I’m a big time indoor house plant person (actually, I love outdoor ones too!). I just love them! I like to call my indoor plants my plant babies.

The collection of plant babies pictured here is not even a quarter of what I have in my house. I have a lot! And I want to add even more. I saw one I wanted at a floral shop the other day, but I had to think about it, so I left it, but I’m definitely going to go back to get it soon (if it’s still there).

My fiddle leaf fig is one of my faves, but not the fave. Actually, I didn’t even take a picture of my favorite one. Though, I do love fiddle leaf figs so much that I have 3 of them in my house. Only one is a tree though, but I’m hoping with enough love and care, the other ones will get there one day.

Plants pictured from top to bottom…

Philodrenon: So easy! If you want to start with an easy one, do this one. You really can’t kill it!

Aroid Palm: This one is another easy one!

Succulents: Everyone says these are easy, but for some reason, there the ones I have the most trouble with.

Fiddle Leaf Fig (Ficus Lyrata): If you get a big one, it can be costly (about $100 or more!), so you want to be sure you’re pretty good with houseplants before you make the investment. This one requires care and attention. Don’t overwater it because you’ll get brown edges. Don’t leave it in the sun, it can get sunburned (I brought it outside to water and allow it to drain, but I left it out a little too long). I do a good soak and then don’t water for about 2 weeks (sometimes 3).

Upright Philodrenon: I love the shape of the leaves. I like to cut off some long stems from time to time, put it in a bottle with water, and display it on my mantle.

Pink Caladium: I had it in a shady spot outside and it didn’t do too well. Once I brought her in, she did much better!

Boston Fern: This is the one I’m still learning about. I know it likes humidity, so I’m still learning how to cope with that, and make sure I’m able to give it the environment it wants. Anyone have any tips on the Boston Fern?

Oh and I use a moisture meter to help determine if my plants are thirsty or not. Ben got it for his plants outside, but I’ll take it to use for my plants inside. I think it’s a pretty handy tool to have!

I don’t ever really get to share a proper house tour because I feel like we’re always working on something, so nothing ever feels complete enough to share. Downstairs feels mostly done, but one of the rooms still needs proper curtains, the kitchen faucet and sink need to be changed, and we still never brought our fridge back in from the garage from when we changed out our floors a year ago! You see snippets here and there from what I put up, and can probably pretty much gather the feel of the room from that, but here’s an official sharing of what our family space looks like.

It’s actually a pretty big room with the kitchen attached (it’s to the right obviously) and we spend a lot of time in this room! I’m not sure how your style has changed through the years, but I’m a pretty consistent person. I have had those vintage sap buckets up for 6 years (I’m considering a change but I can’t figure out what) and the vintage, French garden table has been set up like that for 7 years! It’s been the same set up with the iron basket and plant on top, along with our hi-fi speaker at our old place! Once I like something, I stick with it. Plus, since I was in college, I have had a specific article saved of what my dream house would look like and I’ve pretty much used that as a guideline and inspiration (this home had sap buckets on the wall and I loved it so much, I collected and collected until I had enough to do it in my own home!).

I don’t really follow any particular rules, but I pretty much just go with what I like. Metal pieces are my favorite and we love things with a lot of patina. I love white as a base, but we also like a whole lot of color. Oh and pink! I’ve realized I have a thing for pink, especially pink chairs. We used to have an old Ikea couch, but chesterfields have always been my fave, so when I finally found one on Craigslist about a year ago, I snatched it up. If I ever found a grey one for a good deal, I’d buy that and sell this one, but other than that, this piece will be with us for awhile. I also love to use outdoor furniture inside, and I have a hard time saying no to a good midcentury modern chair, so those are littered all over the house (too many!).

The light fixtures are vintage pieces we snatched up at an antique shop in Fredericksburg, Texas almost 6 years ago and we finally had them put in last year. We walked in the shop and they were grouped together just like that, and we loved it so much (obviously) that we said we’ll take it! All of them! We had someone install them and attach a dimmer switch, and that makes having that many bulbs easier on the energy and wallet. Mostly everything in the room is vintage, except the white Modernica rocker and the anthropologie rug (scored on super sale on the day after thanksgiving!).

