#this entire weekend i was just up in my bed periodically checking youtube like a nutjob

[clowningaroundmars]

tbqh on ONE hand....

im like "ohhh no drake responded and it is pure ASS fuuuck 😒"

BUT on the other hand... im lowkey kinda excited to see if kendrick planned ahead a song to release saved into a folder on his desktop labeled "in case drake comes back with a diss that's total asscheeks"

#kendrick lamar #mine #like im genuinely curious to see what kendrick might possibly come back with #even if he doesnt answer at all that in and of itself would kinda be a god tier response #ohhh my god kendrick youve got him on the ropes!!! #will it be a forfeit or a TKO?! god idk which one i want more #either way i know im not sleeping at ALL these next few nights #this entire weekend i was just up in my bed periodically checking youtube like a nutjob #eyes bloodshot at 2am in case kendrick dropped again 😭😭😭 #i am unwell #im TOO invested in this shit

[bbyboybrock--archived]

Shipped (Colby Brock Imagine)

Summary: *REQUEST* Omg your requests are open!! Can you do something about colby and reader dating in secret and she’s always hyping him up on everything and fans just think it’s cause they are best friends. But she posts a post wearing the love for hire letterman on accident and the fans connected it because Kat and Tara have it to so they figure out they are dating and go crazy (in a good way) for them 🥺❤️

Written: 2020

Word Count: 1,967

Warnings: Major fluff, Swearing

Masterlist

I harassed Colby into letting me listen to their new music. Let’s just say, when you guys hear this, you’re going to be glad One Direction is on a break. Can’t help but stan L4H!! #numeber1fan

I press "send tweet" before plugging in my phone and taking a quick shower. When I get out of the shower I grab my phone and throw myself onto Colby’s bed. It’s our bed at this point. I spend more time at the trap house than I do my apartment, I might as well move in. I go and read the comments under my tweet. Most of them are good. Some fans want me to leak the boys' music, others are freaking out over mine and Colby’s friendship. Someone makes it a point to mention how cute Colby and I would be as a couple and linked an edit that they made. Someone commented that fans like them, the one that posted the edit, are the problem and the reason why Colby doesn’t have any friends who are girls. There is a whole fight going on under that comment.

I quickly try to defuse the situation between the fans before exiting twitter altogether. I take my towel off of my damp hair and walk back into Colby’s bathroom to detangle it. When I finish doing my hair I grab the first jacket of Colby’s that I see to get warm. Lucky for me, it’s his Love for Hire lettermen jacket. For whatever reason, this jacket is more comfortable than any hoodie I’ve stolen during our entire relationship, maybe it’s because it smells strongly like him. Or maybe it’s because I get to finally live out my high school dream of wearing my boyfriend’s lettermen. Either way, Colby knows that this is my jacket now and he’s going to have to fight me to the death for it back. I don’t know if it’s because I freshly showered and my hair is fluffy, or because my skin is thanking me for not putting makeup on it yet, but something is compelling me to take a selfie in Colby’s bathroom mirror.

I get up on to the counter and try to position myself comfortably. I take a few selfies, while carefully not exposing Colby’s messy counter. I do cute poses with peace signs and my tongue sticking out. I do serious “model” poses with hair looking like I’m in a photoshoot. I take a couple and post them on my Instagram story. I triple check each one before pressing send to make sure they end up on my close friends’ list and not my public story. That would be disastrous. I saw how people were acting in the comments of my tweet supporting Colby when a fan posted an edit wishing we were dating. I can’t imagine how his fan base would react if they knew we really are dating and have been for well over a year.

Well, I can imagine how they would react, I’ve been around Colby long enough to figure out how his fanbase functions. Most of his fans would be supportive. Of the majority, there would be roughly half who constantly would show their support over our relationship. The other half would keep quiet and try not to mention it directly so they don’t “jinx” it. No matter how open Colby is with his fans, there is still so much of his life that he has to keep private from the rest of his fans who wouldn’t be supportive of our relationship. The obsessive ones who think that Colby is a toy and belongs to only them. In all honesty, Colby and I probably would have been together longer if it wasn’t for them. We probably wouldn’t have been friends. There was a period in his life when he wouldn’t make any new female friends because of what his old friends had to go through. Because of that, Colby has always been protective of me.

Even though we’ve been friends since he moved to Los Angles, he only introduced me to his fandom two years ago. Even then, it wasn’t like, boom: “here’s a girl that I’m friends with, be nice!” Colby made sure I was properly acclimated to his side of internet stardom by having me appear in all of his other friends’ videos and photos first before a strand of my hair was placed in one of his videos. And then he said, “here’s a girl that I’m friends with, be nice!” Being a Youtuber myself, I have some experience with fandoms. But nothing could prepare me for his intense fans. For the first couple of months after Colby put me on his channel, I understood why Colby kept so many of girl friends in the dark or why some chose to stop being friends with Colby in general. It’s only a select few fans, but when there are so many comments of harassment and death threats it can get overwhelming.

Those comments died down after a while though. Mostly because I either mute certain words from my comments or I don’t read them. Colby and I try really hard to hide our relationship. If we’re in videos together, we don’t sit too close. We keep our hands to ourselves; even a simple hand on the shoulder can cause a frenzy. We only post our couple pictures on our actual secret Instagram accounts and close friends list. Our friends know not to post anything where we might look too much like a couple. We make it a point to bicker like siblings whenever we do work together. Hell, the reason I still have my apartment is to avoid people finding out we’re dating. If I have my own place, people just think I’m visiting the guys whenever I’m over. And it works, everyone just assumes that we’re really close friends.

“I’m back and I bring food!” Colby yells as he opens the door to the room. I plug my dying phone back into the charger before abandoning it in the bathroom to greet Colby.

“Oh thank God, I was beginning to think you were with your hoes. But then I ran into Sam, Jake, and Corey in the kitchen so I relaxed.” I give Colby a quick kiss and help him with the shopping bags in his hand. I set them on the bed and start going through them.

“I wish, but they were too busy for me. So I went and got us stuff for this weekend.” Colby sets the food down and helps me unload the bags.

“Oh that reminds me, we need to stop by my place after dinner so I can pack my things.” Te whole friend group is renting a log cabin in woods for Thursday to Monday morning for bonding and to get a few collars done. Colby went and got a few road trip snacks without me. Probably because I would get distracted at Target and we would never leave. It’s fine, he remembered to get my favorite snacks.

“Yeah, okay, I figured. We could have gone earlier but I had to let you sleep in after you spent all night watching tiktoks.” Colby walks over to the couch and starts to set up our lunch in front of the tv.

“To be fair, I’m not responsible for the time lost when I’m on the tok. Besides, I learned more dances to teach you!” I take off Colby’s jacket and set it at the foot of the bed before joining Colby on the couch.

“Of course you did. You know how much I love learning a new TikTok dance every day.” Colby jokes before kissing my forehead. He hands me my food and turns on Netflix.

A few minutes into our show, there’s a loud, rapid knock at the door. Annoyed, Colby paused the show and puts his food down.

“What?” Colby asks as he gets up to open the door. Sam stands on the other side, relieved. The last time Sam knocked on the door like that, Colby and I were busy… rearranging furniture.

“Oh Colby, you’re home. But I’m not here for you. Y/N, did you mean to post that on your story?” Colby moves aside to let Sam in.

“Haha, Sammy, I’m not falling for that one. Colby already tried that on me last week.” I go back to eating my food and ignore Sam.

“No, I’m being serious. Katrina said she kept trying to reach you but you’re not answering. Fans are freaking out on twitter.”

“Oh shit!” I quickly put down my food and grab my phone in the bathroom. There are miss calls and texts from Kat, Tara, and Devyn. I unlock my phone and open Instagram to check my story. Sure enough, I accidentally sent one of my selfies to my main story instead of my close friends. The selfie looks harmless enough, except I’m wearing Colby’s jacket and it’s very obvious that I’m in his bathroom. Jake moved in some of the cardboard Colby’s into Colby’s room and one of them faces the mirror, you can kind of see it in the selfie. Most people might think nothing of it, but earlier this week Kat and Tara posted pictures of them wearing Sam and Jake’s jackets. With that association alone, everyone is going to find out.

“I don’t get it, there’s only a selfie on here. Did you already delete it?” Colby yells from the bedroom. I slowly walk out of the bathroom with a confused look on his face.

“Please tell me you’re joking.” I open up my story and check how many people have seen it.

“What, I’m lost… Oh… Oh! Oh, fuck!” Colby finally gets it and does something on his phone.

“‘Oh fuck’ is right. So many people took screenshots that even if I deleted it now, it would be pointless.” I walk to the bed and throw myself facedown, like a teen in a movie after having a shitty day at school.

“And you guys are trending on Twitter,” Sam says. I almost forgot he was still here.

“Dude,” Colby warns.

“Not helpful, I get it. I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” Sam leaves the room and I let out a scream as soon as I hear the door close. I feel the spot next to me sink as Colby sits down and starts rubbing my back.

“Hey, Y/N, these aren’t as bad as you think. I’m only seeing positive messaged. Look,” Colby gently pats my back to get my attention.

“Really? Let me see.” I sit up, sniffle, and peek at Colby’s phone as he reads.

“Are you crying?” Colby asks as he wipes my face.

“I immediately got overwhelmed. Let me read the tweets.” I take Colby’s phone scroll through the tweets. He’s right, they’re mostly positive. I haven’t seen a negative tweet yet. That’s the opposite of how I thought this would go. A few people are telling other fans to stop assuming, but even those are calm compared to the fight I saw earlier.

“See, I guess we were stressed all this time for no reason. We can do normal couple things like our friends and not go out of our way to hide everything.”

“That’ll be nice. It was getting exhausting. What do we do now? How do you want to approach this? Live stream? Youtube video?” I look at Colby and he has a big smile on his face.

“Right now, let’s just finish lunch. We can deal with this later. Now, I’m going to take this back. I don’t want you to start crying again.” Colby strokes my hair and kisses my forehead.

“I love you, Colbs,” I say softly.

“I love you too, Y/N.”

#colby brock #colby brock imagine #colby brock imagines #colby brock x reader #fluff imagine #traphouse #trap house #imagine #imagines #traphouse imagine #trap house imagine #sam and colby #sam and colby imagine #sam and colby imagines #colby x reader

[sambergscott]

a peralta guarantee

“I promise I’ll come home safe, Ames. That’s a Peralta Guarantee.”

(missing scenes from 7x08 - amy worrying about jake)

hUge thanks to johanna for inspiring this fic and helping when i had a lil breakdown halfway through

When he approaches her desk mid-afternoon with a decaf coffee and the white chocolate chip cookies she’s been craving from the bakery across town, she knows he’s either a) broken something, b) wants something or c) has bad news. She narrows her eyes suspiciously, detecting an excited bounce in his step which can only mean it’s b and c; he wants something she’s not going to like.

“Hey, babe,” he tries to play it cool, clearing a butt-sized space on her desk on which to sit. “I come bearing gifts.”

“What do you want, Peralta?” She cuts to the chase.

“Damn it, you know me too well,” he mutters. “OK, so, here’s the thing: Doug Judy’s gettin’ married. He invited me to his Bachelor Party this weekend and I know he’s a criminal, Ames, but I really wanna go. Like, so bad. Would you be cool with that?”

She conjures up a mental pro and con list. On one hand, Doug Judy is The Pontiac Bandit, known felon, committer of God knows how many crimes, an overall bad dude. On the other, he’s Jake’s friend, singer of the smush songs CD in the glove box of their car that they always forget to take out, giver of the Le Creuset pot she adores. He’s always been nice to her and—.

“Sarge?” Gary interrupts her decision-making process with a quick question about a perp he just brought in, snapping her back to reality. She’s a Police Sergeant, her job is to serve and protect the city they call home and as much as she loves cooking her mom’s beef casserole recipe in Judy’s awesome wedding gift, she has a responsibility to bring him in.

“I’m sorry, babe. I just think it’s a bad idea.”

His face falls, his disappointment coming through loud and clear.

“What were you expecting me to say? Ignore the million arrest warrants out on this guy, many of them submitted by you, so you can drink beer and go to strip clubs?”

“You’re right,” he sighs. “You’re obviously right. Man, being good at your job sucks.”

She nods in agreement. “Remember last month when I had to shut that binder store down for running a secret drug dealing operation out back?”

“How could I forget? You cried for three days straight.”

“They had the best binder collection I’ve ever seen!”

(It was actually what was so fishy about it. In four trips to buy pregnancy binders, she hadn’t seen any of the founding members of the Brooklyn Binder Babes blog — Mary Sue, Catherine, Margaret or Jane — once. And there’s no way a stationery start-up would attract such long queues without their recommendation. It was a pretty easy solve from there).

“The point is, you can’t go to a criminal’s Bachelor Party.” She pats his hand. “You’ll just have to come maternity clothes shopping with me instead. None of my jeans fit me anymore.”

“As much as I would love to, you can take Kylie. I’m going to the party.”

“What?” She double-takes. “Jake, did you not listen to what I literally just said? We’re cops. We cannot be friends with criminals.”

“But we can be friends with informants who have helped us catch numerous, even bigger, more dangerous criminals,” he says with that look on his face, the one he gets when he finds a loophole that he can use to his advantage. She recognises it from home videos Karen has shown her where, instead of tidying his room like she asked him to, seven year old Jake shoves everything under his bed and carries on enacting a police chase with his race cars. “Captain Holt has given him immunity before, so technically I should be able to go party it up with him in Miami!”

“Wait... It’s in Miami? Miami... Florida?”

It’s a stupid question, she knows. Of course he means Miami, Florida. It’s just... they both promised on the flight home that they would never, ever go back there. After everything that happened with Figgis and not knowing if they’d ever see each other again, a statewide travel ban seemed a good way to put it all behind them, focus on all their future moments together, not on all the moments they missed.

“This isn’t like last time,” he reassures her. “It’s only for a weekend and then I’ll be coming straight home for snuggles with you and —,” he lowers his voice to a whisper because they haven’t told anyone she’s pregnant yet, “the baby.”

Her eyes fill with tears and she bites her lip so hard to stop them overflowing in front of all her uniformed officers. It’s pretty clear that he wants to go and she never wants to be one of them wives who control their husbands’ every move. All she wants is for him to be happy. And if going to Doug Judy’s Bachelor Party makes him happy, he should go, no matter how much she hates the entire state of Florida. She agrees, on one condition: “You have to text me hourly updates to let me know that you’re still alive.”

“Don’t I text you constantly anyway?”

“I guess so,” she sniffs.

He lifts her chin so she’s looking him in the eyes. “I promise I’ll come home safe, Ames. That’s a Peralta guarantee.”

“You better,” she warns, tears suddenly flowing down her face at the thought of him not coming home, not being there to watch Property Brothers with her, not raising their baby and proving to everyone what a great dad he will be.

Used to her extra strength pregnancy hormones shifting her emotions from 0 to 100 faster than John McClane can say “Yippie-Ki-Yay, motherfucker”, he pulls her into a tight hug, careful not to crush the precious cargo that is behind said mood swings.

He strokes her hair and whispers that he’ll be home before she knows it and that nothing, not even the worst state in the country, will tear him away from her.

When it’s time for him to leave, she follows him out to the street and, after a brief argument over the fact he packed his bag before he OK’ed the trip with her and another hormone-induced cry when his cab shows up, reluctantly waves goodbye.

True to his word, he texts her before the car is even out of sight. Miss you already 😘.

--

Her phone buzzes periodically throughout the rest of the day.

In a meeting with Holt and Terry: flying on mark cuban’s dope ass private plane!!!!! ✈️

Cooking dinner: florida is HOT (not as hot as u babe, dont worry)

Doing her crossword in bed: g’night ames, g’night baby, love u both SO MUCH

She smiles, tells him she loves him too and braces herself for the barrage of drunk texts and selfies coming her way.

--

Sleeping without him sucks. The bed is cold, her pregnancy pillow is not as good of a cuddle buddy and she tosses and turns all night worrying about him, where he is, what he’s doing, whether he’s safe.

Her eyes finally slip shut around 1 am when her phone buzzes. Again. And again. And again.

She tries to ignore him, bury her head under her pillow and go back to sleep, but the messages keep coming thick and fast. She groans, giving up and unlocking her phone.

There are 47 new messages from him.

Forty-seven.

Her initial annoyance at being woken up quickly disappears as she scrolls through the thread. He’s mostly sent her random, meaningless emojis and keysmashes, interspersed with the odd “I love you”, “you’re my best friend” and “I’m thinking about you” that warm her heart. He mentions something about their proposal, about crying with Doug Judy, which obviously makes her cry too.

(Dumb pregnancy hormones).

By the time she reaches the bottom, he’s sent her 10 more.

She decides for her sake — and the sake of all of her officers who would have to deal with a tired, emotional pregnant lady — to turn off her phone and reply to him in the morning.

She returns her phone to her nightstand, settles back into a comfortable position and closes her eyes.

She lies motionless for what feels like hours, unable to fall asleep. She tries the breathing technique her brother David brags about constantly, counting sheep like little Matthew, even reciting police codes like Teddy used to go to sleep after sex. Nothing works. She’s still awake.

She turns her phone back on to see what Jake’s up to now, only to see his messages ended abruptly with a caterpillar emoji over an hour ago.  

She immediately panics, dialling 911 into her phone.

Her thumb hovers over the green call button.

She’s heard thousands of crazy operator call stories, frequently reminded the general population to only call in a genuine emergency and watched the YouTube compilations for fun. She deletes the number, positive that if she told an operator her husband was missing because she hadn’t heard from him while he’s at a Bachelor Party, she’s positive she would be added to those videos.

In an attempt to stop her spiral, she contemplates the possible scenarios in which his constant texts would cease.

Scenario 1: He’s living in the moment and has put his phone away (something she has been encouraging him to do lately to reduce his screen time)

Scenario 2: He’s very drunk and has completely forgotten about his promise

Scenario 3: He used up all his battery texting her and his phone has died

Scenario 4: He’s fallen asleep (although a quick check of Trudy Judy’s insta reveals the party is very much still in full flow)

Scenario 5: Judy’s criminal buddies have killed him and thrown his body into the ocean

Once the thought pops into her head, no amount of squeezing her eyes shut will make the image go away.

Holt giving an emotional eulogy about wearing ties and being an amazing detective/genius.  

Some rookie taking over his desk.  

The sympathetic looks when she tells all the other moms in baby group that her husband died.  

Usually Jake is there to hold her when her nightmares get bad. She rolls over, expecting to see his kind eyes and soft smile, the untouched side of his bed only serving to make her cry harder.

She can’t lose him. Not yet. Not until they’re old and grey, and maybe not even then. She spent so long denying her feelings for her dorky partner, rueing every missed opportunity to be together, and when they finally, finally took the plunge, she had never been happier. She can’t lose him yet. They have so much more life left to live.

She can’t lose him because he promised her he would come home safe. He guaranteed it.

She clings onto the tiny grain of hope like one might cling onto a raft in the middle of the ocean.

He would never break a Peralta guarantee.

--

Her phone finally buzzes again an hour later.

From: Unknown

Ames, it’s me, Jake. Judy’s buddies found out I’m a cop + destroyed my phone. So sorry I couldn’t text before. Hope you didn’t worry too much, although I know you probably haven’t slept. You can stop worrying now. I’m safe. Love you + see you tomorrow.  

Love you too, she responds, yawning as she places the phone back on the side table.

Relieved that he’s OK, and exhausted from all the worrying, she falls into the easiest sleep she’s ever had.

--

Before she knows it, it’s the next afternoon, Jake’s keys are turning in the lock, he’s dropping his holdall on the floor and rushing to her side to kiss her all over her face.

“I missed you too,” she laughs, kissing him properly.

“Sorry it took so long — Doug and Trudy made me fly commercial —.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re home now. That’s all that matters.”

“I’m never leaving you two again,” he swears.

“You’ll have to leave us eventually to go to the bathroom and stuff,” she points out, raking her fingers through the unruly curls that she so hopes their baby will inherit. “Just don’t go back there.”

A solemn understanding passes over his face and he nods. “Never again. Not even if our kid wants to go to Disney World. We’ll take them to the California one instead.”

“Smort,” she says, stealing his line and in an instant, that familiar grin is back.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

A dozen memories flood back, of oldies in short shorts and shuffleboard and Doug Judy getting away again. Of noice and smort and saying “I love you” for the very first time. Her eyes fill with tears — dumb pregnancy hormones strike again — as she buries her face in his shoulder.

“Let’s go to bed,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to the top of her head and lifting her bridal style to carry her to their room. He places her carefully onto the mattress and flops down next to her.

She snuggles into him, eyes closing once more. “Did we even get an invite to the wedding?”

“Not even close,” he sighs.

“Damn it. I would’ve loved to see that trainwreck.”

“You and me both, babe. You and me both.”

#b99 fic #jake x amy #my writing #it's taken me 2 full days to write this lemme know what you think

[necrowriter]

monday thing: june twenty-ninth (morning again)

it rained all weekend. this morning the sun finally broke through the clouds, which promptly made everything worse. now it is bright and hot out, while meanwhile the amount of water in the air barely seems to have diminished. if anything it may have increased. it is insultingly humid outside. it is that kind of humid that feels like you could just reach out and wring water out of the air like a washcloth. I stepped onto the porch for a moment this morning to check on the plants. they were fine, but in the thirty seconds or so that I was outside my head started swimming and every inch of my skin immediately felt sticky. I think you could use our yard as a sauna without any additional modifications needed.

I intend to spend the rest of the day inside. those thirty seconds were quite enough.

there are marigolds blooming. only three or four, and small yet, but there are more on the way. seeing one was something to feel good about in a few weeks of not feeling good about much of anything at all. the miniature rose seems to be enjoying the kitchen window and a bit of periodic misting because it has so far produced three beautiful little marbled red-and-white flowers. the cosmos have not put anything out yet, but most of them have shot up tall and leafy. the little seedlings that grew up from the pots that last year's celosia were in--which I have been growing with hope but not surety that they would indeed turn out to be celosia--now have little feathery orange and red buds that do look a great deal like celosia. this is entirely logical really, and yet at the same time it feels like something amazing.

lately it has been especially difficult to get out of bed in the mornings. often it feels like there is not much worth getting up for. the world feels too much, too big, too close, too terrible. often during the day there are times when the anxiety is so bad that it feels as though everything could break apart at any moment, like I am constantly watching numbers on a timer ticking down to some unknown and dreadful cataclysm. it is impossible to pinpoint the place where a reasonable reaction to everything going on in the world ends and some out of control chemical process in my brain begins, but I try to find the line anyway. at what point do the things I might usually do to distract and soothe and comfort myself become irresponsible and avoidant of things that should not be avoided? how long can I justify watching something pointless and funny before I check the news again? how can I talk myself down from the world is ending right now this moment without overshooting into everything is fine and nothing is wrong when that is clearly not the case?

in the end it is all inescapable anyway. there it is, in the morning, before I have checked the news, before I have even opened my eyes.

when I was a child, in the grips of anxiety I did not have words or explanation for, I thought often about the world ending. I fretted about science-textbook stories of stars going out and planets crumbling from entropy, worried about tornadoes, house fires, car accidents. how could we know that one day, without warning, a comet might not crash out of the void of space and put an end to us all? I spent long periods trapped under the weight of a fear so enormous that it felt as if everything might come undone in an instant.

sometimes these days I feel as though I am back there again, ten years old and laying awake at night waiting for the world to end.

better then to lie there in the quiet under the close weight of the blanket, and not bother with anything.

but--

my cat is very soft, and silly, and purrs very loudly, and when she sees I am awake she walks across the bed to say hello, and even if the world is ending she needs to be fed in the morning and to do that I need to get up.

there are flowers that would never have bloomed if I did not get out of bed to water them.

right now it feels as though there is nothing meaningful I can do to make the world any better. I don't know if I ever will be able to. but I know that I must first be in the world.

so: today I fed my cat, and watered my rose, and hugged my mom, and listened to a podcast that told me some history I did not know. today I drank tea out of a mug that was given to me by a friend, and listened to soft music, and watched a youtube video that made me laugh. today I got out of bed and tomorrow I will get out of bed again.

