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School is back in session, so it’s time for a summer favorites post! We have a mix of items that were gifted for our wedding and purchases we made ourselves. All of these products have been so nice to have on the daily, and I’m grateful to be in a place financially to splurge on a few items that hopefully last us a long time. Let’s jump right in!

Pyrex containers

Hands down, these are probably our favorite purchase. They really did live up to our expectations! With the variety in sizes, we’re able to use just one container for leftovers most nights. They wash like a dream, and they’re easy to towel dry, too. We retired all of our old plastic containers, with most of them being from my college days. Plus, having these six containers as our only option has really shown us that we don’t need that many! It really helps us keep our leftovers in check so our fridge stays clear of spoiling food

cat door

This cat door is so cute and very functional. It’s been nice to be able to shut our bedroom door at night and still let the cats come in. When the cat door is closed, I love seeing the girls’ eyes peeking through the window trying to be let in!

badminton set

This was a gift from my dear friend Lauren and her fiancé! We love it! It’s fun to play, quick to setup, and a hit with the family. We played this the night before our wedding, and it was a fun, easy game to keep us entertained.

trivets

I love being able to serve our food on the table! It’s so nice having everyone get their own helping versus filling the plates/bowls in the kitchen and carrying them over. These also help cool pans down quicker so they can be cleaned up after dinner!

native deodorant

This deodorant smells amazing and the scent lasts all day. I wasn’t necessarily aiming to get something that smelled so much like candy, but one whiff and I was sold. It seems to be doing a great job as a deodorant, and I like that it has natural ingredients!

zima dental pod

I haaaated brushing my Invisalign retainers! I decided to try out this ultrasonic cleaner, and it works great! Retainers are expensive and will be needed for as long as you want to maintain your natural teeth. Spending a little extra on their maintenance seems worth it to me!

le creuset casserole dish

We’ve been using our new casserole dish every opportunity we get! We love that it’s deeper than our glass casserole dish, which means our recipes that used to overflow in the oven have no issues now. We’ve used it for our dinners and for a peach pie, all turned out great! I love how it’s quick and easy easy to clean and for those meals where we have a little bit too much leftover to transition to storage containers, we can just put the whole dish in the fridge with the lid. It also makes our meals look presentable.

le creuset dutch oven

Wow did this have a learning curve! We were used to cooking with cast iron pans, but we didn’t consider that this would get just as hot. Our first batch of pasta burned and scorched the inside, but we’ve since learned how to work it! For pasta, we like to fill it up over halfway with water. We start it on high until it’s boiling, then turn it to medium heat when we put in the pasta. It’s important to stir the pasta (we mainly do spaghetti!) until it’s boiling again. If not, you may have some stick to the bottom. With this method, it is very easy to clean up and the spaghetti doesn’t stick. I definitely notice that cleaning this pot is quicker than the stainless steel one we used before.

We’ve also been making our chili mac recipe in the dutch oven instead of our instant pot. This helps us keep a better eye on the pasta, and reduces some inconsistencies when cooking in the instant pot. Overall, it seems like it’ll be a very durable piece of cookware, and I’m happy we purchased it! Next up, we will try using it to make bread!

Let me know your summer favorites! Thanks for reading!

Davien

I’m back! With a new last name! Brandon and I got married last month on July 22, 2023. It was a great weekend with family and friends, and it felt like the perfect celebration for us. I plan on making a wedding related post down the road with all of the tips for what worked well for us and how we made the day special. Now the wedding was just a few days out of my month long hiatus, so I’ll share what else I’ve been up to!

Washington DC

Brandon and I kept our DC trip pretty secret, and we were able to surprise the boys until we got into the airport! We’d decided to turn our honeymoon into a family trip because let’s be real — we’re with each other 24/7 since we share a home office. Plus it was good to do a trip with the boys that involved flying since they’d never flown before! We had a great time, and the city was so family friendly. We were able to walk almost everywhere and where we couldn’t walk, we took the subway! It was a little tricky to navigate at first, but once we figured it out, it was a breeze. We stayed near the National Mall, and it was the perfect location for visiting neighboring museums and landmarks. Our only regrets were paying almost $50 on four small Ben & Jerry ice creams and not being able to see more museums/attractions. That said, the length of the trip (4 nights) was just right.

Our favorite visits on our trip were the International Spy Museum, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and flying. I think we could’ve passed on the Air and Space Museum because it was a little boring, and honestly the zoo wasn’t as lively as we’d hoped!

Reading

Where to start with my reading! I can’t tell if I’ve been a book worm lately or if I’ve just been lucky with a good book selection! Since the wedding, I have read seven books, and I highly recommend them all!

