Want: New Sheets
Wear: Old Navy Summer Wardrobe
Read: all of Tana French
Need: yummy snacks
(This new blogging series is inspired by this SimpleKids post. This post contains affiliate links.)
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Want, Wear, Read, Need
May 2, 2013 By 2 Comments
Monday Giveaway : Healthy Home Makeover
April 22, 2013 By 4 Comments
In honor of Earth Day, I am happy to be one of the sponsored participants in Mighty Nest’s Healthy Home Makeover.
About MightyNest:
Founded by two parents, MightyNest is an online store, resource center, and community dedicated to helping parents create healthy, safe homes. Their mission is to give families the ability to research, get advice, and buy natural, non-toxic products all in one place.
From kitchenware to skin care, MightyNest‘s safety experts have built the web’s broadest selection of products that are free from known toxic ingredients such as BPA, PVC, Phthalates, Lead, Melamine, Formaldehyde, Parabens, and more.
Their goal is to make people feel empowered to make changes in their lives, whether large or small.
We try to lead a pretty “green” lifestyle here in the Guavalicious Household. But there is always room for improvement! I used the Mighty Nest Healthy Home Makeover board as a jumping point for my own Pinterest board. Some of the things I want to add are cast iron pans and dryer balls. I also added a few of our longtime favorites like stackable glass bowls and the Plan Toy Solid Wood Drum
Click through to enter!
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Earth Day Infographic Fun
April 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Three Smartphone Apps That Help With Home Decorating
March 29, 2013 By 5 Comments
Every time I open a home design magazine, I fall in love with at least one room displayed on its pages. I tear it out with the full intention of looking back on it when I (finally) redo a room in my house.
Does this sound familiar? I have a folder that I keep in my magazine rack. It is stuffed full of pages I have torn out of home design magazines. There isn’t very much rhyme or reason to my “Design Ideas” folder, but I keep it anyway. I very rarely look back in this folder, but I keep it anyway. Most times, it is covered with dust, but… you guessed it… I keep it anyway.
Obviously, this is not working for me, so recently I went in search of ways I can feed my designer wannabe habit without buying magazines and without my little-used, dusty “Design Ideas” folder. As I do with many things lately, I turned to my smartphone. This little contraption must be filled with ways to save me, right? Right! Here are three smartphone apps I found to help me with my home decorating ideas.
Houzz Interior Design Ideas
Have you ever heard of Houzz? It is a website devoted to everything home (inside and out). You can get inspiration for architecture, interior design, gardens and more. They also have an app called Houzz Interior Design Ideas that is available for both the iPhone and Android smartphones. You can browse by location, style and room, and then clip your favorites to your virtual ideabook for later. You have access to design professionals and a user forum for interaction. You can download this free app on their site at the bottom of the right-hand column.
Dwell
The Dwell magazine is devoted to modern architecture and design. With the Dwell app, it brings all of the magazine’s beautiful, modern design to your smartphone. This free app consists of videos and slideshows full of the best in modern design. You can also integrate the app with Facebook and Twitter so you can share all of your favorite finds!
3D Interior Room Design
Take your two dimensional ideas and see what they will look like in 3D with this app from Udesignit. For now, the paid app ($4.79) consists of designing the surfaces of the room (walls, floors, doors, windows), but in later versions they promise to include furniture to complete your room’s look. I have a horrible time visualizing what my ideas will look like, so this app is great for me! Download the Android version here.
With these apps, I am excited that I may be able to get rid of my magazines, and possibly part with my “Design Ideas” folder. Have you tried one of these smartphone apps? What did you think?
photo credit: Johan Larsson via photopin cc
About the author: Stacey Werner is the owner and editor for Newlywed Survival, a blog aimed at helping married couples survive the first years of marriage. Topics include creating a home together, budgeting, fitness, food and relationships. Read more of Stacey’s home design posts here. Follow Newlywed Survival here: Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Google+
Money Talk : The %s of Spending
August 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment
When we decided I would take the year off to work on Special Need Tech, I decided I needed to be more serious about our budget. Since we got married, we have always been pretty good about staying on track with savings, etc. We lived on one income until we had kids (then one of us stayed home for the first three years, so we actually were on one income.) We have always bought less house than we could afford.
But it never hurts to do a re-examination.
So I compared where we are against the percentages that are recommend by financial experts (taken from a Real Simple article):
5% = The maximum % of your take home pay you should owe in credit card debt: we’re golden here. We pay off our credit card each month
10% = The minimum % of pretax income you should save for retirement: We actually only save 3% of pre-tax income so we have a lot of room to grow. But we save over 10% of after-tax income so I am not feeling too shabby. Still, we are going to put a recent pay raise towards raising the amount of pre-tax income.