#monday thing #non fiction #monday thing june 29

[0ompa-loompa]

Assignments, final projects, try-outs, mock weeks, finals, college applications, these are what senior year is made of. Naturally, it’s the period of time when you most feel the urge to jump off a cliff. From the first week of school, I could already see the differences senior year brought to my school mates. People were starting to realize that they had to receive great marks, they had to get accepted into good colleges, they had to do this and that as ways to an accomplished future.

Over the years of being a high school student, every time there was a free period, or just any studying-free moment at school, we would watch movies, gossip, or simply be on our phones for hours. Now in every free periods, my classmates would take out these heavy-ass books that can be used comfortably as pillows and actually study. Or re-write their notes. Or revise a subject for next week’s quiz. Anything to keep them working (just curious, do these symptoms apply to all senior year students around the world?).

Since junior year were pretty traumatizing for me (thanks to student government), I had been planning all holiday to give my 110% for senior year. Long story short, I hit it off since day 1 and came out alive six months later. Although it resulted in me spending 3 days sleeping in after end-of-term exams were over, I’m really happy for having been very productive this entire term. I know there’s still 6 months left and the worst parts are yet to come, so I decided to share a few tips exclusively coming from someone *glares at myself* who did remarkably awful the previous year and somehow found a way to crawl back from death

1.       Know Where You’re Going

Getting to the very last year of high school, this is the MOST important part of surviving. Without having your long-term goal, it would be like taking down hundreds of obstacles without having a destination in mind. You don’t know where you’re going, but more monsters keep showing up on your path. Trust me, you’ll eventually get tired and stop trying midway. Losing motivation when you’re in the most vital part of your study can’t be a good thing.

Do research on the degrees you’re interested in taking, from their passing grades to job prospects. Make sure you actually enjoy the subjects needed for those degrees. For example, if you can’t stand Biology, better if you don’t consider attending medical school, and the same goes to other subjects as well.

2.       Maintain Productivity

The amount of school work you’re getting can be overwhelming, that is why you have to do them as soon as possible to prevent them from piling up. You don’t have to finish them all in one day, it’s impossible and careless. At least try to do them bits by bits until the night before due when you can go over what you’ve done and fix a few imperfections or cross-check your answers. Try doing this to multiple assignments instead of focusing on one or two assignments the entire week.

I usually bring unfinished assignments to school so I can get to work when I have free time, usually before after-school extras, or while waiting for an extra course. This way instead of going on Tumblr for hours, I’ll be figuring out math problems and (hopefully) have the homework done by ½ when the course starts.

3.       Gather Motivation

Take a look at that magnificent building, I will build tens of those once I become an architect. Have you seen the latest VSxBalmain collection? I’ll someday be working alongside Olivier Rousting .

It’s very important to keep being productive and use every free time wisely. While you’re at it, make sure to keep your motivate-o-meter at high level. Motivation and inspiration can come from anyone, anywhere and it doesn’t even have to come from anything relevant to your life goals. I usually get a boost of motivation after watching a couple videos of my favorite Youtubers (which has no correlation whatsoever to being an engineer), and I recently  got a huge inspo from reading Crazy Rich Asians. It seriously motivated me to work my ass off and be rich.

4.       Don’t Stop ‘til You’re Proud

Catch up on things you don’t fully understand. If you had a problem with certain subjects or materials, find the answers right away, don’t wait until the day before quizzes or mock tests when you will desperately need answers. Ask teachers, your friends, or our most trusty friend the internet. You can also download several applications to help you study, like Khan Academy and other similar apps. Once you put one problem out of sight, it will become easier for you to put more aside . This is what happened to me last year, I had problems understanding Chem but I refused to actually figure them out, thinking I would learn the materials later. 10 laters later, I got a 7 for end-of-semester test while my classmates received 9s and 8s.

So you have studied for this particular test and still got a bad mark. Shit happens honey, tough it up. Even while I’m writing this, I fully understand that the theory of ‘picking-yourself-up’ is much easier said than done. Give yourself some time to breathe, and start with “okay, where did I go wrong?”. Figure out the errors to make sure you’re not doing them the second time. Consider it this way: the subject has betrayed you and you’re getting a revenge. I planted this idea the very first day of senior year, the thought has driven me to never quit trying. It’s almost like Elle Woods to Warner, but instead it’s me and Physics.

5.       Get A Rest.

Senior year doesn’t mean you lose all hope of going on shopping sprees, watching the latest movies, or taking care of your Tumblr blog. If anything, I’ve watched more movies with my friends this year than I did previous years, simply because we have little time to relax so we made the most of one when we had the chance to. As long as you keep track on your to-do-list, stay discipline on your schedule, a little catch up on KUWTK won’t hurt.

Don’t push yourself to the point of falling down. Read books, paint, dance, even play games (Mobile Legend is the hype these days it’s getting annoying), anything to keep you sane and motivated. Never let the pressure of GPAs and prestigious colleges take positivity away from you.

6.       Don’t Over-Rest.

Yes, hun, I was just telling you to enjoy your senior year and now I’m telling you to not over-relax your way. Maintain a schedule, make agreements with yourself and stick to it. “At 8pm I will start on Math homework, and the rest is for tomorrow”. “I will work my butts off from 8 to 10 am then I can go on Tumblr”. “I will start on my History papers and take a rest after 2 pages”.

I’m not telling you to work 24/7 because that’s not healthy, I’m ALSO not telling you to spend all your weekend in bed and procrastinate because it would defeat the whole purpose of learning to be productive. Once you let yourself procrastinate, It’ll be easier for you to do it for the second, third, and fourth time.  Sometimes you just need to gather your will, get up and face those text books.

Well, there you go. These are all the things I have been doing to not only survive, but to do well in high school. I have been doing all these tips religiously for the past 6 months, it’s almost impossible not to feel tired or even want to just cut it off. But studying routinely makes me feel in control of what’s happening currently, what’s going to happen next, what I want to be doing in the future. So get up and let’s kick asses together.

#eintstetic #focusign #heysareena #acadmia #studyign #studyblr #blog #eintsein #athenastudying #studyquill #academiix #heyscholarly #creatingnotes #intellectys #lycheestudy #intellctuals

[typetwofun]

Adventures in Learning with A Vintage Motorcycle

this post should take ~9 minutes to read

My first ride on a motorcycle on a public road was terrifying. After obtaining my license via a weekend class that took place entirely in a high school parking lot, I had purchased a Honda CB250 Nighthawk on Craigslist. Get License - check, purchase motorcycle - check. Next item on the list is to take this thing on the road...

During my maiden voyage I came face-to-face with the reality that these 2,000 pound death machines some people refer to as cars were trying to kill me at every turn. This was unsettling at first but after a couple miles I gained confidence and felt more comfortable maneuvering around my adversaries who seemed to have every intention of ending my life. I also started to have a lot of fun and understand the allure of the two-wheeler. Although I mainly purchased a motorcycle as an affordable way to get around Atlanta, I was beginning to get the idea that riding a motorcycle was going to now be a part of my life.

“When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever.  The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and height as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.”

"Season of the Bike" by Dave Karlotski

Fast Forward two years and I’m living in Brooklyn. I sold my Knighthawk before I moved and I was kicking around the idea of buying another motorcycle to allow myself some more freedom to explore NYC. In the year of learning how to ride in Atlanta I became attracted to vintage bikes. Every time I saw an old touring bike from the 60’s or 70’s I was envious and I had decided my next bike would be something from that era. After another period of scouring Craigslist and  a couple friends persistently coaxing me to get a bike, I became the owner of a burnt orange 1977 BMW R75/7.

I thought I was purchasing a classic motorcycle that would take me to the farthest reaches of the NYC metro area and beyond. I would get plenty of looks speeding around the city on this museum piece as old guys nodded their heads in approval. But what I actually purchased was more like a new puppy that constantly needed my attention. Purchasing this BMW began a two year crash course on the fundamentals of the /7 (pronounced “slash seven”) and the proper care and maintenance required to keep it on the road.

The reason I share this long back story is because I never intended to do significant work on my motorcycle. I might have romanced the thought of changing the oil and doing little projects here or there but I grossly underestimated the time investment becoming a useful mechanic requires. These series of fortunate or unfortunate events, depending on how you look at it, led me to buying a bike that was going to need a lot of work. I started off small projects like replacing the fuel lines and adjusted the timing which gave me the confidence to begin working on larger and larger projects. Eventually I was tearing the bike down to the engine block and more importantly putting it all back together correctly. As someone who lacks significant experience working on engines, this kind of undertaking required a great deal of effort and if I have gained anything while refurbishing this classic motorcycle, it is how to learn a new skill.

When Was The Last Time I Learned A New Skill?

Learning any new skill is especially difficult when you are quite literally getting your hands (and clothes) dirty and spending long hours of your precious weekend in the garage with nothing to show for it except frustration, fatigue, and an unquenchable thirst for cocktails. As time goes on you have fewer and fewer days filled with frustration and eventually have enough knowledge that you might be so bold to consider yourself “useful” which is a rather satisfying feeling.

When I sat back and thought about it I haven’t learned a completely new skill in a meaningful way since I graduated from college. Sure I have learned little things like how to shoot a rifle, brine a turkey and how to catch a wave on a surfboard. But learning how to tear apart an old engine and put it back together correctly is a rather large undertaking and seemed intimidating to an inexperienced mechanic.

Why Learn a New Skill, Anyways?

As I expressed earlier, my intention was never to learn how to rebuild old engines. When you leave the part of life where you quit asking “will this be on the test?” there does not seem to be a great incentive to learn new things other than to make more money or for leisure activities and enjoyment. This may be the prevailing wisdom, but through this process I have discovered there is quite a bit to be gained by doing my own motorcycle maintenance beyond having a bike that works (most of the time).

Confidence to Solve Other Problems - Demystifying the /7 has helped me gain confidence that I can most likely find a solution when confronted with other technical problems. Armed with an internet connection we are able to find an answer to many of the technical challenges life throws at us. Almost everything we encounter in our world is part of a system or is a product of some kind of process that we can figure out. Whether it’s how to play a Beatles song on a guitar or play a Beatles song from your phone in a rental car via the touch screen display while driving, the answer is out there and you can probably find it.

The Pleasure of Figuring Things Out - Nothing quite beats the dopamine hit after having a breakthrough on a problem you have been working on for hours or maybe even weeks. There have been times where I thought to myself that I need to sell my bike and get something more modern and reliable. Every time a problem made itself evident I hunkered down and attempted to fix it and up to this point I have been successful and finding the solution (knock on wood).

Oh, one more thing, the beer at the end of the day always tastes better after finding a solution to the day’s problem.

It’s Good to Be Uncomfortable - there were many times when I got to a point in a repair job and I became nearly paralyzed with doubt. What if I break this piece? What if when I’m done I realize I need to go back in and redo it? What if I do permanent damage to the bike? What if I get in over my head and I need to burden a friend with helping me or pay a mechanic? And on and on it goes.

I learned somewhere along the way that this unsettling feeling is actually where the magic happens. You are experiencing the fear of the unknown and the only way to rectify that is to figure it out. We have many great resources like YouTube, User Manuals and experts that we can reference but sometimes the only way out is through.

The more I experienced this sensation the more familiar I became with it and the less intimidating the fear of the unknown became. Every other time I was at a supposed dead end I found a way out. Especially with a low stakes hobbyist project, it’s not scary, it’s just part of the process.

Use Your Brain In A Different Way - Like most of you, I spend my work days in front of a computer. Computers are incredible and allow us to get many things done in a short amount of time, but after a long day in front of the screen, my brain also feels like a giant pile of mush. When I spend an afternoon in the garage I may be physically tired at the end of the day but my brain does not feel like it needs to shut down and watch TV for an hour or two before bed. The tangibility of your progress and the ability to physically deconstruct and later reconstruct something is quite rewarding.

Enjoying the Fruits of Your Labor - There is an indiescribale feeling when you begin the day with a machine that is not functioning properly or sometimes at all and ending the day riding that very machine with an understanding of what is happening beneath you to make you go. Similar feelings are closing your first sale in a business you started or presenting a dish you learned how to prepare at a dinner party.

How I learned

I was a lousy student when I was in school. For me, the studying techniques of rote memorization or sitting through lectures don’t usually deliver the desired results of truly understanding new information that I have been presented. I have found that I absorb information much better by watching someone demonstrate the proper way to do something and then I attempt to to try to replicate it. This style of learning lends itself much better to the hard sciences than for other disciplines such as history or sociology.

YouTube - It’s hard for me to imagine what it was like to fix motorcycles or an issue with any appliance before YouTube. The catalogue of high definition videos on any given topic never ceases to amaze me and some even provide enormous entertainment value (exhibit A and Exhibit B). Access to this information is perhaps humanity's greatest achievement (sorry wheel and alcohol). I have gained a new appreciation for YouTube’s utility throughout the rebuild of my bike and its applications which are seemingly limitless. There is no greater resource for learning how something should be done than having a more experienced human walk you through the process on demand for almost no cost.

Mentorship - YouTube and internet forums are great for what they are, but when you’re really stuck there is still nothing that replaces a more experienced human to help you get unstuck. I have had the good fortune of making friends with several hobbyist mechanics who are far more experienced and knowledgeable than I am. Sometimes you can get yourself 90% of the way there, but it takes a “teacher” to uncover what you’re missing or to think of it in a different way.

The money you can invest in mentorship or lessons will return enormous dividends whether you’re learning how to fix a machine, downhill ski, or get that handicap into single digits. Especially for those of us who work 40+ hours a week your free time is invaluable and paying for access to an expert is almost always worth it.

Long Form Articles - Before I dive into a new project I like to read an overview that somebody else has written to give myself an idea of what kind of fun surprises I may be in for. Youtube videos are great as are forums surrounding a specific question. But in order to fully wrap my head around certain concepts nothing beats a well written long form article by an expert.

For instance, I wish I read this article before purchasing my Airhead.

Trial and Error - Despite all the tools, resources and knowledge we are surrounding with there are some questions the internet does not have answered in a 12 minute HD video. There are also days when nobody picks up the phone or your buddies aren’t able to help you. And for such occasions you have no choice but to figure it out.

There are several episodes in my mind's eye where I was floundering with bleeding my brakes, reassembling the throttle grip drive, or adjusting the points gap and on try number 50 something clicked and it worked and I now magically know how to do these things for the next time around.

Wrapping Up

Learning how to rebuild this motorcycle has provided me with satisfaction and enjoyment that have added an enormous amount of joy to my life. Undertaking the rebuild was never my primary intention and more or less a fortuitous accident. As Dan Gilbert outlines in his book “Stumbling on Happiness” humans are usually pretty bad at forecasting and we are particularly bad at predicting what will make us happy. I guess it should be to no one's surprise that my love of fixing motorcycles was serendipitous.  

If there was one thing I would tell my 20 year old self what I should do differently it would be to try new things and learn more new skills. Preferably something you can really get lost in like cooking or woodworking. It makes your brain work in different ways and think about the world through a new perspective. You will meet interesting people whom you wouldn’t normally cross paths with and you will also have a lot of fun doing it.

I hope you find my experience interesting enough to go out and stumble upon your own project or hobby that will make your Saturday afternoons that much more incredible. 

Trust me, it makes the beer taste better at the end of the day.

A view of the piston after the cylinder has been removed

Carburators, valves, valve covers, push rods, and nuts and bolts in a somewhat organized manner after removal

After several hours of soaking, scrubbing, and scraping she looks good as new!

First big ride of the summer after a long winter in the garage.

#motorycle #learning

[cosmosogler]

today i got up soooort of on time. then i got distracted by the internet!!! so i was 2 minutes late for class. the air was chilly today though so the bike ride over to campus was gucci. perfect weather.

i took furious notes in both classical and quantum. classical today was “graded” by a professor who left the comments portion of the lecture very open-ended. we weren’t really sure what to say. i ended up kind of dominating the conversation even though i didn’t really want to.

gotta keep my trap shut!

after that we went to get spaghetti. i missed it, even though we only skipped one week. suzanne asked why i talk to my parents. that got me down a pretty dark lane of conversation. i tried to focus on how i wish i had a closer relationship with my siblings... but i’m still so angry. all the time.

eventually harrison said something like “we need to pick a different awkward topic before my day gets ruined.” 

and i said “OH. i’m sorry my life ruins your day.” 

i was mostly joking. he apologized but we did change the topic to “awkward topics.” 

then i went to group therapy. i had to fill out a survey beforehand. i thought about how i was feeling the last week or two. i only really started feeling like i had any energy at all yesterday-ish. so i kept my answers pretty low mood-wise. 

i only consciously lied on one of the questions because i wasn’t sure what the required response would be. and it wasn’t a big lie. i’m not really at “high risk” of killing myself. maybe 5%. right now at least i feel ok. the past week collectively though, i wasn��t feeling too hot. 

group therapy was... actually good? we tried to focus and dwell on some conversation topics even though most of us are usually lightning-fast about responding. i ended up talking quite a bit. they seemed worried. they also seemed pretty upset about the department thing, where the professors/coordinators lie about how your classmates are doing to try to push you to work harder.

one thing the group leader said though is “how can we help you?” 

i told her i’d get back to her on that. i don’t really know. i said hearing about their self care routines and comparing ideas helps. i have made adjustments to my routine over the last two months. pretty drastic ones. i haven’t yet been able to re-cram in time to meditate before bed but the podcast helps me doze off at least. 

i’ve been drinking more tea too and i think that keeps my stomach a little more settled. caffeine free so i can drink it with dinner.

i need to think a little more about what other people can do to help me. i don’t really have any hope of actually being helped any more. i still get let down all the time by the people who are supposed to be in charge. but like... you only get out of group therapy what you put in. if i can find a specific goal to achieve that these guys can help me get to, and how to get them to get me there, that’d be great! but i also might not have Problems if i am able to get that far? i mean, like, you gotta be pretty on top of things to know exactly what you need help with and what that help needs to look like.

after that i went to e&m. something about that classroom really throws me off, because in the last ten minutes of class my eyes started hurting AGAIN. like a cramp, almost? this doesn’t really happen anywhere else. reading for too long i just get a headache and then i grind my teeth which makes the headache worse. i tried some eye exercises and that helped for a few minutes but by then i was way behind and i was just tired. 

the frustration builds up. the professor will make a step that doesn’t make any sense and not explain it. someone will ask a question and he won’t explain it still because he thought the question was dumber than it actually was. he goes too fast. just little things, but millions of them for 50 minutes straight. and then trying to focus on the board hurts. maybe his handwriting is too small and it strains my eyes? maybe i get frustrated because he stands directly in front of his writing and his lecture is incomprehensible and the anger and anxiety make my muscles tense up which hurts my eyes? i dunno.

after class i checked my email and then biked back over to the group therapy building. but this time i went to the third floor. the person i was having a meeting with was like 10 minutes late even though i got there 5 minutes before my appointment. i took the time to update pokemon go since i haven’t touched it in over 8 months. i caught a murkrow and looked at the entei raid a few blocks over.

i want entei. not gonna happen at level 20 though. my strongest pokemon is 1400 cp. this thing was like 19000.

anyway this new person is annie. the student “care area” is not a therapy office but they can help coordinate between the drc and my department. we talked about maybe dropping e&m for now since the workload is getting to be too much. (i am 4 weeks behind in grading.) 

so i will talk to danielle about it tomorrow, and then see how i do on the test on friday, and then talk to both of them again next week. i’m a little stressed about the consequences of dropping the class. the financial aid requires a certain amount of credit hours. and we’re supposed to be done with classes by the end of our second year, and i won’t even have finished UNDERGRAD e&m by my first year if i drop it. and it’ll give me a glaring weak spot on my next round with the prelim right after new year’s. 

well, i haven’t talked about it with the drc yet, so i probably won’t get anywhere worrying about it right now.

at the end of group therapy i said that even though i like to complain, i will try to follow up with actual solutions more. 

it just seems like... most of the things i complain about don’t really HAVE solutions. or i’ve already made a decision about how to deal with them but they are still very difficult and/or stressful. my classmates said it might be a good idea to reach out to my brother more after he moves away for college because teenagers are super moody and just not very enthusiastic about talking to family members in general. so that just means being patient for another two-ish years.

after that i biked back to the office.

OH! I ALMOST GOT HIT BY A CAR THIS MORNING. it was like three inches away. they were making a left turn across the road i was riding down and they just... didn’t stop. or go and get out of the way. i had to pull a hard turn and swerve up on the sidewalk and i almost hit a pedestrian. 

it’s like they weren’t even looking.

anyway i got back to the office at about 5:15 or so. i took a 45-minute break to eat some food and walk around a bit and goof off on facebook. i felt a little better after that, and then suzanne helped john and i study for our e&m test. we covered the entire chapter, just the main ideas, but it helped a lot i hope. i had my mind blown once at least. i understand dielectrics WAY better now.

we got done with that at 7:10-ish, so longer than a full class period. i was exhausted and antsy by the end of it. i packed up my things, yelled at luis a little bit about the alphabet song since we’d been having an argument about it earlier, and then biked home.

he told me the alphabet song came before the alphabet and that’s why they are in the order they are. i think the vowels should have all been put together.

the alphabet song was based off a mozart piece apparently and copyrighted in 1835. TAKE THAT, LUIS! EAT IT!!

when i got home i made some dinner and hid some cookies around for snoopy to find. she was WAY more interested in looking for them after she watched me hide them. and also had some catnip that i put on her walk-through brush. then she seemed to realize for the first time that her cat bed has two levels, and the lower level had cookies on it.

she’s a goofy one.

by the time i finished eating it was after 8:30 so i watched a few youtube videos and checked the 9 o’clock updates. then i ACTUALLY SAT DOWN AND DID SOME GRADING. i got through 2 pages of a whole lab section, which comes out to 36 pages. i did that in about the same amount of time, and then i spent a few minutes feeding snoopy and preparing my daily planner for tomorrow, and then it was 10 so i started writing. now it is 10:43.

it feels like this week has been going extra slowly. maybe it is because i feel more focused so i am losing less time to the Void of the Internet? my breaks have been more... deliberate. i set aside 90 minutes to play smash bros, and then got back to work after i felt more relaxed. stuff like that. it was a lot of fun, too.

i am a little worried about friday, between the test and the fact that i have to have 9 sections of labs graded by the end of the day, which is just not going to happen. tomorrow i don’t even get to sit down and take a BREAK let alone do work until after 4. friday is busy all the way through 4 too. and today was busy through after 5.

