Small Step To A Healthier Home

Hi Friends! I already checked off my only New Years resolution this past week - to get a physical! It’s so hard to make these appointments when you’re feeling well and have a busy schedule. Visiting the doctor is something you carve out time for only when you’re sick, right? Matt and I both needed to get physicals as it had been a few years, so we made a date out of it and scheduled ours back to back. Mine started with a series of questions about my lifestyle, (Do you eat a well balanced diet? Do you exercise regularly? Do you get enough sleep?), and with the choice of answers being limited to Always, Inconsistently, and Never, I found myself in the unavailable category of ‘Interested’.

I am always interested in taking better care of myself and my family. I have spent many a late night in bed browsing information on essential oils, cancer fighting foods, and apparent toxins found in sunscreen. There is so much information out there - too much for me to handle, that’s for sure! It just isn’t feasible for us to make the number of changes that would be needed to avoid every single possibility of sickness. But small changes we can do!

This past year I became more aware, (through my sister, actually!), of some of the harmful ingredients in our day to day hygiene products, (soaps, lotions, hair care, etc). A doctor friend of mine who blogs about these topics shared a list of where to find healthier, ‘clean’ products. As I scrolled through, thinking I’m going to change our entire regime, I was stunned by the prices - and the quantities! $15 for 12oz of shampoo. Are you kidding? There are 5 heads of hair to wash in this house! And after dealing with lice this time last year I am not skimping on hair washing, people!!!

It couldn’t have been better timing when Public Goods reached out to ask if I wanted to try some of their products. In their first email introducing themselves, they shared their desire to offer cleaner products for every day prices competitive to what you could find in a typical store. Game changer!

Public Goods ingredients are similar to their packaging - they leave out a lot more than they put in. Both are clean, simple and high quality.

Most impressive is the variety of products! They offer personal care, household cleaning supplies, linens, paper, oils - it’s an impressive line that doesn’t stop at just hygiene, or just household, as a lot of companies do. Since Public Goods is an online company, you pay a (very low) yearly membership fee in order to purchase their (very well priced) products. Items are delivered extremely fast, (mine arrived 2 days from when I placed the order), making planning ahead a cinch.

Purse friendly and pretty, too.

Health is always something we can do better on and I am okay with that. We’re still going to drink Swiss Miss and grab a weekly $5 deal at Little Caesars. But this is one change that is easy for me to make that I feel is worth it. These decisions are so personal as everyone needs to decide for themselves what changes are feasible for them. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to have tried Public Goods products and decide if they are worth swapping into our daily routine. If you would like to try, too, you can purchase one little item and then try out a free Travel Kit with smaller sizes of more items with code STYLEMUTT at checkout!

Cheers to baby steps and small changes towards better health! A huge thank you to my Mom and Dad for lending their BEAUTIFUL master bath so I could share these products with you. (You DO NOT want to see my bathrooms). And thank you so much for coming by today!

Best Laid Plans || 2018 Flip List Recap

Oh hey there January. When did you get here?

I came so close. Close but no cigar as they say. It’s not the first time I’ve neglected the final item on my annual Furniture Flip Bucket List (see what happened in 2016 for example) but I really did come close.

Every January, I publically declare my resolutions for the year with a list of projects or challenges I’d like to see myself complete. And sometimes the year gets the best of my despite my most noble intentions.

I may have left completing Item No.2 undone but I at least have something to offer the New Years Resolution Police:

My Plans

So what happened? Why didn’t I crank this last project out? I mean - I have the plans and measurements right here don’t I…? Did I run out of time? DId I get a little lazy? Did I change my mind?

Yes.

I admit it. I ran out of time and gusto to make this project happen in 2018. This happens sometimes when I hit a creative wall - when I sat down at my metaphorical drawing board, this project began to accrue a long list of challenges that I just couldn’t ignore:

• How to connect each table top + leg to each other with dowels

• How to stain tapered legs to match table tops

• Will the table tops be large enough to feel proportionate to leg length?

• Am I spending too much on the components to still make a profit

Maybe with some more time in the year I could have solved this puzzle, but the main reason it ended up on the cutting room floor was moolah. Without the connecting dowels or stain, I’m already running a tab close to $80 just for legs, table tops and mounding hardware.

Source: West Elm

Consider this: West Elm’s Clover Coffee Table (now discontinued) is the polished/ mass-produced version of my plans. Although no longer available, they were able to market their tables somewhere around $250. Even f I were able to assemble a table that looks as polished and try to list it for a similar price in the shop, this still means my profit margin would below my comfortable threshold.

It just wasn’t a practical project to take on. Maybe if I were in the market for a piece like this in my own home, I would give it a go. But the unknown risks far out weigh the potential for reward so I had to pass. For now.

So my 2018 list is incomplete. Alas. But exciting things are coming this year so stay tuned for the 2019 Furniture Flip Bucket List!

Catch up on the 2018 Furniture Flip Bucket List:

HGTV Magazine Feature

Hi friends! Over two years ago we went on a little adventure when HGTV Magazine came to shoot our house, and the feature has just been published in their January/February issue! It was a surreal opportunity and one I still can’t believe happened to us in this house . It feels like yesterday I was refinishing thrifted pieces of furniture in our garage while my three babies took their afternoon nap. Now, Cate and I actually have a business growing on itself! You just never know where trying something new could take you; where that step of faith could end up.

While HGTV did rearrange and add a ton, (I cannot emphasize this enough), of color and layers, the article reflects Matt’s and my fearless approach with our home. We work by the quote of Arthur Ashe, which states:

Start where you are
Use what you have
Do what you can

This has been our mentality from the beginning and continues to inspire us to bring out the best in this home as long as we are here. So without further adieu, I thought it would be fun to take a gander at the article together followed by how our home looks now!

