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.
When we moved in back in May of 2015, we were rushed, out of budgeted building funds, and so anxious to move in, we didn’t finish the room/space above our garage. We were in hopes to save some money and do it later down the road. This space is pretty big with around 1200 square feet. We currently use it for storage, but are planning on finishing it within the near future. We don’t really need the extra space, but it will add value to our home.
I think lighting is one of the most important elements in setting the overall style of your home: modern, rustic, traditional, etc. For instance, we built a modern farmhouse, so using modern and industrial style fixtures was key to giving it the modern feel we were wanting.
Will we go over budget? Will my marriage last? How long will this process take? All of these questions are ones you may have when deciding whether or not to build your own home. There are so many articles that could give much information and go into detail on the building process, but today I’m going to focus on just a few reasons why it can be such a great thing! Some may disagree with is and thats ok! I’m writing this from our own knowledge and experience. Having built three homes and remodeled a few, we feel that building is a much better process and these are a few reasons why.
