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In news that will surprise no one, the Southern Weddings ladies are die-hard devotees of Joanna and Chip :) (It’s no secret that we’re dying to have them in our next issue — how perfect would it be if they were a part of our tenth anniversary volume??) We’ve been eagerly anticipating Fixer Upper Season 4 for months, and so in honor of the first episode kicking off tomorrow, we thought we’d take a walk down memory lane with a few of our favorite houses from Season 3! I’d love to hear your favorites in the comments, too!

I loved all of the arches — in the doorways, in the built-in cabinets — in the Brick House. (Photo by Rachel Whyte)

There was lots to love about the Magnolia House episode, from the goal for the property (a bed and breakfast), that Chip and Jo were the clients, and that so many of the details were chosen to mimic the farm house. The reveal to their parents at the end of the episode was so sweet, too!!

One of the most unique Fixer Uppers ever, the Barndominium gave new meaning to the “modern farmhouse” aesthetic. I loved the 17-foot dining table and all of the sleek sliding barn doors! (Photos by Rachel Whyte and Jeff Jones)

The School House episode included one of my favorite exterior transformations in season three — the now famous German Schmear. (Photo by Rachel Whyte)

Speaking of great exterior transformations… the Whyte’s house, Chip 2.0, was certainly one for the books, as well! That little scalloped table, though, was the detail that really captured my heart. Rachel joined us on Southern Newlywed a few months ago to share behind-the-scenes scoop from their Fixer Upper experience and tons of details on their decor, so be sure to check out that post if you’re a Fixer Upper fan! (Photo by Rachel Whyte)

The Beanstalk Bungalow was one of my all-around favorites from this season. I loved the sweet blue, white, and green palette; the exterior (again! Jo killed it last season on the exteriors!); the brick pavers in the sunroom; and the cottage-feeling master bedroom, ringed with windows.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the 3 Little Pigs house had another fantastic exterior transformation! I also loved the raw brick chimney in the open floor plan kitchen/dining room. (Photos by Rachel Whyte)

I bet Jess in our office (a yellow lover!) was particularly fond of the Chicken House. I loved the cheery color palette and fun wallpaper, too! (Photo by Rachel Whyte)

Finally, the Carriage House. There was just something so cozy about this little house (for the caretakers of the Magnolia House), and the couple who was moving in seemed so sweet.

Fixer Upper Season 4 premieres on HGTV at 9/8CT November 29!

Any favorites, friends? Anyone having a watch party tomorrow night? :)

emily Written with love by Emily
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Boy howdy, do I have a treat for y’all today. Not only did our friend and newlywed Hope Houser send over photos of the beautiful home she shares with her husband, Michael, but we have the “before” photos to share, too! The home these two have created is cozy, inviting, cohesive, and filled with sentimental pieces, from the painting of their first look to the cactus art in honor of Michael’s home state. Add in an enviable man cave, a facade-flip worthy of Joanna Gaines, and an interview filled with sweet wisdom, and my (and probably your) Friday is complete! Please enjoy, friends!

Thanks to Sophie Brendle for the beautiful after photos of Hope and Michael’s home!

P.S. You may recognize Hope as Lysa TerKeurst’s daughter. Read more of her mama’s advice for mothers-of-the-bride here!

The couple: Hope (22) and Michael (21) Houser
Years married: 8 months
Where you live: Charlotte, NC
Tell us a little bit about yourselves. Michael: I grew up in Tucson, Arizona. Although I miss the dry heat at times, Charlotte has become my home. I have an older brother and sister as well as four younger siblings. I loved growing up in a big family and I hope to start my own with Hope in the next few years! Until then I am pursing a double major in business as well as working towards my career goal to become a Chick-fil-a operator/owner. Hope: My parents have lived in the same house my entire life in Charlotte, North Carolina. My dad has owned his Chick-fil-A for 25 years. My mom is the president of Proverbs 31 Ministries. She has written 19 books and speaks all over the world! I have two older brothers and two younger sisters.

