there's no place like home for the holidays

it always feel like the holiday season goes by way too fast, doesn't it? even though we put up our christmas decorations before thanksgiving (yes, we were those people!), it still feels like it is too soon to put it all away.

it was nice having so much space to decorate this year in our new house. that said, it was important to me to keep everything tasteful, since it is so easy to go overboard, buddy the elf-style.

our living room and dining room were first on our list to decorate. the floating shelf in our dining room is one of my favorite places because it has lots of room to mix holiday with everyday. i started with my colorful twig tree from stumble & relish and built around that. oversized ornaments from my mom, crystal votive glasses from my grandma, beaded garland, and other cute holiday nik-naks were arranged thoughtfully with our day-to-day decor, including a "W" candle celebrating the cubs world series win and cute engraved clogs from holland, michigan.

jason couldn't wait to decorate the railings! it seemed like seconds after we moved in this past february, he was already talking about doing this. we found garland at a home store to wrap the railings with, and then tied our special handmade stockings (thanks, melinda!) onto it with twine. 

our 6 foot christmas tree is always the best to decorate. no, it's not real, but it serves its purpose, and that is to hold all of our ornaments! jason and i have so many that we can't even put them all up! last year our tree started leaning because we overfilled it. oops. we have ornaments from when we were kids, from when we first started dating, from when we first got married, from all of our vacations. the list goes on. 

these boots are at the top of our stair landing as you come upstairs to our living room. they were used as the centerpiece of each table at our wedding! year round, i have the natural colored sticks and eucalyptus, but i added some festivity with the red and white decorative sticks.

the shelving unit in our living room was also fun to decorate! i hate the idea of replacing everything with winter and holiday decor, so it's fun to leave some other contrasting elements on display, like i did with our wedding photo, burlap flowers, and vacation souvenirs. 

Our new holiday wreath is probably my favorite part of the whole house! It's so simple, yet perfect.

december ramblings + 6 new things

oh, hi there. i really suck at this blogging thing. sorry. i totally meant for this blog to be a fun way for me to showcase my interior design fun around the house, but now that i work for an architecture firm where this is sort of, almost, like, an everyday thing, i never remember to post! bad excuse, i know.

we are kind of on a "shopping" hiatus now that our home has reached a near-max capacity of furniture, and the holidays are here, so our focus has shifted from shopping for our home to shopping for gifts and... wait for it... ourselves. big shocker, right?

a few things have changed around here, though. we've bought a couple things since my last post in july (again... oops!), & have moved some things around, as we plan our next steps around the house.

1) the new bedroom desk!
you remember, right? that pretty table we used as a bar in our kitchen nook? well, that's moved upstairs into our bedroom to match our fabulous metal chair from arhaus (we got that chair during their end-of-season clearance for $40, woot!)

in true heather fashion, it's mostly a "display" piece, home to our wedding-vase-of-intertwining-sand (i'll pretend that makes sense), a nice yves saint laurent coffee table book, my upcycled fabric box of perfume, & jason's valet, among other things. you know, when it's not covered with those random things we are too lazy to put away. we are normal humans, you know.

2) the replacement bar! 

the ultimate plan is to make our kitchen nook into a nice sitting area with two comfy chairs & a pedestal table, & we knew our original "bar" wouldn't cut it. we also kind of felt like we were living in a frat house having alcohol just, well, everywhere, scattered on a table. (i won't lie, i can't even drink an entire bottle of beer if i'm not in a social situation.) so we did some rearranging once we found this cute wine cabinet online! it's still sort of a mess, but it's a functional mess that i can totally handle. plus, it takes up less real estate, leaving some room for our future nook plans.

3) the tennessee findings!
we took a road trip down to nashville in august & found some really cool pieces at the city's HUGE, amazing flea market, including this wood/hook/mason jar combination. it's on the wall in our living room & it most definitely matches the rest of our downstairs decor. i found some burlap flowers to fill the vase at hobby lobby for just a few dollars.

4) our front yard!
jason surprised me with an updated look for our front yard a couple months back! i went to work on a saturday & came home to this! mind you, this was an area of mud & moss & everything in between, so it wasn't easy to do in just 8 hours. now we have two little trees & some nice stepping stones for our guests to walk on when they come over.

