SideQuest 07: Exploding Toilets, Budget Hacks, and "Doing It In The Dark" (with Isabel Bowen) | DIY Renovations and Creative Entrepreneurship
If you follow us on social media, you know that things don’t always go according to plan. But our guest this week has an origin story that might just beat them all.
In SideQuest 07, we sit down with Isabel Bowen (Arly’s sister!). By day, she plans luxury South Asian and multicultural weddings. By night—literally, in the dark—she runs Bowen’s Builds, where she and her husband tackle major home renovations on a DIY budget.
We chatted about the messy reality of starting a business, why "perfect" is the enemy of "done," and how to renovate a house when you work a full-time job.
The "Toilet Incident" (A.K.A. The Origin Story)
Every DIYer has that one moment where they realize, "Okay, I have to figure this out myself." For Isabel, it happened right after buying her first house.
They had just finished a bathroom renovation when a pipe burst. The toilet didn’t just leak; it exploded. Water flooded through the floor, pouring into the dining room below—right through the smoke detector.
With contractors unavailable (it was New Year's Eve, naturally) and quotes coming in way over budget, Isabel and her husband Jacob realized they had two choices: live in a disaster zone or learn how to fix it. That moment launched Bowen’s Builds, a channel dedicated to showing the imperfect side of DIY.
"Doing It In The Dark"
One of the most relatable parts of this episode was Isabel’s concept of "Doing It In The Dark."
Social media makes renovations look like they happen in a seamless 30-second montage. The reality? Most of us have 9-5 jobs. Isabel shared that 95% of their content is filmed at night because that’s the only time they have to work.
Isabel’s Advice for the Weekend Warrior:
The "One Hour" Rule: You don't need a whole Saturday. Can you scrape popcorn ceilings for one hour on a Tuesday? Progress is progress.
Embrace the Timeline: It’s okay if a bathroom remodel takes 18 months. Life happens.
Create a "Daily Grievance" List: If you don't know where to start, write down the things that annoy you every single day (like a door that won't close). Fix those first.
Champagne Dreams on a DIY Budget
Isabel has a unique perspective because her day job involves planning high-end luxury weddings, but her home renovations are strictly budget-conscious.
She calls this the "Dream vs. Reality" check.
The Dream: Find the inspiration photo (usually way out of budget).
The Reality: Research the actual cost. (Realize you spent your whole patio budget on a hot tub).
The Hack: Find a creative workaround.
Example: Isabel once needed giant brass vessels for a wedding. Real brass was thousands of dollars. Her solution? She bought plastic kiddie pools, spray-painted them gold, and filled them with floating flowers. Nobody knew the difference. You can apply that same creative logic to your home finishes!
Planner vs. Chaos (Sister Dynamic)
We also had a good laugh about the difference between Arly and Isabel.
Isabel (Type A): Plans a renovation 18 months in advance. Measures electrical lines before demo starts.
Arly (Creative Chaos): Starts 10 crochet blankets, finishes zero. Rips up the carpet on a Tuesday because she "felt like it."
The Takeaway: There is no "right" personality for DIY. You just have to find a workflow that keeps you from burning your house down.
Listen to the Full Episode
Want to hear the full story of the exploding toilet and get more tips on starting your own side hustle?
🎧 Listen to SideQuest 07 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your pods!
Connect with Isabel:
📸 DIY & Renovation: Follow @bowens.builds
💍 Wedding Planning: https://theyellowroseweddings.com/
Transcript
Hello. Welcome back. Welcome to our Side Quest. That's my official intro. The question is, can we get through an episode without singing? And the answer is no. I thought we made it through the last Side Quest. Oh, maybe we did. I wanted to sing the whole time. On occasion, we can.
Hi friends, welcome to one of our Side Quests. Today we have a little special guest. Who is not related to me at all. She just looks exactly like me but older. I'm just kidding. This is my sister, Isabel Bowen. And she has a different last name than me because she's married.