Kinda grainy but here we are! Matt’s looking exactly the same. Way to go, babe!

Living Room

First off, CATE rescued those leather chairs and updated them with legs, (you can see how here)! I loved them so much I bought them up quick when she posted them to sell. When we invested in our dream sofa, the two leathers didn’t quite go so well in the room together so I had to part ways, unfortunately.

Quick story: During the process HGTV kept asking me my favorite colors to use in our home. In hindsight I think I should have given them more than just, “White and wood. And a little black.” Clearly they weren’t satisfied! I always bend earthy. Always. Even with our design clients. Maybe it’s because we live in the woods and I am constantly inspired by the changing seasons right outside our windows, but I have always enjoyed quieter earthy color palettes. It was wild to see our house so ‘done up’ for a magazine! We did keep the mirror between the windows in here, and that wood coffee table, (a piece MATT thrifted and gave me for Christmas a while back), is currently in our family room downstairs! Our current coffee table shown above is an old army cot I found on Craigslist! I removed one set of end legs and replaced the canvas with the neutral cover, and turned it into the piece we have now! The woven chair is a piece I got for free at a thrift store by cashing in some customer loyalty points. Hah!

Dining Room

This is a wild one because we took that wall down on the right during the kitchen renovation this past Summer! (And by ‘we’, I mean our amazing contractor, Matt Stein, who makes all the things). But you’ll recognize those pipe shelves which are now in our living room! Still one of our favorite DIY projects. In fact, when we disassembled them to relocate to the living room, we actually moved a few parts around to accommodate the small desk space that’s on the right end of the shelves now! We are also still enjoying our dining table, which, as the article points out, I did sand completely down on a whim! I love the bare naked wood and with kids who love to craft and draw on it, it’s a very well loved piece with scars and marks to prove it! Even though the floorplan of our home was a little different two years ago, my style was fairly similar back then with an appreciation for earthy tones and minimal layers, so it was crazy to see this space so full for the story!

Main Level

Yea, and we’re kind of hoping that neighbor doesn’t read this magazine! Hah! I always had a storage piece on this wall that was hiding our kitchen. Now that the wall is down the view is pretty different! We have absolutely loved opening this space up; it’s been a game changer in how we use our main floor now! The white cabinet here was something I sold during our kitchen renovation since we just didn’t need it anymore, but it remains one of my favorite refinished pieces!

Master Bedroom

While our bedroom was never this busy, this is still surreal to me! That bed belonged to my great-great-grandparents! And stenciling that wall was one of my favorite projects I did in this house early on. I preferred white bedding to let the stencil shine and to give the bed a slightly modern nod, but this shot still makes me nostalgic. I passed the bed onto my cousin when she and her husband needed a bedroom set in their new home, and Matt and I filled our room as we do with Craigslist finds and new DIY projects. Our current bed was a CL score, my dresser was a thrift store piece that I refinished, the trimmed wall was our design and a project we did last year, and the dark green metal catalogue drawers are currently our floating bedside tables. I love that these two shots represent a lot of DIY projects, but done in really different styles! There truly is no limit to what DIY can look like.

Boys’ Room

This is real time, folks. I thought about waiting until this room was finished to show you the ‘then and now’, but 1) Waiting is hard. And that’s it. Hah! I just sold the boys bunk beds this past weekend because they never liked having them bunked, and those beds not bunked were pretty bulky for this little room. We’re moving on to smaller and better things! Stay tuned, I’ll share the finished room here soon! The way HGTV styled it with the bedding, rug, art and accessories was a lot more color than we had, and I plan on keeping consistent with the earth tones in here as we move forward. But I think we’ll keep the birch tree wall. :)

All in all, this was a HUGE learning experience for me and a first in every way. For one, I learned what HGTV magazine considers to photograph well for a printed editorial, and am curious to know if my true earthy, laid back style would ever photograph as well. I loved getting to know the team, (two photographers, one stylist, and two HGTV editors), and observing how they work together. Oh yea, I forgot I had these shots together! The second one is with photographer, David Tsay - I had actually been following and admiring his work before I knew he was assigned to shoot our home! The group shot includes his assistant, and the stylist behind the whole shoot, Charlotte Safavi - I don’t know how that woman sleeps! She is highly accredited and it was a pleasure to watch her work on our home.

Everyone was incredibly kind to my family, playing with the kids and making us all feel like this was the most normal thing in the world! I truly cannot say enough about those people.

HGTV is running a mighty operation over there, and I realize that I’m about as valuable to them as the Hershey Kiss on the back cover of this issue! Regardless, I am so grateful to them for inviting us to grace a few of their pages. While our styles are quite different, I feel like our business missions to inspire and encourage others in their homes really reflect each other. Empowering others to bring out the best in their home, be it a room to call their own, a studio apartment, or a single family home, is something we are both passionate about. It was such an incredible opportunity to work together towards that mission.

I often say, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” and with this experience that statement couldn’t be more true! But I enjoy taking risks. This whole thing started when I became a stay at home mom for the first time and thought, ‘well now what?’ There is so much adventure to uncover in our day-to-day lives, even as a SAHM in small town suburbia. This experience was nothing short of an adventure, for sure!

If you would like to see more of our home and the work I do with our design clients, please find me on Instagram at chelsea_stylemutthome. To follow more of Cate’s incredible refinished finds, you can check her out at cate_stylemutthome!

Thank you for coming by!