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Today’s roundup is going to be home goods that we have purchased recently. The past month we’ve purchased more for the home than we typically do thanks to sales and gift cards. We’re happy with all of our purchases and feel like the benefit they added exceeded the price we paid!

marble spoon rest

A while back we added this spoon rest to our Amazon wedding registry, and we decided to just go ahead and purchase it! I hadn’t had a spoon rest as an adult, and every time we set our serving utensil down on the countertop or cooktop, we wished we had a spoon rest. So far it’s holding up very well (no stains), and it’s actually bigger than I expected. I’d say it’s double the size of the spoon rests I’m used to, but when our utensil is resting on it, it doesn’t look as oversized. Plus, it’s made of our favorite natural material, so it’s beautiful to look at!

magnetic measuring spoons

We were gifted a magnetic set of measuring spoons for Christmas (thanks Mom!), and they were so life changing that we added this pair to our wedding registry. After a week or so, I ended up just purchasing them since I had a gift card and they were on sale. We were able to pare down our measuring spoons to just two full magnetic sets (three sets if you consider that these are dual sided!), and it’s made a huge difference in our kitchen drawer. Plus I’d have to say that these metal measuring spoons are easier to clean than our plastic ones, especially if we measure something oily. (I did a little research, and apparently that’s not just my own perception… Plastic takes longer to clean and dry!)

marble coasters

Brandon and I didn’t grow up using coasters, but we use them daily as adults. I gave myself a challenge in December to just purchase one thing for the house at West Elm (any store would’ve been fine, but we just happened to be near West Elm when I thought of this). I felt like I was putting too much pressure on the new house and needed to feel like I could ‘invest’ in our current one. We decided to buy these coasters to replace the well used (and well loved!) coasters we already had (which were a mix of 4×4 flooring samples and DIY coasters I made with my friend). We keep two in the living room and two in our bedroom, but we have another set on our wedding registry since we used them so often.

white velvet crinkle duvet cover

While looking at West Elm, we were amazed with how soft this duvet cover (and the below quilt) felt. We were using a single oversized blanket as our main bedding (not counting sheets), so we decided to pull the trigger during their 40% off select bedding sale. Having this white duvet really brightens up our room compared to the dark purplish/gray blanket we had before. It also helps motivate us to keep our room tidy and our bed made!

velvet quilt and pillowcases

We also purchased this quilt and the matching pillowcases in the color ‘pearl gray’. It’s so soft and the weight of it really enhances the coziness factor. The thickness of the pillowcases also help make our ordinary pillows sit up higher, which is perfect for watching TV in bed!

duvet insert

This is the duvet that we purchased (also off our wedding registry!) to use with our duvet cover. The price was fantastic, and it really does complete our bedding set.

colander

Our strainer that we used daily finally lost its metal handle, so we decided it was time to replace it. Most of what we rinse or drain doesn’t require small holes, so we decided to go with a colander instead. So far I really enjoy how much easier it is to scrub when we’re done using it. Plus it looks great!

I hope each of these purchases last a long time if we take good care of them! I’ve also been going back and forth about whether to mention stuff we added to/purchased off our wedding registry. I would be 100% happy if the only people who purchased off our wedding registry were me and my fiancé because we’ve been treating it like our personal household shopping list. If you’ve gotten feedback that there isn’t much on your wedding registry and guests need more options, maybe you can get ideas from what I’ve put on mine!

Thanks for reading!