Tell us your love story in one sentence. 20 questions while driving up a mountain top was the best way for us to get to know each other – I love to ask questions, and hearing Michael’s answers made me fall in love.
What is your favorite part of being married? Hope: Watching Michael cook the yummiest dinner, jazz music playing in the background, favorite candle lit, and not having to say goodnight after :) Michael: My favorite part of being married is being able to start my day and end my day with my best friend. I can’t put into words how awesome it is to be in love with your best friend.

What has been the most surprising thing about marriage? Michael: The most surprising thing about marriage is that I never stop learning more about my wife. Marriage is a constant work in progress, and I mean that in a good way.
Tell us a little bit about where you live. We recently bought a little starter home. We would love to be here for the next five-ish years, and then move into our forever home. We are open to either building or buying a fixer-upper and gutting it! (Hope wants the fixer-upper :))

Tell us about the process of moving in together. Michael has given me such freedom to bring all my crazy ideas to life with our home. Some have totally failed, but it’s nothing a little patch-up work or paint won’t fix! The best advice we have would be to give yourself the freedom to experiment. Either you learn a lesson of what not to do next time, or it turns out great! It’s a win/win.

Which room in your home is your favorite, and why? Hope: Our living room — we love hosting our friends and family there! Michael: My man cave. It’s the best napping or movie room!
What most makes your house feel like home? Our wedding presents. Some of our favorite things weren’t on our registry, but they all have such sentimental meaning! Those are what we find ourselves talking about most in our home. (Examples: the painting of us during our first look, the cacti art in our kitchen representing where Michael grew up, our kitchen table that Hope grew up sitting at, etc.)

Where do you splurge and where do you save when decorating? I like to have at least one statement piece in every room, and those are normally the splurge items: our chairs in our living room, our cowhide rugs, the House Of Belonging sign above our bed.
What is your favorite memory from your wedding? Hope: Our band was seriously amazing. We danced under lights in this huge glass ceiling atrium. It truly was the most magical winter wedding. Michael: My favorite memory was watching Hope walk down the aisle. I know it’s, cliche but it truly is a breathtaking moment. Along with that, I love that I’ll always be able to reminisce about the best day of my life with friends and family who were there.

How do you remember your wedding in your home? We have lots of wedding pictures all throughout the house, the Bible we had our guests sign is on our coffee table in the living room, our wedding painting is hanging in the living room, and we have an album of guest photos from our photo booth!
What different decisions, if any, would you make for your registry if you knew then what you knew now? Wait a few weeks until you start spending the gift cards from either presents or reimbursements. We could have used them for so many practical items that we didn’t realize we needed until a few weeks living together in our home.

Who cooks dinner? Michael. Always. (Ha!)
What is your go-to weeknight meal? Weekend meal? Crockpot salsa chicken, sweet potato fries, spinach salad, and avocados. I can’t even count the number of times we’ve had this meal. And then of course Chick-fil-A is a weekly/daily thing ;)
What’s your favorite place to find recipes? I watched the movie “Chef” a few weeks back and ever since I’ve been on a food truck kick. I’ll look for food truck recipes online and work them into our menu for the upcoming week. Try homemaderecipes.com!

How does your family handle finances? We both love growing our savings and giving. Don’t get me wrong, spending is fun, but we want to establish good patterns early on. We’ve had to just decide what things are necessary, and what we can wait on. I would recommend using a budget sheet – once you use it for a few weeks consistently, it will become a really wonderful habit!

What’s your best tip for balancing your relationship and other life priorities? Saying no to some things has been so beneficial for us. We’d recommend allowing yourself to sometimes turn down stuff so that you can use your newlywed time to grow closer together. We’re all about that “quality time” love language! This has been an area where lots of communication is needed and we sometimes fail, but we love to learn!