• The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong
• The Awakening by Kelly Armstrong
• The Reckoning by Kelley Armstrong
• Wrong Alibi by Christina Dodd
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
• The Messenger by Lois Lowry

Queued up next is Son by Lois Lowry! Most of these books I read in middle school or high school, and it was so nice to see that they were as good as I remembered!

Working out

I was able to squeeze in two Chloe Ting workouts before the wedding, first the 2023 Summer Shred Challenge followed by the 2023 1 Min Challenge. I then took a two week break from Chloe Ting to relax and go to Washington DC. It was a good break, but I still got plenty of exercise! Every full day in DC we walked 9 miles! I’ve since started up the 2022 Get Fit and Moving Challenge, and it’s been a great way to stay active. One thing I’ve done differently this time around is not skipping the warm up and cool down videos. While it does add an extra 10-20 minutes to my workouts, getting a good stretch in has been worth it!

Well, that’s all! Once we get past this heat wave, we’ll cozy up with some football which will give me plenty of time to blog! We should also have more house news in the next couple weeks since we plan on reaching out to the builder for a little pulse check.

Have a good weekend!

Davien

Hello everyone! Can you believe we’re already halfway through July? In less than a week, my fiancé and I will be getting married! I’m so excited and to prepare for the busyness of the next six days, I thought I would share a small design while I have some time: our entry!

I was holding off on sharing more 3D renders (done by me) until we had our home design firmed up with the builder, but they haven’t reached out yet. I think they’re still very busy with their 2023 builds, but we’ll reach out in October if we still haven’t heard back. Until then, I might as well continue to post my 3D renders! It’ll then be helpful to share on the blog what had to change with our designs and why!

Of course this space will look different with a ceiling and some foliage outside, but this room is quite the powerhouse. In our current house, you enter right into our living room. This isn’t bad at all, but I do love how in the new house, we’ll have a little more privacy when people are at our door. (I have not yet mastered the skill of always being presentable for unexpected guests!) The main view this room will have is our kitchen island and bedroom door, which we plan on keeping shut during the day aside from a cat door.

The barn door you see on the left side is for the mudroom. I love how it’s equally as accessible for guests using the front door or family going through the garage. I think this should make it pretty easy to keep coats and shoes in one central spot versus having an entry closet and mudroom.

As you can see, I rendered a built in shelf/niche that functions the same as an entry table. I really wanted your typical entry pieces (mirror, accent lighting, surface to set something down on — like a guest’s keys or sunglasses), but I knew we were limited with our use of barn doors. The reason we want the barn doors is to make sure the doors aren’t in the way of traffic/flow if they’re left open. I also like how the entry built-in means the room can stay symmetrical, saves us from having to find an entry table, and also helps protects the lighting and decor from any commotion from entering/exiting the house.

I really loved how this turned out and hope it’s something we can do! While it may look a little bare, we do plan on keeping some plants near the front door’s sidelights, plus less floor clutter makes for an easier space to clean. Especially one that’s prone to dirt and mud!

Also – the right barn door leads to our office. We both work from home (for the same company!) and it’s helpful to have a quick path back to work after you return from school drop off or in case you need to see who’s at the door.

Now, here’s our mood board:

The budget shelf surface would be a laminate (Black Alicante by Wilsonart would be a great option) for our built-in entry ‘table’. If we could splurge, we would totally do a cool remnant marble or even a large format marble tile that is then cut down. The space is very small, so it really just depends on what size remnants are available and the install cost.

I also love the sconces. While pricey, some fixtures really make a space and can be a great investment if A. they bring you joy and B. they last a long time. (PSST: If you like this light, check out some of the others I share in Light Fixture Favorites)

That’s all for this post! I hope you enjoy our dream entry design as much as we do. Hopefully next year we can make it a reality!

Thanks for reading!

Davien

When I started our wedding registry, there were a lot of items that I didn’t list because we don’t need them right now (hope to move into a new house next year), they were too expensive, etc. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t lose sight of anything we wanted to buy ourselves, so I chose to create a new Pinterest board to contain my personal ‘wish list’! I like that Pinterest makes it easy to pin from other websites on both mobile devices and computers, and I also like being able to visually see what’s on my list with product images. Eventually I can categorize things in priority order, sort by room, or archive things we’ve purchased!

Alright, let’s look at what I added! First up, cookware! I was never big on cooking, meal presentation, or even kitchen stuff in general until I moved in with Brandon and his boys. Now that I help cook a nice meal every night, I can really appreciate the kitchen appliances or cookware that make cooking easier. I also want the meal we cook to look as nice as it tastes and have an easier clean up!