Today I’m rounding up all of my favorite wall paneling details I’ve been seeing lately. You’ll find some that I love to just look at and others that I would love to incorporate into our new house. I didn’t include any wall moulding details because there are just so many different patterns. I tend to prefer wall paneling over wall moulding, but I might create a post later on if I get enough inspiration collected.

skinny beadboard

This skinny beadboard draws a lot of attention! One good thing about this wall detail is once it’s up, you really don’t need much in the space to add interest. I feel like I tend to choose design in the functional elements of a space, and that’s exactly what this picture shows. The beadboard, light, towel, and faucet all add some pizzazz without just collecting dust. That said, this may be a paneling detail that I just love to look at! I think the skinny beadboard is a pretty specific style I could see myself growing out of years down the road but would always admire in other peoples’ homes.

tongue and groove paneling

I think this paneling is a lot more subtle than the skinny beadboard, and I love how it’s fully painted. I just pointed out to Brandon that we have this same white paneling in our kitchen, so it truly is a quiet detail.

shiplap

I had to look up the difference between tongue and groove paneling and shiplap because I wasn’t sure if they were the same. It turns out, tongue and groove and shiplap are mainly different because of how they connect together. Our current house had a lot of wood paneling, and we painted over most of it. It was mainly panel boards (not individual boards connected) which probably made it look less cool than the picture above. I actually love the full commitment to keeping the wood tones on this shiplap. The stain color is beautiful and I would love to find a way to incorporate this into our house.

strip panel/slats

Brandon has been very interested in having at least one hidden door in the new house, and I love the look of these slats! If we had a built in door, it would need to be for a room with little traffic. I’m really crossing my fingers for a home gym connected to the primary suite, but I don’t want it to be too nestled into the house without a way back to the main living area. An inconspicuous way to enter from the main living space or hallway would be perfect!

While researching for my post, I realized that I don’t have any horizontal wood panel pictures! I’ll have to keep my eye out on Pinterest and see if any spark my interest. What are your favorite wall details? I’d love to hear from you!

Unless you’re designing a super large house or a countertop showroom, you’re fairly limited on how many different countertops you will have in your lifetime. I think my favorite part of any design show is when they shop for countertops or show the reveal of them. There are so many beautiful countertops out there, and I’m honestly bummed I can’t just collect them like some people collect artwork or buttons.

calacatta marble

I’m not sure if the second picture is an arabescato or a calacatta, but I included it anyway. These are so pretty, but one super important thing to note is they have a high price tag. I think if you love this look but budget is tight, try to find a remnant to use in a smaller area.

cararra marble

Carrara marble is a good option if you’re looking at marbles but don’t want to splurge on the more exotic variations. Plus, it’s timeless! Fingers crossed, we plan on using bianco carrara tile in our shower. It’s pretty similar to the countertop above.

super white dolomite marble

This stone is one of my favorites. We actually went and saw it at a stone yard just to make sure we weren’t being dramatic about not finding a similar quartz option. Nope, this marble is truly that breath taking! We plan on using this on our island and backsplash, but you may already know that from my Dream Kitchen Design post.

calacatta viola marble

How fun is the color of this marble?! It’s purple! I’ve seen so many people do solid marble sinks in this particular stone type. You can find many available on Etsy, even with fun fluted details.

honed black nero marble

When it comes to solid colors like black, there are so many options that marble isn’t really something I even consider. For durability, I’d personally go with a black honed granite, quartz, or soapstone if I’m butting the material up to any other natural stone. If it’ll be acting as the main ‘stone’, then I’d even try out a black laminate or solid surface. You’d be surprised at how advanced the laminates are nowadays, and you can’t beat the price.

honed black granite or soapstone

honed black laminate

soapstone

I really like when soapstone is a little lighter than your typical black. It looks so neat with this wood tone!

butcher block

I think I prefer butcher block countertops when they’re either light or dark. The tones in the middle don’t personally speak to me, but I know from watching Fixer Upper that a lot of people prefer those warmer tones! I don’t know that butcher block has a place in our home, but how pretty is it in this kitchen design?!

eclipse quartz

This quartz is beautiful in person! This would be a good countertop for our primary bath because it’s durable and would compliment the shower tile. Since it won’t be too close to the marble, I don’t think the different materials would clash.

what about white countertops?

