Currently

(Alyster playing on the desk in our bedroom while we were responding to comments on our latest YouTube video)

The last couple of days have been for getting back to normal after being out of town and for adjusting to life with a new kitten. We pretty much haven’t left the house except to go to the store :). We’ve been enjoying being home and cooking and cleaning and playing with Alyster a ton, which is just fine by us.

If you can’t tell, we’re pretty much obsessed with him!! He likes to climb on us and play with our feet (though many of you have told us to break him of that habit early otherwise he’ll be attacking us all the time!) and he cries a lot until we hold him, and then he starts purring, and then our hearts melt. It’s so crazy because we aren’t cat people, if there is such a thing. But this little guy has us wrapped around his tiny baby paws. He peed on the couch and rug last night but other than that he’s learning to use his litter box pretty well.

We kind of slipped off the wagon of eating healthy while we were on vacation (because duh) but we’ve been making smarter choices since we’ve been back. Last night we cooked lemon garlic zucchini noodles with white wine and mushrooms and it was a nice, light summery dish. We’ll be posting the recipe later on!

 (We moved an old desk that used to live in our upstairs bathroom into our bedroom as a bedside table/writing desk and we’re loving the warmth & function it brings to the room)

We just found out some crazy fun news yesterday morning that we will tell you about in a few days once we make sure everything is all set. It’s extremely last minute and we’re kind of nervous but are staying optimistic and think it will be a lot of fun. It’s one of those opportunities that doesn’t come up very often and it’s hard to say no to, no matter how much anxiety it might bring you. Can’t wait!!!!

We hope you’re having a great week so far, friend. Talk to you soon!

We Have a New Member in Our Family

If you've been following our stories on Instagram, then you may have already heard the news BUT in case you haven't, then we have some exciting news (well, to us anyway!!). We have a tiny new member in the McKay household!! Y'all, meet Alyster!!!

We plan on telling you all about how we found him in a YouTube video, but basically PJ spotted him as we were walking down a street in Alys Beach. He was with his mom in a construction site surrounded by concrete and nails. We tried to get his mom and take her home with us too but she sadly wouldn't come, no matter how hard we tried.

We tried to give him back to his mom but she wouldn't have him. We debated on if we should take him from her and separate them and in the end we knew that she was about to wean herself off of him in a week or two, since he is around 4-5 weeks old, so in the end we decided to take him home with us.

At first we weren't sure if he was a boy or girl, so we named him Alys (pronounced "Alice") since we found him in Alys Beach. Then, we looked and saw that he was a boy, so Thomas named him Alyster instead, and now we can't picture him as anyone else!

We were worried the girls would absolutely hate him and try to eat him. Luckily, Jolie has taken to him and has even begun to treat him like he's her baby. It's probably the cutest thing we've ever seen. She's been licking him and fleaing him and looking out for him and it's giving us all the feels. She is acting like a mom to him and we think she's loving it since she never got the chance to be a mom herself.

Meryl on the other hand has not been so welcoming. She's snapped at him a couple of times and seems to fee uncomfortable around him which is weird because we thought she would be the most accepting of him. Jolie is usually the standoffish one, especially when it comes to things that are smaller than her (like babies and kittens, apparently).

By the end of tonight they've all made progress with each other. And not just with each other!! Alyster has warmed up to us and has been purring a lot in the last few hours. He likes to play with PJ's fingers, bite on Meryl's ears, and pretend to pounce on the ground. He's being really playful right now and we're soaking it in since he will start to get a lot bigger pretty fast in the next couple of weeks.

He likes to eat a lot and sleep a lot, and play just as much. We've received so many tips from you guys about how to acclimate him to the girls (elevate him when introducing him to the girls so that they feel inferior to him), get him used to our house (put olive oil on his nose to reset his sense of smell), and how to feed him (with a bottle for now). 

PJ has actually been talking about wanting a cat recently so it sort of feels like fate that we found Alyster. We weren't sure if we were going to keep him forever or just for a while until we found him a new home, but now that he's here we can't imagine him being anywhere else. If you remember, we found Meryl in a parking lot at PJ's old real estate company he was at, so we sort of have a soft spot for animals that need a good home. 

Stay tuned for the full story! In the meantime, you can most likely expect lots of cat videos on our Instagram stories. Okay tbh we never thought we would write a sentence like that. Who are we!?!?

