Weekend Wrap-Up // Food & Decor

Happy Friday! It's a beautiful day and the weekend is almost here, so why not be happy? Today I wanted to share a couple recipes (mmmmm) as well as some updates we've made to the apt and a helpful post about cleaning out your possessions. Read on!

I posted this on the Insta when we had it, but I just have to share it here too. Holy smokes, guys! This is like our new favorite thing! It makes an amazing meal, or you could make little mini ones for hors d'oeuvres.

✔️french bread 

✔️garlic butter (I just melt some butter and stir in fresh garlic)

✔️pesto 

✔️fresh mozzarella 

✔️basil or Italian seasoning 

✔️salt 

✔️tomatoes

Spread the garlic butter and pesto on the sliced bread. Top with slices of fresh mozz, sprinkle with basil or Italian seasoning and salt. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 min then top with tomatoes. Wallah!

Also, for your tastebud's pleasure, these Baked Asparagus Fries looks SUPER yummy and easy. Win-win. Will def be trying them out soon.

And this recipe for Mexican Street Corn Salad is actually to die for! My sis introduced me to is a couple weeks ago and we made a batch yesterday and ended up eating the whole thing! So yumm. But instead of putting the onions, peppers, and garlic in raw, we char it with the corn. So much better, I would guess. :)

This last week saw our bedroom getting some updated decorating! I was going for more simple and neutral. I think it worked! We moved our ribbon garland to the sun room, where we put it over the windows behind the keyboard, and it is soooo pretty there! It will be perfect for summer when we spend more time in there with the windows open and breeze flowing through. I think it adds a little bo-ho touch. :)

This post about how a couple got rid of half their stuff is super inspiring and will definitely be coming out again later this spring/summer when I'm hoping to do some major purging. There's some really practical tips and questions to ask yourself when going through things.

So that's about it! Some new recipes for your to try, as well as some new decor that's been happening around here. We're headed to Nebraska in a couple hours to spend the weekend with my bro and his wife who just moved there, as well as my grandparents and aunt and uncle. It should be an awesome weekend with the fam! Hope you have a good weekend too!

And if you haven't already, don't forget to check out some of the recent posts:
Discipline or Regret... or Not?
Our #keepthelovealive Retreat and How to Plan Your Own
Start With a Little
Comfort & Security

Room Reveal: Guest Room

Welcome to the guest room! This is our second bedroom that is off the kitchen. When we were originally looking for apartments, we wanted something with two bedrooms so that one of them could be our office. However, since this place has the awesome sun room that we were able to use for our office space, we decided to make our second bedroom a guest/storage room. 

See that bed? It may look like a twin [because it is], but don't be fooled! It's actually two separate twin mattresses stacked on top of each other, so if a couple of people want to come visit we can separate them and wah-lah! You've either got two twin beds or a giant king bed! :)

I made the glasss-top table in ceramics class in college. You can also see it here, in the sun room, but when we got a keyboard in there we had to do some rearranging and this table made the perfect little side table for our guest bed.

Those super sweet photo frames were a handmade gift to us from our wedding planner/friend, Amanda. The photos kinda got some curling action since they were in the bathroom for awhile [steam+photos=curling], but I love them!

I keep some gift bags and tissue paper in a little crate by the dresser so I'm always prepared for the next birthday or wedding. We also just scored this tan and white rug at a pay-by-the-pound thrift store in Madison during our fiasco weekend for a couple bucks... so hey! At least something good came of it! :)

I hope you enjoyed the little tour of our guest room and I hope that it has convinced you to come visit! What good is a guest room if we never have any guests?? Shout out to the hubster's little bro for breaking in the room [besides the night before the wedding when all my bridesmaids stayed over]. So.... who's next?

5 Creative Shelving Solutions

Hello friends! Hope your week is off to a good start! Today I'm going to share with you 5 creative ways to incorporate shelving into your home... and one of them that we just put in our home! Read on!

