Milo was sick last week and he was home from school and the sickness kind of went through
our house so Michael got something our Nanny got something and I seemed to have
evaded it and I was saying to Michael it must be because my immune system is
so strong because I take zinc and vitamin C and multivitamins and no I'm not immune
my body was just you know waiting to express so it's now expressing here we
are I don't have all the same symptoms that Milo had he actually had RSV I knock on wood don't have
a cough I just have probably like the worst stuffy nose and clogged head that I've had all year and
I guess tis the season so I don't really have it in me to do an intense YouTube video this week so
what I'm instead going to show you is some house updates because that's very exciting and things
are really moving along over here in house world a lot of our furniture is in place as you can see
our bed frame is here it's taken 3 months to get this bed frame here and it's looking really good
and a lot of the house is coming together so one thing that I want to first go to is the kitchen
and I actually pre-recorded this section talking about the kitchen just a couple weeks ago I was
sitting out on our beautiful outdoor furniture when I recorded this so I am going to cut and show
you that footage one thing I want you to notice is when you see that footage you will see that
I'm sitting in front of like the most beautiful hydrangea flowers sorry it's really hard to say
hydrangea when you don't have any space in your nose anyway I was sitting in front of the most
beautiful purple pink blue hydrangea flowers and I have never had hydrangeas in my house or on my
property before because I've never had property before but now that we have property that has a
hydrangea bush something strange happened this year at the first frost I woke up on the morning
when it was like 30° and there was a coat of frost on the grass and everything seemed to
have frozen overnight and the hydrangeas which were like blue purple bursting the night before
were brown and dead I'm just going to like show you out my window what they look like
now look at them I don't really know what I'm supposed to do about them I don't know if I'm
supposed to like cut them out and remove them or just let them disintegrate into the soil but I'm
leaving them for now if you know what to do with hydrangeas let me know anyway let me cut to this
clip and talk you through some of the changes that we made in our kitchen which is one of my favorite
renovations in the house and then we'll come back and I'll show you some of my other favorite spots
just want to chat home ownership for a moment and share what I think has been one of the hardest
elements here and that is the general house maintenance remembering to cover my outdoor
furniture when it's raining for some reason it just escapes my mind I will see rain on my app
as like rain's coming on Saturday and I'll make a mental note or I'll even put it in my Google
Calendar cover the outdoor furniture somehow I never remember and mid downpour I remember and
I look out the window and I see that everything is just getting soaked and especially this season
like it's fall there's leaves everywhere you can see the leaves are on the couch there are leaves
just dead crunchy leaves tucked into every crevice of this lawn furniture and sprinkled all over the
rug so I just got to figure out a better system for covering the furniture I feel like I'm not
good at maintaining things and caring for things aside from my son plants furniture I don't know
I just am not good at maintaining things and so as a homeowner that's something I'm working on
but anyway it's such a beautiful fall day so I wanted to come out here and just use this little
outdoor space as a moment to share some other interior updates the kitchen was probably the
biggest transformation in this house because if you remember previous to us doing any renovations
the countertops were dark there was this big matte black hood that we initially liked but
then I grew to dislike the cabinetry was kind of this off-white yellowish color and the kitchen
saw the biggest transformation so probably the biggest thing we did was we pulled out the whole
countertop and we put on white quartz we decided to carry that white quartz over to the oven side
and actually carry it up as the backsplash to keep it really simple back there and then we changed
the hood so that it was really just wrapped in the white quartz and it disappears against the
wall we decided to change all of the cabinetry so on the side that's opposite the stove we just
made it all plain white and there was actually a bench back there that we got rid of and we built
up some more drawer storage so we have six more drawers there and that's been amazing for kitchen
storage and then on the stove side we decided to use this really beautiful cerused wood for the
cabinet door fronts and I think we made a pretty genius decision here because we ended up saving so
much money so basically we wanted this cerused wood look and if we had wanted to start from
scratch with this new wood we would have needed to pull out all of the cabinetry knock it all
down and then rebuild it instead what we decided to do was just take off the doors and replace the
doors with the new cerused wood but then of course the whole structure of the cabinet was
still the old off-white color instead we hired a decorative painter to come in he painted the
cabinetry that was pre-built to look exactly like the cerused wood and he used like some incredible
materials and he matched the color perfectly and he had this roller that added wood grain lines
I cannot tell the difference between what was painted and what's the actual cerused wood it
is incredible to the eye you would never know you would think that the whole structure was new wood
but it's actually just partially painted and then partially new doors I can't even guess how much it
would have cost us to take out all the Cabinetry and rebuild it all with this new more expensive
wood but instead of whatever that would have cost the decorative painter was like $2500 to paint
the wood really an amazing amazing choice another major homeowner blunder that we encountered when
