Kitchen Table Love

A few weeks ago I talked about my love of kitchens and what I am looking for and looking forward to in my next kitchen. So today I want to talk about some kitchen tables I am really loving the look of. These ideas are all gorgeous and I really like the idea of having something along these styles. 

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I really like how this is a built in, I think this is great for a big family and the bench itself is gorgeous. This is great for a little kitchen nook and you could have a ton of storage under the bench seats.

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The bench on this table is super cool. I really like how it has all the cushion and the back support. This would be great for a family without small children and a family like mine who wants to sit and visit for several hours at the table.

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The color of this table and the gorgeous wood grain is very impressive on this table. I really like how this looks and the color scheme that is in this room works really well with the table color. 

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I am a big fan of the top of furniture being wood grain and then the bottom being painted. I really like this table and I think it would go well in just about any home. The white is very neutral and the top of the table is a great color. 

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This table like the one above also has a different colored bottom base. I think the black is a good neutral and it goes well with the side table and the chalkboard sign on the wall. This is a very neutral table as well and it looks really great with the decor in this room.

There are so many choices, which table do you like best?

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Wedding Wednesday- How About That Party

When you are attending a traditional wedding you expect to go to the ceremony, maybe a cocktail hour, and then a reception. This reception generally serves a meal and has cake and drinks for all to enjoy. Well at these receptions people tend to get very lavish on their table decorations. The party is much more about how things look and what the theme of the party is, this is where things can get out of hand. So today I'm going to share with you some gorgeous and slightly elaborate reception tables.

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I really love the red in this reception, I know that it must have been very well planned but I think that it was very well done. I also like how they have the clear vases and the candles with different height center pieces that give you lots of depth and interest in the table. 

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These reception tables scream garden party to me. This look is very classic and elegant, I like the small centerpiece of roses and how every chair has a back cover. This is a very traditional wedding set up which is always beautiful and sophisticated.

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Let me be honest, the lights are what captured my attention and I would have loved to see this in real life. I have no doubt this looked like a fairy tail. I also like how the flower center pieces are long and narrow but also short, this gives plenty of space to mingle with your table mates and to see everyone. 

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Once again I love the lights in this reception, it looks like a woodland dream you would find in Neverland. I really like the simplicity of the table piece. The wood with the tin cans and flowers on them are perfect with the lights and other gorgeous decorations. Anything more would have been too much, this turned out quite lovely. 

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I really love the actual tables at this reception. I also like the combination of candles, greenery, flowers, and vases. They work well together and compliment the gorgeous table tops extremely well. This is perfect for country club or vineyard wedding. I think this was very well done and unexpected for a wedding reception.

If you are just joining Wedding Wednesday catch up on every week here. 

Which one is your favorite? What kind of center pieces do you like for weddings?

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Coastal Charm

The House That Built Me

Everyone has that place they think of when they remember their childhood and growing up. We all picture in our minds the backyards we played in, the places we spent our summers, where Christmas and Thanksgiving was and all the big family things we did. In my mind, when I picture my childhood and growing up I can clearly see a few different places, both of my grandparents house, my mom's house, my dad's house, a few friends houses that we lived in as little girls going back and forth. We all have those places that live in our memory, the one's that are a little fuzzy around the edges because it was so long ago and it seems like a completely different world now.

Well there is one house in my mind that stood out from the rest, it was the house that built me. This house has been in my family for 40 years, my grandparents used to live there and when I was around 12 my mom bought it from them and we moved there. So this house has memories from when I was a little girl playing with my cousins in the backyard at grandma and papa's to my teenage years of creating a giant slip-and-slide in the backyard with a group of friends.

However, this house is leaving my family tree. My mom is selling this home and moving to another smaller house that will be better for just her, which my whole family understands and supports. But, I'm having a few mixed emotions about this so I thought I would take a note from Miranda Lambert and share some things about the house that built me.

1. To the next girl who lives in the front room, the windows are nailed shut from my Papa. (my aunt's used to sneak out) But the windows in the living room are the perfect height to launch your sister through if you get locked out.

2. My favorite horse is buried in the pasture behind the barn, she was so good and loyal to me and I still have memories of riding her bareback in the pasture, take good care of our land please. Many animals that we loved spent their lives there and we owe it to them.

3. That ramp on the front porch is mine, I hope you never have any reason to put it to use. It was put there with love from that sweet town when I was 17 and needed it to come home from the hospital.