5) dining room staples!

buying new flowers every week is fabulous, but expensive, so i decided to get some fake ones for fall! i am contemplating changing these out for christmas, but we'll see! i'm still totally digging these. i stuck them in a white pitcher i found at homegoods, which i filled it up with wine corks to hold the flowers in place. this has been our centerpiece for a few months now. the 'j' was also a cheap find from homegoods! (i wonder what it stands for!?)

6) linen curtains!

when we moved in, our kitchen had some brand new vertical blinds over the sliding door into the backyard. i didn't fully mind them, but they got really annoying, really fast, & jason had enough of them the day we moved in. we decided to replace them with new ivory linen curtains. i love how airy they are, & how they let so much light in! they are also the perfect length, less than a foot from the ceiling, down to the floor. (they are no longer as long as pictured because that was just way too long and irritating!)  

our backyard is practically complete!

yes, it's true! it's crazy to see how much progress we made from just a few months back when our yard was a dirt pile covered in snow. i can't take much credit for the sweaty physical labor (okay, pretty much none at all), so a big thanks to jason and his dad! :)

once the patio itself was complete, our biggest challenge was finding a patio set that didn't break the bank. $800 for the standard matchy-matchy table and chairs that everyone else has? no, thanks! we spent several days visiting lots of different big box stores, home stores, and department stores looking for the perfect addition to our yard. there was one day where we actually visited 2 different targets a total of 4 times just to pick out our chairs! (they were on clearance, too!) we found the chairs first, which actually made it a little easier to find a table. the table came from meijer, of all places! (also on clearance, hooray!) the umbrella was half-off at at home. (the store!)

finding flowers was the easy part, and i must say, i know nothing about flowers. at all. did you know annual flowers don't come back every year? well, i didn't. luckily, it's that time of year when flowers are on sale because they've already been in bloom for several months and can no longer stand the hot weather. we picked up a few different species (is it okay to call them that? i don't want to get overly scientific) at menards and goeberrt's farm, and decided we'll leave the more creative gardening for next spring!

all we have left is to create a step or slope connecting our back gate to the patio, as well as adding some grass to the (unpictured) right of it! jason also has plans to build a bench out of cinder blocks and wood that will sit next to the back steps leading in and out of the house.

for now, we will finally enjoy sitting on our new patio with a drink in hand! yay!

our patio before we bought the umbrella!

showing off our pretty seat cushions from target!

pretty flowers from menards and goebbert's farm.

more flowers!

june progress report

okay, so i may not be the best at keeping up with this little blog of mine. uh oh.

here's a progress report since the last time i posted:

1) we've been working on our backyard! (okay, maybe i haven't been doing much, but jason most definitely has!) when we moved in, we were given a wide-open dirt pile to work with. it sounded really bad at first, but once we realized we had the freedom to do anything we wanted, that made it all better. we decided we were going to build ourselves a patio (i use *we* loosely) and decorate the rest of the yard with wood chips, rocks, flowers, herbs, and you know, other yard stuff! the photo above is from a few weeks ago, and i'm happy to say we are much further along! the patio is complete and the rest is underway. in fact, jason is outside working on it as i write this (don't tell him that).

the huge pallet of sand and stones that made our patio what it is today!

the much dreaded first day of work.

2) i painted our front doors! we have french-style front doors which made it double the fun. we were taking a walk this spring and saw that there were a few houses in our association with colorful doors, so we did it, too! i have a thing for teal (obviously), so i chose a brighter shade and went for it. it's not 100% complete, it still needs some touching up around the ends, but it looks amazing. below is a photo from paint day! i will post another photo of both doors soon.

