I was so excited to find this Chanel top at the thrift store last month. My first time thrifting Chanel! I've refrained from listing it yet because making sure you sell authenticate items is super important as a reseller. Being accused of selling fake items is not something I take likely, plus can kill your reputation and maybe even get your account suspended. I've shared some of the most helpful tips I've come across to help you authenticate your own Chanel clothing below:

As far as I have seen and read, Chanel only makes their products in France, Italy, and Spain. It will be easy to spot a fake if an item has a country origin that is not one of these, and especially if it's China. In my experience, Chanel clothing is made in France or Italy while some of their shoes are made in Spain. This top was made in France.

Most Chanel brand tags have either a white tag with black lettering, or a black tag with white lettering. Depending on the age of the garment the tag could look different. There will be a hang tag from the brand tag that will tell you the season of the item. Unfortunately on this item it has been washed out, but on other Chanel item you will find the season, size, and style of the item. This is quite a large tag and could be uncomfortable to wear, so don't be concerned right away if it is not attached. Another giveaway of a counterfeit item is the writing on tags being crooked or words being misspelled. All writing should be consistently straight and placed within the edges of the item. 

Another thing to note is that while a lot of designers have something like an interior hologram  to show authenticity, Chanel items do not. 

Chanel clothing is made of very high quality, natural materials, like silk, linen, and cotton. If an item feels flimsy and cheaply made it's not Chanel. This top is 100% cotton.

Uneven and inconsistent stitching will not pass Chanel quality control. I like to especially look at stitching ends and edges to check to make sure the stitching does not go back over it self, which is a clear sign of sloppy stitching. 

Counterfeit designer clothing items often have sticky residue or glue on the hems.  The fabric was glued together before being sewn to be easier and save time. 

Chanel clothing starts in the hundreds of dollars. If the item feels cheap and you can't imagine someone paying that price for the quality, it's probably fake. Have any other tips for authenticating Chanel clothing? Let me know down below!

Did you know millionaires on average have SEVEN streams of income? Obviously it's impossible to put in 40 hr/wk into 7 hustles, so the more you can include that are passive (ie put in the work at the beginning and then make money from zero work) the better. 

I actually came across the concept of drop shipping and Etsy on TikTok. You start an Etsy shop and create your products through a third party that is completely in charge of creating, storing, and shipping the product. You create designs and start up your shop, and then after that you put in very minimal work while the third party company does the work for you. These companies have a number of products you can add designs to, but so far I've been focusing on mugs because personally I love mugs, and I think a lot of other people do too! I've broken down the process and tools I've used to start building my Etsy business below.

First off, think about your passion or niche that you can relate to and create cute content about. Are you a mom? Plant lover? Own a guinea pig? I recommend for starting out to stick with a topic you are comfortable, like creating a consistent brand, and then branching out later (I'll cover that below). 

LOVE Canva. You can create and design anything.  I use it for social media content, blog photos, and now my Etsy designs. I pay $12/month for the pro plan so that I can access all the templates and have higher quality photos. Luckily they have a whole free month of the pro plan, so utilize that trial! You can use my Canva code HERE and we both get free premium upgrades!

Once you have the free trial for a month create as many cute designs as possible. I looked through Target to see what kind of styles and designs people are being sold right now. I promise you don't have to be super creative. People make a bunch of money from just creating designs with black lettering. Make sure to increase the quality when you download your design to make sure if shows up clear on the mug, and download it as a png file. 

If you don't have an established Etsy account yet that is totally fine. I recommend using a pic of your face for your profile and make sure to add in the bio what your niche is to attract similar people.

Next is to find the third party drop shipping company you want to use. I have been using Printify, and I am super happy with them. They have a wide variety of products, very decent product and shipping prices, and they produce and ship within just a couple days. 

Printify makes it super easy to link your account to your Etsy store. The only issue I faced was I did not know that you need to have listed one item in your Etsy store before you can start listing from Printify. I created a little bogus listing and then deleted it once I had started listing from Printify. 

Printify will transfer over a lot of your item's information into your Etsy listing, but I like to go in a make a couple of changes to make my items more searchable. I add hashtags as well as some recommend item specifics (like material and color). 

Once orders start rolling in, I like to manually go into Printify and tell them to start producing the mug. You don't have to do this as they will start producing the item within 1-2 days, but because of the production time I like to get it started right away so it can get to the buyer quickly.

And that pretty much sums up how to get your Etsy passive income stream off the ground! If you have any questions. or any other pieces of advice to add, let me know in the comments below!

