home inspiration - for the future

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Recently, my husband got a huge promotion at work.  For normal people, this would mean they would be able to afford to move out of their parents' basement!  But unfortunately for us, we now have student loans that are coming out of deferment and we will have to make payments on those that will be large enough to keep us in the basement for an unforeseeable amount of time longer.  In the meantime, I like to daydream about what I could or would do if we had a place of our own.  Here are some spaces that I love and will keep for inspiration for the day when we get to become *real* grown ups. *click images for sources*

You can follow along with all things home that I'm loving right here. 

Maybe I should tell the story of our situation?  It's long and would need to be broken up over a few posts.  For now, let's just say it involves life giving us the biggest lemons we've ever had and how we've had to learn to accept it and move on.

throw pillow with embroidery wrapped piping

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The inspiration for this project came from this simple, but gorgeous pillow at Anthropologie.

I thought about doing a metallic thread, but after seeing this pillow tutorial, I thought it would be fun to use a bright color instead.  It definitely would be out of the ordinary for me and it's good to step outside of the box sometimes.

I made this pillow with an envelope closure; you can see my tutorial for that here.  I was going to buy white piping, but my daughter was with me and she picked out lime green.  Also, they were out of white, so we went ahead and used the lime green.  The embroidery floss I used is DMC color 891, found at my local craft store.

Make the pillow following the instructions on the tutorial.  To wrap the piping, knot the end of the embroidery floss and and start from the inside.  Bring your needle out at the base of the piping and stitch around the piping, wrapping the floss around it to cover it.  You can use a satin stitch to make it smooth and perfect, but I like the way it looks with some of the floss overlapping itself a few times and then other spots being a little more smooth.  When you run out of floss, bring the needle back inside and knot it.  Keeping all of your knots inside the pillow will keep the outside looking neat and clean.  To finish this, I needed about 4 1/2 skeins.  While this is a really simple project, it is time consuming.  It took a few weeks to get it done, not because it took that long, but because I don't have large chunks of free time.  It's a great activity to do while watching a show, which is exactly what I did any time my husband and I watched something.

It's a fun way to get the exact color piping you want with a fun texture.  If you tackle this project, I would love to see them.  Link it up in the comments!

a plaid scarf

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The morning we took these pictures it was windy and cold.  Plus, my daughter has been waking up at 6am every morning for weeks now which has been making her kind of grumpy.  I hope she goes back to sleeping until 7am again soon!

Even grumpy though, she's still as sweet as can be and extra snuggly.

sources // sweater / leggings Gap no longer available similar / boots / bow / scarf

dark chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel frosting

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My husband turned 30 last week!  He doesn't think his birthday is anything special, but I do and he's totally wrong haha.  I really wanted to make this birthday special for him.  I made sure to get him the gift he wanted, took him to his favorite Mexican restaurant where a bunch of our closest friends surprised him, and the kids and I surprised him earlier that day with a giant "30" balloon and these amazing cupcakes for him and all of his coworkers.  He said he loved it all.  Success!

If you've never made cake from scratch, for whatever reason, you absolutely have to make this one.  It's easy, no fuss, and the cake turns out moist and chock-full of delicious chocolate flavor.  The frosting recipe is from Bakers Royale and is seriously the best caramel frosting ever.  It's not super sweet, but is loaded with rich, buttery salted caramel flavor.  It's my favorite frosting ever, with possibly only the exception being this peanut butter frosting recipe.  Possibly.  Click here for the frosting recipe and click on the image below to get the printable version of my cupcake recipe.  Enjoy!

sweater weather - finally!

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I guess Mother Nature heard me say we were enjoying warm weather because the temperature quickly dropped 20 degrees.  But I love it!  We get to wear cozy sweaters and socks now and it actually feels like Fall.

traveling with kids

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We're gearing up for a trip back East for two weeks.  We leave next Monday and we'll be staying with my brother and sister-in-law in Richmond, VA.  My husband's whole family is going because my other brother-in-law is getting married!  We're all so excited!  On our trip we'll be spending a couple days in DC, then heading down to North Carolina for the wedding.  After that week, our little family will be flying down to Orlando to see my family and go to Disney World!  The kids and my husband are all so excited, but I think I'm the most excited because I get to share something that I loved so much growing up with the people I love most.  How great is that?!  We'll be flying out, no way were we driving!  But flying isn't easy with kids either, so I thought I would share what we do to make it a little bit easier on ourselves.  Last summer we went to New York with my family and these are the things that worked for us then and still work to this day in similar situations where the kids are confined and get bored quickly.

 sources // 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

a new suit for the husband

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My brother-in-law is getting married in just a couple of weeks and since he's being nice enough not to require his brothers to wear a tux, we needed to buy my husband a new suit.  He hasn't had one for quite awhile and he really hasn't needed it, but oh my gosh, I about died when he tried on the one we ended up buying.  Who knew a suit could be so handsome?!  I guess if you've watched Mad Men, then you'd already know that, and I do, but it was just totally different on my husband....anyway!  Today I'm going to share what we got and then after we get it back from the tailor, I'll post pictures of him wearing it.

His tailor suggested we shop at Dillard's, Macy's, or Nordstrom and check out the sale racks because we could get a really good deal on a very nice suit that way, plus it would help us to save some money since we still needed to pay for the tailoring.  We went to Dillard's, but their sales weren't that great and neither was their selection.  The mall we went to also has a JCPenney and I felt like we should check it out.  Turns out they were having a major sale plus they had a coupon we could use.  For the pants, jacket and shoes, we spent $179.  The suit alone was originally $300, so we totally scored!  The shirt was purchased at Dillard's and it's really nice while still being easy to care for, which is always great in my book.


Here is what we bought for him.

sources // jacket / pants / shirt / shoes

I'm going to make him a pocket square to go with it too and we need to find him a tie that goes with the color scheme of the wedding: burgundy, brown, and ivory.  A burgundy tie is what we're going for and my husband likes paisley ties, so if you know of any good ones, send me the info!  I can't wait to see the suit after it's been tailored to fit him perfectly.  I might never want him to wear anything else.