Le Creuset Dutch oven

My reasoning for wanting a Dutch oven, especially a fancy one like this, came about in the most ridiculous way. We made a delicious chili this weekend in the crock pot, and we had to dish out all the bowls in the kitchen then carry them to the table. I love the idea of being able to put our meal on the table and serve it there instead of in the kitchen, which is why I asked for trivets on our wedding registry. My initial purpose for this Dutch oven was to hold the chili from the crock pot, that way we could serve it nicely on the table and just store the leftovers in the fridge with the lid on.

Now I may be influenceable, but I’m not buying a pot at this price just for presentation and food storage. I need a real cooking purpose!! Luckily, it seems like this thing can do it all. Make our weekly butter noodles, make BREAD, or really anything else that we wouldn’t put in our pans or the Instant Pot. Since we only use/have cast iron pans, it makes sense to make our pots long lasting and nonstick too.

By the way, if we weren’t making home cooked meals every night, I would never be able to justify this price tag. One thing that Brandon and I love though is reducing waste and having quality, lasting items. When/if we buy this Dutch oven, I would surely do a review. There was a time that I thought we wouldn’t need a KitchenAid stand mixer, but we use that almost every night and it’s saved us so much time and energy in the kitchen!

Le Creuset casserole dish

The main perk with this casserole dish is that it has a cute lid which is great for transporting or storing food! The color is very pretty, too!

Le Creuset loaf pan

I recently made banana bread and it would’ve looked so cute in this little loaf pan! This is another case where yes our discolored aluminum pans would continue to work just fine, but having a pretty pan just makes the whole baking process more enjoyable!

Napkins

You’ve read all about my desire to have cloth napkins in previous posts, so this should be no surprise. But yes, I want to have a stock of cloth napkins on hand so we (mainly I) don’t have to use a paper towel with dinner every night. I love the idea of them lasting a long time and just reducing the amount of garbage we have each week. Plus, there are so many pretty ones and this is one item where I feel like you can’t have too many!

Drink table

This little drink table is so cute! I was telling Brandon that we need more places for people to put their drinks when they’re over. All of our surfaces for placing a drink are around our loveseat we sit on and while we have plenty of coasters for everyone, most of the coasters have to be put on the floor! We could get some use out of this drink stand now, but it’ll also be perfect in the new house. Plus, I LOVE the wood, brass, and marble tones!

Coasters

These we probably wouldn’t use until the new house because like I said, we have more coasters than places to put coasters! But I love this little dose of a bold Viola marble, and in the new house, we’ll want to make sure we use coasters for any drinks left on our island!

I hope you liked these items on my buy later list! Let me know if there’s anything you saw that you liked or if you have any recommendations!

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Davien

As we prepare to have a new house next year, we’re trying to take inventory of what we have and/or want that way we can get an idea of how much storage we need. We’re big proponents of having a few quality things you take care of rather than a bunch of things that are hard to keep track of, which makes them harder to maintain. Our house is much easier to keep clean now that we’ve donated a lot of things we don’t use or need!

Below I have a few recent declutter projects we’ve completed, as well as some future ones we need to tackle in the next year or so.

Recent Projects

Spice cabinet

Our spices were all stored in a 12″ wide upper cabinet, so making sure that our most used spices were accessible and easy to reach was important. In our new house, we’re going to minimize tall storage, so really this was just a temporary annoyance. However, my cousin gifted me some spice jars for my wedding, so I started reorganizing a little early! I love how the jars are bigger, so we don’t lose the little ones and accidentally buy duplicates. When I was decluttering, I actually found 2-3 jars of some spices that I was able to consolidate into one!

I also love how the new glass jars are see through, so we can see how much of a seasoning we have left while meal planning and making our grocery list. The wider opening makes it easier to fit our tablespoon, which has always been a struggle. During this declutter, we also decided to relocate the seasoning jars to a drawer and keep them in alphabetic order. This makes them so much easier to find! We were able to utilize this empty drawer thanks to the kitchen decluttering we’d done in the past.

Finally, while we love the jars, there are some seasonings that we will continue storing in their bulk, store bought containers like garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, and paprika. Those seasonings in particular we use a lot, so refilling the glass jars would be a regular occurrence. Either way, I love these little jars so much, I plan on getting one more set of 12 for the remaining seasonings we have.

Measuring spoons/measuring cups

Our measuring cup drawer used to be a nightmare despite its small size, mainly because the cups would get caught when trying to close it. This is where we did some major downsizing. For one, we went down to just 2 sets of dry measuring cups. We have a black set that is a harder plastic and has half measurements marked (like 1/8 cup). We also have a set from my dorm days, which we plan on replacing with a steel set in the future since the measurements are almost rubbed off.