1. Stack some old crates to corral your entry way necessities. 

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2. Fill a whole wall with shelves and color code your books. Perfect for the OCD-type, maybe not so practical when you're looking for that specific book title.

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4. Hang some funky small shelves for an interesting design element.

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3. Paint a bookcase different colors in the inside and on the outside for a fun pop!

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5. Last, but certainly not least, hang an old fruit crate for extra wall storage when you're tight on floor space. We just hung this in our bedroom this last weekend. There used to be a small bookshelf next to the mirror to hold all my "getting ready" stuff, but since rearranging the bedroom it was kind of getting in the way. Our solution—get that up off the floor and hang it instead!

Bedroom Update // It All Started With a Lamp

We I did a little big of rearranging in the bedroom the other day. If you know me at all, this won't surprise you one bit. And it all started with a lamp. Isn't it peerrrdddyyy?? :)

On Monday my mom and I went to a super sweet Salvation Army (on 4th St. N, for those of you in Minneapolis), and I totally scored this incredible geometric floor lamp! We both had been looking for lamps so when we saw a sign stating that lamps were 50% I swear I heard the angel hallelujah chorus. So what did I do? Buy three lamps? You betcha'!

[Excuse the low-quality pic (high-quality hubby), hopefully I can post some better pics later... but this gives you an idea of the new space.]

After trying out the standing lamp in the living room, Loverboy and I both decided it just wasn't quite the right height for the space, so thankfully, I had already started tearing apart our bedroom [Loverboy gets to come home from work to lots of fun things. So grateful for a husband that just laughs when I yell at him from the furniture-baricaded bedroom that I'm tearing the house apart]. I've really been wanting a little side table by my side of the bed and I decided that our old coffee table [post on our new-to-us coffee table coming when I remember to snap some pics] might do nicely. Kind of quirky for the space, but it would give me lots of room to do what I wanted.

So, I had already moved things around quite a bit and the geometric lamp was able to find a home as a perfect little reading lamp in the corner. I kind of love it and have been spending a lot of time in there. Although the new arrangement feels a little bit tighter than the last one [kind of inevitable when you're moving a bed from away from the wall], it definitely feels cozier and like the space works better for our needs.

And my little side table just makes me so happy! The perfect space to stash a couple books, some lotion, chapstick, and other essentials! 

So there's a little update on the status of our place... hopefully some better photos will be coming your way soon! Thanks for stopping by friends, and happy hump day!

O Christmas Tree

As promised, I'm finally posting about our very first tree! as you can see, it was quite the process to get it all set up and decorated, but with some Rudolph playing in the background and our stellar teamwork, I'd say it was a very successful first tree! 

Not to mention how stinkin' awesome Home Depot is. [No, I did not get paid to write that... I wish. Home Depot? Please?] But seriously. We went to go get our tree with Bri's little Honda Civic, a little uncertain about how it would go, and left with grins on our faces. 

Really, the free hot cider and cookies while you browsed would have been enough, but then we got to the check-out, the guy gave us 50% off, partially because he couldn't find the tag, and partially because he was a nice guy wanting to spread some Christmas cheer! 

Then they put it through this little machine that netted it up [see above intense photos of me cutting the net], and told us to drive up our car. Once we did, there was a gentleman there who helped Bri hoist it up on the roof of the car and tie it all down safe-like for us. What a breeze!

Here's the little guy all lit up and shiny in our living room. Please notice the faux-fire playing on the television. They are all the rage, guys.

I got all our ornaments and tree-decking supplies from the Dollar Tree! Man, I love that place! It cost us less than $30 to deck this guy out and we even had left-over ornaments to spread throughout the house (and then some.... may have overestimated how many ornaments it takes to fill a tree... oops!). 

