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Floradise

A lifestyle blog by Marette Flora

Easy & Affordable Ways to Update Your Home

Graham and I have been slowly making updates around the house in our limited time over the last three months. We would love to be able to tackle the kitchen renovation, but it’s not the right time for that yet. Instead we’ve been doing small upgrades wherever we can. Often these simple and cost-effective tasks completely transform a space. If you, too, are waiting on a major home renovation but want to make the house feel more like home, here are some possible fixes to make first:

  • Switch out the outlets and switch plates. Our house came with old, beige outlets and switches that looked dirty. Buying new white outlets and installing them ourselves (if you know how to do it safely) makes a room look more clean. We also upgraded the outlets next to our bed to have USB slots that make charger our phones and electronics easier. Game-changer!
  • Painting the walls and trim. Doing this yourself might be more work and will take more time than hiring someone, but it saves so much money and instantly gives any room a facelift. Our bedrooms were white, as are most of the walls in the house, and we’ve been having fun picking out new paint colors. So far we have finished painting two bedrooms. Painting the trim was such a time suck, but it looks a thousand times better in white than the natural wood color popular circa the 1990s.
It took several coats of primer and white paint to transform the trim in the bedrooms.
  • Remove old blinds and curtains and install new, more modern options. I absolutely hate the old style of mini blinds that are so pervasive in older homes. We bought 2.5-inch faux wood cordless blinds and installed them ourselves. They keep out a significant amount of light and look so much nicer. We haven’t installed new curtains yet because we are searching for the perfect picks, but that’s on the list.
  • Pressure wash the exterior. The house was empty for a couple of years before we moved in, so it needed to be cleaned inside and out. You can easily rent a pressure washer (or buy one) and it made an immediate impact on the outside of our home.
  • Remove outdated appliances or electronics. Our home came with an old radio attached to a kitchen cabinet. We removed that bad boy and gave ourselves more space. Perhaps you can wait on changing the refrigerator and range, if needed, but you can always upgrade things like the microwave for a lower cost.
  • Add plants! Nothing makes us feel more at home than new plants. They bring life to any space.

Are you planning any home updates? What would you like to do next to your home? Stay tuned for more home updates, including bedroom reveals when they are complete!

Related post:

Life Update: Our New Home

Life Update: Our New Home

 

We Bought A House

The past few months have been huge for us. In addition to welcoming Addi to our family, we also closed on our house last week!

Our apartment lease runs through July, so we can take our time to move. That’s nice because it’s been difficult finding the time to pack. Slowly but surely we will get it done, though.

We wanted a home that we could update to make our own. We need to do some upgrades to make the house what we want, but we are excited to put in the sweat equity. The kitchen needs to be completely redone, so that will be our first project. I’m also pumped to have more space, especially a garage and driveway! After three years of having to find a parking spot on the street in Chicago, I am thrilled to not have to do that anymore, even if it means moving just outside Chicago city limits. The neighborhood is perfect because it is next to a shopping center with some of my favorite retailers, plus a cycle bar and a yoga studio! It doesn’t get better than that!

Searching for a home in the Chicago area was a bit challenging because homes move quickly and often receive multiple offers if they are a good deal or updated. The home we ended up buying had been on the market for a long time and needs some work. The seller had turned down higher offers than ours due to an emotional attachment to the house, but I wrote her a letter assuring her that we wanted this to be our family’s home and we are excited to make memories there. We are so happy she accepted and we feel the negotiation process was fair.

Would you be interested in home renovation updates and a house tour? Let me know in the comments!

 

Non-Scary Movies to Watch in October | Fall Happenings

Raise your hand if you’re too afraid to watch horror movies. I refuse to see them. If scary films aren’t your idea of fun, either, try any of these fun options below during the month of October, or anytime! You have probably watched them all before, but sometimes you forget about films you watched as a kid. What would you add to this list?

  • Mean Girls (On October 3rd)
  • Hocus Pocus
  • Casper
  • It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
  • Nightmare Before Christmas
  • Harry Potter (any)
  • Practical Magic
  • Edward Scissorhands
  • Beetlejuice
  • Twilight (any)
  • Matilda
  • The Addams Family

October Happenings:

Among my three-year-old’s costume requests this year: Witch, pumpkin, robot, dinosaur, Princess Sophia, Elena of Avalor, wizard, and chicken. She has recently insisted on a dinosaur costume** the most, so that’s what I ordered. She looks adorable in it. It’s a bit long (She’s 3 feet, 1 inch tall.) on her, but we will make it work.
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We also recently bought some affordable fall decor items. I would love to look for more if we have time this weekend. A peek at our fall decor:

I won these shakers in giveaway on the Small Towns and City Lights blog last year.

