Tag «life hacks»

Spirit in a Vacuum

Just when you thought we were done adding family members for a while, I have to introduce you to a new one: Herbie! Herbie (AKA Herbert Hoover) is our new robotic vacuum, and I am in love with him. Herbie is an ECOVACS DEEBOT N79 Robotic vacuum, and I found him on Amazon. I have …

This is How We Do It

And by “it” I mean anniversaries. Seth and I are the kind of people who prefer “experience” type gifts over material gifts, so when our first anniversary was coming up, I called dibs on planning how we’d celebrate it. I had spent the previous summer making pretty regular trips to Traverse City for work and …

Living in a Land Down Under (Part II)

Sydney I arrived in Sydney after a 14 hour flight from Dallas (and a six hour layover before that) exhausted and sure that I wanted nothing more than a nap. So when I found my sister at the airport, we headed to our hostel. Yes I said hostel. I know in America that word conjures …

Trying to Find the You That You Once Had

Hello everyone. It’s been a little crazy on our end this past week or so, due in large part to some tough family stuff going on. Many of you know that my dad is an alcoholic, and has been for as long as I can remember. Last weekend, we had an intervention and sent him …

Living in a Land Down Under (Part I)

In 2012 my sister, Allison, was studying abroad in Australia. I had been working at the Bench for a little over a year, hadn’t yet bought Bones, and had no idea what to do with server money after working minimum wage retail jobs for the previous six years. So when she suggested I come visit, …

A House With No Curtains

Today I’m going to talk about “in a pinch” window treatments that work. This post is pretty short because these are pretty easy. Sometimes you have a window or two that needs dressing up without needing a full-blown window treatment. It may be a frosted window in your bathroom.  It may be a window that …

Running On Empty

When we were renting our house, we had a regular old 40 gallon tank water heater. I’m honestly not sure how old it was at the time. But it drove me nuts, because apparently, I like to take absurdly hot showers. Seth says it’s like I’m trying to burn myself alive. Needless to say, our …

Where Do the Children Play?

In our circle of friends, RISK has always been our excuse to get together and hang out, usually for absurdly long game sessions. One complaint we always had was that the countries on the RISK board were often too small to accommodate large armies (of plastic game pieces). At the time, we had a hand-me-down …

Net Worth Tracking

Strap yourselves in folks, because this is another long post about how we manage our money. At the start of the year, we were feeling frustrated because it felt like we were working really hard but never felt like we were “getting ahead” financially. To combat that, we started keeping track of our net worth. …

Wait Until Your Deal Come Round

Alternate post title: How to Get a Deal on Anything So I’m absurdly excited to announce that I bought enough solid bamboo flooring for our ENTIRE HOUSE. That’s right, not just the upstairs. THE WHOLE HOUSE! I am a firm believer that having coherent flooring in a tiny house helps to make it feel more …