I'm kind of in love with the gold, white, and metallic vibe we've got going on. Probably my favorite color palette right now, if you can consider those colors. We loved the experience of Home Depot and how easy it was... but I'm curious... are there those of you who are hard-core "go cut it yourself" or others who are tried and true to the fake tree? I feel like we took the road in the middle as far as convenience, ease, and memory-making. What do you do for your Christmas tree? Anyone wanna try to convince us for next year? :)

3 Tips for Renters

Happy Friday, friends! Today I want to share with you three things I've learned from renting. A lot of people in our life stage are renting, and it can sometimes feel like a drag to not be able to do exactly what you want with your place, but there are definitely ways around that, and even bonuses to renting as well!

1. Put stuff on those walls!
Nothing says "renter" like empty walls. So one of the quickest and easiest ways to make your rental feel like home is to hang stuff up! It's super easy to take down when you move, and there's not a whole lot (if any) repair work before you leave. Photos, paintings, prints, and other various wall hangings can do wonders to an otherwise empty or disorganized feeling space. You can share stories through your wall hangings. You can convey style and mood. You can create a color scheme or a theme. Wall hangings are important, people. Need some inspiration? In case you missed it, awhile back I posted about 5 ways to fill your walls. I'd say that's a pretty good place to start. ;)

2. Embrace the awkward
Pretty much anytime you rent, you're going to have something about the place you don't love. That's probably true of when you buy too—but then you can just demolish, re-finish, or otherwise completely change that little bit of awkward going on. But when you're renting, your best bet is to embrace it.

Check out the creepy sweet angel shelf going on in our bathroom... once paired with a little bud vase in similar colors it's not quite so weird. And see that cut-out in our kitchen? Yeah, it's a window into the second bedroom. Why is it there?? We have no idea [although I speculate it was to pass food through to a prisoner, buttttt....]. So we put up some scrapbook paper and use it as a shelf for cookbooks. Boom. Awkward embraced.

3. Become friends with your neighbors!
Okay, so this tip obviously doesn't have anything to do with decorating, but it has tons to do with making your apartment/rental feel homey! The great thing about rentals, is that they are often apartment complexes or duplexes, or if you're like us, a four-plex! This means you're living super close to at least a few other people, if not a whole building of them. I think this is the perfect time to practice making friends, since seeing someone in the hallway is much easier than walking across the street and knocking on someone's front door.

And take it from me, becoming friends with your neighbors can be so much fun! We just had our upstairs neighbors over for a game night last night and we had a blast [hey K&M if you're reading this!]. The best part? You don't have to bundle up and brave the cold to hang out! :)

What tips and tricks have you learned from renting? 

Spreading Christmas Cheer for All to Hear!

I really do love this season. Partially because it lends itself to so much gold and glitter, but mostly because it's the time of the year that reminds us of God's greatest gift to us—His Son. And although gold and glitter don't exactly say "Jesus," I really do find that decorating for the Christmas season gets me in the mood for cheer and thankfulness. Having Christmas music playing as the soft glow of Christmas lights shines on the Nativity scene just does something good for my soul. So I thought I'd share some of our decor with you in order to inspire you to snaz up your place a bit for the holidays. And as you're about to see, it doesn't have to be expensive or difficult.

I love going to TJ Maxx or Gordmans and looking at all the beautiful decor, but something about the challenge of being uber thrifty really excites me. So this year we've decided to keep costs to a minimum... but that doesn't mean that gold or glitter had to be at a minimum! After hitting up the Dollar Tree and a couple thrift stores, we were ready to decorate!

So here's a peak at our place all spruced up for Christmas. And of course things are a bit different now that we had to rearrange the living room to fit our tree... but that's for later.

The jingle bells, ornaments, and this fabulous tinseled tree are brought to you by the Dollar Tree.

This ceramic Nativity set is from way back in the day when I was in a church equivalent of the Girl Scouts. I glazed the set myself... not bad for a nine year old!

The colorful lights, greenery, and gold, glittery pears were all thrift store finds, along with the precious ceramic deer that I snagged for $3 and $4 a piece!

And here's our tree.... JK! This lil guy brings Christmas cheer to our bedroom... and has been doing so for me probably since I was in middle school. Post about our real tree coming soon!