Inspire your creative side. Fuel your adventurous side.
Our most popular blog post EVER is Top 5 Tips for Surviving the Puppy Years with a GSP. I thought I’d follow that up with the OTHER tips for training our german shorthair pointer in the second year. Here are our Top 7 tips and lessons.
Continue reading “Tips for Training a German Shorthair Pointer: Second Year”
James and I have returned from another amazing trip to New Zealand’s north island. We are definitely feeling the jet leg this week, so I thought I’d put my feet up and recap our north island trip! We went the last week of February, and stayed through the first week of March, which meant it was nice and hot pretty much the whole time. This time of year, we had cooler mornings and evenings but full sunny days! It rained only on our first and last day – lucky us! Read on to see what we got up to cruising around New Zealand’s north island with family.
Continue reading “13 Day North Island Itinerary: New Zealand”
I wanted to share one of our favorite weekend rituals: coffee time. My parents started “coffee time” when they were first married. And now, they have passed on this tradition to their daughters! Each of my sisters and their husbands have a designated morning coffee time. And when we are all together as a family up north for the weekend, we always look forward to coffee time. And the coffee time tradition continues to grow! So what is coffee time? I’ll tell you.
Continue reading “Coffee Time: Our Favorite Morning Ritual”
We finally did it. After a year and a half of nasty, faded, salmon-tan carpet and yellow linoleum floors, we decided to rip it all out. DIY projects always take longer than expected and this project was no exception. I think it actually made the rule. I’ve been so excited to share with you guys are DIY vinyl plank floors. We love them so much, and it truly has transformed our 1980s home into 2019. We are going to share our before and afters, and how we updated our home with vinyl plank floors.
Continue reading “DIY Vinyl Plank Floors”
Super excited to have a guest writer on the blog today to share her honeymoon itinerary! My adventurous sister Allie is sharing her non-traditional honeymoon with you all! This really sounded like a trip of a lifetime! I’ll let her get started.
Hello! My name is Allie, and I am Brooke’s middle little sister. I am also the sister who helped get the girl and the kiwi together! Shortly after those two got together, Derek came into my life, and he was the best man at Brooke and James’ wedding. Derek and I were married on June 2, 2018, and as close as we are to Brooke and James, we chose not to bring them on our honeymoon. But I still wanted to share our amazing European honeymoon adventure with you!
Continue reading “Non-Traditional European Honeymoon”
One of the most common questions I get is “How do you afford to go to New Zealand every year?” I don’t have one really good answer for that question, I think it’s a combination of a lot of tools we use to help us save money for travel, and save money in general. I’ll give you our 5 ways we save money to fund our flights. Here’s how we do it.
Continue reading “How We Save Money to Travel”
I don’t love fall. That might be an unpopular opinion, I know. But I much prefer summer and winter. Though the leaves are really colorful, I don’t love all the rain and mud. For me, fall is just a countdown to winter. But recently my sisters, mom and I escaped the fall blues by going to Boyne Mountain Spa for a mother-daughters weekend. Here’s what we got up to on our relaxing weekend away at Boyne Mountain Spa!
Continue reading “Mother-Daughter Weekend at Boyne Mountain Spa”
Well, it had to happen eventually. The worst DIY EVER! A DIY project that I describe as AWFUL and HORRENDOUS and A TOTAL NIGHTMARE! What did we do? We spray painted our standing tub. Yes, you read that right – we used spray paint on our tub! “I’ve never heard of that”, you’re probably thinking! Well, there is probably a reason – because it was the WORST! Read on, I’ll tell you all about it. Continue reading “DIY Spray Paint Tub”
For the last several years my family and extended family have gone on a Michigan fall color, wine, beer and cider tour – or “wine tour” for short. Usually we try to go when the colors are at their “peak”, typically middle of October. We all pile into my Uncle’s motorhome and tour northern Michigan’s best wineries, cideries, and micro breweries, and enjoy the beautiful fall weather! This year we set off to Traverse City, Leelanau, Suttons Bay, and Bellaire. Here’s our wine tour itinerary! Continue reading “Michigan Beer & Wine Tour: Traverse City & Suttons Bay”
I had planned on sharing about our DIY vinyl plank floors this week, but the trim isn’t back up yet! So, I thought I’d share a little bit more about us. You have probably read About Us, and you have also probably read about How We Met. If not, go do that first! It’s a great story, if I do say so myself. But today, I want to share our proposal story!
Continue reading “How the Kiwi Proposed to the Girl: Our Proposal Story”