 

I finally picked up the Sweater Weather candle I like.

 

The pumpkin candy holder is from Target, while the leaf table runner is from Ross.

 

We switched up our tablecloth for an autumn print we found at Ross.

 

Besides shopping for V’s Halloween costume and some home decor, we haven’t had a chance to do any traditional fall activities. I’m counting down the days until we can visit a pumpkin patch, go to the Chicago Botanic Garden or Morton Arboretum, and bake Halloween cookies. Last year I made the fall bucket list below and I find that it’s still relevant. What’s on your fall list?

Related post:

 

New Plants & Making Another Air Plant Garden

 

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I flew back from Phoenix on Friday night and didn’t hop into my own bed until 2 a.m., but somehow I was not completely wiped on Saturday. I took my time getting settled and then Graham proposed a trip to our favorite garden shop to buy a flower pot for our second bonsai tree. It’s been in its plastic packaging since we bought it, and that’s just unacceptable.

I asked Graham if we were just looking for pots when we walked into Gethsemane Garden Center, but he told me he couldn’t make any promises. Soon enough he was browsing the bonsai collection in the greenhouse and eyeing a plumeria tree.

Meanwhile, I picked up the essentials to create my own vertical air plant garden at home. I wanted to make another so I could hang it beside the one I made at my recent Dabble class with LeeLee’s Gardens.

Here’s what I bought to make my air plant garden:

Notes: You don’t really need two colors of moss, and I have a ton left over to make about 10 more gardens if I wanted to do so. I also now have the glue for other projects. If you happen to live in an area where air plants grow you wouldn’t have to pay the prices I did. Also, you could probably find them in other stores for less, but we like the quality of the plants we purchase at Gethsemane, and we notice plants just seem more expensive in Chicago than other places. You can also find a variety of sizes of cork bark online for different prices. I like that the piece I bought already had hardware to hang it, so I didn’t need to purchase that.

How I made my air plant gardens:

  1. Screw your hardware (screw eye hooks) onto the back of the cork bark. Space them equally and toward the outer top corners of the cork bark. You can use fishing line, twine or whatever other material you like to loop and tie through the hooks and use for hanging. You could also just screw the hardware on the top of the cork bark if you prefer to hang it that way. This is how my newest cork bark came.
  2. Pick your air plants based on what the cork bark looks like. It has nooks in various sizes and places, and those are natural spots to place air plants and moss. Design your layout of the plants first. I like having a large air plant, a medium size one and one to three small ones.
  3. Decide where you want to place moss and other decoration. You can stick the moss in with or without glue. (Tweezers or a pointy object can help stick the moss on.) In class I didn’t use glue, but this time I decided to put a tiny bit of glue down first before glueing the moss on.
  4. Place glue on the bottom of the air plant and place the air plant onto the cork bark/moss. Repeat with the rest of your air plants.
  5. Leave it resting on a flat surface and wait about 12 hours for it to dry.
  6. Hang and enjoy!

We repotted the bonsai into our new addition, and it looks beautiful! We actually saved money buying the bonsai apart from the pot. Already potted bonsai trees can be anywhere from $50-350 or more depending on the size and type.

 

Other than that, we bought tiny foliage for about $3 to replace the only one we have ever lost from this shop. We also picked up some succulents from both Gethsemane and Lowe’s recently. We have yet to place some of these together in a pot, but garden planning is a process!

 

 

How we save money on plants at Lowe’s:

This is probably not a secret to anyone, but we pick up plants that are on clearance because they are struggling and bring them back to life. We have done this many times. Sometimes all it takes is placing them under a grow light or in the actual sun. Typically we get these for $1 each to $5 if they come in a nicer pot.

 

All of these are from Lowe’s except the orange celosias, which were about $3.49 for a six-pack at Gethsemane.
Do you enjoy gardening? How are your plants doing?

Bedroom Tour

** This post contains affiliate links to products I have in my home. I make a small commission for purchases through these links. 