3) we installed a mirror and floating shelf in our dining room and i'm in love with it! it's home to a few picture frames, a candle, jason's grandfather's antique whiskey glasses, a terrarium, and more! plus, the mirror brings so much extra light into the room, especially with the chandelier on.

that's all for now! finishing up the backyard, going to start working on the front yard, hoping to finish up my office (it's in progress and will actually be put to use soon - photos coming!), and also our bedroom. 

follow me on instagram if you want to see more!

april showers bring teal walls

yep, it's already may, and i haven't posted anything since march. uh oh. luckily, you haven't missed toooo much...

in april, we decided to paint our accent wall a gorgeous dark teal. when we first moved here, we were pretty cool with the paint choices. but then, as we started decorating, we realized a problem: they're a little too neutral for us. ivory, grey, and white. i'm all for a loud pop of color, so i was more than happy when jason agreed that we needed to paint the main wall that our living room and dining room share! after spending an hour surrounded by a large selection of blue paint chips at menard's, we finally found this color! it took two days to paint, but it's done, and now we can continue adding decor to both walls. hooray!

what do ya think?

next on our endless list of fun:
*building patio and garden
*completing home office
*floating shelf & mirror in dining room
*painting front doors

stay tuned! wanna see it as it happens? follow me on instagram!

accentuating our living room

so, it's the end of march, and my last post was at the end of february. oops! the good part about this is that i have lots to share. our living room is finally almost done, hooray! the photo above shows our most recent additions to the room.

as you can see, we finally got our coffee table, which is just gorgeous! it's a chest that opens on both sides and is perfect for storage. we don't have much in there yet, but we can say it's nice for phone chargers!

we also found a pouf at homegoods. i absolutely love the look of poufs and see so many that i am obsessed with. this one is a navy/white ikat print that really matches the theme we're going for. it's also comfy to rest your feet, or your entire self, on!

i knew a couple days into our move that i wanted to do photo ledges between the two windows. i just love how it looks! we picked them up at ikea (where else?) and used them to showcase several framed prints and canvases, as well as a couple family pics (one of which is jason and i in disney world with mickey and minnie the day after our engagement). at the top right is actually a flat wall art clock that we thought was the coolest thing.

we also bought a lamp, shown in the first photo against the wall beneath our photo ledges. it was quite the hunt to find a nice lamp that fit our aesthetic, and of all places, we found ours at meijer. they actually have lots of cool stuff for homes! the base gives a fun hammered, silver appearance, and we found an ivory lamp shade to match.

in the far back corner, by the stairs, we have a 3-tier weathered wood and metal console table that we also found at meijer! i have a tendency to merchandise our personal belongings store-style (i mean, hello!? that's what i do!) and this project was no different.

the top shelf is now home to a couple of picture frames from our wedding (we have come to realize that we need to print out more recent photos of ourselves - we only have photos from 2.5 years ago and earlier!), my growing collection white ceramic birds, a vintage-style hanging bird cage i bought at a boutique i used to work at, a vase i found at gordman's that i have left to fill with a flower or two, my collection of ceramic buddhas, and a "kindness" sign i picked up at stumble & relish!

the middle is home to a vintage-style lantern, my lizard collection (yes, i have a lot of collections!), another owl, and an unused candle.

the bottom shelf can hold up to 20 pounds so i decided that would be perfect for some books, as well as our favorite jonathan adler dachshund bookends!

above the table, we hung our set of three mirrors that my mom bought at target. she decided she couldn't use them and i gladly took them off her hands!

last, but not least, not shown in any of the photos is our new light fixture! we wanted something different, but not too crazy... something that fit in our living room without stealing too much attention. jason gets all the credit for this one! here it is:

and that, my friends, is our living room! how do ya like it?

stay tuned for our latest projects! want to see more? follow me on instagram!

space to entertain (or just get cozy)

ahh, the living room.

we bought this massive L-shaped couch (that came with an equally massive matching ottoman) a couple years ago, and we finally have REAL space for it.

we decided to take the wheels off of the ottoman so we can use it as a bench to fill the extra space by the window. hooray - additional seating!

the accents are really my favorite part of the living room.

the grey studded pillows on the couch were a gift on our wedding registry and i think they still fit the room very well!

the pillows on the bench i call "nautical farmhouse." is that a thing? well it is now! at least until jason successfully convinces me that they really don't match (yeah, he's tried). he channeled his inner nate while at tarjay (silly spellcheck, that is a word!) a few days ago and found the large floral/paisley navy pillows. i just threw our old red and white striped pillows on top. we'll see if they stay long enough for the next living room photo!