AND i gotta start the classical assignment somewhere in there too so i don’t have to try to slog through a 12-hour assignment over the weekend yet again. 

tomorrow my labs ungraded are gonna bump up to 12. but i made progress today. i have doubled the amount of grading i’ve finished. that’s something, right? 4 is twice as much as 2, even if you need to get to 70. and then 20 more after that.

something good. i jumped right away to asking questions when i got to my meeting with annie today. i admittedly did not have time to look up their office before i got over there, but she was very kind and explained how their office was different from the drc and counseling centers and what they are useful for. we got a solid plan set and another appointment scheduled within 25 minutes. 

now i just need to apply that “here is how this will be helpful” authority to emotions i guess? i’m not very good at asking for help from peers. i do it a lot but that doesn’t mean i’m good at it. well, i can do academic questions pretty well. but personal help is like... a league of its own.

i think i did a good job making use of some break time today and then getting back to work when i was ready. i didn’t have a LOT of time today but i stayed busy at least. and i paced myself really well yesterday because i wasn’t miserable and exhausted today! 

well, i was miserable and exhausted. but not AS miserable and exhausted as i usually get when i work too hard for too long without breaks. because i took breaks!

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Sacred Song (Post 101) 8-12-15

                        Natalie and I have continued our game of YouTube tag throughout the last several weeks.  It passed the time nicely on our Maryland excursion, but we have also found that it is pretty fun to play on short expeditions as well.  The pop music stations that Natalie prefers become drearily repetitious when we don’t break things up, although it is entertaining to listen to her accompany the artist as a background singer.  Sometimes Nicholas sings along to his music as well, but I probably shouldn’t disclose that.  Playing music on YouTube instead means that I can intertwine songs that I like in between the sandwich ends of inevitable Taylor Swift anthems.

One night last week we carried the game of tune tit-for-tat that we were playing on our phone into the house, across the kitchen and to the breakfast table where my mother was getting ready to serve my father his supper.  Curious and knowing that he likes all things Gaelic, I pulled up a video of a scene from the movie Empire of the Sun in which a young British lad stands at attention and salutes through the barbed wire fence of a Japanese internment camp singing the Welsh lullaby Suo Gan as zeros takeoff into the sun. For me Suo Gan is a particularly haunting song because the melody is the same as the hymn Christ Before Us which I first encountered on my Emmaus weekend nearly two years ago.  Hearing a particular hymn at a peculiarly emotional time can add a spiritual impact to a song for a specific person that it may not have for other people.  Morning Has Broken can similarly bring tears to my eyes, because it was sung at Pam’s funeral service.

As it turned out my father’s love of Gaelic music did not include any special feelings towards the Welsh classic, but we did share some memories about walking into an English church in some town that I could not recall where we arrived just in time for an afternoon rehearsal of the parish boys’ choir.  They were very talented.  The idea of pulling up hymns on YouTube did intrigue my father, surprisingly.  He asked me to play Jesus I Come for him, which, he explained, was the hymn they were playing at the Tremont Baptist Church when he entered there for the first time. My mother had evidently invited him to her church when they were dating.  My father agreed; he would have also probably agreed to try bungee jumping had my mother suggested it and that particular form of stupidity existed anywhere else other than in the Australian outback at the time of their 1960’s courtship. Instead of the Sunday morning’s boredom that my father probably expected, he experienced a powerful intervention by the Holy Spirit into his life through the gateway of a beautiful hymn sung by a talented choir.

So I searched his request, queued up the hymn, hit play and passed him his favorite sacred music on the little midget screen of the IPhone5 that I most often use for scrolling Facebook.  Although the music didn’t sound special to me, it caught my 78 year old father like fly-paper.  He sat transfixed at the breakfast table totally oblivious to me and to the usual bustle of my family interacting about our kitchen at dinner time.  The kids could have been having chicken fights and he would not have noticed.  As far as I could tell, my father was 650 miles and 60 years eastward sitting in a pew in a famous New England church with the girl he loved, encountering awesome beauty of Jesus Christ sung about him by angelic voices.  I wished that he could stay there for longer than the odd five minutes of the hymn.  I envied him. For a time he was through the looking glass or had tumbled through the fur coats of the magic wardrobe that I often hope to find but rarely do.

You would think that it would be easier to have that type of heavenly experience than it usually turns out to be.  I had hoped for a trip back through the years to simpler times on the family excursion we took to a Cleveland Indians game last Friday night.  Nicholas, Natalie, Stephen and I made the trip, but it didn’t turn out quite as I had planned.  First of all I was very tired, having worked some early and long days on Monday through Thursday completing a project that we had begun almost a month before.  Things were also progressing well with our house purchase.  It seemed like a good chance for some family-style rest and relaxation. Also the Tribe was having a dollar hot dog night promotion with a fireworks show as a nightcap.  Our plan seemed all in order.

 Like a good father, I had wielded the proposed trip as a motivating sledgehammer thought the preceding week.  Stephen, for instance, because of his illness, habitually complains about small or imagined injuries like blackouts and falling out of bed on a near continual basis.  The last week he had added mysterious arm stiffness to his list of hypochondriac symptoms.  Whenever I offered to delay our trip until he felt better, his maladies made an immediate improvement.  Stephen is gravitationally attracted towards quality meat products at entirely too reasonable a price-point.  He is not above taste testing gas station sushi so dollar hot dog night is right up his alley.

Natalie was also on her best behavior throughout the week.  She was quite excited on Friday night when I arrived home from the boomerang ride of my Youngstown round trip.  That is when the threads of my carefully woven plan began to unravel. I had arrived home early and, unfortunately, exhausted, hoping to catch a quick cat-nap before H hour. Unbeknownst to me, Nicholas had committed me to driving over to my brother’s house to pick up Abby’s car for which my father was paying to have a stereo installed as a birthday present. I stayed awake for the mini-excursion that set us off our Cleveland bound time schedule by about an hour. We would be significantly late.  Strike one.

Still, we were a happy bunch as we drove towards the RTA Station on Shaker Blvd (RTA is Cleveland’s BART.)  Natalie and I sat together.  Nicholas and Stephen sat separately as Stephen had acquired a case of oppressive halitosis that he attributed to dry mouth from his medication.  Natalie and I talked quietly until our train came to a kerchunking halt at an interchange station for us.  Natalie, Nicholas and I assembled in column formation in the aisle. I looked over to Stephen to see why he was not following.  I could see that he had adopted a posture to arise, but was stuck in place.  He was frozen and I could tell that he was experiencing a focal seizure, the malady that he had been reporting to the disbelieving me for the last several weeks.  I had watched Pam have hundreds of focal and full seizures during the period of time between her two brain surgeries.  Like my dad’s trip back to Boston, I was transported to another place and time as I watched my son struggle to stand, a time that I had hoped never to visit again. Father Groeschel would describe that location as a point on the pathway inclining up a hill called Calvary.

Because he finally stood after a few dozen seconds and showed no ill effects, we decided to proceed to the game despite the scare.  I think I am glad we proceeded; it was an excellent and terrible outing all at once.  We got there late, but the seats were the best that I have ever bought – that’s what happens when Nicholas goes to the box office with my credit card.  Interestingly we discovered that Natalie despises hot dogs, but will eat three in close succession when she is starving and Nicholas is buying American sausages like he is feeding Slimer from the movie Ghost Busters. Stephen had another focal seizure with a similarly quick recovery when one of the Indians unexpectedly knocked a hanging curve into the bleachers to tie the game late.  It was an Indians game, though, so they lost in the ninth inning on a home run to a Twins outfielder that is old enough to have been in high school while I was in college. Happy that Stephen had made it through the game without a more significant medical incident we headed home without waiting for the fireworks.

So it is Tuesday, as I write this.  I am in the ER with Stephen to get his condition checked out.  He seems to be OK, but without a local doctor, the ER seemed the quickest alternative to get blood work, a CAT scan and access to medical specialists without the bureaucracy of referrals.  Frankly, I don’t care to be in another hospital, ever, but I realize that this is a necessary trip.  I would feel better if Father Luke from St John Vianny in Walnut Creek would happen in soon to anoint Stephen and pray with us, but I think we are out of his jurisdiction.  John Muir was tough to revisit for Nicholas’ treatment, anyway, but it was also seemed as comfortable as an old shoe, albeit with the possibility of a chance meeting transporting me back to a good or bad place in another lifetime.  

Today things turned out well with no bad news in either Stephen’s scans or labs.  I drove him home later after discharge thankful that he is relatively healthy.  We stopped on the way back at Arby’s and at one of the parishes that we might eventually choose as our own to visit Jesus in Adoration.  On the road again towards Streetsboro, I reconsidered again why all this inconvenience might have happened knowing that Stephen’s actual health remains largely the same.  Sure it was good to get him checked out, discover a good hospital and get assigned a family doctor for a follow-up visit, but why was I put through this dry run of worry and fear for the umpteenth time.  Was God holding me back a grade for some lesson that I should have learned one, two or three years ago?  

Then I remembered the conversation that I overheard among the doctors at the nursing station from my perch by the door of Stephen’s transient ER suite.  They were preparing to inform a patient and family that multiple unexplained lumps had been discovered throughout the lungs in some other poor patient’s scan. Thoughtfully, I removed the mini rosary that I had received at Emmaus from its place on my dashboard and prayed a Divine Mercy Chaplet for another family that got bad news while Stephen and I received our discharge paperwork.

#God #Jesus #The Holy Spirit #The Virgin Mary #Sacred Song #Christ Before Us #Suo Gan #Emmaus #hymnal #Morning Has Broken #Jesus I Come #The Lion the witch and the wadrobe #Divine Mercy #Father Groeschel #Calvary #Father Luke #St John Vianny

[makeuptips10-blog]

Social Media Diary: An Instagram Influencer with 55,000 Followers

New Post has been published on https://www.claritymakeupartistry.com/social-media-diary-an-instagram-influencer-with-55000-followers/

Social Media Diary: An Instagram Influencer with 55,000 Followers

My name is Sam. I’m 21 years old, a college student and a writer here at StyleCaster. But there’s one more thing that characterizes my definitively Gen-Z existence: I’m an Instagrammer. (Sorry, I just baby-barfed.)

For the record, I hate the word Instagrammer. (And don’t even get me started on the word influencer.) Like the B-word in its early stages, the titles are mostly used in a derogatory context; they’re employed to degrade the people who wear them, as if that’s all they are—and as if it’s not enough. But the truth is, there’s no better name for what I do (yet), so we’re just gonna have to roll with it.

I use my cell phone much the same way any college student does. Every morning, I scroll through one newsfeed or another until my eyes adjust to the daylight my shades unsuccessfully tried to obstruct; I listen to music on Spotify when getting ready for class; I text and call my friends to catch up while I’m commuting; and I navigate the twisted channels of Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and YouTube when I’m bored. (I’m not much of a Twitter girl.)

My phone is my go-to travel companion, my avenue to information I might need, and my emergency lifeline in times of crisis (like, when I run out of St. Tropez—hello, Amazon).

But I also run this Instagram account.

Let me start with a disclaimer: I’m no Kylie Jenner. I have 55,000-ish followers (which, granted, is more than twice the number of people who can fit in Madison Square Garden). But I still qualify as a “micro-influencer,” meaning I don’t “influence” a proportionally large amount of people, in the grand scheme of things.

That being said, I run my account like a businesswoman. Every day, I receive upwards of 50 unique messages (DMs, emails, press releases, etc.) regarding my Instagram account. I spend time negotiating the terms and contracts of branded collaborations. I conceptualize, shoot, edit and post all my own content. I consult with my agent and mentors to discuss brand strategy and areas for improvement. I travel for shoots and meetings.

In short, I spend a lot of time on my phone.

Last month, I decided to embark on a little mission—one focused on self-awareness. I downloaded an app called Moment, which promised to track my iPhone usage over a given period of time. I chose a week where I’d be in office some days and out of office others; I wanted to see how my habits changed from a professional setting to an unrestricted one.

I figured the app would not only serve me a major reality check but also answer some questions I get from my friends and followers: How often do I post? How long does it take me to edit photos? Do I read all my DMs?

Scroll down to get the answers yourself—and to read a minute-by-minute account of my week on Moment.

Day 1: Tuesday, August 7

Courtesy of author.

10:15 a.m.: I arrive at the office, get settled at my desk, respond to some work emails and prepare for the day. I also turn on Moment for the first time.

10:15 – 10:47 a.m.: Over the next 32 minutes, Moment logs nine “pickups.” Kevin Holesh, the app’s creator, defines a “pickup” as any time your screen lights up for five or more seconds. (You’re probably wondering what happens if you get a text, which causes your screen to light up for approximately five seconds. Yup, that counts as a pickup.) My guess is that these nine pickups were thanks to my roommates—we were texting in a group chat and Venmo-ing each other for the previous weekend’s Ubers.

10:47 a.m.: I use my phone for two minutes. It’s more than likely that I was responding to a text (it’s also more than likely that said text was from my mom).

10:47 a.m. – 12:09 p.m.: Moment logs six pickups between 10:47 and 12:09. As the Internet wakes up, I begin receiving notifications from Instagram. I don’t get push notifications for likes or comments, but I do get them for direct messages.

12:09 p.m.: I use my phone for three minutes, to briefly respond to a text or two and to resolve a conversation in my Instagram DMs.

12:09 – 12:16 p.m.: One pickup.

12:16 p.m.: I use my phone for two minutes, likely to follow up on some texts.

12:16 – 1:50 p.m.: Eleven pickups. I’m popular today.

1:50 p.m.: I use my phone for two minutes—probably exchanging Snapchats with friends.

1:50 – 2:51 p.m.: One pickup.

2:51 p.m.: I use my phone for five minutes. This is when my lunch delivery arrives—I answer the phone, and use my time in the elevator to catch up on some Instagram DMs.

2:51 – 6:34 p.m.: I have an extremely productive stretch at work and barely touch my phone. Only three pickups in total.

“The app shows my numbers in the color green, which I interpret to mean, Hey, Sam—you’re not so bad.”

6:34 p.m.: I got to work a few minutes late, so I decide to stay a little late in return. At 6:34, I pack up, grab my phone and head out. I get distracted by a Facebook message and spend five minutes on the app. I get on the subway and lose cell service for the majority of the ride, so I’m not on my phone much.

6:34 – 6:50 p.m.: Three pickups.

6:50 p.m.: I get off of the subway and respond to the messages I missed during my subway ride. I schedule an Instagram to go up later that evening. I use my phone for five minutes.

6:59 p.m.: I get back to my apartment, flop on my couch and scroll mindlessly on Instagram for four minutes.

6:59 – 8:14 p.m.: I work on some contracts, send some Instagram-related emails and edit some photos and videos, all on my computer. My phone records three pickups, which must have been from texts I was receiving (even though I was responding to them on my laptop).

8:14 p.m.: I spend two minutes on my phone calling Caffe Buon Gusto on the Upper East Side to push my reservation back by 15 minutes—my roommate and I underestimated the amount of time it would take to get there.

8:18 p.m.: It starts to rain, so I spend two minutes on my phone calling an Uber.

8:31 p.m.: I use my phone for two minutes in the Uber, mostly to determine why no one’s texted me in 13 minutes. I spend about 30 seconds posting my queued-up Instagram to my profile. It performed at average capacity.

8:34 p.m.: I spend eight minutes on my phone, checking up on my Instagram, responding to DMs and looking at celeb posts with my roommate.

8:34 – 8:52 p.m.: Three pickups.

8:52 p.m.: I use my phone for three minutes to take a Boomerang of my roommate and me cheers-ing to our last night living in the New York City for the summer. (We’re moving out of our apartment the next day and preparing for our return to Elon at the end of the month. We can’t believe we’re going to be college seniors.)

9:01 p.m.: I open up Instagram and spend two minutes getting the perfect photo of my pasta. It’s gorgeous, so I put it on my Story.

Courtesy of author.

9:01 – 11:09 p.m.: We have too much fun at dinner to remember our phones—Chianti Classico makes for a good substitute. My roommate orders the Uber home, and we practically crawl back to our rooms, exhausted by our own capacity to eat for two hours straight. Two pickups.

11:09 p.m.: I’m finally in bed, tired and full of pasta. I use my phone for nine minutes to gush about the restaurant (to Mom, of course) and take my final scroll through Instagram. I sleep. According to Moment, my phone sleeps with me, for eight hours and seven minutes.

Recap: Today, Moment recorded 58 pickups and roughly an hour and a half of screen time. The app shows my numbers in the color green, which I interpret to mean, “Hey, Sam—you’re not so bad.” Normally, I’d be proud of this, but I know that the stats aren’t indicative of the truth. I was unusually productive today—plus, my phone didn’t account for the hour(ish) I spent working and texting on my laptop after hours. Regardless, I chalk it up as a win for Team Sam.

Day 2: Wednesday, August 8

Courtesy of author.

7:48 a.m.: I have to wake up unusually early this morning because I’m working the BlogHer conference with the team. I use my phone for 10 minutes to respond to some texts from the night before, check my work email and take a pass through my Instagram newsfeed. I check on my Instagram post from the night before, and am disappointed in its performance—that outfit deserved better.

8:06 a.m.: I use my phone for eight minutes—not sure why.

8:06 – 8:29 a.m.: Four pickups.

8:29 a.m.: I use my phone for four minutes to respond to the four texts I just received. Why is everyone up so early today?

8:29 – 9:11 a.m.: Nine pickups. These are texts from a friend, Slack messages from my editors at the BlogHer conference and Instagram DM notifications.

9:11 a.m.: I use my phone for four minutes to order an Uber to the conference. (I’m wearing heels.)

9:11 – 9:19 a.m.: One pickup.

9:19 a.m.: I use my phone for my entire 21-minute Uber ride, because my driver doesn’t feel like chatting. It’s too early for that anyway. My Instagram newsfeed is on fire today—pretty sure I like every picture I scroll past. I take a selfie to post on my Instagram Story, because I love my sunglasses.

Courtesy of author.

9:44 a.m.: I’m at the conference, but my laptop refuses to connect to the WiFi. I use my phone to scan the web for news, which takes about five minutes.

9:50 a.m.: Still no WiFi. I’m back on my phone for two minutes.

9:50 – 10:19 a.m.: The WiFi seems to be working, so I don’t use my phone for a while. Two pickups.

10:19 a.m.: WiFi? Never heard of it. I use my phone for eight minutes to respond to work emails.

10:19 – 11:42 a.m.: My editor and I figure out how to use my phone as a hotspot for our laptops. We work and work and work and work, but the connection is still pretty slow, so we don’t get much done. Moment records one pickup.

11:42 a.m.: I use my phone for two minutes to take and post a photo of a speaker to my Instagram Story.

Courtesy of author.

11:42 a.m. – 3:56 p.m.: My phone is low on battery, so I head to a staff room to charge it. I leave it there forever and use my laptop to respond to important messages in the meantime.

3:56 p.m.: My phone must be charged by now, and my laptop is almost dead. Without any electronics, I can’t work—or survive, probably. I head back into the staff room and spend three minutes checking my notifications. Moment recorded seven pickups while I was away.

4:01 p.m.: I pick up my phone compulsively, and check for notifications for two minutes. I have none—it’s only been a minute since I last used my phone.

4:01 – 4:09 p.m.: Two pickups. (Now I have notifications?)

4:09 p.m.: I resolve the notifications. It takes three minutes.

4:09 – 4:35 p.m.: Three pickups. All texts.

4:35 – 5:06 p.m.: Two pickups. Both Instagram DMs.

5:06–5:30 p.m.: We’re in the home stretch of workable conference hours. The WiFi cooperates long enough for me to build out most of a story, but not long enough for me to finish it. My phone records two pickups.

5:30 p.m.: I’m heading out because the wireless is frustrating, and I have deadlines to meet. Before I leave, I spend three minutes ordering an Uber back to my apartment.

5:34 p.m.: My phone notifies me that the Uber has arrived—go time. I use my phone for five minutes while I walk to the car.

5:34 – 5:43 p.m.: Two pickups. My mom is texting me to discuss the fact that I’m moving out of my apartment in NYC pretty soon. We exchange sad faces (:/).

5:43 p.m.: I use my phone for five minutes to continue discussing logistics with Mom.

5:43 – 5:52 p.m.: I briefly doze off in the car. There’s a lot of traffic, so the ride is slower than usual. Moment records two pickups.

5:52 p.m.: The Uber drops me off at my apartment, and I use my phone for 18 minutes. During this time, I’m editing some photos that I plan to post throughout the week.

5:52 – 6:15 p.m.: One pickup.

“I’m starting to feel like yesterday was a fluke, and I’m beyond sure tomorrow will only be worse.”

6:15 p.m.: I use my phone for two minutes. I’m running late to shoot some content for a branded collaboration, and I need to let the team know I’m on my way.

6:15 – 6:25 p.m.: Two pickups. (Responses from the team saying they’re a few minutes behind schedule, too.)

6:25 p.m.: I use my phone for six minutes to navigate the rest of my way to the shoot.

6:25 – 7:16 p.m.: I’m on set, sans phone. Five pickups.

7:16 p.m.: I use my phone for seven minutes, to upload some of the RAW images from the shoot into my camera roll. There’s a lot.

7:16 – 7:44 p.m.: Two pickups.

7:44 p.m.: I’m on my phone for two minutes, swiping through the photos from the shoot. I “heart” the ones I like and immediately delete the ones I don’t.

7:44 – 8:02 p.m.: I leave the shoot—I’m eager to get into some air conditioning and to sit down for a while. The team packs up, I hop in a car and begin the journey from NYC to my hometown in New Jersey. One pickup.

8:02 p.m.: Since I’m not driving, I have some downtime in the car. I catch up on an entire day’s worth of Instagram DMs, Instagram-related emails, text messages and social tags. This takes me 27 minutes.

8:02 – 8:34 p.m.: I take a breather from my screen and look out the window for the rest of the drive. By the time I arrive at my parents’ house, Moment has recorded another pickup.

8:34 p.m.: I head inside and flop down on the couch. It was a long day. I mindlessly scroll through Instagram for nine minutes.

8:34 – 8:49 p.m.: I discuss the concept of dinner with my parents—nobody has thought of it yet. Busy day in the Feher household, I guess? We decide on pizza. Three pickups.

8:49 p.m.: I use my phone for three minutes to order said pizza. Dad heads out to pick it up.

8:49 – 9:06 p.m.: One pickup. Instagram DM.

9:06 p.m.: I’ve set the table (casually—it’s just pizza), and I’m waiting for Dad to return with the pizzas so we can finally eat something. I wind up on my phone for eight minutes.

9:06 – 9:57 p.m.: Dad arrives, and we feast. The pizza is gone in mere minutes, but we sit and catch up for a while. We’ve missed each other since I moved to the city. We have a lot to do tonight—we take off for a family vacation to Bermuda in the morning! Four pickups.

9:57 p.m. – 12:43 a.m.: I shower and start packing. I’m super productive—probably because I’m not using my phone. Moment records 12 pickups. They’re some combination of texts and DMs.

