The Perfect White Paint

By far, one of the design questions I'm asked most often is what color white paint we used in our house! Unfortunately, the answer isn't a super simple one, since I ended up with a custom color. When we bought our house in 2011, I tried a dozen different white paint samples but none of them were quite right. Most were too creamy or yellow, and some were too "hospital" stark white. Since we had planned to use this color on our kitchen cabinets, built-ins, interior doors, and the trim throughout the entire house - I knew nothing less than perfect would suffice! After even more experimenting, I finally came up with the perfect custom white color at Sherwin Williams! I STILL love this color white and recommend it to everyone I know. It is the perfect balance of being a pure white while still being warm, with ZERO hint of yellow. Six years later, I couldn't be happier with this product and I'm excited to finally share the "recipe" with you today! (See the top of the paint can... If you bring this into Sherwin Williams, they will mix it up for you!)

Click the image below to enlarge the writing on top of the paint can so you can see the color formula! 

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Also, since we used it on our kitchen cabinets and trim, we went to the Sherwin Williams Cashmere line. Makes spills, stains and dirty handprints super easy to wipe up! 

Let me know if you try it!

Spur of the Moment, Every Day, Real Life House Tour

Far too often I have had people tell me "oh your house is always so clean" or "I don't know how you keep it all together!" Ummm... It may appear that way, but in reality, those two statements could not be further from the truth! Maybe this was me and the every day status of my house 4-5 years ago, but with kids? Forget about it! 

Truth #1: Most of the home tour pictures on my blog/instagram are very strategically taken, and I'm always shuffling kid toys out of the room, removing sippy cups from counters, and wiping up floors minutes before taking any snapshots. EVERY SINGLE TIME! (Also, I've found that getting just the right exposure on my camera can hide all the fingerprints on the appliances and crumbs on the floor! Yes!)

Truth #2: I'll be honest.. I definitely miss the days when my house was clean and put together every day! It is a daily struggle of mine to let go of the mess, stop constantly cleaning, and just live in the imperfect moment. I'm learning! I think that is exactly why I DO get it super clean, staged, and photographed once in awhile! It is nice to know that even if I don't have the capacity to my house "perfect" all of the time, at least I know it has the capability to be that way! While having it that nice every moment of every day is not realistic during this particular season in life, it is still nice to get it that way once in awhile. (And document it during the 5-minutes it stays that way, ha!) 

Anyway, just to ensure I am keeping it 100% real, here is a spur-of-the moment, un-staged, un-edited home tour! 

Ok, so it isn't a DISASTER (at least not in this tour.. sometimes it is!) but it isn't picture perfect and magazine worthy every day either.  It is a house that is LIVED in and loved! 

I'm Officially a Stay at Home Mom

By the time you are reading this, I will have put in my two weeks notice at my full-time job! After 10-years of actively pursuing my career in the world of hospital finance (first as a consultant at a public accounting firm and recently as a financial manager at a large hospital here in Cleveland), I made the decision to put my career on pause and spend the next however many months/years at home focusing on raising my wild and crazy kiddos.  I couldn't be more at peace or more excited about this new chapter in life (yes - I'm overwhelmingly feeling these two wonderful, contradictory feelings at the same time!)

I will say, it wasn't exactly something we had planned for a long time, but a combination of circumstances and a strong tugging at my heart that led to this decision. For many years, life as a working mom was working perfectly! Until it wasn't... So what led us to this particular point in our lives? A job great opportunity for Evan that also led to a less flexible/more demanding schedule, too many months of overly busy mornings/nights/weekends trying to prep for the work week, a much harder third pregnancy than anticipated, an incredibly feisty and fearless toddler, my mother-in-law no longer wanting to baby-sit full time, the benefit of a good financial situation (thanks to years of hard work and living below our means), a humbling realization that our kids are growing up SO FAST and wanting to soak up every second of their childhood, and an overall immense craving for a more simple, less complicated life.

Am I crazy for walking away from a six-figure salary, great benefits, and a promising career ladder? I believe the answer to that question is YES! If I'm totally honest, it still freaks me out a little bit when I think about it! But we couldn't deny that all of those "benefits" for us were starting to come with a really high cost. After months of thinking about it, praying about it, and overanalyzing it, the decision became undeniably clear. At the end of the day, Evan and I firmly believe that our family will actually feel "richer" in this new situation even with significantly less money coming in the door. A little more peace, a little more sanity, and more quality family time = priceless. 

Photos by Kayla Lupean Photography.

I will definitely be sharing more about our decision, goals, fears, and experiences as it relates to this major life change in the near future! In the mean time, any advice for someone in my shoes? 

Welcome to the New Blog!

This blog relaunch has been a long time coming and I'm so excited that the day is finally here! You see, this blog started off many years ago as a place where I would document my DIY house projects and the transformation of our first home to show my family and friends who lived far away (mostly my dad... hi Dad!) what we were working on. Nothing fancy, no real goals, but it had been a true labor of love to show how we were transforming this fixer-upper of a first house into our HOME. 

However, six years after moving into this home, with all of our major house projects almost complete, increasingly demanding careers, and with two kids (and another one on the way!), the house projects have slowed wayyyy down and quite honestly, for a long time I have felt a bit of writer's block when it came to this site. I'd often ask myself, if I'm not knocking down walls or completely transforming a room, does anyone really care? Additionally, blogging in general has become super popular over the last few years and people with way bigger budgets and way more talent than me became semi-celebrities with their interior decorating blogs! While I never aimed for that, it did make me wonder sometimes why I even continued this little side hobby if there were so many blogs out there a billion times better than mine. I thought about flat out deleting it more times than I can count (in fact, I even did delete it once which is why all of my early posts no longer exist - tear!) BUT, something has always brought me back. I love the concept of making a house a home and I love sharing my home with others who have the same passion!

This year, it has hit me that although our HUGE projects might be mostly done at this point, my love for making my house a cozy, beautiful, organized, happy place to be is stronger than ever! However, now it is more about making a beautiful life in my home, rather than JUST making a beautiful home. With the chaos and the craziness that comes with being a mom of young kids, I'm learning  that first, I have to make our home work and function for our busy lives. And second, that I need to make my house beautiful and welcoming - it's just who I am and engrained in my being! (As silly as that sounds, it is true!)  

I'm SO excited to embark on this new journey in my life and with this blog! I can't wait to share with you our house projects - big and small, more of my family, and little things I'm learning/working on to make our little life in our little house that much more sweet! After all, the meaning behind the name "The Fat Hydrangea" in the first place is that it was my personal version of reminding myself to stop and smell the roses...  To slow down and enjoy the beauty in the every day. (I just much prefer fluffy blue or white hydrangeas to roses!) 

Thanks for following along!