Posts Tagged "guests for the holidays"

The holidays can be stressful as it is, but once you add in entertaining guests at your home it can become down right overwhelming.

With family visiting from out of town this year, I asked Chris to knock out a few easy DIY upgrades in our home to get an early jump start on preparing for our holiday guests.

To make sure he had no excuses to get to work, I headed over to the Home Depot to pick up all of the items needed for each project.

This post is sponsored by The Home Depot

I even grabbed Chris an early Christmas present as a little extra motivation. The Home Depot always has the best tool deals during the holidays!

He’s been talking about upgrading all of his tools to the Milwaukee line for years! I even upgraded his small old tool boxes to this huge Husky Heavy Duty 15 Drawer Rolling Tool Chest!

Chris is definitely a happy man!!!

Now let’s put these new tools to work!

Here are 5 easy DIY upgrades you can knock out this weekend to help prep your home for your holiday entertaining: 

1. UPGRADE YOUR THERMOSTATS TO SMART THERMOSTATS

A smart thermostat is one great upgrade you can do in your home leading into the holidays. 

After researching numerous different smart thermostats’ features, we decided the Nest Learning Thermostat was the way to go for us.

We love its sleek design and that it really is “smart” enough to help track our daily energy usage while learning how we live in our home helping us to save on our energy bill all while still keeping our home feeling comfortable.

It makes controlling the temperature in your home super easy for everyone and it conveniently allows you to adjust the temperature for your guests remotely via your cell phone.

If you’re the one traveling out of town for the holidays this year, a smart thermostat like the Nest is the perfect way to conserve on energy while you are away. And again, it can all be set up and monitored via the app on your smart phone.

2. UPGRADE YOUR OUTLETS TO USB PORT OUTLETS

USB outlets are an easy upgrade that can be installed in your home in just a matter of minutes.

I can’t tell you how many times we’ve taken a trip out of town and forgotten our phone charger adaptor, but had an extra charging cord plugged into the car or thrown in our bag.

With this simple upgrade your guests can easily charge their phones with just their cords while freeing up the 3 prong outlets for other devices.

It’s actually been said that the charge is up to 40% faster this way! I’m loving this simple upgrade so much that I’ve already convinced Chris to convert all of the outlets in our bedroom, living room, and kitchen over to USB’s as well!

3. UPGRADE YOUR LOCKS TO SMART LOCKS

Another quick upgrade on our list was switching out our front door lock to a smart lock system. While at the Home Depot, I purchased the Lockly Vision Smart Lock + Video Doorbell because it is a three-in-one solution.  A doorbell, a smart keypad door lock and a camera all in one!

Adding a smart lock system to your home makes it super easy to lock and unlock your doors from afar with the convenience of your smart phone.

You can also give your visitors a temporary keypad code which gives guests the freedom to come and go as they please without having to worry about needing a key.

Not only does Lockly’s smart keypad make things more convenient for you and your guests, but the HD Video doorbell also adds another level of security to your home, which during the holiday season is a must! 

4. UPGRADE GARAGE DOORS TO SMART GARAGE DOOR OPENERS

Next up let’s talk about garage doors openers.  I know you’re probably thinking “Why upgrade my garage door openers for the holidays?” That’s a great question and I think I have a few great reasons why. 

While shopping at the Home Depot I picked up two of the Chamberlain LED Smart Garage Door Openers for Chris to install before the holiday season in hopes of adding Security, Convenience and Comfort to our home and for our guests. 

 

 

The Chamberlain Smart Garage Opener is a decently inexpensive option for those looking to add smart technology to their home. 

With many homes having a guest bedroom above or near the garage, installing an ultra quiet system like the Chamberlain is a great way to add additional comfort to your guests stay.

And with the convenience of the MyQ mobile app, you can easily give your guests access to your home while you are away.

You can even link this system to Key by Amazon for convenient and secure gift and grocery deliveries to your home during the holiday season.

Now do you see why it’s on our holiday prep list?!!!

5. TACKLE THOSE PESKY PAINT TOUCH UPS 

It never fails that when the holiday season approaches we are always doing last minute paint touch-ups around the house just hours before our guests arrive.

But not this year! This year I made sure to grab one of our favorite paints, Behr Ultra Scuff Defense, to help get our (well Chris’) paint party started early!

A smudge here…a chip there…or in our case a whole wall, Behr Ultra Scuff Defense is a paint and primer in one with advanced scuff resistance and outstanding durability for all your high traffic areas.

 

It totally lives up to all of the hype!

The great thing about these 5 easy DIY upgrades is that you can knock them all out in a weekend! Prepping to entertain this holiday season doesn’t have to be stressful if you just make a point to plan ahead.

Check out our latest Youtube Short of Chris in action knocking out all of these easy upgrades!

Holiday Prep-Part 1

Holiday Prep-Part 2

On to our next project…

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