Beautiful Fall Porches You Don't Want to Miss!

It's that time of year where I'm REALLY in the fall spirit (it only took me a month to arrive!) and I thought it'd be fun to get inspired by some gorgeous fall front porches. Feast your eyes on these, friends!

This one is just simple and neutral, but that's usually my style!

via

I'm not usually one for much color, but I'm really into this!!

via 

I pretty much adore anything Julia does, so no surprise I'm all about this sweet, southern front porch! I just don't think I'll ever have the budget for 30+ pumpkins and 16 mums-- Ha!!

via 
Again, neutral and just really pretty!

via 
This is SO classic and I love the black door. The boxwood wreath is awesome-- they could keep it for Christmas, too! The candlelight is lovely, creating some cozy ambiance. 

via 

I bet this is from Nantucket or somewhere on the East Coast, if I had to guess. All those pumpkins and gourds are so cute coming down the steps! 

via

Hope this gave you some inspiration!! xoxo


interior design website / services / portfolio

0

Friday Finds: Favorite Fall Boots

Happy Friday! Fall is in full effect over here in the Midwest! What about where you are? In fact, we're going up North this weekend to Traverse City to see the pretty fall colors. I can't wait!

Since we pretty much live in boots from October-April, I thought I'd share some of the boots and booties catching my eye this season. 

SHOP:

Do you gravitate more towards tall boots or booties? I always grab my booties first, probably because they're so comfy, but I do love my black Penny Riding Boot. I also secretly love my Uggs. When it's this cold, all style goes out the window. I got these cute one with bows last year for Christmas and I love them! Then I have a realllyyy bad black pair I wear to take the dog outside in (I've had them for 10 years...yikes!)
Do you have any favorite boots I need to know about?!
Have a great weekend! Be sure to follow on Instagram along on if you'd like to see some gorgeous fall color! 
interior design website / services / portfolio

2

Green & Blue Living Room Rug

Last Friday was an exciting day around here because our new living room rug arrived!! My husband stayed home with a cold, so he was feeling under the weather but when it came I begged him to help me roll it out. What a guy ;) I knew we needed a much larger rug with color and pattern for the space! The old rug was great for the apartments I've lived in, but was much too small for this new space. Hopefully one day we'll also get a larger couch, but there are other things we're doing before that. #priorities
Here's our new rug, which I got from Well Woven. When I found them on instagram one day and started looking through their selections, I was really impressed! The reviews were all really great and the prices are awesome. Talk about an extremely affordable rug-- this 8x10 was $299! I am really excited to be partnering with Well Woven to show you the Maxwell rug in my living room. They've been so kind to give my readers a discount code (on top of their affordable prices!) so scroll down to get that. 

I knew I wanted something in the green, blue and neutral family and I also knew I wanted something that had a vintage looking pattern. I didn't want it to be too saturated, so when I saw this one, it caught my eye! I always recommend looking at the photos people post in the reviews of products, if there are any, and this one had so many photos that I felt super confident about ordering!

The colors ended up being perfect-- my current pillows work so well with it. And of course, Lincoln is loving that he has this super soft, larger, new rug to lay and roll around on ;)

Little peek at my new homegoods find for the entry way!

This is a pretty low pile rug, which is great for walking without tripping. It's also extremely soft and comes in a variety of sizes (would be such a pretty runner!) I still need to get a rug pad, which I always suggest for keeping rugs in place and for extending the lifetime of a rug, but I was too excited to see it down, so I went for it. (When McCann learned we're going to have to move the sofa and rug again to put down a pad he wasn't thrilled with me ;))

There is just enough color in the rug for my liking! If you want to play with pattern and color, but are typically a neutral girl like me, rugs are the perfect place to start because they lay flat on the ground, not in your normal sight-line and usually furniture would be placed on top of a rug.

