As living in an apartment goes, big changes can't always be made, so I try to do small things to switch up our home decor for different seasons. This is such a reflective week, I thought I'd share some little updates and decorating I did in the last year. All of the pictures are linked below incase you want to check out the corresponding posts!
1. Some new cotton stems I found at Hobby Lobby, which were 50% off when I got them so totaled $11 for 3 stems. WOOHOO! These are my fall and winter decor. I got my pitcher from Anthropologie as a gift. It's sold out, but they have tons of others similar. I'm obsessed with this one!
2. My parent's new guest room (aka my old bedroom. Cue the tears! Just kidding, I actually love it even more now :)) I'll be blogging about this in a few weeks to show you the update.
5. A dining nook update with beautiful and comfortable new chairs. This doubles as my office space, so it was really important we found functional chairs! These fit the bill.
6. My new favorite magnolia wreath-- finally! I'd been looking for one for so long and am so glad I went with this one. I'm now friends with the sweet shop owner and maker of the wreaths. Love this community of Creatives!
9. Peony season is my favorite season ;) It's such a short part of June, so I will be honest, I get new ones whenever I can until the season is over. It's about 4 weeks, so not too costly! ha!
I can't wait to share more home decor and design tips in the new year, as that truly is my passion (and my job! ;)) Please let me know what sorts of topics you want to learn about in design and decorating! I'll do my best to cover all of them.
Thanks for peeking into my changing home over the years. It really is such a personal thing to share-- where we live. But I love letting you in the door virtually and if I could, I'd have you all over in real life, too :)
I'm so excited to show you a new addition to our bedroom! Growing up, I had a sweet friend named Rachel. We went to elementary school together until 3rd grade and then I switched schools, but we still kept in touch because we sung in choir and did musicals together at our church. I'm not kidding when I say I could have called her profession as a child, because she was such a great artist, even at a young age. Now she is an amazing painter, specializing in abstract art! I just love seeing friends using their talents so well in their business.
Rachel developed a really unique niche for her art. While she can paint anything, she loves doing abstract paintings of YOUR photos! I just had her do a painting of one of our wedding photos and I love how it turned out so much. I feel like this is such a great statement piece of art, but it has meaning behind it! If you feel sort of weird about hanging wedding photos all over your house, this is a great way to still display gorgeous, meaningful art, but without plastering your faces on your walls (I, for one, don't happen to mind that ;))
The splash of color this painting adds to our neutral walls is greatly welcomed.
This was the painting Rachel used as her inspiration:
Thanks, Rachel! I love our new art, especially because it was created by you!
Are you a fan of abstract art?! If so, you can message Rachel on her etsy shop or email her at rachelwadlowart@gmail (dot) com to commission her to make one just for you. She even does mini prints!
If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen me post about a new piece of art I had my friend, Chelsea, do to complete our gallery wall. She used watercolor to paint a picture of my bridal bouquet! I'm so in love with it, because it's one of my very favorite details of our wedding day, so I'm really thankful to have the memory of it preserved in the painted form. I thought I'd show you the final product today!
The gallery wall hangs at the top of our stairs, as you walk into our apartment, so this is our entry way.
I absolutely love this piece! I'm so grateful to have such an amazingly talented painter as a friend!! Every time someone comes over, they ohhh and aww over this art. I just thought the other day about what a perfect gift this would be as a wedding planner, photographer or florist, to give to a bride. I know I would love it :)
Hope you had a great weekend! I'm in Dallas today, prepping for our workshop on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was a bit of a rough weekend with getting into Dallas- First, Lincoln had some tummy issues two nights in a row, so we weren't getting a lot of sleep (prepping us for children one day...ha!) Then, I was supposed to be staying with my brother and his wife, but my brother got the stomach flu, so I had to find another place to stay. Thankfully they have some friends who were nice enough to let me stay with them!!
