Plant Friends

Like literally every other girl on the Internet, I've jumped on the succulent bandwagon. Not that I don't love to have fresh flowers and other plants around me, but succulents are definitely a more low maintenance alternative for those of us who may not have the greenest of thumbs.

For mother's day this year, my family went on a garden tour in East Sacramento and one of the stops was a bazaar of sorts where they were selling succulents 4 for $10. My sister and I each got two and while she planted hers right away, I was a little bit lazier and couldn't decide what I wanted to do with mine. Until one day I saw these Fossil watch tins sitting on the shelves over my desk, unused and empty and got a little inspired. They're stupid easy to plant and I think that they look so cute planted in the printed tins, too!

I'm out of watch tins now, but I have some tea tins that I think are going to house the next few succulents I add to my collection. The best part is they're kind of a middle of the road size so they're good for smaller plants, giving them room to expand, but they'll be super east to transplant into a larger pot when they get to that spot as well.

My Room, One Corner at a Time: The Gallery Wall

I know, I know. Long time no post. My little sister asked me the other day if I was still blogging and I honestly had to answer that I wasn't because I've been a little off track lately. But not anymore. I thought I'd share with you some of my room inspiration now that I feel like it's finally coming together. 

While I don't claim, by any stretch, to be a savvy decorator, once in a while, inspiration will strike and I'll end up with a very well-styled corner. I think for the most part, I have pretty good taste. The issue is just always finding a place for everything so that it looks good together and is as functional as possible. 

I think that this is by far and away my favorite section of my room right now, especially because of the eclectic gallery wall that I've got going on. All of the pieces on the wall are from some of my favorite places that I've been or am planning to go. And I think that after playing with it for a while, everything actually works really well together on the wall. Just a note, normally, my laundry basket hangs out under the picture of Greece but it's full and I figured you probably wouldn't want to see my dirty laundry, so there's a hole there in the pictures that doesn't exist in real life. 

Let's start with the section on the right, shall we? I skipped showing my calendar but you can see some of the little illustrations I do on it each month when I have something planned on that day. The round thing at the top is actually an orthopedic horseshoe, believe it or not. There's a place in Northern California called Columbia and it's an old-timey mining town near Sonora. They have a blacksmith shop there and they sell horseshoes with your name imprinted on them. My aunt got me this one because I thought the fully round shape was cool and the story behind it even more so. 

The photo underneath is one that I bought at Apple Hill last fall but ironically enough is a window on campus at University of the Pacific where my little sister goes to school. I loved the black and white and the architectural feel of the window when I saw it and when I found out it was taken at UoP, I had to bring it home. 

The "C" on the bottom is from Tuesday Morning, I think. My mom got it for me a while back and I didn't really do anything with it until one day, I saw the gap in the wall and decided to see if it worked. It did and it's been there ever since. 

This picture of Greece has to be the most serendipitous art find I've ever made. About 2 years ago, when I first moved into my apartment near school, I decided that I wanted art on the walls from places I wanted to travel to. I kept my eyes peeled at Ikea, Target, and TJ Maxx for a picture of Greece, which is my number one place I want to go before I die, but no luck. 

One afternoon, my mom and I stopped into Good Will (where we don't really go on a regular basis) and there on the wall was this picture. For 5 dollars. FIVE. DOLLARS. I'd been searching for the better part of a month for a picture just like this all over the place and I happen to walk into Good Will on a whim and there it is for practically free. Needless to say, I snapped it up and it's been on my wall ever since, through the move to the apartment and back home again. 

The next two had to come off the wall to get photographed because of the awful glare coming in from my windows. Luckily, my bedding makes a pretty cute background, huh?

