hi-def warmth

Every year we have Thanksgiving at my aunt’s house and the past couple times we’ve had gatherings at her house, it rains! We were joking around that we’ve solved the drought – we just need to keep having parties at her place. Someone call Governor Brown!

Below you can see the rain soaked tables. Thankfully the covers from her previous party were still up so the rest of the tables were nice and dry.

My cousins did an awesome job with the decor, as usual! I loved all the fall colors in everything – so many autumn vibes. It was pretty chilly because of the rain but that actually made it feel more like Thanksgiving.

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a homier home

So I know that I’ve been promising this post for ages, but it’s finally here! Because I’m such a homebody, it’s really important to me to create a home that I truly enjoy being in and actually feels like home. So below I’ve shared photos of the majority of the decor in our home. Everything pictured below is still a work in progress, I’m constantly adding and moving things but I thought it was finally time to share where we’re at now. I’ll add more details about each space below but just a few general tips:

  • Frames – Check out stores like Ross, Marshall’s and TJ Maxx to find cheaper photo frames. I personally haven’t gotten a chance to do this but also check out your local dollar store! If I see something I like, I usually just pick it up and worry about what I’m going to actually put in it afterwards.
  • Gifts – As you’ll see when I describe each photo below, a good number of things we have around our apartment were actually wedding gifts from friends. While we didn’t request anything like that, I think people just thought to give us gifts like this because they knew we were starting a new home together. If you have a birthday, graduation, etc coming up and someone asks what you’d like, you can ask them to give you a gift for your home that they think describes your personality. It’s so nice to have things around our house from people who mean so much to us.
  • Souvenirs – In the past year or so, hubby and I have been lucky enough to travel to a couple places around the country. We have a mug collection so we buy a mug from every city we’ve visited together. But I also really like buying ‘functional’ souvenirs for our home. You’ll see a calendar below that we picked up at the Chihuly Garden and Glass.
  • Thrift/Antique Shops – I’m a big believer in supporting small and local businesses so these shops are one of my favorites. I’ve picked up a few of the pieces around our home from a local antique shop.

As an amateur photographer, I really enjoy taking photos during our travels. I mostly photograph architecture but occasionally I get really great photos of hubby (left). I love printing these photos and putting them in various frames I’ve picked up while shopping. This is probably my favorite wall in our apartment. When studying gets to be too much (and feels like it’ll never end) I love having this reminder of all the fun places we’ve been to and that we’ll continue to do so. I still have to pick up a couple more frames to add shots from our trip to Northern California last week. The letters were used at my bridal shower and I painted the two letters a couple months ago (same paint that I used for the cork boards in a previous post!).
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DIY: gettin’ corky 

I’ve recently been more interested in DIY projects to make our home homier. We’ve been in this apartment for just over a year but I’m still constantly moving things around/adding things. I’ll be doing a post soon on home decor with photos of where we’re at now and tips on how to work on your home while on a budget.

Doing arts/crafts is such a great study break and I love envisioning projects and seeing how they turn out. It’s definitely nice to use the right side of my brain every so often because it’s pretty neglected and as our learning coach once said to me ‘you need an outlet for your creative side’ so here we are!

In college, I had cork boards above my bed with photos, concert tickets, movie stubs, event flyers, etc. but doing that in my ‘grown up’ apartment just felt a little immature so I wanted to do something to class it up. I had this matte teal acrylic paint leftover from a previous project and the cork boards from my college apartment so of course I started painting them during study breaks while I watched TV. Most of the furniture in our apartment is a dark chocolaty brown and I love how the teal looks against it. It compliments the brown really well and also makes the apartment brighter with a pop of color.

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