12:43 a.m.: I feel guilty for ignoring all the texts and DMs, so I spend 10 minutes responding to them.

1:10 a.m.: I use my phone for three minutes to set an alarm and do a quick scan on Instagram. I finally climb into bed, and it takes me all of two seconds to pass out—I’ve had a long day. Overnight, Moment records one pickup.

Recap: Today, Moment recorded 97 pickups, as well as four hours and two minutes of screen time. (The app shows my stats in the color red—and that doesn’t include anything that happened after midnight, though I included it here for the sake of clarity.) I’m starting to feel like yesterday was a fluke, and I’m beyond sure tomorrow will only be worse, since it’ll be my first day of vacation. My most-used app of the day is Instagram (one hour and 24 minutes), and my least-used is Siri, which I didn’t use at all.

Day 3: Thursday, August 9

Courtesy of author.

7:39 a.m.: My attempt at waking up on time is unsuccessful (shocker), but I’m only nine minutes behind schedule. For two minutes, I scan my email for anything time-sensitive. My heart skips a beat when I learn nothing requires my immediate attention.

7:39 – 9:30 a.m.: I finish packing my suitcase and carry-on, and throw on some airplane-friendly clothes (read: sweatpants). I don’t lay eyes on my phone until the very minute we’re walking out the door: 9:30 on the dot. Five pickups.

9:30 a.m.: For the first 12 minutes of the ride to the airport, I catch up on Instagram DMs.

9:45 a.m.: Mere seconds after I last put my phone down, I pick it up again for another 12 minutes. I’m bored in the car, because Mom and Riley (my brother) are completely zonked. Dad is listening to Pearl Jam and is totally in the zone. Do not disturb.

9:45 – 10:06 a.m.: Two pickups, both texts from friends wishing me a happy vacation. (My friends rock.)

10:06 a.m.: I spend four minutes chatting with my friends.

10:14 a.m.: We’ve arrived at the airport. The security line looks long, but I know exactly how to distract myself. I’ve been meaning to download the Lightroom app for weeks now, and I just haven’t gotten around to it. I plan to launch a new Instagram theme this week, and this app will make it easier. I spend 16 minutes downloading and exploring the app.

10:14 – 10:39 a.m.: One pickup.

10:39 a.m.: I spend seven minutes on my phone practicing in the Lightroom app. It’s fun—either that, or I’m a total nerd.

10:39 – 11:10 a.m.: Three pickups.

11:10 a.m.: I respond to said pickups. Two minutes.

11:10 – 11:24 a.m.: We board the plane. The process is pretty quick, and I’m already excited to land in Bermuda. I get one text, which counts as a pickup.

11:24 a.m.: I use my phone for five minutes. During these five minutes, I open Spofity, scroll through my playlists, choose one and hit shuffle. I close my eyes and immediately begin to doze off.

11:24 – 11:46 a.m.: Six pickups. I’m asleep for all of them. Oops.

11:46 a.m.: I spend 15 minutes resolving my pickups—both texts and DMs.

12:02 a.m.: I look up from my screen and realize we were supposed to take off seven minutes ago. I wonder what happened, but I don’t care that much, and I use my phone for six more minutes.

“Though it makes sense that I’d use my phone more on vacation than at a work event, I feel like I made a concerted effort to unplug today (especially at mealtimes).”

12:02 – 12:23 p.m.: Four pickups. Random notifications. Why hasn’t our plane moved yet?

12:23 p.m.: I use my phone for two minutes…

12:36 p.m.: …and two more minutes…

12:39 p.m.: …and two more minutes…

12:49 p.m.: …and then three minutes. We’re still on the fucking ground. Something’s up.

12:49 – 12:58 p.m.: I’m not on my phone much over the next few minutes, because I’m too busy trying to figure out why the heck we haven’t taken off yet. Eventually, I learn that a passenger asked to deboard the plane once we were already in line for takeoff, so we had to go back to the gate and let him off. (Which wouldn’t have taken too long, except they also had to find his checked bags in the cargo hold. Facepalm.) One pickup.

12:58 p.m.: I pop in my earbuds, throw on a playlist full of songs that calm me down and improve my attitude (which you can find here), and entertain myself by editing some old photos. I’m on the phone for 18 minutes before we finally take off.

1:18 p.m.: We’re finally flying, so my phone is in airplane mode. I spend 10 minutes playing around with the Lightroom app. I know that I’ll start taking photos pretty much as soon as I land, and I don’t want to waste any precious vacation time learning how to use it. Eventually, I get sleepy and doze off.

2:57 p.m.: I’m awake, but we haven’t landed yet. (Rude!) I use my phone for two minutes before giving up on it—it’s no fun without WiFi.

3:10 p.m.: We land and sit on the runway for a little before we’re able to deboard the plane. I use my phone for 11 minutes to view all my missed notifications while we wait for the green light to remove our seatbelts.

3:22 p.m.: We’re moving, people! I text my grandparents that we’ve all landed safely and that we’re in line for customs. Four minutes.

3:30 p.m.: I forget the “no cell phones” rule in the customs area, and spend two minutes on my phone before someone asks me to put it away. Whoops.

3:38 p.m.: We’re at baggage claim waiting for our suitcases when I realize that the time zone didn’t adjust on my phone. I spend five minutes trying to figure it out, to no avail. For the rest of the trip, my phone is an hour behind Bermuda time.

3:38 – 3:47 p.m.: Two pickups.

3:47 p.m.: We’re in a cab on the way to the hotel. I respond to my notifications, but put my phone down after two minutes, because our cab driver is the nicest human being I’ve ever encountered, and because I want to be present for the first part of our family vacation. 

3:47 – 4:15 p.m.: Six pickups.

4:15 p.m.: For three minutes, I respond to an urgent email regarding my Instagram. We arrive at our hotel.

4:15 – 5:09 p.m.: We check in, are shown to our suite and hurriedly change into some socially acceptable lunch outfits. We’re ravenous because we haven’t eaten since breakfast. Five pickups.

5:09 p.m.: We head over to a gorgeous oceanfront restaurant at the hotel. It’s happy hour, which means cocktails, sushi and tapas. I spend eight minutes editing and posting an Instagram from my archives so that I don’t have to post again until tomorrow. (Since we got in so late today, I won’t have an opportunity to take many ‘Gram-worthy pics.)

5:18 p.m.: I use my phone for five minutes to check on my post.

5:18 – 5:37 p.m.: Three pickups.

5:37 p.m.: I check on my post and respond to comments for another two minutes.

5:44 p.m.: I’ve been trying not to use my phone too much at the table lately, but we realize we’ll probably be hungry again late tonight, since it’s so early. Mom and Dad assign me the task of finding us a good restaurant for a late dinner. We spend 19 minutes on my phone, searching for options, discussing our cravings, reviewing menus and making a reservation.

6:05 p.m.: I use my phone to take some still photos, and my mom steals it to snap a pic of me. Four minutes.

6:22 p.m.: Two minutes.

6:33 p.m.: We’re back in the suite—everyone’s relaxing and getting ready for dinner.  Mom and I are ready pretty quickly, so we flop on the bed and look at some of the photos we took at happy hour. They’re cute, and we love the new editing theme I’m working on. Three minutes.

6:33 – 7:07 p.m.: The heat is starting to fade, so we sit outside on the terrace until Dad and Riley are ready for dinner. (Somehow, my brother takes longer than I do.) My phone is inside charging. Five pickups.

7:07 p.m.: It’s golden hour in Bermuda, so we decide to walk down to the beach and take some pictures. Two minutes of screen time.

7:11 p.m.: And two more.

7:16 p.m.: Lots of photos are happening. My phone is open for 11 minutes.

Courtesy of author.

7:30 p.m.: And literally 12 more. We’re obsessed with this lighting.

7:30 – 7:50 p.m.: Two pickups.

7:50 p.m.: We head back to the suite to grab our bags and call a car to take us to dinner. I use my phone for three minutes while Dad is making the call, put it down, and then use it again for five more minutes while we wait to be picked up.

7:56 – 8:40 p.m.: During this time, we’re in the cab with another extremely friendly Bermudian driver. We arrive at the restaurant, claim our reservation and are shown to our table. Moment records three pickups.

8:40 p.m.: The staff knows we’re celebrating my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, so the maître d’ brings some champagne. I grab my phone and snap a Boomerang of my parents cheers-ing. Three minutes.

8:45 p.m.: Five minutes.

8:55 p.m.: Three minutes.

8:59 p.m.: Four minutes.

8:59 – 9:19 p.m.: No phone for a while—five pickups.

9:19 p.m.: Back at it. Five minutes.

9:19 – 9:42 p.m.: We’re eating, drinking and laughing. It’s not often all four of our schedules align for more than one meal, so we try to savor our time together on vacation. I manage not to touch my phone, and it shows five pickups. All text messages and Instagram DMs.

9:42 p.m.: The waitstaff brings out a slice of cheesecake that says “Happy Anniversary” on it—how could I not snap a pic? Four minutes.

9:42 – 10:08 p.m.: We enjoy the dessert and finish our drinks. It’s not often that other patrons outlast us at restaurants, but one couple is left when we head out. The maître d’ calls us a car, so I have no reason to use my phone. Three pickups.

10:08 p.m.: I respond to notifications for two minutes.

10:11 p.m.: Six minutes of phone time as the cab approaches.

10:23 p.m.: I use my phone for three more minutes in the cab. I’m watching my own Instagram Story, which I sometimes do compulsively. It’s weird—sue me.

10:53 p.m.: I haven’t responded to my texts nearly as promptly as usually do. I feel guilty when I realize some messages have gone unattended since morning. I spend four minutes catching up on my conversation. As I finish up, we’ve arrived at a beach bar. I hear live music in the distance, and sign off.

10:53 p.m. – 12:12 a.m.: We can walk to our suite from the bar, so we do. I get ready for bed and spend 11 minutes tending to my notifications before passing out. Two overnight pickups.

Recap: Today, Moment recorded 131 pickups, as well as four hours and 53 minutes of screen time. Though it makes sense that I’d use my phone more on vacation than at a work event, I feel like I made a concerted effort to unplug today (especially at mealtimes), so I’m slightly surprised by my elevated stats. I’m definitely in the red. Better luck tomorrow.

Day 4: Friday, August 10

Courtesy of author.

8:31 a.m.: I wake up and immediately respond to some texts. Two minutes.

8:31 – 10:07 a.m.: We get ready and walk down to the beach. I lose my phone in the depths of my tote and forget about it while I enjoy the morning sun. Moment records nine pickups.

10:07 a.m.: I wonder if anyone’s texting me. (They are.) I use my phone for two minutes to respond and scroll through Instagram.

10:27 a.m.: I’m on my phone for 11 minutes, responding to a bunch of DMs. Some are recommendations of things to do in Bermuda, some are questions about my recent posts, some of them are brand outreach.

10:27 – 10:48 a.m.: One pickup.

10:48 a.m.: I scroll through my own Instagram account, and wonder if I’m going to like my new theme as much as I think I will. Four minutes.

10:48–11:06 a.m.: Four pickups.

11:06 a.m.: I use my phone to take a couple of photos. Well, Mom uses my phone to take a couple of photos as I climb a rock formation. It’s fun, but I don’t think it makes me look very sporty. Five minutes.

Courtesy of author.

11:12 a.m.: We get back to the chairs, and I use my phone for 10 minutes. I look at the photos, am surprised by how much I like them and edit a few.

11:12 a.m. – 12:11 p.m.: We head back to the suite to get ready for lunch. We’re eating at the tennis club where my mom and dad first met—the same one where they had their first date and their first kiss. I shower and change, letting my phone charge on the desk. Two pickups.

12:11 p.m.: I use my phone for three minutes, and we head out.

12:11–1:21 p.m.: Our hotel isn’t too far from the restaurant, so we decide to walk. We arrive at the restaurant and my parents admire the way it looks exactly the same as it did 29 years ago. Nine pickups.

1:21 p.m.: I use my phone for two minutes to snap a shot of the scenery. It looks like we’re about to eat on the front of a postcard.

Courtesy of author.

1:36 p.m.: I use my phone for six minutes to look something up for my parents.

1:45 p.m.: I use my phone for seven minutes to respond to a text as we’re shown to the table. We usually spend a few minutes using our phones right when we sit down so we can try to put them aside for the rest of the meal.

1:45 – 2:06 p.m.: We order drinks and food and decide to head up to the clubhouse quickly to see if it remains the same. It does.

2:06 p.m.: Somehow, I’m “on my phone” for 15 minutes. But I don’t remember this, so I wonder if I forgot to lock my phone before I put it in my bag.

2:23 p.m.: Lunch is just as wonderful as we expect.

2:39 p.m.: I use my phone for five minutes to look at pictures we took of the plaques in the clubhouse. One shows my mom and her mom’s tennis victories. The other shows Dad and his dad’s. We text the photos to both of my grandmothers to brighten their days.

2:46 p.m.: We walk around the property and find a giant chess set. I snap a photo (one minute) and play against my brother until Mom and Dad are ready to leave. Six minutes.

Courtesy of author.

2:46 p.m. – 3:42 p.m.: We head back down to the beach so we can walk to our hotel. Upon getting back, I lie down to charge my phone for a few minutes—and end up spending 20 minutes on my phone.

3:42 p.m.: I wake up and check out my notifications. Two minutes.

4:10 p.m.: We decide to get some more activities in before dark. I already know what I’ll wear, so I relax while everyone else gets ready. I’ll change right before we leave. I use my phone for 14 minutes, mainly to scroll through Instagram.

4:10 – 6:43 p.m.: It’s time to head out. I throw on some clothes and call us a cab. It arrives almost immediately and takes us to an outdoor mall. The shopping isn’t fantastic, but that’s OK—we’ve found something more interesting: drunk mini golf. (Which, as it turns out, is basically just mini golf with a bar.) Moment records 16 pickups. Whoops.

6:43 p.m.: We’re finishing up the back nine, and I know I can’t keep my game under par. So instead, I have another daiquiri. Five minutes on the phone while I wait for my drink and bring it back to the course.

6:52 – 7:05 p.m.: The game is over, and Dad rolled an unexpected hole-in-one on 17, so everyone else loses. It’s OK though, because Dad rocks at mini golf. I use my phone for 12 minutes (to check the ferry schedule and then to browse the internet).

7:05 – 7:10 p.m.: We head over to the dock and board the ferry a few minutes early. It’s gorgeous outside, so we sit on the top deck. No pickups—I just wanted to talk about the ferry.

“Since it’s pretty much the same results as the day before, I figure this is my vacation norm.”

7:10 p.m.: I use my phone for 13 minutes because (a) I need to continue catching up on the notifications I missed while mini golfing, and (b) the boat has not left the dock yet.

7:26 p.m.: The ferry is finally in motion, and the sun starts to set. I snap some pics just before the last bits of light fade away. After that, everyone settles into their seats—we still have 15 minutes left. I use my phone for 12 of them.

7:43 p.m.: The ferry arrives back in town, but we still need a car back to the hotel. We flag one, get in and immediately feel exhausted. Mom and Riley doze off, and Dad is being friendly with the driver, so I’m lost in the Instagram Explore Page for a while. Five minutes, to be exact.

7:43 – 8:06 p.m.: The last few minutes of the cab ride, everyone wakes up and catches a second wind. The cab drops us off at the suite and we head inside to get ready for dinner. Two pickups, and then two minutes on the phone.

8:19 p.m.: Dinner isn’t until 9:00, so we get ready pretty slowly. I lounge in bed for about 10 minutes, using my phone before I even consider changing my outfit.

8:19 – 9:49 p.m.: Eventually, I join in the getting-ready effort; we make it to the beachfront restaurant only a few minutes late for our 9 p.m. reservation. We sit, order drinks and enjoy some appetizers. Our toes are literally in the sand, and the ocean is only a few yards from our table. Everything is perfect—I’m not on my phone. Five pickups.

9:49 p.m.: We’ve ordered our entrées, and are considering making reservations for dinner tomorrow. Eventually, we decide we should. I hop on my phone for 14 minutes while we choose a restaurant and reserve a table. I spend some of that time posting an Instagram from today.

10:04 p.m.: When my phone lights up, I don’t recognize the notification. Turns out it’s Moment, alerting me that my “daily stats” are ready for viewing. No freaking way. I use my phone for a few minutes, and eventually flip into “do not disturb” mode.

10:24 p.m.: I excuse myself from the table to use the bathroom. On my way back , I stop by the bar, because I literally can’t help but check my phone. That’s messed up.

10:54 p.m.: We’re finished at dinner, so I open my phone for 15 minutes while we eat the last of our dessert, pay the check and finish our drinks. Sometimes, we end up talking while I’m using my phone, and I leave it on the table while we chat. Then, when the screen fades, I tap it to keep it active. So I’m not really using my phone, but it counts as screen time.

11:10 p.m.: We head out. Two minutes responding to messages.

11:20 p.m.: Everyone’s exhausted. Today was packed. I use my phone for three minutes while we walk to our room. I don’t expect to pass out right away, but I do. Moment sleeps with me.

Recap: Today, Moment recorded only 90 pickups—but also four hours and 58 minutes of screen time. Yesterday, I had more pickups, but slightly less screen time, which means my phone sessions were longer today than they were yesterday. Since it’s pretty much the same results as the day before, I figure this is my vacation norm.

Day 5: Saturday, August 11

Courtesy of author.

9:09 a.m.: Mom and Dad have to wake me up. I passed out so quickly I forgot to set an alarm. I spend five minutes catching up on overnight notifications.

9:15 a.m.: I scroll through Instagram for two minutes to catch up on news.

9:24 a.m.: After discussing some potential plans for the day, I grab my phone and open Pinterest. We spend seven minutes looking up some information about the crystal caves, then decide to head to the pool for the first half of the day. We’ll hit the caves in the afternoon.

9:45 – 11:59 a.m.: We walk up to the pool and begin lounging. Fifteen pickups. Sometimes, when I’m off my phone for this long, my friends get worried.

11:59 a.m.: Two minutes, mostly spent ignoring my notifications and checking out my own Instagram account.

12:23 p.m.: Five minutes.

12:31 p.m.: Nine minutes, while I lounge on a pool chair.

12:42 p.m.: I look at my notifications for two minutes, and once again choose not to resolve them. We order lunch to the pool.

12:42 – 12:54 PM: We cool off in the water, then grab some lunch. Three pickups.

12:54 – 1:13 p.m.: A total of eight minutes on my phone, spread out pretty evenly while I eat.

1:13 – 1:42 p.m.: Four pickups while I eat (and subsequently doze off) by the pool.

1:42 p.m.: I decide it’s time to face the notifications. Twenty minutes spent working on my phone.

2:35 p.m.: Two more minutes.

2:52 p.m.: Ten minutes.

3:06 p.m.: We gather our things and walk back to the room, and I use my phone for the 12 minutes it takes to get there. Scrolling. Through. Instagram.

3:20 p.m.: We’ve gotten back to the suite and started to freshen up. I take a quick shower, and then I’m on my phone, sitting in a towel. I literally refuse to move. I’m so comfy—bye. I’m on my phone for two minutes before someone yells for me to keep getting ready.

3:30 p.m.: Another five.

3:36 p.m.: Three more. What could I possibly be doing?

3:41 p.m.: Three more. Ridiculous.

3:46 p.m.: Time to move—the last crystal cave tour departs at 5:00, so we need to get into town ASAP. We call for a cab but none are available. The front desk promises to call me back when they find one. I use my phone for three minutes while I wait.

3:46 – 4:02 p.m.: I still haven’t heard from the front desk. I start to panic and call again. They say they just found one and were about to call me. Four pickups, then two minutes on the phone.

4:06 p.m.: Eleven minutes on my phone as we wait for the cab.

4:19 p.m.: I use the cab time to edit some photos. I end up on my phone for, like, ever (30 minutes).

4:54 p.m.: We make it just in time for the last tour. The caves are cool AF, and I am definitely posting a picture of them this week (if I can work it into my social calendar). I use my phone for 10 minutes taking pictures and editing them on the spot while we’re in there. Efficiency is key.

“This is an improvement [screen-time-wise], and I also had a really awesome day. I wonder if the two are related.”

5:05 p.m.: My brother and I spend three minutes showing each other the photos we took on our phones. His Google phone takes awesome ones.

5:05 – 5:26 p.m.: Earlier, someone told us about a popular bar near the caves. We head out, use Google Maps to locate it and realize it’s within walking distance. Obviously, we head over. Eight minutes on the phones in total.

5:26 p.m.: We get inside, and it’s air-conditioned. Life is good. I use my phone for two minutes upon sitting down.

5:26 – 5:42 p.m.: We enjoy some frozen drinks, because, somehow, we haven’t stopped sweating yet. Four pickups.

5:42 – 7:00 p.m.: We head back home—we really want to catch golden hour at the beach. One outfit change later, we’re there, enjoying a flawless, 75-degree, cloudless, slightly breezy golden hour. It’s the most peaceful thing I can remember doing in years. Two minutes.

7:11 p.m.: I use my phone for four minutes to determine exactly when the sun will set. We learn that it’s soon, and my mom grabs the camera. It’s Christmas card time. (Apparently, you’re never too old to take Christmas card photos.) I quickly post an Instagram and toss my phone into my bag so we can take some pics.

7:11 – 10:47 p.m.: It’s not often I lose the phone for this long, but tonight is particularly fun, so I put it on airplane mode. We get a cab downtown and eat dinner at a super-casual pub in the middle of everything. We drink, eat, laugh and make plans to go dancing after dinner. It’s so fun I can’t even bring myself to touch my phone. The next time I look at it, we’re already at a bar.

10:47 p.m.: We’re in Bermuda—a whole different country. But there’s this boy staring at me from down the bar, as if he knows me. He approaches me: “I follow you on Instagram!” (Whoop, there it is.) We spend three minutes on my phone looking up his account so I can follow him back. I accidentally quit out of Moment, so nothing is recorded until the next morning. But when I realize this the next day, I work with my family to try to remember the rest of the night, so I can fill in the gaps on this article. The following are our best guesses.

10:47 – 11:46 p.m.: We dance. We laugh. We cry. We have a really, really, really good time. Eight-ish pickups. (Bonus points if you get this reference.)

11:46 p.m.: Another guy, around my age, approaches me. He’s from the area, and so is his sister, who dances with her friends about 10 feet away. He tells me she recognizes me and asks if I go to Elon. Why does everybody at this bar know me? I’m having a blast meeting new people. I leave my family for a few minutes to introduce myself, and then to subsequently make a fool out of myself dancing. Things are fine. I spend two-ish minutes on my phone to follow this girl on Instagram.

11:46 p.m. – 12:15 a.m.: Still dancing (surprise, surprise), but now I’m back with the family.

12:15 a.m.: This time, the people who approach me are two women. We’re all cracking up because my dad is absolutely killing me in a dance-off. I’m ashamed of myself, yet proud of him. One of the women tells me she has a 17-year-old daughter—one who’s applying to Elon. I gush about it for, like, 20 minutes, then give the woman my phone number, in case she has any questions about the school. I spend a minute or two on my phone making sure I have hers.

