Our South Austin Home – Mid 2020 update

It’s been so long since I’ve had you in our cute little South Austin home and I’m so excited to show you around! 

You can see our last home tour here! It was from last September, which was really the last time we made any big changes. 

Tbh, not a whole lot has changed. There is still a big hole in our TV cabinet lovingly chewed out our baby bunny, Pebbles. 

If you follow along on Instagram, probably none of this will be new. BUT I really want to document it here on the blog so I can see how far we’ve come next season!

Just to give you the lowdown if you’re new here!

We bought this house February 2019 and it’s our very first home! It’s in South Austin, where I grew up – actually just a few minutes from where my parents still live! 

Before we were living in a teeny tiny apartment on Manchaca over by Radio. Going from 600 square feet to 1,200 was a little overwhelming at first but it’s true that you quickly accumulate all the junk and then you need more room!

And in true millennial fashion, the absolute best part is that Turbo now has a backyard. He LOVES being outside and when we were in our apartment all he would want to do is lay on our front stoop. He’s very happy getting to bork at all his neighbor friends and bask in the sun whenever he wants! 

Biggest Home Updates

Probably the biggest thing we did was the wallpaper! It was our first quarantine home project and something I didn’t think we would get done for a looong time. But when you have nothing but time, that perspective kind of shifts!

I do love that this house was all white, mostly upgraded and sort of like a blank canvas! Because while I can appreciate the minimalist, clean look of just white and black with pops of navy or gray in a home – I LOVE color and want it everywhere! 

The wallpaper is our first lean towards that. It really transformed the whole kitchen / dining room area into a little jungle. I love it! 

I documented the whole process in an IGTV (watch it here!) but the gist of it is YES it looks amazing but it was such a pain in the ass. People will ask if it was worth it and half the time I say don’t do it and the other half I’m like yes you have to, it’s life changing! 

So take my advice with a grain of salt! 😉

Smaller Changes

My favorite thing to see is how much my plant babies have grown. I should do a post comparing them from a few months ago to now! It’s so wonderful to see the growth.

 In our last home update, I also talked about AJ’s birthday / our house warming party. That was such a fun time and I’m SO SAD. Thinking about how we haven’t had anyone over (at least to the inside!) in forever.

Speaking of though – we have made some changes to the backyard since that’s the only place we can host! We have some pretty big plans for it too.

So far I haven’t shown any photos from it but I should have taken some before we planted everything! 

In December and January, we added a ton of plants! My mom is a master gardener and has a background in landscaping and she designed and picked out everything! Our flower beds were empty, we had ZERO trees. Basically it was a big blank canvas and she filled it with so many lovely plants that are starting to flower and grow!

Really recently we put up some string lights. They are heavy duty and hang pretty low so I’m not sure if this is the final stage. But we had zero light before, and now it feels like we’re hanging out at a bar on East sixth like the old days! 

We’re also talking about doing a pergola or some sort over our deck. We’re still debating trying to do it ourselves, or really going all out and hiring someone to build something more substantial! 

Just last week, a wrench was thrown in our wedding plans (liiike we essentially lost a cool 6k 🙃More on that later). SOO any more backyard projects are on hold right now. 

Future Home Projects 

My biggest project now is PAINT! Like I said earlier, I do love white walls and how bright and light it makes everything. Butttt it’s also a little boring – don’t you think? 

The wallpaper was the first addition to the walls and it just sparked so many ideas. It made me want everything to be bright and colorful. Just looking at it peps me up and I want our whole house to be like that!

I would love to wallpaper our guest bathroom. I’ve always wanted to have flamingos or another bright jungle scene. Have you been to the bathrooms at Kitty Cohens? That’s what I want to emulate! 

Here’s a list of our actual concrete plans. These are going to be SO hard to explain with just words so hang with me:

• Paint the front entryway. The plan is to paint the door and walls the same color, and have a diagonal line extend on the longer wall into the living room.
• Paint along the back door. Paint the trim and an identical stripe around it. Then the stripe will extend under the window! 
• Shapes in the living room. I want to do some shapes/blobs in the living room around our gallery wall. I also need to get new prints!  
• Get new prints for the gallery wall. Just added that to the list ha! 
• After the living room paint I want to paint our bedroom. Once I get through this list I’ll share more about that! 

That’s pretty much all the updates I have for you! Now I’m going to virtually invite you in and show you all the photos I can so we can both pretend you’re visiting! 

P.S. if we’re not friends on Instagram yet – that’s where I share a lot more frequent updates! Click here to see! 

Come Inside our South Austin Home!