Turning our house into an Airbnb

 Hey Guys!

So today's post is about turning our house into an Airbnb. As of last October 2021 it has been 5 years since my sister bought a house that we both lived in together. We don't really know what we will do with the house in the end but we initially had the plan to buy the house together but unfortunately at the time we closed on the house I did not have a job or any income so my name could not be listed on the mortgage. I think depending on how we do with it or where we both end up in future situations we might just refinance the house to have it both in our names and just keep it as an Airbnb. 

My sister was the first one to move out in July of 2021 as she moved to Orlando to pursue her Master's and I moved out in April of 2022 to move to North Dakota. Since no one was living there anymore and we still need to pay the mortgage, we decided to turn it into a rental property. The house is fully furnished still and we have a lot of great amenities to offer our guests. We left behind most of our own pieces of furniture and then we bought and/or made a few new pieces if something was really special to us. It has been a long journey to finally get the house listed but it is finally live on Airbnb and I wanted to share some of that info on here. The house isn't fully ready yet but we made sure to make the available date a tangible one and it will be fully ready by the time our first guests arrive! Here is the link to the house and please enjoy a little tour of the house that I said I was going to do a post on so many years ago and never did! 

Please feel free to share this post with anyone who might looking to come for North Fort Myers, Florida and rent a home on the water. I hope you enjoyed todays post!

Thanks for stopping by!

XO, Steph

Living in Grand Forks, North Dakota

The outside of our apartment building

Snow shortly after I arrived

The snow melting a week later and a view of the field across from our apartment

The pretty skies after the sunset

Hey Guys!

Currently I am residing in Grand Forks, North Dakota and I wanted to do a post about living here. I recently moved here in April of 2022 and I will most likely be here until April of 2023. And why Grand Forks, ND you ask? Well my fiancé is stationed here with the Air Force. I probably won't be saying much more than that or be using his name a lot due to the nature of his job and other things but after 3 years of being in the Air Force he was finally able to move off base and after us being in a long distance relationship those entire 3 years we decided that we wanted to be together. To be honest, I really struggled with this a lot! I grew up in a Christian household going to Church every Sunday and living together before marriage was something I never really pictured myself doing. Granted, I pictured myself getting married at 25 and buying a house and having a perfect career, and life just being absolutely magical. I never imagined to fall in love with someone 5 years younger than me, who joined the Air Force and moved away only a year and a half into our relationship. 

I don't really have anything to justify my choice other than it was a choice that I made for myself. Ultimately it came down to I didn't want to be away from my best friend and the love of my life anymore, oh and by the way in case you missed it, we're engaged now (but that will be for another post)! We had been away from each other for 3 years already and even though I thought we were going to get married much sooner into our relationship, you can't make someone get married when they aren't ready. Marriage is kind of big a deal. Both of our parents have been divorced and are on their second marriage. Thankfully these ones have worked out much better for them this time around. We both just want to ensure that this is it and that we want to spend the rest of our lives together which so far the answer is yes we do! 

Anyways, onto my experience of living here so far. I was born and raised in Florida and have lived there my whole life. I had always wanted to move away from Florida because dealing with snowbirds is very tiring! The traffic is just absolutely awful during season and unless you don't really have to leave your house very often it's not fun to deal with. With that being said, I never in a million years would have thought that the place I'd be moving to someday when I pictured myself finally moving somewhere outside of Florida would be North Dakota. I had always planned on it being New York City but if you have read my previous posts then you know I chickened out of moving there after college because I didn't want to move so far away from my family. Well the joke was on me because I moved even farther away from my family, about 2,000 ish miles away from my family. When I was younger I could also picture myself moving to either North Carolina or Tennessee. I absolutely love vacationing in both of those states and I just think that it would be so peaceful to move to one of those states. Also, shortly after my fiancé started dating we talked about moving to Massachusetts because that's where he is originally from. He didn't move to Florida until he was a Sophomore in high school. 

