^^Outfit Details: Yumi Kim Floral Dress // Black Tie Heels

Happy Valentine’s Day! We got an early start on celebrating this year when we filled our house with roses and balloons earlier this month – I kind of like it that way though. Holidays always go by so quickly. I love Valentine’s Day because it means date night, chocolate and flowers – all of my favorite things! In honor of the holiday of love, I thought it’d be fun to share some things about us that you might not already know….

10 Things About Us

1. Life with two dogs is crazier than we thought: We definitely didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. We anticipated that the puppy stage would be challenging, but we realized we actually got pretty lucky with Luna. Leo’s been a lot more to handle! We are finally to a point where he sleeps through most of the night (for the first 2 months, he was up every 2 hours) and we’re still working through potty training (some days he gets it, others not so much). Luna definitely had an adjustment period where she had to get used to a puppy stealing all her toys, food and attention. It took about a month, but we can now leave them in a room together and not worry about it. They are actually really sweet together most of the time. We often find them cuddling each other – it’ so cute!

2. We’re hoping to add to our family, just not quite yet: We definitely want children soon, but getting adjusted to this new life with two puppies is enough for us right now. We’re not getting any younger so we won’t wait too long, but at this very moment, we’re content (and exhausted) with our little fur babies.

^^Outfit Details: Red Jumpsuit // Red Lipstick – layered ‘Dangerous’ and ‘Russian Red’

3. We’re clean freaks (despite having two dogs): The ONLY downside to having two Golden Retrievers…your house will be COVERED in dog hair. I’ve come to realize the only way to deal with it is to brush them and vacuum every other day and even then, I find clumps of fur around our house. With Luna, it wasn’t too bad. She definitely shed, but her she has longer, thinner hair so it was really only bad during spring and right before winter as she gained and lost her winter coat. With Leo, it’s another story. His fur is super thick and fluffy – which makes him adorable – but also shed like crazy! I cannot keep up with it. I have another vacuum in my Amazon cart as I write this. We already have three vacuums, but nothing seems to clean it all up. I’m trying out this one next.

4. We love luxury, but we have very little attachment to “things”: Phil and I love luxury brands and designer goods, but we are both content without those things too. When we moved to LA and back again, we got rid of most of our items and then in 2015 we spent 6 months traveling so we were really without a lot of our possessions. After all of that, we felt very unattached to material things. We place a lot of value on experiences because they’re memories you’ll hold onto for a lifetime.

^^Outfit Details: Red Lace Maxi Dress // Christian Louboutin Heels

5. Minnesota will likely always be our home: We both grew up in Minnesota despite being born in North Dakota (me) and New Jersey (Phil). We lived in Los Angeles for 5 years and we loved it, but ultimately wanted to settle down where are our families were so we knew we wanted to buy our first house back in Minnesota. We love being close to our families – my mom, younger sister and stepdad live a couple blocks away and my sister and her family live a few blocks in the other direction and we spend most weekends with my dad and stepmom who are 15 minutes away.

6. We’re always on the hunt for our next house though: We bought our house more for the neighborhood and school district so we knew we’d be renovating our house at some point (we’ve been in stages of that for the last couple of years). We just didn’t realize how time consuming renovations would be and unfortunately, we’ve had some pretty bad contractors. Luckily, we’ve had some great ones too and we’re on the path to wrapping up all of our outstanding projects – I will be sharing them here soon! After going through all of our renovations, we still don’t quite feel our house accommodates our needs for space so we’re always on Zillow searching for our dream home. We will likely build at some point unless one of a few homes that we’ve had our eyes on comes available.

7. We’re workaholics and rarely have downtime: This is something we are both always looking to improve on. Like most people, work/life balance is hard to perfect for us. When Phil and I first met, I was interning at an investment bank and had to report to work at 6AM and then head to class after. Phil got on a similar schedule and I feel like life never really slowed down. Once Phil made the jump to do music full time, he had to put in a lot of extra hours at night. When we lived in LA and I was working on Wall Street, I often had to be up by 3AM and I was blogging at night after work. We’ve both definitely experienced burn out because we’re always burning the wick at both ends. Most people close to us would tell you our lives are not quite as glamorous as they seem because we are always working. We are both incredibly appreciative that we can do careers that we love (I wouldn’t trade it for the world), but I think there’s a misconception that bloggers have it easy. I work more hours than I did on Wall Street – and that’s hard to beat! Luckily, Phil fills in where I can’t (errands, cooking, helping with the dogs, etc.) and we try to approach everything as a team.

8. We prefer shopping for our home vs. our closets: We do most of our shopping online, but find a lot of inspiration shopping in stores for our home. Despite going to the mall a lot growing up and even in my prior career (it was part of my job as a stock analyst), I don’t really love browsing the mall. I hate trying on and I’m usually so tired after walking around that I don’t feel inspired to pull an outfit together. On the other hand, Phil and I both love shopping for our home. It’s fun to imagine what your life looks like together by shopping for the pieces that you’ll be surrounded by every day. I love architecture and design – I wanted to be an architect growing up. The Restoration Hardware in Chicago is probably our favorite retail store ever – their cafe is amazing along with everything else in there.

9. We eat out a lot, but enjoy homemade meals more: Given time constraints and mostly poor planning, we typically do takeout, but whenever we cook at home, we enjoy it so much more. When I say “we” I mean Phil because he’s a much better cook than me and he actually likes doing it! I prefer baking, myself. Guess what we’ll be doing on Valentine’s Day?

10. We spend nearly every day, all day together (yes, all four of us): We both work from home and Phil helps me with my business a lot during the day so we often work next to each other every day and with two attention-loving Golden Retrievers – they’re never far away. It can get to be a lot at times -working and living on top of each other – but we love it. It’s fun to take little breaks during the day and just watch the dogs do funny things together (they’re sitting next to me right now drinking out of the same water bowl despite having two right next to each other). It’s always chaos around here, but it’s always entertaining.

xo, Maria

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