As some of you already know, we are in the process of planning our new adventure, a new build. The planning process of a new home can be both very overwhelming and exciting. Along this journey, we hope to share with you different stages we are in. Sometimes its good to see what is behind the build and what actually goes into it. This will include the good, the bad, and even the ugly.
As you know, keeping things simple is my style. Christmas decorations do not have to be over the top. In fact, you can give holiday cheer with just a few simple touches. This year I decided to go with more of a traditional theme. I used greenery, red, black, and touches of gold to complete a more traditional look with a few modern touches here and there. Mixing in a few old and new pieces, I was able to create the look and feel I wanted within a reasonable budget.
If you’ve ever built a house, you know there are always things you wish you would have done differently. In our current house, one is putting a regular door going into our toilet room in the master bath. It was always in the way when open. The solution: take it down, and replace it with a sliding barn door. Not only did it solve the problem, but it added another element of visual interest to the room.
Our story all started with $10,000 dollars nearly 18 years ago. Henry and I had gotten married and was expecting our first child. He had just gotten laid off from a position as a web designer and I was teaching at a local high school. We didn’t have a penny to our name and as most young people after college, we were in debt. Henry’s uncle loaned us $10,000 dollars for a down payment on our first home. This was a “fixer upper”, but you would have thought we were buying a million dollar home!
In another article, I shared some tips on taking better interior photos. One of them was to use a DSLR camera instead of an iPhone, because it gives you the ability to adjust shutter speed and allow more exposure for your shots. However, increasing exposure can cause a problem if there are windows in your shot. Since the window is where all of the light is coming from, they end up being overexposed.
It’s our tradition to have both sides of the family over on Thanksgiving Day for dinner. Hosting over 30 people for Thanksgiving can be a little crazy and stressful. Considering we have done this for years, I have learned a few lessons along the way. It should be a time of enjoyment not only for the guests, but for you and your family also. After the first year of trying to do everything myself, I knew I had to be more organized if this was going to happen again. Well, we have continued to host Thanksgiving every year! Hopefully these few tips will help you to enjoy hosting Thanksgiving as much as I do.
When you build a house, there are always things that you wish you would have done differently. In our previous houses, there have been major things that drove us a little crazy, but in this house, there are only a few minor things. So for this post, instead of focusing on the negative, I want to point out a few things that I’m so glad we did, and would most definitely do again in a new home. These aren’t the only things, but these three are at the top of the list.
We just recently reached 20k Instagram followers, and we did it in about 80 days. From what we’ve been told, that’s kinda fast. We’ve also been hearing this question a lot lately: “How have you grown your instagram account so quickly?” So instead of trying to answer it over and over in DM’s and comment replies, I thought it would be better to write a blog post.
A few weeks ago, we wrote an article about our home office makeover. The main feature of the makeover was the dark vertical shiplap wall behind the desk. Since posting that article, we’ve heard from a lot of people wanting to know the details about how I did it. So, in this article, I’m going to show you how.
I don’t know about you all, but my bedroom is the one place I love going to unwind, relax, and wake up feeling refreshed. When I am out of town, I’m always wishing I could be back at home in my own bed. I’m sure Henry gets tired of hearing me say that, but as much as I love traveling, there is just no place like home or my own bed.