For measuring spoons, we have two sets as well. One is double sided, so it really feels like three sets! Our wet measuring cups are stored elsewhere due to their height, but we get by great with just two of those. A great perk to downsizing your kitchen tools is it doesn’t take long to find what you’re looking for!

Entryway closet

The main motivation with decluttering our entry closet was mainly to make it look neater (there are no doors, just open shelving). However, one major plus is it helped us see what storage we’d actually need in our new house mudroom. We obviously need room for coats and shoes, but outside of that, our main needs are hats/gloves, sunscreen, and bug spray.

We were also able to see that the majority of our hooks are used by sweatshirts/hats, so we plan on having hooks in the kids’ bedrooms to help store those less regularly used items there.

Books

When Brandon and I get on a reading roll, we get through a lot of books. We’re so lucky to live within walking distance to a library, but it’s got a pretty small selection compared to bigger city libraries. To keep our bookshelf tame, we try to keep our our own collection pared down to what we’d like to reread, loan out, or just keep if the book has any meaning. Books we bought but didn’t like or read once with no plans to reread, we’re trying (as in the books are in my trunk) to donate or resell. I love the idea of our bookshelf being a curated collection of books we’d recommend to a friend.

Future Projects

Cleaning supplies

We have so many cleaning products we don’t use! In the kitchen, we’re extremely basic with just Dawn dish soap for our dishes, countertops, and table. This works for us, and I know our future marble will require a gentler cleaner.

We’ll keep lysol wipes and paper towels on hand for toilets/litterboxes, as well as a mirror cleaner. Besides that, I’d love to reduce the number of surface cleaners we have. Ideally all of our cleaning products could be in one central location or cabinet, instead of each bathroom or kitchen requiring its own cleaning product storage.

Washcloths/towels

We have so many random towels, and this is the one area where I struggle with ‘but what if we need it!’. My goal for the new house would be to have 2-3 hand towels designated for each bathroom, 2-3 bath towels per person, 2-3 each of hand towels/wash clothes/drying towels for the kitchen, and then a stash of rags/towels for cleaning. As long as you’re staying on top of your laundry, you don’t really need a whole lot of towels. Plus, it’s annoying to go through the work of doing the laundry, folding it, and then you have to squeeze them into a drawer or pile them like a leaning tower!

Having kids responsible for their own bath towels will also help reduce the chance of one child always grabbing a fresh towel so there’s none left for the others!

Tupperware/storage

We dread washing our plastic storage containers/tupperware because you have to work harder to make them feel clean! I’d love for us to consolidate our large collection of medium sized plastic tupperware into a variety of glass storage containers. A lot of the time we need multiple tupperware containers for leftovers because we don’t have a big enough size. That means more plastic to wash, which we do not like! Plus, I’d love to not have to devote an entire cabinet to storing storage containers!

Do you have any decluttering projects you recommend or ones you need to tackle yourself? Let me know!

Thanks for reading!

Davien

Hello! It’s been a while since I listed out some of my favorites, so I thought I’d share a few things that we’ve been enjoying! This list has been compiled over the past couple months since we haven’t really had much ‘fun’ money to spend on new things (wedding and new house on the horizon!). All of our purchases have been super intentional, and I can’t say enough how appreciative we are of the gifts that are on this list.

There’s quite the hodge podge of items to show, so let’s jump right in!

KitchenAid food processor

We were gifted this food processor by a coworker and his wife, and it has been the little engine that could in our kitchen! I’m very good at finding other things to do besides chop an onion, so Brandon usually has to do it. Now I help out! We’ve found that the chop mode works best for onions, black beans, and chickpeas. And the puree option will be perfect for blending up the strawberries for our strawberry wedding cake!

We also love how easy it is to clean. There are three pieces (bowl, blade, lid) and all disconnect from the base to be washed fully. I had a small Ninja a while back, and it was hard to keep the piece where the blade went into the base free of mold. So gross! Also, the bottom of this food processor has a groove so the cord can be wrapped up when not in use. This is a 10/10 food processor, and we’ve probably used it over 10 times in the few weeks that we’ve had it!

sandstone tile samples

Alright… I love the look of limestone, and I was trying so hard to find a budget option. Then I was just trying to resort to finding a tumbled limestone in the United States, regardless of budget. Through some research, I found Floors of Stone. They were offering free samples of this gorgeous sandstone, and I was drawn in! I placed my order of 4 free samples, then got a very nice email from customer service saying that customers outside of the United Kingdom were asked to just pay the courier fee. Well… this ended up being $56! But honestly, it was so worth it. For one, we know that the first tile is as pretty as it is in the pictures and if possible, we want it for our future mudroom. The second one is nice as well, but a slightly different tone than we were looking for.

