5 things . . .

Hope y'all had a wonderful Easter!  I have 5 totally random thoughts for your Monday . . .

1.  I can't get this image out of my head.  Isn't it gorgeous?  I love the drapes, the mirror, the gray settee, and the pretty pink peonies.  So lovely!    

Source: lonnymag.com via Emily on Pinterest

2.  I was in Anthropologie the other night (can you say trouble?) and picked up this shirt.  Yep, it's orange bicycles.  Love it and it's much more fun that my other button-ups I wear to work.  And in full disclosure, Justin picked this shirt out.  Anthro always has things in random places and Justin saw this and pointed it out to me.  He's a keeper.   

3.  As we were packing up our old house, I told Justin I wasn't going to bring any books to the apartment to decorate with because I knew we wouldn't have the same kind of storage/book shelves.  He told me he thought I should at least bring a few of them because "books make a house a home."  After laughing a little at him for making that comment, I told him I totally agreed and threw a few in a box.  You may have seen a couple of them here on the campaign dresser.

When we were at Anthro (see number 2), he found this book called "Books Make a Home"!  He joked that he authored it under a different name.  How funny is that?  We had a good laugh in Anthro about that.  I'm sure people wondered what was so funny about a book about books! 

4.  I didn't need a new dry shampoo, but I thought I would try one that was cheaper than my usual one to see how it would work.  I grabbed the Tresemme dry shampoo for normal hair.  I've only used it one time, but it definitely worked as I hoped.  I recently got bangs and like putting just a little bit of dry shampoo on them in the morning (even right after I've washed my hair).  The dry shampoo helps to keep them looking "fresher" throughout the day.

5.  I have a super special treat coming up this week.  My friend (and wonderful photographer), Carrie, came to take pictures of our old house before we moved.  As were were moving, I was so thankful I had a blog to look back at to see the house and the progress we made.  But I knew Carrie could capture our home in ways I never could -- hence her being a successful photographer!  Be sure to check out Sweet Louise Photography and her blog.  Not that you need any more encouragement to go check out her awesome work, but it also includes super cute babies and kiddos!  In the meantime though, here's a teaser:  

Such a fabulous shot of our old staircase, right?  Well there will be more where that came from thanks to Carrie!

Craigslist Scores.

Happy April! 

I recently came across two Craigslist finds that rival my Craigslist bar cart score.  I found both of these pieces within 3 days of each other.  First up, the coveted campaign dresser.  I have Pinterest to thank for this find.  I saw a pin with Craigslist search tips, so of course, I clicked on it and saw you have the option to "show images."  Who knew this, by the way?  I've been searching Craigslist forever and had never seen that option before.  I was skeptical that it was really even there, so I did my usual "dresser" search to test it out.  And lo and behold, images showed up (albeit tiny)!  While I was there, I perused the images and thought I could make out a campaign dresser from a super fuzzy image.  I was right!  And it was $75!  I could hardly contain my excitement when I first saw it in person.   

We ended up having the perfect place for it in our apartment, and it's great for some extra much needed storage.  Here it is in all its glory! 

The dresser isn't in the best shape, but it isn't terrible.  It has some nicks and scratches on the top and on the front (hence the placement of some of the accessories).  I don't know where I'm going to put it when we move, so I'm not making any final decisions, but I am thinking I will end up painting it.  And you may have noticed that it's missing a drawer pull.  Thankfully, I was able to find one online that appears to match perfectly and should arrive shortly!

Aren't those carnations so pretty?  I bought them over a week ago and they still look beautiful!  I love the fun bright colors.  The pink and white striped tray is a recent find from Ikea.  

 
The dresser totally needs some help in the styling department (and doesn't work the best on the hardwoods), but I am working with a very limited number of accessories I brought over from the house.  Everything else is in storage, including a lamp that would be perfect for the space.  But oh well.  It will be like Christmas when I get to unpack the boxes in storage! 

And you may remember my $3.95 Paris map from Paper Source.  I thought it worked perfectly on this wall.  (And I am still trying to figure out why the light switch needs to be half way over on the wall.)

As for my second find . . . a beautiful bamboo dresser. 

Excuse the quality of the pictures.  I took them on my iPhone as we were loading the dresser into our storage unit.  Sadly, we don't have room for it in our apartment, but we will be reunited again! 

The dresser has been professionally repainted in a gray/blue color.  The lady we bought it from said that after she had it painted, her husband didn't like the color of it.  Too bad for her because this piece is gorgeous.  Again, I don't know where it will go in the new house (assuming we ever find one), but I am actually digging its current color.    

How fabulous is the hardware?   

And a big shout out to Justin for putting up with my Craigslist searching and going to load up the furniture for me.  I would like to say I won't search anymore until we find a house, but old habits die hard! 