We are so pleased! Not only do we have some life breathed into our space, but it's also the appropriate size (8x10)! In case you need some tips for picking a rug, this post is helpful. It's really important to make sure at least the front legs of your furniture in a living room are on your rug. When in doubt, go bigger! Other than seeing too small of art or art hung too high, too small of a rug is the next thing I see the most of. Hope these hints help!
Get 15% off your next Well Woven purchase with code MICHAELA1515. (This will work on purchases above $75 and excludes flat price item sales.)









interior design website / services / portfolio

2

Our Moving Experience: Change is Hard & Good & We're Grateful

Finally, I'm getting around to writing the blog post on our moving experience, our new home and how everything has been going since April, when we bought our house. If you missed the big announcement post of our new house with all the details on our house hunt, you can find it here! 

(We've already done so much to the front yard and got rid of those blinds in the window!)
It’s important to note that as a little girl, I was never a summer-camp-loving-kid. In fact, I hated it! I didn’t even like sleeping over at friends’ houses, so our house gladly became “the” house where all my girlfriends would come for sleepovers. My mom was a pro at making these nights, which were quite frequent, a great success with everything from renting us movies and providing allll the yummy snacks. My dad invested in these awesome sleeping pads from Costco and we had one for each of my friends. We were well-prepared and I loved it! I was in my own environment and felt comfortable. I also loved hosting even then, so this was extra fun. 
This is why it came as a huge surprise to everyone, including myself, when I moved across the country from California to Michigan in pursuit of love in 2014. (If you’re new here, my husband has lived in MI his whole life, and I moved here 5 years ago when we were 8 months into dating. I got my own apartment for a couple years until we were married in 2016. Then we moved into our first apartment together and have just purchased our first house together April of 2019! Phew!) 
While I’m not super sentimental in a lot of ways (like, I don’t hoard things from years and years ago unless they are very special to me, like personal cards), I am when it comes to where I live. Maybe it’s my line of work or maybe it’s just my personality, but I get very attached to where I live. It’s my safe place, where I spend most of my time as someone who works from home, I put a lot of effort into how it looks which translates into how it feels, and most simply, it’s home. In every place I’ve ever lived, be it my dorm room or my many apartments over the years, I’ve put a lot of my time and effort into making that place feel beautiful, inviting, cozy and special. It’s almost as if anything could go wrong outside my little space, but inside I feel known and safe and it's mine. That’s why in my sophomore year of college, when my roommate had a cardiac arrest and had to leave for the quarter to recover, I was left so paralyzed by the events that took place in my room, it was so hard to go in there. I felt like my (or rather “our”) space we worked so hard on together had been violated. 
This makes moving a hard thing for me to do. When I moved from my own apartment here in Michigan into our first apartment together when we were married, it was hard for me even though there were actually a lot of difficult things that took place while I lived there. The heartache of being homesick, then losing my husband’s dad to cancer, feeling alone when I didn't have many friends in the beginning of my time here. It didn’t matter though, because in those walls are where I felt safe and where I became my own person after taking a leap of faith and moving all these miles away. Then we moved into our first apartment together and it was so, so fun! I loved that little place SO much, I’ll never forget it. We became a family there, decorated and did a couple home projects together, brought our pup home there (ha! Sounds like our child, which he is;)), had friends gather around our 33” dining table there, got our first Christmas tree there, and yes, difficult things happened there, too. Change is hard for me, friends. Anyone else?
When we left our apartment for the last time, I started laugh-crying because I couldn’t believe I was crying over this. Here we are getting to move into our own HOUSE and I’m sad about leaving our tiny 1 bedroom apartment. But in all seriousness, it was hard and good. I came to the conclusion that leaving should be hard; it means memories were made and relationships were formed.