We bring these Side Quests to you because we want to share some extra information, stories, and have guests on and not get sidetracked more than we normally do on our regular episodes. Which is already a lot. Yeah, we already can barely make it through it as you know.
So Isabel is a DIYer. She has an Instagram, Bowen's Builds. And she and her husband Jacob work on a lot of DIYs that they do around their own house. And then she also is a luxury wedding planner. Which I've helped out with a couple of her weddings and they're beautiful and amazing. And she just does everything. She's like, "You know what? I'm gonna be really good at this one thing." And then she just makes a business out of it. And then she's like, "You know what? I'm not busy enough. I'm gonna make another business out of something else that I'm gonna teach myself how to do."
So let's chat with Isabel a little bit. Isabel's info and her Instagram handle and all her connections will be in the bio as well. So if you want to check her out, you can check her out.
Well Arly, you obviously know a ton about Isabel and you have alluded to her multiple businesses. But Isabel, can you tell us about your businesses? Cause I probably know the least of everybody here.
Um, so first one would be I started a wedding planning company five years ago and that just flourished. I wouldn't say COVID was the best time to start a wedding planning company. But it happened. And so over the years I've come to specialize in South Asian and multicultural weddings. So I've got to do a lot of big Hindu, Indian fusion weddings. Which is what Arly has helped out with. Those were so fun. So fun.
And that I would say like I do that part-time now. I used to work contract for a corporate company doing event planning. And so those two kind of combined my time. But wedding planning is so fun. I think I love it because I am so Type A. So it allows me to be organized and make my lists and do the planning. But also do a lot of design work. And just like DIY and home projects, you have to wait 18 months to see your design come to life. But it's so rewarding to see it when it's all set up and done. Even if it takes forever.
And other than wedding planning, doing content creation in DIY and home improvements for Bowen's Builds. So I think it uses two different sides of my brain because you do have to wait a year plus sometimes to see that come to life with DIY. I can just go and paint my garage door one day and piss off the internet. Oh and they're mad. Oh they're still really mad. I loved the one you tagged us in that was like, "Women aren't supposed to paint." I was like, "Uh, okay, no." My response was, "Well someone better tell our clients that we're not allowed to paint for them." The internet offers up a very large weird slice of the country. Yes it does.
But yeah, that's kind of the combo of what's going on right now. And what is your wedding business name? The Yellow Rose Weddings. Awesome.
How on earth did you just decide to start your content creation business? And maybe say a little bit about it because a lot of us, like before I we were doing the podcast I didn't really even know what that meant. So I'm not sure a lot of our listeners might not know what doing that as a business looks like.
Yeah, so it kind of started, I guess also during COVID, my husband and I bought our first house. And one day, we tackled our bathroom renovation on our own in our brand new house and it went, it was fine. You know, everything went well. We got our research, we found out how to cut tiles and change the sink, all that kind of fun stuff. But then a couple days later, because of the poor past contractor's work that we tried to fix, the toilet burst. Oh. And flooded through our dining room into the lower level through the smoke detector in the middle of the night. Oh my gosh.
And so we spent hours and hours. I mean, you know, we did our cleanup, made sure it was livable. And then we started researching how to fix it and we couldn't find anything. Like how to fix. We had to get a whole thing of like replace almost the whole ceiling in our dining room and rent like the big drywall thing. Oh, yep. But we couldn't find any information on it. And all the information on YouTube that my husband could find was super professional companies who like you guys doing it that it looks great. And we're like, okay, well we we haven't done this before. We have no idea what we're doing. And there's nothing out there that is showing us how to do this ourselves because we can't afford to hire somebody. I'm gonna say it was like New Year's Eve or something. No one's gonna come out then. Like it was a terrible timing.
And so we're like, we have to do this ourselves. So after that my husband's like, "You know, we should start a YouTube channel to tell people that you can do things wrong. And maybe it takes you 15 tries to make it right, but he wanted to show like the imperfect side of DIY. And that normal people could do it." And so that's kind of how we started sharing on Instagram. And also my grandma would call me and be like, "I haven't seen your photos on Facebook of your house." And so I was like trying to put all that into one avenue.