This is the newest piece on my wall. My sister bought me those two prints at Wonderground Gallery in Downtown Disney. I've loved mermaids my whole life (I pretended to be Ariel every time I was in a swimming pool from ages 2 on) and Pirates of the Caribbean is not only one of my favorite movies, but has been my favorite ride since my first trip to Disneyland at age 6. I just got around to framing them this month but I love the frame that I chose to go with them because it accents the darker colors in the pictures without being too overwhelming to the prints themselves. 

I bought this picture in Venice Beach about 3 years ago for $5 off of an old hippie photographer. This was the only print he had of this particular image and I fell in love with it immediately. It's an old car that's clearly been painted with craft paint, and it's just a super funky, awesome representation of Venice Beach which is one of my favorite places to visit in Southern California when I'm there. 

The top of the bookshelf has had a lot of different things on it in the last year, but I finally settled on this more sparse collection of things to go with the pictures on the wall and the space that I have there. So, a hurricane candle holder and my favorite perfumes it was. 

I think this was probably one of my first real "decor" purchases. I got this hurricane a year ago with a graduation gift card from one of my mom's dearest friends who has since passed away. I saw it in the store at Bath and Body Works and was in love immediately. The glass gives such a cool effect to the candlelight and I love the polka-dotted finish even when there isn't a lit candle in it. Now, every time I light a candle (which is pretty much every weekend morning), I can think of Elizabeth. 

The last section of the bookshelf is just my favorite perfumes for Spring/Summer and a cutout "C" that I had no idea what to do with so it got stuck there. The little tray is a cheese platter from Pampered Chef, but I love their bamboo pieces and this little tray was the perfect size and shape to hold perfumes and the wood finish is great to accent the perfume bottles without distracting from them. Not super exciting but definitely a useful addition to this party of my room. 

There you have it, my gallery wall. I think I might actually do a post for each section of my room as it comes together (although I'm moving in a couple of months, so we can start all over again, then, I suppose) and share them with you. I've honestly been struggling with what I want to do with this blog for a while. I'm not a beauty girl (nor do I want to become one), I don't go on cool trips all the time (wish I was able to, but entry level job market budgets don't exactly allow for jetsetting and globetrotting) and I have a food blog already that is also in a state of hibernation. 

Lately, I've made the decision to get out there more and do some more activities than Netflix in my room or going out on dates with the guy I've been seeing for the past few months and I think that I'd like to share that with you as I start to find those things. Whether that's my move, or my trip to Disneyland coming up, or even my favorite products that I've tried out recently, I think this blog is going to be a place where I share what I'm doing, without worrying about a central theme. The theme is me, Chelsea, after all and I'm pretty random myself. 

Cheers, guys!

ChelsReads: Dragonfly in Amber

Hey guys, been a while, hasn't it? 2015 so far has been a little nuts and I haven't had time to just sit down and blog for a while. But I finally (I mean, seriously, I bought the book the second we got in the door from Disneyland in January) finished the second book in the Outlander series, Dragonfly in Amber and I thought I would share it with you.

The second book of the series followed Claire and Jamie's time leading up to the second Scottish Uprising and the battle at Culloden Moor. I don't want to spoil too much, in case anyone out there wants to read it, but the story spans Europe, from Paris back to Scotland and I think that it was a great  second foray into their story. At the end of Outlander, we were in France where Jamie was recovering. From there, we move to Paris and traverse the social scene of a time where the Jacobite movement was still taking off. To be totally honest, it's kind of insane how all over the place the story was and I can't believe it was all one book. 

Apart from some minor discrepancies between the first book and the second, overall it was a great read. In fact, I wasn't originally planning to continue with the series after finishing Dragonfly in Amber (honestly, as good as it was, it's a looooong read and I was told that the subsequent books don't get really good again until the 5th or 6th stories) but I finished the book and had to find out what happened next so I downloaded Voyager. 

I'm hoping that now that I'm working a different (and much better) job that I'll have more time to post both here and on the food blog that I work on with my friend. And yes, I know how many times I've said that, but this time I'm actually planning to make it work. This is going to be a big year and I can't wait to share it with you.