Simple ways to elevate your home for guests

Thank you Angel Soft® for sponsoring this post. Ditch the spray and switch to Angel Soft® with Fresh Lavender-Scented Tube.

In the past five years or so, I’ve realized that one of my favorite things is putting together events and/or creating beautiful experiences for people. A lot of times, this manifests in me putting on parties that are, like, a liiiittle bit extra, but since becoming an Airbnb host, it’s been something that I’ve been trying to put into how I set up my home for my guests. I like to have fresh flowers in the house for every guest, I like to have little snacks and quick and easy breakfast items available, and I spritz some fresh essential oil in each room before the new guest arrives. Having little things around that make a guest feel special or comfortable is something that I love, and if it’s easy and quick to do, even better.

When I learned about Angel Soft® with Fresh Lavender-Scented Tube toilet paper I knew that’d be a super easy way to elevate my guest’s experience with something simple and everyday. Plus, I don’t have to do any extra work since I have to have toilet paper anyway! There’s lavender scent right in the tube, so every time a guest uses it, they’ll get a nice subtle lavender scent. I happened to already have some lavender hand soap in the bathroom, and I have some dried lavender hanging in my kitchen from last year’s lavender harvest in my garden, so it kind of matches a little lavender theme I have already going on!

My mom is a great host, and while throwing parties stresses her out (whereas I revel in throwing parties), she too enjoys creating a lovely space for guests to stay, so I definitely learned from her! Her and my dad have a couple vacation rentals, so seeing how they set up those spaces for guests helped me consider extra little touches I might not have thought of. My mom always has extra little travel lotions, toothpaste, toothbrushes, razors, and tissue for people to grab in case they need it, so I included some of those little things for guests. As my friend was helping me clean the Airbnb one day, I saw her put the little triangle on the toilet paper and I was like ah! of course, that’s such an easy little thing to do, but it makes the bathroom feel like it’s been cleaned and prepared for every new guest, and it’s a very hotel-y touch.

When I travel, I almost always stay in vacation rentals instead of hotels, so I’ve experienced a lot of different ways people host. One of my favorites was the artist loft I stayed in when I was in Paris. The host left me a bottle of wine, cheese, and a baguette— very French and felt special!

I’m always on the lookout for new ways I can make my own guests feel special too, and while Angel Soft® with Fresh Lavender-Scented Tube probably won’t be the ultimate memory that stays with them, it will definitely contribute to the overall sense of care that I like to take with creating a space for them to stay!

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Want to stay at The Brave House on your next trip to the Seattle area? We’d love to host you!

Thrifted Dresser Revival

After we moved into the new house I was looking for a dresser for Dan because the closet space isn’t huge. I knew I wanted something kind of modern, kind of scandinavian, but also affordable. Buying anything new that fit those descriptions seemed nearly impossible. I could get the first two, but nothing that fit my (real low) budget. So I decided to hit the thrift stores and see what I could find. I ended up getting this old dresser for $25 and promptly started refinishing it!

In the Before image I’ve already removed the old hardware that was just plain and dated, and I’d removed some of the drawers to start sanding. The door’s hinges broke off when the gal was wheeling the cabinet out to my car and she hit a pot hole, so that’s why the door is sitting on the ground, but replacement hinges were easy enough to find at the hardware store!

BEFORE

AFTER

I had some long legs from Pretty Pegs for a bench project that I never ended up doing, but I loved the idea of adding a bit of quirkiness to a dresser with the long legs. I used a skill saw to cut off the bottom on the two sides that served as the old legs in order to give it a straight bottom to attach the legs to, but other than that, the only power tool I really needed was a sander and a drill. And man did I do some sanding. So. Much. Sanding. I used a belt sander for most of it, then used an orbital sander for some parts, and had to do hand sanding in all the crevasses.

I decided to keep it unfinished because I liked the light, naked wood. I replaced the old dated drawer pulls with new ones, and then I added some shelves in the door space on the right because it previously held an odd slide-out hanging rod that didn’t seem practical for our purposes.

I picked up the drawer pulls from Home Depot and just made sure that they had the holes the same distance apart as the original ones so all I had to do was screw them right on, super easy update! And the Pretty Pegs legs came with brackets to attach the legs, so that was also a pretty easy update!

Since it’s relatively top heavy with the longer legs, I’m planning on attaching it to the wall with brackets, just so it doesn’t fall over with the drawers pulled out (or some crazy toddler decides it’s a good idea to climb up it).

All in all, the project took 2, maybe 2.5 days from start to finish and here’s the breakdown on the cost:
Thrifted Dresser: $24.99
Drawer Pulls: $32.40
Hinges: $2.78
Legs: (c/o Pretty Pegs) $75

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.