Our Morning Routine

We recently collaborated with hims to show what our morning routine looks like and give you a look into what we're doing to take better care of ourselves. Check out the video above to see PJ's at-home workout routine, the health issue Thomas is working to take care of, and what we like to do to take better care of ourselves mentally.

And, if you aren't already, click here to subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Feature Friday with Nate Smith

Hey y'all!! Happy Friday!! How has your week been? We've been at the beach the past two days celebrating PJ's birthday as our boy turned 32 yesterday. We're down in Aly's Beach with our friend Shaun Smith who was kind enough to let us stay with him. We're having a blast and can't wait to tell y'all about it!

This week's FF is a bit different than what we normally post, but has such a great story to tell. His bravery and courage (in more ways than one) is inspiring and we think you'll enjoy learning a little more about his story. Take a look below to see what we mean...

Where are you from? The U.K.

Where do you live? Georgia

What's your Instagram handle? nate_smithws

Age: 16

Relationship Status: Single

What is your favorite place you have ever travelled to and why? My favorite place that I have ever gone to is the United Kingdom because that is where I was born and I always like going back and getting to see all of my family.

Who is your favorite artist at the moment? Favorite song? My favorite song at the moment is No Roots by Alice Merton, although my favorite artist at the moment is Old Dominion.

What is your proudest accomplishment? My proudest accomplishment so far in life would have to be when I got accepted for a full ride scholarship to Emory University as a freshman in high school.

Describe your home decor style: My home is still what my parents want it to be since I am in still in high school and live with them. I live in a 4 story house in the city, with a very modern design and almost all glass exterior. The inside decor consists of mainly crisp and rectangular shaped furniture, with some round objects placed throughout the house.

What is something you wish you would've known when you were younger? I wish that when I was younger that it was ok and should not be frowned upon to be gay, I grew up believing that it was a sin and that I must pray to become a child of god, as time went on I realized that I was who I was and wanted to remain who I was. Basically I just wish I had known there is nothing wrong with being gay and that it is ok to reach out for help when you are in a dark place.

How old were you when you came out? What was your experience like? So I actually just came out this about a month ago this year, and I had of course told a couple of my closest friends before this and was pretty sure that my parents knew, but it wasn’t until I started following PJ and Thomas and saw how happy they were, that I decided to come out to everyone. I of course had immediate acceptance from my closest friends and best friend actually cried because she was so happy for me. They were also of course some people who weren’t so accepting and I lost about 25 followers which does not seem like a lot but it really showed me how there are people in this world who may I may not be able to be friends with but it doesn’t mean that I can’t still be nice to them because everyone has a right to their own opinion. My family is a different story though, my sister thinks it is amazing, my mom has accepted it but doesn’t like it, and sad to say my dad does not really talk to me since he found out, although the benefits outweigh the downsides by a long shot. For the first time in my life I truly feel like I can be ME and not worry about what everyone else will think about me and I have never been happier.

You came out while in the military. What was that like? So many people get confused or don’t believe me when I tell them I am currently serving in the US Army National Guard as a Private First Class (PFC). As it is well known when living in the states you must be 18 to serve in the military although an exception was made for me so that I could serve due to my abilities. I was born with an eidetic memory meaning that I only have to see or read something once and remember it forever, this also allowed me to learn 4 languages and excel in much of what I do. About a month ago I decided to go ahead and come out which meant that my Platoon and Company would be soon to find out, which was always a big discourager, but I knew that I couldn’t wait forever. Most of the soldiers were accepting and said that they would see me as no different, just as much of a soldier, and were not going to stop trusting me with their life over who I am attracted to. Some were less accepting and no longer wanted to have me within their company but my company commander simply removed them instead. They weren’t real happy about that. Have to admit that even the accepting were a little uncomfortable showering together with me after that bc we all shower in a group shower together when in the army, but they quickly learned that I was not going to just sit there and stare at them shower, just as I hadn’t before.

What did you learn about yourself in the coming out process? I honestly learned a LOT throughout the coming out process. I learned that I could actually be a very outgoing person when I didn’t think that I could ever be a truly outgoing person. I learned that I didn’t need to be shameful of my body and that if I simply embraced it that life was so much better. Most of all I learned that I was fine the way I am and that if I just allowed people to talk to me that maybe I can find someone to love someday, which I wasn't sure was gonna happen. 