Baby Henry's Shower.

Back in January, we hosted a couple's baby shower for my best friend, Lauren, and her husband, Jacob.  I figured I better recap the shower now because baby Henry will be here in just a couple of weeks!   

I've known both Lauren and Jacob since elementary school.  Not only are they are the best looking couple of all time, they are also the sweetest people ever.  I am so thankful that throughout the years Lauren and I have remained close friends.  I remember thinking it was the end of the world when I moved to Houston for law school and she stayed in Austin for law school.  Little did we know then Lauren would end up in San Diego.  (But hey, we won't ever complain about going out there to visit them!)  Regardless of the physical distance between us, Lauren has always been there for me and I am forever grateful for our friendship.  We've shared so many important occasions together (we were both the maid of honor in each others' weddings), so I can't wait for the arrival of their sweet baby boy!          

 This picture is from the baby shower the day after the couple's shower.

Lauren and Jacob still have lots of friends and family in Texas (and beyond) who wanted to help them celebrate.  So we decided to have a couple's shower on a Friday evening when they were in town.  Because it was a couple's shower, I didn't want baby blue everywhere.  Instead, I copied Henry's nursery scheme and went with a gray, navy, and orange theme.

Here are some of the details:  

And it's not a party without food and drinks.  We also had fajitas, but those aren't as pretty as the desserts!  Lauren picked the peanut butter, banana, and caramel cake from Carrie Made the Cake.  And not surprisingly, it was delish! 

To jazz up the place cards, I used the back of the invitation, which was orange and white chevron, and used double-stick tape to attach a small strip to the bottom of the plain white card. 

We kept the party favors simple and wrapped up decorated shortbread cookies from Paulie's.

In addition to the usual soft drinks, beer, and wine, we had margarita punch to go with the fajitas.  I kept the punch non-alcoholic and just left the tequila and Cointreau off to the side for people to add as much or as little as they wanted.   

And no shower recap is complete without a baby bump picture.  So for good measure, here's a shot of Lauren's cute baby bump!  (And I got totally shown up -- Lauren is in 3 inch heels, while I opted for flats.)  

It was so fun to be able to shower my two of my favorite people.  I can't wait to meet sweet baby Henry. 
  

Ikea Finds.

When we moved to our apartment, we knew we would have to get a few things for storage.  For starters, our kitchen had no pantry.  Ikea's Besta cabinet ended up being the perfect size for the space and worked really well with the kitchen cabinets.

Thankfully, Riley and Zoey "helped" with the assembling.

Voila!  After a little assembling (and getting the dogs out of the way), we now have a new pantry!  It's excellent because it doesn't cover up the light switch on the wall and still gives us some space for our trashcan. 

There's also enough room on the other side for a little hook to hold my apron.  It's nice because it's almost hidden over there.

In case you're curious about the inside of the pantry, it's nothing too exciting. 

Here's a shot of the cabinets in the kitchen so you can see what we're working with.  The one from Ikea goes perfectly! 

Those of you with an eagle eye may have spied a new rug in the kitchen.  I picked up this ikat rug from Urban Outfitters, which works well in there (and didn't break the bank).  Our kitchen has slate tile in it and I hated the way it felt on my feet.  So I wanted something that would cover most of the floor.  I think the dogs are also happier with something a little softer to beg from when we are in the kitchen.   

In addition to the pantry, Ikea also came through for some shoe storage.  The master closet in our old home had amazing built-ins that were perfect for shoes.  Not surprisingly, the closet in our apartment does not.  We had the perfect little space in our new closet though for some shoe storage.  The Billy bookcase from Ikea with some additional shelves just happened to fit perfectly!  I still have to store some of my shoes under my clothes and poor Justin doesn't even get a shelf, but he's ok with that.   

For those of you following along with our house hunt, we went to see 2 homes today in our favorite neighborhood.  One was out of our budget, but we wanted to see it anyway for comparison purposes.  Thankfully, the bedrooms were oddly laid out upstairs so we didn't fall in love with it (but the first floor was perfection).  The other house was pretty decent, but was built about 20 years ago and we would definitely need to do some renovations (i.e., new kitchen, new bathroom).  Property Brothers, anyone?  It totally gives us something to think about though.  The inventory has been super low here, but our realtor thinks things will pick up in the next month.  We are keeping our fingers crossed!  I am tired driving through the neighborhood yelling "come on people, sell your house!"   

Last but not least, in the last week, I've come across 2 amazing Craigslist finds.  One of them starts with a "camp" and ends with an "aign."  I will be back with pictures!

Hope y'all had a wonderful weekend! 

Thank you.

I looked recently and noticed I had 500 followers!  Whoa!  It's hard to believe that this little (often neglected) blog has that many followers.  I remember when I first started the blog, my mom and occasionally Justin were the only readers.