Solid white countertops look great in many designs, but to me… white is white. It’s highly likely we will include them in the new house, but I’m not very particular with what material we use. Quartz, laminate, solid surface, you name it.

If this post left you hungry for more countertops, check out pictures from a stone yard like Blue Pearl Stone or Architectural Surfaces! Disclaimer: it won’t really help. You’ll just want to keep looking!

I’d love to hear about your favorite countertops, too! Thanks for reading!

I spend a lot of time at home, so I feel like I get my full use out of it. There are so many beautiful images floating around where I initially think — I want that! Then I realize that it’s not super practical for me. There are definitely certain areas that I can live with impracticality (hello! marble girlie here!), but everyone has their limits.

stone block shower bench

This shower is gorgeous! The stone looks like swirled ice cream, and I love the feminine colors. This is a shower I would enjoy in theory, but in practice I know I would drop something between the bench and the wall and struggle to retrieve it. Is it easy to clean in those crevices or will it become a mold source? It’s very possible that the width of the gaps are wide enough to allow for some cleaning, but I can’t say for certain. Love this design and would love to look at it all day, but I’m not sure how satisfied I’d be with maintaining it!

styled/staged desktops

As someone who works from home full time, I can not relate to styled desks. I think this is a lovely design for someone who uses their desk infrequently or doesn’t need more than a laptop to be efficient. However, I don’t see where you’d be able to comfortably fit even one monitor on this desk. The staging makes for a nice picture, but I know that a big desk with minimal décor is what I need in my life!

range hoods that drop to the countertops

If I were building a large kitchen, I would prioritize having a lot of space adjacent to the cook top. In our house, we have our dish drainer less than a foot from the stove, so we’re not working with a whole lot of space. Our new house should have nice stretches of countertop (no uppers!) on each side of our range. I think if you’re cooking a meal that has a lot of ingredients, you need plenty of room to stay organized and prep. I do have to say, I love the look of those pendants! That scale of lighting is something I plan on incorporating in our kitchen design. So pretty!

dainty stools

As someone who frequently uses a step stool to reach upper cabinets, I can’t take this dainty stool trend seriously! They look so cute and I’m sure if you’re tall or rarely need a boost, you wouldn’t even think twice about incorporating one into your design. However, I can’t imagine having an aesthetic stool and a second, functional one. I need things to either be aesthetic and functional, or be purely aesthetic and not trying to fool anyone. I really do like this design overall though, great job to the designer!

These are my personal opinions, and overall I like all of these designs done by the linked designers. I wouldn’t want my feedback on practicality to discount the work they put into their projects. Leave a comment if there are any designs you like but know aren’t practical for your lifestyle!

I thought it’d be fun to compile some of the cute things I’ve been seeing while online window shopping. I don’t plan on purchasing most of these things in the near future, although I do have some of them on my wedding registry. I did not link anything that currently has negative reviews, but as a disclaimer, I do not currently own any of these items and cannot personally vouch for their quality!

marble trivets

We don’t have a lot of counter space, so most of our hot pans go right on our stovetop. In the new house, I’d love to have some trivets that we can place on our dining room table. With the dining table more than a couple steps from the kitchen, I want to experiment with having our food served at the table instead of dishing it out before we sit down. I also want to host family gatherings in the future, so I’ll need some trivets to protect our countertops. I ended up putting both of these trivets on my registry!

cinnamon cloth napkins

I must be a messy eater because most of my meals require a paper towel handy! I’d like to make a switch to having cloth napkins available that we can wash and reuse. Plus these are so cute! I definitely put these on my registry.

walnut cutting boards

We currently have two plastic cutting boards and both get pilled up and hard to scrub over time. I’d love to switch to something that is more durable and if it does get unusable, we could dispose of it in a more environmentally friendly manner. These cutting boards are handmade in Maine and look so pretty! These are on my registry, too.