Moving into our new house has come with challenges and lots of joys! In mid-April when we got the keys, we painted the whole house by ourselves the first week we had possession. We spent every waking minute we had, outside of work, here doing projects. After about two weeks of doing this, I was beat down and needed some time away from the house and just needed some rest. We still had our apartment at the time (thank God for the overlap of our lease so we didn’t have to live in construction, but it came with some challenges!) so I took about a week off from going to the house, while my husband still went and worked on fixing it up. I couldn’t help with everything he was doing anyways. I’m going to be honest here: the 6 weeks we had our house and our apartment at the same time, though it was a gift logistically, were really hard and put a strain on our relationship. My husband wanted to get as much done at the new house as he could and I just really wanted to eat dinner together like we normally did, but we hardly ever did in this 6 week time frame. My husband saw the work he was putting in as loving me, because he was doing the work for me to really love our new house, when I just saw this as over-working himself and not wanting to spend time with me. You can see the conundrum here ;)
We finally talked about it and once we moved into our house and the apartment was all moved out, it got a lot better. God healed the hurt. But we learned a valuable lesson in those weeks: communication is key, especially in times of stress. Shoot for over-communication, in fact ;) If we could do it all again we decided we would still try to have dinner together most nights, then work on the house after that, even if it meant not everything was done before we moved in. Relationships > things (even houses and deadlines!)
Now that we’ve been in our home for 5 months, it’s starting to feel much more like home. It’s definitely taken me some time to get used to because of it being a project, unlike our apartments that were just move-in ready. It’s an older home and some things will just never be the way I would ideally want them, but I’m learning to be okay with that and practicing gratitude. Because truly, it’s a sweet, charming little house and I’m so grateful it’s ours for now! I’m also super thankful for my husband who is apparently extremely handy!! I had no idea (and he’d tell you he didn’t either-- thanks to YOUTUBE for all the tutorials that have basically remodeled our house!) but his hard work is really paying off. He’s done so much to improve the house and make it something we both are growing to love and proud of calling home.
One thing I’ve been really intentional about is trying to get to know my neighbors. When we first moved in and I’d take Lincoln on walks (having a dog helps you make friends in the neighborhood really quick!) I would be sure to ask their names and really try to remember them. I have done a pretty good job! If I could do it again, I’d take my dad’s advice and make a map of our street and write people’s names on their houses as I learn them ;) Some people are super friendly while others keep more to themselves. I also made sure to get to know my mail carrier. She is very friendly and when she found out what I do for a living, she’s since invited me over to “take a peek at her new house and offer any advice” as she moved in down the street ;) Ha! It’s my hope to make meaningful connections with those that want to and find ways to bring life to this little street. I’m hoping to bake Christmas cookies to drop on neighbors doorsteps and get a little thank you gift for our mail lady, Michelle. I would love to host a summer party next year for the neighborhood once our backyard is done, too! 
So, that’s been our experience with moving so far. It hasn’t been perfect, but it’s been good and we are grateful that God has given us this gift. I know one day I will be laugh-crying as I say goodbye to this precious little house and tree-lined street. 

I'd love to know some of your moving experiences! xoxo

interior design website / services / portfolio

0

Friday Finds: 5 of my Favorites

Hi friends, happy Friday! I hope you had a great week! My husband came down with a cold, so he's home from work today and I've got the thieves diffusing and I'm taking a bunch of vitamins so I can try to avoid it. So far it's not too bad, thankfully! Today I'm sharing 5 of my favorite finds as of lately, then some sales down below. Let me know what you're loving in the comments! 1. This cozy pullover. I've worn it three times this week...don't judge ;) You wouldn't if you knew just how amazing it was! It's on sale for under $50 today. I got the XS and it's still a little over-sized which I like. It's lined with the same fabric inside as you see on the outside. So warm!  Don't miss this, girls.

 I got the cream with black trim and it's great-- goes with everything!

2. The new Blondo bootie design this year is so cute with the detail on the back! I have last year's design in this heel height and they're awesome. These are the waterproof booties I always talk about! Just give them 3 wears and they'll be the most comfortable bootie you've ever worn. And I ordered 1/2 size up, like suggested, and it was perfect.

3. Beautycounter launched their gift sets for the year and you might be thinking "it's too early for holiday!", BUT think of how much time and stress you'd be saving if you got some gifting out of the way now :) Our sets are a great way to try products at a discounted rate, too! This mini face oil set always sells out first! A couple of my personal favorites: - Skin care favorites: this has our cleansing stick, mini charcoal mask, full sized resurfacing peel (my favorite product ever) and mini brightening face oil. This is an amazing value at under $100.