And over the years it's grown into working with really great brands who pay us to do content that we don't share for the brands that you might see on their website. And, you know, just trying to inform our followers on how to do things by yourself even though it like our patio project recently just about broke our spirits. Oh yeah. But you know, we did it. And so just showing that whole journey of, you know, hard things. We can all do hard things.
That's kind of one of our mission statement here is. We can do hard things. And it's not always going to be perfect or great. And sometimes you're going to have to resist the urge to burn your house down. But we can do it. We can do it.
There isn't always a lot of very helpful information out there for non-professional people. Or someone to say, "You might mess it up. And that's gonna suck to fix it, but it's okay and you can fix it." It's hard to have some confidence to do something that you have no idea about. And it takes a lot of tenacity too.
So, like your patio project, I'm sure you were like, "I have to keep doing this. I have to keep doing this." I think it's like so important like you said for you to just try to do things things on your own because it's not always a matter of not being able to pay for it. But sometimes the thing you want to do there isn't like "I'm gonna call the that person." So if you have like, you know, your toilet exploded and your ceiling has fallen out and your light fixture doesn't work anymore. Like that would be three people. And that's not always convenient and sometimes they won't even take the work if it's like if it's a plumber and it's just a toilet. And it's a drywaller but it's just a small section of ceiling. And it's an electrician and it's just one light fixture. At least around here, it can be really difficult to find people to do that. So being able to do those things yourself is a real power move.
Yeah, and then you have to start being the project manager for your project because you're managing the different trades which if you have no idea what's going on or anything, that can be really unapproachable. And that's also annoying. Because when we do it it's like the plumber has to come do something. And then the electrician can come. And then the drywaller can come. But then the plumber has to come back. And so does the drywaller. And the electrician. But they all have to come back after the other person has done something else. And then they can't finish it because the other person has to do something else again. And they also have a whole other life with other customers and families. They don't seem to want to just always come like exactly when you tell them. Like the plumber finished five minutes ago. Can you be here in 10 minutes?
Okay Isabel, so. If people didn't have us or you to go to to learn how to do stuff. What would be your steps for planning a project? Like you're like, "I don't know how to do this, but I want to do it and I don't want to pay someone to do it." How would you tackle that?
So I think if you were in a non-emergency situation. If water is not flooding from your ceiling. I would say, my first thing is always going to like Instagram or Pinterest and envisioning how to like what I want. So for example, we're planning a big bathroom renovation. Now we might not get to it for five years, but what I'm doing now is I went through and we took measurements of the space. We tracked on our floor plan like where all of our electrical lines are. So as I'm dreaming of like how I want the bathroom to be laid out, I know like what our Jake tells me like, "You know, you have physics in play. You can't put this here unless we like we don't really want to like move the toilet across the room. That comes with more."
So I kind of strategize logistically like what's logically going to work. And then I go to inspiration. If it's design centered I'll go through I'll find all my inspiration photos. I'll kind of lay out kind of like I loved playing Sims growing up. So I like make it look like a Sims room in my like designs so I know exactly how I want it. I go through and I point out to my husband like here's how I want the room. And then he'll say, "Well, you know, if you move the sink over, we're going to have to do X Y and Z which will probably add blank to the budget."
So kind of after that we start talking about what each step of the process is going to cost. So that's your budget conversation. And then we go through and say like what can we swap out to make this project cheaper? What can we do ourselves? Most of the stuff, my husband's an electrical engineer so we're allowed to do a lot of our own electrical work which saves us a lot. But plumbing is something we're both like we would rather hire someone. That's kind of funny. We can do minor stuff but we don't want to be rerouting the toilet or like going under the crawl space and rerouting the plumbing.