Do you have a favorite date night idea to share? Our favorite night would be cooking dinner at home, eating at our farm table, then venturing upstairs with a glass of wine to watch whatever show we;re hooked on at the moment. Currently, it’s “Parenthood.” So good.

What is one small way you love or serve your spouse? Hope: I LOVE walking into a clean house. I travel a lot with my job, so Michael is always serving me by cleaning the house before I get home from a trip. Michael: I love when Hope sends me encouraging messages, phone calls, or notes throughout my week about stuff I forgot I told her about, like a big exam coming up, a presentation for work, or a new workout routine. It could be anything, but her intentionality always makes for a better day.

Do you have children? Both of us grew up with big families, so we would love to have a big family, too! We want to wait 3-5 years to have kids. Adoption is something we both have had our hearts set on for a while!

Before getting married, I wish someone had told me… My mom always tell us this: “When you wish for someone else’s good, you have to be able to handle the not-so-good that comes with it. It always comes as a package deal.” We knew this before we were married, but it’s something we are constantly reminding ourselves of. Comparison is so dangerous in a marriage!

This year, our family is most excited about… going to Israel together in a few months. I have been, but Michael hasn’t, and we are SO excited to experience it together as newlyweds.

Thank you so much for sharing your hearts and home with us, Hope and Michael!

A little reminder: we’d love to hear from you! Our hope is to feature REAL couples in the South – not just folks who write blogs (though we love them, too!), but also your inspiring friend, super talented cousin, or neighbor with the cutest house – the kind of person everyone would love to “e-meet.” If that sounds like you or someone you know, take a peek at our Southern Newlywed submission page and shoot us an email!

emily Written with love by Emily
3 Comments
  1. avatar Christina Morales reply

    What color are the kitchen cabinets?
    What is the quote over the bed?

  2. avatar Caroline reply

    Where did you get the bedding with the brown comforter? I love it!

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I couldn’t be more excited about today’s Southern Newlywed post, because the home we’re taking a tour of belongs to none other than one of the most beloved SW couples we’ve ever featured, as well as dear friends of mine! Callie and Jamie’s gorgeous RiverOaks Charleston wedding graced the pages of V7 almost two years ago, and since then, these two have been settling into newlywed life in a little yellow house that they’ve lovingly renovated and made their own. As was apparent through the way they planned their wedding, being intentional and thoughtful is a high priority for Callie and Jamie, and I’m sure you’ll see that clearly throughout their house as well!

Thanks so much to our beloved Blue Ribbon Vendor Nancy Ray Photography for these beautiful photos!

The couple: Callie (25) and Jamie (25) Davis
Years married: Two years as of May 3rd
Where they live: Raleigh, North Carolina
Tell us a little bit about yourselves. Jamie and I both grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina and went to the same high school (‘sko caps!) and college (go Wolfpack!). Callie is a film wedding photographer with Nancy Ray Photography and writes a personal blog at Call Me Callie. Jamie works in commercial real estate specializing in land acquisition. Together, we believe in deeply rooted relationships, that a joyful heart begins with thanksgiving, and that without Jesus, we are nothing. We love the meaning of marriage, the ocean, spontaneous dance parties, our local farmer’s market and travel.
Tell us your love story in one sentence. High school acquaintances who connected through mutual friends in college, dated for almost five years, and tied the knot under the oaks in Charleston, South Carolina. (I love our love story. Truth be told, when we started dating, never in a million years did I think that one day we would be married, but the Lord had a different plan and I am so grateful.)


Do you rent or own? What are your hopes and plans for the future in this area? Tell us a little bit about where you live. We own our little yellow house, as it was a gift to us from Jamie’s uncle. It is the most generous gift we have ever received and has forever changed the way that we view giving generously, living everyday with a thankful and humble heart, and why we feel so strongly about hospitality and allowing our home to be a place to serve others and The Lord. (You can read the full story here.) It was built in 1952 and we quickly realized it was a real fixer upper. Soon after we got engaged, we began dreaming, drawing, and planning some possible renovations for our little house. Two months after getting married, we moved into our newly renovated home. This house is so special to us after all the work that we put into it and I never want to leave, but I knew that when I married a man working in real estate that that wouldn’t be the case for us. Our future plans include buying another fixer upper or building a house from scratch and investing in rental properties.

