Instead of burdening yourself by worrying about what you could be missing by not being at all the places, with all the people, doing all the things, you take pleasure in having personal time. You can experience JOMO but not attending social events (aka not people'ing) or by simply unplugging, which these days, is a vacation all in itself.
I’ve lived — as an official rent-paying “adult” — in three different apartments…four if you count a short period of time when I thought I was grown and moved in with a roommate. This condo was truly the first I really dug in to tackle renter-friendly projects that went beyond getting organized and putting up new paint.
But here’s the thing — this is still only a 2 bedroom apartment, meaning the whole place has a total of six “rooms” (eight if you count the laundry closet and balcony) to play with. I knew that this meant I was not going to have a limitless amount of projects to tackle; I knew that at some point I would be project’d out…and that point is now.
Read MoreThat said…
I do respect the significance that Valentine’s Day has for other people — it’s a day to celebrate and share love, no matter the relationship — romantic, familial, or otherwise.
So I’ve pulled together 20 of my picks for gifts for all the people that you love.
Read MoreThis year one of the things I wanted to do more of was read. Since I’m already an audible user, I figured the very least I could do was use my account more. Over the past two years, while I’d defused my audible account pretty regularly — listening to way more books than I’m certain I would’ve actually read — I knew I wasn’t really getting my full money’s worth. So I challenged myself to listen to at least two books a month — one fiction, one nonfiction.
This month I’d already tackled my two books, both leftover from 2019 — “With The Fire On High” by Elizabeth Acevedo and “Dapper Dan: Made In Harlem” by Daniel R. Day. These are both books that I downloaded (I kid you not) back in November but I just never got around to listening to them.
Read MoreInspiration can be found in all places, in all things, including driving through a “snow storm” after picking up the kiddo from school. Cognizant of how design inspiration can be found in the most unlikely places, I decided to start pulling the palettes from the scene — literally just with a color dropper — just to see what colors were really resonating and it was really illuminating.
From one spontaneous moment in time, I was able to capture what really was (is) an amazing color palette. And now here we are… the first of 12 mood board inspirations for 2020.
Read MoreI have never ever EVER been one to make resolutions but I do believe in trying to set the tone for my year. In the past, I’ve created a vision book, started a gratitude list, and chosen a word of a year…just to name a few of the ways I’ve always attempted to ensure I have a great new year.
If you’ve been hanging out with me for even just a little bit, then you know I’ve never let the fact that I rent that in the way of making our home actually feel like our home. Yeah, we have a lease, but that’s not an excuse to give up entirely on good design; so from the time we moved in — Spring 2017 — I have tackled a bunch of big & small renter-friendly upgrades…
For me, however, the biggest challenge was always the front of the apartment where the common areas are — living room, dining room, and kitchen — because of how “warm” the whole area is…the beige on beige on brown! In terms of renter-friendly upgrades, the only thing I’d tackled in this space was adding a peel-and-stick backsplash to the kitchen. I’d conceded that I couldn’t do much in the kitchen, but figured if I could at least cover some of the painted walls & add some visual interest with a backsplash, then that would be enough — it wasn’t.
Putting wallpaper in areas like kitchens & bathrooms is always a risk/gamble, especially removable wallpaper for the obvious challenges of heat & humidity; but with the right wallpaper brand, you can totally get something that’s a winner.
I realized I never came on the blog or on my YoutTube channel and actually TALKED about my book. And while I never mentioned it on my Instagram, I never really really got into why I wrote a book and all the sentiments behind this endeavor.
For an entire week — the first week of February to be exact — I woke up every day at 4 am just to write. While my husband and daughter slept, before the sun was even up, I wrote. Within that first day, I had listed and named my chapters, like outlining a term paper, and before I knew it a book was unfolding before me. The next few weeks were spent learning all about the self-publishing process, working through and editing my ideas with friends and peers. And in the midst of all this creative chaos, eventually, a book was born.
I channeled into that book all the stuff I struggled with sharing here on the blog or on social media; it felt like a safe, undistracted space to just talk about what I wanted to talk about when it came to curating and creating a home you’d love… hence the title, Curate The Home You’re In: Effortlessly Create Your Everyday Dreamscape.
Read MoreWhile, in general, I am pretty intentional when I am shopping. I try and myself to prevent buyer’s remorse, but a lot of times, when I am in an emotional tizzy, more often than not I get my relief from shopping. I comb through my wishlists and start adding to cart, or I take a drive to one of my fav retailers and take out my stress on my wallet.
I thought this iteration of entrepreneurship — with interior design — would be different. I figured I was older, wiser, I’d learned all the hard lessons, and so I was ready to do bigger and better than last time. I had a lifetime of experience behind me so what could possibly go wrong, right?
If you’re new to my blog and somehow stumbled upon this blog post first, welcome, but you should probably read a few posts back where I share my wicked journey of creating a life I hated and needed to recover from.
The summer months was basically a season of reflection and self-discovery and hard truths for my family and I, but especially for me. One of those hard truths —
I’d always known that should I ever need to go get a job outside of the home, it would likely be in visual merchandising, not interior design. I can’t quite explain it, but I knew that as a designer, I wouldn’t want to do that in the traditional sense of working at a firm, even though I am perfectly fine working within the confines of an organization as a merchandiser — weird, I know, don’t judge me.
Read MoreToday — well today that I’m writing this, because who knows when I’ll publish it — marks exactly 90 days since the day I started my new job as a visual merchandising manager. Now in case you missed it, here’s the short version of how/why I went from being an entrepreneur to being an employee…
Read MoreAlways have been. I love tinkering with all kinds of gadgets and while I am very aware of the pitfalls of technology, I just can’t help myself. As luck would have it, I married someone equally obsessed with tech & things, and even our toddler is pretty well-versed in using most of our devices without any assistance from us. Being that we rent, we knew that we couldn’t get as tech-savvy in our home as we’d like, BUT that doesn’t mean we couldn’t do a lil somethin somethin.
Read MoreIf you read my week 1 introduction to this project, then you know that we’re renovating a basement and converting a one-car garage to create, in essence, a single, split level apartment.
Last week, I showed you some before photos and the floor plan, but what is the design plan? So glad you asked…
Each area has its own plan but it is one streamlined aesthetic. I’ve mentioned that for this project, I was keeping everything super simple because while having it look good is obviously important, the priority is making it livable, functional, and comfortable. So while a reno may seem like the perfect opportunity for me to go balls-to-the-wall creative with the design, here I really kept it super simple, focusing on keeping it feeling cozy and effortless.
Read MoreThis is my fourth time participating in the bi-annual design event. Designers, design bloggers, design enthusiasts, DIYers, and everyone in between all participate, completing a design project within 6 weeks. In addition to the guest participants — like myself — 20 designers are featured, documenting their projects from start to [hopefully] finish.
This season I’ll be taking on a project that’s very personal, and very near to my heart...
When we moved into this condo in Spring 2017, one of the very first things we were thrilled to have was an actual pantry! Prior to this, we’d had really good storage in our kitchens — our studio apartment in NYC had WAY more cabinets than we ever used and our first apartment in WA had a tall pantry cabinet — but this was the first time we had an actual step-in pantry and we were geeked! My husband cooks, I clean, and it’s a glorious arrangement for us. With that, it meant he now had a place to hoard store all his culinary things, while for me it was a place to organize… a win-win all around.
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