First Time in Denver

Posted on January 30, 2021January 30, 2021 by Alyse Nicole

First Time in Denver

I had planned on going to Denver, CO for my birthday. It was originally a couple trip for William and me, but once “you know what” hit, that counted William out because he’s considered high risk due to his asthma. So it turned into a family affair, with the addition of my friend Jennifer. Here’s the story.

How it Started

So, we planned the trip for months, as one does. For our first day, since we were all arriving at different times, I decided to hire a private chef for that evening so we could rest up and wind down from traveling. The first chef completely ghosted me. We were conversing. All she had to do was send the invoice. Then she was nowhere to be found. So, I found her on Instagram and asked her if we were still on. I didn’t hear back from her until we were back from our trip. Luckily, I went ahead and moved on. So, I found another chef, and he tried to overprice the meal for whatever reason. So, I cancelled our agreement as well.

The first day of the trip was my actual birthday, and since we were celebrating my 35th birthday, which is a milestone birthday to me, Jennifer and I flew in first class. It was my first time, and let me say, I’m in love! Click here to see how that went lol. We arrived in Denver first, but my niece, Kayla, arrived shortly after. So we waited for her so we could all drive to the Airbnb together. On the way to the house, we stopped by a dispensary. This was also a first for me, and what an experience it was! Once my sisters and other niece made it in, we had also partaken and were under the influence. So this is what happened with the food. smh

Since we were without a private chef, I just found a local restaurant that delivered and had family size dishes. Now, here’s where I messed up. I ordered the food after taking the edible! So, the evening was going on, and I knew the food shouldn’t have taken that long. Eventually, I decided to check the status, only to find that I had ordered it as pickup instead of delivery. Mind you, we didn’t have a car, and the restaurant doesn’t deliver themselves. It’s actually through Doordash. So, I’m freaking out now. I called the restaurant and let them know, and together we came up with a solution. Uber has a new service called Uber Pickup, where they literally pick things up and bring them to you. So, we finally received the food, and it was surprisingly still hot! Night saved! As far as the rest of the night, I ended up crashing around 8pm. Happy birthday to me. lol

Hitting the Town

Now, it’s Friday, day 2, and we’re starting our activities. We headed downtown to Larimer Square, but sadly it was closed. So we walked over to 16th Street to check out the 16th Street Mall. I’m not sure if Larimer Square was closed because we were too early, because of the snow, or due to the lockdown that started back the week of our trip. All during our trek, there was a slight blizzard (to us) taking place. We couldn’t wait to get to Denver and experience the snow until we got to Denver and experienced the snow. It was basically like walking in the rain. lol

So, during our journey, we made it to Angelo’s Taverna, where we had lunch in a greenhouse. The greenhouses are part of their solution to outdoor dining due to COVID restrictions. It was a really cool experience, besides it being pretty cold inside. We started with oysters. Then I ordered a huge calzone with sausage and bell peppers. After dinner, our server brought me a cannoli for my birthday. Everything was delicious!

We had so many plans, like visiting Miracle at Larimer Square, a Christmas themed pop up bar. There’s one in Austin during the holidays too, but we never make it. We were also supposed to go ice skating downtown. While neither of those happened, we did ride the free 16th Street shuttle to the State Capitol and stumbled upon a German Christmas market in the Civic Center Park called the Christkindl Market. Each vendor was set up in a cedar booth that resembled a log cabin. We had some delicious hot chocolate and Russian style crepes from Blinchiki, one of the food vendors on site. If you’re in Denver in December, please visit this market. It’s like you’re in another place and time.

The last details given were from Friday and Saturday. At this point, the whole trip has become one big day because Saturday evening, my niece received some news that would completely change and outweigh everything. At around 5pm, mountain time, my niece received a call that her daughter was in a terrible car accident and had to have emergency surgery, among other things. Of course, this meant we spent the rest of the trip making sure she’d be ok. It was a long night, but our baby girl pulled through. Two months later, she’s still on the road to recovery, but she’s doing so good!

I’m sorry to end the story this way, but that’s how the trip ended. Everyone else’s flights left early in the morning. So, when I got up, they were already gone. I cleaned up, took a few pics (that were all later deleted), and headed to the airport. I did treat myself to some expensive airport restaurant food since I got there early. Then I met up with Jennifer, and we came back home. I will say that I plan to return to Denver when it’s safer and warmer so I can get a better experience of the Mile High City. Have you ever been there? If so, do you have any recommendations for when I revisit?

