Hello! I'm Suzannah, a serious DIYer and mom of two little ones. Follow along with my DIY fixer upper house renovations, sewing and crafty projects, real food recipes, and de-stressing goals.
I believe you can love your home just the way it is, AND have the power to design and make big changes to make it better.
Holiday decor... it fills our Instagram feeds and is both inspiring and overwhelming. I love the holiday cheer, but it's easy to feel like you're not doing enough or your tree, fireplace, whatever isn't special enough. There are new trends every year and yet, we want to keep the sentimental stuff the same. Well... I've done holiday decorating several ways and learned how to work with trends, keep it fun and exciting, and not get too stressed out!
The excitement around this day has really slowed down now that retailers offer their sales all weekend, sometimes even starting the day before Thanksgiving. But I still love to see the sales, and save up a few purchases until Black Friday weekend. This year there are four specific things I'm shopping for. Sharing those below, plus a (short) list of favorite retailers whose sales I always check for.
My 4 Black Friday/Cyber Monday Purchases
1. Growing kid clothes.
Lucy will be going up a size soon so I bought her a ton of basics plus some cute sweaters and dresses for next January through spring. I've been really tired of Target and Old Navy kid clothes lately but I've been shopping for the kids at lot at H&M. Some faves below. Hanna Andersson is all 40% off as well, been trying to only buy their jammies for the kids cause they're just so much better than any others!
2. A TV
Our TV conveniently started biting the dust the other week. We're actually pretty happy and proud of how long it's lasted (and how long we've held out buying a new, cooler one when the old one worked just fine.) We bought it in 2009. Ha! We've decided not to go for a Frame TV, rather, just something with a narrow frame (they all have that now). We'll still put it above the fireplace but I think it will look a lot better than the current one with its huge shiny black frame around the 46" screen. I want this one; Jason wants the bigger version. Note: Target will price match if the price drops before 12/24, so you can buy now and just check the Cyber Monday deal, rather than hedging your bets in case it drops lower then, or sells out!
Target is doing buy 2 get 1 free books through 11/27, and their base prices match Amazon's, so that is a great deal. I bought myself two home decor books while buying a gift book already, and am really tempted by some others. My family does lots of books as gifts so this is a great deal for us to shop! This is also a great sale/time to buy kid Christmas (or any) books or cookbooks.
4. Everyday flatware
We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary this year and we're still using our dishes, flatware, pots/pans, and a few other things from our wedding registry. Which is so cool, and we love them for the most part, but we've never loved our silverware (the handles are so heavy they always slide off the plate when you stack them) and we've lost a lot of the smaller forks. I decided we could treat ourselves to a new set this year! But it's taken me a while to do the shopping, and now a lot of the options are on sale. I'll have to report back on how this shopping goes cause so far I haven't found the perfect set!
Favorite retailer sales
I'll add to this list as I find them!
Gap Factory -- 50-70% off everything plus extra 10% off with code GFFRIYAY
The One Room Challenge has wrapped up again! This is a bi-annual design event where over 8 weeks, 20 featured designers and hundreds of guest participants make over a room and document the process every week. I've participated 6 times! (See all my ORC posts here and all my room reveals here.) I did not have it in me to join in this fall, but it is so fun to watch all the projects going on and I love checking out all the reveals. There are so many good ones and so much hard work goes into them (see all the guest reveals here) but I put together a list of my all-time faves that are really exciting to me right now. Great trends, bold choices, real-life usable spaces... here they are!
This room is so dramatic! She added all the molding and chose that perfect rich blue to go with the brass/gold (I looove all the cool antique frames), and hey, that's the sofa version of this chair I also have. But it looks way more interesting in her house, against something other than white walls!
I've been into organization, Kon Mari-ing my closet, and not buying more than I need for years, but I've recently been listening to some minimalism podcasts in the parenting realm and gotten inspired again. The holidays can be difficult for a minimalist or someone who really likes to control what we own.
Took us all summer so we won’t really get to enjoy it until next spring, but we are really excited to have our flagstone path completed in the backyard. We’ve made so many changes to the backyard since we moved in, it’s hard to remember what was here before… But it wasn’t a clear path. We had these great big flat flagstone pavers extending from the patio (which used to be covered in a deck), and then a few random pavers by the gate, I guess. Our vision for our backyard was connecting the patio to the gazebo and to the gate with a path.
Gift guide season! This time of year you'll see a lot of gift guide posts, on blogs everywhere. I've produced them in the past too, in ways I think I can add value. I’m not going to be a "one-stop resource for everyone on your list" like some great websites and blogs out there, and as most of you know this is not my full-time job so I don’t have the time to put in to creating a bunch of gift guides and monetizable posts that someone might shop from. I also can’t share too many of the gifts I’m actually buying because my family reads this blog!
So this year I'm scaling it back and I’m going to keep it really authentic: this post is looks like a gift guide but is honestly the most genuine one I could share: it’s all for me! My Christmas list is simple this year. For the reason I started blogging in the first place (I get excited about things and like to tell other people!) I'm sharing it here and I hope it is helpful!
Defining myself in one short phrase… Mom of young kids, homebody, interior design lover, a little bit crunchy/appreciating natural products. Right? If you know anyone else like me and are looking for gift ideas, you’ve come to the right place!
Living rooms are tricky. I’ve said it before. There are so many options for what you could do in them so there’s no easy formula like there is with a dining room. It’s not even a sure thing that you want a standard size sofa! What about a sectional, or two face sofas facing each other? With most living rooms there are multiple options so it takes a while of living in them and playing around to find what works best.
I’ve seen pleated lampshades around a lot lately, even shared a guest tutorial for a beautiful method here! I hadn’t made one yet myself. When I did… I always like to try something new, so I combined the methods I’d seen on DIY tutorials on blogs and some tips I was able to gather from the pros, and came up with this no-sew pleated lampshade tutorial that will work on large or small lampshades, drum or empire shape!
