It's been festive at home since late October.  Yes, I decorated incredibly early and my reason for that is "I want to get my $$$ worth".  I didn't realize until this year that I have a ton of owl things, 80% of my Christmas owl decor are gifts from loved ones.  I wanted to keep the color-scheme the same as last year but this time make it a bit more white with hints of gold and silver sprinkled everywhere.

The only red I had this year was all in my wrapping.  It's sad to say, but this year I wasn't in the mood for wrapping gifts.  I kept it simple with the butcher paper, but used different fabric ribbon, mainly red.  With gift tags I kept it traditional with vintage Christmas stamp set I use every year and kept it uniform, using only one design.


Other than the folks gifting me owl decor; the tree, brass stocking holders, plain bulb ornaments, and pine cone ornaments are all from target. The stockings, and white & gold owl are from anthropologie, and the white porcelain owl cup is from world market.  I would check out all three places right now as they all have after Christmas sales!

I'm thankful that I get to decorate the house the way I want it and M just goes along with it.  He even buys or suggests items while shopping that can definitely go with the decor.  For New Years weekend, I plan to take everything down and re-decorate our console since I bought him a record player for Christmas, and we have a few other new trinkets from Dallas as well.  A small part of me is telling me to keep the decorations until Valentines.  Another month won't hurt! ;)

See last years Christmas Tree here and last years wrappings here and here.

While in Dallas last month, M's brother recommended a place for Antique Shopping.  I was on a search for a few things: bookends, Christmas trinkets, and possibly an ornament to fulfill the tradition.  There was so many good things!  Not to mention, all the vintage Christmas decorations.  I told M if I knew there was going to be this much good stuff, I would of brought an empty carryon!  I found a small handful of goodies, we managed to find not one, but two ornaments!



After roaming around all morning and afternoon, M wanted to show me this bridge close by to his parent's house.  The bridge was the perfect place to snap a photo to place into our ornament.  This time, I actually printed the photos in Walgreens and simply picked them up one day during lunch.  Yes, one hour photo still exists!  I was jokingly telling M that I can fit up to 5 ornaments for our tradition on the Christmas Tree, but he insists we get a bigger one next year.  Mmmm, maybe a new tree next year is a good idea, since the owl ornaments keep growing!  We'll see!

see our first ornament here.

M knows my love for pre-loved treasures.  Anywhere we go or travel he always insists we go to thrift stores and antiques shops to see what trinkets we can find for our home.  Last year when we were in Joshua Tree we were looking over a glass case and he spotted a black vintage floral ornament frame.  He bought it for me and insist we put it in our Christmas Tree.  After placing a big order (free prints) on Shutterfly I printed out a photo of us from hiking and placed it in the frame.  It went perfectly with one of the darker owl ornament, it looks so good!


Do you have any traditions with your significant other?

After moving out of LA County, I wanted to explore and see if there was any tea rooms around Claremont and La Verne.  Surprisingly, there's only 3 that I know so far including Two A Tea.  One day, Steph and I made reservations to a tea house before starting our day of thrifting and catching up.  I came across Barbara's Victorian Tea house.  I recommend making reservations 2-3 weeks in advance as it's hard to book something the week of.  It was my first time going there and I already loved that it was an actual house vs. a tea room in a plaza.

The house was built 125 years ago, and the tea house has been around over 10 years.  I was so in love with the long porch in the front.  We had the traditional 3-4 course with the salad, scones, and sandwiches.  After tea, we went upstairs as they had an antique shop and different rooms had various items.  It was hard to just pick one thing, so I left the antique section empty handed (for now).  I love how festive it is, and i'm hoping to make reservations soon and spent crisps afternoons here.

I travel to New York a few times a year for work.  Whenever I have a moment or a day off I go with my {work} mother on little ventures around SOHO, Brooklyn, 3rd Ave, Manhattan, etc.  She showed me a store two years ago called & Other Stories.  It's the same family as H&M, but more up'd in price very similiar to Urban to Anthro.  The first thing I was attracted to was their shoes and accessories.  Little did I know, they had a beauty section in their shop that I fell head over heels with !

I bought their punk bouquet as my signature daily scent. If you can't make it to New York and have no plans this weekend, I highly recommend visiting their new Beverly Hills location that just opened two weeks ago.  They'll be opening another location in South Coast Plaza, it's the perfect place for Christmas Shopping.  Have you started yet?

It's officially Holiday mode, and don't worry i'm focused on Thanksgiving as well ;).  I love that Halloween decor can easily be moved over until the end of this month.  I'm keeping out my owls to keep it fall-festive, but I must admit, I started on Christmas shopping already..  Since Holidays go by so quickly and get so busy I want to make sure I have everything covered.  But what's fall without a visit to the pumpkin patch?   Unfortunately the So. Cal weather kept it's heat.  I went to the same pumpkin patch close to the beach.  Although, I was close to the ocean it was about 85 degrees that day.  So much, for wearing boots and a flannel, I needed to be in an Autumn sun dress!






