House - Words of Williams

By Eric on February 26, 2013 5

New Office Furniture

We don’t technically have an office in our house. We have an old desk inherited from my childhood in our spare bedroom that holds our iMac that we never use. Truth be told, most of our blog posts are written from the comfort of our couch.

While I would love to have a decked out office optimized for blogging awesomeness, it’s just not in the budget right now. But, sometimes you come across something that you just can’t pass up.

A couple weekends ago we decided to take a van full of miscellaneous items to Goodwill, and while we were there we thought we would look around. We are looking for some cool glass jars to make a terrarium. We had no luck with the glass, but I did spot this beauty in the furniture section.

In House

By Eric on February 20, 2013 13

Thinking About Buying a House?

We’ve shared before how we wish we would have waited before buying a house. And in hindsight, 2007 was a seriously terrible time to buy. The real estate bubble was bursting at the seams, and we have watched it pop and splatter remnants all over our financial lives. We stretched ourselves too thin, had too much debt and added insult to injury by taking out a loan for a vehicle.

I’m proud of how we’ve dug our way out of the mess, and the lessons we have learned are priceless. But, what if we had a do-over? What would that look like?

This is where we get to plead with those of you who have yet to take the plunge into home ownership to please weigh the options and proceed with caution. I’m not trying to scare you into not buying a home, I just want you to be prepared for all the expenses that come along with owning a home.

In House, Money

By Eric on February 7, 2013 43

DIY: Pallet Wall

Confession: I was not the first person in our house to join Pinterest. That prize goes to my lovely wife. And I can’t keep up with the thousands of things she’s pinned, but I was quite surprised to find that she has a board dedicated to projects she wants me to complete.

At first I found this type of commuication curious. Instead of asking me, “Hey, can you do this?”, she created a board almost secritively and when it was discovered, I felt both flattered and un-included at the same time. My reaction was more of an “I’ll show her!” reaction and I picked the biggest badest project I could find…the pallet wall!

With this project complete and my to-do list growing…I’ve got to get this post up and get back to work!

Continue Reading…

In House

One of my goals for 2012 was to find joy in the kitchen, and it was my loftiest goal of all. I have never looked forward to spending an hour in the kitchen creating something that can be eaten in 10 minutes.

But cooking is something we have to do almost every day, right? So why not find a way to enjoy it? (This post by Kate Connor was very enlightening to me!)

How I Found Joy in My Kitchen

Meal planning that works for us. To me, meal planning is a dirty word. I think I am turned off by meal planning like many other people are turned off by budgeting. So I got to thinking…meal planning doesn’t necessarily mean I have to cook every night. It just means that it would relieve stress from our lives if we decided ahead of time what our meals will be. So, what we’ve found to work best for us is to plan only three meals at home for the week (one of which is always breakfast for dinner!) and allow ourselves to eat out a couple times, too. Other than that, we eat leftovers or (healthy) things we can find around the house. I will try to do a food post on that soon if anyone thinks it would be helpful. I still can’t believe how terrible we used to eat just a year and a half ago. We are not perfect, but we have made lots of steps in the right direction.

food2

By Eric on October 31, 2012 15

Weekend Project: Backsplash

This past weekend, Kelsey’s parents came down and we put her dad’s skills to the test as we tackled a backsplash and under-cabinet lighting in our kitchen. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a while, but picking the right tile has proven to take a while longer than we initially thought.

After a few trips to Christianson Interiors (Kelsey’s dad’s store), scouring Pinterest for ideas, and visualizing what it would look like once it’s plastered on our kitchen walls, we finally settled on a mosaic pattern filled with lots of character. Made up of glass, frosted glass, stone, and stainless steel, it encompasses all the elements and colors we both had been looking for. Here are the before and after photos!