ribbed glass carafe

I plan on using this carafe (I have no idea how to pronounce that and would call it a vase if it didn’t say ‘carafe’ in the description!) to water our monsteras. We currently keep a random, tall, star wars themed plastic cup on our counter to serve as our watering can. I like keeping it on the counter because it does remind me of the task, but it’d be nice to replace it with something that’s a little nicer to look at. This is the last item in the post that I’ve included on my registry.

ottomans

We have two ottomans already, but these are so cute! Our current ottomans aren’t really my favorite color anymore (vibrant dark green), so maybe we’ll replace them after we’re settled into the new house for a while.

pink pillow

I don’t typically use a lot of throw pillows, but this one caught my eye!

framed textile

Brandon disagrees with framing a ‘rug remnant’, but I think this is such a neat piece of art. I might see if I can find similar items on Etsy or even DIY this art with a piece of our 70s carpet before we tear the house down!

marble door stop

I don’t really have a use for this door stop because our flooring is 95% thick carpet, however if I needed a door stop, I would totally get this one.

ceramic flush mount light

I love the look of this light, and I could definitely be tempted to try it out in our current house if we were 100% sure we’d use it in the new house, too. It’d definitely lighten up the space.

decanter

I’ll be honest, I have no use for this decanter! However, I love the pretty shattered glass design.

Those are all of my cute things for my first home finds round up! I hope you have some ideas if you finished reading. I think making these posts gives me the satisfaction of looking into these items without actually making a purchase!

Featured image: Nadine Stay

For almost every decision, there are tradeoffs. Sometimes you don’t recognize the cons because there are so many pros. I never thought I’d leave Des Moines until I started dating my fiancé. The pros of living in Des Moines simply outweighed any potential cons. I’m not sure I could even name cons at the time! It’s where my job and friends were, I had a nice apartment and was close to so many amenities. When I started dating someone 2 hours away, the pro/con balance started to tip. Less traffic, more nature, and lower cost of living became valuable to me along with being closer to Brandon. Des Moines never changed, but my perception did!

I won’t have any pictures in this post. I might post pictures of this house in the future (because I will be posting pictures of the new house), but I’m not good at photography. Most of the pictures on my iPhone turn out blurry, and I’m never sure what I’m doing wrong!

The size

I think this house is the perfect size for a family of four. If we didn’t have plans to expand in the future, I think it’s possible we could try to renovate the basement to increase our office size, rearrange the bathroom space, maybe even do something different with the kitchen. On one hand we know this isn’t the house for us because it’s limited in bedrooms and isn’t really setup for a big addition, but it’s nice how cozy and quick to clean it is!

The windows

I love how you see nature everywhere you turn in our house. Except for our office, every room has windows! They’re large windows with pretty medium wood trim. The only downside is they are so drafty! If we planned on living here longer, we would need to get them replaced. Occasionally you can put your hand by the trim and feel the air come through.

The spiral staircase

I love this detail! It’s fun and unique (at least to me!) to have a spiral staircase. It’s a great space saver, but it’s not practical as the only way down to the basement from the inside. It’s hard to carry stuff down and is definitely a safety concern when little kids are around. The balusters are actually spaced further apart than recommended, so I would be nervous to have a baby crawl near it!

The carpet

Thick, plush carpet is so nice to walk on. You can hardly tell when it needs vacuumed (although it stains), whereas crumbs and dust can’t be ignored on hard surface floors. I called out losing the carpet as something I’m excited about in a previous post, but I will miss its coziness. The good news is my mom frequently gets me slippers for Christmas, so my feet are ready to make the change!

The DIY opportunities

This house is perfect for DIY opportunities! For one, there are a lot of places to make improvements, and two, we can’t really be afraid to mess up. The only downside with wanting to do little DIYs is that we don’t want to invest a lot of money into this house if we will be tearing it down. When we have the new house, I’ll probably be too scared to mess anything up! It’ll be too clean of a slate to start with.

I liked making this post because it really shows you that there are pros and cons to everything and that the grass isn’t always greener. The grass will just look a little different based on your perspective.