the blue throw is my absolute fave! i saw it in a display at target (of course) and just had to have it. it's super soft and the color will go fab with the new tv stand we haven't bought yet... we'll have that in two days! (yes, it's blue!)

then, in that far back corner, you see our brand new coffee table! it's super cool - a wood top with metal criss-cross side panels for legs. we're going to store our blankets in a wicker basket underneath.

for now, we have a few picture frames on the table, but that will soon change, as we are going to be installing some picture ledges on the wall above the table. i'm super excited for that!

and there's the rest of our little living room! the corner shelving unit may stay or go - as you can see, we don't even have the glass shelves in there! boo. the top has served its purpose, though! my cute sister-in-laws gave us an awesome piece of art they made, displaying a google map of our new house, with the words, "our first home, est. 2016," and the exact coordinates to our address! all of your super sweet cards are there, too. thank you, thank you!

the tv is due for a size upgrade as jason so kindly reminds me every few minutes, and so does our tv stand, as mentioned! on the shelves (so far), we have a little metal dachshund we found at world market, and an illinois box sign from stumble & relish that has a little heart over what i'm going to call "the chicagoland area" (though if you want to get technical, it's a heart over evanston... my home away from home).

so many changes will be happening in this little room over the next few days. stay tuned!

follow me on instagram for live updates :)

our spacious kitchen

our lovely new kitchen with all new everything!

when jason and i first set out to find a house/condo/house boat/whatever we could find that didn't break the bank, our top request was a nice, modern kitchen with pretty appliances.

as you can see in the photo above (excuse the mess!), we definitely got what we asked for.

we were extremely lucky because not only was it nice and modern, we got a new kitchen! and when i say new, i mean brand spankin' new, right out of a catalog (IKEA, anyone?). new hardwood floors, soft-close cabinets, dishwasher, oven, fridge! the list goes on.

the best part? that's only half of it! not pictured is a whole other side of the kitchen, which was wide open (at least several square feet!) for us to do our thing! of course, having only been in the house one week, it's nowhere near complete, but here's what we've added so far:

we found this awesome table at homegoods prior to the move and decided to throw our wine and spirits on there! but then...

we noticed the table itself really wasn't enough to fill the space, so we went ahead and got a cool storage bench from target! it made the area so much more dimensional, added texture, and now, our guests can join us in the kitchen and not just in our dining room. i also loved that the color of the bench matches the table's metal legs perfectly! cute and functional in several ways.

at our old pad, we used this IKEA cart as a stand for our toaster oven and random items that we couldn't find a place for in our tiny kitchen. here, it's home to our collection of cookbooks, our brand new juicer (which i can't wait to use!) and my pretty flowers, which are stored in my super cute handmade ceramic vase from stumble & relish (my favorite little gift boutique in evanston, which i am lucky enough to also call my employer).

needless to say, i am in love with our spacious kitchen! we're still moving stuff around, adding more knick knacks (we still have plenty more boxes to unpack!), and working on the wall situation, so there's lots more to come. 

follow me on instagram to see what else is goin' on!

making our new house a home

we did a thing!

jason & i just moved into our new 3-story suburban townhouse one week ago today.

just before christmas, this house was added to our "visit" list pretty much by accident. the list of houses we had made for our realtor started to dwindle a few days before we were scheduled to visit. one by one, each house became pending or contingent, and in turn, our hope of finding a house was just that... hope.

though i instantly fell in love with this property's photos on the MLS, it happened to be an hour away from my job, and i told myself i couldn't move somewhere with that long of a drive. jason convinced me to look at it anyway, and sure enough, it happened to be "the one." seconds into the tour, we just knew this was meant to be our home. we were on the phone with our mortgage lender before we could even walk out the door! and naturally, within hours of visiting, interior design ideas began flowing through my brain nonstop and my "maison" pinterest board grew probably 100%. two and a half months later, it is finally ours!

though this is only a brief version of the very long story of our multiple month house hunt, i don't think i could be more in love with a house!

stay tuned as we make this house a home the best way we know how! with metal & burlap. (& love, of course.)

sooo many more boxes than pictured. ;)

portillos on moving day, because, why not?