My biggest advice when furniture shopping, especially when you’re just starting off on your own or as newlyweds, don’t rush to buy lots of things just to fill a space right away. Ben and I lived our first year of married life only buying a couch and bed. The rest of the stuff we used were his old bachelor stuff (and some things from my old room at my parents’ house) and it worked for us. It really gave us time to figure out things we liked together (figuring out your style together takes learning!), get to know flea markets and how much we were willing to spend on pieces we loved, and it gave us time to find things that we really loved! The only slight change from our style beginnings is that we really loved color A LOT (oh and the first baby nursery we had was totally shabby chic floraly!), but we have since toned that down a little, but we still love color.

Here’s another one of my personal furniture buying philosophies… if you buy vintage, you can pretty much sell your piece (provided it’s in good condition and you didn’t pay an outrageous price) for what you bought it for, on the other hand, if you buy big store items, you can’t really sell it at the price you paid, so that is another reason I love shopping vintage. At the same time, some people get creeped out about old things and the fact that someone else owned it (and they don’t really enjoy the hunting), so if vintage isn’t for you, it isn’t for you! No harm done and to each their own.

Hope you liked the little tour! What are some of your decorating rules and tips?

see another one of our room tours here…

This is one of my favorite rooms in the house. Maybe because it feels the most complete, or maybe it’s because I just love that hammock so much. Actually, we all do. If you wanna see more of it and find out some of my favorite parts of the room, you can check out my room tour over at A Beautiful Mess. It was a couple weeks back, but I just kept forgetting to share it in this space, so here it is. I actually just took pictures of some other spaces in our house and I promise to share more with you soon.

I’ve had my fiddle fig leaf in this basket for awhile now, but wasn’t entirely feeling it. I wanted a white ceramic pot, but not sure if I’m totally feeling that either. Then as I was cleaning up last week, I saw this wire basket that hds just been sitting in the hallway (it used to be the girl’s laundry basket) and thought that might just do it. I sewed a large canvas bag of sorts to put the pot in (I also repotted my tree) and then put that in the wire basket. I definitely like this solution a lot better and it is working with something I already had. Now, that wicker basket is going to be put to some other use for sure. There are always plenty of uses for good baskets.

I’m pretty indecisive when it comes to plant containers, just as I am with pillows. I’m just not really good at coordinating them together. Are you an indoor plant person? If so, what containers do you like to use inside? I’d love some ideas!

Today’s motto is “back to life, back to reality” and with that, we bid farewell to most of our Christmas decorations. We still have the tree up because we never got a family picture in front of it, so the goal is to take one tonight and the golden stars are still hanging above our dining table, but we may leave that up a bit longer. The girls did have a request to keep their little tree in their room and I agreed just for a couple more weeks.

Things are (mostly) back in place and again and the house feels slightly fresh (just don’t go upstairs because the mess in horrendous!). The morning was spent cleaning and putting things away and it feels good. I can’t really think clearly in a messy space (in the common areas), so I feel much better. If you went to our bedroom though, oh man, that’s a whole other story. That is where I let my messes run wild! They cannot be tamed. It’s pretty embarrassing. Well, despite the messes in the bedrooms, things are generally clean, but please if you come over, just don’t look too closely!

I know my parents tend to leave their tree all the way up into February, so if we get the longing for a little bit of Christmas, maybe we’ll head over there! Goodbye Christmas, see you next year!

I took our most recent photo booth strip from our trip to the fair, went to a local copy center, asked them to photocopy the first picture into a black-and-white 18″ x 24″ print and I must say that I am pretty happy with the result. The best part… it cost $1.99. It was just what this little wall needed (see here).

I did also have them copy another strip, which was already black-and-white, but the shadows in that copy came out kind of strange that I like how the colored one transferred into a large black-and-white better. You can see that one here.

Have any other quick ways and fun ways to put up a family portrait? I love how Jen turned her instagram into wall art. This is next on my to-do list.

p.s. yes, that is an inflatable, pink unicorn. we picked that up at the fair too!