What most makes your house feel like home? I think we could live anywhere as long as we were together. I know this to be true because when we first moved into our house, it looked far from this. We barely owned any furniture or decor, and it took two years to make our house look like the way it does in these pictures. I had frames that were hanging on our walls without pictures in them because I was too indecisive, and for awhile, we had a mismatch of seating in our family room, but that didn’t change the way that our house felt. Coming home to each other and maintaining a posture of open hands with our home is what matters most. 

Where do you splurge and where do you save when decorating? What are some of your favorite sources for home things? We decided to splurge on bigger pieces like our L-shaped couch and our bed frame, knowing that we will hopefully keep these pieces for years. Just like my grandmother has always taught me: you know you’re meant to have something if you leave it in the store and continue to think about it. I remember going into the store countless times and looking at pictures of these pieces online before making the purchases. I wanted to be 100 percent sure that I would love them for a long time if we were going to be spending more money on them! So far, they have been my favorite purchases! I love Home Goods, Target, West Elm, Ikea, and PotteryBarn.

Which items from your wedding registry do you use the most often? We love our everyday china from Crate and Barrel. I remember standing in the store contemplating whether or not to add the weird pasta low bowls to our registry. “We’ll never use those,” I remember saying to Jamie, but he thought otherwise, so we added them, and I’m so glad that we did! No matter what we are eating, we grab the pasta low bowls out of our cabinet over a plate or bowl almost every time! If you haven’t already, you should totally add these to your registry because they will change your dining experience :)

What is your favorite memory from your wedding? Goodness, it’s hard to pick just one! The private moments throughout the day–praying around a door moments before our ceremony, our dockside dinner, and the boat ride after leaving our reception.
How do you remember your wedding in your home? (Pictures, mementos, etc.) As a wedding photographer, I believe you can never have enough wedding pictures displayed in your home! In the everyday hustle and bustle of life, it’s easy to forget that joyful day, and we recently decided that we want a daily reminder of the commitment that we made to each other as we walk through the rooms of our home. We also have things throughout our home from our wedding day–hemstitch cocktail napkins on our bar cart, the x-back chairs that our guests sat in in our dining room, lanterns that lined the dock by our fireplace, our cake server and knife in our china cabinet, and our guest book Bible that floats throughout our home as we read it in different rooms.

Who cooks dinner? We love to cook together! Jamie usually handles the meat and anything on the grill, while I usually handle the sides.
What is your go-to weeknight meal? Weekend meal? Our go-to weeknight meal is tacos. We almost always have ingredients on hand that can be transformed into tacos. Whether it’s planned ahead and we do shredded chicken in the crockpot or blackened shrimp, we love tacos in all shapes and forms! Our go-to weekend meal is probably something on the grill–burgers or chicken. We love to entertain and have people over to our house, so it’s an easy thing to fix, and it can be paired with any potluck sides that people bring!

What’s your favorite place to find recipes? This year, Jamie and I acknowledged that we’re not the best when it comes to following recipes. To be honest, I’m somewhat of a picky eater and we always end up modifying the recipes that we try. We do better when we try to recreate something we’ve eaten in a restaurant or just pull things together based on what we’ve got in our fridge. However, this month, we tried a week of Hello Fresh and it was really fun!

