Focusing on the weekend

nice weekend

When life’s ends start feeling a little harder to keep tied together and work me is feeling extremely overloaded, I fall into a pattern of wishing away the week and pushing all my hopes for crossing off personal to do’s to the weekend. This might be a great coping mechanism for some work-life balance if I actually used my weekends to do those things…but majority of the time, my weekends look more like an exercise in laziness and procrastination to make up for all the work-related drive and productivity. Essentially, I crash.

Don’t get me wrong, my weekends start with Super Yoga Palace and include plenty of fun with as many of my favorite people as I can get, so it’s not like I’m completely useless. But those pesky life administration tasks like responding to my jury duty request and returning the Walmart goods that have been sitting in my room for over a month just don’t seem as important when I actually have time to do them. Case in point, my house.

My roommate and I came into the new place with a lot of big ideas and quite a clear vision for the welcoming, stylish place we would create. Somewhere along the way we reached a “liveable enough” stage, though, and never quite got around to some of the more ambitious projects that include making a bar cart, turning a ridiculously heavy wrought iron table top into wall decor and hemming curtains.

DIY is just not naturally in my DNA, even though I love the idea of it. But after another gratifying yoga practice followed by a delicious brunch at Sundown at Granada and seeing Girl Most Likely with my sister, I’m ready to branch out a little and turn on the focus. My reward? A long overdue housewarming party next month!

While I’m figuring out the difference between flat and satin paint, I highly encourage you to watch this clip from Girl Most Likely. The movie had its pros and cons overall, but this scene alone is a strong candidate for the ‘best things I have ever seen’ list. You’re welcome.

 

Shopping for a home

Breaking news around Finding Tiffany’s, I’ve just been self-nominated for the Bad Blogger Award! All joking aside, the combination of being slammed at work and not yet having internet in the new home is that blogging time & capabilities have been hard to come by lately…BUT I have missed you all terribly, which is why I’ve taken to blogging on a Wednesday even though it’s not my usual posting day.

Right now I have so many blog posts hanging out in my head, it’s hard to pick where to begin! See my brain works like cooking popcorn (you heard me), in that thoughts and ideas are constantly popping up, pinging around, seeming quite exciting at the moment of ideation and building up fast. For now, though, let’s start with where I’ve been spending a lot of my time as of late…Target.

Like many of the masses, I both love and fear Target. Between their commitment to supporting small business, launching an organic grocery line, Simply Balanced, and having just plain cute stuff, my addiction is with good reason. A typical trip involves going in for a 5×8 picture frame and leaving with over $100 worth of shoes, a DVD, tank tops and another adorable set of kitchen cups (true story). How do they do it??

To accommodate my lacking budget I’ve managed to avoid going completely, but I just couldn’t withstand my house’s cries to be decorated any longer. Between hours perusing Target’s never-fail stock along with a little Ikea and Pinteresting, I’ve come up with these mood boards…

Bedroom

Bedroom Inspiration Mood Board Target

Living Room

Living Room Inspiration Mood Board

With one Target spree down and an Ikea trip on the books, I’m feeling a little bit closer to making these dream rooms a reality!

What would you like to do right now?

downtown Dallas
Home…right now.

Today Marthe from The Freedom Experiment (always a favorite read) asked her readers what they’d most like to be doing right now. After another losing battle with morningtime, I can tell you that driving to work with another day of zero coffee ahead of me was not exactly high on my list. But imagining my perfect day really has pulled me out of a slump before, so I let her question sink in only to find a somewhat surprising truth to snap me out of my haze.

latte coffee
Oh, how I miss you…

Because the truth is, I’m really quite happy with what I’m doing, and I’ve got a lot of exciting times ahead. As I admired the downtown Dallas buildings and great weather last weekend after a “so Dallas” evening on the Katy Trail Ice House patio, I thought “You know what, I have to say, I maybe sorta actually kinda like it here.” This might not seem like much of a confession to you, but Dallas was the last place I saw myself living, not to mention liking. But somewhere along the way this place became home….for now anyway. There are far too many great places in this world for me to settle down just yet.

Keeping the Dallas momentum going, though, this weekend I’ll be seeing the Nasher sculpture museum for the first time (it’s about time) and catching their Air Review concert and outdoor screening of Life of Pi, all in my new neon windbreaker. Plus, there’s my upcoming moving out pool party/cookout followed by actually moving out…and into my new adorable house. And on top of that, I have a foodie trip to Austin, weddings for people I like a whole awful lot and my first ever trip to Chicago (hello, new year’s resolution being met!).

So now I’m passing it on, what would you most like to do right now?

Mint Home Makeover

A couple months ago, I moved into a beautiful loft in downtown Dallas:

My un-Instagramed rooftop view.

Carving out my own space in a large, open loft with roommates takes some creativity (read: a lot of time on Pinterest). But some curtains and artwork later, I still felt like something was missing…An average wooden table, way too many trips to Hobby Lobby and some mint paint later I had this:

To save money, I used acrylic paint, which you can usually find on sale for around a dollar. Since I couldn’t find the mint color I was hoping for, I ended up mixing a bottle of Tiffany blue with two pale seafoam greens…and even had a bottle’s worth left over that I used on these picture frames and can save for touch-ups! While scouring the craft store aisles, I also came across a tube of chalkboard paint that became the perfect top coat:


Voila. It makes me so proud to look over every day and be able to say — I did that!

[Photo Disclaimer: My phone decided to cool off one hot, Texas afternoon…in a pool. The camera quality has never been the same. 😦 I apologize and hope you’re inspired by my uncraftiness-turned-craftiness to start – and finish – a project of your own!]