And so I would say like your initial like brainstorming. Your inspiration and design. Like I always like to think what's my dream scenario. And then I backtrack to like how can we make this physically logistically work. And then is it within our budget. So sometimes for a project we set a budget like we don't want to spend more than on the patio, we said we don't want to spend more than $10,000. And as we started to, we bought a $10,000 hot tub right away. And we're like, okay, well we blew our budget immediately for the backyard. So we need to like re-have this new conversation about what the patio is going to look like. So after that it was like, let's just find the cheapest options that will still work within our vision. Yeah we could have found the cheapest tiles but we wouldn't have loved it. So we had to make a lot of budget compromises after that. And then we start with like our action plan. Like what is gonna take a little bit of time, what do we need to do first? Do we need to hire out? So kind of just like that. I know that's a lot, but.
That's great advice though. That sounds extremely manageable. And also it's very realistic. Like thinking about your dream. I'm this is the difference between me and Isabel here. Is I'm like, I saw a picture on Instagram and I'm removing the floor. Let's not think about how do I get this tile. Does it even exist? Is it within any kind of budget? Uh I blew all of my budget on DoorDash. Uh what are we going to do now because we have no floor in the bathroom? But that is a lot more manageable for people who are trying to do things themselves is is to look at what they would like. And maybe they don't have even close to that kind of budget. But maybe they could be like, "You know what? This is a little bit similar. And I can add other elements in it like decorations and stuff to make it look more uh this esque that you were looking for."
I mean and that's why I think we got into this I don't know I wouldn't say niche, but in wedding planning my couples want like say this rental that's cost similarly like usually like $6,000. And I'm like there's no way we're fitting this in the budget. So to make it happen I have just over time become really resourceful and creative at thinking of like a budget-friendly alternative. So I think that helps me like what's the closest we can do without really getting it but getting the same vibe. Like Arly saw I painted these kitty pools to be like these beautiful like they're usually these huge brass like lotus pools for a pre-wedding celebration. And I was like I can't get those. We can't afford to import those. Let's come up with an alternative.
And so in a project it's the same way. Like I really wanted this super expensive tile but I was like it's gonna take months and months and months to get here. We don't want to wait that long. And also it's we wouldn't be able to afford anything else ever if we did. You're like we'll have to take out another mortgage.
And like, you know, part of our niche as like at Bowen's Builds is we do projects together and we do projects after work. So 95% of the content we're creating we noticed it's in the dark. There's no lights going on. We've invested a lot in lights over the years to be able to film what we want like outside and stuff. But yeah, it's because we're doing like a little bit at a time after, you know, at 8:00 PM. And so I think that also shows that like it's it's manageable. Like for everybody to just do a little bit at a time. Even though, you know, I would love to just one day I went and just ripped up our stairs at our old house. All the carpet. And that created a lot of issues. So um doing a little because we could only do an hour at a time. So um we ended up like walking on half like redone stairs for months.
That sounds like something I would do. I mean, it's practical. We all are us two are licensed builders and Arly's extremely proficient at this stuff but there's still stuff in my house that isn't always done and stuff. And yeah, I think that's a super realistic. Like obviously we get our customer projects done timely, but something about DIY is sometimes it just takes a little bit to find the time to do it. While you're busy living a whole other life and you get home and you're like, "I have exactly two hours before I can't keep my eyes open. What am I going to do with that time?" And there are lots of demands on our time.
It's easy if you go somewhere. Like if you're renovating at a different location than your house. Because if you go there then you're like, "Okay, I I have a certain amount of things here that I have to do." When you're at home you're like, "I have to do this." And then if you're ADHD like I am you're like, "Oh my gosh, you know what? I totally forgot to take out the trash and it comes tomorrow." So you have to go on that whole excursion. And then you're like, you know, do 10 other things. Then the dryer buzzer goes off. Yes. Yeah. And you're like, "I forgot that I put down laminate glue 45 minutes ago. And now I need to do something with it before somebody gets stuck in it."
