interior-design – This is my hobby.

Vince and I purchased our first home in 2017 — a tiny, historic Spanish Mission style house with a cottage behind it.

We had our two boys and lived on top of each other but absolutely loved that little house.

Vince used the Florida room as his office, we knocked out a closet to put in a stackable washer and dryer (a lot of old FL homes don’t have laundry hookups indoor or in the main house), and I filled each space with thrifted finds.

So many sweet memories in our first home as a family.

Had so much fun styling and sharing with my friends.

Love, love, love this piece and will never get rid of it.

The hardest thing about living in this house was that our headboard was right against the boys’ bathroom, so they were constantly waking us up!

I had a blast making style choices for the boys’ room.

Was obsessed with this bird chandelier we ordered on Etsy but had to eventually dismantle because of our cats.

We filled the cottage with thrifted finds.

We moved to our current home just as the pandemic started — it couldn’t have been better timing. I can’t imagine us weathering lock down and virtual learning on top of each other in that small space.

Our new house is much bigger, but it’s a cookie cutter new build, so we sacrificed the historic charm of our first house for modern comforts as our family grew.

It was fun and special to watch our new house being built.

We did keep our first place, though, and now rent out both the main house and cottage.

With my hectic schedule, I hardly drive by the house and haven’t been inside in over a year, maybe longer. With all the amazing thrift finds I’ve come across recently and left behind, Vince asked me to consider snagging some and saving them for an airbnb decor revamp.

The current styling of the airbnb is much more modern, neutral and less eclectic than my house — it needs to appeal to broader tastes — so my challenge is finding ways to update decor that fit within as specific palate.

I went out over the weekend and came away with some starting points:

At Goodwill, I found four matching pillows to brighten up the couch, a basket that can be used on the kitchen counter or maybe living room coffee table, some artwork for the kitchen, and a woven trunk.

I’m thinking the woven trunk would be good to double as a table and extra storage in the secondary bedroom of the main house.

We are in desperate need of a new couch (maybe leather this time around?), so I’ll be visiting the Nearly New Shop in West Palm Beach weekly to see if I can find the perfect piece.

What do you think? I’m open to all suggestions for sprucing up the place. I’ll share styling details here as I go!

Last week’s thrifted ‘fits:

Shirt thrifted and passed on from a friend, Madewell jeans (my fave) from a Goodwill Boutique in Boca

My husband is the type of person who likes things in extremes.

For example, if he finds a pair of shorts he likes, he gets them in every color.

He’s really into baseball caps, so we have a plethora. He buys them everywhere we go.

Right now, he’s having a major sunglasses moment.

He discovered that for about $40, he can get an entire box full of sunglasses on Alibaba.

I don’t know anything about this site and am not endorsing it — y’all know I’m a thrifter/secondhand champion, so this sunglasses-in-bulk business is not my vibe.

I prefer to source cheap sunglasses from Goodwill.

We are aligned, however, in the general concept of cheap sunglasses for him, because he’s lost several expensive pairs, including on airplanes and in the ocean.

When the sunglasses box arrived, I immediately knew I was in danger.

With each pair Vince tried on, the previous was tossed to the side, and my kitchen counter was soon covered in sunnies.

A future flashed before me that was full of sunglasses — surfaces throughout my home covered in them — all the same pair in different colors.

The horror.

BASKETS TO THE RESCUE.