Good Grief Blog — intentional in 2018
how we're going to furnish our new house!
a little over a month ago, an opportunity to rent a brand new townhome fell into our laps. it's less than 7 minutes away from where we work (without going on the freeway!!), 2 bedrooms + 2.5 bathrooms & honestly the cutest little place i've ever seen. i'll be doing a full home tour next week when everything has arrived, but i wanted to show you some STEALS i found on amazon to furnish & decorate our house.
when we moved in with my grandma last year, we got rid of basically everything because she had basically everything we would need in terms of furniture. now that we're moving out of grandma's, we have to start from scratch & i am SO excited because who doesn't like new things? & also, online window shopping is one of my hobbies, so i'm excited to actually buy things & make our little house a home!
if you've been here a minute or two, you'll know that i am a minimalist at heart & so i was very selective in what we will be purchasing to decorate & have in our home. i was looking for items that were cute but also functional that ALSO had a price point that i didn't cry over. when i was looking, i tried to find items that would make the house flow together seamlessly. these are a few of the things that we've either bought or have in our cart right now!
Zinus 14 Inch Metal Platform Bed Frame with Steel Slat Support, Mattress Foundation
Tuft & Needle King Mattress
we ended up getting our mattress on prime day & saved a good chunk of money for doing that, but even still, tuft & needle mattresses have such a great price point. ONLY $700 for a KING SIZED MATTRESS?!
Zinus Modern Studio Collection TV Media Stand/Table
Giantex 3 Piece Nesting Coffee & End Table Set
mDesign Free Standing Bath Towel Bar Storage Ladder
Metal Dining Chairs with Wood Seat Stackable Industrial Counter Stool
that's the furniture stuff we're getting & then we're going to be decorating our space very simply, but here are a few things i've got my eye on!
mDesign Newspaper and Magazine Rack
Black Galvanized Metal Serving Trays
Umbra Woodrow Waste Can
AmazonBasics Heather Jersey Sheet Set
Geometric Plant Hanger
when i saw these next few plant hangers i KNEW i had to have them for our guest bathroom! i have so many ideas for how to decorate our bathrooms & i can't wait to share them with you in the home tour hopefully next week! the first two were generously gifted to me & i was so, so excited! you can use this link to purchase the modern hanging planter vase and this link to purchase the modern standing planter vase!
this post contains affiliate links, which means i make a small commission off of purchases through the links provided at no extra cost to you. this helps my blog stay afloat & i couldn't be more grateful!
do what makes you feel alive
5 tips for creating a capsule wardrobe | my summer capsule wardrobe
sadie's soapbox | let their efforts be enough
this week, i had an interesting experience with my blog. i published my typical wednesday letter, excited to share a cause that my work is supporting this quarter. i posted about the initiative & invited people to join in on donating to the cause if they could.
a day or so later, i received a few comments on my blog post that i was not expecting.
i don’t like the word attacked because i feel as though that word gets thrown around a lot these days. however, i definitely would put this person’s comments in the “that wasn’t pleasant” box. from their comments it seems as though they didn’t feel i wrote enough on the topic; that i didn’t give enough information as to who or what was causing the problem. it seems as though they felt as though my efforts to spread any type of awareness on the subject simply weren’t enough.
it’s true, i could have written more. it’s true, i could have put statistics in that post. it’s true, i can do more than just donate to the cause & share about it on my blog. it’s true, there is always more we can do & more we can learn.
as i’ve thought about this person’s comments, i’ll be honest, i’ve been frustrated. i was trying to help. i was trying to be more open-minded. i was trying to share a cause that i feel really IS important. i was trying to take a step in what i thought was the right direction to do what i can to help everyone feel loved & included. even though it was a baby step.
as i continued thinking about these comments & feelings that were brought upon by said comments, i thought about all of my friends & family who have taken baby steps to try & help me in our infertility journey. how often have i looked at a baby step in the right direction & thought the person trying to help could do more?
i’m embarrassed that i had any thoughts like that because your steps to be kind MATTER. your steps to help MATTER. your steps to try to understand MATTER. your steps to show love MATTER. your steps to be kind are enough. your steps to help are enough. your steps to try to understand better are enough. your steps to show love are enough.
your efforts are enough.
we can always be more aware & more informed. but change & understanding don’t happen overnight. our baby steps to becoming more loving, kind, aware, & understanding count. they count. they really do. so keep taking steps forward & be kind to those who aren’t as far in the journey as you think they should be.
to every person who has reached out in love to me: thank you, thank you, thank you. your love is recognized. i am grateful for you. i’m grateful that you thought to reach out to share something that could help me. that means so much to me— especially now. i am trying to be more grateful & though i’m not perfect (nor claim to be so) i can promise you that i’m doing my very best. your efforts are enough. your efforts are enough.
how we decorated our basement apartment
hey there,
so here's the deal. apartment dwelling is, well, limiting. there's not much you can do in terms of painting, knocking down walls, tearing up carpet and basically renovating the space to make it your own. so instead of trying to figure out what we can change (although, i still do that...) i've started to really try to focus on how i can make the spaces we've lived in work for our family. we have had the opportunity to live in two basements and one tiny apartment in our two years of marriage, so small space living has become the norm for us. so much so that parker was just saying how one of his "must-have" items for our first house is a BIG bathroom because we've had tiny bathrooms in every apartment we've ever lived in.
i'll be 100% honest, if i could, i would have changed something in every single one of our apartments. (and that change for every apartment includes adding wood flooring or wood laminate. i lovvvvve that look & WILL have wood flooring in my future house.) BUT because we were limited on the changes we could make, i've had to learn how to decorate our apartments so that the spaces feel like home.
in our first apartment, we actually really lucked out. it was a basement apartment with amazing natural light and a huge living area. i loved that apartment. i was still learning how to decorate/what style i really loved & honestly, how to say no to things that i didn't actually want. we were very lucky to be given a lot of hand-me-down furniture, which really helped us to simply have furniture, but nothing was really cohesive or quite my style. when we moved from our first apartment, we had to downsize quite a bit because the apartment we were moving into was much smaller than our first apartment. while we loved our second apartment (we got our mack pup while living there!!!), it was actually kind of gross. (cheap apartment living for you. hahaha) we only lived there for three months and didn't do much decorating.
our current space is a basement apartment. we are happy to be here & are grateful to live here. it's taken us some time to really settle in, but we are getting there. we downsized even more when we moved to our current place because it was fully furnished, so we figured it was a good time to part with our hand-me-down furniture. in our current space we have a large living room, a tiny bathroom & a pretty good sized bedroom.
because we are living with my grandma, we really try to respect that it is her home. we can't paint or change out the carpet, so we had to make changes that could easily be changed back when we move out. we've been able to move a few things to give ourselves a little bit more space in the living room in the basement. we already had our egg chair & then we ended up buying a couch to make the room feel more like a living room. we used one of my grandma's coffee tables to help create the living room feel. we also bought a 5'x7' rug to help make the flooring feel a little more our style. because most apartments don't allow you to put holes in the walls, we've become very good friends with command strips. (which we will probably also use when we have our own house because they are so awesome) we hung up our gallery wall pictures that have moved with us from each apartment. the photos we hung are attached to some of my most favorite memories, so hanging them up helped make the basement feel more like home.
i'm still trying to figure out how to decorate our bedroom. it's a pretty good-sized space but i just haven't figured it out yet. but i'll update you when i figure it out!!