Making A Rental Feel Like Home: Living Room

As you all know, we moved to Denver in June of 2017 and started renting our 1,000 sq ft 2 bedroom 1 bathroom home just 15 minutes from downtown Denver. You can check out more of our entire process here from when we first moved to the area and picked a home.

Now, since then, we've been fortunate enough to be able to work on different elements of the home to make it more "homey" and somewhere we feel like we could be awhile. We already talked about the kitchen and dining area, the master bedroom and lone bathroom, and if you've been following along with the blog we are currently working on converting the second bedroom that was once the guest room and office to the nursery (with tiny corner office area!) through the One Room Challenge. So far it's going well! Check out the week one progress , week two, and week three!

The only place we haven't talked about much is the living room space. Here is a reminder of what it looked like when we walked through it the first time last May:

A pretty great space with room for larger sized furniture and to have a bunch of people over. Something that we definitely enjoy being able to do!

Let's talk about what we did to take this peanut butter living room and transform it into something more cozy and that reflected our style. Thank goodness for our amazing landlord who has a lot of faith and trust in us!

Making Our Rental Feel Like Home: Bedroom & Bath

I won't lie to you, friends, I very seriously miss my GIGANTIC old bedroom, huge closet, attached master bath, and wood floors. I loved that I had room for a chair, bed, dressers, desks, nightstands... all the things. However, what I've quickly realized since we moved is that we don't really need all of those things. In many ways it is much easier to keep the bathroom cleaned without it, I have less places to stack items I don't need in the bedroom, and cleaning is much faster with less floor to mop or vacuum. 

Our new room is probably just over half the size of our old one. Here's a small angle of what the master looked like when we first toured:

Making Our Rental Feel Like Home: The Kitchen & Dining Room

We spent a lot of time after we moved in making the house cozier for us. We love the kitchen and dining room area, but it definitely lacks in storage and the washer and dryer are in the kitchen right there. That was a compromise, for sure. At our old house it was off of the kitchen but separate enough that it worked. I wanted to make sure that it was at least as attractive as it could be. Having a place with a washer and dryer hook up was big, so dealing with it in the kitchen and not having shared laundry seemed a fine trade.

Finding a Rental in a New City

After owning a home for nearly 10 years, it was super weird and super hard for me to transition to being a renter. I spent a ton of time looking into different places, locations, and types of rentals.

A few key things I realized about renting in a city, specifically Denver, Colorado:

1. It is very expensive. Full stop. We pay $1400 for a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom duplex 15 minutes from downtown Denver. It has a giant yard, garage, and fireplace. Our mortgage in Grand Junction was $870. Ouch. Some things we lost in this rental: A/C, 2nd bath, 3rd bedroom.
2. Private rentals seem to be better. They are more willing to work with you, are friendlier, and much more accessible for maintenance. They want to protect their investment. I eventually found ours on Zillow.com.

5 Things to Know About All This Messy Business

Moving away from my home town has been quite the experience. There have been so much to learn and so many new roads and directions to figure out! There's also been learning the ropes of my  teaching job at my new school and designing new coursework and curriculum for classes. We have way more freedom to do different activities and lessons here, but that means I have to build or rebuild a lot of it from scratch. Because of these tumultuous changes I've taken a break from blogging and we have tried to focus on our new life here.

Now! I realized just how much I miss it and am going to start all over, even if I never become a mega popular blogger where I can leave my day job to communicate and write all day with you guys, at least I have a spot where I can have a great time talking about things that are important to myself and others at this stage. So! Here are 5 things you need to know about This Messy Business moving forward into the new life and phase of this little bloggy and I'm excited for a fresh start!

Back in 2010 

In 2013.

1.  I am a 27 year old high school English teacher and Speech & Debate coach! I've been teaching high school for 5 years now.  I love all things reading and talking. I am hoping to incorporate more book reviews, suggestions, must read lists, and even some lesson inspiration. 
2. Brennan and I are engaged! We are going to be getting married on June 15, 2019 and I gotta tell you... I love wedding planning. If I were to forgo teaching I would totally go into the wedding planning business. It's awesome. 
   
3. I started this blog when I was 19 or 20 to document remodeling and renovating my 3 bedroom 2 bath manufactured home in Grand Junction, Colorado. We sold it in under a week in July 2017.  You could read all about how I staged it to have it move quickly here.
   
   
4. We are primarily a plant-based family! We are working to shift all our products to cruelty free and vegan. Brennan has been vegan for 4 years and I have been working to transition into that same lifestyle.  We love when we get to do a CSA with a farm in the summer, hopefully we find on like what we had in Grand Junction here in Denver! 
   
5. We now live in Denver, Colorado and it is a huge change! We are hoping to go on more adventures that I can document and share with you, try out different awesome restaurants, and find cool neighborhoods. We want to purchase a home in the next 3 years so we need to explore the right place for us.  Right now, we love renting. Read all about why here!
   

I'm hoping reinvigorating the blog and widening my scope from the previous years will make this a place where I can enjoy others, collaborate, and share some fun pieces of our lives. What do you think makes a successful blog? What do you like to read about?

Our Engagement Story

The world works in mysterious ways, only making the meeting of two people happen when it was exactly meant to. We both attended Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, Colorado in 2009 and even knew the same people and had mutual friends, but we never had the chance to really meet. We are pretty certain we were even at some of the same parties in college without knowing it!

