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.
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Full Disclosure: I do not celebrate Valentine’s Day, and I never have.
That 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.
Valentine’s Day isn’t about romance, it’s about love…
So I’ve pulled together 20 of my picks for gifts for all the people that you love.
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This 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.
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Inspiration 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.
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I 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.
Going into 2020 I was in desperate need of a reset and decided to take creating a vision board seriously this year.
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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.
That’s when it hit me…WALLPAPER!
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.
To tackle this big new crazy idea of mine, I knew Milton & King would be the perfect partner!
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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.
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I have a confession to share: I’m an emotional shopper!
While, 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.
P.S. don’t be like me… be better than me.
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Not too many people know this about me, but from 2008 to about 2011, I tried my hand at entrepreneurship for the first time.
That was over 7 years ago!
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?
Answer: everything.
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Current Title: Visual Merchandising Manager for Williams-Sonoma
Wait… what?
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 —
Being an entrepreneur was not enough for me.
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.
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Today — 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…
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Fun fact about me: I’m a tech nerd.
Always 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.
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If 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.
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This 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...
A home renovation! Specifically, gonna be converting a garage into livable space and renovating a flooded basement.
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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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For the past three years, I thought I was designing a life I loved… through my home, my business, my family, and just everything. I had moved across the country with my family, my husband had a great job, I was able to launch a subscription box, I was pursuing my masters, I had shed my “baby weight” by the power of nursing…I mean, life was great…right? The hard truth that I only recently had to come face-to-face with was that I had designed a life I HATED, not loved. I was only “pretending” to be this strong and happy and put-together person. This post is an introduction to, not just new content, but a new me…a real me, not by design, but by transformation. By the grace of God, I have survived a serious case of “growing pains” and while I do not know what lies ahead or what comes next — like at all — I do know that I want to share the entire wild ride with you, unapologetically, and truly loving the space I’m in.
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It’s no secret that I love making my bed. It’s actually a rare occurrence for my bed to be unmade — and it’s usually because I wasn’t the last person in it. I’ve always found that making the bed, no matter how disheveled the rest of the space looked, instantly made the whole bedroom look put together.
But I’m not a complete maniac — there are days I am too tired, busy, or just plain ol’ lazy to make the bed. Does this mean I completely abandon the habit? Nope! It just means I had to find lazy ways to get it done.
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