{Fashion} Stitch Fix #1

Guys - there's a new love in my life. And his name is Stitch. Or Stitch Fix, if you're feeling formal. Have you heard about it yet? I think I may have been slow on the uptake here, since I just learned about it in the last couple of weeks but it seems to be all over the place.

If it's new to you too, the concept is this: you create a style profile - your preferred style, your sizes, your preferred mix of business/casual/dressy, even a link to your Pinterest style board... anything that helps indicate what you like to wear. You pay a $20 styling fee, then your 'stylist' (doesn't that make you feel fancy?) sends you a box of five hand-picked items. Keep what you like, send back what you don't in the pre-paid envelope. If you keep anything, the $20 fee goes toward your items, and if you keep all 5 things, you get 25% off everything.

Here's what I got in my first Fix, courtesy of my stylist, Miranda...

A Visible Backyard

One of the most exciting things about moving to a house from a condo is that we'll have a yard. Although I'm excited to have a space for outdoor entertaining and that kind of thing, my immediate focus is on having a yard for Smokey to run around in. We take him out for walks several times a day and on various "adventures" (he knows that word - don't say it around him unless you want to activate the puppy cyclone!), but it's so rare that he actually just gets to chill outside. On his lazier walks, the poor little guy always tries to plop down in the grass to sunbathe and avoid coming back in, but I'm always in a rush get back to work or whatever I'm doing. No question, he's going to LOVE having a yard and not being so leash-dependent.

But before we can Smokey let loose on his own, we need a fence. And before we can get a fence, we need to make way for the fence. You might remember that our backyard was previously in jungle status - as in, not possible to see more than a few feet into it. This past weekend, we started trying to fix that (which you may have known already if you follow me on facebook or Instagram).

Homepolish Interior Design {10% off coupon code!}

Have you ever used an Interior Designer? I haven't. They're so expensive, right? And if you can find a good deal, well, there might be a reason for it. I've seen interior design consultations on deal sites before - but the portfolios of the ones I've seen are always SO traditional (like maybe I'd use them if I was designing a country club? I'm guessing design school may have been a few decades back?). But now there's a site that puts those problems to rest.

Enter Homepolish: offering accessible, affordable, quality interior designers - starting at only $50 for an initial one-hour, in-home consultation. Check out some of their gorgeous work, and scroll to the bottom for a coupon code!

In L-O-V-E with this light fixture

{House update} Feeling like a real house

Wow, I'm behind on the house updates! I left off here - in late June, when drywall had just been installed.

Budget Laundry Room Renovation

Our condo's laundry room (or more accurately, tiny laundry closet) has been in sad shape for quite a while. We had a giant hole in the wall from when someone came to investigate a leak. We never bothered to fix it since it's so tucked away (you have to walk through my closet in order to get to the door to the laundry closet). Before moving, we just planned to fix the hole and slap on a fresh coat of paint. Turns out, it needed a full-blown renovation, but we were able to complete it for about $50 and minimal time, so it worked out for the best!

Not a true before, but just imagine a giant hole in the wall and (rotted) baseboards in place

30-day Fitness Challenge

I just started a new fitness challenge involving a combination of running & hot yoga. It was totally unplanned, and it's not an actual structured challenge...but somehow I found myself jumping into a hardcore (at least for me) fitness commitment. Does that ever happen to you? You're busy with life, not doing a good job of working out or eating healthy or whatever, then - boom! - without even thinking much about it, your life suddenly seems to be revolving around a whole new routine?

via/via

{Drip, drip} New bathroom faucet

The bathroom faucet in our condo has been leaking for a while. We figured out a special on/off trick to make it leak less, but that only made it go from a continuous stream to a steady drip. So, "fix leaky faucet" was high on our pre-move to-do list. After doing a little research, we discovered that we needed a replacement cartridge that is nearly impossible to find, while replacing the entire faucet would be a 15-minute, $30 project, so we decided to replace rather than fix. 

See all that water pouring out? The faucet was off!