Welcome to my blog!!

Hello and welcome to my blog! I am so excited to be launching this and cannot wait to share my adventures in home decor with you! It all started this morning when my boyfriend said, “you should start a blog about your decor.” My first thought was, do I want to let the world into my personal life, but I soon realized that wouldn’t be the case. Besides, I love reading other decor blogs, so how am I any different than all the other amateur, aspiring-to-be JoJo Gaines and Pottery Barn interior designers?!

So here goes…forewarning, this first post may be lengthy, too much typing for some of you. I just want to give you the back story, but I will surely get better with condensing my typing over time. : )

My boyfriend and I purchased our first home last year and moved in just days before Christmas. I feel like we skipped the holidays because we were so excited about the new house and were rushing around everywhere to see family and friends. To add to that, I owned very few Christmas decorations. Fortunately, my mother purchased a small real tree to give us a little Christmas cheer in our home.

My mom offered to lend me some berry garland and a tree skirt to spruce it up. I put it on a small table to boost it up and make it appear bigger. The gifts around the base helped with that too. Not too shabby.

This year I wanted to start early and purchase my own decorations to give our house my own personal touch. I started before Thanksgiving, maybe even before Halloween! I was just too excited to wait. : ) I was perusing Home Goods, Target, and all the like to find exactly what I wanted. This resulted in many return trips for items I decided to weed out. It all started with some pinterest posts…

Exhibit A:

From thegardenglove

Exhibit B:

From paperblog (I think it’s written in Spanish, but you can still enjoy the pictures and get ideas)

Exhibit C:

From homedit

Starting to see a common theme?! I love all of these displays because they are rustic chic. They all have some element of used, re-purposed, or natural (from your backyard), combined with an element of new, shiny, or glittery, and last and possibly the most important element of design, LIGHT!! Now I had direction…I wanted to snap my fingers to make my house mirror all the beautiful posts on pinterest. We all know that’s not how it works, so I got to work immediately. I recruited my boyfriends help as well and we ended up walking through our neighborhood and to the park/golf course down the street. We collected pine cones from the golf course. After about 5 minutes, we were approached by a man on a gator telling us we were not permitted on the course unless we signed up to play or observe. Oops, sorry Mr. golf course manager, we’ll leave as soon as we grab a fewwww more pine cones. : ) I also grabbed a few magnolia leaves from my neighbors tree (shh don’t tell them). My boyfriend picked up some gold glitter spray paint from home depot…

and I got to spraying

outside of course. Magnolia leaves turned out nice too.

Here are some of the leaves in one of my arrangements.

This is on the butcher block in the kitchen. The candles are from Marshall’s. The small candle was $4.99 and the larger were $6.99. I like them because they have a rustic look to them, similar to birch, but not exactly the same.

These are in my guest bathroom upstairs.

I like how you can still see the green come through. It makes it look more rustic and natural. I put them with the pine cones we collected from the golf course and threw in some cinnamon sticks that I had in the pantry from Thanksgiving.

I used these leaves to add some height and dimension to the card frame my boyfriend and I created. It was too plain without them. Sidenote: I would love a longer piece on this landing. The current piece is half of a large armoire/china cabinet that was passed down from my mom. It works for now and I am so appreciative to have something to use in this space, but I definitely need something wider. : )

The little tree on the table is from target. I think it was $6 or $8. There is another one of the rustic candles I purchased from Marshall’s. This next display is one of my favorites.

My inspiration was from pinterest– a mish mash of many variations of this. I purchased the wood crate a few years ago after much deliberation over whether or not I actually needed it and what I could use it for, especially considering I did not have a house of my own at the time. It had been sitting on the ledge in front of our fireplace for months. We were using it to hold newspaper and wood we brought in to the house make fires. I wasn’t loving where it was, mostly because it was hidden behind a larger armchair and couldn’t be truly appreciated. Well, it was perfect for this arrangement. Back to the park we went to gather wood. The greenery was left over from our tree, and more pine cones from the course. The LED branches are from target. They add so much to the display. I really love them!

Okay, enough typing from me. Here is a tour of the rest of the house…