Florida Day Trips: Florida Southern College

I love Florida Southern College in Lakeland for sentimental reasons... it's my (awesome) alma mater! Aside from being an academic institution though, it also makes a great day trip for architecture and photography buffs.  An architectural treasure right here in central Florida, The Florida Southern campus is the largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright's work.  It was even named the nation's "Most Beautiful Campus" by the Princeton Review!

Annie Pheiffer Chapel

A Marsala Wedding

A few weeks ago, Pantone announced that its Color of the Year 2015 was Marsala, a deep red color.  I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty horrified when I saw the choice.  To me, it conjures mental images of dried blood and raw meat.  Considering Pantone's pick usually heavily influences wedding colors for the year, it left me thinking, eww... crime scene wedding theme, anyone?  As I've browsed Pinterest though, I've seen it used in some really pretty ways, which brings me to Marsala wedding inspiration!  I still wouldn't necessarily pick it for my own wedding, but it looks like it could be a pretty year after all! (And if not, I'll take one of those Red Wine Slushies with Chocolate Whipped Cream to make myself feel better.)

Check out my Marsala Wedding Inspiration Pinterest page for sources.

-Robin

New Year, New Look

I can't believe it's 2015 already!  We had a great Christmas, but I'm ready to get back into the swing of things and start working towards new goals for the new year.  As I mentioned briefly last week, it took most of December to get a new look for the blog, but while it may have taken a little longer than I originally hoped, I'm super excited that it is debuting for the new year.

My goals for the new year mostly focus around continuing to grow the blog, especially through better, more targeted use of social media.  I even had the crazy idea of (finally) going back to grad school to get an MBA in Marketing, so I can learn to do this the really, really legit way and maybe be able to help other small businesses along the way.  We'll see, haha.

It's been almost exactly a year since I officially debuted my blog on Facebook with a feature of a wedding that I'd worked on.  I've come along away since then, but there's still a ton of room to grow. I'm excited for lots of new content this year, including more Shop Local features, more Florida Day Trips (super excited for that one, the research is fun!), more How To projects, and as always, lots of wedding and home fun.  

So to start the new year out with some new content, in addition to the new look, I give you... house photos!  We've worked really hard to learn how to use our new camera and while we're still not pros, we've gotten a lot better.  I still have a lot more to take, but here are some of the living room!

I'm happy to have some photos that could actually pass as 'afters'... there are still some 'befores' and 'durings'  on my house tour page.

Happy New Year!  Anyone else have any goals (maybe instead of resolutions per se) for the new year?

-Robin

The irony of being a new blogger

Blogging can be weird.  If you're writing about a particular subject matter (decorating/cooking/beauty/whatever else you can think of), you want to at least kind of seem like an authority.  No one's going to want to read your blog if you have no idea what you're talking about.  The ironic thing is that most of us in the hoards of eager new bloggers have no idea what we're doing.  So we're constantly trying to research and learn to do it better and for the most part, there's always a huge learning curve.

I'm certainly no different.  I've been struggling for a year with the look of my blog.  As a designer myself, I thought that I could make the blog look good on my own, without outside help.  I'm no graphic designer though and I realized that that was not the case.  I eventually realized that blog templates are readily available, especially on my old standby, Etsy.  (I don't know why it sometimes takes me so long to find stuff like this, but I digress...)  So I enlisted the help of Leanne from Brand Me Beautiful to help me get a new look.  

With the craziness of the holidays and a hospital stay on her part (yikes), it wasn't quite the quick fix that I thought it would be, but it's all up and running now and I'm so excited to finally have a nice looking blog.

Check back in the new year for lots of new content on my pretty new blog!

Under Construction

If you've visited the blog in the last few days, you've probably noticed that things are looking a little wonky.  I just got an awesome new template (and I'm pretty excited about it), but we're still working out some formatting issues.  I'll be back up and running with an awesome new look soon!

Customizing and Protecting Your Phone with Red Bubble

When B got his iPhone a few months ago, he started hunting for a fun case for it.  After much searching, he turned to Red Bubble and finally settled on a design featuring the wallpaper from his beloved Haunted Mansion.  Red Bubble is an awesome website that allows you to order a variety of items, like mugs, phone cases, and t-shirts featuring designs from users.

Now it's my turn to get a new phone (which is replacing my surprisingly long-lasting cracked screen monstrosity). It's really easy to get sucked in to all the choices on Red Bubble and search through designs forever.  I originally wanted this design from Scott Naismith, but because cost varies by design, I'm balking at the cost....

5 Tips for Surviving Holiday Blues

I loved Christmas growing up, but as an adult with anxiety and a theme park career, the luster has worn off.  It's only the beginning of December and I can already feel the panic mounting, as my to do list grows.  So in response to my growing feeling of doom, I've compiled some tips for dealing with the holiday blues!

Guide to: My (Thrifty) Thanksgiving/Holiday Table Setting

As I was writing this post, I surprised by a loud popping noise.  It was my laptop charger and one of the wires had almost completely severed.  Oops.  Lucky for me B could fix it, but I was still computer-less for a few days.  So, here is my much delayed Thanksgiving post...

Thanksgiving was at my house this year.  Cooking isn't really my strong suit, so lucky for me, my parents brought most of the food and B made a pie, so all I really had to do was clean the house and try to make it home from work.  For my contribution, I really wanted to try to make the table look nice.  My house is (really) small, so the only place large enough for all of us to eat is in the living room.  We cleared the coffee table out of the way and I set up one of B's long sewing tables in its place.  Of course, I looked on Pinterest to try to get some decorating ideas.