Who is your biggest inspiration and why? So I kinda answered this above and I know that it may not seem like something so simple or someone like Thomas and PJ who I don’t even know could make such an influence, but they really can. I started following PJ and Thomas about a month before I came out and the fact that I could see that they were so happy and that while not everyone was accepting of them that they still lived an amazing life with many friends, and were happy doing what they were doing, really just made me smile. As time went by I started considering the fact that this may be true for me too, and so I started talking to my best friend about the idea of coming out and she jumped at the opportunity to convince me. I spent like an hour with Rita (my best friend) looking at PJ and Thomas’s page and seeing how happy they were, and eventually decided that if there were people who were unwilling to accept me than that was there problem, that they simply weren’t my true friends, and that I should not revolve my life around what everyone else thinks. 

The Weekend We Did Nothing and It Was Absolutely Everything

This past weekend we had no plans. Zero. ZILCH. It’s the first time in what seems like forever that we didn’t have to be somewhere or work on a project. Our schedule was wide open and we honestly didn’t know what to do with ourselves.

Friday evening we went out to the land to see if they had mowed it yet and sadly, they haven’t. The grass is still 5 ft tall, so we went by the river bank where the grass isn’t so overgrown. And that’s when PJ got the idea to strip down to his undies and jump in the FREEZING cold water. It was hot out but not jump in freezing cold water hot. 

He floated down a couple hundred feet and got out shivering, but it was kind of exhilarating. If you know PJ, he’s not exactly spontaneous, so the fact that out of nowhere he decided to just jump in, to go for it, was out of character and extremely fun to watch. Plus, how cute is he?!?

Saturday and Sunday we did a takeover of Gayswithstories Instagram account which was a lot of fun. We spent Saturday adding some blinds to our bedroom (we’ll make a post to show you how it turned out. Spoiler: we love them!!) and doing little stuff around the house. Again, no plans, just winging it and enjoying the down time. 

Sunday we went to PJ’s aunt’s pool and swam with his family. It was SO HOT outside and her pool always hits the spot. That night we came home and made dinner with Thomas’ mom. We are on our healthy kick so we made zoodles again and suddenly we’re hooked. Thomas’ mom gave us her zoodler that she never uses so we’re thinking this is going to be a weekly dish. 

So yeah, that was our weekend!! It felt good to not have anythjng to do for a few days and just do what we wanted. We’re thinking it was probably fate and for the best because the next couple of weeks we have something every single weekend, so we’re gonna be busy for a while. In fact, things have already been pretty crazy this week!! We’re planning a (VERY) last minute trip to celebrate a certain someone’s birthday that’s coming up in a few days, so wish us luck!!!

We’ll do our best to update when we can! Hope you had a good weekend, too. :)

xx

Feeling Thankful

With the weather being so amazing lately, we've been spending a lot of time outside any way that we can. We went on a long walk around the neighborhood the other night and soaked up the warm air and birds chirping all around us. 

It feels good to finally be settled in our home and neighborhood after being here a year. With our last house, we were only in it for a year and a half, and almost half of that time was spent working on our current home, so we sometimes feel we didn't get to enjoy our last house as much. There were a lot of rooms we didn't get to finish decorating to really make them "our own", which is part of the reason we're feeling so thankful now to get the chance to do that in our current home.

Of course, there's still so much we want to do to our home now (even though we renovated it head to toe for a TV pilot, there were still some things that didn't get completed that we may shwo you in a future post) that we just haven't made time for. We talked a little bit about it in our Instagram post the other day and how we are just thankful for what we have, not for what we want, and it's true. It's something we constantly have to work at but if we remind ourselves as often as we can, maybe it will become our normal state of mind? 

We all have a lot to be thankful for if we take the time to really evaluate our lives and do our best to look past all of the things we don't like about our lives and focus on the things that we love. Mayve we don't have the perfect body or house or our dogs are terrors and we hate our jobs. Maybe we fight too much with our family or wish we made more money or wish we ate better or whatever. There are a million things we all wish were different about our lives, but what if we only talked about the things that we love about our lives? Wouldn't that be so much more rewarding? 

Not sure how or why we got on this rant or where this whole thing even came from, but it's been eye opening for us the past couple of days. In any event, we're thankful you're here with us, friend. We hope you enjoy your Friday and have a wonderful weekend :).

Zucchini Noodles with Tomatoes & Mushrooms

We've been doing our best lately (and by lately we mean this week) to eat healthier and make smarter choices in the kitchen. With our vegan pizza we made the other night, we thought it would be fun to try another healthy option for dinner.

