It seems that my whole life has been a mix of dirt & diamonds.

I grew up hanging with my 2 younger brothers. Spending the days playing on our 20 acres of wooded land….riding 4 wheelers and swimming in our pond. We weren’t afraid to get dirty and were encouraged to play outside…no city kids here. On the flip side, we lived in a queen anne’esque style home complete with a wrap around porch and filled with my mom’s antique collections.  A lot of people thought our house was like a museum with all of the ornate furniture and antique wallpaper but furniture is meant to be used and that we did, it wasn’t a museum to us! It is probably why I love the saying “luxury isn’t luxury unless it is comfortable”. I always believe you should fill your home with pieces you love but don’t tip toe around those things trying not to get them dirty….use them, abuse them and cherish them!

I still love beautiful homes but spend a lot of time getting dirty in order to make them into diamonds. Quite literally, blood sweat and tears go into all of our projects…mostly tears on my side and blood on Dan’s:)

Our most recent photo shoot came together as an idea to portray the comfortable luxury vibe we love to live: Not afraid to get our hands dirty to make something beautiful. Work hard for what you have. Be humble. AND diy but Do It Right! Dirt to diamonds……

We started with our first home purchases before we were married. Being very careful with what we spent on each project because the resale potential was small and so were our budgets. Often times filling the homes with repurposed, hand me down furniture from our family and second hand stores. The coffee table in the living room of my first place was salvaged from the trash pile in my condo building’s shared garbage area…I cut the legs off, sanded it and painted it. Voila!

The word “adorn” means to make something more beautiful or attractive. It’s about taking something in disarray, seeing the beauty in it and transforming it. The word fits my view of the ugly homes perfectly. I see past the current state of the home to what it could become (we usually buy the house that has been sitting on the market forever)! Fast forward to this photo shoot. New blog photos were desperately needed for the adorned homes blog page and I wanted to portray the 2 sides of our life….the dirty work we do ourselves and the pretty outcome after we are done.

We partnered with our photographer, Laura Rae, at her studio and Creative Lighting  (who supplied the insane gold chandi) for our shoot!  It couldn’t have turned out better! 2 different vibes make who we are. Redneck roots grown to know the importance of quality work and impeccable style. Its inspires us every day to look back at what we’ve done to get to where we are today!

So go climb that ladder in a dress, live life with a mix of dirt & diamonds.