Right place, wrong time.

Although we had been talking about investing in real estate for a long time, timing was definitely less than ideal when the opportunity to purchase Betty’s Bungalow came up! I (Alex) have been attending a Physician Assistant program in Iowa for the past 29 months. At the time these photos were taken I was over in Appleton Wisconsin (where Emily and I met and attended college). I was finishing my last ever long distance clinical rotation. Many of you might not know, but we had been both finishing up masters programs while maintaining the dreaded long-distance relationship. It’s not easy to renovate a house when you live four hours away! However, we could not pass up on taking a chance on this charming little home with a connection to Emily’s past. We dove in to starting a renovation, and a business, despite the chaotic circumstances! Luckily, we were blessed with some amazing parents who were pivotal in making Betty’s Bungalow the place it is today.

        

So, while I was busy studying and looking in kids’ ears, Emily and her parents were hard at work prepping the house and painting the outside. Some of the  weekends during the month of my last distance rotation I returned to sand, paint, and be any type of utility player I could be! Much of the brainstorming for the design, mission, values, and decor of the house occurred during this month. Things were going well, and with my days of living out of my car coming to an end we began a new adventure!

Back to where it all began

One weekend out of this month Emily came to visit in Appleton, WI. We had a great weekend soaking up some of the last bit of summer sun, in good measure… pasty white people with history of melanoma aren’t allowed much sun! We spent the day wandering campus and enjoying the farmers market, something I never got to do as we played football on Saturdays. While wandering around we came across some new art, including butterfly murals (Emily has a thing for butterflies), and this engraving on the sidewalk. We thought it was pertinent to us after this hell of a year we have had, losing our first puppy, Oakley, and Emily’s Melanoma scare.

On to more pleasant topics. We spent the night going to Basil’s an awesome Thai place in Appleton, with my favorite red curry anywhere. Afterwards we wandered college avenue, and made it to Cleo’s, a year round Christmas bar (for those wondering, we passed on the Suffering Bastards).  We goofed off, as is our norm, and spent most of the night talking about how to make Betty’s the most awesome place to come stay in Rochester. This weekend is where Emily and I went through multiple designs of our logo and finally settled on what you see today! We also ended up finding the dresser in the main room of Betty’s on Craigslist. Which was cool, and not-so-cool, at the same time. The cool part, it looks awesome and the person we bought it from played football at Lawrence. He coached the running backs when I was a freshman, so it was nice to see a familiar face!  The not cool part was that it didn’t fit into our vehicle. As I mentioned before, we have awesome parents, and my Mom ended up driving up to pick it up!

 

Postings need Poodles

As some of you may be aware we have a serious addiction to Goldendoodles.  They are fun-loving, goofy, and bouncing furballs, so it makes it easy for us to love them. Anyway, we have this thing about being #(hashtag)Team Poodles. For those of you who don’t know, my Mom has a thing about yelling hashtag and making a “hash” hand gesture because she thinks she’s hip, but I digress. Basically, we love our dogs and want to share that with you too! Each post will have a goldendoodle, (or two)! Below you get to see the Goldendoodle in its natural snuggle habitat in the early morning! Rory also likes to dance with her Mom!

Thanks for reading! Hope you all have a great Christmas with your loved ones and a Happy New Year!