Well this morning when I was driving in I driving to work it was icy. Like I had to wait in the driveway for like 10 minutes for the ice to melt. And then I got to work I'm like I'm only going to be here for 10 minutes so I'm going to leave my car running otherwise it will literally ice over in the time I'm inside. And then an hour later Allison goes out she's like, "Do you know your car is running?" So that's exactly what I do. I'm like I'm I'm recording TikToks. While my car is outside running. I'm like glad it's still here. Jeez.
Yeah. But that's real. I mean all everybody is just having a job whatever it is they do to make life work and then wanting to do other things too. And you have to be able to embrace that kind of tackling it little bit by little bit.
There's been this thing I've been thinking about the last few years and I I think I must have saw it back on Tumblr in the days of Tumblr. That was like the time's going to pass no matter what you're doing. And so I think like thinking about your dream home and where you're at now can be really discouraging. But if you work on it like little bits at a time and even if it's only an hour a week. Like that time's going to pass whether you do that or not. And I think it's great to think about it in a way that like I'm going to take this little chunk now to get me to my goal. Not being depressed about not being there but taking the time. Like with your patio if you're only doing it after work it takes a long time to do that. But you're still picking at the progress. And I think not to be super woo woo hippie but it really is about the journey with these things. And you can I love how you start with a road map of like this is the end goal. Cause it can feel like you really get lost in the project and all the details. Especially the patio cause you have to like rent a tamper and tamper the ground before you can even start laying stuff. And then you have to add patio sand and all these things. And that can feel so overwhelming but if you're like here's my vision for the end and here's my goal for the end. It's like you're a marathon and each step gets you closer.
Well and if you break it down too you can put it into your calendar around weddings and days when you're babysitting friends kids and when you're scheduled to go out to dinner or traveling home for Christmas. You can plug it into your calendar like this part of the project is going to take both of us a day to do. And where can I plug that in. It's a little easier than like you just walk out on a Saturday like what are we doing today. That's what I do. And let me tell you friends, it is a struggle.
Well yeah we have a lot of I was reviewing old content recently for a brand and there's a lot of videos where I'm like, "We have an hour before we go to friends like dinner with friends. We're like in our, you know, in our nice clothes like out there chipping away at something." And Jake there's a really viral clip of Jake mowing the lawn 30 minutes before we hosted a wedding in our backyard. Like our best friends got married in our backyard and he's mowing the lawn. Um and so yeah we just I think it took us a while to get into that flow too. Like to chip away and plan for it. And you know what makes it difficult sometimes is you know we were expecting pavers in April and we didn't end up getting them until like June. So we had to put a lot of things on hold, reorganize things um and uh you know just try to we were able to like chip away at other little things before we went back and you know were able to finally lay down the pavers. So.
What is one of maybe your favorite projects that you've done in your house? Like cause you've done projects that are functional and like added things to your house that are design esque and like beautiful. What what is something that is your favorite and maybe that you would encourage other people to do?
Ooh. My favorite, while the patio project is like our least favorite, it's also our favorite because when we moved into our new house the backyard was like a little swamp area. You couldn't go back there. The mosquitoes were so bad. It was so gross. We have terracing so you can't really use most of the backyard. Um and so I think the patio because now we entertain so much we have people over like every weekend. And so being able to use that space has been really really great. And we're still chipping away on it. You know mom and dad just visited and we built the stairs so we could finally use the top terrace. We're gonna put a fire pit up there. Um and so I think that and I guess my advice would be that was our first priority because that's where everybody's going. That's your biggest pain point. At our old house we were always on the deck. And we gave up you know our beautiful deck for the new house. And so we were like okay we're going to spend most of our time in the bedroom and the kitchen and the patio. And before we even moved our bed over we had repainted redone the flooring in our master bedroom and painted so that we were ready to live in that space. And so that that our everyday space. Like I always talk about your bedroom should be task free. The laundry basket shouldn't be sitting there. You shouldn't have like your active projects out. It'll make you like rest better if you don't maybe that's my OCD too but like you won't think about all your like things going on.
