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.

faux fireplace progress

Our fireplace mantel is up and finished (for now). We completed it just in time for the holidays and we were so happy to have a place to hang our stockings. We painted it with an oil-based paint (for durability) and finished the interior with black chalkboard paint. I eventually want to do a stacked-wood-look, but for now I’m happy. In the mood lighting of our Christmas party a few even thought it was real. Win.

Because the wall we put it on is the main walking path in the home, we couldn’t afford to push it out from the wall too far (which would have really given it a “real” fireplace feel). But we were able to afford a few inches. So we cut a 2×4 in half and stuck the pieces behind it, if we would have done any more we would have needed to find another top piece!.

What do you think? It’s styled in a gold motif, left over from the holidays. I can’t wait to play around with styling it for spring. I love the huge the mirror and how it shows off the tall ceilings, but am excited to change it up. 

10 dresses for valentine’s day

It’s one month until my absolute favorite holiday of the year: Valentine’s Day. What would a special day be without a special dress? I love finding the just-right feminine dress that says romance and candlelit dinners. For white ones, I love bright red accessories to pull it all together. Below are just a few of my favorites!

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

hello 2014!

image via

2013 was a big year for us. We moved in to our home after months and months of renovating, got married and expanded our family, in short it was fantastic. While we don’t have anything major planned for 2014, I’m hoping for a few subtle shifts. I want to get into the full groove of married life, work on finding a good balance between friends and spouse, home and travel, and work and fun. I’ve played around with our five year plan and I think it’s time to think about it seriously. Time is the one thing we can never get back, and I want to use it wisely and intentionally. Here are a few of our New Year’s resolutions (yep, jumping on that bandwagon).

1. Make moves for a career change. Billy has a great union job that gets him pretty good money, loads of overtime and access to discounted natural foods (super handy for poor vegans), but he works a lot, and with opposite work hours we don’t see much of each other during the week. It majorly sucks since we kind of like each seeing each other. 
2. Blog more, blog better. I’m sad at how few renovating posts I accomplished. This year I hope to A. be more timely blogging about projects we’re doing, and B revisit the bigger projects we did to the house i.e. laying out the kitchen, stretching renovating dollars (hint: DIY) and tricks to drywalling. 
3. Be more productive: It’s amazing how organized a closet can get in two hours, how quickly a backsplash can go up and how clean a kitchen can get in an evening. For 2014 there will be far less watching of 90s sitcom reruns (my guilty pleasure) more doing.

Have you made any goals for this year? I’d love to hear them! 

happy holidays

card design here from paperless post

Christmas is finally (almost) here. We have some final gift wrapping and egg nog drinking to do, and we’re so excited for some quality time with our families. We had such a wonderful year. We moved into our new house after about nine months of huge DIY renovations. It was the biggest project ever, and it was just awesome. I hope and plan to do more house posts in the new year with some of the bigger projects we did, like drywalling our entire house, raising our house to level it, changing floor plans and of course how not to get overwhelmed by all of it. We also planned and had the most amazing wedding ever. It is a day I’ll cherish. But with two huge life events behind us, we’re looking toward the future. I hope and wish you all have the most spectacular of holidays! We’ll see you in the new year!

a pause in the season

Today it is not about Christmas, gifts, shopping or decorating. Today is about my best friend and partner in life. So we will let the season pause and focus on those closest to us. To cherish, appreciate and celebrate. Happy Birthday, Billy!

november instagrams

Before the first week of December gets away from us – here are a few of our November instagrams! What a fun way to put your month in perspective! We had fun going on walks with the dog and discovering new-to-us restaurants in town!

SUBSCRIBE

FAVORITES

PINTEREST