LOCKDOWN: How We're Doing

Day 1748329 of lockdown. (Actually, it’s been a little over a month!) How are we doing?

Well to begin with, we are all healthy and I still have my job/income, so those are two HUGE blessings right off the bat! We’ve slowly gotten into a routine of working and schooling from home. I’m incredibly thankful that I have a nice home office set-up with a huge desk, multiple monitors, and lots of natural light. It’s actually a pretty nice place to work from every day. Also very blessed that in spite of daycare and school closing, I still have help in the mornings so I can get some done work done without also trying to juggle caring for the boys at the same time (My nanny Kelly is amazing in every way, I have no idea what I would do without her!)

Also on the positive side, I have LOVED the extra time with the boys. It is such an incredible gift. I was actually a stay at home mom for a year around the time Graham was born and until we moved back to Columbus in the summer of 2018. I was heartbroken to have to give up all that time with the boys when I went back to work, and never thought I’d ever have the opportunity to be around them 24/7 again, so this month at home has also been such a blessing! I love hearing them giggle the day away while I’m working (Well, most of the time.. sometimes I long for a nice quiet office space to focus! haha!!) We’ve also had tons of wonderful experiences and messy adventures I wouldn’t have had (or probably allowed!) had we been going on with our day-to-day busy life as usual. Major forts, digging holes in the front yard, massive lego builds that take up the whole dining room table for weeks on end, and lots of staying up late and playing outside until the sun sets (the gift of not having to get up QUITE so early!) Leo told me the other day he never wants the Coronavirus to end. Clearly he doesn’t really understand what is going on, but I think it is a testament to the love, joy, and closeness we are feeling during this time!

I’m also thankful for the push and normalization of remote technology for working and connecting with people. I’m thankful that working remotely is working so well, and I hope to use this as an opportunity to bridge myself into doing it more often even when the lockdown is lifted. Also loving how much technology is being fully used to connect to people - Zoom calls with cousins/aunts/uncles and family I normally see 1-2x a year if I’m lucky! (Some of them in their 80s! It is adorable!) This has actually brought us all closer. Amazing! And I love that my church is doing so much to stay connected via online Sunday services and IG live lessons, worship music, and prayer throughout the week. I feel closer to this community more than ever - what a blessing that has been as well! I think these types of technological touch-points have been born out of the COVID situation but that they will become a normal/additional part of communicating going forward and it is all for the good.

Also thankful for the disruptive changes that will hopefully occur. In addition to technology advances noted above, I hope the identification of so many pain points in our culture/community/world can be addressed and fixed going forward. I have hope good will come out of all of this. God always seems to find a way to do that and I’m clinging to that hope. (And in my opinion, we owe it to our front line workers and those that have passed to try.)

All of that being said, it has also been one of the hardest months ever. This lockdown has definitely taken single parenting to another level. This new routine is soo much more work in terms of cooking, cleaning (and DEEP virus-killing cleaning), laundry, entertaining/exercising the boys, the challenge of grocery shopping, being busier at work, and trying to squeeze in some time for myself to breathe! I’m finding myself staying up wayy too late in order to have that quiet, peaceful time to myself.

It is also SO HARD not to have my parents helping out. Normally if I had an extra busy day at work or was feeling extra tired or needed an hour to catch up on things around the house, they would take the kids for me. They have been my major support system since moving here almost two years ago, however, we decided relatively early on though that they were safest if they pretty much isolated themselves. We miss them so much, but we would never want to risk them getting sick! We want them around for a LONG time! Not having them to jump in has been a huge adjustment, but I’m also happy to say we’re falling into more of a rhythm and finding ways to bend/stretch to get done what needs to get done and still be happy doing it. Just goes to show, we’re stronger than we think and can do things we never thought we’d be able to do!

Another hard thing was that early on I had to make some really difficult decisions about daycare and when to take the boys out, whether to withdraw them to save tuition (since we would still be charged even without going) but risk our spot going forward, and deciding who - if anyone- I should allow in our house during lock-down to help me with them. It was HARD making these decisions on my own with so many unknowns about the future, but I prayed a lot about it and made the best decisions I could with the information I had on hand at the time. So far so good! And at this point I have full faith that any closed doors moving forward will be blessings in disguise and things will find a way of working out.

Lastly, missing my friends and family and grieving my routine and so many cancelled events. I felt like the boys and I were finally doing so well and had created such a good routine, and then BOOM. It just hit me kind of hard :( And I think feeling this grief also brought up some older feelings of grief, and I’ll be honest and just say there have been some hard and sad days. But if anything I’ve learned the last few years, it is that grieving is part of the process of healing. Grieving sucks, but it is also part of the pathway to turning our heartaches, disappointments, and pain into compassion, appreciation, and hope.

I KNOW how much sweeter day-to-day life will be when the world opens up again and how good it will feel to laugh with friends, run into a Starbucks, walk the streets downtown to my office, play on a playground, go out to eat at a restaurant, and to just live a ‘normal’ life again. I patiently wait for the day we have the processes, tests, and infrastructure in place to do that safely. In the meantime, I pray I can soak up the blessings and lessons of this (hopefully) once in a lifetime, unique situation.

That’s pretty much it over here! I hope you all are staying healthy and doing well. Lots of love and virtual hugs.

Painting the Garage BLUE!

One sunny Saturday social-distancing morning, the boys were playing outside and I felt inspired to clean to the garage. As I was picking up the garage, I randomly decided to paint the drywall in my garage navy blue! (Benjamin Moore’s Polo Blue to be exact! My fav color!)

I needed something to keep my busy and had been itching to paint something this color for awhile (I had a few gallons sitting in my basement!) and inspiration just struck! It was easy to do and the impact exceeded my expectations! I love it! SO excited to have this space be one I actually LOVE.