Wilsonart Black Alicante laminate sample

What I love about this laminate sample was the price tag (free!), and how it made us really trust in our decision to pair laminate near marble. It’s also helpful to keep near my mood board of samples to remember our color scheme for the dream house!

KitchenAid standing mixer

We were gifted this mixer by my parents and sister’s family, and we love it already! We have yet to use it for cakes, but it will surely be easier than using our hand mixer and having to stop to pour in more ingredients. We actually used it to make mashed potatoes, which was an unexpected but perfect use case.

Besides the fact that it frees up your hands while mixing, I love how easy it is to clean. If you can’t tell already, we value easy clean up because we don’t have a dishwasher. This mixer just has the bowl and attachment to clean, and there aren’t any nooks or crannies to scrub into. I’m sure it’ll last many years, and it’s nice enough to keep on our counter!

220 grit sandpaper

No, this was not a mistake! Our keurig duo (which we love) has had a leaky pour spout since we got it. Apparently this is a common complaint and a manufacturing flaw. We did not believe that sanding down the tiny line on the spout would fix the issue, and we held off on buying a new coffee pot for quite some time.

Anyways, $2 + tax later, it’s fixed, and we have no issues spilling our coffee! Moral of the story, don’t be like us, just trust the super simple, stupidly obvious fix.

belt bag

Brandon gifted me this belt bag for my birthday after I expressed interest in a purse that was more hands free. People can say what they want about the look or the trend can die down, but I’ll still use my belt bag! I love how it’s never at risk of falling off my shoulder or needing to be hung up on a gross public restroom hook. Plus, it keeps everything in my line of sight and would be hard to pick pocket!

PB&J sandwiches

Yes, PB&Js made the list. The past two months, we have had to cut some spending categories in order to pay for unexpected purchases without disrupting our dream house savings goal. The restaurant budget was first on the chopping block! We really don’t eat out very often to begin with, but we knew that we had a lot of road trips this spring due to weddings, birthdays, dentist, etc. Instead of spending what could’ve been 5 meals on a drive through order, we did some planning and made PB&Js for all of our little trips! Our trick was to make more than we thought we needed and place them back in the bread bag for easy travel. The sacrifice has honestly been so worth it, and we’ll get to enjoy our favorite restaurant (JJ Jasmine’s) next month!

marble fruit bowl

This was gifted to us for our wedding by someone who doesn’t read my blog or know what my home decor style is. In fact, she’s on Brandon’s side, so she probably doesn’t know much about me at all! For her to pick this out out of all the more common things on my registry, it was so special! Maybe she has a sweet spot for marble too!

chickpea fritters by Feel Good Foodie

We have been making this recipe every week, and it’s absolutely delicious. We like to double this so there are leftovers, make it into 6 normal sized patties, and then swap the 2tsp cumin (after doubling) for 1tsp cumin + 1 tsp smoked paprika. Yum!

chickpea salad sandwiches by Nora Cooks

Another recipe that we’ve been eating on a weekly basis! This one is so quick now that we have a food processor, and there is no cooking required! It’s great for a quick meal.

Iowa Treasure Hunt

Hear me out on this one! One of my coworkers brought up this website during our meeting, which I’d heard of before but never had anything to claim. However, I entered in Brandon’s name and got a hit! He submitted the claim, and next thing we know, we have an extra $30 going to our new tires fund! It’s so easy! If you’re in Iowa (or maybe your state has one), you should see if there’s any money you need to claim. I’m telling you, it’s legit!

Do you have any recent favorites you’d recommend? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

Davien

Brandon and I started thinking through our house design in the fall of 2021. That’s a long time to be dreaming up some house plans! While there were some elements filtered out in the beginning (spiral staircase, second story, etc), we’ve been pretty steady in what we want in our new build. However, I feel like in the past few months we’ve changed up our ideas on a few details as we went further into our financial journey.

Below I’ll be going over 5 things that have changed in our house plans. It should be obvious that there could be more changes down the road, and we may even flip flop on these again! We welcome changing our mind during the dreaming/preparing stage, but once we have those plans locked in, we will do our best to avoid change orders!

flooring we’ll like forever ➡️ flooring we’ll like for the next 5-10 years

We were fully in the camp of wanting to get our flooring right at build time for quite some time. While we still agree that we want to make sure our main flooring is what we want, we’ve decided to be more flexible in areas such as secondary bathrooms.

We’re considering doing an LVT click/lock flooring in the bathroom spaces and replace with tile down the road. Tile itself isn’t too expensive, but I personally would not want to pay for the $$$ labor to install a tile I don’t love and then later pay for the $$$ labor to remove it.