we first got here was that within our first week in the house there were many major appliances that
were just not working and we thought we had tested everything in the inspection but I guess as stuff
sat over the summer and there was construction whatever the reason we got to the house and
our garage doors weren't working our dishwasher wasn't working our washer dryer wasn't working
and the refrigerator which was a Subzero was super super old and had been leaking water pretty much
immediately we had to like put on our homeowner caps and make decisions on the fly of if we were
going to replace some of these appliances and that is where AJ Madison comes in they're sponsoring
this portion of today's video they were so helpful when I came to them with all these major appliance
issues and they were really helpful at helping us figure out what to replace these with in our
kitchen we had this Sub-Zero fridge that we ended up moving out it's a fridge freezer we put it in
our garage and now it's not hooked up to the water line so it's not leaking anymore but that's just
living in our garage as kind of like a backup fridge and freezer and then we replaced it with
this thermador column smart fridge and freezer I'll pop up like the actual name of the product
here in case anyone's interested it is just such a gorgeous fridge and freezer on the inside has
so much storage and space you can readjust the shelving in New York City we had one of those
drawer freezers where all of my stuff was like stacked on top of each other and I couldn't see
anything especially when it came to breast milk it was really hard to store and so maybe for a
future time of breastfeeding this freezer will serve me better it's panel ready so we ended
up paneling it with the cerused wood we put the Gold Hardware on it so it can be just a regular
pull to open fridge but one really cool thing about this fridge and freezer is that you can
also just push the door gently and then it opens like a it's like a Smart Touch to open fridge I've
never seen that and then for the dishwasher we replaced it with a Bosch dishwasher it's actually
the same one we had in New York City and we loved it so much it has that top drawer for all of your
little utensils something about the way that it rolls is just so smooth like I've had dishwashers
that you open and they slam or like they fall off the tracks it's also panel ready so he just put a
white panel on it to match all the paneling on the island and it was a perfect choice if you need any
appliances for your home I would highly recommend AJ Madison they make everything you could think
of and they're also just so helpful I called them on the phone I walked them through the specs and
the dimensions of the spaces and they gave me a whole sheet with all these options of what we
could get for those spaces we're also going to got our washer dryer from them when we replaced
this one we spent like the whole first week in this house draining out manually the frontload
washer so that's in the works too but thank you so much to AJ Madison for sponsoring this
portion of the video you guys are the best here is the way our bedroom looks with the final bed
in place I'm really loving this new minimal way of making my bed two pillows stacked neatly on
each side it's very calming you've probably seen the beams but these are the new beams we added to
the ceiling and they really make the room height seem even higher and then our TV is finally here
it just got mounted recently so here's the bedroom here's a little peek at Michael's office because
the built-ins are now done I love the blue color of the walls this color is called hail Navy by
Benjamin Moore I absolutely just die for the green trees and grass contrasting with the color of this
room here's Michael's desk area and he's going to put a chair here obviously and he's thinking of
getting one of those standing desk Riser things so that he can work standing up and sitting down and
he also has this closet on this side this room is amazing I love that the ceiling in here was
painted too it just really like when you walk into this room in person it just sort of transports you
to a totally new place our dining area just makes me so happy the way the light comes
into this space it is perfect the way it lands on this table and this picture window the best
addition to the house I've got to say continues to surprise and Delight every day as we wake up
the view out there is different there was a point at which it was really green then it was bright
yellow now like the yellow leaves are starting to kind of come off and you're getting a clear
view at the evergreen tree that's behind it but it really is just quite the view and I can't wait
for this to be snow covered I just love in this spot of the house the amount of Windows and all
the light that comes in right now it's about 4:00 p.m. and this is the afternoon light but there
is light coming in these Windows all day the sun just sort of moves and angles as it goes and one
more major update out here since I last filmed is that our garden is officially set up and assembled
and I actually worked with this small gardening business in town to set it all up get the planter
beds built get the deer fence put around it get the soil put in I think they're going to plant for
me 15 garlic bulbs for the winter which just lay dormant in the winter and then apparently start
popping up in the spring and then they're going to come back in the spring and help me with all
the the spring vegetables but let me just show you what it looks like so here's the outdoor furniture
here are the dead hydrangeas and then here is the garden and I'm just going to walk Barefoot
to get to it to show you oops a little muddy this was a really bad decision okay anyway here's the
garden I plan on coming here Barefoot a lot in the spring and summer it's probably a 6ft deer
fence and then we've got a little latch and when you go inside it's like a little t-shaped walkway
with the planter beds all around the outside that was a really bad decision now I got to figure out
getting inside oops just waiting for Michael to bring me a towel because my feet are filthy and