I have been here since about April 9th, 2022 so in total I've been here for a little over a month. I say that because about 2 weeks after getting here I left on a 17 day long roadtrip with my parents who flew up to Minneapolis and we drove around visiting different National Parks for my moms birthday! We also drove back down to Florida to go to Disney for one day, on my moms actual birthday! Yes we are that Disney obsessed! I will do a few posts about that trip as well later on. We visited some very cool places that I will talk about in more detail. Anyways, the only conclusion I have come to is that I'm ready to move back home! My fiancé has a little less than a year left and I am definitely counting down the days. Our #1 goal is to make it back home but we really have no idea where we will end up because it all kind of depends on where my fiancé is able to get a job. The main reason he joined the Air Force was because they pay for all his IT certifications that he needs to get a job once he gets out plus they offer gaining experience as well. 

Thankfully there are IT jobs pretty much everywhere but we also looking at which jobs pay the most and offer the best benefits because we both have this goal of retiring earlier than average person. So we kind of plan on living a somewhat frugal lifestyle to gain a higher savings for retirement. We both want to be able to spend as much time at home with our future children as possible and also be able to travel the world more. Once he gets closer to getting out he will primarily be searching for jobs in the Lee County area and then if nothing is panning out there the goal is to end up somewhere in Florida because at least we would still be in the same state as our families. There are a couple other states that he has been looking at as well but if we end up in one of those states, it will most likely be temporary until he gains enough experience to be able to relocate back to our hometown in Florida. 

As far as where we live, we live in a very nice 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment on the second floor in a very nice area but honestly there is nothing to do here besides drinking and staying indoors. Two things I'm not very good at. Since I don't really have a job, I don't really leave the house much and fiancé leaves the house every day to go to work and on the weekends he struggles with wanting to leave the house. I definitely don't blame him. When I worked full time I loved getting my errands done first thing in the morning only to come back home and spend the rest of the day just relaxing in comfy clothes and watching a movie. We're both very much homebodies but at the same time I grew up in Florida, going or doing something every weekend. I'm not much of beachgoer but the typical Floridian goes to the beach on the weekends. The land here is very flat, I'm pretty sure it's flatter than Florida even and there are barely any trees. It kind of blows my mind and I've been visiting here since 2020. Also the sun does not go down until like 10 pm and it rises at like 5:30 am. It is all very weird and it definitely has been hard to adjust my sleep schedule. I am a morning person but with the sky still very bright I have a hard time getting tired in the evenings and wanting to fall asleep early. 

My fiancé's sister and her boyfriend recently came to stay with us and we had a wonderful time hosting them. Neither of them had ever been to North Dakota so at least they got to cross that off their list. We showed them around town, the base that my fiancé works on, and we went out one night to check out a few of the local bars/breweries. It was a lot of fun and we can't wait to have more visitors. My fiancé's parents are coming in about a week and we are very excited to have them as well. We have a ton of stuff planned to do with them and it should be a lot of fun. One thing for sure is that the trips are never long enough but we definitely enjoy getting to spend any and every second with our loved ones.

I think that pretty much sums up my experience so far but I will definitely keep you guys posted on how things are going! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!

Thanks for stopping by!

XO, Steph

June 2022 Life Update

My dog Dooney and Me in the snow in North Dakota

Hey Guys!

Long time no talk! But no, seriously, it has been a while and I have really missed blogging! I want to start off by apologizing and even though I know that I really only had like maybe 5-10 people reading my blog posts and most of those were my family and friends, I want to say I'm sorry for taking such a long hiatus and for just randomly not posting anymore. Honestly, life got a little crazy! I mean, I think a lot of peoples lives got crazy once Covid became a thing. I really don't have any other excuse besides Covid and probably some mental health issues just like a lot of people kind of dealt with during Covid. We all had to stop seeing our friends and family and we all became shut-ins for a little bit. 

Anyways, I wanted to give you guys a little life update on where I have been since my last post in February of 2020! When I posted last, I had just started going to school for my Master's and Covid was just kind of in the beginning stages of being spread around the world...yay so fun! I was still working for the County at the time (remember? The job I constantly complained about) and my boyfriend had recently been stationed in Grand Forks, North Dakota and only had been living there since October of 2019. Wow that sounds so crazy to say! Time really does fly by! In the time since then, I was promoted at work to a job that I had really wanted for about a year or more, I am still currently working on my Master's, my sister went back to school for her Master's and moved to Orlando. We still have the house that we shared together and are in the process of turning it into an Airbnb/long term fully furnished rental property. My dog was also diagnosed with Cancer and we almost lost him. After 4 years my boyfriend and I got engaged, and I recently quit that job I was promoted to and moved to Grand Forks to be with my fiancé. I think that pretty much sums it up but if I miss anything I will probably blog about it later. 