We actually ordered some great LVT samples from Tilebar like this one:

But since we wanted to try installing flooring in our tiny bathroom we have now, we didn’t want to pay for the $99 flat fee for shipping. Instead, we placed an order for this tile through our town’s Akin Design Center. If installation goes well, perhaps we could install this style of flooring ourselves (since it’s just click and lock) in the new house’s bathrooms!

By the way, budget isn’t the only reason that we want to do a more intermediate flooring solution in the non-primary bathrooms. Really I just don’t want to have the added stress of designing all of these bathrooms at once and regret any expensive decisions made!

modern cottage exterior ➡️ crisp, clean exterior

Now here’s an area that has changed a lot over time! I think initially we wanted a fully modern look, but then we switched to something like a modern cottage. While we still love this look, there were a lot of elements that weren’t translating into our house plan very well. For instance, most of these homes are two stories without a front facing garage. Trying to make our ranch with a large front facing garage look like a modern cottage was like putting a square through a round hole!

We were also looking at a big price tag with stone and brick that we’d prefer to put inside the home. Our house exterior today is muddy brown, so we loved the idea of seeing a crisp white house at the end of our lane. Artic White James Hardie siding might be our answer! Hardie siding is known as nice looking and long lasting. I think we could see about having horizontal for the main portion of the house and vertical in the gabled sections of the home.

I actually prefer white windows with an all white exterior, so this decision will end up saving us the slightly higher price tag for black windows, too.

marble backsplash ➡️ laminate backsplash

Originally we were going to do a dark quartz, laminate, or granite on our back kitchen counter and then a marble slab backsplash (as seen below):

When I was adding up how much extra this would cost us, I decided to render just an extended backsplash of our countertop material in SketchUp. I actually really liked it!

Plus, we found a laminate option that should look very nice on our perimeter countertop. I really like the sample we have of this, and it would look so good with the other materials in the space. If we decide it doesn’t wear well, we could always save up to replace it later. But I think we’ll be very happy with it, as we really don’t have complaints about our current laminate countertops besides them being green!

no tub ➡️ tub ➡️ no tub!

We started off not having a tub, maybe because of space reasons. Then we created a monster sized bathroom in our plan with a GORGEOUS tub moment. It was a beautiful corner tub with curtains.

Now we have no tub since it didn’t fit well in our bathroom. I think this is the right decision because we hardly use the two tubs we have in this house. If we really want a bath, we can use a different bathroom.

cooktop/wall oven ➡️ range

I’ve always loved the look of a cooktop and wall ovens were appealing for keeping pets and kids away when taking something out of the oven. However the more we thought about it, we didn’t want our oven right against a wall (and near a doorway) and that was the main place it made sense to put one.

Instead we’re thinking of a 36 inch range which should give us some more cooktop space (when we make black bean burgers and homemade wedges, it gets a little crowded). My preference would be an electric range, but they don’t make many of those that are 36 inches wide. Although the idea of cooking on a gas range kind of scares me with the little flame, I’m sure I’d get the hang of it!

Alright, those are all of our recent flip flops! Hopefully soon we’ll have real decisions happening with the builder. When that time comes, we’ll be ready!

Thank you for reading my post!

Davien

One thing that Brandon and I have talked about regarding our secondary bathrooms is that we’ll likely choose prefab vanities if those are less expensive. While this wouldn’t be my #1 choice if I had endless money, it’ll be perfect for years to come while we live life and think of a super cool bathroom design to do in the future.

To help me see what’s out there for store bought vanities and their respective prices, I did some shopping research at Wayfair, West Elm, and Home Depot. Full disclosure, I have no idea what prefab or custom vanities cost. It’s possible that none of the vanities I linked are cost effective and in that case, I just have expensive taste? Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there!

By the way, if you like any of the vanities from Home Depot or Wayfair, you can click the links and there’s a good chance that the customer reviews include photos of how the vanity looked in the reviewer’s bathroom. Unfortunately West Elm didn’t have many customer photos, but the way the vanity is styled in the product pictures gives you a good idea of how nice it’ll look!

Now let’s go through these 16 vanities!

1. This vanity is 6 feet wide! It has double sinks and a perfectly neutral wood tone. It’s currently $2400.

2. This double vanity has a smoky tone! It’s 54 inches and $1500.

3. This vanity is not cost effective in comparison to the first two, but it looks very sharp! It’s only 36 inches wide, yet costs a whopping $2000.

4. This would be a good option for the boys’ bathroom. It’s 54 inches wide and $2300. Most of the vanities from Wayfair are actually on sale! I’m hoping that this Memorial Day sale happens again next year, so we can order all of our vanities early and at a good price!