12:30 a.m.: It’s almost time for bed. My family decides we should definitely head back. (Blessed.) I use my phone for about two minutes to get a cab, only to find a taxi stand three feet away. I hang up, and we wait there instead.

12:45 a.m.: We’re home. I flop in bed and spend three-ish minutes on my phone before blissfully falling into a deep, deep sleep. I’m pretty sure nobody sets an alarm.

Recap: Today, Moment recorded only 81 pickups—and three hours and 54 minutes of screen time. This is an improvement, and I also had a really awesome day. I wonder if the two are related.

Day 6: Sunday, August 12

Courtesy of author.

10:40 a.m.: By the time I get up, everyone else seems to be awake already—though they’re moving pretty slowly. We decide to rent motorbikes (for later use) and chill by the pool. I spend one minute on my phone scrolling through my notifications, but that’s it.

11:46 a.m.: At the motorbike rental place, we sign some paperwork, grab some bikes and practice riding them. Nobody seems confident in our motorbike skills—including the rental staff. I use my phone for nine minutes, mostly to send some “I love you” texts to my grandparents. (Just in case.)

11:46 a.m. – 12:16 p.m.: We head to the pool. It’s a beautiful day, and my hangover’s making me hungry. Looking at my phone makes me nauseous. Two pickups.

12:16 p.m.: We order some food to the chairs (plus, like, three gallons of water), and while we wait, we catch up on our phones. Ten minutes for me.

12:26 p.m.: The food arrives, and it’s beautiful. Wings, burgers, flatbreads and french fries. I use my phone for four minutes to snap an Instagram Story of the spread.

12:26 – 12:37 p.m.: We feast. Four pickups—all responses to my food snaps.

12:37 – 1:12 p.m.: More feasting, plus four pickups.

1:24 p.m.: We’re done eating, and we feel much better. I peek at my phone and realize I have a few people to respond to. Moment logs 12 minutes.

1:38 p.m.: I use my phone for another two minutes before taking a dip in the pool.

1:38 – 2:38 p.m.: I let the chlorine wash away the memories of all those vodka Red Bulls. Six pickups.

2:38 p.m.: I emerge from the water and use my phone for two minutes to send some messages on Instagram.

3:05 p.m.: I get a notification that says I should post an Instagram right now—based on my engagement history, this is a good time to do it. I choose one from Friday, and it performs. Two minutes.

3:11 p.m.: I spend 14 minutes responding to comments and DMs, as well as scrolling through my newsfeed to catch up.

3:33 p.m.: I love this pool, but I hate push notifications. I guess if I’m sitting here I might as well be productive. Twenty-four minutes.

3:33 – 4:35 p.m.: Maybe my long phone streak satisfied people. Only one pickup.

4:56 – 5:31 p.m.: We head back to the suite, shower, throw on some real-people clothes and hop on the motorbikes. We ride them to a mini-hike that will eventually lead us to the top of the world. Seven pickups.

5:31 p.m.: The view from the top of this hike is unbelievable. It looks like a movie set. I pull out my phone to snap a photo or two. Two minutes of screen time.

“I definitely used my phone more today than I did yesterday, but I forgive myself—I was hungover all morning. Who can blame me?”

5:42 p.m.: While I’m snapping photos, I notice the notification buildup on my lock screen. On the walk down, I try to resolve the easy ones, so I don’t get too far behind. Two minutes.

5:42 – 6:53 p.m.: We ride to another little beach, enjoy the views and hop back on the bikes to our next destination—Horseshoe Bay. It’s beautiful (duh). Then we make it to our final destination, a gorge white lighthouse. Ten pickups in total.

6:53 p.m.: I take a panoramic video of the view from the lighthouse (one minute), and then scroll through all my photos and videos from the trip so far. So many times this week, Bermuda has taken my breath away. Nine minutes.

7:17 p.m.: We’re back in the room, getting ready for dinner. I use my phone for two minutes to resolve random notifications.

7:24 – 7:49 p.m.: We decide to head out for the restaurant early, to catch the sunset (our reservation is for 9:00). Dad calls a cab, and we arrive just in time. Seventeen minutes on the phone in total.

8:05 – 8:50 p.m.: We watch the sunset, grab a drink at the bar and are shown to our table a few minutes early. Six pickups.

8:50 – 9:36 p.m.: We eat dinner in yet another beautiful place. The food is delicious, and I hardly even think about my phone. Four pickups.

9:48 p.m.: Checking out my Instagram again. Two minutes.

9:52 p.m.: When our entrées are cleared, I excuse myself to use the bathroom. I bring my purse and use my phone in the lounge to check up on my messages before I return to the table. Two more minutes.

10:09 – 10:30 p.m.: We order and eat dessert (a selection of mini ice cream cones that I can’t believe I didn’t photograph, despite a few more minutes of active screen time). We use my phone to look up some information that will help settle a silly debate we’re having.

10:36 p.m.: We head out of the restaurant, and a shuttle takes us to the main hotel, where the concierge will call us a cab back to our hotel. I use my phone for three minutes to check on my latest post.

10:41 p.m.: Seventeen minutes of… I’m honestly not sure.

11:01 p.m.: The taxi picks us up, and during the ride, I use my phone. My brother has passed out, Mom is half-asleep and Dad is chatting with the driver. I scroll on Instagram to catch up on celeb news and my friends’ lives. Thirty-seven minutes of my life. I can hardly believe I looked at my phone for that long.

11:41 p.m.: We arrive back at the hotel. Another busy day. Nine minutes before bedtime.

Recap: Today, Moment recorded 93 pickups—plus four hours and 43 minutes of screen time. I definitely used my phone more today than I did yesterday, but I forgive myself—I was hungover all morning. Who can blame me? I’m certain tomorrow will be worse, because we’re flying home, and I forgot to bring a book. (In other words, I’ll be spending the entire day on my phone.)

Day 7: Monday, August 13

Courtesy of author.

9:09 a.m.: I wake up and can’t fall back asleep, so I scroll around on my phone for nine minutes. Then I lie in bed until everyone else wakes up.

9:26 a.m.: We get out of bed and begin to pack our things. Our flight is delayed. We’re thrilled—let’s eat! I use my phone for two minutes to check my email.

10:14 a.m.: We return the motorbikes to the rental place—but not before snapping a photo. Two minutes.

10:14 – 10:35 a.m.: We head back to the room to throw on some swimwear. Since our flight is delayed, we have some time to chill. One pickup.

10:35 – 11:45 a.m.: We head down to the beach and relax for a while. Eventually, we can’t bear the heat and opt to return to the air-conditioning. We have to check out soon, anyway. Eighteen minutes and three pickups, in total.

11:45 a.m.: We chill in the suite until someone comes for our bags—we’re going to leave them at the hotel while we get lunch and then grab them on our way out. I use my phone for seven minutes.

11:45 a.m. – 12:37 a.m.: Someone comes to grab our bags, which means we’re good to go. Thank goodness—we’re ravenous. We order a cab and it takes us into town so we can eat some lunch. I spend almost the entire time on my phone, which, in retrospect, is a little sickening.

12:37 p.m.: We sit in the restaurant and everybody takes a few minutes to themselves for phone time—this way, we can all be present during the meal. Mom and I are exceptions today, because we’re getting status updates about the flight.

12:37 – 1:44 p.m.: We enjoy our lunch, and my phone is active pretty much the entire time, so we can receive status updates in real-time from the airline. We learn that our flight is taking off earlier than expected. (Although we were kind of hoping we’d get stuck in Bermuda.) We hop in a cab and race to the hotel.

2:12 p.m.: We’re back at the hotel grabbing our bags, and the cab driver is kind enough to wait for us, so he can take us to the airport next. I use my phone for 18 minutes during the transfer.

2:12 – 2:39 p.m.: Another friendly cab driver. I love it here. We all chat and giggle about how wonderful it would’ve been if we got stuck in Bermuda. Two pickups. Eventually, my phone distracts me.

2:39 p.m.: I use my phone for three minutes to use my work email.

2:57 – 4:02 p.m.: We arrive at the airport, go through customs and security, and find our gate. Four pickups and 18 minutes in total.

“Today, Moment logged only 93 pickups, but a whopping seven hours and 22 minutes of screen time. I could die of embarrassment.”

4:02 – 4:53 p.m.: We hang out at the gate—I use this time to get work done. I make some progress on this article, respond to all my emails and plan out my next two weeks in my trusty agenda. Since I’m using my computer, I get a lot of my notifications sent there instead of my phone. Moment records very few pickups, because I’m resolving most of my notifications on my laptop. But I still spend 17 minutes on my phone during this time.

4:53 p.m.: Are we ever going to board this plane??? Dad is borrowing my laptop, so I move all my assignments to my phone. It’s a lot slower, but we only brought one computer, so we have to share. I spend over an hour on my phone, writing part of this article.

5:56 – 8:06 p.m.: Honestly, I can’t even tell you what happens during these few hours—I think my brain is blocking them out. All I know for sure is that we board the plane, sit on it for a while, and fly. I don’t buy in-flight WiFi, but like I said—I forgot my book. So I spend the relatively short flight editing photos, playing solitaire (on my phone) and listening to Spotify. We land around 7:30, but don’t get off the plane until 8:00-ish, so I spent two full hours on my phone. (Yikes.)

8:06 – 8:36 p.m.: We head over to baggage claim, grab our luggage and find the car. Notifications are pouring in, since I couldn’t access them on the flight. Ten pickups.

8:36 p.m.: In the car, I use my phone for 29 more minutes. I cannot imagine what the heck I could possibly be looking at after a flight full of screen time—except maybe all the messages I missed in airplane mode.

9:16 p.m.: We arrive at our go-to restaurant in my hometown. It’s two minutes away from the house, so we basically live there. We all use our phones to catch up on work stuff. Eight minutes.

9:26 p.m.: After ordering drinks, I hop onto my phone for two minutes to post a picture of that giant chess set we’d seen earlier.

9:26 – 10:12 p.m.: Another meal. We are blessed. Twenty-seven minutes on my phone, but I can explain—Nana had met us at the restaurant, and we spent the entire meal scrolling through photos from the trip on my phone. So it was basically the whole point of conversation.

10:12 – 10:51 p.m.: I accidentally close out of Moment, but I don’t want to keep getting notifications from it, because I feel sick about how much I used my phone this week. I just want it to stop. I jot down notes about my phone usage for the rest of my night to stay on track. The following information is taken from my notes.

10:51 p.m.: We pay the check and head home to greet our sweet pup, and to go TF to bed. We’re a hot mess. I use my phone for the two-ish minutes we’re in the car.

11:16 p.m.: I scroll on Instagram before bed and close out some conversations from earlier that day. This girl’s gotta sleep.

Recap: Today, Moment logged only 93 pickups, but a whopping seven hours and 22 minutes of screen time. I could die of embarrassment. If I didn’t have the traveling excuse, I wouldn’t even be telling you guys this. Of that time, I spend the most on Instagram: two hours and 34 minutes.

Day 8: Tuesday, August 14

Courtesy of author.

7:25 a.m.: Since I started this whole project when I got into the office last Tuesday, I decide to keep it going until I get into the office this Tuesday. I wake up and scroll for three minutes.

7:25 – 8:40 a.m.: I open up Moment again, because I’m ready to face the day. I get ready for work and head to the train station to catch the train from my hometown back into the city. Four pickups.

8:40 a.m.: I board the train and use my phone to catch up on messages and emails before work—I’ve been out of that mind-set for too long. Eighteen minutes.

8:40 – 9:13 a.m.: Four pickups.

9:13 a.m.: We’re about to pull into the station, so I resolve my notifications again before I have to get off. They end up being notifications that require a lot of attention. Another 18 minutes.

9:13 – 10:42 a.m.: I de-board the train, walk to the office and get a start on my day. In total, I spend two minutes on my phone. Moment logs 14 pickups.

10:42 a.m.: My work here is done. I spend three minutes deactivating the Moment app so it stops tracking my progress, and I hold onto the stats so I can analyze them later. I breathe a sigh of relief.

Final Thoughts

Over the last week, I picked up my phone 650 times and spent more than 32 hours staring at it. While the number of “pickups” I recorded didn’t surprise me too much (because, don’t forget—you don’t always have to use your phone to get a pickup), the 32-hour thing makes me want to cry.

I have some serious reality-checking to do. Regardless of my following on Instagram, I don’t think it’s practical, healthy or smart to spend more than one-seventh of my life staring at a screen—and that doesn’t even count my laptop.

This experience has definitely been eye-opening. But for now, I think I’ll close them for a while.

Source: http://stylecaster.com/social-media-diary/

[endlessarchite]

The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta…

Dude. We got things DONE this weekend at the beach house. And by that I mean, we showed up with a giant to-do list and only got about half of it checked off, but it really felt awesome after four days there (thanks to the kids having no school on Monday & Tuesday) to lock the door knowing that we’d knocked out a huge portion of the kitchen.

We still have to get a fridge and a dishwasher, add floating shelves around the stove, add a backsplash, do the toe kicks & quarter round down at the cabinet bases, and the island will have a larger counter with a sink in it and a 12″ overhang for the stools… but we are getting there! We actually have perimeter counters! I mean, they need to be screwed in and sealed, but they’re there! And we have working drawers (still need hardware) and a hood that’s hung up (that white part is just a protective cover, it’ll all be stainless once we peel that off). I love how everything I say is countered by a “but we still need to do blank!” But seriously, this kitchen progress feels pretty freaking exciting for us. Especially because just a little while ago it was looking more like this:

And back when we bought it last fall we were staring at a room that looked like this:

So…. progress!

And without further ado, here’s a video walk-through that we took right before we locked the door behind us yesterday. It’s full of all the what’s next & what’s changing info along with a bunch of explanations about the whole house as it has progressed since our last tour back in October. Note: If you’re viewing this post through a reader, you might have to click through to the actual post to see the video. And if for any reason you’re having an issue with the video loading here on our site, you can also view it here on YouTube. 

Once again I’ll mention that I can fit a whole lot more words and info (and pictures!) into a video. Heck, a video is worth a million pictures! So that’s the best way to get all caught up and see/hear about what’s going on these days. But if you’re at work or somewhere that you can’t watch the video, here are some photos to tide you over.

The front bedroom is moving right along. We couldn’t fit the headboard in the packed car on the way out, so that’s coming (and we’ll also hang curtains to make that bed feel a lot more balanced and grounded in front of the window) but it’s really feeling super cozy in there now. Something magical happened when we moved the side tables from the back bedroom in and rolled out our new 8 x 10 rug. It’s 20% off on Serena & Lily right now – not sure how long that’ll last, but it’s so soft and it’s also indoor/outdoor so we love that we can hose it down outside and it’ll hopefully be super durable for the beach house.

As for the other sources in the room, there’s a mood board with links at the bottom of this post, so there you can find the bedding & lamp info, etc. And picture me cupping my hands around my mouth and shouting a resounding “yes, we’d love to!” to everyone asking us to build a “Shop Our Beach House” page like the one we have for our current house. We’re hoping to do that as things come together more – maybe within the next month or two.

We also got this 5 x 8′ rug (also on sale for just $258 right now) for the guest room, which is a pretty sandy color and is a hemp/cotton blend for a nice durable and beachy feeling. We’re realizing we’re drawn to a lot of blue things (hello, beach house… and also, hello, we love blue) so it’s nice to have some warm tones in the refinished wood doors & floors, the pink stove, and also in this warm textured rug. Gotta keep the balance so it doesn’t turn into the “I’m Blue Abadee Abadaaa” house (does anyone else remember that crazy song?! They were just taking nonsense right?!).

Speaking of blue, downstairs we also got this 8 x 10′ rug, which is a nice silvery gray-blue, especially on sunnier days (so sorry the video was filmed on the grayest of gray days – BOO!). We’re actually debating bringing this rug up to the back bedroom and perhaps getting something slightly warmer and less blue since the sofa sometimes reads like a deep denim blue, and again… there’s lots of blue here, so we want to make sure it doesn’t get overwhelming.

It’s a really nice plush rug though! Super soft feeling and the little X detail around the border is so cool. Looks way more expensive than it was for that large size in all wool. And yes, we still need a top for that coffee table and to paint and reupholster those crazy green chairs. Soon I hope!

And now let’s talk about the rug that didn’t work. As soon as we rolled this one out we were like “Uhhhhh, it’s really dark. And kinda crazy looking in here.” In the photo on the site it looked a lot more subtle and subdued, but in person it felt more chaotic than this picture even conveys. In person you couldn’t really pick up on the diagonal lines of the pattern, it just sort of looked like a rag rug with lots of randomly placed bumps in dark blue, and with the blue doors and the blue tub in the master… it was A LOT of blue (and not all the same tone of blue – the rug sort of clashed in person).

So although we gave ourselves a few days to live with it to see if it grew on us, the verdict was “we’re sending it back.” Again, this picture makes it look less busy. In person, it just didn’t work for us. Which is sad, because packaging and mailing back a rug is akin to running a triathlon for a 5’2″ gal like me.

So the little X-border rug from downstairs might come up here (it reads a lot more like a light silvery-gray) and then we have to find a good rug for the living room, but it helps that the three big rugs that we need for this house are all 8 x 10’s, which is nice for flexibility & swapping (you know I love to switch things around – a little too much probably).

The hall bathroom is still my favorite bathroom, and we actually found the perfect mirror for it, but alas, we couldn’t fit that in the car either, so we’ll have to hang it next time. We did manage to hang a shower curtain in there and caulk the tile edges (we finished caulking all the showers!). So pretty much all we need to complete this room is a toilet paper holder, a few towel hooks, and the easy small stuff. HUZZAH! Also need to hang the art and add window treatments so we can stop blocking the windows with cardboard while we’re there because that just doesn’t feel very classy you guys.

This is a terrible picture taken with the lights on during a super rainy day, but the master bathroom shower finally got glass! WAHOO! We worried that shower might feel tight, but thanks to getting this glass panel instead of a big bulky wall, it feel so bright and open in there! It actually feels just as big as the bigger hall shower which is around 6″ wider – so it’s funny how much your eyes play tricks on you when it comes to the actual perceived size of something. Still need a lot of stuff in here (I want a wooden stool by the tub, a few other hits of wood to add warmth, window treatments of course, towel hooks, etc). Slowly but surely…

But now let’s get back to the kitchen that we assembled from approximately 4,567 small parts with a single allen wrench.

Just kidding, it was slightly fewer parts and it actually didn’t involve a single allen wrench (go figure!), but it was sort of like a DIY marathon of snapping, drilling, hinging, hooking, and leveling things over a four day period.

As for why we opted for Ikea cabinets at the beach house, we’ve been really happy with the ones we put in our laundry room and our bonus room – and the budget called for something affordable since we’re also adding beds and furnishing a lot of other rooms at the same time. We even got to take advantage of Ikea’s spring kitchen event (yes we ordered all of this waaaay back then) to save some extra money. This entire kitchen – including the counters and sink! – came in around $3K, which is pretty dang amazing to me.

We’re lucky because some Ikea kitchens consist of 25+ cabinets and we only had 8 in here to assemble (and it helped that we had an extra long weekend thanks to those two additional days off of school for the kids). It also helped that we went pretty simple with the layout and the cabinet fronts since we want the pink stove and the pretty old architectural details in here (like the back staircase and the old glass-paned doors) to be the stars.

Speaking of that back door, yes we’re going to eventually paint it. We love the blue chippy door to the mudroom, which you can see in the video, but the back door just seems to look dirtier as the kitchen comes together more. And yes, we have to weatherstrip it because there’s a small gap. The light bounces off the floor and creates what looks like a much wider gap than the actual sliver of space under there, so we get “OMG CAN AN ANIMAL GET IN THERE?!” comments surprisingly often, but in reality it’s definitely not animal-sized. If it was, the whole weatherstripping thing would have been waaaay higher on the to-do list. Ha!

Getting back to the topic of kitchen assembly time, the fastest part was the counters by far. We measured ten times before we cut each one, and we taped them off to lessen the likelihood of splintering from the circular saw (which worked!). Lo and behold, we didn’t mess up a single cut! Each of the four counters we sliced and diced fit like a glove. We still have to screw them into place and seal them (and figure out the entire island – so there’s THAT) but we’re super relieved that our first go at cutting our own counters wasn’t too much trouble. Note: For more info about how we planned this kitchen, what exact items we ordered, and why the heck we chose butcher block, this post has all of those details for ya!

And as for the color of our butcher block, we got so lucky! It’s really close to the heart pine floor color, and we think when we seal them we’ll be even closer (they look a bit drier and less shiny than the floors right now, but only slightly).

So that, my friends, is what we’ve been up to at the beach house. Oh and the kitchen table came with those chairs from craigslist (the whole thing was $65 and the table has super cool legs that you can’t really see here) but we’re going to be switching the free chairs out for white ones since that feels like a super dark spot in the kitchen right now. And those chandeliers will be lowered around 10″ (they were installed higher so people wouldn’t run into them and break them while the house was being put back together & the floors were getting refinished). And we need a dishwasher. And a drawer for that space below the microwave. And a much bigger island counter with a sink in it. And art. And lots of stuff. But look, we have a half-functional kitchen!!!

A few other things we checked off the list were that I got to run around scraping stickers off all of the windows with a razor and then I cleaned them all (so SHINNNNY! – please sing that like the crab in Moana). I also got crazy with the spackle and basically filled every single ding and dent I could find (if you look super closely in the video you might see some of my patches that I have to sand and paint the next time we’re there). When the hood went up there was a little ding in the ceiling, so I wasted no time hopping up on the counter to fill that baby. PARKOUR!

I’ll leave you guys with this shot of the kitchen from the door, which is such a welcome change! No more pile of Ikea boxes sitting on the floor, mocking us and making us question our sanity/ability/time management skills.

And since we promised a big ol’ mood board full of sources, here’s the one we shared a couple of weeks ago along with with our new additions added below:

1. Living Room Art / 2. Kitchen Stool (similar) / 3. Chair Version of Kitchen Stools / 4. Front Bedroom Art / 5. Walls (SW White Heron) / 6. Downstairs Trim (SW Stone Isle) / 7. Upstairs Trim (SW Pure White) / 8. Tub & Pocket Doors (SW Riverway) / 9. Foyer Mirror / 10. Hall Bath Tile / 11. Hall Bath Vanity / 12. Downstairs Bath Mirror / 13. Downstairs Bath Vanity / 14. Master Bath Mirror / 15. Master Bedding / 16. Master Bedside Lamps / 17. Master Bedroom Art / 18. Master Bath Tile / 19. Master Bath Accent Tile / 20. Master Nightstands / 21. Hall Bedding

22. Leather Ottomans / 23. Hall Bedroom Art / 24. Extra-Long Waffle Shower Curtain / 25. Downstairs Bath Art / 26. Glass Shower Pane / 27. Pink Downstairs Lamps / 28. Hall Bedroom Blanket / 29. Front Bedroom Blanket / 30. Blue Front Bedroom Lamps / 31. Kitchen Counters /  32. Wood Benches / 33. Front Bedroom Pillow / 34. Kitchen Cabinets / 35. Front Bedroom Rug / 36. Living Room Rug / 37. Middle Bedroom Rug

And for anyone looking for lighting sources, here’s our mood board with that info:

1. Front Porch / 2. Downstairs Bath / 3. Kitchen Island / 4. Porch Numbers 5. Foyer (similar) / 6. Bedrooms / 7. Kitchen Sconces / 8. Living & Master Bath 9. Mudroom / 10. Clear, Soft White LED Bulbs / 11. Dining / 12. Master Bath 13. Hall Bath / 14. Hallway & Small Upstairs Rooms / 15. Under Stairs

And in perhaps the craziest news of all, on November 5th we got a completely unseasonably warm 70-degree day, so we actually all went to the beach and went swimming!

