homes

Weekend Update

| The Bee Life

Happy Last Monday of February!!

I know not all of you are lucky enough to live in the Midwest, but this past month has been freezing cold with snow-filled weekends! Living in a 100-year old house, and negative degree temperatures for consistent days in a row means frozen pipes.  Luckily(?) our frozen pipes are isolated and only in our kitchen, each time they freeze we learn something new… so long story short one of the fixes was putting in a new faucet.  B and I are now trained plumbers, thank you very much! Teasing, but we did it all by ourselves and it’s such a change physically along with hopefully helping the pipe freezing problem (we can now run cold and hot water at the same time) … and that was only Friday night!

Saturday morning I helped my aunts out while they went out of town and went over to feed their girls, Opa! the puggle and Maya, the black lab, also meaning Moz got to play with her cousins!  Of course Saturday morning was a mini blizzard, nonstop fluffy snowflakes falling and terrible, not plowed roads, so shoveling was a necessity. With bad roads and the beautiful snow fall, a relaxing day at home doing some little projects was the plan! Followed by a night-in, our own little happy hour with a cheese board paired with some Manhattans. And we topped the night off with DiGiorno pizza and a movie. We watched Sex Tape with Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel, it was actually pretty very funny!

Sunday was productive and relaxing as well (well sort of).  Breakfast and coffee and some Millionaire Matchmaker in the morning, followed by Church, the gym and some shopping/errands (which of course went longer than expected).  Home to relax for a bit and do a few more little projects (can’t wait to share these soon!) before dinner with the aunts and of course, more snow!

It was a very nice weekend, it wasn’t over complicated with endless trips or errands, it was productive and relaxing all at the same time.  Hoping to have a few more of these in the future! Hope you are all staying warm, wherever you may be.

House Hunters – Living Room Digs

| The Bee Life

Even though we have moved into the house and are pretty settled, we still have future decorating plans (that’s a given, right?) and one that is going to make a huge impact is our living room. I feel like there are so many ways to go with our furniture and style.  Also not being a designer; I have a hard time describing my style. So if anyone out there wants to help this girl out, I would love that!

Ideally, I would love to start with neutral bases for our big furniture pieces – whites and beige’s or grey’s.  Then from there start bringing in the color with an area rug, ottoman, pillows, and light fixtures. Something like this;

Pulled from How to Decorate via Pinterest – Site linked to picture.

How to make this my own:

01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05

This is still a work in progress – but a starting point. I have really struggled with my living room, I feel like there are so many possibilities, I am just focusing on staying patient and when I see it I’ll know! How do you help decide on your designs?

Transformation Tuesday no. 2

| The Bee Life

Hello Transformation Tuesday!

We are finally moved in, and it’s a strange feeling to have this whole house to ourselves. Again, I am realizing that I have been doing a horrible job at taking up-to-date “After” photos – but I still think the ones I have say a lot!

Bathroom Makeover

I underestimated what a little paint could do and switching out the original shower curtain… oh and I didn’t realize the ceiling needed to be painted until the first coat on the walls was up to reveal the ceiling was the same color.

For now this will work for us, but we eventually want to get a larger vanity and light fixtures, maybe even new flooring. But for now this paint job has made a huge different, it makes the room look 10x bigger, not to mention we didn’t need to break the bank.

Yellow Room Makeover

This room initially to me, didn’t need to be touched. But after the plaster cracks were fixed, the walls needed to be painted. Not to mention after we had the electric updated, the base trim had to be repainted, as it was completely removed from the workers. Hence, more painting… but what a difference. The top trim also had a large gap at the top near the ceiling, either it was from the house settling or a poor job to begin with. So, instead of replacing, we caulked in the gaps and painted to refresh… wait until you see…

We have also since replaced the ceiling fans, so they are less obvious and a little newer looking. Once again, inexpensive fixes, that make a huge different –

  • Caulk – $5 each (about 1-2 tubes needed)
  • Yellow Paint – $33 gallon
  • White Trim Paint – $41 gallon
  • Ceiling Fan (not pictured) – $34
    Total Makeover Cost = $118

Can’t wait to share more transformations with you!

House Hunters

| The Bee Life

Recently Bentley and I have been looking at houses, hoping to find our home. After renting for the last 3 years (and even longer for B), we are both at the point where if we are going to be paying hundreds of dollars a month on rent, we would rather pay towards something that could be ours and build equity.

We have been on the search for a week and already we have had two house heartbreaks. We’ve found that the houses we end up seeing and loving, usually end up with an offer literally the next day. Then they’re gone. Just. Like. That.

We are eager to find a house, but also aren’t on any timeline, we still have time on our lease but at the same time are hesitant to look at houses knowing how quickly they get snatched up, or how quickly we’d have to decide and place an offer at the risk of entering into a bidding war. Only to end up having time remaining on our lease.

Recent homeowners, what’s your advice to first time home buyers when going through this process? Have you lost a house? How many houses did you see before you found the one?

Happy House Hunting!

xo- eb

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