How we get ready for house guests

We had our first house guest a few months ago, when The Guy’s best friend came down on his work trip, but he stayed at our place a little less than 12 hours. After that I thought it was time for another few house guests to make their arrival to California.

I facebook’ed my two sister-in-law’s (The Guy’s sisters), and asked them when they were planning to come visit us. Last time we saw his younger sister, was at our wedding. The last time I saw his other sister was when I was home in Newfoundland.

To my surprise, they both booked flights, and were here in California at the same time.

Needless to say, I wanted to have the house in presentable shape, as The Guy and I tend to drop things on the floor instead of putting them away. I spent one full day organizing our main floor, rearranging a few things, deep cleaning the kitchens, and took the vacuum to the floors. Our house is a little bare at the moment with little artwork on the walls, but it feels a lot more spacious after I moved a few furniture pieces around.

I’d show you our guest room, except it’s not exactly a guest room. The Guy has taken over that room for all his bike stuff, so it’s not as decorated as I’d like, whatsoever.

After a flight or long haul, I know that I love to just take a long shower/bath and simply relax. I like our guests to feel at home, or at the very least feel relaxed like they’re at a spa or hotel. Regarding the bathroom, I like to give them our spare bathroom and make it feel very hotel/spa like. I bought a few towels at World Market, and I already had the striped towels from Pottery Barn a few years ago. They were all freshly washed and folded like you’d see at hotel, all fancy like.

I gathered a few more goodies at World Market — we don’t have a store like that, that I know of in Canada. It’s one of my favourites around here, and it doesn’t help that it’s almost across the street from me. Inside the basket is a hand towel, a few face clothes, a candle, hand cream, body wash. Then I picked up some disposable razors from Daiso and added them to the basket. All topped with a few chocolate truffles.

Since I love spoiling people, I couldn’t help but add a few more touches to the basket and towel. I added a few mini makeup items (cuticle oil, nail file, perfume, lipstick, and mascara) for the girls, and some face masks on top of the fresh towels.

Adding a new hand soap was something I wanted to do, too. That was bought at TJ Maxx.

The shower had a few travel sized items that I snagged at a hotel a few months ago. The cleaning lady and I shared a little bonding experience over the philosophy goodies, and she hooked me up big time. Now, I save them for our guests, ha!

A fresh and clean bathroom all to yourself as a house guest is pretty sweet, isn’t it? I’m so glad they both managed to book trips down to see The Guy and I. I’ll do a recap on what we did throughout the little while they were here, in the next few posts.

Krista and Shauna, I miss you both already!