No I think that that's true. I love that. I sometimes push the laundry basket into your hallway at night cause you'll feel better. Um. Dude I need to start doing that. Yeah try that. Jace is gonna be like, "Why is everything everywhere except the bedroom?" You you start to push it out but you get distracted so then you just leave it right in the middle of the doorway and Jace trips over it in the middle of the night. Exactly. Ours is on wheels so I just push it. Give it a good push and it goes rolling away.
But yeah it's the like we focused on that so it was task free so we could rest. And then we made the kitchen manageable like we still have a big project but like that was the space we could use. And then the patio because since we did it we're out there all the time. Um and our first doable upcoming renovations are for the patio. Like we have a grill station cause he grills every time like we're making sure the furniture is functional. So I think my advice would be like think of where your like what your space what space you're using the most. What your daily grievances are. Like I made a list at the old house of things that piss me off every day. And I tackled those. I was like this door pisses me off every time I open it and it doesn't close all the way. Like I made sure that that was on the list. So um you know start a daily grievance list and start like a where do I spend my time list. And I would say tackle that first cause you'll feel a lot better even if you know our upstairs carpet pisses me off. But only pisses me off once a week when I walk upstairs. Versus the cleaning closet door that never shuts all the way.
One of the most remarkable things I think about your journey is how you've managed to transition from you said you had a more traditional career where you worked for a company and did wedding planning. And now you have your own wedding planning company and also you do content creation and you were able to make the transition out of that traditional role. I think that's really hard to break out of. Normally when you think about I need to be able to buy groceries you're looking for what job does a company have to offer me. And once you've started that and you still have bills to pay it can be hard to make that transition. So can you talk a little bit about the actual like the concrete steps that you took to get out of that like corporate role and into what you wanted to do yourself?
So I was working at a job that I really loved before COVID and I was just working I was burnt out. Like I was working 80 hours a week it was a lot. Um and so during COVID we had a slower season so I think like I had the opportunity to test out the contract work for this corporate company. Um and so I also got married right after that and like we can sustain off of Jake's income. So I think like I'm very blessed in that that he like he was like quit your job. You hate it. Um and we'll figure it out. And so I think the trans like I feel very blessed that I was able to have my spouse like support me while I just did whatever I wanted for a little bit.
Um but I think like telling somebody else to do that would be um if just interviewing around to see like if there's a you know you can if you're saying I want to leave my corporate job for wedding planning go on the weekends and start like pimping yourself out. Am I allowed to say pimping yourself out? Yeah you're fine. We might bleep that one out. We might just leave it in. If you want to explore like a different industry. I would say then um inquire with that new industry maybe on the weekends. Like for wedding planning for example go interview with a wedding planner you can do it on the weekends. You can see if that's something that you want to do so that making that leap into a new industry is different.
I will also say and I'm sure you guys are aware starting your own business is a feat of itself. And so I think you really have to be very passionate about what you're doing to love that. Um and I think just like you know the whole making sure you're budgeting and your saving like to be able to if you do take you know six months off of work to see if your new path is working out like um do some pre-planning. Not all of our Type B people are maybe gonna write it out.
Maybe don't quit your job. Until you know you love it at least. Until at least you know that you like that new passion. Yeah. I'm quitting to be a professional crocheter. You're not allowed to quit. Sorry. But you could and then you might find out it barely pays. Yeah. They will pay you less than what you spent on yarn. Crocheting really is a labor of love. I know I I thought about that this Christmas. I was like this is really just the only purpose of this is to show people that I love them. Absolutely. There isn't anything else to it.
Well last Christmas I asked for crochet supplies for Christmas. So a year ago. And taught myself how to crochet. And I've made I'm working on my 10th blanket of the year. But the amount of time and yarn it's like 60 to 75 hours. And like $150 in yarn. So if I were I would have to charge like $1,200 for a blanket if I was going to make any money. So yeah it's definitely one of those things. I do it for my own enjoyment. And yeah.