28% = The % of pretax income that should go towards housing: We spend around right at this or will once we complete our refinance to a 15 year loan. We are trying to get our house paid off by the time the girls are in college.
Overall, we are right on track!
Finally! A Family Organization System That Works
July 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Looking for a place to organize everything from medical records to when it’s your day to bring snack to soccer practice? Check out family organizer About One.
Joanne Lang, About One’s founder and CEO, created AboutOne based on her experience as a mom of four young boys. She was seeking a tool that would collect her family information the way that Linked In collected her work information. Here’s a preview of what About One is all about.
I am always interested in learning more about how to get organized. It’s a bit of an addiction. So I was thrilled to give About One a try even if I was a bit leery of an online organizer. I am such a paper and pen girl that i wasn’t sure if I would like it.
But they won me over. As a clutter collector, I was thrilled to have a place to put all those scraps of information and memories I collect. The interface is clean and simple so it didn’t feel like a chore to get things entered in. And as the mobile app develops I am looking forward to getting even more stuff quickly updated. There will be no more lost invitations and pulling up to a playdate only to realize I left the actual address at home (sadly that has happened more than once.)
And I feel great knowing that my information is secure. Not to mention secret from snooping kids. I plan on sticking all my gift ideas in there from now on!
Disclosure: I was compensated by AboutOne to review their online organizer. All opinions and text are my own.
10 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Recycle
July 24, 2012 By 8 Comments
In honor of the Toyota Prius C that is going to arrive in my driveway today, here is a list of ten things you didn’t know you could recycle!
- Dryer Lint: We collect ours and throw it straight into our compost pile. Don’t have a compost pile? Grab a plastic trash can, punch some holes in the bottom, and voila… compost bin! We don’t even use ours for anything fancy. We just throw it in our front beds. It’s mainly so we can recycle leaves, kitchen scraps, and of course lint!
- Eyeglasses: It’s tempting to throw those old frames in the trash when you upgrade, but resist the urge! Several groups recycle eyeglasses by distributing them to people in need. Ask your optomologist if she particpates in a program. If she doesn’t, here is a place where you can mail them in.
- Yoga mats: Don’t throw your mat in the trash once it is all asanaed out. Instead, send it to Recycle Your Mat. Here are 50 more ways to reuse it.
- Torn/Stained Clothing: I like to cut old tshirts up into cleaning rags, but I take everything else to Goodwill in a bag marked stained/torn. They bundle the scraps and sell them.
- Pizza Boxes: These usually get tossed because you can’t recycle cardboard that has oil stains. But more and more pizzerias are getting hip to this fact and using paper liners that absorb that nasty oil. Even if yours doesn’t, take a minute and cut around the oil stains.
- Tech Junk: Still have AOL cds knocking around the house? Relieve your guilt by sending them to Green Disk. It will cost you but won’t it be worth it to have old cords, hard drives, etc. out of your closets?
- Peanut Butter Jars: Guess what? Plastic and glass doesn’t have to be perfectly clean to be recycled. So give them a swish or two and throw them in the bin.
- Plastic Wrap: With kids, we are awash in plastic wrap. Because evidently a toy can’t leave the production factory without being shrink wrapped tight as a drum.
- Drink Packets: Your kids addicted to Capri Sun? Get them in the habit of recycling by finding the nearest TerraCycle collection bin. They take those old drink packets and make them into cool things.
- Hotel Keys: Who else is guilty of leaving the hotel with card keys? Send them off to EarthWorks (along with any old gift cards you have lying around and clear your conscience.
Disclosure: I am part of the Toyota Women Influence Network. I have not been compensated for this post. Opinions are my own.
No Buy July!
July 2, 2012 By 10 Comments
I first read about the concept of a no spend month a few years back on the blog Small Notebook.
The concept of a “no spend month” intrigued me.
But I never made it happen.
Life. Kids. Unwilling husband.
They all got in the way.
But the truth is… I didn’t want to do it.
After all, we work hard and save a lot. Why shouldn’t we spend what we want?
However, this July, the expenses are adding up: summer preschool, BlogHer, anniversary trip to Iceland. So it’s finally time for a new family tradition: No Buy July.
This month we’re committing to spending as little as possible.
