Our Homes


The Royal Oaks House
Brunswick, Georgia

This home literally landed in our laps. If you read below, we were renting another home and had hopes/ plans of buying it from the owners that we were renting from. They knew of these plans, but had ended up changing their minds and decided to put it on the market. At the time, my husband had just ended his 10 year marine corps career the month prior and was still on the search for a job locally. There was no way that we would qualify for the home in the time they wanted. They put it on the market and 4 days later it sold. We then had 30 days to find a new home, and have my husband find a job. To say that was a stressful time is an understatement. Fortunately, the property management company had only one rental in our price range. She forewarned us that it had been sitting vacant for awhile, and the previous renter had been in there for 8 years and had not taken care of it. I kept my mind open... but guys, it was awful. It smelled of cat urine and smoke. The toilets were clogged and had cigarettes in them, there was niccotine film caked onto the glass shower door, a window in the master bedroom was being held in place by a nail, and there were urine stains all over the hardwood floors. The owner of this home had no interest in fixing any of it, so we had no choice but to suck it up and move in. The smell being so bad, I refused to move in until all of the walls were primed and painted, along with the house being deep cleaned! We spent days before moving in just preparing this house to be liveable. Surprisingly just painting and cleaning made so much of the smell dissappear. We also had the floors cleaned and sprinkled baking soda all over to soak up any of the leftover moisture and smells that we could. Okay, enough of my ranting.

The point I am getting to is that this home was far from one that I ever would have chosen and literally cried knowing I had no choice but to move into it. But again, we have made it our own. In the past 3 years we have done whatever we could to make this temporary home one that we love.

My Challenge:
As you have read above, this home came with a whole list of challenges before we ever even moved in, but as far as design challenges, this home presented me even more. The layout of this home is very different from our previous two. It is a completely open layout when it comes to the kitchen, living room and dining room. All of them flow together, so I had to create a design plan that would carry effortlessly from room to room.

My Style: Modern French Country
In this home, I wanted to go neutral. I wanted to play with gray tones and wanted to focus on creating an inviting but more sophisticated design. Being the condition this house was in when we moved, the light fixtures were just as horrible. We opted to use our own lighting in every single room and that greatly helped to change the overall feel and look to this home. Of course, when we move out, the original light fixtures will be put back up. I kept the warmth in the home by using natural wood tones and building our own furniture to fit the spaces perfectly. I like to call this home my little french cottage. The home is much smaller than our last, and has been fun to design rooms that all compliment each other with similar tones, while also keeping with the french feel.

The Sandalwood House
Brunswick, Georgia

When moving to Georgia, we were given a 2 week notice of our move date, along with where we would be moving. My husband was given orders for recruiting duty, which meant, there would be no base nearby and likely you were going to be stationed in a city that you had never been to before. When our orders read: Brunswick, Georgia I had honestly no idea where in Georgia that even was! I began doing my search to find our new home immediately. Unfortunately, while it seemed that many of the larger cities utilize posting homes onto home search sites, Brunswick however had very little to offer. Only 3 rental homes being anywhere remotely in our price range and in decent neighborhoods. I started off contacting all 3, the only one that got back to me was the one that I absolutely loved! But... that home already had 4 other applications in on it and we were all the way across the country. After being devastated at the high possibility that the home would go to someone else, I sent over a letter, telling a little more about our family, our situation, and including a picture. To my surprise, they passed by the other applications and chose us! We were fortunate enough to call this rental our home for 3 years, and in that time frame... made it our own.

My Challenge:
While the outside of this home was the cape cod/ farmhouse of my dreams, the inside was a whole different story! Every room that you went into was a different color, and I am not talking soft colors that flow from room to room... I am talking bright colors that do not coordinate one single bit.
The living room was peacock green, the dining room was bright red, the kitchen was sherbert orange, our master bedroom was school bus yellow, the master bath was a dark teal blue, and the three guest bedrooms were peach, turquoise and butter yellow. If you like color, then this house would have been perfect for you... I on the other hand, am a neutral lover. So we went from base housing where all of the walls were stark white and couldn't change anything, to the most colorful house you have ever seen, I would say that is a whole new design challenge!