4. The cement slab behind the garage, it used to be a chicken coop. Then it was a play house for us as little one's until my Papa tore it down because he thought it wasn't safe.

5. Out in the back of the pasture, you'll find a make shift play house just beyond the fence. There is a tree branch we knocked down to cross the river and you can live like Huck Finn out there for a day.

6. When you venture on the train tracks make sure you can't see one from either way. Don't tell your parents but if you put a penny on the train tracks after a train goes by it will be smashed really neat.

7. If you walk those same tracks far enough north you can sneak into the rodeo arena from the back but you have to go through a lot of brush to get there. But be ware of any hobos on the tracks.

8. The backyard is a great place to have a campfire with friends and spend your summer nights making s'mores and telling stories, that's how I spent every night the summer before my senior year.

9. The backyard is also the perfect place for a giant slip and slide, just make sure to put inflatables at the end or you will hit the barn. P.S. the well water will be COLD but it is a lot of fun.

10. There are secret stories in the walls and floors from years of love, laughter, tears, and heartbreak. I hope that you find yourself in that house like I did, because it is the house that built me.

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Making Your Own Wedding Bouquets

As I've talked about on Wedding Wednesday's  it is easy to let your budget get out of control when you are planning your wedding. So in order to save some major money on the wedding I decided to make all of the bouquets and boutonniere's for the wedding. This has saved us a HUGE chunk of change to spend in other areas of the wedding now. So I'm going to share with you my easy way to make your own wedding bouquets.  

The first thing I did was go to a wonderful place called Basket Market in Oklahoma City. Now what is this wonderful place you ask, well it's like a wholesale hobby lobby. That's right, its wholesale hobby lobby, they sell hobby lobby things in bulk. So it is PERFECT for making a ton of different things for your wedding. I also watched their monthly deals to find out when the bulk box flowers were on sale and that's when I bought our flowers. 

The box flowers look like the above flowers. They are each single stem flowers that come in boxes of 6-12 stems. They have almost every kind of flower in every color, so it made things very simple when I was trying to decide on what kind and type of flowers I wanted. And in case you were wondering yes I was that extremely annoying person who would pull out a few stems of each box and bunch them together to try and find the right flowers for my bouquets. 

Each flower stem had 3 or 4 leaves attached so I made sure to strip the stems bare. This made it a thousand times easier when I was bunching them together. I also trimmed the stems all as close to the same length before I started bunching them together. If you have wire cutters that will make this process a lot easier. I tried to make sure my bouquet base was long enough to comfortably hold with both of my hands, this will be up to the preference of the bouquet holder. 

After I have done this will all of my flowers for the bouquet I then spent approximately 20-60 minutes trying to decide exactly how I wanted the bouquet arranged. I just did this with my hands, there are a million tips to use rubber bands, or floral tape, I used my hands. If you try those other options like I did originally you end up getting annoyed because it doesn't stay how you want it just right. 

Now the best part about these stems is that they have metal wires in them you can bend to make your bouquet lay right. This helps with the flowers position and gives you the ability to have your OCD make the flowers perfect.  

My next step was putting all of the stems together. Why yes, I did use duck tape. This was possibly the best idea I had come up with so far. I have zero fear that my flowers will fall apart or get damaged with my duck tape method. I know they will be secure and exactly how I want with the duck tape around the stems. 

I did add so leaves from the stems around the bottom of my bouquet just to add some more depth and interest. I did the duck tape around all of the bare stems first and then I did small pieces of tape on each leaf piece. This gave me the ability to pull them off and rearrange them until they were how I wanted. Then I did a couple (5 times) of duck tape around the top to make sure they were all secure. 

After the duck tape I wanted to cover my stems. So I got some ribbon that I had picked out and used Glue Dots to attach them to the base of the bouquet. I put several (as many as possible) glue dots on the actual base of the bouquet as well as several on the ribbon and made sure to overlap the ribbon a little over each strand. This ensured that no duck tape was seen and it made almost every single row of ribbon attached with glue dots. I used several dots at the top and double looped around the top and did the same at the bottom of the bouquet. 

As you can see at the bottom of the bouquet the ribbon is just attached with invisible glue dots. I also made sure to burn the end of my ribbon so that it wouldn't fray. I covered all the way to the very edge of the stems because they were hideous after being trimmed. 

