Day 2: Cook

Do you cook a lot at home?

Ever since we found out Thomas has high cholesterol, we've been trying to cook and eat healthy more and more. It's not always easy (read: never easy) for us to cook at home because, let's just be honest, laziness, so it's something we're constantly working on.

Thomas' sister Amy got us this book last year called Cook: Visualize The Perfect Plate, and tonight we broke it out. Have you heard of it? It's filled with the most beautiful photos of meals and ingredients and it breaks down every step so it's actually really easy to make the recipes. There are so many gorgeous recipes and we can't wait to try them all, but for tonight we tried one and it was so good!!

On the menu for tonight was ratatouille! Loved the movie, but we don't know if we've ever had the dish before. It's basically a bunch of different vegetables dumped into a pot with olive oil and garlic and then it's dinner. Some people use noodles and make it a pasta but this recipe didn't call for that. 

How pretty are all the ingredients laid out? This dish is big on taste and especially big on color. 

And it's pretty healthy, too. No added salt or sugar. Just fresh veggies all mixed together for a quick and tasty meal. If you want the recipe for yourself, check it out below:

And here's how ours turned out:

It's definitely prettier before it's cooked, but the taste is delish. PJ added parmesan to his for garnish. Yum. So that's that! Have you had ratatouille before? We'll definitely be making this again, probably for a bigger group of people, though. #leftovers

See you tomorrow. xx

UPDATE: PJ made his into a pizza 😂 

Day 1: Husbands Who Make The Bed

Well here we are. Day one out of 30 of acknowledging the most beautiful part about our day.

We're actually really looking forward to this. Is it sad to see it as a challenge? Besides blogging every day for 30 days straight (which is a challenge in itself), shouldn't we already just be able to see the beauty in each day? 

So let's get right to it. The most beautiful thing about our day, at least the one most worth mentioning, has to do with husbands who make the bed. Funny enough, it also captures our different personalities perfectly. Thomas took the picture below because he felt like it accurately shows what the feeling of the end of a long week looks like: messy, all over the place, and knowing you wouldn't want to be anywhere else than in your comfy, cozy bed. 

Thomas was picking up around the house when he came back in the room about an hour later and saw the bed was made. Not perfectly, but it was noticeably neater than before, just the way PJ likes it. See what we mean? Thomas is always go with the flow, and PJ is so structured , always wanting things to look their best, which neither of us are complaining about. A made bed is such a treat at the end of the night to us. Pulling the covers back, hopping into bed after a long day. Bonus points if they're freshly cleaned, out of the dryer sheets!

So A+ for all you husbands (and wives! and partners!) out there who make the bed every day. It is always appreciated, especially at the end of a somewhat hectic week. It can't be overstated enough. 

Hope you had a good week! xx

A Fun 30 Day Challenge

Life can be hard. 

We know this. You know this. It's just how it is.

But life is also beautiful. And spontaneous. And crazy. And surprising. And wonderful. And unexpected. It's so many things each and every day but it's easy to overlook those things, especially when dealing with everything we all have on our plates. Oh, life is also overwhelming, too. Did we mention that one?

So, because life is not perfect, and it's sometimes hard to see the good in it, we want to celebrate the beauty in each day. We want to acknowledge the things that make it wonderful instead of focusing on the negative. What was the most beautiful part of your day? How did you celebrate it? Was it something big or small? Did you tell anybody or keep it to yourself? 

To celebrate the beauty in each day, we are going to write the most beautiful thing about our day right here, every day, for 30 days straight.

They say that if you do anything for 30 days it sticks, so we're hoping we can see the good that life has to offer if we document it. And if we do it here, there's some accountability, right? You guys will hold us accountable, won't you? In any event, we think it will be good for us to publicly write it down so that we can look back on this time in our life in a few years. Do you ever do that? on Instagram or Facebook? It's kind of scary/hilarious/cringy. Ah, the internet.

So that's the challenge. Or maybe it's an experiment? Whatever it is we're up for it and can't wait to get started. If you want, you can check back in every day for the next 30 days to see the most beautiful part of our day. We know life isn't perfect and we don't pretend ours is, and every day is going to present challenges and maybe some days it will be hard to find the good. But by focusing on the beauty more, maybe something will stick.

 Won't you join us in this challenge? 

Home Again, For a While

We are back home from Mexico! We went to Playa del Carmen for five days with some of our best friends all thanks to HotelTonight, a really cool and convenient app that allows you to book last minute hotel rooms for cheap prices. 

It feels somewhat weird calling them some of our best friends since we all met on Instagram and have only seen each other a handful of times, (some we met for the first time in Mexico!) but it's true. We have all grown close in a short amount of time and we're so grateful for their friendship. Stay tuned for a vlog of the entire trip! 

We have been traveling so much the last two months and we've had the time of our lives, honestly. We told ourselves this year was the year of travel and so far we've been fortunate enough to be able to go all over, making new friends along the way. However, once we walked through our front door last night and felt the overwhelmingly good feeling of FINALLY being home, we couldn't help but feel so thankful that we don't have anything planned for a while. However, we DO plan to spend more time with family, clean the whole house, rearrange some things, cook more (all of this traveling = not eating so great), and possibly starting a mini renovation on a room at home.