I really want to get back to blogging, not necessarily full time seeing as how I am a full time student, searching for a new, hopefully fully remote job, and planning a wedding all while living 2,000 miles away from family and friends! I already have a few posts in mind that I plan on writing today, which is a Sunday and then finishing some of them up throughout the rest of the week. I will explain my current situation in a little more detail in one of the posts and as well as some of the other items I mentioned above. As for now, I hope you guys have a fantastic week and if there is anything specific you would like me to blog about please leave me a comment below! 

Thanks for stopping by!

XO, Steph

Why I Chose Not to Move to New York City

Hey guys,

So today's post is going to be kind of personal and it took me a long time to actually write this post. One of the reasons I wanted to write it is because it's been almost 2 years since my sister and I thought about moving to New York. Also, since I recently took a trip to New York I thought it would be fun to finally finish writing this post and actually post it! I absolutely love the city of New York! It is one of my favorite places to visit, I never get bored and I just absolutely love the atmosphere! It's so fast paced, high-tech, and people from all over the world live there. It's such a unique experience and if you've never been, it's number one on my places to visit list. This city is amazing and theres a reason it's been featured in so many movies and TV shows! 

Anyways, one of the main reasons I chose not to move there is because it's my favorite place to vacation. If moved there then I would be living there and I would have to pick new favorite place to vacation which probably would have to be Florida since that's where I'm from and all of my family lives here. But honestly, I couldn't pick Florida as a new favorite place to vacation because I don't actually like Florida enough to want to vacation here all of the time. The only reason I would be coming back was for my family and I don't necessarily consider that an actual vacation then. I wouldn't be exploring anywhere new I would probably just be seeing all of my family that lives whenever I came down.

The next reason is because it is just way too expensive to live there. It's also way to expensive to really do anything as well! I've watched a lot of those videos on facebook about people living in their tiny loft apartment in New York and how they barely get by with their rent and the amount of money they make but they still choose to live their because why not? It's an amazing city! But I just don't think I could imagine paying so much money for rent and other expense to live either with 3-4 other roommates with no space or just my sister and I in a studio with no space and with two dogs. Because yes my sister and I have a dog each and we definitely would not leave either of them behind.

Speaking of no space, I just don't think I could handle how tiny and confined everything is there. I've pretty much always lived in a house with a yard except for 1 semester when I lived in a dorm! I've had dogs and other various animals throughout my life too and a backyard for them to play in! I don't think I could handle having to take my dog out for a walk 2-3 times a day and making them stay on a leash every time we went. My dog enjoys being able to run around the backyard sometimes and just sit down in the sun and relax. I've also pretty much always had my own room and when I moved out of my parents house I've always had an extra room that my sister and I typically use as an office! I think if I had moved to NYC that I might have suffered from some sort of depression over this because I kind of am claustrophobic so I think I would have handled it well.

I also did not want to move there because I know for a fact that I would severely miss my family. The one semester that I lived in my dorm, I absolutely hated it so I drove home every single weekend just so I didn't have to be there. Thankfully I went to a school that was only about 2 and a half hours away so the drive was super easy and went by pretty quick! I currently live like 5 minutes from my parent's house and they are constantly coming over here to our house or we are going over to their house. We also pretty much spend every weekend doing something with them unless one of us is out of town. I also go on a lot of vacations with my family so I would miss being able to just take weekend trips to Disney with them. Granted I was planning on moving there with my sister so I think that would have helped a little but I still think I would have been depressed about not being able to go to dinner with my parent's whenever I wanted.

I hope you guys enjoyed this post! For now I think I will stick with just vacationing in NYC! I look forward to that trip pretty much every year now and I hope it's something we're able to keep doing every year!

Keep checking back for more posts even Monday, Wednesday, and Friday! I hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Thanks for stopping by!

XO, Steph