I officially covered our outdoor table here for winter it kind of came with these two triangular
things here and here which are so smart because they raise it up and they're supposed to make it
so that water doesn't pool obviously it's still oh oops whenever I enter a new season like right now
it's it's turning into winter we're getting into a new time of year it's almost the New Year time but
it's not quite New Year's resolution time but I do always feel that Fresh Start effect at the start
of a new season and I feel like I can achieve the things that I'm setting out to do so I just
want to share what's been kind of on my trajectory of things I'm attempting to do and maybe it will
inspire you to try to do something similar for yourself so firstly I'm sitting in front of the
sun which is what made me think of this morning sun exposure when it was still nice outside like
before I put that cover on our table outside I was doing a pretty good job every morning at taking my
cup of coffee outside and sitting at our picnic table on the porch getting Morning Sun for like
10 to 15 minutes while I had my hot coffee and I was also following this YouTube video of neck
exercises that are really useful for people who like now we're in this digital age where we're
always sitting with our necks juted out so it was a lot of weird but supposedly good for your neck
exercises I can link the video up top for anyone who has neck pain or just wants to improve your
neck Mobility I was doing that video like every day sitting in the sun for a good couple weeks
then I covered the table it started to get Frosty and cold and now I have nowhere to sit out there
anymore so what I've been doing now is first thing in the morning when I wake up I'm getting dressed
in sweatpants and a sweatshirt and just getting myself bundled up to be able to go outside and as
soon as Michael leaves the house with Milo because Michael always does morning drop off at school so
as soon as Michael and Milo get themselves into the car and drive away I'm stepping out and I'm
doing a 10minute morning walk just to get sun exposure mostly on my eyes it's not like
I have my body out it's freezing cold so I'm in a sweatshirt and sweatpants and off in a jacket but
I'm not wearing sunglasses and I'm just getting my eyes exposed to the light I know this is
really good for setting your circadian rhythm telling your body that it's morning hopefully
producing cortisol for your day and then knowing when to create melatonin naturally for the night
time goal number two is I've been working a lot on breathing exercises and specifically the Wim
Hoff breath work exercise I actually found this podcast episode that's like a 10-minute
follow along Wim Hoff breathing technique really intense breathing for 30 rounds and then a pause
then a deep breath in and holding for another 10 to 15 seconds and then out and you do that cycle
three times if you're curious about it I'll put a link down below for the podcast that I've been
listening to which is obviously free but it's just a guided Wim Hoff breathing exercise I've
been getting really into this breath work mostly in conjunction with some of the cold plunging that
I've been doing which you saw in my last video it's just felt really good for me to either start
my day with a little Wim Hoff sequence or to infuse it in the middle of the day and my third
goal revolves around sleep and specifically now that there was Daylight savings and the clocks
jumped back an hour Milo is waking up and it is an hour earlier than he normally wakes up which the
first day of Daylight savings that did not matter at all because we we all got our normal amount
of sleep but now like Michael and I are going to bed according to the clock and then Milo's
still waking up an hour earlier than he used to so we're like all losing an hour of sleep and I
just have a real goal to put myself to bed early it's such a struggle I don't know why I think I
need to do like another video about sleep because I track it all on my Oura ring I'm obsessed with
my sleep scores I look up my HRV levels my deep sleep there's a lot of markers that I track and
that I try to improve and I'm just really in tune and in touch with my sleep I can tell you when I
wake up in the morning based on how I feel what type of sleep score I'm going to have and that
just shows how accurate the scoring is I find that at the end of the day Michael and I always want to
enjoy a show together and unwind and watch a show we've just had a whole day of each doing our own
separate work then we put Milo to sleep together then we maybe ate something or sat and had dessert
and we just want to get in bed and like relax and watch something and there's such good TV on we're
currently watching lessons in chemistry and so we don't want to go to sleep but but if I don't
go to sleep until it's like in the 11s or heaven forbid the 12s it's just not enough sleep for me
I know that I need 7 1/2 to 8 1/2 hours of sleep and I know what you're saying I know what you're
thinking you're probably thinking well if you wake up at 7:30 then which by the way I'm not
because of Milo but if you wake up at 7:30 then you can go to sleep at midnight and that's 7
anda half hours of sleep no I could tell from my Oura score that I'm not asleep all night if I want
to get 7 and 1/2 hours of sleep I actually need to be going to bed at 8 and 1 half maybe even 9
hours before that wake up to get 7 and 1/2 hours of good sleep so yeah that's where we're at with
sleep that's just another major goal anyway I hope you're loving the house updates I'm really excited
to do another video where I really deep dive and show you everything and I'm also working on an
offering for you guys it's just a free download thing you can enter your email to get it and it
will give you all the links to everything in our house including furniture rugs paint color of you
know all the paint color and the tiles and just all the materials we used for the house if you're
renovating or decorating it will be great for you so stay tuned for that thanks for coming back to
my channel I'm going to go relax maybe do some more breath work and I will see you next time
bye