Happy New Year! You are probably here to get a better look at the vintage Gucci clutch I am giving away on Instagram! If you haven't entered yet, you can check out the rules and enter HERE (super easy - just have to like the image and share the best deal you got in 2020! Deadline is Friday 1/8/21 at 11:59pm PST)

Some markings around outside and peeling on inside, easy fixes and still has so much life left!

I have two pairs of these Stuart Weitzman over the knee (OTK) boots, and I love them. I've had them for a couple years and they are really comfortable + really dress up leggings. I got both of mine secondhand so I've linked below a number of secondhand similar boots as well as some that are new and on super sale!

Happy New Year fam, and good luck!

Every time I am crammed into an economy seat on a 10 hr flight to Europe I always regret not doing more to figure out a way to be in a big comfy seat in the front of the plane. I follow a lot of travel hack accounts that show themselves in fancy airplane suites, but the points system always seemed confusing and I wasn't really sure how it worked. 

Fast forward to summer 2020 when we had all the time in the world and we were trying to plan a trip to Europe for 2021 *fingers crossed* My business bank account is only a debit card, and I really wanted to find a way to take advantage of all the money I was spending for my business. I started doing more googling and found a lot of websites and blogs about taking advantage of credit card points for travel, and the most straight forward credit card with a lot of travel perks I kept coming across was the American Express platinum card. 

The first thing I saw was the big $550 annual fee. 0__0 Honestly, I've never had a credit card before with an annual fee. It definitely sounds like a lot of money, and it is if you don't take advantage of all the perks and offers they have. Keep scrolling to see all the perks and why it makes $$$ sense to get it!

Once you add your amex card to your Uber account, you will automatically receive a $15 credit on the first of every month which you can use either on rides or eats. In the month of December you actually get $35 because of an end of the year $20 bonus. On top of all that you get the Uber Eats pass for free, which is regularly $9.99/month. With the UE pass you get free delivery and an extra discount on your food.

When you use your amex card to pay your phone bill through a carrier, you get a $20 statement credit to your account. What I've done is just make a $20 payment with the amex card, and then the $20 credit pops up automatically. 

Twice a year (once Jan-Jun and Jul-Dec) you will receive a $50 statement credit to your account when you make a purchase at Saks Fifth Ave. There is no minimum purchase requirement so you can literally get free items (like makeup or skincare!) I used my credit to purchase my favorite perfume, Coco Mademoiselle. This stuff is so popular and is never on sale, but I got it half off thanks to this credit.

Similar to the phone bill credits, if you use your amex card to pay for your streaming membership (Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+, etc) you get up to $20 a month back in statement credits. Doesn't everyone have at least 3?

You get up to $100 credit for either TSA Pre Check ($80) or Global Entry ($100) when you use your amex, which is good for 5 years. Global Entry is for international travel, but also includes TSA Pre Check so I will be registering for that one. 

Every year you get $200 credit towards money spent with airlines, which can include upgrades, luggage fees, and even service on the plane (cheers!) The one catch is you can only select one airline to receive this credit with. 

At this point you already have over $1000 in credits and free stuff!

When I signed up, the promotion was that if you spend $5000 in the first 3 months, you receive 75,000 bonus points. With all the work we have being done on our house now, we already had a plan for this and that wasn't too much for us as we were planning to spend it anyway. 

This is a perk I am very excited about! Bjorn has travelled first class for business so he has spent some time in airport lounges, but unfortunately I have not. With the Amex card you get into over a thousand airport lounges all over the world for free, along with two free guests. Free drinks, free food, and some have showers and rooms for sleeping! Generally one ticket into an airport lounge is anywhere from $60-$100 depending on the types of amenities. 

You are automatically placed into Marriott and Hilton gold status, which comes with a lot of perks, which includes free upgrades, free breakfast, free parking, and a lot of other great perks!

So essentially for most purchases you get 1 point for every $1 spent, but on purchases for plane tickets (booked directly through an airline or amextravel) or hotels (booked through amextravel) you get 5 points for every $1 spent. 

When redeeming points for travel, you generally get 1 cent for every point you have. So for the 75000 points I got for spending $5000 in the first 3 months, I get around $750 I can redeem towards travel with amextravel. Another nice perk is that if you book an economy ticket, you. can use your points through amex to upgrade your ticket if it is available. 