And this is the final product of my wedding bouquet. I really love peonies and blue and yellow are our colors. The bridesmaids will be wearing blue dresses so I wanted to incorporate the blue and yellow somehow in my bouquet. I really like the way the peonies and garden roses look together and it seemed like the perfect bouquet to carry down the isle. 

I followed the exact same steps for the bridesmaid bouquets. They were actually a lot easier because they were so much smaller. This made it much easier to keep a good hold on the flowers. 

My wonderful flower storage system until the wedding, I found a box and poked holes big enough for the base of the flowers to fit through. This will keep the flowers from being smashed and loosing their shape before the big day. It also makes things really easy when you are transporting things. 

There is my simply tutorial on how to make your own wedding flowers. What do you think of my bouquet strategy? Did you make your own bouquet or have a florist make one for you? 

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Coastal Charm 
Home Stories A to Z

Peaks, Pits, Praises, and Prayers

This week we have been preparing for a garage sale and working on wedding things. We are going to try and get our invitations out on Monday and my goal is to have all of the flowers, my garter, and some decor for the wedding finished by the end of the week. So far I have the flowers all finished and will be posting a DIY Wedding Bouquet post next week. We are getting really close to the wedding and moving and changing everything and its starting to get a little crazy around here.

Sneak peak of the DIY Wedding bouquets I will be posting about!


Peaks- We have gotten so much accomplished this week! We are packing up the house, working on wedding stuff, and getting ready for a garage sale bonanza. I am so proud of all we have gotten done though, its been a very productive week.

Pits- Everything is getting boxed up and it  makes our house look less like a home and more like a boring rental. It's slightly depressing to go home to a place that doesn't look like your home but it will be so nice when everything is ready to move and we don't have to worry about last minute packing.

Praises- We had AMAZING wedding showers the last two weekends and got so many wonderful things from our friends and families. We are definitely beyond blessed with love and support.

At one of our showers!

Prayers- That Jarr does good on his finals and doesn't stress too much about everything. That our garage sale goes well and we can get rid of a lot of our things we don't need anymore. That the move and new transition goes well and we can all stay stress free and as calm as possible.

What are your Peaks, Pits, Praises, and Prayers for the week?

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Sleeping Oasis

I don't know about you but one of the most important room in my house is where the snoozing is going on. I like comfortable bedrooms with relaxing colors that will make it easy for me to take a nice long sleep in. I am a big fan of sleeping and as many who tell you will know if I could take a nap everyday I would. So I have found some gorgeous bedrooms that I am majorly lusting over. I would love to have some of these gorgeous rooms at my future house. Maybe I could convince one of these lovely room creators to come decorate my house? Maybe?

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Now I really love this room, the gorgeous floors, that amazing rug and the white bedding. Not to mention the candles and the perfect lamps on the night stands. BUT in my house let me tell you how this would go, muddy paws (aka Remy) would come and run all over that rug and jump on the bed and roll around, turning them both a lovely shade of mud brown. The candles on the floor, Eli would totally try to play with the flame and catch himself on fire. IF I could manage to keep Eli off of the night stand the lamps also might survive.

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Now this is the kind of bedroom girls dream about. That view, man I would love to have that view every day. I really love the benches at the end of this bed also, how cute are those! I am also a huge fan of the curtains because lets be real, who wants light shining in on them during their precious sleep time? Not this girl, heck no that just ticks me off. Again I am a fan of the white bedding but I just don't know if I'm brave enough for it yet.

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I look at this room and one word comes to mind, COZY. Now this bedding I think I could get away with. It is a nice shade of tan that would work well with muddy paws. I really like her night stands also. The mirrored sides is really neat and I would love to have a piece like that in my room.

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I am really digging this headboard. I don't think I would use black like they have but the tuffs, man I could definitely get down with that. I also like this bench and how it could be used for storage, I don't think you can ever have enough storage. And once again I am loving that they have curtains up.

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I really like the colors in this room, I don't think I would pick those darker shades to put on walls but I really like it here. I never would have thought this would work so well together. I also LOVE the throw blanket on this bed, I am a HUGE fan of big knit blankets like this, my future MIL has one and I snatch it every time we go to their house. I really like how this room has a variety of textures, the sparkle pillows, the throw, the comforter, and the headboard all are different but go together.

What do you like to have in your snooze zone? What kinds of colors do you think work well in bedrooms?