There are things we can’t change like our mortgage payment, our gas bill (budget billing), our CSA, insurance payments, etc. But in every other area we will be trying to save money.
The challenge is to come out zero sum each week so if we want to go out, we have to make that up in some other way.
How?
- By returning all the items we didn’t really need
- By selling the clothes outgrown and not being handed down
- By weeding out the toys (both grown up and child) and sending them to better homes
I will be updating our progress each Monday!
Join us?
Look Mom, I Am a Real Professional!
March 7, 2012 By 7 Comments
So you may have noticed I have been almost completely offline most of this year. My life was a mess and something had to give. Turns out that something was personal blogging.
The truth is, I can’t do it all. At least I couldn’t in my totally disorganized state. Since I had started working from home last spring (in addition to my work at home job as indentured servant) my house and life had continually spiraled towards disasterdom. And I so wasn’t taking good care of myself, my autoimmune disease was in full flareup due to my snacking diet and the ten pounds I gained from it. So in January, I stopped all personal blogging, finished up my current contracts, and concentrated on getting my house and life organized.
What a difference! Now that my house is in order and my schedule organised, I have a clear mind (and space!) to work in. No more working on contracts and projects at two am. No more uninspired review posts. No more constant sickness from being run down.
After I got my house in working order, it was time to get my work life in order. I needed to stop making the kitchen table my desk, especially when I had a perfectly nice home office waiting for me downstairs. For some reason I had decided it would be better filled with everything I did not have a place for. I am not going to lie, those things got moved to the guest room instead of disappearing, but now I have a clean space. With a door that shuts.
Next up was my schedule. I was trying to fit work in when I had free moments. And as a parent, those momenrts were few and far between. That’s how I ended up working until two in the morning every night. Now my family, friends, and the girls’ school know that I am just not sitting at home eating bonbons, I am working from 9-12 and 1-4 and cannot be disturbed during those times. I do paperwork on Saturdays and personal blogging on Sundays. I also started saying no more and pulled out of everything that wasn’t enriching my life. My priorities are my family, my work, and my friends. And my sanity too.
The one thing I am still really working on is my professionalism. A lot of the work I do is also done by agencies and firms in town and to compete with them I have had to step up my game. I have assembled a list of resources from website designers to SEO experts. And I know who to go to for printing now. Having been online for so long I sort of forget that people still need actual items in their hand from time to time. I have started using an online print firm that allows me to upload my custom design. Now I have high quality booklets to hand out to potential customers for way less than I was paying at the chain stores. And I can produce anything from notepads to catalogs for my customers.
So that’s how I got my life back and turned into an actual worker, albeit one that works in sweatpants. I would love to hear what your tips are for keeping sane while working at home. Got any advice for me?
You CAN Go Home Again
March 4, 2012 By 1 Comment
The last two months have been full of goal setting, acheiving, striving, and lots of hard work. What better way to celebrate than with a pre-SXSW Interactive vacation? We flew into Austin early and then drove down to San Antonio, with a stop at the Salt Lick on the way. Incidentally, here is what I thought of Salt Lick:
After filling up on BBQ, we drove down to Blanco to try and visit Real Ale, one of my favorite breweries, but they were closed. They usually only have tours on Friday but we’re hoping to stop by for a brew on Tuesday, my birthday. My husband hopes they let us in because he doesn’t want to see my disappointed face again.
From Blanco, it was about an hour drive to our hotel in San Antonio. We lived in the Alamo city for five years and the drive in was full of us gawking at the changes. Former coworkers of my husband held a small party for us Saturday night where I nommed on amazing Vietmese spring rolls and spent hours chatting with my friend Claire, also known as The Half Hearted Housewife.
Today we dived full on into the surreal by going to eat at our favorite restaurant than driving around our old neighborhood. My stomach got butterflies as we turned onto our street. Soon I saw the bright blue of our house. It looked amazingly the same, down to the Honda in the driveway. We pulled over and got out for a better look. And then, even though my husband begged me not to, I knocked on the door and introduced myself.
The couple could not have been more gracious. They invited us in, showed us around, and talked about the changes they had made and what they still hoped to do. I have to admit, it looked better than when we owned it. They had a more cohesive look and had made improvements we hadn’t gotten to. It was quite surreal, looking around what used to be our home… the house we had our kids in.
We left and drove around a bit more before heading back to the hotel. The changes stayed in my mind all evening, making me think about how we see and treat our homes. I feel inspired to start putting in more of an effort on our home. There were so many things we waited on until we were ready to sell. I want to make the improvements now so I can enjoy them.
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