Food

I have a little secret… Are you ready for this?

As much as I love beautiful things and to create amazing projects and styled photo shoots for WhipperBerry, my home DOES NOT live up to the standards that I set for my blog.  GASP… I know!!

I can't tell you how many times someone has said, "I can't wait to see the home of WhipperBerry!" I then have died a little inside knowing that they would be soooooo disappointed.  Seriously, I have gone to great lengths to NOT have people come over to my house who are aware of my work on my blog. 

Case in point… This last summer I went on a road trip with Shelley from House of Smiths and Jen from Tatertots & Jell-o to San Diego for Blogher.

img source | Blogher 2012 from House of Smiths

Starting at the top and going clockwise | Jen from Tatertots & Jell-o, Amy from Living Lucurto & I Heart Faces, ME… Heather from WhipperBerry, Shelley from House of Smiths and Angie from I Heart Faces.

I can't tell you how much anxiety that produced knowing that two very talented home bloggers where coming to pick me up at my plain Jane, cluttered and TOTALLY OUT DATED home. I very quickly devised a plan so that they didn't need to drive all the way to my house.  They could stop for a bite to eat and my husband would drop me off at the restaurant. Whew… major crisis averted.

This has been a serious source of stress for me for the last little while.  Not that every home needs to look like a professional designer came in and waved his or her magic wand and created this amazing oasis for your family to live in.  It doesn't!  It needs to be a place where you feel comfortable and can take pride in knowing that you've created a warm, inviting home for your family and guests.  That will mean very different things to different people.  I knew that my home did not live up to that for me, and I had trouble with that.  Especially since I've put myself out into the blogging world.

I'm sure you've noticed that my photos are VERY controlled. I have a small corner in my kitchen that I set-up to take all of my pictures. One of these days in the near future I will show you how to set-up a small scale photo studio like the one that I created.  It will be another mind blowing shocker of a post!!

How did my home get this way, you ask? Well, we moved into our home 8 years ago and at the time I was 7 months pregnant with little miss Em our third daughter.  We had made the big move away from family in Colorado to the wilds of Las Vegas and that was HUGE in and of itself. We actually had the chance to buy our home brand new and got to pick all of the cabinets, flooring and such.  The problem… WE HAD NO IDEA WHAT WE WERE DOING… and we were trying to keep our costs as low as possible {we were being cheap!} Therefore we ended up with a home that didn't look like much.  It has been WONDERFUL, don't get me wrong. It has been a fabulous place for our family, it just doesn't have the look or feel that I would love to have.

Over the years we have struggled, like so many of you, with debt and money woes.  This was another factor to the state of our home.  We have spent MANY years creating debt and then  working our way out of it. We have been debt free for several years now, but that has been a BIG struggle.  I am, what Shelley would call, a SUPER CONSUMER and my husband is a SUPER SAVER. The two don't mesh very well in most cases. I ADORE him so I've worked hard to learn how to curb my spending appetites. So… It's very important for us to stay out of debt {mostly because I enjoy being married to my super sexy husband!} But… I subsequently have had to put blinders on.  I don't look at home catalogs, or go shopping at home stores.  I don't look at my friends new furniture too long. I don't look at our furniture and drive myself crazy longing for something I know it's not the right time to have. I have learned to be happy with what we have and when we have the opportunity, I try to spruce things up the best I can, while staying true to our financial plan.

Well, we've finally hit a point where we can start to make some much needed updates to our home and I am soooooo excited.  I am planning on doing a good portion of the work myself with the help of my sweet husband, however there was one big GINORMOUS task that I knew was just too much for us to chew.  Flooring!! I am not going to go totally into it in this post, but I thought I would let you know what I am up to right now.

Yesterday, if you were following me on Twitter or Facebook, you would've seen my flooring play-by-play.  We started demo of the existing flooring after packing up the bottom floor of the house this last weekend. Big job I must say!! Here's the whole bottom floor of the house stuffed into the garage…

And here is the photo of our SHOCKING carpet!!

As much as I would LOVE to say, "check out that shadow!" I can't… That's what the Vegas heat will do to your carpet.  Not really the heat itself, its the outside heat that causes the asphalt to be in a bit of a soft state all the time, thus causing you to track all kinds of crud into your house.  It doesn't matter if you are a shoe Nazi and stand at the door demanding that everyone remove their footwear before entry… This just happens. 

I have a fantastic friend at T-Brothers Tile here in Vegas who is going to help and transform this floor nightmare!! Don't let the name fool you, T-Brothers is soooo much more than tile.  They are your one stop shop for tile, wood, granite counter tops and so much more.  They even have someone who will clean and re-seal your grout if you need it.  They've been on the DIY Networks Kitchen Crashers show and you can see the whole episode right here.

The T-Brothers crew came over yesterday and started the demo and here's what it looked like…

We had the trifecta… tile in the entry way, carpet in the living room and office and LOVELY linoleum in the kitchen.  The demo team was loving us!!

Here's what it looked like at the end of just 5 1/2 hours…

Clean as a whistle!!

I will have to stop there, but don't you worry! We have so much to share as my sweetheart and I transform our home into something we will LOVE to call our home.  Who knows when we are done maybe I will invite Jen and Shelley over for a girls weekend here in Vegas without the panic attack!!

So… what's your little secret? What do you try and hide from friends when they come to visit? Or do you even let them walk in the door?  I would LOVE to hear your story.

keeping it real… my toilet is currently sitting on my front porch!