I think what drew me to this particular credit card was the points to $$ for air travel and the lounge access, especially since hubby and I are hoping to spend a lot more time between Germany and the US in the coming years. If you see some value in this card for yourself you can use my link to also take advantage of the 75,000 bonus points HERE! (I also get a 15,000 point referral bonus :))

** Disclaimer ** Credit cards can be scary and bad bad bad if you spend too much and don't have the money to pay them off. Make sure to use credit cards responsibly.

I really can't believe its been a year since we closed on our house and started renovating. On the one hand the time has really flown by, and on the other it feels like we've lived here a decade. The first few months were such a struggle. We remodeled every square foot of this house so we really couldn't unpack anything for months.  We worked from room to room with chaos everywhere. I definitely wouldn't recommend this strategy for everyone, but we were able to save a lot of money and invest into our home without going into debt.

The room that absolutely took the longest and most work was the kitchen/dining room area. Aside from being the most time consuming and literally taking everything out (including walls!) and starting from scratch, some of our cabinets were on backorder and took an additional 6 months to arrive due to covid. We finally got the remaining cabinets in September (that we ordered in February) and everything is installed. We still have a few finishing touches left to do, like a backsplash (which I need help from you guys picking out!) But first, keep scrolling to see the before and afters!

Tada! We took out the big wall separating the front room from the kitchen to open up the space, and I love how bright and open it is. Plus the peninsula adds sooo much countertop and storage space. It feels so much bigger now! We also removed the wall to the right entrance to make the hallway to the bedrooms wider. We gutted the old 70's cabinets and countertops and completely replaced everything. As far as what we had our contractor do, it was a lot more than what we had him do for other rooms in the house:
- remove the walls
- install cabinets
- install countertops
- install sink and create plumbing for garbage disposal
- update electric 
- cut/add recessed lighting to kitchen and living room
​- install appliances

As far as the work B and I did, we removed old flooring (two levels of it :/), laid new flooring and baseboards, painted, and updated hardware. 

We really wanted a simple, European style kitchen. We both loved the glossy white cabinets, and these were actually difficult to find. Americans are far more interested in the shaker wood cabinets. For the cabinets and countertops, our contractor hooked us up with a killer deal at a wholesale warehouse. It was the complete opposite of fancy and organized (and quite a nightmare), but these wholesalers are the ones supplying material to the fancy kitchen design businesses, so we cut out the middleman and markup. It was way cheaper than even Ikea! It was well worth the headache. For our quartz countertops, we paid roughly $40/sq ft for material and installation, when the average is anywhere between $75-200/sq ft! The old kitchen only had countertops on either side of the sink. I don't even quite know what to do with all of this peninsula countertop space now!

All of our appliances were bought secondhand through Offerup. We bought the Kitchenaid dishwasher and oven/microwave wall combo together from someone who was replacing a kitchen in an investment property. They were about 6 years old but barely used. We got the dishwasher AND oven/microwave combo for $900 all together. For reference, a Kitchenaid oven/microwave wall unit alone starts at $3500 new!

I really had my heart set on having a separate cook top from the oven, and naturally this is way more expensive than a stove/oven combo. The electric cook top is Ikea but we actually found it for $150 cheaper new on eBay!

The dining table and chairs are Ikea, and the countertop stools are Wayfair (all new). I was searching so long for a big black wall mirror but they are so expensive, I don't even understand why?? This one got listed on Offerup $40 and I had B drive me that night to go pick it up. 

Something else that is surprisingly expensive? Doors! I wanted a modern, European door with the three rectangular windows down the middle, but those are thousands of dollars. What? This one was $300 from Home Depot and originally white, so I just used some leftover matte black paint to make it a little more edgy. 

Fun fact - the gas company guy told us there was actually a market for those super old (&dangerous&expensive) wall heaters (the one in the above before picture that is in the wall we removed).  We listed it on Facebook Marketplace as vintage and sold it pretty quick! We invested in central air for the house and if you had asked me last month when the California temps were 116F, I would tell you that was by far our best investment in this house. I have no idea how anyone lived in this house for the past 70 years without central air conditioning.

We even had some left over quartz to add to the little window opening between the kitchen and the living room.

Something to think about when designing a kitchen - white is nice and open and all until you have to clean it! Our old house had brown countertops and honestly I just liked being ignorant about how dirty my kitchen was. White does NOT lie and shows every single drop of whatever you spilled. I am constantly wiping and cleaning. Going back I would've looked for countertops that had more gray in them haha.

Here is where I need your help! What type of backsplash should we go with? I've added pics of my top three ideas below. Black herringbone, white subway tiles w/black grout, or a silver to break up the black and white?? Comment below and let me know what you think would look best! I'll share the results on IG @fancyfreeblog next week!