It was so crazy. The water felt perfectly refreshing! Of course now we’re back at home and this morning it was 40 degrees so bah humbug.

Psst – You can see more of our beach house adventure here (it’s a category full of posts about the entire process, which started over a year ago).

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta… appeared first on Young House Love.

The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta… published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

[truereviewpage]

The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta…

Dude. We got things DONE this weekend at the beach house. And by that I mean, we showed up with a giant to-do list and only got about half of it checked off, but it really felt awesome after four days there (thanks to the kids having no school on Monday & Tuesday) to lock the door knowing that we’d knocked out a huge portion of the kitchen.

We still have to get a fridge and a dishwasher, add floating shelves around the stove, add a backsplash, do the toe kicks & quarter round down at the cabinet bases, and the island will have a larger counter with a sink in it and a 12″ overhang for the stools… but we are getting there! We actually have perimeter counters! I mean, they need to be screwed in and sealed, but they’re there! And we have working drawers (still need hardware) and a hood that’s hung up (that white part is just a protective cover, it’ll all be stainless once we peel that off). I love how everything I say is countered by a “but we still need to do blank!” But seriously, this kitchen progress feels pretty freaking exciting for us. Especially because just a little while ago it was looking more like this:

And back when we bought it last fall we were staring at a room that looked like this:

So…. progress!

And without further ado, here’s a video walk-through that we took right before we locked the door behind us yesterday. It’s full of all the what’s next & what’s changing info along with a bunch of explanations about the whole house as it has progressed since our last tour back in October. Note: If you’re viewing this post through a reader, you might have to click through to the actual post to see the video. And if for any reason you’re having an issue with the video loading here on our site, you can also view it here on YouTube. 

Once again I’ll mention that I can fit a whole lot more words and info (and pictures!) into a video. Heck, a video is worth a million pictures! So that’s the best way to get all caught up and see/hear about what’s going on these days. But if you’re at work or somewhere that you can’t watch the video, here are some photos to tide you over.

The front bedroom is moving right along. We couldn’t fit the headboard in the packed car on the way out, so that’s coming (and we’ll also hang curtains to make that bed feel a lot more balanced and grounded in front of the window) but it’s really feeling super cozy in there now. Something magical happened when we moved the side tables from the back bedroom in and rolled out our new 8 x 10 rug. It’s 20% off on Serena & Lily right now – not sure how long that’ll last, but it’s so soft and it’s also indoor/outdoor so we love that we can hose it down outside and it’ll hopefully be super durable for the beach house.

As for the other sources in the room, there’s a mood board with links at the bottom of this post, so there you can find the bedding & lamp info, etc. And picture me cupping my hands around my mouth and shouting a resounding “yes, we’d love to!” to everyone asking us to build a “Shop Our Beach House” page like the one we have for our current house. We’re hoping to do that as things come together more – maybe within the next month or two.

We also got this 5 x 8′ rug (also on sale for just $258 right now) for the guest room, which is a pretty sandy color and is a hemp/cotton blend for a nice durable and beachy feeling. We’re realizing we’re drawn to a lot of blue things (hello, beach house… and also, hello, we love blue) so it’s nice to have some warm tones in the refinished wood doors & floors, the pink stove, and also in this warm textured rug. Gotta keep the balance so it doesn’t turn into the “I’m Blue Abadee Abadaaa” house (does anyone else remember that crazy song?! They were just taking nonsense right?!).

Speaking of blue, downstairs we also got this 8 x 10′ rug, which is a nice silvery gray-blue, especially on sunnier days (so sorry the video was filmed on the grayest of gray days – BOO!). We’re actually debating bringing this rug up to the back bedroom and perhaps getting something slightly warmer and less blue since the sofa sometimes reads like a deep denim blue, and again… there’s lots of blue here, so we want to make sure it doesn’t get overwhelming.

It’s a really nice plush rug though! Super soft feeling and the little X detail around the border is so cool. Looks way more expensive than it was for that large size in all wool. And yes, we still need a top for that coffee table and to paint and reupholster those crazy green chairs. Soon I hope!

And now let’s talk about the rug that didn’t work. As soon as we rolled this one out we were like “Uhhhhh, it’s really dark. And kinda crazy looking in here.” In the photo on the site it looked a lot more subtle and subdued, but in person it felt more chaotic than this picture even conveys. In person you couldn’t really pick up on the diagonal lines of the pattern, it just sort of looked like a rag rug with lots of randomly placed bumps in dark blue, and with the blue doors and the blue tub in the master… it was A LOT of blue (and not all the same tone of blue – the rug sort of clashed in person).

So although we gave ourselves a few days to live with it to see if it grew on us, the verdict was “we’re sending it back.” Again, this picture makes it look less busy. In person, it just didn’t work for us. Which is sad, because packaging and mailing back a rug is akin to running a triathlon for a 5’2″ gal like me.

So the little X-border rug from downstairs might come up here (it reads a lot more like a light silvery-gray) and then we have to find a good rug for the living room, but it helps that the three big rugs that we need for this house are all 8 x 10’s, which is nice for flexibility & swapping (you know I love to switch things around – a little too much probably).

The hall bathroom is still my favorite bathroom, and we actually found the perfect mirror for it, but alas, we couldn’t fit that in the car either, so we’ll have to hang it next time. We did manage to hang a shower curtain in there and caulk the tile edges (we finished caulking all the showers!). So pretty much all we need to complete this room is a toilet paper holder, a few towel hooks, and the easy small stuff. HUZZAH! Also need to hang the art and add window treatments so we can stop blocking the windows with cardboard while we’re there because that just doesn’t feel very classy you guys.

This is a terrible picture taken with the lights on during a super rainy day, but the master bathroom shower finally got glass! WAHOO! We worried that shower might feel tight, but thanks to getting this glass panel instead of a big bulky wall, it feel so bright and open in there! It actually feels just as big as the bigger hall shower which is around 6″ wider – so it’s funny how much your eyes play tricks on you when it comes to the actual perceived size of something. Still need a lot of stuff in here (I want a wooden stool by the tub, a few other hits of wood to add warmth, window treatments of course, towel hooks, etc). Slowly but surely…

But now let’s get back to the kitchen that we assembled from approximately 4,567 small parts with a single allen wrench.

Just kidding, it was slightly fewer parts and it actually didn’t involve a single allen wrench (go figure!), but it was sort of like a DIY marathon of snapping, drilling, hinging, hooking, and leveling things over a four day period.

As for why we opted for Ikea cabinets at the beach house, we���ve been really happy with the ones we put in our laundry room and our bonus room – and the budget called for something affordable since we’re also adding beds and furnishing a lot of other rooms at the same time. We even got to take advantage of Ikea’s spring kitchen event (yes we ordered all of this waaaay back then) to save some extra money. This entire kitchen – including the counters and sink! – came in around $3K, which is pretty dang amazing to me.

We’re lucky because some Ikea kitchens consist of 25+ cabinets and we only had 8 in here to assemble (and it helped that we had an extra long weekend thanks to those two additional days off of school for the kids). It also helped that we went pretty simple with the layout and the cabinet fronts since we want the pink stove and the pretty old architectural details in here (like the back staircase and the old glass-paned doors) to be the stars.

Speaking of that back door, yes we’re going to eventually paint it. We love the blue chippy door to the mudroom, which you can see in the video, but the back door just seems to look dirtier as the kitchen comes together more. And yes, we have to weatherstrip it because there’s a small gap. The light bounces off the floor and creates what looks like a much wider gap than the actual sliver of space under there, so we get “OMG CAN AN ANIMAL GET IN THERE?!” comments surprisingly often, but in reality it’s definitely not animal-sized. If it was, the whole weatherstripping thing would have been waaaay higher on the to-do list. Ha!

Getting back to the topic of kitchen assembly time, the fastest part was the counters by far. We measured ten times before we cut each one, and we taped them off to lessen the likelihood of splintering from the circular saw (which worked!). Lo and behold, we didn’t mess up a single cut! Each of the four counters we sliced and diced fit like a glove. We still have to screw them into place and seal them (and figure out the entire island – so there’s THAT) but we’re super relieved that our first go at cutting our own counters wasn’t too much trouble. Note: For more info about how we planned this kitchen, what exact items we ordered, and why the heck we chose butcher block, this post has all of those details for ya!

And as for the color of our butcher block, we got so lucky! It’s really close to the heart pine floor color, and we think when we seal them we’ll be even closer (they look a bit drier and less shiny than the floors right now, but only slightly).

So that, my friends, is what we’ve been up to at the beach house. Oh and the kitchen table came with those chairs from craigslist (the whole thing was $65 and the table has super cool legs that you can’t really see here) but we’re going to be switching the free chairs out for white ones since that feels like a super dark spot in the kitchen right now. And those chandeliers will be lowered around 10″ (they were installed higher so people wouldn’t run into them and break them while the house was being put back together & the floors were getting refinished). And we need a dishwasher. And a drawer for that space below the microwave. And a much bigger island counter with a sink in it. And art. And lots of stuff. But look, we have a half-functional kitchen!!!

A few other things we checked off the list were that I got to run around scraping stickers off all of the windows with a razor and then I cleaned them all (so SHINNNNY! – please sing that like the crab in Moana). I also got crazy with the spackle and basically filled every single ding and dent I could find (if you look super closely in the video you might see some of my patches that I have to sand and paint the next time we’re there). When the hood went up there was a little ding in the ceiling, so I wasted no time hopping up on the counter to fill that baby. PARKOUR!

I’ll leave you guys with this shot of the kitchen from the door, which is such a welcome change! No more pile of Ikea boxes sitting on the floor, mocking us and making us question our sanity/ability/time management skills.

And since we promised a big ol’ mood board full of sources, here’s the one we shared a couple of weeks ago along with with our new additions added below:

1. Living Room Art / 2. Kitchen Stool (similar) / 3. Chair Version of Kitchen Stools / 4. Front Bedroom Art / 5. Walls (SW White Heron) / 6. Downstairs Trim (SW Stone Isle) / 7. Upstairs Trim (SW Pure White) / 8. Tub & Pocket Doors (SW Riverway) / 9. Foyer Mirror / 10. Hall Bath Tile / 11. Hall Bath Vanity / 12. Downstairs Bath Mirror / 13. Downstairs Bath Vanity / 14. Master Bath Mirror / 15. Master Bedding / 16. Master Bedside Lamps / 17. Master Bedroom Art / 18. Master Bath Tile / 19. Master Bath Accent Tile / 20. Master Nightstands / 21. Hall Bedding

22. Leather Ottomans / 23. Hall Bedroom Art / 24. Extra-Long Waffle Shower Curtain / 25. Downstairs Bath Art / 26. Glass Shower Pane / 27. Pink Downstairs Lamps / 28. Hall Bedroom Blanket / 29. Front Bedroom Blanket / 30. Blue Front Bedroom Lamps / 31. Kitchen Counters /  32. Wood Benches / 33. Front Bedroom Pillow / 34. Kitchen Cabinets / 35. Front Bedroom Rug / 36. Living Room Rug / 37. Middle Bedroom Rug

And for anyone looking for lighting sources, here’s our mood board with that info:

1. Front Porch / 2. Downstairs Bath / 3. Kitchen Island / 4. Porch Numbers 5. Foyer (similar) / 6. Bedrooms / 7. Kitchen Sconces / 8. Living & Master Bath 9. Mudroom / 10. Clear, Soft White LED Bulbs / 11. Dining / 12. Master Bath 13. Hall Bath / 14. Hallway & Small Upstairs Rooms / 15. Under Stairs

And in perhaps the craziest news of all, on November 5th we got a completely unseasonably warm 70-degree day, so we actually all went to the beach and went swimming!

It was so crazy. The water felt perfectly refreshing! Of course now we’re back at home and this morning it was 40 degrees so bah humbug.

Psst – You can see more of our beach house adventure here (it’s a category full of posts about the entire process, which started over a year ago).

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta… appeared first on Young House Love.

The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta… published first on http://ift.tt/2qCHnUt

[interiorstarweb]

The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta…

Dude. We got things DONE this weekend at the beach house. And by that I mean, we showed up with a giant to-do list and only got about half of it checked off, but it really felt awesome after four days there (thanks to the kids having no school on Monday & Tuesday) to lock the door knowing that we’d knocked out a huge portion of the kitchen.

We still have to get a fridge and a dishwasher, add floating shelves around the stove, add a backsplash, do the toe kicks & quarter round down at the cabinet bases, and the island will have a larger counter with a sink in it and a 12″ overhang for the stools… but we are getting there! We actually have perimeter counters! I mean, they need to be screwed in and sealed, but they’re there! And we have working drawers (still need hardware) and a hood that’s hung up (that white part is just a protective cover, it’ll all be stainless once we peel that off). I love how everything I say is countered by a “but we still need to do blank!” But seriously, this kitchen progress feels pretty freaking exciting for us. Especially because just a little while ago it was looking more like this:

And back when we bought it last fall we were staring at a room that looked like this:

So…. progress!

And without further ado, here’s a video walk-through that we took right before we locked the door behind us yesterday. It’s full of all the what’s next & what’s changing info along with a bunch of explanations about the whole house as it has progressed since our last tour back in October. Note: If you’re viewing this post through a reader, you might have to click through to the actual post to see the video. And if for any reason you’re having an issue with the video loading here on our site, you can also view it here on YouTube. 

Once again I’ll mention that I can fit a whole lot more words and info (and pictures!) into a video. Heck, a video is worth a million pictures! So that’s the best way to get all caught up and see/hear about what’s going on these days. But if you’re at work or somewhere that you can’t watch the video, here are some photos to tide you over.

The front bedroom is moving right along. We couldn’t fit the headboard in the packed car on the way out, so that’s coming (and we’ll also hang curtains to make that bed feel a lot more balanced and grounded in front of the window) but it’s really feeling super cozy in there now. Something magical happened when we moved the side tables from the back bedroom in and rolled out our new 8 x 10 rug. It’s 20% off on Serena & Lily right now – not sure how long that’ll last, but it’s so soft and it’s also indoor/outdoor so we love that we can hose it down outside and it’ll hopefully be super durable for the beach house.

As for the other sources in the room, there’s a mood board with links at the bottom of this post, so there you can find the bedding & lamp info, etc. And picture me cupping my hands around my mouth and shouting a resounding “yes, we’d love to!” to everyone asking us to build a “Shop Our Beach House” page like the one we have for our current house. We’re hoping to do that as things come together more – maybe within the next month or two.

We also got this 5 x 8′ rug (also on sale for just $258 right now) for the guest room, which is a pretty sandy color and is a hemp/cotton blend for a nice durable and beachy feeling. We’re realizing we’re drawn to a lot of blue things (hello, beach house… and also, hello, we love blue) so it’s nice to have some warm tones in the refinished wood doors & floors, the pink stove, and also in this warm textured rug. Gotta keep the balance so it doesn’t turn into the “I’m Blue Abadee Abadaaa” house (does anyone else remember that crazy song?! They were just taking nonsense right?!).

Speaking of blue, downstairs we also got this 8 x 10′ rug, which is a nice silvery gray-blue, especially on sunnier days (so sorry the video was filmed on the grayest of gray days – BOO!). We’re actually debating bringing this rug up to the back bedroom and perhaps getting something slightly warmer and less blue since the sofa sometimes reads like a deep denim blue, and again… there’s lots of blue here, so we want to make sure it doesn’t get overwhelming.

It’s a really nice plush rug though! Super soft feeling and the little X detail around the border is so cool. Looks way more expensive than it was for that large size in all wool. And yes, we still need a top for that coffee table and to paint and reupholster those crazy green chairs. Soon I hope!

And now let’s talk about the rug that didn’t work. As soon as we rolled this one out we were like “Uhhhhh, it’s really dark. And kinda crazy looking in here.” In the photo on the site it looked a lot more subtle and subdued, but in person it felt more chaotic than this picture even conveys. In person you couldn’t really pick up on the diagonal lines of the pattern, it just sort of looked like a rag rug with lots of randomly placed bumps in dark blue, and with the blue doors and the blue tub in the master… it was A LOT of blue (and not all the same tone of blue – the rug sort of clashed in person).

So although we gave ourselves a few days to live with it to see if it grew on us, the verdict was “we’re sending it back.” Again, this picture makes it look less busy. In person, it just didn’t work for us. Which is sad, because packaging and mailing back a rug is akin to running a triathlon for a 5’2″ gal like me.

So the little X-border rug from downstairs might come up here (it reads a lot more like a light silvery-gray) and then we have to find a good rug for the living room, but it helps that the three big rugs that we need for this house are all 8 x 10’s, which is nice for flexibility & swapping (you know I love to switch things around – a little too much probably).

The hall bathroom is still my favorite bathroom, and we actually found the perfect mirror for it, but alas, we couldn’t fit that in the car either, so we’ll have to hang it next time. We did manage to hang a shower curtain in there and caulk the tile edges (we finished caulking all the showers!). So pretty much all we need to complete this room is a toilet paper holder, a few towel hooks, and the easy small stuff. HUZZAH! Also need to hang the art and add window treatments so we can stop blocking the windows with cardboard while we’re there because that just doesn’t feel very classy you guys.

This is a terrible picture taken with the lights on during a super rainy day, but the master bathroom shower finally got glass! WAHOO! We worried that shower might feel tight, but thanks to getting this glass panel instead of a big bulky wall, it feel so bright and open in there! It actually feels just as big as the bigger hall shower which is around 6″ wider – so it’s funny how much your eyes play tricks on you when it comes to the actual perceived size of something. Still need a lot of stuff in here (I want a wooden stool by the tub, a few other hits of wood to add warmth, window treatments of course, towel hooks, etc). Slowly but surely…

But now let’s get back to the kitchen that we assembled from approximately 4,567 small parts with a single allen wrench.

Just kidding, it was slightly fewer parts and it actually didn’t involve a single allen wrench (go figure!), but it was sort of like a DIY marathon of snapping, drilling, hinging, hooking, and leveling things over a four day period.

As for why we opted for Ikea cabinets at the beach house, we’ve been really happy with the ones we put in our laundry room and our bonus room – and the budget called for something affordable since we’re also adding beds and furnishing a lot of other rooms at the same time. We even got to take advantage of Ikea’s spring kitchen event (yes we ordered all of this waaaay back then) to save some extra money. This entire kitchen – including the counters and sink! – came in around $3K, which is pretty dang amazing to me.

We’re lucky because some Ikea kitchens consist of 25+ cabinets and we only had 8 in here to assemble (and it helped that we had an extra long weekend thanks to those two additional days off of school for the kids). It also helped that we went pretty simple with the layout and the cabinet fronts since we want the pink stove and the pretty old architectural details in here (like the back staircase and the old glass-paned doors) to be the stars.

Speaking of that back door, yes we’re going to eventually paint it. We love the blue chippy door to the mudroom, which you can see in the video, but the back door just seems to look dirtier as the kitchen comes together more. And yes, we have to weatherstrip it because there’s a small gap. The light bounces off the floor and creates what looks like a much wider gap than the actual sliver of space under there, so we get “OMG CAN AN ANIMAL GET IN THERE?!” comments surprisingly often, but in reality it’s definitely not animal-sized. If it was, the whole weatherstripping thing would have been waaaay higher on the to-do list. Ha!

Getting back to the topic of kitchen assembly time, the fastest part was the counters by far. We measured ten times before we cut each one, and we taped them off to lessen the likelihood of splintering from the circular saw (which worked!). Lo and behold, we didn’t mess up a single cut! Each of the four counters we sliced and diced fit like a glove. We still have to screw them into place and seal them (and figure out the entire island – so there’s THAT) but we’re super relieved that our first go at cutting our own counters wasn’t too much trouble. Note: For more info about how we planned this kitchen, what exact items we ordered, and why the heck we chose butcher block, this post has all of those details for ya!

And as for the color of our butcher block, we got so lucky! It’s really close to the heart pine floor color, and we think when we seal them we’ll be even closer (they look a bit drier and less shiny than the floors right now, but only slightly).

So that, my friends, is what we’ve been up to at the beach house. Oh and the kitchen table came with those chairs from craigslist (the whole thing was $65 and the table has super cool legs that you can’t really see here) but we’re going to be switching the free chairs out for white ones since that feels like a super dark spot in the kitchen right now. And those chandeliers will be lowered around 10″ (they were installed higher so people wouldn’t run into them and break them while the house was being put back together & the floors were getting refinished). And we need a dishwasher. And a drawer for that space below the microwave. And a much bigger island counter with a sink in it. And art. And lots of stuff. But look, we have a half-functional kitchen!!!

A few other things we checked off the list were that I got to run around scraping stickers off all of the windows with a razor and then I cleaned them all (so SHINNNNY! – please sing that like the crab in Moana). I also got crazy with the spackle and basically filled every single ding and dent I could find (if you look super closely in the video you might see some of my patches that I have to sand and paint the next time we’re there). When the hood went up there was a little ding in the ceiling, so I wasted no time hopping up on the counter to fill that baby. PARKOUR!

I’ll leave you guys with this shot of the kitchen from the door, which is such a welcome change! No more pile of Ikea boxes sitting on the floor, mocking us and making us question our sanity/ability/time management skills.

And since we promised a big ol’ mood board full of sources, here’s the one we shared a couple of weeks ago along with with our new additions added below:

1. Living Room Art / 2. Kitchen Stool (similar) / 3. Chair Version of Kitchen Stools / 4. Front Bedroom Art / 5. Walls (SW White Heron) / 6. Downstairs Trim (SW Stone Isle) / 7. Upstairs Trim (SW Pure White) / 8. Tub & Pocket Doors (SW Riverway) / 9. Foyer Mirror / 10. Hall Bath Tile / 11. Hall Bath Vanity / 12. Downstairs Bath Mirror / 13. Downstairs Bath Vanity / 14. Master Bath Mirror / 15. Master Bedding / 16. Master Bedside Lamps / 17. Master Bedroom Art / 18. Master Bath Tile / 19. Master Bath Accent Tile / 20. Master Nightstands / 21. Hall Bedding

22. Leather Ottomans / 23. Hall Bedroom Art / 24. Extra-Long Waffle Shower Curtain / 25. Downstairs Bath Art / 26. Glass Shower Pane / 27. Pink Downstairs Lamps / 28. Hall Bedroom Blanket / 29. Front Bedroom Blanket / 30. Blue Front Bedroom Lamps / 31. Kitchen Counters /  32. Wood Benches / 33. Front Bedroom Pillow / 34. Kitchen Cabinets / 35. Front Bedroom Rug / 36. Living Room Rug / 37. Middle Bedroom Rug

And for anyone looking for lighting sources, here’s our mood board with that info:

1. Front Porch / 2. Downstairs Bath / 3. Kitchen Island / 4. Porch Numbers 5. Foyer (similar) / 6. Bedrooms / 7. Kitchen Sconces / 8. Living & Master Bath 9. Mudroom / 10. Clear, Soft White LED Bulbs / 11. Dining / 12. Master Bath 13. Hall Bath / 14. Hallway & Small Upstairs Rooms / 15. Under Stairs

And in perhaps the craziest news of all, on November 5th we got a completely unseasonably warm 70-degree day, so we actually all went to the beach and went swimming!