I loved how the tented area reminded me of a Fall Farmers Market.  I wanted to buy all the small ones and learn how to make pumpkin soup or just draw faces on them :).  This month will be light traveling as I'll only be going to Texas this month with M to spend time with his family for Thanksgiving and celebrate our yearly anniversary.  What do you have planned this month?

See my pumpkin patch visits from 2013, and last year.

Happy Halloween everyone!

I hope you all had a great spooky weekend in your costumes!  This Halloween is very low key, I didn't attend any parties this year as I wanted to catch up on things at home, and settle back in from traveling this past week for work.  I was ahead of the game this year and finished up my Halloween card crafting by the first week of October.  I made sure I mailed them out a few weeks before so all my lovelies can get into the spirit.  When it came to crafting the ghostly cards, I was inspired by this ilootpaperie card, and found a printable from ohhappyday that was similar!  I used card stock paper, folded card stock, and washi tape all on hand.  I just had to make a quick stop to pick up some more glue!




Every year I do very light decorating for fall/halloween.  You can see from my previous post that I always take out the owls and the porcelain pumpkin.  I forgot the to bring the pumpkin with me when moving but i'll be sure to incorporate it next year! I'll also be sharing my hot visit to the pumpkin patch.  I'll be dressing up today for halloween as belle from beauty in the beast (in the blue dress).  When putting the costume together, I only spent $10.00 on getting the apron on etsy.  Everything else I had in my closet!  What will you be dressing up as today?

Cheers to ghouls and treats!

See previous halloween crafting here.

I'm going to be travelling for work in a few days.  My plans for this past weekend was to run errands, enjoy a good brunch out with M, and craft away.  It so happens that yesterday was a birthday, and national boss day (it landed on Sunday, but Monday is when everyone celebrated).  Everyone in the office pitched in and we got a singing telegram for our own director in the office.  I also crafted up cards to fit every occasion this coming week!

I'll be holding onto the french inspired card until I see the birthday girl for tea next week!  Thankfully, I can say that Halloween Crafting is all done and I can't wait to share next week.  The only thing I'm struggling with is what to wear for Halloween.  Possibly Mrs. Pacman?  A scary clown?  Maybe even batman?  We'll see..

What will you be for Halloween?

It's been exactly a year when rola and I went to New Orleans for a few days.  We stayed at an airbnb and one morning we went for a walk to the St. Roch Market located in the St. Claude avenues for breakfast.  The vibe is just like Downtown LA's Grand Central Market.  I heard many great things including that dinner is exceptionally delicious.  They opened 4 years ago and I was excited to see what goodies they had!

Wedding gifts can go three ways: 1. gift money 2. gift something sentimental or 3. gift from the registry.  M and I attended a wedding a few weeks ago and the bride and groom had everything they needed, so creating a registry was not necessary.  I had to be creative with this gift so when I was out of town with the future Mr. & Mrs. Killian, I brought out my camera and requested if I could take their photo.  The day I took their photo was their 8 year anniversary to the day, and it was exactly a week away from their wedding.  I had the photo printed at Walgreens in a 5x7 and picked it up during lunch.  As for a frame, I automatically wanted to choose one from work.  I came across this frame I knew it would be a fit as gray matches with everything and the walnut inside gave it a rich feel.
Along with the photo and frame M added a few other things that he knew the future Mr. and Mrs. would enjoy.  I wrapped up everything in butcher paper and added pink accents (shown above).  It just so happened the the fabric ribbon fit perfectly with the color theme.  The newlyweds loved their gift.  We had dinner with them a few nights ago, and I saw the frame in a vignette of theirs upstairs!  Cheers to love and long relationships.  I can't wait to attend another wedding!

The last time I was in Downtown LA was at the beginning of Spring this year and ate at my brothers friend's Ramen Restaurant. Downtown is a place that I went to all the time in my early 20's now that I'm older and traffic is horrendous, i'll only go if it's necessary or there's a gathering of some sort.  My good friend was visiting from Norway, I wanted to bring her to a place that had good french macarons and of course Bottega came in to mind.  I've shared the food that I've had but the dessert, is a whole other level!

We all got a box of (5) macarons and of course I got my favorite (3) pistachio's and (2) earl grey's.  We also got (3) iced coffee all in different flavors: regular, hazelnut, and vanilla.  The coffee there is AMAZING and is not phrased enough or at all.  It was the perfect afternoon to enjoy such sweets with great company.  I loved going during the day as the afternoon and dinner get's so crowded it's hard to find a seat.  What places do you like to go to in downtown?