5. I love how crisp this vanity is! It’s 6 feet long and $2600. I feel like I don’t always like white cabinets with black pulls, but it’s pulled off very well here!

6. Moving into West Elm territory! This vanity is another smaller one at 3 feet wide, but rings up at $1300.

7. This vanity definitely has a mid-century look! It’s 63 inches wide (my height!), and about $2500.

8. The pulls on this 5 foot wide vanity look like slugs! This is one of the most expensive vanities in my post at $2700.

9. But not one to be beat, this vanity is the same width as the one above (5 feet) but costs thousands more! If you take the total cost ($4700) divided by the linear feet (5 feet), you’re looking at $860 per linear foot of vanity!

10. I feel like a big thing right now is making your kitchen and bathroom cabinetry look like furniture, and this vanity definitely gives dresser/nightstand vibes. It is absolutely cute as a button, so the price of $2700 at 63 inches wide is worth it to me!

11. Ok, this 6 foot vanity looks like our IKEA MALM dresser that we love! It’s a little pricy at $3700, but I love the look of it!

12. The last of the West Elm vanities! This one is 4 feet wide, and $2400. I love the wood tone and the integrated handles!

13. Home Depot has budget friendly vanities with tons of good reviews. This particular vanity is 5 feet wide and only $800!

14. This vanity is very modern with its long pulls! It’s 42 inches and seems to be a good price at $959!

15. Brandon noted that the knobs and pulls on this vanity look like the faces of the pitstop crew on Cars! It’s 61 inches wide (odd size!) and $2000.

16. This vanity is quite a bit different than the others with it being a more traditional build. It’s got a cool wood tone and plenty of storage! It’s $2300 and 6 feet wide.

This post will be good for me to reference in the future if I need to find a vanity! I hope it also gives you some options if you’re thinking of doing a bathroom remodel. If you asked for my top three on the list and were really twisting my arm, I would pick #5, #7, and #10!

Thanks for reading!

Davien

When the #53rdBuild sneak peeks were first shared by THELIFESTYLEDCO, I was interested. But when they did their construction update and featured a bold checkered tile on the shower floor and tub surround, I was absolutely captivated.

I was soon counting down the days until the airing of their Youtube tour! And let me tell you, it did not disappoint. Because this was a ($8.5 million!) spec home, there were no clients involved. This led to so many crazy cool choices. I highly recommend watching the house tour on Youtube. While 8.5 million dollar design choices aren’t something most can replicate in their own homes, THELIFESTYLEDCO designers do a great job at pointing out which choices are budget friendly and which come with a luxury price tag.

For this design spotlight, I’ll be sharing the pictures from the #53rdBuild on THELIFESTYLEDCO’s blog. If you want to see more pictures, click that link! They took so many pictures of this home!

As I’ve said in at least two other posts, these designers sure do know their way around a fireplace! In their Youtube video, they say this is a tambour and quartz surround. I love the shape of the storage cabinets and their integrated handles. Fun fact about this project, the designers did not use any handle/pull hardware in this home except for in the casita kitchen! This definitely contributes to the luxury price tag.

A lot of the furniture/decor can be found at THELIFESTYLEDCO shop if you search on the project hashtag. I personally love the coffee tables in the living room but unfortunately, for at least the next few years, they aren’t in the budget.

Here’s a view of the kitchen! Ugh, I love the flooring.. love the chairs.. and the marble of course is stunning. I also really like how this quartz looks like limestone. If you point your eyes to the bottom of the island, you’ll see a reeded toe kick! So unique. Also, I haven’t really seen anyone do tile around an island like that! It’s such a subtle design element once you notice it.

Kristen Forgione did not say what this powder bathroom marble is, she just mentioned that it was a remnant. My guess is Super White marble/dolomite because we’ve seen this slab in person and want to use it in our kitchen next year! It’s SUCH a beautiful stone!

I’m still internally screaming over this checkered tile! When we build our house, there will be a lot of things/materials that we can’t fit into the budget. I feel better about this when I tell myself I can tear up one of the bathrooms and replicate this tile look in like… 20 years. 😆

I also love the fluted tile on the shower walls! 10/10 bathroom!

I like the wall color they picked for this bedroom, but THELIFESTYLEDCO could put pureed peas green on the walls, and it’d still look fine because their engineered wood floor selection automatically makes a room look nice.

THELIFESTYLEDCO really knocked it out of the park with this bathroom! The designers said this luxurious tile is from Floor and Decor, and I know I’ve been there too much because mentally I pictured the tile they were talking about! I’ve definitely walked by it before. The high ceilings, statement lighting, and central seating area make this bathroom feel like another main area of the home!