You know our feelings about pasta, so it's no surprise we can't go a week without eating it. Last night, however, we opted for a healtheir alternative that was very easy and quick to prepare. Here's how to make it!

Ingredients

• Zucchini noodles (we just bought a pre-made pack at Publix)
• Mushrooms (we used portobellos, bought in a small pack at Publix)
• 1 whole tomato, chopped
• Half onion chopped (we used a red onion)
• 2 garlic cloves finely chopped
• Olive oil (we didn't measure, but a few drizzles will do)
• Fresh basil, chopped
• Salt & pepper to taste
• Garlic powder to taste

Instructions

1. Heat a sauté pan over high. Add olive oil, garlic, onions, and mushrooms. Sauté until lightly browned; season with salt and pepper.
2. Add tomatoes, season with salt, pepper, and garic powder and sauté for 1 minute. Mash tomatoes with a fork until almost a thick sauce consistency.
3. Toss in the zucchini noodles and cook until tender.
4. Finally, add in the chopped basil and stir for 30 seconds.

We can honestly say we found it delicious and now realize more than ever that you don't have to sacrifice good tasting food to eat healthy. Feeling positive and energized and looking forward to the future!!! 

Rain, Finally

We've been going on almost a week with no rain, and our front yard was suffering because of it. It's been really hot here lately so our grass has almost started to burn, and we're pretty bad about not watering it. So, while the day started out beautifully, and the weather was perfect for sitting on the front porch and drinking coffee, around 6pm the sky turned dark. Very, very dark.

But, if you know us, then you know our feelings regarding rain and thunder storms. We worked for the majority of the day on an upcoming collaboration we're doing with a really fun company, but while we were finishing up, the clouds formed and the sun disappeared. It was windy and a warm breeze was blowing. Then, as if it couldn't hold it any longer, ginormous rain drops began to fall from the sky and within minutes you could barely see outside. 

Thomas has been meditating recently, so while the rain came down, he went on our back porch and relaxed for a few minutes. He downloaded the app Simple Habit. Have you heard of it? It's a fun, easy to use app that's been helpful in starting to meditate daily. 

As the rain came down outside, we felt safe inside and just enjoyed the gloomy, cozy weather as much as we could. The rain always brings us comfort in a way, and there’s no place else we would rather be than home. Do you feel this way about rain storms, too? 

xx

Homemade Vegan Pizza

Last night we made vegan pizza for the first time and we have to admit, we were skeptical at first. We decided to go the healthier route for pizza because we're trying to eat better since we have a very, um....select pallet. By select pallet we mean we love pasta and cookies waaaaay too much. Okay moving on.

We Googled some vegan pizza recipes and settled on one that we have to say, was absolutely delicious. It was from Minimilist Baker, a favorite food website of ours. Why don't we get right to it?

Ingredients

PIZZA

• 1/2 of one Trader Joe’s garlic-herb pizza crust (or half of this homemade recipe or this gluten-free recipe)
• 1/2 cup each red, green, and orange bell pepper, loosely chopped
• 1/3 cup red onion, chopped
• 1 cup button mushrooms, chopped
• 1/2 tsp each dried or fresh basil, oregano, and garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp sea salt

SAUCE

• 1 15-ounce can tomato sauce OR 6-ounce can tomato paste (organic when possible)
• 1/2 tsp each dried or fresh basil, oregano, garlic powder, granulated sugar
• Sea salt to taste (~1/4 tsp)

TOPPINGS

• 1/2 cup vegan parmesan cheese
• Red pepper flake + dried oregano

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (218 C) and position a rack in the middle of the oven.
2. Bring large skillet to medium heat. Once hot, add 1 Tbsp olive oil, onion and peppers. Season with salt, herbs and stir. Cook until soft and slightly charred – 10-15 minutes, adding the mushrooms in the last few minutes. Set aside.
3. Prepare sauce by adding tomato sauce to a mixing bowl and adding seasonings and salt to taste. Adjust seasonings as needed. Set aside. Note: If using tomato paste, add water to thin until desired consistency is reached.
4. Prepare vegan parmesan if you haven’t already by blitzing raw cashes, sea salt, nutritional yeast and garlic powder in a food processor until a fine meal is reached. Transfer to jar and refrigerate to keep fresh.
5. Roll out dough onto a floured surface and transfer to a parchment-lined round baking sheet. You’re going to add the pizza WITH the parchment directly to the oven to properly crisp the crust, so any round object will do as it’s not actually going into the oven (I use a wood board).
6. Top with desired amount of tomato sauce (you’ll have leftovers, which you can store in a jar for later use), a sprinkle of parmesan cheese and the sautéed veggies.
7. Use the baking sheet to gently slide the pizza directly onto the oven rack WITH the parchment underneath. Otherwise it will fall through.
8. Bake for 17-20 minutes or until crisp and golden brown.
9. Serve with remaining parmesan cheese, dried oregano and red pepper flake. Leftovers keep well – no need to reheat! Cold pizza is yum.