Master Bedroom Makeover

Posted on January 1, 2021January 6, 2021 by Alyse Nicole

Our Master Bedroom Makeover

We participated in our first One Room Challenge this Spring when I did a full makeover of our master bedroom. We’ve lived here since 2017 but had never done anything to it.

For those unfamiliar, the One Room Challenge is a usually 6 week long project where you choose a room in your home or someone else’s home and give it a full makeover. How big or little the makeover is up to you. You share your progress once a week via your blog, social media, or both. Then everyone does their big reveal on the last week’s post date. For the Spring 2020 challenge, we were given 8 weeks to finish to help with shipping delays caused by COVID-19.

A little back story, we bought a king size mattress when we first moved in and still used our full/queen size headboard that was handmade by my late father-in-law. So we’re definitely holding onto that. Since the makeover, the headboard has been living in the front guest bedroom. Below are some before pictures. I put everything on the bed and was trying to do a purge/keep situation. It was not successful. lol

When I saw that registration was open for the One Room Challenge, I immediately signed up, not even knowing what we’d do. I’ve been watching participants for years and was tired of cheering from the sidelines. So, I bit the bullet and registered. Later that day, i was lying in our bed, doing nothing, and I started looking around. My brain was like OF COURSE THIS IS THE ROOM!

So I talked with William, my husband, and we agreed to redo the bedroom. Then to make it a bit spicier, I decided to do the whole thing myself and surprise William with the reveal. As a compromise, he has full control over curating the wall art. It’s currently still in progress. The pieces are all created. They just need to be framed.

I came up with this mood board after finding the paint color Night Watch by PPG. It inspired the entire design. I wanted to paint the entire room this color, but I was vetoed by William. So, accent wall it was!

The first step was to paint. All of our interior walls, except our master bathroom and laundry room, were painted a terra cotta color before we moved in. So, I chose to paint the remaining walls outside of the accent wall white, specifically Pure White also by PPG. It took 2.5 weeks for me to finish painting. So I did other projects in between, like assembling the bed and building a desk. Click here to see the whole process in my Instagram highlights.

The bed was a mostly easy assembly. Fun fact: I really like putting furniture together, especially Ikea furniture! Our bed, however, was from Wayfair. For the desk, I bought two 1x12x6 common board planks, some hair pin legs, and a few 12″ braces from Home Depot. It all came out to around $80, with the pin legs being the most expensive at $45. I used the braces to connect the two boards. Then, I attached the legs about an inch from each corner’s edge. After that, I stained the wood with some walnut stain we already had and topped it with one thin coat of epoxy. Once that dried, I was done!

After finishing the desk, I had to do the last design step that I’d been avoiding since week 2 or 3, and that was cutting the trim for the door moulding. To start this project, I taped off what I wanted the moulding to look like. I then measured that several times and bought the trim from, you guessed it, Home Depot. We only had a jigsaw at the time, and I was scared to use it. So I taped off what I eyeballed to be 45 degree angles at the needed lengths and asked William to cut the first piece. He uses the jigsaw all the time. So it wasn’t a problem for him.

I watched him cut one piece. Then. I built up the courage to try with him supervising me. I did great on the first cut and became overconfident. That’s when the problems started. I cut the rest by myself, and it wasn’t pretty. The angles were off. Chunks of wood would break off the tips when I cut through, and it was just all around ugly. So I stopped cutting after what you see in the second picture above and rented a miter saw. That was one of the best decisions I made during this project! It was so easy to use, and the cuts were perfect and beautiful. So now, a miter saw is on my wish list.

The actual final step before decorating was putting up the tv. I envisioned mounting it and making a wooden frame/art piece to cover it. That didn’t happen for multiple reasons, the main reason being I had NO IDEA how to do that lol. So, I just had the tv mounted by Five Star Installations , a local company I found on Facebook. While Rashon, the owner, was putting up the tv, I finished the doors. These were the final steps before I could start making the room pretty, and I was so excited to almost be done and show William what I had been up to for the last 8 weeks!

Well, that’s all for today, but check back soon for the reveal of our master bedroom makeover, where I’ll go into full detail on sourcing the items and my thought process.