The Fourth

4th of July felt very uneasy to celebrate this year what with our border “situation” but we got to spend some low-key time with great friends watching the kids play, throwing pop its, and enjoying time together. It feels like such an immense privilege to be able to do all that. To have a cozy house to come home to, regardless of its unfinished state. To be able to move freely to visit friends. To get to tuck my son in at night and read him stories and sing him bedtime songs. I know so many mothers out there would give anything to have that. Instead of spending money on frivolous 4th of July stuff (okay, other than that $1 flag— Jack wouldn’t let me leave Target without it, haha), I ended up donating to TogetherRising to help stop the child detainment and separation at the border (though RAICES is also an amazing organization too, if you’re looking to donate!).

Since Dan had the day off work we did some tiling and we’re in the home stretch now (well, for the kitchen. we still will have to do the bathroom and the laundry closet). Everything now is just edge cuts so I’m back on duty as resident tile cutter. If you’ve never cut tile with a tile saw, let me tell you… it’s pretty fun. But maybe my idea of fun is a little different than yours, haha.

Adventures in DIY tiling

There’s not much I won’t DIY, and I’m usually pretty spot on in my assessment of how difficult a project will be but this kitchen floor has turned into a huge pain. And to be fair, I’m not feeling the pain of how annoying the install process is— Dan is the one doing the mortar and laying the tiles. But what we planned on being a weekend project has now entered the second week of having no functional kitchen, and I’ll tell you what: not having a range is a lot harder than I thought. I finally broke down and bought a microwave yesterday so we could at least have some home cooked food.

We’re probably about halfway done with the kitchen and the same tile will continue into the bathroom and in the laundry closet, so I’m thinking we probably have at least another week of doing tile, though we thankfully have laid the tile where the range goes, which means it will be able to return to it’s home and functional status in the next day or two.

Next up, I’ll be grouting the tile, which is perfect because it’s a great project for me to do while Jack naps. Even though I hate working with it, I decided to go with the Fusion Pro grout again, just because I don’t have to seal it or anything. And I think it’ll be less annoying to work with this time simply because I’m not doing a contrasting grout (last time I did black grout with white hex tiles). Since I wanted a concrete floor, I’m doing the grout in as close to the same color as the tile to give it more of a seamless look. But you know I couldn’t make things easy, so we’re doing a herringbone pattern. It’ll be more subtle since the grout won’t be contrasting, but I still think it’ll add interest.

Ooooh, and peep that new light fixture too! In the meantime, you know I couldn’t wait any longer to paint something chartreuse in this house. This color is Lemongrass by Behr and It feels so happy! Even with no trim.

Life Lately | June is crazy

June, guys… whew! This month has been crazy town. I can’t even believe this has been one month, it’s felt like ages. We haven’t even lived in the flip house for a whole month yet! I can’t believe we moved in on June 1st, so weird. I guess if you didn’t get the news, we moved out of our other house, turned that one into an Airbnb and are now living in our not-yet-finished flip house. I’ve been given a crash course in managing and turning over an Airbnb because we had guests every single night during the month of June except ONE night. Holy moly. July is looking to be just as busy and while it’s a lot of work to clean and do the laundry on a nearly daily basis, I’m super thankful for two things. One: we are making enough on that house’s Airbnb income that it pays for itself plus some! and Two: I get to work and have my kid hanging out with me the whole time!

One thing that ‘s been hard for me after having Jack was the fact that I wasn’t financially contributing to the family. I know that what I’m doing as a mom is arguably far more important than bringing in money, but as someone who has always contributed to our income, I’ve just felt like a drain on our finances, so being able to do something that brings in an income while also getting to spend time with Jack during the time we go clean the house between guests has been really nice.

While it’s been nice to be bringing in a more steady income (I was doing the odd blog/instagram sponsored post before, and some photography gigs here and there, so not nothing, but also not steady), it’s also been pretty hard adjusting to living in a house that is basically still partially unfinished. The master bath is down to the studs and we just taped up plastic over the doorway to it. The kitchen floor has been plywood for 3 weeks and now, as we’re starting to prep for tiling, we don’t have any of our appliances in the kitchen because they all have to be out so we can tile under them. So our living room is full of appliances and the kitchen island and we’ve been eating take out for almost every meal which sounds great in theory, but really I’d just love to be able to cook a meal again. And have a living room that doesn’t have an oven, refrigerator, and island in the middle of it.

