am a fan

+ I am currently revamping our living room and when seeking inspiration, I landed into Anna Spiro's gorgeous book. I love that it chock-full of decorating advice, saturated colors, mixing patterns (my fave) and celebrates collecting things you love for your home. Homebody by Joanna Gaines is also a great resource for getting started!

+ Speaking of interior design inspiration, Karin Bohn is a new find and I love her youtube channel. She seems to be an incredible boss lady - running her own company in Vancouver and also such a likable person, sharing lots of tips and tricks. I appreciated her inside look on remodeling her own townhouse.

+ I am reading the Wizard of Oz for the first time to my boys and am discovering the fun of reading a familiar classic story aloud again. We are all loving it and I am doing my best at all the voices. Their aunt is taking them to the play in a few weeks and then we are going to Wicked next month (hip, hip!), so it'll be all kinds of magic this season. I love that they're still young and love this kind of simple activity with me.

+ My friends turned me onto Madewell earrings. They're trendy, adaptable and casual without breaking the bank. They also may have turned me on to clearance velvet shoes.

+ My two year and I love these interactive recipe board books. They are darling and beautifully illustrated. Claire loves all the tabs and pulls. We have the Cookies and Pancakes books in our library.

+ Clinique cleansing balm and Belif moisturizer have been my all-stars in rotation this year and never fail. Some beauty guru got me hooked on these too.

+ A dear friend introduced me to the scent Philosykos by Diptyque. It's absolutely unique and memorable. If you like grapefruit, you'll love their Oyedo scent and Do Son is freshly delightful too.

+ This cozy classic Pendleton blanket. My obsession with blankets is not going away anytime soon. This reminds me of my dad and Dan.

+ Mercury glass lamps. I have my eye on this one.

+ This TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert got me thinking about writing and creating. It's ten years old, yet still applicable. I completely loved and could relate easily to the following passage:

I had this encounter recently where I met the extraordinary American poet Ruth Stone, who's now in her 90s, but she's been a poet her entire life and she told me that when she was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the fields, and she said she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. And she said it was like a thunderous train of air. And it would come barreling down at her over the landscape. And she felt it coming, because it would shake the earth under her feet. She knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, and that was to, in her words, "run like hell." And she would run like hell to the house and she would be getting chased by this poem, and the whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. And other times she wouldn't be fast enough, so she'd be running and running, and she wouldn't get to the house and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it and she said it would continue on across the landscape, looking, as she put it "for another poet." And then there were these times -- this is the piece I never forgot -- she said that there were moments where she would almost miss it, right? So, she's running to the house and she's looking for the paper and the poem passes through her, and she grabs a pencil just as it's going through her, and then she said, it was like she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it. She would catch the poem by its tail, and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page. And in these instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact but backwards, from the last word to the first.