Hi Ya’ll! I’m Hannah, and I’m so glad you are here. I hope you will find inspiration, creative ideas, and DIY motivation as you read through my blog on renovating our 1950’s bungalow in Austin, Texas. I’m a *retired* teacher turned stay-at-home-mom rebranding herself as an interior designer (and I use that term loosely). I live in Austin with my husband (a closet carpenter) and our three kids under 5. Our house bleeds crimson and blue for the Kansas Jayhawks (my husband’s and my alma mater) and I’m a sucker for a vanilla diet coke from Sonic happy hour. I am constantly cooking or baking something yummy and I would spend all my free time crafting if I could.
To be honest, I’ve been thinking about starting this blog for a long time. When we bought our house in 2012, many people told me to start a blog and document all the renovations we did. And do you want to know why I didn’t start then? I didn’t know what I would name my blog. I know, that’s probably one of the worst reasons to not do something (Never-mind I had never started a website before – how hard could that be?). But its true and I kept on living my life *thinking* about starting a blog.
Eventually I did come up with a blog name – “Honeymooning on Saint Johns,” an ode to getting married and buying a house (on Saint Johns Avenue) in the same month. This series of events prohibited us from going on an actual honeymoon (don’t worry, I’m clearly not still bitter about that), and we spent many of our first months as a married couple living in a house with no sheetrock (thankfully, by the time we moved in we had a working toilet). Heck, we even entertained out of town guests in our house with an uninstalled range as our TV stand. Here’s a little glimpse of our house back then:
okay, so we had some sheetrock, just not a lot. And yes, that’s floor protection covering our beautiful refinished hardwood floors (we had to do something while waiting on permits!). Here’s another view so you get the whole picture:
A friend of mine always says “start before you are ready,” so, here we are in 2020 and I decided to give this whole thing a go. “Honeymooning on Saint Johns” didn’t feel appropriate anymore since we are 7.5 years into our marriage and (for better or worse) we are past the honeymoon stage. Elle & Jay is a tribute to my first and second born, whose first initials are L and J. My third born wasn’t around yet when I conceived this blog name, so I’ll just have to name something else after her.
While I do plan to center this blog around home renovation and interior design, I also aim to share about cooking, crafting, organizing, raising kids and life in general. Come on in and stay a while. Let me know what you think. And what you like. And then, if you like it enough, share it with a friend.