I accepted my challenge and little by little we changed the color of each room, starting with the main living room first. The dining room color changed 2 times after I didn't like my first choice and the entry way got a nice coat of faux shiplap that we did ourselves. After 3 years of painting and small rental friendly projects, this home was feeling like one that we could very well own one day... and that was the plan, as my husband was making the decision to end his career with the Marines when his time was up, and the homeowners seemed in agreement that when we were ready, we could buy.
Until... they changed their minds. (read more above in the Royal Oaks House)

My Style: Traditional Vintage Farmhouse
My style really evolved in this home. It felt more like our own, although it was still a rental, I was able to put more of my own personal touch on it. I love styling homes based off of what the home tells me. No, while you may think I am a crazy person and talk to empty rooms, I mean by the style of the home. The exterior and interior of this home is very traditional, while the expansive one floor layout felt more like a farmhouse. I decided to mix the two together and create a suburban farmhouse if you will. I wanted to explore with soft colors since living in an all white home for the three years previous. The result was a cozy traditional farmhouse.

The Sipple House
Our Home Behind Military Gates - Camp Pendleton, California

After getting married we soon had to decide where we could call home. Being that the Hubbster is a camo wearing, country defending machine, we tossed back and forth the idea of living on base or off... after finally choosing military housing. Not only for it's safety, but convenience. So here we were, very NEW newlyweds, moving into our very bare, plain and quite boring cookie cutter military home with it's wonderfully stark white walls, beautiful light fixtures and lovely builder grade materials (which I might add, are all out of the early 90's)

My Challenge:
To decorate this beast with no paint, without changing one fixture, or doing anything remotely permanent. Oh, and did I add that when we moved in we had NOTHING but just our wedding presents. Yes, that means no furniture, no bed, no washer & dryer, nothing. This house has been our labor of love literally from the ground up (after spending almost a month sleeping & sitting only on the floor). When gathering inspiration for my home (before the days of Pinterest) I searched through magazines, blogs, and samples I had saved over the years. I always had a vision of what I wanted in my own home someday, but affording it was another story. We were newlyweds here, 23 years old, living on two incomes, which quite frankly, were less combined than what most families make on one income! During my journey of decorating our home I came to meet many other military wives & noticed something... every house I went to, there were the same white boring walls and yes some decided to hang a few things on them, but it seemed as if everyone that I was meeting was afraid to decorate, afraid to make their home their own.

My Style: Rustic Vintage
After living in our home now for 2 years, I have been able to slowly find my 'style'. Shortly after moving into our home, looking at the bare walls, an empty dining room, sparse bedroom and plain living room I did what NO person should ever do immediately after moving into a home... I went shopping. But not for items that were really ME or MY STYLE, but anything that would fill up the house and make it feel less empty. HUGE MISTAKE people! After a few months I ended up with a house that was completely NOT me and not to mention wasting way too much money on items that I completely started to loathe. I realized, I was impulse buying. After realizing my mistake and now hating everything that I had purchased, I slowly started selling and phasing out the items in our home that simply were not 'us' and began purchasing items that I truly loved. Our home is still a work in progress (and most likely will be, forever) but it's a start. This is our first home. The home we moved into just days after our Wedding, the home where we brought our daughter home to from the hospital, this is the home that is our beginning.

10 comments so far

  1. I love every bit of it! I also have the challenge of decorating a military base house. You have to get creative where ever you can! You have a very lovely home!!

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    1. Thank you Chelsea! I peeked over at your blog & love your home as well! Great job & wonderful DIY projects ;)

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  2. You have made such a beautiful home! I really enjoy your blog!

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  3. I love your decor. I too am a Marine Wife stationed at Camp Pendleton. I would love to know where you got a lot of your things. I would love for you to give me some pointers on our home.

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  4. I'm so inspired by you. I think you home is beautiful. I look forward to your future blogs.

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  5. I am about to move into base housing at pendleton and have no direction when it comes to my style. Any tips? or you could just do it for me and I'll pay lol

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  6. Fellow Marine wife here! I just found your blog and LOVE it! We don't live in base housing at the moment, but definitely will at some point in the future. I love how you've embraced the opportunity to make military housing "your own". Looking forward to following you!

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  7. I think it's amazing that you want to move here; South Carolina is my home...but if I could pick one place to live inside the U.S., it would be California. Instead, we get to go to good ol' North Dakota :) It will be my first time living on base. Your blog has inspired me and I have hope that everything doesn't have to be plain! If you ever need to know what to do when you get to S. C., just let me know!

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  8. Hi Jennifer! I'm a student at Harlem High School and I am currently making a documentary on a man who fought at Iwo Jima and went through basic training at Camp Pendleton. I was wondering if you would allow me to use this photo in my documentary? Love your blog and thank you for your time!

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