Source: tumblr.com via Emily on Pinterest

When I first started blogging, it was a way for me to catalog the updates to our new house at the time.  Little did I know then I would still be blogging several years later and would be documenting the sale of that home and our journey to find a new one.  I hope you continue stick around!     

I thought this would be a good time to tell you guys how thankful I am that you read this blog and for your sweet comments and emails.  It's so wonderful to have such a great community of bloggers to share big (and little) news with.  I really appreciate your encouragement and support!  Thank you, thank you, thank you!    

Ikea Lamp.

Oddly enough, our living room doesn't have any overhead lighting.  Of course part of me is tempted to pull one of my chandeliers out of storage, but the part of me with common sense knows that we should just make do with some well placed lamps. 

Our mantra for things we buy for the apartment is functional and inexpensive since it's only temporary, which means Ikea is usually the best bet.  We came across the Januari floor lamp for a whopping $16.99.  I believe it also comes in black and an ugly greeny-brass color. 

I wasn't digging any of the colors, but I knew it wasn't anything a little spray paint couldn't fix.  So we picked up the white one along with some spray paint.  For reference, I ended up using the one on right, which was called "Brass."  Thankfully, unlike the Ikea brass, it didn't have gross green undertones.  The gold was pretty, but just too bright and gold (go figure). 

After some quick spray painting at my mom's house (since we don't have a great place to paint here at the apartment), the lamp looks 20 times better.  The shade is also from Ikea.

Easy peasy! The brass is much better than the white would have been.  And depending on where it goes in the new house, I know it can be easily spray painted again.  I'll be back with some more great finds from Ikea that seem to have been made for our apartment!

Hope y'all had a great weekend.  We had absolutely beautiful weather here -- I almost felt like we were in San Diego.  We looked at a couple of houses, but nothing we fell in love with.  The hunt continues!        

Wallpaper Crush.

My first time to see (and fully appreciate) David Hick's Hexagon wallpaper was probably when I came across this image.  How gorgeous and bold is this wallpaper?  I can't seem to get it out of my mind recently.  I particularly love it in a powder room, but frankly, I would love it just about anywhere! 

(photo: here)

(photo: here)

Source: moth-design.blogspot.com via Emily on Pinterest

Source: highstreetmarket.blogspot.com via Emily on Pinterest

Source: google.com via Emily on Pinterest

Source: fromtherightbank.com via Emily on Pinterest

Source: atlantahomesmag.com via Emily on Pinterest

And even Sarah Richardson approves:

(photo: here)

Pretty fabulous, right?  I really like it when it's paired with more traditional elements.  Is there anything decor-related you just can't get out of your head (or am I the only one that needs to get a life)?

Moving = Stressful and Sadsies.

Hey everyone!  Long time, no talk! 

I've been crazy busy packing, moving out, moving in, and unpacking (and traveling to Dallas once a week too).  Besides the usual stress that comes along with moving, it's been extra hard for me leaving our house.  Yes, we chose to make the move, but as things got towards the end, I was having a hard time walking away from our first house, where there were so many memories.  So this past week has been rather tearful through the closing and turning over possession of our home.  This post totally resonates with me.
 
I think it would have been easier if we were moving to our new home rather than a temporary apartment, which is the size of one of our floors of our old house.  Here's what I mean . . .

Our master closet before: 

Now:

(What you don't see are 3 more wardrobe boxes in the living room.)

Our living and dining room before:

Now:

(There are those 3 wardrobe boxes.  And please note the glass of wine by the laundry bins.  Trust me -- wine makes unpacking easier.)

I definitely know the move will be worth it in the end, it's just hard to remember that as you are walking down your beautiful staircase one last time.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that something great comes on the market soon.  The inventory has been pretty low recently and there isn't anything out there we are loving.      

Pending work cooperates, I hope to be back more frequently now that the hard part with the move is over.  There's so much I want to blog about!  And I definitely miss catching up with you guys!    

Packing.

Hope y'all have had a wonderful weekend.  Here's how things are looking around here . . .

I have to say, I am getting a little lot sad packing everything up.  But we are looking forward to what's ahead! 

Journals.

As much as I love my iPhone, I am a huge note taker/list maker on paper.  I always have a pad of paper or two in my bag for random notes, thoughts, to-dos, shopping lists, blog post ideas, etc.  I recently came across the coolest personalized journals from minted and had to share them.  Maybe I'm such a big fan of these because my current to-do list is so overwhelming!

Cute, right?  Now if only they would actually complete all of the things on my to-do list for me, they'd be even better!   

And how sweet is this one for Valentine's Day? 

Go check 'em out -- there are tons more on the website.  It's hard to pick a favorite!  (And minted has no clue who I am.  I just saw their journals and had to share them.)  

Hope you're having a great week!