I don’t think I will ever be done decorating our bedroom. It’s constantly evolving. But in the spirit of being more open, I’m sharing just about as personal a space as it gets in all its imperfect glory.

We have lived in an apartment, which has been an adjustment, for the past two years. We previously lived in a condo that we still own, so we could do whatever we wanted to it. Sadly, we don’t own this place we live in now and can’t change things we’re not entirely pleased with. But we make it work. I think of our bedroom as a relaxing place, and that’s ultimately the goal.

If you’re curious, here’s how our bedroom room is set up:

Some background: This bedroom is not in what was designed to be the master bedroom. We made this room our bedroom because it has a gas fireplace and we knew Victoria would be joining us. We didn’t want to have a fireplace in a toddler’s room for safety reasons.

The room has two sets of French doors. Our bed has storage underneath, which we use for spare bedding and pillows. (It is on an angle because behind it is a radiator and because it gives us more room than other configurations.) Above the bed is a canvas of a photo we took at Arches National Park. We typically search Groupon for canvas print deals like this.

Before Victoria came to live with us, my workspace was in the second bedroom. Now that she has taken over that bedroom, my desk is in our bedroom because we lack a better place to put it. There’s simply not enough room to put it in the living room or the hallway. But it’s actually working out well.

On the small sliver of wall next to my desk is a postcard/photo/trinket display I found on Marshalls. It holds special postcards, souvenirs and stamps. On my simple white desk I typically keep both my work and personal laptops, a box full of mementos, a couple of photos, my planner, a notebook and “The 52 Lists Project” book that I’m currently working through.

Race medal holder is from Etsy.

Above my desk is my race medal holder, which I found on Etsy. Next to my desk is a printer stand that can hold two printers: one for work and one for photos.

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I added this small rug to protect the wood floors from my chair’s wheels. I plan to get a better one. This also doubles as a photo backdrop

In the opposite corner we have our white Ikea dresser, 80 percent of which holds Graham’s clothing. 

Next to it is a lamp with shelves that hold our router (hidden behind a photo), our home phone (which we need for the apartment gate) and my work phone. Unfortunately these are things we need and can’t store elsewhere because a quirk of our 100-year-old building is that the outlets and plugs are only in specific places. The opposite side of the room is all windows, where I like to place plants and photo frames. We don’t have nightstands because we have no need for them. I do have a small stool that was given to me by my in laws that I place my phone on when I sleep.

On top of the dresser we have tiny turtles we collect on our travels. We also have two Homesick candles that were given to us by my best friend. They smell like Arizona and Kentucky! We also have a sketch of our dog Taylor, who died in January. This was a gift from a friend. We don’t have the perfect frame for it yet, but when we do this precious image will have a new home. In front of that is a paw print that was included in the package when we had Taylor cremated.  Behind that Taylor sketch is a jewelry holder we bought in Costa Rica. (We were assured it was sustainably sourced wood.) Above that is a canvas of a photo I took in Hawaii.

To the left of the trinkets is my accessory holder. I also hold my rings and earrings in one of the turtles. As you can see, I don’t wear earrings often. I do like necklaces, though. I also have an amethyst given to me by one of my yoga teachers at our teacher-training graduation.

In the next corner we have our small closet. Luckily, Graham and I don’t have a ton of clothing. I am constantly donating and selling clothes. Inside, I hang hats on these hooks to save space.

That same corner has a print by Anastasia Mak Art. We bought this print at a local arts fest, but you can also find Anastasia Mak prints on Etsy. I want to get more prints to hang above and below this one.

In between my desk area and the bed is a fireplace. On top of it I have a diffuser given to me by my in-laws. Above it hangs a canvas of us with Taylor. This is a recent addition, because we miss her so much.

And that’s about it! A small wall space next to the closet holds Graham’s diploma, but I’m not showing that. (My diploma is at my mom’s house.)

Thanks for stopping by our humble abode. Let me know if you’d like to see tours of other rooms in our apartment. Also, any tips for living in a small space are appreciated!

Phoenix Travel: Camby Hotel

Last week was yet another whirlwind. In my life, weeks are either super slow or an avalanche — there is no in between. On Wednesday night Graham and I went to his work holiday party. At 4 a.m. the next morning I was on my way to Midway Airport to travel to Phoenix for work and for my holiday party. I landed in Phoenix about 9 a.m., changed into Phoenix-weather appropriate clothing and worked a full day in the office. I couldn’t keep my eyes open at this point, so I returned to my hotel room that evening for one glorious night of uninterrupted sleep, a rare occurrence in my life as a new mom.