We used vegan mozzarella cheese from Publix (instead of parmesan cheese), the Daiya Foods brand, and it was so good. We couldn't tell that it wasn't really cheese and PJ commented that the pizza reminded him of cornbread (??). Not sure how he made that connection but he liked it, so it's a win in our book!

Also, it's best served with an entire bottle of wine (for two to share, of course) and Bossa Nova radio playing while you make it/eat it. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did. xoxo

Q&A Part II

If you haven't already seen it, here is the follow up video to our Q&A Part I last week! We answer questions about having kids and coming out, along with whether our designs styles were the same or different when we first got together. It was so much fun to answer these and we can't thank you enough for submitting such thoughtful questions!

We hope you're having a great Monday night!! xx

Mother’s Day

(Our moms last year filming a scene for our pilot. PJ’s mom is on the left, Thomas’ on the right)

We hope you had a wonderful Mother’s Day yesterday!!! We were able to spend it with both of our moms throughout the day and we felt so grateful to get the chance to see each of them. 

We went to lunch with PJ's mom and then hung out at Thomas' mom's place for a bit. What would we do without these women who showed us how to love, how to work hard, how to never give up even when it would be the easiest thing in the world to do? We owe our moms everything and wouldn't be where we are today without them (literally). 

Here's to moms on Mother's Day and every day. xx

Wine Night!

Our friend Sayle and her wife Jodi are in town this weekend and they were kind enough to invite us to their friend's house for a little get together! Sayle owns and runs a wine education company called Wine Savy NYC, so she knows almost all there is to know about wine, though she would never admit it herself :). Refinery 29 recently interviewed her about the best wines to drink now that it's summer. Isn't she a genius?

They had the most beautiful spread and, of course, the most amazing wine. We are suckers for a good charcuterie board and the ones they had last night did not disappoint. We ended up staying for almost five hours just chatting and laughing with everyone, feeling like we've known them forever and like we were just catching up. Actually, the cool thing is that they've all known each other since they were five years old and have remained close over the years. How crazy is that? 

Also, have you ever had pickle pops? It's just pickle juice that you put in the freezer and they become freezer pops. They're really, really salty at first but after a few seconds they're delicious. Our sweet host Blair had an entire box of them!

This was all of us! Thank God for self-timers and cellphones.

Last but not least, this was by far our favorite wine of the night. Absolutely delicious. Okaybye.

Neighbors

(PJ and our next door neighbor Jane admiring her new plants)

Our neighbor Jane has been our neighbor since the 1980's. By that, we mean she was Thomas' family's neighbor before she was ours, so she's always been a constant in our lives over the years. When we bought the house back in May of 2016, we immediately started brainstorming with her on ideas for fixing it up (she's an interior designer) and started to become close.

PJ and Jane bond over their mutual love of plants and flowers and are always spitting our names of random plants that Thomas has never heard of. Last night, while we were working on restoring a new furniture piece we found on the side of the road, we noticed she was outside and called her over to ask for her opinion on color. We went over all the different ways we could use the piece and some color options and that conversation somehow turned into talking about plants. PJ always gets excited when that topic comes up :).

She showed us her front and back yard and how well her grass was doing and some new plants she put in some pots she's had for a while. The weather was just about perfect as it was nearing sunset, and her grass felt like a soft rug under our bare feet. She promised to let us know when her fig tree produced later this summer so that we could have some figs to make a couple of new recipes.

It got us thinking how grateful we are to have her as a neighbor, even after all these years. She has always been nothing but sweet, kind, gracious, and helpful towards us. She helped us stage our house for the pilot and we borrowed a lot of her furniture (we even borrowed her huge antique Persian rug to stage the dining room with- you can see it in our last post) from her house and her sister's house who lives down the street. She was the one who told us about that estate sale a few weeks ago and we went with her to look at all the pieces. She always has the most creative ideas on how to use certain items in a home, and naturally, her own home is so cozy and well decorated.