And in totally unrelated news, I finally bleached my very grown out roots and re-dyed my hair! I finally got the color I was originally wanting! It ended up more neon green the first time around, and this time I got the more mustard-y chartreuse yellow I was looking for. If any of you are crazy like me, it’s Arctic Fox Cosmic Sunshine and I added a little Iris Green into it.

Blogging as it was

When I started this blog in 2008 it was both an online journal and a way to share myself with others and, in turn, be inspired by other bloggers. It was on a really random internet rabbit hole adventure that I found fashion bloggers and having recently gotten more into personal style I just decided on the spot to start one as well.

None of us had any idea that blogging would become a huge industry. No one knew what we were even talking about when we said we were “bloggers.” Back in those days, sharing our daily lives and inspirations wasn’t about getting clicks, affiliate link income, and landing sponsorships. It was just connecting with others and enjoying the creative outlet of writing and photographing our days. Poorly lit photos and all.

I’ve been wondering lately about infusing some of that back into this space. Adding anything into my life these days is a process of vetting it for worthiness of taking up my very limited time. Is writing little diary posts up here even something I want to spend the energy doing? I’m not sure. But what I know is, we don’t need any more perfect blogs or perfect instagrams filled with professional photos of perfectly posed “candid” shots, and kitchen renovations done in a magical month. So I guess, I just want to share more of what is really happening, in my life, on the regular. Like, hi guys! I’m a person! I do lots of stuff (too much?) and have way too many thoughts about all the things.

So I’m gonna take things back a little bit here. Back to blogging as it was. We’ll see how it goes.

2019: the year of credit repair

Thank you Lexington Law Firm for sponsoring this post. A high service partner and consumer advocate that will help you fight for the credit you deserve!

2017 and 2018 were pretty hard years for our family financially. Between moving, loss of income, and relying too heavily on credit cards, we incurred a lot of debt and also hurt our credit score in the process. For a long time I just couldn’t face the reality of our financial situation, and I also was paralyzed by feeling lost in the whole process of just starting to tackle our debt and credit, and so I just kept putting it off. Come January 2019 I decided to finally give our finances and credit the attention they deserved, and have started making strides to repair our situation.

Credit can feel like a mysterious and arbitrary number, based on a bunch of stuff that doesn’t seem all that clear. I know I made a bunch of mistakes even in the couple months of starting to fix our credit (pro tip: don’t cancel your 10 year old credit card even if you’re trying to get rid of credit cards. The age of your credit matters to your credit score! I cancelled mine just wanting to get rid of unnecessary credit cards that I’d paid off and now my credit age is only a couple years. boo!).

Having someone who knows what the heck they’re doing to help you make a plan (and avoid mistakes like mine), can be incredibly helpful and take the stress out of a process that can be really anxiety ridden. While a late payment or a bad mark from a creditor might not seem important, it can have long-term effects on your credit, and can stay on your report for years! What’s nice is that, since fixing your credit is such an important goal for many people, a whole industry has sprung up to help those of us navigate the murky waters of credit repair. Tons of fact vs. fiction information is now available to help educate those of us about the credit errors that can be fixed!

Lexington Law Firm is one of those companies, using the power of the legal experience and technology to help folks like you and me fix our credit. I don’t know about you, but having a team of lawyers helping me fight bad credit with legal experience sounds pretty dang awesome. Or at least waaaay better than me stumbling around trying to google my way to fixing my credit.

Since Lexington Law Firm has long-standing relationships with Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, they’ve got the relationships, and experience in knowing exactly how getting credit errors removed works. So what seems a little like a murky mystery to me is plain as day to them. Look, I’m as hardcore DIY as you can get, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to realize that it’s just going to be worth the money to outsource the stuff that I’m not great at (even if I know I can figure it out eventually). Knowing that there are options out there like Lexington Law Firm to outsource the confusing part of repairing bad credit is super helpful. So if you’re like me and making 2019 the year to tackle credit and finances ( *wince *) check ‘em out and see if you could use some outsourcing to help you get on track to great credit so you can buy that house you’ve been stalking on Zillow. Oh wait, is that just me? whoops.