My blissful sleep was at the Camby Hotel in the Biltmore area of Phoenix. The best way I can describe the Camby is quirky. I’ll let the photos do the talking:

I loved the chandeliers throughout the evening and lobby. 

This neon mixed media saguaro was my favorite. 
The artwork/light in my hotel room was my favorite.

The bathroom was well appointed.


After coming home to one of the worst weekends I’ve had lately. I wish I were still at the Camby right now! What’s the best or quirkiest hotel you’ve stayed in? Share in the comments below!

Family Traditions & Simple, Affordable Christmas Decor

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Now that there’s a little one in our household it’s time to form new traditions to go along with our established ones. (In case you missed it, Graham and I took in my niece Victoria and the adoption will go through in a few months.) So far our established traditions are these:
  • Cookie Day. Graham initiated me into this tradition the second year we were together. His side of the family gets together one day in December to bake dozens and dozens of cookies. I mean A LOT of cookies. I am so excited to introduce Victoria to this tradition next weekend.
  • Collecting ornaments throughout the year. Graham and I make sure to buy an ornament (or something that can be used as an ornament) from everywhere we visit. It’s a way to make our souvenirs more meaningful and a way to remind ourselves of our travels and adventures every Christmas season. As we hang each ornament, we say, “Remember this (travel memory)?” It makes putting up the tree more fun.
  • Sending holiday cards to family and friends. We, too, love ordering holiday cards with our favorite photos from the year. It’s a common but amazing tradition that I get excited about doing.
  • Giving back either through volunteering, donating, or buying gifts for people in need. This year we chose to buy gifts for two children in need. We’ve also donated to several causes we care about recently. We might buy more gifts, too! I haven’t volunteered as much as I wanted this year, but it’s something I want to do more of as a family as Victoria grows up.
  • Decorating together. Our holiday decor is affordable, bright and cheerful. We also like to make our decor personal: Our ornaments are trinkets we collect throughout the year at places we visit and we display loved ones’ Christmas cards. I try to keep our spending on Christmas decor minimal because I’d rather spend money on experiences or gifts. 
A glimpse of our home:

I included where we bought our decorations.

These red and green glitter clips were $1 each for a pack of six at Target.
We bought the garland at Lowe’s (I think) and I am pretty sure these red bows are from the dollar store.

We bought this ornament and another similar one in Maui.

This ornament was a gift from my sister-in-law in 2014.

This glass vase and small ornaments were $1 each at a dollar store. The candy cane table runner was $5 at Target.
Pine cones and ornaments from Wal-Mart. We previously decorated with real pine cones before moving to Chicago.
We bought this ornament at Tonto National Monument in 2013.

This baked goods box is in the dollar bins at Target. This red tree skirt is from Wayfair for $18.99 (and I got free shipping).
I am not sure what new traditions we will create together as a family of three, but I can’t wait to find out. What are your holiday traditions?

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Gifts for Bloggers

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Looking ahead to the holidays can take your mind off anything that ails you. The season inspires an urge to give to those you love — and even to strangers. We could all use more love. Last year I enjoyed participating in a blogger Secret Santa gift exchange, and I hope to do it again this year. I didn’t know anything about my blogger, but the exchange was an opportunity to check out a new blog and find adorable gifts for its author. This year I’ve come up with six blogger gift ideas for the blog boss in your life. What would you add to this list?

  • Cute camera bag or purse. I’m thinking bags that are photo worthy to be both practical and fashionable.
  • A blogger rug or unique background to use for Instagram posts and blog flat lays. Yes, the white rug is ubiquitous, but it works. It helps products stand out in photos.
  • Notebooks and planners to make lists, brainstorm ideas, plan posts and use in photos.
  • Photo-ready candles to burn in the background of YouTube videos, to use as props or to burn while blogging to enhance the ambiance.
  • External hard drive if your blogger doesn’t already have one. All those photos, videos and graphics take up valuable space on your computer. It’s smart and imperative to back up all of that hard work! I currently use this one by Toshiba.
  • Photography, photo editing or video editing classes so the blogger can improve his or her skills and look more professional. Blog webinars are helpful as well!
What are you getting for the blogger in your life? Share your ideas in the comments!

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