Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials
We love having friends over to our backyard firepit, which means we eat A LOT of s’mores. That means A LOT of opportunities to try unique twists on traditional s’mores. There’s nothing wrong with the tried-and-true recipe, but introducing new ingredients and combos keeps things fun, interesting, and even better tasting. So here are 5 of our favorite “upgraded” s’more ideas for your next firepit gathering.
Our kids are very much into the traditional Jack-O-Lantern-style pumpkin carving, often trying to make a scarier, grosser, or goofier face than last Halloween. But we still remember a time when toddler-friendly (even baby-friendly!) pumpkin “carving” was the name of the game over here. So we wanted to highlight six simple, fun, but unconventional pumpkin decorating ideas for kids that we’ve used in the past. Including a “romantic” one we made pre-kids (yes, I’ll pause while you ponder what exactly can be romantic about a pumpkin…). We’ve included a brief description of each below, but you can also follow the link to the original posts for more photos and details about each pumpkin-carving project. “Baby’s
We got lots of questions about the “miracle” cloning paste we showed on Instagram recently. What is it? What does it do? And why the heck is it called “keiki”? Short answer: keiki paste is an easy-to-apply growth hormone for your houseplants that can help fill out bare spots on pothos, orchids, and more. It’s a smart solution for any plant parent, but we’ll tell you why it may fall short of being truly miraculous.
The annual Color of the Year announcements are one of our favorite traditions to follow (and predict, with varying degrees of sucess). Each year, a lot of the largest paint manufacturers select a hue and/or palette they believe “captures” and/or “forecasts” design trends. Some are bold. Some are boring. Some are straight-up bonkers (who remembers the color we affectionately dubbed “hot dog”?). So we’ll continue to update this post as the 2026 COTYs are announced over the next six months.
I’ve daydreamed about buying a backyard movie set-up (projector, screen, etc) for several summers now. But the logistics and potential expense always stopped me… until last month! And now I feel silly for waiting, because we pulled it off with just 3 pieces of equipment that cost less than $200 total! That’s cheaper than the cost of some projectors… or a few family trips to the theater! And now we can host unlimited movie gatherings with friends (we’ve already had two in the last two weeks!).
We’d never really thought of Dallas as a “vacation” destination, but there’s so much to do there that we barely scratched the surface on our recent trip! We ate lots of good food, explored fun neighborhoods, and found more kid-friendly activities than we had time for. So here’s a quick recap of some of our favorite Dallas destinations. Plus some things we want to come back and see next time!
Got little bugs buzzing around your kitchen? Congratulations, you may have fruit flies! Don’t fret. These annoying pests are pretty common but luckily, it doesn’t take a lot of money, supplies, or effort to get rid of them. In fact, you can probably find everything you need in your cabinets! We recently had a fruit fly problem in our home (the first time in over four years here – we have no idea what brought them in). So I seized the opportunity to test 7 different methods of eliminating them. Yes, there were copious notes taken and even a spreadsheet. So today I’m sharing the best fruit fly traps and how to make them.
Serenbe is a small “New Urban” community about 45 minutes south of Atlanta in a rural town called Chattahoochee Hills. It’s sort of a mix of an upscale-feeling suburban development and an eco-conscious resort in the countryside. We recently took a 3-night trip with our kids and had a great time exploring, eating, and spending time in nature!
Succulents are some of the easiest houseplants to propagate because there are several ways to do it. Today we’ll show how one succulent can be turned into many (even a dozen or more!). So whether you’re looking to grow your own collection or gift some plants to friends, this is a fun and easy process to try!
Since our bedroom used to be a living space, it came with absolutely zero closet space. This was obviously a big downgrade from the fancy walk-in closet in our last house. BUT ALAS! Watch how we built in some floor-to-ceiling Ikea Pax wardrobes to create just as much storage as our last closet AND make them look like they’ve been there all along… For comparison, our last home’s walk-in closet was an 8′ x 6′ room. Each side had one 29″ wardrobe in the middle flanked by two 19″ wardrobes on each side. That’s 67″ of linear closet space along each wall, for a total of 134 inches. In this home, we used the exact
Never heard of Ocean Springs, Mississippi? Neither had we! But it caught our eye on round-ups like Southern Living’s 15 Most Adorable Small Towns and USA Today’s 10 Best Coastal Small Towns where it ranked #1. So a few months ago our family decided to check it out for ourselves. It did NOT disappoint! We actually considered detouring through Ocean Springs on our weekend trip to New Orleans two years ago. But now we’re glad we didn’t shortchange it with a quick pitstop and gave it a full trip of its own.
In November of 2020, we published a post called “What’s It Like To Downsize” after living in our smaller home for 6 months. We covered a range of experiences – like the good things about moving to a smaller home (owning less stuff! saving money!) and some of its challenges, especially in the initial stages of downsizing (paring down! figuring out storage!). We still agree with everything in that post, but it had only been six months… and since it has now been over 4.5 years (!!!), we feel like we have a few more to add about the long-haul downsizing experience. Let’s get into it. I won’t recap our entire decision to downsize (you