Second stories

I grew up in a house with a foyer and stairs that led up to a balcony (and two extra bedrooms). I love the look of a taller house, and the second story really creates that. We’re planning our dream house to be our forever home, so with that in mind, it makes the most sense to plan for aging in place. We’ll keep the primary suite, laundry, guest bedroom, and office on the main level. We’ll also utilize our sloped lot and keep the kids’ bedrooms in the walkout basement.

Side facing garages

I love the look of houses that don’t show the garage head on! I feel like this design choice is reserved for either new, large homes or older homes that didn’t have attached garages. Our floorplan and lot likely won’t allow for it without making some compromises, so we’ll keep our front facing garage for now.

Checkered Tile

I’m not a big fan of the black/white contrast, but I love what people are doing with gray and white tiles. I think it’s very possible that I could get bored of this style since it’s more trendy (or timeless if it’s back?), so we won’t be using this design.

These dreamy tubs

I tried so hard to make this happen! I had it in my SketchUp rendering for quite some time, but the more I thought about it, it just wasn’t working. In order to have a corner bathroom in our plan, we had to put the closet/workout room in between the bathroom and the bedroom. For weeks, I convinced myself I would be willing to walk down a long hallway to use the bathroom at night. However, that’s just not realistic. Plus when I’m old, a walk that far down a hallway could be a whole event! I actually scrapped the idea of having a tub in the primary suite altogether, since I liked the look more than the function. Removing it just made our whole bathroom layout flow better!

Bedroom sitting areas

I love this look, but I don’t think we’ll have the square footage to make it happen. Plus, if my fiancé and I are both up, we’re usually out in the living room. If it’s only me awake, I can be content with just a chair in the corner while reading or writing!

In our current house design, we don’t have a lot of light in the main living space if you compare our layout to the typical new construction houses that have everything along a wall of windows. Our current house has a lot of light so while we’re lucky with that, we are often blinded by the sun around dinner time. That said, I think we’ll regret not adding in light where we can (hence the front door inspo below!). I think this door is so grand for an entry space, especially if you want to keep things simple by not adding a lot of extra furniture to the space. Truly my dream door!

We plan on having a glass door in between the office and kitchen to give quicker access to coffee and snacks (since we both work from home). Plus, if we’re home most of the day and investing a lot of money into our kitchen, we at least want to be able to see it while we work! These doors should allow light from the office to flow into the kitchen, but I could see us going with an arched doorway instead to soften up the space.

For interior doors, I always thought I’d want painted doors that could be repainted as they get wear and tear. However, I threw some wood doors in my SketchUp software, and I love the warmth they add. I would love to have simple interior doors like this:

(I realize that most of the pictures I’ve shared are not only from the same designer, but the same project!)

With our current layout, there are a handful of places where barn doors make the most sense. I tend to lean more contemporary/modern, but there are a few barn doors that I like. With being short, I guarantee even if I didn’t like the rustic look of the hardware, I would hardly see it enough to remember.

Our current layout has a barn door on each side of the entryway (one going to the mudroom, the other as a second entry into the office). I wasn’t too interested in having to decorate the entry (knowing how easy it is to clutter up entryway tables or knock stuff over when carrying things in), so I love the idea of the barn doors acting as a functional aesthetic. We may still have room for pictures or sconces in the entry, but the doors will eat up enough wall real estate where we shouldn’t have to save too big of a furnishing budget.

We also want to put a barn door on the laundry room doorway. It’s right next to our primary suite (currently), so it’d be nice to just leave that door open when we’re having a big laundry day.

I realize it’d be a lot easier to include my SketchUp renderings in these posts, but we are finally so close to working with a builder that I’d rather wait. In a couple months, we should be in the blueprint phase, and not only could I share concrete plans, but I could also show how what we wanted compared to what we landed on with the build team.

Happy Holidays!

Davien