As of right now we have a couple trips planned in September, October, and November, so we're going to enjoy the down time in the next few months. You know home is our happy place. It's where we can be ourselves, watch whatever we want, eat whatever we want, and spend endless amounts of time figuring out our next design project. There’s no place else we’d rather be.

It feels good to be home, doesn't it?

Good to be Home

We got home late Monday night after spending the weekend in San Francisco for Pride with Mister B&B. As soon as we walked through the door and saw Alyster and our two little girls (the big girls are at PJ’s mom’s house until we pick them up tomorrow), we got the biggest feeling of comfort and relief. We were home! Finally.

We had the time of our lives in SF, though! We met some amazing people who we feel blessed to call new friends! It wouldn’t have been as much fun without Kyle, Titus, and Raymond, who were so kind and ended up showing us so much of the city, we guess you could call them our tour guides (even though none of them currently live there, they new their way around the entire city!). We also finally met Brock & Chris from Yummertime after being friends on a Instagram for what feels like forever. They were beyond sweet and just as charming in person as they are online. We plan on making a blog & a vlog of the whole trip so stay tuned for that to see how we spent our time in SF!

Before we went to SF, PJ was working in Ohio for 5 days, and before that we were on the cruise for a week, so you can imagine how good it felt to come home and just be HOME. Relaxing on our couch, cuddling in our bed, watching Netflix and playing with the girls and Alyster. It’s also fun to drive around town and see small, subtle changes that occurred while you’re gone, you know? Maybe a house that’s being fixed up is further along or maybe a road has been newly paved. There’s always something that’s slightly different when we get back from being gone and that can make coming home to the same town you’ve lived in forever all the more exciting.

We have 3 house guests (from two different cities!) coming to stay with us for the next couple of days and they’ll be here in just a few hours! We are so excited! You may recognize their faces from Instagram ;) so keep an eye out to see who it is. One of the main things we love about Instagram is how many people we are able to meet from all over the U.S. and become friends with. All from an app. How cool is that?

We hope you had a wonderful pride weekend and are getting back into the swing of things this week. Take care, friend. xx

 PS- we leave on another trip ONE WEEK from today with more Instagram friends!!!! We CANNOT WAIT!!  

Where in the World Are We Going?

(Alyster keeping us company as we write)

We have been traveling SO MUCH this year, more so than any other year. It's crazy to think about, though, because that was one of our new year's resolutions. We were going to make this ~The Year of Travel~ and we feel confident in saying that it officially is!

This coming Friday we are heading to San Francisco to celebrate Pride! We are slightly embarrassed to say that this will be our first major Pride event we've been to. We've been so busy the last couple of years fixing up houses (seriously, we've had a house to work on every summer for the past 3 years) and then last year promoting the show, which happened to air on this same Pride weekend 1 year ago (!!!), that we haven't made time to go to one. We did go to Knoxville's Pride last year which was fun because we got to meet some of y'all there and experience what goes on at an event like that, but we think San Fran's will be on a whole other level. Have you ever been?

We are staying with a fun, surprise house guest that we can't wait to tell you who it is. We've never met them in person, only through Instagram, so we're looking forward to getting the chance to say hi IRL. 

We will only be in SF for a couple of days, so it's a really short trip. We've been getting some messages from y'all on where to go and what to do so thank you! Keep them coming! We've never been to California together before (PJ went with his aunt to L.A. years ago) and it's something we've always wanted to experience together, so we are beyond excited to get to go!

Our friend Lindsey is the best house sitter in the world, and she will be watching our place and our dogs while we're gone. We don't know what we would do without that girl! You may have seen her pop up in our Instastories from time to time. #loveher

So that's all for now. We'll update you more as it gets closer! Hope you're having a great week!!! xx

Good Intentions

(How cute does Alyster look here?! It’s the new background picture on my phone, don’t mind me)

Why aren’t there enough hours in the day?

Do you ask yourself that from time to time? Doesn’t it seem like there’s always SO much to do and never enough time to do it? We just asked you a lot of questions in a row so we hope you don’t feel pressured 😂, but it’s been on our minds a lot lately.

May, June, and July are shaping up to be our busiest months in a while, with traveling out of state, even out of the country, not to mention lots of work to be done at home. We also just added a new member to the family (above) so trying to balance work, relationships, friends, etc, has us asking again, where are all the hours in the day going?! And why can’t we get more!

We have a couple of letters sitting on our desk from you guys that we planned on responding to this past weekend, but PJ just got home from being gone all week, and we had some out of town friends come to stay with us (which was so much fun!!!) and before you know it, it was Sunday night and we were pooped.  We plan to get them in the mail this week, though!

So, we always have many, many good intentions to get everything done that we have on our plates, but sometimes there are just not enough minutes in the day. And after writing this post, we think that’s okay from time to time. We can only do what we can do, right? It’s important to strive to be better, but it’s just as important to remember that we need to cut ourselves some slack and know we are all just doing the best that we can, don’t you think?

That last one was a rhetorical question ;). 

(Above photo by Cameron Hinkle) 

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!