Diary No. 19

Rounding up another two weeks’ worth of iPhone photos from my camera roll.

I’m really liking how my office/second guest room is coming along. I did the desk area as part of a campaign with HomeGoods and it was actually kind of a “stressful” behind the scenes. Part of the campaign was that I had to shop two stores (HomeGoods & Homesense) and I had to get a bigger piece of furniture at Homesense. But because of the way the stores opened, I had to shop the HomeGoods first. I went in completely blind, found the gingham chair pretty much immediately and came up with the game plan to do an office setup. I bought everything for a desk, recorded it all to post later, and prayed I’d find a desk at Homesense. I got SO LUCKY in that this was the only desk that would fit the space and worked with my aesthetic.

It really works perfectly for the space. I’m still getting a lot of questions about the daybed, which I bought from Walmart. And I found the shades from Wayfair. They’re not opaque but they’re so inexpensive that you could easily have a local person add a blackout liner if you needed that.

I got to preview Last Christmas and loved it. I wasn’t totally sold on the idea for the first half of the movie because it’s kind of cheesy… and then it gets so, so good and it all “makes sense.” It was also great to hear from Emma Thompson, who wrote and starred in the movie, as well as Henry Golding and Emilia Clarke. I couldn’t believe how lovely and nice they were.

(Here’s my dress, c/o)

We got to celebrate Halloween with Mike’s nieces and goddaughter. Um guys. This is what Halloween is all about it. Even though they’re only two, the girls were DIGGING their costumes and totally bought into the whole idea. Getting a little sugar rush didn’t hurt.

On Halloween, the weather was pretty bad. Throughout the day it poured and then it sort of cleared up while kids trick or treated. But it was bizarrely hot and humid. Almost all the kids who came to our house had their costumes tied around their waist to cool off. In the middle of the night, Mike woke me up because it was EXTREMELY stormy. Not going to lie, I slept through the worst of it but Mike was pretty worried, which is unlike him. He said it was the worst weather he had ever experienced… and when we woke up the next morning there were so many trees down. We got incredibly lucky though some of our neighbors had huge trees fall down in their yards and there were a handful of cars that were just completely crushed. Rumors started circulating that it had been a tornado and, sure enough, they investigated and it was.

I have to say that I was so impressed with our town. They got everything back up and running (streets cleared, power restored) way faster than I think anyone anticipated. Scary, but all things considered everyone was pretty lucky.

That day I flew to Nashville for a girls’ trip with Ashley to attend the Pencil & Paper Co creative camp. It was SUCH a fun weekend and both of us kept saying, “Why don’t we do this kind of thing more often.” We loved having the excuse to explore a new city and meet a ton of incredible people. Even though we were only there for about 48 hours, it felt like a week when it was all said and done. (In a good way, that is!)

While in Nashville, Ash and I just had to go to Ann Patchett’s bookstore Parnassus. I am a huge fan of Ann Patchett’s writing and her bookstore has been on my “bookstore bucket list” for a while now. We happened to stumble into a book reading with Allison Moorer. The two of us were in tears. Ashley and I have a knack for finding book-related events.

How beautiful is this? Mike and I are doing pre-sunset afternoon walks with the dogs as often as we can. It’s the easiest way to beat the winter blues. With the sun setting so incredibly early, we just need to get outdoors no matter how cold it is.

Talbots sent me these shoes and I am totally obsessed. I tried them on with the outfit I was had on and loved the casual look with a slightly dressier kitten heel.

Our living room is slowly but surely coming together! Our chairs were just delivered and I ordered this magazine rack. Can’t get over how cute it is.

I co-hosted an embroidery class with Hibiscus Linens. Mariana is an EXPERT embroiderer and it was an honor to learn from her. She teaches classes in a lot of cities so you should totally do one if she comes to where you are!

As you can see below, I got super into it this week. Because I have a ton of spare time for even more hobbies 😂 I think I am going to do personalized cocktail napkins for holiday/hostess gifts.