Day 4: A Sugarloaf Sanctuary

Happy Tuesday everyone! We’re plowing ahead with Day 4 of our Florida adventure… fasten your seat belts. 🙂

Psst. Playing catch up? You can read all about Day 1 of our trip here, Day 2 here and Day 3 here.

I have been more excited about this part of the vacation recap than most of the other stuff. And I was pretty stoked about Harry Potter World, so that is saying something. 🙂

Day 4 started a little later than the others. We gave ourselves some time to sleep in and got on the road about 10am. Instead of a third breakfast in the hotel, we decided to just start driving and grab a breakfast sandwich the first chance we got. Well…. the first chance we got ended up being noon, so we just called it lunch and got sandwiches from Subway. Oh, and SNACKS for our road trip!

A few hours later and we finally hit that bright blue water, so of course we had to get out and see it in person. We were expecting it to be that clear blue color, but didn’t realize it would be so warm!

Less than an hour later, we pulled into Sugarloaf Key- our home for the rest of the week- and stopped for a quick dinner at a local restaurant called Mangrove Mamas before we headed to our host family’s house.

For this trip, we booked all of our lodging through Airbnb. I think I might have found my new go-to for all things vacation lodging. Here’s the quick low-down on Airbnb… it’s a website that hosts TONS of people offering a place to stay for travelers. All over the world. Essentially, if someone has a house or room and that they want to rent out for a night, a week, a month, etc. they create an account on Airbnb. Travelers can search the website using their trip dates, destination location, and lodging requests (# of guests, # of rooms, etc.) to find places to stay anywhere in the world. And we found that it was much cheaper than going the route of a hotel in some cases.

My favorite part about it was that there was a sense of community. When you stay in a hotel, it is a much different experience than when you stay in someone’s home and get to talk with them, get to know them and their story a little bit. That was a valuable experience for me. So without futher ado, let me introduce you to the home of the wonderful people we had the pleasure of getting to know for the few days we stayed in the Keys…

Irene and Ed are lovely people. So it would make sense that their home is just as lovely. I think the word stunning came to mind every time I sat in the reading room or ate breakfast looking over the water or walked out the door of our room right onto the dock. Their home was simply stunning. And I can’t wait to show it to you. Don’t worry- I asked their permission first and Irene gave me the green light to show you all of the lovely spaces we got to enjoy during our stay!

Irene and Ed live on Sugarloaf Key, about 30 minutes or so from Key West or Mile Marker 0. We actually liked not staying right in Key West because it meant that we could see more of the Keys. Also, parts of Key West are on the wild side so it was nice to visit at night, but then retreat back to the calm oasis of the other islands.

Let me first show you our room. To get there, we parked in the side driveway, next to the guest house. We rented a bedroom in their home, but they also rent out the guest house too. A short walk around brings you to… the backyard.

The first thing I told Irene when she gave us the tour was, “Um, our backyard doesn’t look like this!”.

This is the back patio, dock, diving board, “yard”, whatever you want to call it. Our room was through those doors on the right, overlooking it all.

Inside was clean, crisp, light, and airy- all of my favorite things. 🙂 It was the perfect room for us. So very refreshing. Just the right amount of beachy vibe. Just the right amount of home. Just the right amount of “this feels like a Class A hotel!”.

The room had plenty of white wicker (what says “we’re at the beach” better than white wicker?) drawer and bedside table space for us to use, as well as two closets- one that was an actual closet and the other that boasted a desk and a space to keep things organized. A project after my own heart…

The cool, crisp, and clean carried right into the bathroom. The light blue walls and counter top paired with a colorful beachy floor tile and a seashell mosaic shower curtain was a winning combination.

And my favorite part? The tub to ceiling sparkly white subway tile in the shower. Complete with a shampoo and soap nook. I was frantically taking mental notes for the day we tear out our current mess of a tile job in the upstairs bath. Seriously, this shower made you feel clean as soon as you stepped in.

Oh, and the basket of towels right next to it? Could this feel more luxurious? I think I might put one right outside our shower just so we can feel this fancy all the time. 🙂

And the coolest part about our room? The view right outside our windowed bedroom doors! We could not get enough of seeing this every morning…

If we head out into the rest of the house, this is the first room we come to. I’m going to call it the family room. Complete with comfy couches and chairs and a large coffee table for stashing a cool drink, it’s a cozy place to curl up and watch TV. Mitch and I joined Ed in watching the finale of The Voice our very first night there. 🙂

In that hallway where Mitch is standing is the powder room. And, true to form, it makes you feel like you’re right at the beach. Just check out this cool dark green glass sink!

Adjacent to the family room and just on the other side of the dividing wall is the kitchen. Talk about an ocean vibe. This kitchen oozes sun and surf from every nook and cranny.

The counter is more of that cool light blue that we saw in the bathroom in our room. The back splash has the same hue, but in tile form with calm wavy movement throughout.

My favorite part was the cabinets. Light wood fitted with cabinet fronts that looked like mini waterfalls. Irene outfitted the shelves and counters with shells and pictures of things they’ve seen on their various trips.

In the other half of the kitchen was the dining room that echoed the patterns and colors of the family room furniture. The table overlooked the water out the back and the floor to ceiling wall of mirrors made it feel like this room with a view just went on forever.

We’ve come to my favorite part of the tour- what I’m calling the reading room. Probably because every spare second we had here, I curled up on the over-sized chair or roomy couch with my book and read, all the while stealing glances out at the water.

The comfy furniture was oh, so inviting and the walls boasted a happy yellow hue adorned with interesting photography and art pieces collected over the course of the couple’s adventures.

But I have to tell you- the star of the show definitely had to be the view. As most of the walls are made of floor to ceiling windows, there was no shortage of opportunities to look out and enjoy the water. In fact, if you really wanted, you could walk right out one of the back doors, two steps across the concrete dock, and straight into the water!

And my favorite part about the room? This little breakfast nook!

We loved having breakfast every morning looking out over the water- so peaceful!

So now that you’re drooling (and not over the food, although that was delicious too!), who wants to come and vacation here? 🙂 Yep, that’s what I thought. Irene and Ed were wonderful hosts and really made us feel very welcomed in their home. We loved having this peaceful sanctuary to come back to after our adventures each day and are so thankful that we got to stay in their beautiful home!

And because I just can’t get enough of this place… plus videos are just so much fun… here’s a mini-tour of the bedroom we got to stay in. Our “home away from home” if you will. Enjoy!

Thanks again Irene and Ed! Your home is lovely- a direct reflection of the kind and caring people you are. We’ll be giving you a ring the next time we’re in the Keys! 🙂