Fast forward to December of 2015 when we reconnected over the internet and began to find out just how much we had in common. We went on a couple of dates but what really sealed the deal was when B invited me to go to Ouray, Colorado at the end of January 2016 to spend the weekend getting a massage, soaking in the hot springs, and going to a romantic candlelight dinner in the mountains. Seriously, if you go to Ouray, go to the hot springs. It's amazing. 

It was perfect. From that moment on, we were together.

In May of 2016 we started to live together in Grand Junction before making the big decision to move to the Denver area in June 2017.

On August 20, 2017- we went to Wall, South Dakota for my cousin's wedding and Brennan met the whole family, and got all of them in on his plan! He spent time talking to my dad on the first night they were there and then on Sunday, as they were headed back with my parents and cousin Ashley, they stopped at Mt. Rushmore.

He is extra tricky because I absolutely loves teaching and learning about Abraham Lincoln which is why B coordinated my parents and family members to make sure she was all ready to be proposed to right there in front of the sculpture of my favorite president. The moment was fantastic and even other visitors to the monument clapped and cheered when they saw B get down on one knee to propose.

And of course, as we all knew I would, I said: Yes.

Here are all the pictures to prove it. Stay tuned for tons of eco-friendly and vegan inspired wedding posts!

5 Reasons We Love Renting (Right Now)

Well friends, we finally made it! After all the craziness that came with making the decision to move, finding a new job, finding a new place, selling our house, and driving all of our crap over the mountain- we're here and moved in! It's been a whirlwind 3 and a half months.

Having been a home owner for just over 9 years, I figured the adjustment of renting was going to be a real challenge. Boy, was I wrong! I LOVE renting right now! Wondering how that could be? Here's a few reasons:

1. Financial Freedom. Seeing the mortgage come of your credit report and your overall debt balance dramatically decrease was pretty sweet. We are really into the Dave Ramsey Debt Free program so not owning a home gets us closer. Our expenses are similar since we still pay rent, but it feels so much more liberating right now as we work towards other goals.
2. Fixes aren't on us. Most fixes don't come out of our own pocket. For example; before we moved in our area had a major hail storm that did some serious damage. Apparently the screen door on our rental was one of the casualties. Our landlord set up, paid for, and scheduled the replacement. My only job was to be here and sign saying I saw the dude install the door. I didn't have to pay a dime! No stress trying to balance the budget or figuring out how to DIY it. That, was pretty great.
3. More for our money. This is sort of relative considering we moved from a small-mid sized town to a city but for us it is the case. I'd purchased our previous home at the height of the market in 2008 so we were overpaying for the value for a very long time. It was a larger space in terms of square footage compared to our rental but it didn't have other features that had become more important to us. Our rental is a "REAL" house (previous was a manufactured home) that is brick and has an attached garage, a great big backyard, proximity to shops and restaurants, and a spacious front yard that keeps the house off the street. We also have a really great back porch where we can entertain friends and family.
4. More time for us. I still love getting to decorate and organize, especially since we plan to be in this house while we're paying off debt, but I'm not spending as much time worrying about remodeling and updating. I think this house would look great with painted cabinets and new tile in the kitchen and dining room, but since I don't own it I'm more apt to just deal with it. I'll put down a big rug or something. I now use that money to go explore different neighborhoods with B or put into savings for the wedding, or pay off debt.  Plus, we get to see which area we really want to be in before we purchase.
5. Minimalism. We went from a 3 bedroom 2 full bath to a 2 bedroom and 1 bathroom. As a result, we really had to work to minimize a lot of our possessions. Read truly: I had to get rid of a lot of crap from before we were together. B is already quite the minimalist, I have more of a problem. This has helped me to pick what is truly valuable and brings us joy. We sold and got rid of a lot of furniture and other decor items before moving and I am so glad we did! The only 2 things I regret getting rid of was my 2 bookcases. But maybe I just need to sort back through my books and donate a bunch more. 

Overall, I'm really excited for this adventure. I go to my new school to get started next Monday and I just feel really good about this change. I'm so happy and can't wait to see what we do next!

Eastward Bound & Down: Relocating a Life

It has been nearly 365 days since my last post, meaning that mostly just my  mom will see this. But hey, that's fine! My mom is pretty awesome!

As of this month I have officially owned my home for 9 years and it has been a remarkable experience. I was able to go to college, learn to install my first dishwasher, remodeled my first kitchen, replaced counters, installed flooring, and repainted the living room and bathroom 3 or more times. It has been totally wild, but it is time to announce that I am officially selling my house in Grand Junction, Colorado and moving my entire life to Denver. Like all the other millennials in the entire United States. However, I would like to claim that I am already from Colorado- so it's less annoying.

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We are so excited to go! Brennan (BB) and I have found a rental and I have found a new teaching job over there. It's a scary big move but we're excited. We have been working really hard to get our house market ready and I will be sure to do a blog post about that soon.  Here's us looking all cute and stuff at the Denver Botanical Gardens:

If you have any tips or advice for making a move to a new city please share it with me! I could use all the help I could get. I've grown up in Grand Junction and have never been anywhere else. It's an exciting change. 

Here are the big things I'm excited about:

• More stuff to do (Red Rocks Amphitheater, Baby!)
• Closer proximity to family
• Better work to life balance.
• New house has a large backyard and a garage! (YAY!)
• Master's Degree opportunity.
• More time to bloggggg!

Any tips from people who have moved and downsized? What did you do to sell your house fast and get settled into a new city?