It was so crazy. The water felt perfectly refreshing! Of course now we’re back at home and this morning it was 40 degrees so bah humbug.

Psst – You can see more of our beach house adventure here (it’s a category full of posts about the entire process, which started over a year ago).

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta… appeared first on Young House Love.

The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta… published first on http://ift.tt/2uiWrIt

[lukerhill]

The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta…

Dude. We got things DONE this weekend at the beach house. And by that I mean, we showed up with a giant to-do list and only got about half of it checked off, but it really felt awesome after four days there (thanks to the kids having no school on Monday & Tuesday) to lock the door knowing that we’d knocked out a huge portion of the kitchen.

We still have to get a fridge and a dishwasher, add floating shelves around the stove, add a backsplash, do the toe kicks & quarter round down at the cabinet bases, and the island will have a larger counter with a sink in it and a 12″ overhang for the stools… but we are getting there! We actually have perimeter counters! I mean, they need to be screwed in and sealed, but they’re there! And we have working drawers (still need hardware) and a hood that’s hung up (that white part is just a protective cover, it’ll all be stainless once we peel that off). I love how everything I say is countered by a “but we still need to do blank!” But seriously, this kitchen progress feels pretty freaking exciting for us. Especially because just a little while ago it was looking more like this:

And back when we bought it last fall we were staring at a room that looked like this:

So…. progress!

And without further ado, here’s a video walk-through that we took right before we locked the door behind us yesterday. It’s full of all the what’s next & what’s changing info along with a bunch of explanations about the whole house as it has progressed since our last tour back in October. Note: If you’re viewing this post through a reader, you might have to click through to the actual post to see the video. And if for any reason you’re having an issue with the video loading here on our site, you can also view it here on YouTube. 

Once again I’ll mention that I can fit a whole lot more words and info (and pictures!) into a video. Heck, a video is worth a million pictures! So that’s the best way to get all caught up and see/hear about what’s going on these days. But if you’re at work or somewhere that you can’t watch the video, here are some photos to tide you over.

The front bedroom is moving right along. We couldn’t fit the headboard in the packed car on the way out, so that’s coming (and we’ll also hang curtains to make that bed feel a lot more balanced and grounded in front of the window) but it’s really feeling super cozy in there now. Something magical happened when we moved the side tables from the back bedroom in and rolled out our new 8 x 10 rug. It’s 20% off on Serena & Lily right now – not sure how long that’ll last, but it’s so soft and it’s also indoor/outdoor so we love that we can hose it down outside and it’ll hopefully be super durable for the beach house.

As for the other sources in the room, there’s a mood board with links at the bottom of this post, so there you can find the bedding & lamp info, etc. And picture me cupping my hands around my mouth and shouting a resounding “yes, we’d love to!” to everyone asking us to build a “Shop Our Beach House” page like the one we have for our current house. We’re hoping to do that as things come together more – maybe within the next month or two.

We also got this 5 x 8′ rug (also on sale for just $258 right now) for the guest room, which is a pretty sandy color and is a hemp/cotton blend for a nice durable and beachy feeling. We’re realizing we’re drawn to a lot of blue things (hello, beach house… and also, hello, we love blue) so it’s nice to have some warm tones in the refinished wood doors & floors, the pink stove, and also in this warm textured rug. Gotta keep the balance so it doesn’t turn into the “I’m Blue Abadee Abadaaa” house (does anyone else remember that crazy song?! They were just taking nonsense right?!).

Speaking of blue, downstairs we also got this 8 x 10′ rug, which is a nice silvery gray-blue, especially on sunnier days (so sorry the video was filmed on the grayest of gray days – BOO!). We’re actually debating bringing this rug up to the back bedroom and perhaps getting something slightly warmer and less blue since the sofa sometimes reads like a deep denim blue, and again… there’s lots of blue here, so we want to make sure it doesn’t get overwhelming.

It’s a really nice plush rug though! Super soft feeling and the little X detail around the border is so cool. Looks way more expensive than it was for that large size in all wool. And yes, we still need a top for that coffee table and to paint and reupholster those crazy green chairs. Soon I hope!

And now let’s talk about the rug that didn’t work. As soon as we rolled this one out we were like “Uhhhhh, it’s really dark. And kinda crazy looking in here.” In the photo on the site it looked a lot more subtle and subdued, but in person it felt more chaotic than this picture even conveys. In person you couldn’t really pick up on the diagonal lines of the pattern, it just sort of looked like a rag rug with lots of randomly placed bumps in dark blue, and with the blue doors and the blue tub in the master… it was A LOT of blue (and not all the same tone of blue – the rug sort of clashed in person).

So although we gave ourselves a few days to live with it to see if it grew on us, the verdict was “we’re sending it back.” Again, this picture makes it look less busy. In person, it just didn’t work for us. Which is sad, because packaging and mailing back a rug is akin to running a triathlon for a 5’2″ gal like me.

So the little X-border rug from downstairs might come up here (it reads a lot more like a light silvery-gray) and then we have to find a good rug for the living room, but it helps that the three big rugs that we need for this house are all 8 x 10’s, which is nice for flexibility & swapping (you know I love to switch things around – a little too much probably).

The hall bathroom is still my favorite bathroom, and we actually found the perfect mirror for it, but alas, we couldn’t fit that in the car either, so we’ll have to hang it next time. We did manage to hang a shower curtain in there and caulk the tile edges (we finished caulking all the showers!). So pretty much all we need to complete this room is a toilet paper holder, a few towel hooks, and the easy small stuff. HUZZAH! Also need to hang the art and add window treatments so we can stop blocking the windows with cardboard while we’re there because that just doesn’t feel very classy you guys.

This is a terrible picture taken with the lights on during a super rainy day, but the master bathroom shower finally got glass! WAHOO! We worried that shower might feel tight, but thanks to getting this glass panel instead of a big bulky wall, it feel so bright and open in there! It actually feels just as big as the bigger hall shower which is around 6″ wider – so it’s funny how much your eyes play tricks on you when it comes to the actual perceived size of something. Still need a lot of stuff in here (I want a wooden stool by the tub, a few other hits of wood to add warmth, window treatments of course, towel hooks, etc). Slowly but surely…

But now let’s get back to the kitchen that we assembled from approximately 4,567 small parts with a single allen wrench.

Just kidding, it was slightly fewer parts and it actually didn’t involve a single allen wrench (go figure!), but it was sort of like a DIY marathon of snapping, drilling, hinging, hooking, and leveling things over a four day period.

As for why we opted for Ikea cabinets at the beach house, we’ve been really happy with the ones we put in our laundry room and our bonus room – and the budget called for something affordable since we’re also adding beds and furnishing a lot of other rooms at the same time. We even got to take advantage of Ikea’s spring kitchen event (yes we ordered all of this waaaay back then) to save some extra money. This entire kitchen – including the counters and sink! – came in around $3K, which is pretty dang amazing to me.

We’re lucky because some Ikea kitchens consist of 25+ cabinets and we only had 8 in here to assemble (and it helped that we had an extra long weekend thanks to those two additional days off of school for the kids). It also helped that we went pretty simple with the layout and the cabinet fronts since we want the pink stove and the pretty old architectural details in here (like the back staircase and the old glass-paned doors) to be the stars.

Speaking of that back door, yes we’re going to eventually paint it. We love the blue chippy door to the mudroom, which you can see in the video, but the back door just seems to look dirtier as the kitchen comes together more. And yes, we have to weatherstrip it because there’s a small gap. The light bounces off the floor and creates what looks like a much wider gap than the actual sliver of space under there, so we get “OMG CAN AN ANIMAL GET IN THERE?!” comments surprisingly often, but in reality it’s definitely not animal-sized. If it was, the whole weatherstripping thing would have been waaaay higher on the to-do list. Ha!

Getting back to the topic of kitchen assembly time, the fastest part was the counters by far. We measured ten times before we cut each one, and we taped them off to lessen the likelihood of splintering from the circular saw (which worked!). Lo and behold, we didn’t mess up a single cut! Each of the four counters we sliced and diced fit like a glove. We still have to screw them into place and seal them (and figure out the entire island – so there’s THAT) but we’re super relieved that our first go at cutting our own counters wasn’t too much trouble. Note: For more info about how we planned this kitchen, what exact items we ordered, and why the heck we chose butcher block, this post has all of those details for ya!

And as for the color of our butcher block, we got so lucky! It’s really close to the heart pine floor color, and we think when we seal them we’ll be even closer (they look a bit drier and less shiny than the floors right now, but only slightly).

So that, my friends, is what we’ve been up to at the beach house. Oh and the kitchen table came with those chairs from craigslist (the whole thing was $65 and the table has super cool legs that you can’t really see here) but we’re going to be switching the free chairs out for white ones since that feels like a super dark spot in the kitchen right now. And those chandeliers will be lowered around 10″ (they were installed higher so people wouldn’t run into them and break them while the house was being put back together & the floors were getting refinished). And we need a dishwasher. And a drawer for that space below the microwave. And a much bigger island counter with a sink in it. And art. And lots of stuff. But look, we have a half-functional kitchen!!!

A few other things we checked off the list were that I got to run around scraping stickers off all of the windows with a razor and then I cleaned them all (so SHINNNNY! – please sing that like the crab in Moana). I also got crazy with the spackle and basically filled every single ding and dent I could find (if you look super closely in the video you might see some of my patches that I have to sand and paint the next time we’re there). When the hood went up there was a little ding in the ceiling, so I wasted no time hopping up on the counter to fill that baby. PARKOUR!

I’ll leave you guys with this shot of the kitchen from the door, which is such a welcome change! No more pile of Ikea boxes sitting on the floor, mocking us and making us question our sanity/ability/time management skills.

And since we promised a big ol’ mood board full of sources, here’s the one we shared a couple of weeks ago along with with our new additions added below:

1. Living Room Art / 2. Kitchen Stool (similar) / 3. Chair Version of Kitchen Stools / 4. Front Bedroom Art / 5. Walls (SW White Heron) / 6. Downstairs Trim (SW Stone Isle) / 7. Upstairs Trim (SW Pure White) / 8. Tub & Pocket Doors (SW Riverway) / 9. Foyer Mirror / 10. Hall Bath Tile / 11. Hall Bath Vanity / 12. Downstairs Bath Mirror / 13. Downstairs Bath Vanity / 14. Master Bath Mirror / 15. Master Bedding / 16. Master Bedside Lamps / 17. Master Bedroom Art / 18. Master Bath Tile / 19. Master Bath Accent Tile / 20. Master Nightstands / 21. Hall Bedding

22. Leather Ottomans / 23. Hall Bedroom Art / 24. Extra-Long Waffle Shower Curtain / 25. Downstairs Bath Art / 26. Glass Shower Pane / 27. Pink Downstairs Lamps / 28. Hall Bedroom Blanket / 29. Front Bedroom Blanket / 30. Blue Front Bedroom Lamps / 31. Kitchen Counters /  32. Wood Benches / 33. Front Bedroom Pillow / 34. Kitchen Cabinets / 35. Front Bedroom Rug / 36. Living Room Rug / 37. Middle Bedroom Rug

And for anyone looking for lighting sources, here’s our mood board with that info:

1. Front Porch / 2. Downstairs Bath / 3. Kitchen Island / 4. Porch Numbers 5. Foyer (similar) / 6. Bedrooms / 7. Kitchen Sconces / 8. Living & Master Bath 9. Mudroom / 10. Clear, Soft White LED Bulbs / 11. Dining / 12. Master Bath 13. Hall Bath / 14. Hallway & Small Upstairs Rooms / 15. Under Stairs

And in perhaps the craziest news of all, on November 5th we got a completely unseasonably warm 70-degree day, so we actually all went to the beach and went swimming!

It was so crazy. The water felt perfectly refreshing! Of course now we’re back at home and this morning it was 40 degrees so bah humbug.

Psst – You can see more of our beach house adventure here (it’s a category full of posts about the entire process, which started over a year ago).

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta… appeared first on Young House Love.

[vincentbnaughton]

The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta…

Dude. We got things DONE this weekend at the beach house. And by that I mean, we showed up with a giant to-do list and only got about half of it checked off, but it really felt awesome after four days there (thanks to the kids having no school on Monday & Tuesday) to lock the door knowing that we’d knocked out a huge portion of the kitchen.

We still have to get a fridge and a dishwasher, add floating shelves around the stove, add a backsplash, do the toe kicks & quarter round down at the cabinet bases, and the island will have a larger counter with a sink in it and a 12″ overhang for the stools… but we are getting there! We actually have perimeter counters! I mean, they need to be screwed in and sealed, but they’re there! And we have working drawers (still need hardware) and a hood that’s hung up (that white part is just a protective cover, it’ll all be stainless once we peel that off). I love how everything I say is countered by a “but we still need to do blank!” But seriously, this kitchen progress feels pretty freaking exciting for us. Especially because just a little while ago it was looking more like this:

And back when we bought it last fall we were staring at a room that looked like this:

So…. progress!

And without further ado, here’s a video walk-through that we took right before we locked the door behind us yesterday. It’s full of all the what’s next & what’s changing info along with a bunch of explanations about the whole house as it has progressed since our last tour back in October. Note: If you’re viewing this post through a reader, you might have to click through to the actual post to see the video. And if for any reason you’re having an issue with the video loading here on our site, you can also view it here on YouTube. 

Once again I’ll mention that I can fit a whole lot more words and info (and pictures!) into a video. Heck, a video is worth a million pictures! So that’s the best way to get all caught up and see/hear about what’s going on these days. But if you’re at work or somewhere that you can’t watch the video, here are some photos to tide you over.

The front bedroom is moving right along. We couldn’t fit the headboard in the packed car on the way out, so that’s coming (and we’ll also hang curtains to make that bed feel a lot more balanced and grounded in front of the window) but it’s really feeling super cozy in there now. Something magical happened when we moved the side tables from the back bedroom in and rolled out our new 8 x 10 rug. It’s 20% off on Serena & Lily right now – not sure how long that’ll last, but it’s so soft and it’s also indoor/outdoor so we love that we can hose it down outside and it’ll hopefully be super durable for the beach house.

As for the other sources in the room, there’s a mood board with links at the bottom of this post, so there you can find the bedding & lamp info, etc. And picture me cupping my hands around my mouth and shouting a resounding “yes, we’d love to!” to everyone asking us to build a “Shop Our Beach House” page like the one we have for our current house. We’re hoping to do that as things come together more – maybe within the next month or two.

We also got this 5 x 8′ rug (also on sale for just $258 right now) for the guest room, which is a pretty sandy color and is a hemp/cotton blend for a nice durable and beachy feeling. We’re realizing we’re drawn to a lot of blue things (hello, beach house… and also, hello, we love blue) so it’s nice to have some warm tones in the refinished wood doors & floors, the pink stove, and also in this warm textured rug. Gotta keep the balance so it doesn’t turn into the “I’m Blue Abadee Abadaaa” house (does anyone else remember that crazy song?! They were just taking nonsense right?!).

Speaking of blue, downstairs we also got this 8 x 10′ rug, which is a nice silvery gray-blue, especially on sunnier days (so sorry the video was filmed on the grayest of gray days – BOO!). We’re actually debating bringing this rug up to the back bedroom and perhaps getting something slightly warmer and less blue since the sofa sometimes reads like a deep denim blue, and again… there’s lots of blue here, so we want to make sure it doesn’t get overwhelming.

It’s a really nice plush rug though! Super soft feeling and the little X detail around the border is so cool. Looks way more expensive than it was for that large size in all wool. And yes, we still need a top for that coffee table and to paint and reupholster those crazy green chairs. Soon I hope!

And now let’s talk about the rug that didn’t work. As soon as we rolled this one out we were like “Uhhhhh, it’s really dark. And kinda crazy looking in here.” In the photo on the site it looked a lot more subtle and subdued, but in person it felt more chaotic than this picture even conveys. In person you couldn’t really pick up on the diagonal lines of the pattern, it just sort of looked like a rag rug with lots of randomly placed bumps in dark blue, and with the blue doors and the blue tub in the master… it was A LOT of blue (and not all the same tone of blue – the rug sort of clashed in person).

So although we gave ourselves a few days to live with it to see if it grew on us, the verdict was “we’re sending it back.” Again, this picture makes it look less busy. In person, it just didn’t work for us. Which is sad, because packaging and mailing back a rug is akin to running a triathlon for a 5’2″ gal like me.

So the little X-border rug from downstairs might come up here (it reads a lot more like a light silvery-gray) and then we have to find a good rug for the living room, but it helps that the three big rugs that we need for this house are all 8 x 10’s, which is nice for flexibility & swapping (you know I love to switch things around – a little too much probably).

The hall bathroom is still my favorite bathroom, and we actually found the perfect mirror for it, but alas, we couldn’t fit that in the car either, so we’ll have to hang it next time. We did manage to hang a shower curtain in there and caulk the tile edges (we finished caulking all the showers!). So pretty much all we need to complete this room is a toilet paper holder, a few towel hooks, and the easy small stuff. HUZZAH! Also need to hang the art and add window treatments so we can stop blocking the windows with cardboard while we’re there because that just doesn’t feel very classy you guys.

This is a terrible picture taken with the lights on during a super rainy day, but the master bathroom shower finally got glass! WAHOO! We worried that shower might feel tight, but thanks to getting this glass panel instead of a big bulky wall, it feel so bright and open in there! It actually feels just as big as the bigger hall shower which is around 6″ wider – so it’s funny how much your eyes play tricks on you when it comes to the actual perceived size of something. Still need a lot of stuff in here (I want a wooden stool by the tub, a few other hits of wood to add warmth, window treatments of course, towel hooks, etc). Slowly but surely…

But now let’s get back to the kitchen that we assembled from approximately 4,567 small parts with a single allen wrench.

Just kidding, it was slightly fewer parts and it actually didn’t involve a single allen wrench (go figure!), but it was sort of like a DIY marathon of snapping, drilling, hinging, hooking, and leveling things over a four day period.

As for why we opted for Ikea cabinets at the beach house, we’ve been really happy with the ones we put in our laundry room and our bonus room – and the budget called for something affordable since we’re also adding beds and furnishing a lot of other rooms at the same time. We even got to take advantage of Ikea’s spring kitchen event (yes we ordered all of this waaaay back then) to save some extra money. This entire kitchen – including the counters and sink! – came in around $3K, which is pretty dang amazing to me.

We’re lucky because some Ikea kitchens consist of 25+ cabinets and we only had 8 in here to assemble (and it helped that we had an extra long weekend thanks to those two additional days off of school for the kids). It also helped that we went pretty simple with the layout and the cabinet fronts since we want the pink stove and the pretty old architectural details in here (like the back staircase and the old glass-paned doors) to be the stars.

Speaking of that back door, yes we’re going to eventually paint it. We love the blue chippy door to the mudroom, which you can see in the video, but the back door just seems to look dirtier as the kitchen comes together more. And yes, we have to weatherstrip it because there’s a small gap. The light bounces off the floor and creates what looks like a much wider gap than the actual sliver of space under there, so we get “OMG CAN AN ANIMAL GET IN THERE?!” comments surprisingly often, but in reality it’s definitely not animal-sized. If it was, the whole weatherstripping thing would have been waaaay higher on the to-do list. Ha!

Getting back to the topic of kitchen assembly time, the fastest part was the counters by far. We measured ten times before we cut each one, and we taped them off to lessen the likelihood of splintering from the circular saw (which worked!). Lo and behold, we didn’t mess up a single cut! Each of the four counters we sliced and diced fit like a glove. We still have to screw them into place and seal them (and figure out the entire island – so there’s THAT) but we’re super relieved that our first go at cutting our own counters wasn’t too much trouble. Note: For more info about how we planned this kitchen, what exact items we ordered, and why the heck we chose butcher block, this post has all of those details for ya!

And as for the color of our butcher block, we got so lucky! It’s really close to the heart pine floor color, and we think when we seal them we’ll be even closer (they look a bit drier and less shiny than the floors right now, but only slightly).

So that, my friends, is what we’ve been up to at the beach house. Oh and the kitchen table came with those chairs from craigslist (the whole thing was $65 and the table has super cool legs that you can’t really see here) but we’re going to be switching the free chairs out for white ones since that feels like a super dark spot in the kitchen right now. And those chandeliers will be lowered around 10″ (they were installed higher so people wouldn’t run into them and break them while the house was being put back together & the floors were getting refinished). And we need a dishwasher. And a drawer for that space below the microwave. And a much bigger island counter with a sink in it. And art. And lots of stuff. But look, we have a half-functional kitchen!!!

A few other things we checked off the list were that I got to run around scraping stickers off all of the windows with a razor and then I cleaned them all (so SHINNNNY! – please sing that like the crab in Moana). I also got crazy with the spackle and basically filled every single ding and dent I could find (if you look super closely in the video you might see some of my patches that I have to sand and paint the next time we’re there). When the hood went up there was a little ding in the ceiling, so I wasted no time hopping up on the counter to fill that baby. PARKOUR!

I’ll leave you guys with this shot of the kitchen from the door, which is such a welcome change! No more pile of Ikea boxes sitting on the floor, mocking us and making us question our sanity/ability/time management skills.

And since we promised a big ol’ mood board full of sources, here’s the one we shared a couple of weeks ago along with with our new additions added below:

1. Living Room Art / 2. Kitchen Stool (similar) / 3. Chair Version of Kitchen Stools / 4. Front Bedroom Art / 5. Walls (SW White Heron) / 6. Downstairs Trim (SW Stone Isle) / 7. Upstairs Trim (SW Pure White) / 8. Tub & Pocket Doors (SW Riverway) / 9. Foyer Mirror / 10. Hall Bath Tile / 11. Hall Bath Vanity / 12. Downstairs Bath Mirror / 13. Downstairs Bath Vanity / 14. Master Bath Mirror / 15. Master Bedding / 16. Master Bedside Lamps / 17. Master Bedroom Art / 18. Master Bath Tile / 19. Master Bath Accent Tile / 20. Master Nightstands / 21. Hall Bedding

22. Leather Ottomans / 23. Hall Bedroom Art / 24. Extra-Long Waffle Shower Curtain / 25. Downstairs Bath Art / 26. Glass Shower Pane / 27. Pink Downstairs Lamps / 28. Hall Bedroom Blanket / 29. Front Bedroom Blanket / 30. Blue Front Bedroom Lamps / 31. Kitchen Counters /  32. Wood Benches / 33. Front Bedroom Pillow / 34. Kitchen Cabinets / 35. Front Bedroom Rug / 36. Living Room Rug / 37. Middle Bedroom Rug

And for anyone looking for lighting sources, here’s our mood board with that info:

1. Front Porch / 2. Downstairs Bath / 3. Kitchen Island / 4. Porch Numbers 5. Foyer (similar) / 6. Bedrooms / 7. Kitchen Sconces / 8. Living & Master Bath 9. Mudroom / 10. Clear, Soft White LED Bulbs / 11. Dining / 12. Master Bath 13. Hall Bath / 14. Hallway & Small Upstairs Rooms / 15. Under Stairs

And in perhaps the craziest news of all, on November 5th we got a completely unseasonably warm 70-degree day, so we actually all went to the beach and went swimming!