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Wedding Wednesday- Isle Decorations

If you are new to our Wedding Wednesday update make sure to check out the other posts about bouquets, the dress, choosing colors, location of love, wedding favors, and cakes. I am trying to cover everything that has come up for me but if there is something specific you would like to hear about please let me know!

This week I am talking about isle decorations, the thing I have learned about this is you can make this part of your wedding  as cost effective or as expensive as you want. There are affordable ways to decorate your isle while still making a statement. Some of these are budget friendly while some of these could cost a bit more then some brides would like to spend. I think there are ways to still have the wedding of your dreams while doing things within your budget.

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I really like the idea of some form of bow in your color scheme on the end of every other row of chairs. This is perfect for an outdoor wedding with a gorgeous view. You don't want anything that will take away from the view but you still want something that will add a little extra. I also really like how at the top of these bows they have added a little bit of babies breath, it is the perfect touch.

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I'm not going to lie, I LOVE lanterns. I like them in my house, in my wedding, in my life. I am a huge fan of the lantern but, this could get very expensive. I like how they have spaced these though so you don't have to use near as many. I also like how they have the touch of flowers at the top of the pew, this gives a good pop of color and helps break up the dark of the pew and the floor. 

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Now this is a simpler version of the previous isle decorations. I like how they have the flowers with a longer ribbon on the pew ends and the flowers on the ground lining the isle. I think this is a really good idea for a church that may or may not have some ugly carpet that you are trying to hide. 

The link to this image was not available anymore, if you know who should receive credit please let me know! 

I really like the idea of the tree stump with some wild flowers in a vase on top of it. The colors and textures in this are perfect for an outdoor wedding. The hardest part of this would be finding the tree stumps. The flowers are gorgeous though and I really like the different colors they have incorporated here. 

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Here is another version of the flowers and candles. I like how the flowers are a different color then the candles here and I really like how they have three different sizes of candles to add some depth to this display. I think that this is a really pretty idea and would be great at a night wedding. It would really high light the romantic side.

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And just for kicks here is one more different version of the lantern and flowers. I like how it looks like the flowers have fallen out of the lanterns here. I think this is very pretty and would look good indoor or outdoor.


What kind of isle decorations do you like for weddings? Are you a flower and lanterns person?

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Coastal Charm 

Honesty is The Best Policy

I've been sharing my healthy living journey with you and so far I've talked about what I want to do here, I've talked about getting physical, and I've talked about how much hydration matters. So today I'm going to get real with you about how my side of the healthy living journey is going. I'm going to be honest guys, it's really hard. Some days when I get home late from work and Jarr is just getting home from school I don't want to cook and I definitely don't want to go work out. So, we don't. I know that's terrible but this is about a lifestyle change. So ultimately we try and be good everyday but some days its just not going to happen.

So instead we start again the next day and try to be better. Sometimes a girl just needs mashed potatoes for dinner so that's what I make with chicken and I make sure I eat a salad with it. Then we take Remy for an hour long walk and I don't let myself feel bad about eating mashed potatoes.

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So I'm going to share with you some inspiration that I need and I'm sure will help you also. I'm going to be honest here, the struggle is real to make a lifestyle change. So we are trying to make dinner every night and to at least take Remy for a walk every day. Some days this doesn't happen but we are pretty good 80% of the time.

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There are no excuses to not be healthy, so straight up, I'm lazy. If I've had a hard day at work I just want to go home, lay on my couch, and not make dinner. I don't think there is anything wrong with that if it isn't every day of my life. I think that one day a week that's okay. I'll never be a Victoria Secret model or probably look like the girls in these inspiration photos but I will be a healthier version of myself and that's what matters to me.

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This is key for me, I am proving people wrong. Some people say that I need to lose weight but they are wrong, I don't need to lose weight. I am beautiful at any size, we all are. But if I want to be healthier that is my choice and I can do it without dieting and killing myself at the gym. I can make myself a better version of me by doing things at my own pace and on my own time. It will take longer but that's the difference in a lifestyle change and in a fad diet.

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That's the thing, I don't let one day ruin my week. If I have a day where I cheat and I eat bad and we might not work out then I start over the next day. This isn't ideal but that's how life works. I refuse to give up being healthy because I decide I want a cheeseburger for dinner one night. It's okay to not eat clean and healthy every single meal and you can still make a lifestyle change.

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So I'm still working on making a healthier version of myself but I'm doing it on my own terms. How is the healthy living going for you? Do you give yourself a break or are you hard core 24/7?

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