Anyways, that's behind us and today I'm showing you a few corners of our apartment that I decorating for fall. I kept things super simple and neutral, of course, because I'm just not one for lots of orange.
I picked up these cotton branches at Hobby Lobby for 50%, making my total $11. Score!!
Some mini pumpkins from Trader Joe's completed our little ledge as you walk up the stairs.
I put a mercury glass pumpkin and some pumpkin coasters my grandma got us on our buffet.
These dried roses aren't necessarily "fall" but they remind me of the fall! They are all roses that my husband has given me over the course of our relationship- one from the first time he sent me flowers on my birthday, one for our dating anniversary and one for our engagement (2/3 took place in fall).
O also picked up this blue and white vase on our anniversary trip a few weekends ago. I just love it! The blue and white love affair continues ;)
So while a lot of these things might not be screaming fall, they do feel textured and homey. If you missed our fall front porch, you can catch it here. What's your fall decorating style?
Welcome to our fall porch! We live in an apartment, but we do have our own entrance to our unit from the outside, which is pretty fun for me to decorate for the seasons. As you might know, I am apprehensive about fall, because I know the reality of winter hits so soon after, but decorating the porch and the inside of our house has helped me embrace the new season a little bit!
I like to keep things pretty neutral around here, but my husband likes a little color, we we compromised and did a bit of both. I found these pumpkins from Trader Joe's for $24 total. I was really excited about that, because I feel like it's pretty cheap! I also got the two mum plants (not my favorite, but I picked two that almost have a mini dahlia look to them) for 20% off, coming in at $8 each. Then I happened to be at Hobby Lobby on a day their doormats were 50% off, so I got this Gather porch mat for $9.99!! Can't beat it. Here's a peek:
If you saw my post yesterday, then you know how stoic our dog was when I took his picture on the porch. We were about to go on a walk (hence the harness) and he just froze there on the porch staring blankly at us. Ha!! Couldn't be less excited about the walk or the fall porch.
Obsessed with the pumpkin with warts on the left!!
I love the colors in this mum...making me like the plant a bit more!
Still in love with my magnolia wreath. It looks and feels so real!
A really easy way to spruce up your entry way and porch is by switching out your door mat! There are so many adorable ones this season. These are a lot of my favorites (most I found on etsy, which I love, because supporting small shops is something I really enjoy doing).
SHOP:
How cute is the doodle do welcome mat?! I also really like the Come In and Cozy Up mat for this season.
Hi ladies! First things first, This is Us comes back tonight for season 2 and I couldn't be more excited. If you haven't watched season 1, you have about 12 hours to binge ;) Okay, on to the post...
We've lived in our apartment for about 18 months now and we really love it. It would be nice to have some more space (like an extra bedroom!) but having a garage, a pool, a workout room and a washer and dryer in our unit are a few things that we're really thankful for. Because of the small space, the dining area (not even a room) doubles as the office / work space. Therefore, we need some really comfortable chairs since they are playing double duty for us. A few weeks ago we got a pair of new chairs and we're both loving them!! We really liked the ones we had before, but my husband requested more sturdy chairs this time, which I had to agree with. I still wanted a light chair with darker legs and some sort of detailing, so that's what I set out to find.
I found these chairs at Lamps Plus, who I always thought just had lighting, but nope! Lamps Plus has tons of awesome chairs, among other furniture, and they won't break the bank. They looked sturdy and had the beautiful tufting AND nail head trim, so viola! They were perfect. We're really happy with the new ones and I like how they fill the space a bit better, too. My husband approves them because they are a lot wider than our old chairs and don't creek with movement. Yay!
Flowers from our anniversary trip :)
Table- I custom designed it and had a builder make it for me locally / Chairs
Now I find myself wanting a small round rug for under the table. I'm still debating getting one, because I'm not sure if it's worth it for the time we have left at our apartment, but I know it would look so great and really warm the space up! I'll keep you posted ;)
I'll be back next week with some other updates around our apartment!