It was so crazy. The water felt perfectly refreshing! Of course now we’re back at home and this morning it was 40 degrees so bah humbug.

Psst – You can see more of our beach house adventure here (it’s a category full of posts about the entire process, which started over a year ago).

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta… appeared first on Young House Love.

[additionallysad]

The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta… http://ift.tt/2yIqDUr

Dude. We got things DONE this weekend at the beach house. And by that I mean, we showed up with a giant to-do list and only got about half of it checked off, but it really felt awesome after four days there (thanks to the kids having no school on Monday & Tuesday) to lock the door knowing that we’d knocked out a huge portion of the kitchen.

We still have to get a fridge and a dishwasher, add floating shelves around the stove, add a backsplash, do the toe kicks & quarter round down at the cabinet bases, and the island will have a larger counter with a sink in it and a 12″ overhang for the stools… but we are getting there! We actually have perimeter counters! I mean, they need to be screwed in and sealed, but they’re there! And we have working drawers (still need hardware) and a hood that’s hung up (that white part is just a protective cover, it’ll all be stainless once we peel that off). I love how everything I say is countered by a “but we still need to do blank!” But seriously, this kitchen progress feels pretty freaking exciting for us. Especially because just a little while ago it was looking more like this:

And back when we bought it last fall we were staring at a room that looked like this:

So…. progress!

And without further ado, here’s a video walk-through that we took right before we locked the door behind us yesterday. It’s full of all the what’s next & what’s changing info along with a bunch of explanations about the whole house as it has progressed since our last tour back in October. Note: If you’re viewing this post through a reader, you might have to click through to the actual post to see the video. And if for any reason you’re having an issue with the video loading here on our site, you can also view it here on YouTube. 

Once again I’ll mention that I can fit a whole lot more words and info (and pictures!) into a video. Heck, a video is worth a million pictures! So that’s the best way to get all caught up and see/hear about what’s going on these days. But if you’re at work or somewhere that you can’t watch the video, here are some photos to tide you over.

The front bedroom is moving right along. We couldn’t fit the headboard in the packed car on the way out, so that’s coming (and we’ll also hang curtains to make that bed feel a lot more balanced and grounded in front of the window) but it’s really feeling super cozy in there now. Something magical happened when we moved the side tables from the back bedroom in and rolled out our new 8 x 10 rug. It’s 20% off on Serena & Lily right now – not sure how long that’ll last, but it’s so soft and it’s also indoor/outdoor so we love that we can hose it down outside and it’ll hopefully be super durable for the beach house.

As for the other sources in the room, there’s a mood board with links at the bottom of this post, so there you can find the bedding & lamp info, etc. And picture me cupping my hands around my mouth and shouting a resounding “yes, we’d love to!” to everyone asking us to build a “Shop Our Beach House” page like the one we have for our current house. We’re hoping to do that as things come together more – maybe within the next month or two.

We also got this 5 x 8′ rug (also on sale for just $258 right now) for the guest room, which is a pretty sandy color and is a hemp/cotton blend for a nice durable and beachy feeling. We’re realizing we’re drawn to a lot of blue things (hello, beach house… and also, hello, we love blue) so it’s nice to have some warm tones in the refinished wood doors & floors, the pink stove, and also in this warm textured rug. Gotta keep the balance so it doesn’t turn into the “I’m Blue Abadee Abadaaa” house (does anyone else remember that crazy song?! They were just taking nonsense right?!).

Speaking of blue, downstairs we also got this 8 x 10′ rug, which is a nice silvery gray-blue, especially on sunnier days (so sorry the video was filmed on the grayest of gray days – BOO!). We’re actually debating bringing this rug up to the back bedroom and perhaps getting something slightly warmer and less blue since the sofa sometimes reads like a deep denim blue, and again… there’s lots of blue here, so we want to make sure it doesn’t get overwhelming.

It’s a really nice plush rug though! Super soft feeling and the little X detail around the border is so cool. Looks way more expensive than it was for that large size in all wool. And yes, we still need a top for that coffee table and to paint and reupholster those crazy green chairs. Soon I hope!

And now let’s talk about the rug that didn’t work. As soon as we rolled this one out we were like “Uhhhhh, it’s really dark. And kinda crazy looking in here.” In the photo on the site it looked a lot more subtle and subdued, but in person it felt more chaotic than this picture even conveys. In person you couldn’t really pick up on the diagonal lines of the pattern, it just sort of looked like a rag rug with lots of randomly placed bumps in dark blue, and with the blue doors and the blue tub in the master… it was A LOT of blue (and not all the same tone of blue – the rug sort of clashed in person).

So although we gave ourselves a few days to live with it to see if it grew on us, the verdict was “we’re sending it back.” Again, this picture makes it look less busy. In person, it just didn’t work for us. Which is sad, because packaging and mailing back a rug is akin to running a triathlon for a 5’2″ gal like me.

So the little X-border rug from downstairs might come up here (it reads a lot more like a light silvery-gray) and then we have to find a good rug for the living room, but it helps that the three big rugs that we need for this house are all 8 x 10’s, which is nice for flexibility & swapping (you know I love to switch things around – a little too much probably).

The hall bathroom is still my favorite bathroom, and we actually found the perfect mirror for it, but alas, we couldn’t fit that in the car either, so we’ll have to hang it next time. We did manage to hang a shower curtain in there and caulk the tile edges (we finished caulking all the showers!). So pretty much all we need to complete this room is a toilet paper holder, a few towel hooks, and the easy small stuff. HUZZAH! Also need to hang the art and add window treatments so we can stop blocking the windows with cardboard while we’re there because that just doesn’t feel very classy you guys.

This is a terrible picture taken with the lights on during a super rainy day, but the master bathroom shower finally got glass! WAHOO! We worried that shower might feel tight, but thanks to getting this glass panel instead of a big bulky wall, it feel so bright and open in there! It actually feels just as big as the bigger hall shower which is around 6″ wider – so it’s funny how much your eyes play tricks on you when it comes to the actual perceived size of something. Still need a lot of stuff in here (I want a wooden stool by the tub, a few other hits of wood to add warmth, window treatments of course, towel hooks, etc). Slowly but surely…

But now let’s get back to the kitchen that we assembled from approximately 4,567 small parts with a single allen wrench.

Just kidding, it was slightly fewer parts and it actually didn’t involve a single allen wrench (go figure!), but it was sort of like a DIY marathon of snapping, drilling, hinging, hooking, and leveling things over a four day period.

As for why we opted for Ikea cabinets at the beach house, we’ve been really happy with the ones we put in our laundry room and our bonus room – and the budget called for something affordable since we’re also adding beds and furnishing a lot of other rooms at the same time. We even got to take advantage of Ikea’s spring kitchen event (yes we ordered all of this waaaay back then) to save some extra money. This entire kitchen – including the counters and sink! – came in around $3K, which is pretty dang amazing to me.

We’re lucky because some Ikea kitchens consist of 25+ cabinets and we only had 8 in here to assemble (and it helped that we had an extra long weekend thanks to those two additional days off of school for the kids). It also helped that we went pretty simple with the layout and the cabinet fronts since we want the pink stove and the pretty old architectural details in here (like the back staircase and the old glass-paned doors) to be the stars.

Speaking of that back door, yes we’re going to eventually paint it. We love the blue chippy door to the mudroom, which you can see in the video, but the back door just seems to look dirtier as the kitchen comes together more. And yes, we have to weatherstrip it because there’s a small gap. The light bounces off the floor and creates what looks like a much wider gap than the actual sliver of space under there, so we get “OMG CAN AN ANIMAL GET IN THERE?!” comments surprisingly often, but in reality it’s definitely not animal-sized. If it was, the whole weatherstripping thing would have been waaaay higher on the to-do list. Ha!

Getting back to the topic of kitchen assembly time, the fastest part was the counters by far. We measured ten times before we cut each one, and we taped them off to lessen the likelihood of splintering from the circular saw (which worked!). Lo and behold, we didn’t mess up a single cut! Each of the four counters we sliced and diced fit like a glove. We still have to screw them into place and seal them (and figure out the entire island – so there’s THAT) but we’re super relieved that our first go at cutting our own counters wasn’t too much trouble. Note: For more info about how we planned this kitchen, what exact items we ordered, and why the heck we chose butcher block, this post has all of those details for ya!

And as for the color of our butcher block, we got so lucky! It’s really close to the heart pine floor color, and we think when we seal them we’ll be even closer (they look a bit drier and less shiny than the floors right now, but only slightly).

So that, my friends, is what we’ve been up to at the beach house. Oh and the kitchen table came with those chairs from craigslist (the whole thing was $65 and the table has super cool legs that you can’t really see here) but we’re going to be switching the free chairs out for white ones since that feels like a super dark spot in the kitchen right now. And those chandeliers will be lowered around 10″ (they were installed higher so people wouldn’t run into them and break them while the house was being put back together & the floors were getting refinished). And we need a dishwasher. And a drawer for that space below the microwave. And a much bigger island counter with a sink in it. And art. And lots of stuff. But look, we have a half-functional kitchen!!!

A few other things we checked off the list were that I got to run around scraping stickers off all of the windows with a razor and then I cleaned them all (so SHINNNNY! – please sing that like the crab in Moana). I also got crazy with the spackle and basically filled every single ding and dent I could find (if you look super closely in the video you might see some of my patches that I have to sand and paint the next time we’re there). When the hood went up there was a little ding in the ceiling, so I wasted no time hopping up on the counter to fill that baby. PARKOUR!

I’ll leave you guys with this shot of the kitchen from the door, which is such a welcome change! No more pile of Ikea boxes sitting on the floor, mocking us and making us question our sanity/ability/time management skills.

And since we promised a big ol’ mood board full of sources, here’s an updated version of the one we shared a couple of weeks ago with our new additions added:

1. Living Room Art / 2. Kitchen Stool (similar) / 3. Chair Version of Kitchen Stools / 4. Front Bedroom Art / 5. Walls (SW White Heron) / 6. Downstairs Trim (SW Stone Isle) / 7. Upstairs Trim (SW Pure White) / 8. Tub & Pocket Doors (SW Riverway) / 9. Foyer Mirror / 10. Hall Bath Tile / 11. Hall Bath Vanity / 12. Downstairs Bath Mirror / 13. Downstairs Bath Vanity / 14. Master Bath Mirror / 15. Hall Bedding / 16. Master Bedside Lamps / 17. Master Bedroom Art / 18. Master Bath Tile / 19. Master Bath Accent Tile / 20. Master Nightstands / 21. Master Bedding / 22. Kitchen Counters / 23. Pink Downstairs Lamps / 24. Blue Front Bedroom Lamps / 25. Kitchen Cabinets / 26. Front Bedroom Rug / 27. Living Room Rug / 28. Middle Bedroom Rug

And for anyone looking for lighting sources, here’s our mood board with that info:

1. Front Porch / 2. Downstairs Bath / 3. Kitchen Island / 4. Porch Numbers 5. Foyer (similar) / 6. Bedrooms / 7. Kitchen Sconces / 8. Living & Master Bath 9. Mudroom / 10. Clear, Soft White LED Bulbs / 11. Dining / 12. Master Bath 13. Hall Bath / 14. Hallway & Small Upstairs Rooms / 15. Under Stairs

And in perhaps the craziest news of all, on November 5th we got a completely unseasonably warm 70-degree day, so we actually all went to the beach and went swimming!

It was so crazy. The water felt perfectly refreshing! Of course now we’re back at home and this morning it was 40 degrees so bah humbug.

Psst – You can see more of our beach house adventure here (it’s a category full of posts about the entire process, which started over a year ago).

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta… appeared first on Young House Love.

#additionally sad home renovations

[statusreview]

The Beach House Has A Kitchen! Well, Kinda, Sorta…

Dude. We got things DONE this weekend at the beach house. And by that I mean, we showed up with a giant to-do list and only got about half of it checked off, but it really felt awesome after four days there (thanks to the kids having no school on Monday & Tuesday) to lock the door knowing that we’d knocked out a huge portion of the kitchen.

We still have to get a fridge and a dishwasher, add floating shelves around the stove, add a backsplash, do the toe kicks & quarter round down at the cabinet bases, and the island will have a larger counter with a sink in it and a 12″ overhang for the stools… but we are getting there! We actually have perimeter counters! I mean, they need to be screwed in and sealed, but they’re there! And we have working drawers (still need hardware) and a hood that’s hung up (that white part is just a protective cover, it’ll all be stainless once we peel that off). I love how everything I say is countered by a “but we still need to do blank!” But seriously, this kitchen progress feels pretty freaking exciting for us. Especially because just a little while ago it was looking more like this:

And back when we bought it last fall we were staring at a room that looked like this:

So…. progress!

And without further ado, here’s a video walk-through that we took right before we locked the door behind us yesterday. It’s full of all the what’s next & what’s changing info along with a bunch of explanations about the whole house as it has progressed since our last tour back in October. Note: If you’re viewing this post through a reader, you might have to click through to the actual post to see the video. And if for any reason you’re having an issue with the video loading here on our site, you can also view it here on YouTube. 

Once again I’ll mention that I can fit a whole lot more words and info (and pictures!) into a video. Heck, a video is worth a million pictures! So that’s the best way to get all caught up and see/hear about what’s going on these days. But if you’re at work or somewhere that you can’t watch the video, here are some photos to tide you over.

The front bedroom is moving right along. We couldn’t fit the headboard in the packed car on the way out, so that’s coming (and we’ll also hang curtains to make that bed feel a lot more balanced and grounded in front of the window) but it’s really feeling super cozy in there now. Something magical happened when we moved the side tables from the back bedroom in and rolled out our new 8 x 10 rug. It’s 20% off on Serena & Lily right now – not sure how long that’ll last, but it’s so soft and it’s also indoor/outdoor so we love that we can hose it down outside and it’ll hopefully be super durable for the beach house.

As for the other sources in the room, there’s a mood board with links at the bottom of this post, so there you can find the bedding & lamp info, etc. And picture me cupping my hands around my mouth and shouting a resounding “yes, we’d love to!” to everyone asking us to build a “Shop Our Beach House” page like the one we have for our current house. We’re hoping to do that as things come together more – maybe within the next month or two.

We also got this 5 x 8′ rug (also on sale for just $258 right now) for the guest room, which is a pretty sandy color and is a hemp/cotton blend for a nice durable and beachy feeling. We’re realizing we’re drawn to a lot of blue things (hello, beach house… and also, hello, we love blue) so it’s nice to have some warm tones in the refinished wood doors & floors, the pink stove, and also in this warm textured rug. Gotta keep the balance so it doesn’t turn into the “I’m Blue Abadee Abadaaa” house (does anyone else remember that crazy song?! They were just taking nonsense right?!).

Speaking of blue, downstairs we also got this 8 x 10′ rug, which is a nice silvery gray-blue, especially on sunnier days (so sorry the video was filmed on the grayest of gray days – BOO!). We’re actually debating bringing this rug up to the back bedroom and perhaps getting something slightly warmer and less blue since the sofa sometimes reads like a deep denim blue, and again… there’s lots of blue here, so we want to make sure it doesn’t get overwhelming.

It’s a really nice plush rug though! Super soft feeling and the little X detail around the border is so cool. Looks way more expensive than it was for that large size in all wool. And yes, we still need a top for that coffee table and to paint and reupholster those crazy green chairs. Soon I hope!

And now let’s talk about the rug that didn’t work. As soon as we rolled this one out we were like “Uhhhhh, it’s really dark. And kinda crazy looking in here.” In the photo on the site it looked a lot more subtle and subdued, but in person it felt more chaotic than this picture even conveys. In person you couldn’t really pick up on the diagonal lines of the pattern, it just sort of looked like a rag rug with lots of randomly placed bumps in dark blue, and with the blue doors and the blue tub in the master… it was A LOT of blue (and not all the same tone of blue – the rug sort of clashed in person).

So although we gave ourselves a few days to live with it to see if it grew on us, the verdict was “we’re sending it back.” Again, this picture makes it look less busy. In person, it just didn’t work for us. Which is sad, because packaging and mailing back a rug is akin to running a triathlon for a 5’2″ gal like me.

So the little X-border rug from downstairs might come up here (it reads a lot more like a light silvery-gray) and then we have to find a good rug for the living room, but it helps that the three big rugs that we need for this house are all 8 x 10’s, which is nice for flexibility & swapping (you know I love to switch things around – a little too much probably).

The hall bathroom is still my favorite bathroom, and we actually found the perfect mirror for it, but alas, we couldn’t fit that in the car either, so we’ll have to hang it next time. We did manage to hang a shower curtain in there and caulk the tile edges (we finished caulking all the showers!). So pretty much all we need to complete this room is a toilet paper holder, a few towel hooks, and the easy small stuff. HUZZAH! Also need to hang the art and add window treatments so we can stop blocking the windows with cardboard while we’re there because that just doesn’t feel very classy you guys.

This is a terrible picture taken with the lights on during a super rainy day, but the master bathroom shower finally got glass! WAHOO! We worried that shower might feel tight, but thanks to getting this glass panel instead of a big bulky wall, it feel so bright and open in there! It actually feels just as big as the bigger hall shower which is around 6″ wider – so it’s funny how much your eyes play tricks on you when it comes to the actual perceived size of something. Still need a lot of stuff in here (I want a wooden stool by the tub, a few other hits of wood to add warmth, window treatments of course, towel hooks, etc). Slowly but surely…

But now let’s get back to the kitchen that we assembled from approximately 4,567 small parts with a single allen wrench.

Just kidding, it was slightly fewer parts and it actually didn’t involve a single allen wrench (go figure!), but it was sort of like a DIY marathon of snapping, drilling, hinging, hooking, and leveling things over a four day period.

As for why we opted for Ikea cabinets at the beach house, we’ve been really happy with the ones we put in our laundry room and our bonus room – and the budget called for something affordable since we’re also adding beds and furnishing a lot of other rooms at the same time. We even got to take advantage of Ikea’s spring kitchen event (yes we ordered all of this waaaay back then) to save some extra money. This entire kitchen – including the counters and sink! – came in around $3K, which is pretty dang amazing to me.

We’re lucky because some Ikea kitchens consist of 25+ cabinets and we only had 8 in here to assemble (and it helped that we had an extra long weekend thanks to those two additional days off of school for the kids). It also helped that we went pretty simple with the layout and the cabinet fronts since we want the pink stove and the pretty old architectural details in here (like the back staircase and the old glass-paned doors) to be the stars.

Speaking of that back door, yes we’re going to eventually paint it. We love the blue chippy door to the mudroom, which you can see in the video, but the back door just seems to look dirtier as the kitchen comes together more. And yes, we have to weatherstrip it because there’s a small gap. The light bounces off the floor and creates what looks like a much wider gap than the actual sliver of space under there, so we get “OMG CAN AN ANIMAL GET IN THERE?!” comments surprisingly often, but in reality it’s definitely not animal-sized. If it was, the whole weatherstripping thing would have been waaaay higher on the to-do list. Ha!

Getting back to the topic of kitchen assembly time, the fastest part was the counters by far. We measured ten times before we cut each one, and we taped them off to lessen the likelihood of splintering from the circular saw (which worked!). Lo and behold, we didn’t mess up a single cut! Each of the four counters we sliced and diced fit like a glove. We still have to screw them into place and seal them (and figure out the entire island – so there’s THAT) but we’re super relieved that our first go at cutting our own counters wasn’t too much trouble. Note: For more info about how we planned this kitchen, what exact items we ordered, and why the heck we chose butcher block, this post has all of those details for ya!

And as for the color of our butcher block, we got so lucky! It’s really close to the heart pine floor color, and we think when we seal them we’ll be even closer (they look a bit drier and less shiny than the floors right now, but only slightly).

So that, my friends, is what we’ve been up to at the beach house. Oh and the kitchen table came with those chairs from craigslist (the whole thing was $65 and the table has super cool legs that you can’t really see here) but we’re going to be switching the free chairs out for white ones since that feels like a super dark spot in the kitchen right now. And those chandeliers will be lowered around 10″ (they were installed higher so people wouldn’t run into them and break them while the house was being put back together & the floors were getting refinished). And we need a dishwasher. And a drawer for that space below the microwave. And a much bigger island counter with a sink in it. And art. And lots of stuff. But look, we have a half-functional kitchen!!!

A few other things we checked off the list were that I got to run around scraping stickers off all of the windows with a razor and then I cleaned them all (so SHINNNNY! – please sing that like the crab in Moana). I also got crazy with the spackle and basically filled every single ding and dent I could find (if you look super closely in the video you might see some of my patches that I have to sand and paint the next time we’re there). When the hood went up there was a little ding in the ceiling, so I wasted no time hopping up on the counter to fill that baby. PARKOUR!

I’ll leave you guys with this shot of the kitchen from the door, which is such a welcome change! No more pile of Ikea boxes sitting on the floor, mocking us and making us question our sanity/ability/time management skills.

And since we promised a big ol’ mood board full of sources, here’s an updated version of the one we shared a couple of weeks ago with our new additions added:

1. Living Room Art / 2. Kitchen Stool (similar) / 3. Chair Version of Kitchen Stools / 4. Front Bedroom Art / 5. Walls (SW White Heron) / 6. Downstairs Trim (SW Stone Isle) / 7. Upstairs Trim (SW Pure White) / 8. Tub & Pocket Doors (SW Riverway) / 9. Foyer Mirror / 10. Hall Bath Tile / 11. Hall Bath Vanity / 12. Downstairs Bath Mirror / 13. Downstairs Bath Vanity / 14. Master Bath Mirror / 15. Hall Bedding / 16. Master Bedside Lamps / 17. Master Bedroom Art / 18. Master Bath Tile / 19. Master Bath Accent Tile / 20. Master Nightstands / 21. Master Bedding / 22. Kitchen Counters / 23. Pink Downstairs Lamps / 24. Blue Front Bedroom Lamps / 25. Kitchen Cabinets / 26. Front Bedroom Rug / 27. Living Room Rug / 28. Middle Bedroom Rug

And for anyone looking for lighting sources, here’s our mood board with that info:

1. Front Porch / 2. Downstairs Bath / 3. Kitchen Island / 4. Porch Numbers 5. Foyer (similar) / 6. Bedrooms / 7. Kitchen Sconces / 8. Living & Master Bath 9. Mudroom / 10. Clear, Soft White LED Bulbs / 11. Dining / 12. Master Bath 13. Hall Bath / 14. Hallway & Small Upstairs Rooms / 15. Under Stairs

And in perhaps the craziest news of all, on November 5th we got a completely unseasonably warm 70-degree day, so we actually all went to the beach and went swimming!

It was so crazy. The water felt perfectly refreshing! Of course now we’re back at home and this morning it was 40 degrees so bah humbug.

Psst – You can see more of our beach house adventure here (it’s a category full of posts about the entire process, which started over a year ago).

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