- Lip polishing set: this comes with a lip scrub (so necessary in the winter!), balm and clear gloss, all of which I love!

- Lip Jellies Collection: 5 of these little lip jellies which are hydrating and each have their own scent-- butterscotch, sorbet, raspberry, orange cream and peppermint. Perfect to give as a set or break up and give one to each of your girls.

4. Pretty much all the Madewell sweaters. I'm so excited because a Madewell store is opening 5 minutes (dangerously close) from our house in about 10 days! I can't wait!! Here are my faves this week:

This one might be my all time favorite. I've been eyeing it for a couple weeks now and and it's on sale + an additional 30% off! It comes in cream, blush and deep red / berry. The little balls on the sleeves are SO cute and I love that oversized sleeve with the tight wrist.

5. These sweats! Okay, I finally got to feel these Lou & Grey from the LOFT sweatpants and they are the softest things I've ever felt, ever. Like literal butter. I told my mom about them and she promptly went to the store to get herself a pair (and rumor has it she grabbed me a pair for my birthday in 2 weeks ;)) You can dress them up and down or sleep in them...Can I get an AMEN?! True to size.

Those are my Friday Finds this week! Hope you have a great weekend!
xoxo
interior design website / services / portfolio

0

Our Fall Decor 2019

Our fall decor is up and I thought I'd show you around! It's all very simple, like usual. If you remember, in our apartment we had a ledge coming up our stairs that was great for decorating! Now that we don't have that, I had a couple pieces of decor I couldn't do anything with because they were really large and won't fit on our new builtins. But I'm happy with how these turned out. You can see my summer shelves in this post and you might not notice, not much changed! I simply switched out some neutral fall decor for some of the summer pieces. This is a great trick if you don't feel confident in your decorating shelves ability OR if you just love what you have but want to switch a couple pieces out.

This might be a weird quirk, being an interior designer, but once I find a formula for my shelves that work, I don't change them up much! What about you?

I got a couple white mini pumpkins and set them in row on our mantel. I love how cute this is!

I switched out the sign on the shelf for my gather sign, which feels more "fall" to me :) I also got out the mercury glass pumpkin I've had for years and my little white and gold pumpkins. I used all the same stuff I've had for years, but it feels different since we're in a different space. Kinda fun!

I love this sweet little plant in a cloche my friend got me as a house warming gift!

  See how I made these DIY white and gold pumpkins here.

On the other side I mirrored the mercury glass pumpkin with the owl, swapped out my white candlesticks for brass ones, added a recycled glass pumpkin (so cute, on sale now!) with a tea light in it and placed a white, switched out our wedding album for a painting with some color, and placed a gold pumpkin on the bottom shelf as a finishing touch.

Oh, and this is one of my favorite fall candles!!

You may notice we finally put the knobs on our cabinets!! The shape reminds me so much of our entry and kitchen light, I thought it was perfect. And the glass gives it that vintage feel I love so much.

Looking back at the front door, this is what you see. (I don't love that you see the back of our couch when you walk in, but it worked the best for the TV and couch placement ;))

Our pretty new pillows for fall are giving me all the feels. I always go a little darker in the fall for a cozier feeling!

lumbar pillow / seaglass pillow was custom / navy pillow

Still obsessed with this tassel pillow and still so happy that Lincoln hasn't touched them yet ;)

Our entry table is styled with some books, our record player, a lovely blue lamp (HomeGoods) and a vase from a friend (love!) with some fall cotton branches in it. I finished our gallery wall this summer and love how it turned out. I'm thinking of changing out a couple of the wedding photos for more recent pictures. What do you think?

PS. Have you tried this Trader Joe's pumpkin candle? So good!

That's it! I didn't do much other fall decorating in other rooms, but you can bet I will for Christmas! If you missed our fall porch, you can see that here.

Have you done any fall decorating?
Have a great Wednesday!

interior design website / services / portfolio

0