We don't ever really think about it, and maybe some times we even take it for granted, but we feel blessed for all of our neighbors who have accepted us into the neighborhood without a judging eye. They've all been so welcoming and sweet, which isn't always the case, and could have easily been the complete opposite, given the fact that we live in the south and there aren't many gay couples in the area. There are a few, though, and everyone seems to get along well. Very grateful indeed.

Also feeling grateful that her yard is so pretty because this is what we see when we look out our dining room windows and while we're on our back deck. Why can't our yard look like that?!!

How Our House Looks One Year Later

We have officially lived in our house a year! How has time gone by this quickly? Okay technically it was a year on April 21st, the day after we finished filming our pilot episode, since we moved in the very next day. But time got away from us and we forgot to post, so here we are. A year and two weeks later.

We’ve loved living here, in this house and with our neighbors and over the last year have enjoyed making this house feel like a home. When we were fixing it up for all those months and then when we finally filmed the reveal, it didn’t feel like a home to us, really. There were cameras and lights and microphones and people walking in and out constantly, setting things up or helping put things in their place. It was wonderful and exciting, but again, it just didn’t feel like an actual home. It felt more like a movie set, actually. 

We tried to make it as homey looking as possible for the show, but with the perfectly placed flowers, the books with their spines turned around (since we can’t show the covers of the books on TV without the author’s permission), and the (beautiful) art that we were borrowing from our local museum, there was only so much we could do to make it feel homey. 

Which brings us to the present. A year later we have made this house a home, the way we want it to be and are settling in just fine. We’ve enjoyed making small changes here and there, but for the most part everything has stayed in its place. We thought it would fun to take a look back at how the house looked a year ago, when we staged it for TV, and compare how the house looks today now that it’s had people living in it for a year.

Our living room probably looks the most like it did whenever we staged it for the show. We have all of the same pieces in there but added an antique console table that was PJ's grandma's under the three windows on the left. We also put brown, faux wood blinds in there for privacy. Oh, but the biggest change in there is that we turned all of our books around! Like we said, we couldn't have them facing the camera, so we turned them all backwards so that the cream and yellow pages were all you could see. It's definitely ~a look~ and we can appreciate it, but it's not the look we really want in our living room.

Staged for TV

Today

We staged the room below as sort of a "center hall", well, that's what we called it a least. Just a room that you pass through a decorate with pretty things. It didn't serve much use in the show, but these days we use it as a breakfast nook of sorts. We eat most of our meals here, especially when our dining room table is filled with clothes that need to be folded.

Staged for TV

Today

The master bedroom below almost looks the exact same, minus the addition of a few pictures, new lamps, and new bedside tables. Oh, and we switched out the rugs in here, too. We put our bedroom rug in our dining room since we felt it was too big for our room, and brought in the rug you see in the center hall above.

Staged for TV

Today

The kitchen is also pretty much the same, except we added some bamboo blinds for privacy and warmth/texture, and we brought in our stainless steel commercial island that we had in our last house. Fun fact: PJ had orginally built an island made out of wood that he salvaged from this house, but once it was completed and we got it in there, it ended up being too big, so now it lives on our back porch as a potting table/place to set food when we have guests.

Staged for TV

Today

Hate that we didn't get a proper "before" shot of the kitchen from this angle, but the behind the scenes picture from the pilot will give you an idea of what it looked like. Our kitchen is almost completely white, so the chalkboard wall gives it a little bit more personality, visual interest, and makes it feel like we're in a coffee shop :).

Today

We staged the front room to the right as an office for the show, complete with the schoolhouse desk PJ found on the side of the road (!!!!), floor plans from our last house, and books. We actually kept it as an office for the first few months we lived here and had our TV room upstairs. We soon found out it was an inconvenience to go uptairs just to watch TV, when we didn't really go upstairs for any other reason, so we turned it into our den. In fact, we mostly keep the air turned off upsatirs (we're cheap, so what) when we don't have guests because we have everything we need on the main floor. Whiiiiiiiich is why we rarely take pictures of our upstairs and why you won't see any in today's post :). 

We are actually working on redoing some of the rooms and making them look more presentable so we will be back in a few weeks to show you all the progress we've made!!!

