Living for Pretty

Celebrating all things pretty, happy and inspiring. From renovation stories, to recipes, decorating, parties and little life lessons, you’ll find a little bit of everything here.

our cozy peach bedroom (reveal)

We now have a few key elements in place in our bedroom, which means it’s reveal time. Our bedroom is tiny at about 10′ by 10′. It’s big enough for a queen sized bed and small nightstands, that’s about it, folks.

In my opinion, the bedroom only needs to function for two things, sleeping and dressing. Well our bedroom fits a queen size bed perfectly, and the closet (almost as big as the bedroom!) has plenty of room for clothes, storage and dressing.

The wall color is Ecru by Benjamin Moore – and it’s just perfect. It can appear white, but has a pretty peach tint that makes you feel all cozy and cocoon like.

The brass lamp bases were a garage sale find last summer ($3 for the pair!). This season we will be hunting for matching nightstands, with drawers for storage, and I’d love to find an inexpensive platform bed with more storage underneath. I wouldn’t be opposed to fresh new bedding either, or at least a new throw pillow, or two.

Our curtains were another smart move (if I do say so). We bought the fabric to use as tablecloths for my bridal shower, much like the headboard fabric. Love it when things can be used twice!

frames, ikea + thrifted // lamp shades, target // headboard, project here // duvet cover, macys (old)

our DIY upholstered headboard

Like most of our projects in our house, our headboard has been on our to-do list for months, and we finally finished it. We actually did the first cuts back in October, but lost steam before we got any fabric on it.

I’m not going to do a tutorial, because, let’s face it, there’s a zillion of these tutorials out there. In fact, I don’t know who would buy an upholstered headboard, when you can make one so inexpensively. Hundreds of dollars were saved, people.

The shape was inspired by this bed on Glitter Guide. I’m really happy with the end result, but the shape drove us mad. We are apparently really bad at geometry and we didn’t have a compass on hand. We ended up re-cutting and trimming here and there a few times to get it symmetrical. The fabric was originally bought to use as tablecloths at my bridal shower. Not a coincidence, if you’re buying fabric for a one-time-only event, try to think of ways you can reuse it. I love the colors, it fits perfectly with the soft peach color on our wall and the grey adds a bit of masculinity to it, maybe? I may be fooling myself there.

Tutorials we found the most helpful:

Our supplies:

  • Wood
  • Batting
  • Carpet pad (this was left over from carpeting our basement, we added it in for another layer of cush)
  • 1 inch foam
  • Fabric
  • Staple gun and staples
  • Foam adhesive spray
  • A few hands (I’ve seen tutorials on people doing this single handedly, I recommend recruiting help if you have it)
  • Nailhead trim
  • Suggested : A compass is you have curves
  • Liquid nails (we used this to attached the extra wood pieces to make it thick) 

One of our roadblocks in getting this project to the finish line was a disagreement in how best to add a thick edge. I was dead-set on using Kristin’s method from the Hunted Interior. My dad, who has a construction background, thought wrapping fabric around a thin piece of bendable wood and attaching would work. However, you need wood trim in order to use nail head trim, which was the plan. Once that was decided, I just had to convince Billy to do the extra legwork in cutting out the headboard shape for what would be the second time. If we were to do this again, we’d attach the wood first and make the trickier cuts only once.

A few in progress shots:

Our extra wood to make the edge a bit more substantial:

One layer of carpet padding, because we had it:

Then we spray glued the foam on and put the final layer of batting:

And finally, we wrapped it in fabric and stapled it. (sorry no photos). And measured the line for nailhead trim.

There is a specific hammer that you’re suppose to use for nailhead trim, but for this one-time project, I didn’t feel like spending the money. So, we wrapped our hammer in some of the scrap fabric – and it worked great! A note on the nailhead trim, we ordered several trim kits, but the colors were never right. First I ordered Dritz in silver, but we have a lot of brass in the room, and I wanted to pick up those metal tones. So, we ordered the Dritz nailhead in brass – the ‘nails’ were the perfect color, but the strips were a bright brass, like gold. That would not work! I finally found some in a “french natural” and it was exactly what we were looking for.

And the finished product!