But some of the things that we enjoy can turn into a career. And I think handyma'aming is a great example. A lot of the I belong to a nationwide group of handy people it's like 13,000 people all across the country. And a lot of them their story is they have a job they don't totally love. They want to do something else. And so they start doing it on the weekends and the evenings. So they can kind of test first of all do I like this. Second of all does it pay. Third of all can I manage the details of it. And there have been a lot of stories of people going from part-time to full-time. And that my it's talking about handy people cause that's my experience. But it can be like that in any field. I mean you could be in wedding planning already and want to do wedding planning for yourself instead of someone else. So you have a very specialized you've developed a very specialized niche for your wedding planning company and you maybe wouldn't have been able to do that if you worked for someone else. So you kind of start that on the side and turn that into something that can support your family. And that can apply to other things too. I think Emily's a great example she doesn't love to do graphic design it's not real top on her list like in terms of designing websites and things but like if Emily got tired of Arly and I she could like start pimping herself out.
Okay if she's not if I'm not allowed to quit she's definitely not allowed. No well yeah this is hypothetical neither one of you is allowed to quit. But I'm just saying she has a skill set and you're an artist. I mean you could absolutely begin Arly to do other things too. You're not allowed to. But you could.
My mom tried in high school to get me to like sell things. Cause I was like always crafting. Man oh man was I crafting. Good things bad things beautiful things super super ugly things. And my mom was like "Just make 75,000 of these." And I was like "I already made two I'm bored." She was like "But if you make a bunch we can sell them." And I was like "I'm not hustling mom." She was like "I I'm just crafting away over here."
That's a great example of the difference between like a a Type A and a Type B person. Because I'm very much Type A. And so you're like I'm making 10 blankets in a year. Yeah I started to crochet and then Arly was like "Will you teach me to crochet?" So I taught her and then she's making amigurumi and all these other specialty things and I'm like "Dude I learned how to make a blanket I'm going to make blankets." Because it's production level crocheting. And Arly's like I she gets well you get like a third of the way through a blanket and you're like "This is boring I'm done."
Okay I tried to make an like a 12 by 18 square for a baby lovey. It's not even big enough to be a baby blanket. And it took me three days after work. And I almost threw myself off my roof. I was like my I was so close to being like "Samantha will you please crochet this for me? Because it'd probably take you 25 minutes." But it was the same stitch over and over and over again. And I was like "I do not like this." And I love that so much. When I learn a skill I'm like I'm going to use this skill. And you're just like "Well that skill's done throw it out the window I need a new one." Like I have used that one up and it's time to learn all the other ones and I'll relearn this when I forget it.
You're one of those people that when they have your estate sale you're going to have supplies for 40 different kinds of crafts. That's true. And when my parents have their estate sale I'm going to acquire all of their things because I have not only done what my parents have done which is get heavily involved in a lot of very niche things. But I have taken all of the things that my mom loves and all of the things that my dad loves and I have combined them. And so now I have crocheting, sewing, woodworking, leather working, all this stuff that like nobody ever needs to know but I sure do know how to do it now. Collecting milk bottles like milk jars.
You need to tell your landlord you need a shed. I do need a shed. Landlord. Landlord.
Well this has been fantastic. Isabel you're such an inspiration to just hear the story of how somebody got from where they were to where they wanted to be.
I feel like a lot of people are gonna uh relate to having a busy life. You have two pets. You have a husband. You have friends. You have another business. I mean you busy. And breaking things down taking things like one bit at a time is really like good advice which you know I personally not sure if I could take that advice because I'm really impulsive and impatient. But if I were smart I would. But it is nice to hear you break it down like that because I see all of your posts and you make like a lot of really beautiful things and like spaces really cozy and like designed well and stuff like that. So it's nice to hear how you how you start and how you make it happen um when some of us are a little bit more flailing in the wind type situation. Uh my execution is poor. But uh your ideas are there. Yeah the ideas are there.
Well if you want to learn how to just start with small things and build on that then join us this Friday for our regular episode. Thanks for joining us today. And you can find Isabel on Bowen's Builds.