Here they put WINDOWS in the corner of the pantry! When they demonstrated how it looked from the outside, it looked like a little bakery or bistro! I’ve never seen windows in a pantry like this.

This little mudroom corner was so sleek! They didn’t talk about it much, but it still caught my eye!

I love most of the designs in this project, but the bathrooms take the cake! In this final picture, they have tons of bianco carrara marble, which is what we’re wanting in our new shower next year. I just love how soft and pretty this bathroom is!

I hope you liked this post! But I hope it left you wanting more, so you go and watch their video! I only picked my absolute favorite designs from this house, and there are so many more to see!

Thanks for reading!

Davien

Today I am so excited to post our dream floor plan that we have perfected over the past two years. It’s been a long time coming to such a great layout, so fingers crossed that the builder can help us bring this design to life! We’re going through some hoops to build on our existing lot, so we’re planning on being in this house for the long haul. We want to have room for more kids, have it be aging friendly, and be an overall beautiful home that we’re excited to welcome people into.

First, let’s take a look at the general overview. (Sorry for any fuzziness)

It’s a sturdy main level with just under 2300 square feet. Our current house has 1500 square feet on the main level, and while the layout itself is pretty good, overall we just need the rooms bigger and some more designated spaces. In this picture, we have a mudroom (within the garage), entry, office, living/dining/kitchen, pantry, laundry room, guest bath, guest bedroom/future nursery, and a primary suite.

We also plan on having a finished basement with more bedrooms, bathrooms, and an additional living room (hence the stubbed out stairs).

Here is our dream primary suite. We’d be really close to the laundry room and near the stairs as well to have quick access to the lower level (walkout lot) where kids’ bedrooms would be. Our dream would be to have a private balcony off of our bedroom, which is also shown in the picture. I’ve stubbed out some furniture with our IKEA dresser, queen bed, and standard nightstand dimensions. Down the primary hallway, we’d have a closet that could store our laundry hampers and extra bedding.

I’ve already shown our bathroom design, but now you can see where it fits in. Further down the hallway, you can see a big ole room. This is intended to have our main closet (most of our everyday clothes fit in our dresser) for nicer clothes, shoes, seasonal wear, etc. However, the room will be primarily clear and used as a fitness room. I’d like to have a place on the main level to still be active during the winter, and I know I’ll be more motivated if I have a designated space tucked away. It’s a little hard to see, but there’s also a barn door that allows quick access to the guest hallway (which will come in handy when the guest room is being used as a nursery someday). One thing that’s been important during our home design is functionality. Having our primary suite be accessible from both ends of the house means we’re always nearby in case of commotion!

And here’s a view of the guest hallway in relation to the living room. In the previous picture, you can see that a full bathroom would be nearby as well. The closed off room between the stairs and the guest hallway would be a closet that has doors facing the living room. This would be where we store our vacuum and maybe extra blankets!

This is one side of the house that I’m pretty excited for! To the left, we have a mudroom between the garage and entry. The details are primarily for planning, as mudroom cabinetry would be the first on the chopping block if our budget is in jeopardy. We have barn doors on each side of the entry to reduce any issues with doors being left open and in the way. I haven’t done a reveal on this yet, but on the right you can see a sneak peek of an idea I have to build an entryway console table in at the framing stage. The barn door could just glide over it and any lighting or decor would be safe from impact!

To the far right, you can see a glimpse of our office, too. This is the one room that is viewable from the front yard, but given that it’s our office, not a whole lot of privacy is needed. I’ll post a design render of it later, but it has entrances from the entry and the kitchen.

And… the kitchen! This isn’t fully rendered yet, but here’s what I have so far. On the left you can see our office door, which will be very convenient for coffee breaks and help let light through to the kitchen.

I’ll do a more in depth view of the kitchen later, but this is a good idea of the layout and color scheme we have planned. We want the cabinetry on the right to not distract from the symmetrical view we created. One of those sets of white cabinet doors would be a fridge/freezer (we’d really like a panel ready one, but tbd on budget). In the back right corner, you can also see the doorway to our pantry. Up front to the right, you can see the laundry room barn door.

And here’s what you’d see if you were standing at the kitchen sink.

The only criticisms I could see for this floor plan is 1. budget and 2. resale/appraisal since two of the bedrooms are non-standard in that they have two entrances. But really, what else would there be to complain about!

I can’t wait for the builder to reach out (…maybe after the wedding since we’re exactly 2 months out) and start drafting our plan. We’d really like to know where we are in terms of budget and what we’d have to do to make our dream plan work!

Thanks for reading!

Davien