Does’t the fabric look great with our paint color? I’ll be sharing some more bedroom pictures with you all on Wednesday, stay tuned!

ombre pink bridal shower

One of my biggest joys in life is bringing loved ones together for an intimate affair. I love pulling out my serving pieces and creating an atmosphere for celebration. A few weekends ago I was honored to host my sister-in-law-to-be’s bridal shower. Her wedding is seashore inspired (the ceremony will be at a local lighthouse) and I wanted to do something distinctly feminine that alluded to the wedding inspiration without infringing on the wedding theme. I thought an ombre / watercolor effect would be the perfect nod to the wedding palette. I then interspersed gold and mint elements to tone down the pink.

We have a pass-through from our dining room to our kitchen, but I knew the kitchen would be a mess with prep work for the party. To hide it and create a focal point, we crafted a crepe paper backdrop with layers of crepe paper streamers, died linen strips and a gold fringe. I think it turned out dynamite, although a little more pink than I had anticipated!

gifts for the most amazing people in the world, moms

If there’s one holiday we should all celebrate and ring the bells for, it’s Mother’s Day. Moms work the hardest out of anyone, and most of their life is about being selfless. They give a lot, and this is one day we should work extra hard to make sure we’re giving in return. Uncommon Goods has an amazing selection of gifts that would make any women jump for joy. They have a specific Mother’s Day collection (here) that makes finding a gift super easy, and with spring blooming around us, their garden collection (here) has a lot of great gifts to get moms ready for the season.

one/robe | two/wine glass | three/succulent box | four/tulip tree | five/agate coasters | six/life story | seven/wine pairing tea towel | eight/herb garden
This post was sponsored by UnCommon Goods 

basic whole wheat biscuits

In college Billy was famous for his biscuits and gravy. After a night on the town, or, even just in bed, his biscuits and gravy were pleasant morning ritual. All my life I had been disgusted by biscuits and gravy. Soggy bread just wasn’t appealing. Then I had his and I’ve been changed ever since. Now, this is not his recipe for biscuits and gravy, just a mere explanation of the power of comfort food done right. His college biscuits and gravy were loaded with bacon fat, and as vegetarians, that’s a no-go. These biscuits do the trick paired with vegetarian gravy (flour and milk) or slathered with butter.

Adapted from Budget Bytes 

Ingredients

  • 1 cup soy milk 
  • 2.5 cups whole wheat flour
  • 4 tsp baking powder
  • ¼ tsp baking soda 
  • ¾ tsp salt
  • 4 Tbsp cold butter
  1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. 
  2. Combine dry ingredients.
  3. Using your hands, mush the butter into the flour mixture until you get a dry sandy texture.
  4. Stir in the cold milk, the dough will be very wet and sticky at this point.
  5. Liberally flour the counter top and place dough and pat down until it is about ¾ inch thick. Using a cookie/biscuit cutter or, in my case a glass, cut the biscuits out of the dough. Place the cut biscuits onto a baking sheet lined with foil. 
  6. Bake for 15 minutes. 
  7. Drizzle with honey, slather with butter, or slop on some gravy and enjoy!

delicious crepes and a confession

This recipe is for when you wake up feeling a little frenchie. Which, I hope is often. I can’t get enough of crepes; they’re so versatile. I love doubling the recipe and don’t mind eating these for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a few days.

Recipe

  • 2 large eggs
  • 3/4 cup soy milk
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 cup wheat flour
  • 3 tablespoons coconut oil
  • oil for coating the pan
Combine ingredients in a blender or food processor.  Heat a small non-stick pan and oil. Pour a small amount of batter into the center, swirl to spread evenly. Cook until you can easily get a spatula under the crepe. (Approximately 30 seconds) and flip. Cook for another 10 seconds and remove. Wait a couple minutes to cool and dress as you’d like! 

My favorite crepe combos:

  • Trader Jo’s cookie butter
  • Fresh fruit (or frozen, warmed up with some sugar)
  • Peanut butter and banana 
  • Jam
  • Nutella and banana
  • Any fruit + whipped cream

A side note and confession: You may notice the addition of eggs in this recipe. You might say, “Wait! Aren’t you Vegan?!”. And, well, not any longer. We were going strong for a year; we had started veganisim the day after Christmas in 2012.  With the festivities of our wedding and the holidays this year, we started to crumble. I like to say we’re 80% vegan and 100% vegetarian. When we do buy dairy products we try to do so as conscious consumers. Checking labeling and buying local. (I’d like to say that labeling has a long ways to go in this country!). We still cook with our arsenal of vegan recipes and focus on being healthy. Someday we’ll renew our personal pledge, but until then we are enjoying eggs and the occasional artisan cheese.

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