I never thought I could love a garage so much! Haha :)

Florida Trip 2020

Our trip to Anna Maria Island, Florida this year was AMAZING and looking back it was the absolute biggest blessing… We went the last week of February and I think if iit were scheduled even a week later we would have made the decision not to go because that is when the Coronavirus fears starting really picking up.

I’m so glad we got in oodles of family time with my parents and siblings and cousins before going into lock down! We had such a wonderful time. Here’s some of my favorite pictures from the trip!

Love these beautiful memories!

Customizing my Builder Basic Kitchen!

I am so excited to be sharing my KITCHEN with you today! I love seeing the progress of this space from when it was first under construction, to what it looked like when we moved in, to how it looks today with all the upgrades! It is seriously my dream kitchen and I am so happy with how it all turned out!

A little background - I knew after my first few meetings with the builder that I would want to do some immediate upgrades to the kitchen after moving into the house. The main reason? The builder (Pulte) did not have an option to install a farmhouse sink. (They are an AWESOME production builder, but not flexible if you want to customize anything beyond their limited offerings to upgrade). In my last house, I decided not to go through the hassle of installing a farmhouse sink when we upgraded the kitchen and I always regretted it, so this time around I knew I’d do whatever I needed to do to get it done and that it would be worth it in the long run!

That being said, the only upgrades I did with the builder were to upgrade the cabinets to the beautiful white maple cabinets you see in the pictures below and install additional recessed lighting in the ceiling. Everything else was the lowest grade, builder-basic option that didn’t add any additional cost to the purchase price of the house.

Here’s the beautiful blank slate of a kitchen the day the cabinets were installed:

The next picture is of the kitchen the day I got the keys. As you can see, I started with laminate countertops, a basic sink/faucet, simple lighting, and stainless steel appliances from the builder (although now that I think about it, I did upgrade to a gas stove so they’d install the gas line for me). I also had them put the basic hood above the stove instead of a microwave, simply because I prefer the look aesthetically. I didn’t want the microwave to be such a prominent focal point!

After moving in, the first thing I did (literally day 2 in the house!) was have an electrician come out and install new pendant lights above the island. I picked up these two 15-inch Harmon Pendants from Restoration Hardware. Love the style and the soft task lighting they provide!

I also got three of these Riviera countertools from Serena and Lily. They are definitely one of my favorite design details in the whole house! And let me say, they are super durable. They wipe clean really easily! (A must have with three messy boys!) Perfect combination of form and function.

I also bought new Kitchenaid appliances for the space… Love them SO much.

The next step was the tricky part. In order to install the new farmhouse sink, I needed to get a new base cabinet specifically designed to hold an apron-front sink. Thankfully I found a local company (Famous Supply of Columbus) where I could purchase the exact cabinet I needed to match what I already had (Aristrokraft Landen Maple White cabinets, to be exact). I then hired a construction company I found highly referred in a local Facebook group to remove the old cabinet and sink and install the new cabinet and sink (Cornerstone Construction). They were awesome, and worked hand in hand with the countertop company to make every step of the process super smooth. Usually I try to DIY projects, but I do not mess with plumbing and the sink was soooo heavy, you seriously needed two really strong people to lift it, period! Way smarter in this instance to hire someone to do it quickly and do it 100% right!

The next step (or rather simultaneously), I chose and ordered quartz countertops! There were actually lots of benefits to doing this post-closing and not through the builder, as well. The first reason is that I got to pick out EXACTLY what I wanted. The builder did have some great options, but I wanted it to be 100% my style. I ended up going with Calacatta Verona countertops by MSI (I got them Columbus Granite for those of you in town. Ask for Ernie, he was amazing and they worked with me to schedule the shortest turnaround time possible so I wouldn’t be without countertops and a sink for a day longer than necessary. Best service!)

The second benefit was that I was able to change the shape of the island. The builders original design (which you can see with the laminate) calls for the island countertop to be curved. It’s nice, but it is just not my style. Instead, I made the island a rectangle with tapered edges and made it several inches bigger. SO happy with the result.

Finally, going this route saved me thousands of dollars over what the builder was going to charge me to get the quartz through them. Since my budget was super tight, this was a huge perk!

At the time we upgraded the sink and the plumbing, I also chose to install this faucet by Moen. We had a Moen faucet in our old house and I loved it. Again, the builder had some good options, but wayyyy more expensive and not 100% what I wanted. Love the style, functionality, and PRICE of this one.

I then had my dad’s friend Jeff install the under-cabinet lighting and tile the backsplash. I knew I wanted basic white subway tile… it’s my favorite and I love how it turned out.

I was kind of on the fence about the lighting, but my dad INSISTED (to the point of offering to pay for it, thanks Dad! Haha!) And WOW, what a difference. I love it so much. Makes the kitchen feel even bigger and brighter. The lights are on dimmers too, so I love how I can play with the level of light and set it JUST right for what I’m doing. Worth every one of my Dad’s pennies!! ;)

Here is the JUST finished backsplash!

The only thing I have left to do is install the cabinet hardware! Some friends of mine have the most beautiful kitchen, and I knew the second I saw the hardware in their kitchen that I wanted the same hardware in mine. Now I just need to pull the plug and actually do it! (It’s on my to-do list… kind of one of those things you get used to living without and so it falls on the back burner, but this post is motivating me to finally get it done!).

And now here’s some pictures of the finished kitchen! I love this space and hope you do too! And I hope it inspires you to think beyond the builder-basic box if you’re buying a production home like I did! Customizing some of these things after the fact can make the house feel a lot more like your own and save you soooo much money!

That’s all for now! Hopefully I’l be sharing my mudroom here soon :)