DIY Fall Vintage Dough Bowl Centerpiece

HAPPY FALL!! 🍂🎃 It’s my favorite season! I KNOW it’s cliche, but fall is truly my favorite color. And favorite feeling. Being cozy, wrapped up in a blanket with the fireplace on, a warm mug in my hands, and a good book? Doesn’t get better than that.

So remember the summer dough bowl centerpiece I just posted about? Well… its sweater-weather, cozier sister is here 😉 

Just like the summer one, I purchased all of the beautiful faux florals and veggies from Michael’s. You should see my downstairs closet… it’s like a Michael’s store itself. 😂 It’s kind of insane how good their florals are. They truly look real! And they always have amazing deals. I purchased them a few weeks ago (long before first day of Fall!) and they already had great deals on them, like 40-50% off! And don’t forget to always check out their coupon page for an even greater deal.

My best tips are to 1) get a variety of stems and 2) get more than you think you’ll need. You’ll want a mix of leaf stems as well as florals and different textures to bring in some interest. And as you start snipping your florals and putting each stem in place, you’ll begin to pick and choose between different lengths and fullness and run out of your selection faster than you think! The more options, the merrier -- and then you, too, can have your own Michael’s home closet 😉

Adding a centerpiece to our dining room table makes SUCH a difference. It really pulls the tablescape and entire room together. And I love that this dough bowl centerpiece is flexible to change with the seasons. It’s perfect for someone like me who can’t get enough of the decorating bug, especially in my favorite season 🍂

If you end up replicating this for your own home, let me know! I’d love to see all of your amazing fall creations.

Life Update 001

I was going to write ‘it’s been awhile’ since posting a life update, but this is actually quite a new concept for the blog. So, I guess I should really say ‘it’s been never’ since I posted a life update 😂 I’m not exactly sure why all of a sudden I have the urge to share a general life update other than it’s been quite a crazy year and a half living through the ups and downs in a world navigating COVID-19. Nonetheless, here are some updates from our crew.

We bought a house!

Yep, you read that right… we bought a house!… in the middle of a pandemic. Are we crazy?! Maybe 😉 But as they say, everything just fell into place. We feel very blessed and grateful to have been able to purchase our first home in an incredible neighborhood AND with incredible neighbors. Whenever I return to the house from running errands or from a trip, I immediately feel calm and so, so at peace. I think that’s how you know you’ve made your house feel like a home. 

So, buying a house naturally comes with all of the motivation and excitement for DIY projects. We’ve already tackled some (I’ve shared a few on my Instagram, with more to come!), but I feel like my head is exploding with new ideas every day. I want to install beadboard in our hallway, picture frame trim in our main bedroom, wallpaper in the guest room… and maybe our main bedroom, too… mixed metals and candleholders as a gallery wall above our bathtub, a more permanent desk and shelving system for Tim, maybe a garage gym; the list goes on and on. It is both FUN and overwhelming at the same time.

Tim got a job!

Most of you know my husband, Tim, was laid off by Airbnb at the beginning of the pandemic. He applied and interviewed for a year and nothing was coming through. He didn’t want to take a step back in his career -- and we were lucky enough to be able to get by on my income -- so he took his time finding the right fit. 

Well, when it rains, it pours (in a good way). After nothing sticking for almost a year, he was suddenly interviewing at 3 different companies at one time and was ultimately recruited for a startup where he landed a great job and was promoted within 3 months! It was a year filled with persistence, patience, and faith, and we feel blessed that everything worked out and he’s thriving in his new role.

I started a new position!

I’m still loving where I work, and I actually transferred roles in the last few months. It’s still within marketing, so not a complete 180, but my new position is more closely tied to sales vs. awareness and engagement. It’s been really interesting and challenging so far, and I can’t wait to see where this new role takes me! It’s always awesome to experience a different side of the business.

I’m going back to school!

They say you should announce something publicly to keep yourself accountable. Well, here I am, being vulnerable and announcing my return to school. Due to a mix of working at a consumer packaged goods company and dedicating lots of time each week for years to nutritious meal prepping, I’ve gotten more and more interested and invested in the fact that food is medicine and have decided to pursue my master’s degree in nutrition (eeek, I couldn’t be more excited!). I have some pre-requisites I need to wrap up before I can apply to the program, which I’ll be tackling over the next several months. I’ll still work full time and school will be part-time for now. The actual master’s program itself is full-time online (no specific times for classes, just weekly deadlines), so that feels like an excellent fit with my full-time work schedule, but I know life will get a lot more crazy. 

This bachelor of arts grad is diving head first into her first science pre-requisite in a few weeks: human anatomy and physiology, so good vibes are welcome 🙏 I think I’m going to find this all fascinating, but the good news is if it’s not what I thought it would be, there’s always another door to open and another path to explore.

The blog is now Wholly Rooted!

Staying with the same theme of ‘food is medicine’ -- I really do believe this and I’m excited to dive more into holistic nutrition and learning about the human body through my courses over the next few months and years. As I’ve grown, this blog has grown with me, so I decided to re-brand (again 😉) to Wholly Rooted, a space dedicated to health, home, and happiness. Look forward to more food and nutrition topics, as well as my usual DIYs, baking, home decor, and life updates. I feel it in my bones that this is the right move and path for me, so I’m happy to have you alongside me in this journey!

Well, that’s it for now… a lot of movin’ and shakin’ over here in our world. I hope you are thriving wherever you are in life right now and I know the best is yet to come for all of us.

Cheers!

Our Framebridge Gallery Wall

Okay, so this blog post has been… a long time in the making 😉 We installed our gallery wall fairly quickly after moving into our home (we moved in October and got it up in January), but life and work got crazy, so I never took the time to sit down and write about it. First, let me say I LOVE IT and it’s probably the most complimented part of our home.

As you can tell from the title, we used Framebridge and I can’t recommend them highly enough. YES, it was pricey (somewhere around $700 after a discount code I used), BUT the quality of both the frames and service can’t be beat. The pictures come pre-framed with paper backing and beautiful matting (professional!). While it does feel pricey, for pre-curated, antique-esque, large, high-quality frames, it felt like a pretty great deal. We ordered the Staggered Grid in Mixed Metallics, but they have sooo many options. Some other favorites include the Wide Grid, the Half Wall Grid, the Floor to Ceiling Grid, and the Up the Stairs.

Even though it’s been awhile since we actually installed the gallery wall, I do remember the installation being fairly finicky. Framebridge does a nice job of including a paper grid that allows you to easily hammer in nails at the exact right places so your wall turns out exactly as you hope, but in practice, their paper grid was a bit off compared to the nail holes in the frames themselves. So you really need to make sure you compare the paper grid to the actual frames so you can get the exact height you want. The paper grid also had creases in it from being folded up during shipping (unavoidable), so it made it a bit difficult to ensure it was straight and flat against the wall. So while all-in-all it took a bit longer than we expected, once we got everything prepped and nails in the wall it was smooth sailing.

I would choose Framebridge and do this install over again in a heartbeat because it’s simply so beautiful. It’s definitely a corner that brings us immense joy, and I love that it’s the center of our home where we gather together for meals at the end of each day. I’m sure I’ll invest in more gallery walls from Framebridge in the future (lookin’ at you, stairwell). What does your dream gallery wall look like?