Staged for TV

Today

Today

Our master bath wasn't shown too much on the show, so we did minimal styling. Mostly just white towle and green plants sitting on our marble-topped window ledge. Since then we've added some affordable (and bright!) cafe curtains and a new storage cabinet between the two sinks. We were supposed to have a vanity instead of the double sinks, but our cabinet maker couldn't get to it in time before our deadline for the show, so alas, we are stuck with two sinks and little to no storage in our bathroom. There's something that's charming about the pedestal sinks but more storage and counter space would be sooooo nice. We plan to put an actual vanity in next year or so.

Staged for TV

Today

Today

The hall bath REALLY wasn't shown on the show (like, at all) so all we did was throw a little rug in there. Notice how we didn't even put up a shower curtain. Everything is pretty much the same in there now, just with a shower curtain and a black and white picture of Marlon Brando above the toilet because, who wouldn't want to use the bathroom with Marlon Brando jumping in the air making a funny face?

Staged for TV

Today

Our dining room in the back of the house. We originally built this room as a sun room, and then we reworked the windows and planned on making it a den/family room (since our office was in the front room on the right, remember?) BUT THEN we found the table. Ahh... the table. We had seen it at our favorite antique store for years and when it came time for the show, we knew we had to have it. We were able to get it for hundreds off asking price, because you should never pay full price for furnitire. EVER. The only problem is it was 12 ft long and wouldn't fit in the original dining room, so the only room it would fit in is the new den/family room, which was an addition. So, we added a chandelier and had our trim guy cut it down 3 ft to make it a 9 foot table (because 12 ft was still too long for that room!!) and that's the story of it. Below the before/now pics, you can see what it looked like when we first put it in the room to see if it would fit. 

Staged for TV

Today. We've actually done more to the dining room since this picture was taken back in February, like adding bamboo woven blinds, more pictures, and more plants. Currently our table is buried under a mountain of clothes, so we'll stick with this older picture for now :) 

So that's it! This was a long post but a fun one to look back on and compare. We're just showing you the downstairs for now, minus the laundry room which we are still setting it up the way we want it to look, but that wasn't shown on the show anyway. We plan to show the upstairs once we get that completed, again, hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

Which look do you prefer? Staged for TV or "lived" in?

Design Dilemma

Yesterday we came home to find a ton of furniture we ordered online sitting on our front porch. Finally! We were so excited because we had spent so long picking out each piece and deciding where we wanted it to go in our house. We ordered a bunch of different things for a few rooms and had spent almost a month choosing just the right pieces.

When we got them inside and started opening them and putting them together, we felt really good about everything. It was cool to see it all in person and finally in the rooms after spending so much time ooo-ing and ahhh-ing over them online. 

We set up one of the rooms with the furniture all in its place and stepped back to admire the view and...... well it didn't really look all that good to be honest. We were upset. We had spent sooooo much time going over the floorplan and where this and that would go and now that everything was in its place, it just felt off. It didn't have the look/feel that we were going for and we couldn't figure out why.

This isn't going to be one of those posts where we tell you our dilemma and then by the end of it we reassure you that everything is fine because we figured it out and blah blah blah. Nope. This is the kind of still-working-on-it post where we haven't 100% found the solution yet. We ended up rearranging the whole layout of the room in question and it made it somewhat better, and we still have to bring in accessories like art, lamps, and ~decorative~ items. But still, as of right now, we've kind of hit a wall creatively.

When that happens, we like to clear the room out and go back to the basics, back to what we had originally envisioned and see what we need and don't need to achieve that vision. We worked on it until late last night so a good part of our frustration with the room could have been that we were just tired and needed a fresh mind/start. We have a whole blog post/YouTube video about the process coming soon, so we can't reveal too much now, but we'll keep you updated about the final outcome. Do you ever go through moments of design frustration like this? 

In other non-design related news, we went to lunch yesterday in Warehouse Row in downtown Chattanooga with a few friends and felt like we were in New York City for a few hours. Have you ever been? It's absolutely gorgeous.

We ate at Public House (above) and noticed they have the same schoolhouse pendant lights that we have in our upstairs bathroom!

After lunch we went to look at a potential flip house. It doesn't look like much now, but it has a great layout and could be sooooo cute. We already have so many ideas for it. We'll keep you posted on what happens with it!! Fingers crossed!!