Tell us about the process of moving in together. Do you have any tips for blending your two styles? Moving in together after we got married was really fun. When we got married, we were in the middle of renovating our little house. Believe it or not, when we got back from our honeymoon, my parents picked us up from the airport and we moved right in with them! It wasn’t ideal, but it was a major blessing. Our house still had two months until it was going to be complete, and with both of our parents living in Raleigh, it felt silly to try and find a place to rent for only two months. When we finally moved into our renovated house, it immediately felt like home. After two years of decorating, finalizing projects, and making it ours, it still feels like home. What we have learned most through this project is that stuff doesn’t make a house a home. Blending our two styles was really fun and easy because knowing what we know, we didn’t take it so seriously. After planning a wedding together, we had a good understanding of each other’s style and what we wanted our house to look and feel like. We wanted to fill our home with things that we love, or that remind us of what we love. We both love the ocean, which is why our home is filled with images and a color palette that reminds of us it–neutrals mixed with bold textures and cool colors. We also both love to be outside, which is why we tried to bring outside in as much as we could–yes, I’ve become an indoor plant lady and I love it! I believe that there are no rules when it comes to designing or decorating your home. Fill it with what both of you love! Mix patterns and textures and play around with a color palette until you make it work! The effort is worth it for both of you to come home to place that feels like a place of rest and comfort.

What is your favorite part of being married? Our friendship. We love to spend time together, whether it’s on vacation exploring somewhere new or cuddling up on the couch to watch Netflix. Jamie makes me laugh harder than anyone else–think dance parties while brushing his teeth, talking to me in funny accents, making up lyrics to songs, and neverending selfie videos of him singing. He makes our life so light and fun. I love that we get to a be a team, cheering each other on through the ups and downs, and working together toward a common goal. I love that we are becoming sanctified by being together.
What has been the most surprising thing about marriage? Before we were married, I knew that our life together would be a big adventure, but what I didn’t realize is just how much we would enjoy the simple things–coming home to each other after a long day of work, cooking dinner together, walking our sweet pup, tending to our garden, and doing yard work. 


What’s your best tip for balancing your relationship and other life priorities (work, personal time, extended family, etc.)? Invite each other in. Whether it’s your work, your hobbies, or your goals, invite your spouse into those things and do them together. Jamie and I have discovered this year what this means for us and our marriage. We made time in our busy schedules to train for and run a half marathon together and spent tons of time in our backyard building a chicken coop from scratch. We’re not perfect, but we constantly strive to prioritize each other.
What is one small way you love or serve your spouse? Jamie: Asking Callie, “How can I serve you today?” Callie: Texting Jamie during the day to tell him that I love him and ask how his day is going.

Is there anything else about your home or family life that you think our readers would be interested in? If you know me, you know that one of my dreams is to live on a farm or a large piece of land. Although we can’t make that dream happen right now, we decided to bring a little bit of farm life to our urban backyard by building a chicken coop! Jamie and I built our backyard chicken coop from scratch in August (it was quite the adventure!) and added five hens to our family! In a couple months, we should be getting fresh eggs every day and we are so excited!

Thank you so much for sharing your hearts and home with us, Callie and Jamie! Follow along with them here:
Callie’s blog | Callie’s photography | Callie’s Instagram | Jamie’s Instagram

A little reminder: we’d love to hear from you! Our hope is to feature REAL couples in the South – not just folks who write blogs (though we love them, too!), but also your inspiring friend, super talented cousin, or neighbor with the cutest house – the kind of person everyone would love to “e-meet.” If that sounds like you or someone you know, take a peek at our Southern Newlywed submission page and shoot us an email!

lisa Written with love by Lisa
6 Comments
  1. avatar Robyn Van Dyke reply

    Love the house tour but love their hearts even more!

  2. avatar Elizabeth Maxwell reply

    Absolutely love this precious post!! And the images are gorgeous. Is there a way different furniture pieces/decor can be linked so that others can find them? Thank you!

  3. avatar McKenzie Fussell reply

    Absolutely loved Callie and Jamie’s sweet house! So much cuteness! xo, McKenzie

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Southern Weddings reserves the right to delete comments which contain profanity or personal attacks or seek to promote a business unrelated to the post.  And remember: a good attitude is like kudzu – it spreads.  We love hearing your kind thoughts!

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