A fun fact about us…about two weeks after Luke and I started dating, I told him I was leaving to live in another country for six months. 🙈 I was convinced that would be the end of us and that he wouldn’t want to wait around for me. Instead, he stayed. 😭 We Skyped almost every day while I was gone, counting down until we’d get to have dinner together again. Then, just after I came home, he accepted a job opportunity a few hours away. We spent the next five years doing long distance. Between jobs, school, and different seasons of life, we had a few years where we were as much as eight hours apart. Most of our weekends were spent driving highways, packing overnight bags, and squeezing every minute we could out of our time together. We moved into a tiny 900-square-foot basement apartment just before we got married. I remember those years so clearly. They were hard but they made us so strong. TBH a lot of people thought we were a little crazy for believing we’d make it. This month we’ll celebrate eight years of marriage. Sometimes I look around at our life, and I think back to those Skype calls and weekend road trips. It’s funny how the life you spend years dreaming about slowly becomes your ordinary. I don’t ever want to forget that.

I actually do a lot don’t let this fool you 😂☠️ just can’t resist me some @falloutboy Also Luke is super concerned about all the women coming for him in my DMs so just have to publicly break it to you all that he’s happily married 😅 #diyproject #coupleshumor #diyhumor

You just have to slow down enough to notice it 🫶 I think we spend so much time chasing the next milestone that we forget to notice what’s already here. Maybe the rich life isn’t waiting on the next paycheck, the next promotion, or the next house project. Maybe it starts the moment we decide to pay attention. I still have big dreams, but I don’t want to miss today’s version of them either.

Kinda chic to build your own version of a rich life instead ✌️🫶 #kindachic #chic

Time to jump off the hamster wheel and pour your energy back into your own life 🫡

This is your sign to log out of the comparison game and pour your energy back into your own life 🫶

Hard to believe that we’re living the life we once dreamt of. Slow mornings, waking up with the sun to the sounds of little feet running through the house. Drinking coffee and playing games on the front porch. Nowhere to be but a pancake breakfast down the road 🥹#slowliving

I know… if you’ve been following along, you’ve probably noticed this coop has been finished for a while now. 😅 Truthfully? This project completely drained us. Not in a bad way, it was one of our favorite things we’ve ever built!! But between working full-time, raising kids, and spending nearly every free evening and weekend out here, by the time we finished, I didn’t have much left in the tank to relive it all through editing. ☠️ So here I am… almost two months later, finally sharing the footage. Watching it back reminds me that every big dream looks real messy in the middle. There were wrong measurements, countless Menards runs, and plenty of “well… now what?” conversations. But somehow, it came together! Part 3 is coming!

Social media has a funny way of making us believe that everyone else has the perfectly organized pantry, the spotless living room, and a home that’s somehow always “finished.” But behind every beautiful home is still… life. Laundry that needs folding. Toys that somehow multiply overnight. Please explain how they do that 😂 donation bin that’s been sitting in the same spot for weeks. Projects that take longer than expected. Dishes that occasionally wait until tomorrow. Ours is no different. We moved into this house almost five months ago, and the list is never ending on what we’ve got going. Some days, that means choosing the park over folding the laundry. letting the kids build forts in the living room. It means leaving the dishes until after bedtime stories. It means remembering that homes are meant to be lived in, and we need to steward them together. I hope this is your reminder that you don’t have to have it all together to be building something you are proud of. Your life doesn’t have to look perfect to be a good one. 🤍 What’s one “imperfect” thing in your home that actually makes your life work better?