Skip to main content

Decorating Ideas and Dream Home Inspiration

Decorating Ideas
10 Most Popular Home Posts 
If you only read 10 interior design posts on my site, make it these:

1. Stucco, Tile, and Maybe a Roof. Oh, and a Tractor!

2. Luxury Home Tour in Santa Fe, NM

3. Party Ideas from Your Antisocial Hostess With the Mostest

4. Kitchen and Dining Room Remodel - Before & After

5. 3 Bathroom Styles, 1 House

6. 6 Ways to Get Luxury Lighting on a Budget

7. Our $5,000 Master Bathroom Remodel

8. The Great Wallpaper Mural (In)Decision

9. 15 Decorating Ideas from the Summit County Parade of Homes

10. Hilariously Bad Real Estate Photos - What NOT To Do When Selling Your House

Decorating Ideas From Our New Home
We love living in the New Mexico mountains.

1. White Kitchen with Brick Backsplash


2. Fun Powder Room in Spring

3. Rustic Holiday Decor


4. Kitchen with White Cabinets and Red Brick


5. Hallway Bathroom Reveal - Reclaimed Alligator Juniper Vanity


6. Overbudget? LOL


7. 3 Bathroom Styles, 1 House (Rustic, Spa, and Glamorous)


8. 6 Ways to Get the Statement Lighting You Love - On a Budget


9. How to Decorate with Antlers (real and faux)

10. Dream Home Dreaming

11. Our Small Home Office (Featured in Albuquerque Magazine)


Interior Design Posts to Give You a Laugh

1. Bad Real Estate Photos - Don't Make These Mistakes When Selling Your House


2. Bad Real Estate Photos - Scary Clowns Edition


3. Cabinet Hardware OOPS


4. The 4-to-5 Day Weekend


5. Wood Chandelier (How Did They Know?!)


6. Sprin...Errr...Fall Cleaning


7. Chalkboard Door Multiple Choice


8. The Chalkboard Door is for Holiday Decorating


9. At-Home Sauna? Yes, Of Course

Our $5,000 Master Bathroom Remodel
This resulted in a 4-way bidding war when we sold our Albuquerque home! Our renovated kitchen (photos here) also helped.


How to Remodel a Bathroom On a Budget

1. Our DIY Bathroom Remodel On a Budget

2. This is What Happens When SN Gets Bored (Bathroom Reno)


3. Budget-Bathroom Remodel in Progress


4. More Bathroom Remodel Photos - It's a Long Process


Entertaining at Home
Introverts throw the best parties...probably because they freak out over every little detail.

1. Holiday Party Ideas from Your Antisocial Hostess With the Mostest


2. Easy DIY Thanksgiving Centerpiece


3. Hosting Our 1st Thanksgiving


4. Special Touches to Improve the Comfort of Your Guest Bedroom


5. Decorating with Fresh Roses


6. Our First Guest Bedroom


7. Interior Christmas Decor


8. Tea for Three and Three for Tea Party


9. Mouse Wine and Cheese Napkins


10. Free Thanksgiving Printables (Because introverts love a good conversation starter!)

Building a House - The Construction Process
It's every bit as stressful as you've heard, but worth it in the end. If you're building near Albuquerque, we recommend our builder, John Lowe with Panorama Homes, and would hire him again. He has high quality standards and will help optimize your budget. We got a lot of house for our money!

1. Loan Approved - We Have a Porta Potty!

2. Breaking Ground


3. Week 1 (We were so young and optimistic back then.)


4. Construction Weeks 2 and 3 - Bad News


5. Construction Week 4 - Much Better


6. Week...Who Knows? (AKA Say Goodbye to Your Footings)


7. The Award for Slowest Foundation Ever Goes To...


8. Let the Framing Begin


9. Stucco, Tile, and Maybe a Roof (And a Tractor!)


10. Magnetic Poetry Floor Plan

11. Our New Home is Ready for Her Closeup (Computer Rendering, Paint Colors, Stucco Choices, Etc.)

12. Home Design - It's All in the Details


13. Trying to Choose a Bathroom Floor Plan


14. Framing - I Love This House


15. We Have Windows!


16. Shiny Dreams and a Dark Gray Funk of a Mood


17. Electrical and Insulation


18. Drywall


19. 6 Week Deadline


20. In the Battle of the Sexes, I Think I Lost This One (AKA Why Does Our Garage Have the Best Views in the House?!)


21. The Best Kitchen (N)Ever


22. Will We Live Long Enough to See Our Dream Home Finished? (Or Will We Kill Each Other In the Process?)

Wallpaper Ideas


1. The Great Wallpaper Mural Indecision (photos from our new home)


2. Decorating with Wallpaper - 60 Best Wallpaper Ideas


3. Dining Room Wallpaper Mural (photos from our old home)

4. Pamir Garden Wallpaper (our hallway bathroom)

5. Unique Bathroom Ideas with Paint & Wallpaper (our guest bathroom)

Interior Design Photos to Inspire Your Next Home Project

Not planning to remodel or build? You may change your mind after seeing these photos.

1. Our Dream Home! My Favorite Inspiration Photos

2. Laundry Room Ideas


3. Bathroom Ideas


4. Flooring Ideas


5. Living Room Ideas


6. Dining Room Ideas


7. Window Seat Ideas


8. The Best Seat in the House - More Window Seat Ideas


9. Home Exterior Ideas


10. Luxury Home Photos


11. 9 Interior Design Secrets From the Best Luxury Hotels


decorating photos

Decorating: All Other Reader-Favorite Blog Posts

1. 10 Interior Design Upgrades You Can Do Today

2. How to Transform Your Yard for Meditation


3. It's a Chair! It's a Pillow! It's...a Chair Pillow


4. The Blog Post Where I Sell You My House


5. Yellow and Red Kitchen and Dining Room (Kitchens and bathrooms sell homes and our sale was no exception.)


6. Not Just for Clothes! How to Organize a Closet for Your Life


7. Decorating on a Budget - Colorful Incense and Potted Flowers


8. Washi Tape Decorating Ideas


9. My Plate Collection - Noritake Colorwave


10. My Favorite Way to Display Vacation Photos


11. Open Shelving Decorating Ideas: Sand and Sprinkles


12. Are Laminate Floors Durable?


13. DIY Pottery Barn Chairs


14. Label Game- The San Diego Soap Company


15. Should We Buy This Pretty House?


16. You're Never Too Old for a Purple Princess Bedroom


17. Cloche Decorating for Valentine's Day


18. Painted Dining Chairs - Before and After


19. Chalkboard Door Artwork


20. The Living/Dining Room Switch Around


21. What Killed Our Cherry Tree?

Popular posts from this blog

Cake Mix Pancakes

This reader-favorite recipe is *almost* as popular as my Cake Mix Cookie Bars recipe .  When making Cake Mix pancakes , the scrumptious possibilities are endless. Red Velvet cake mix pancakes. Chocolate cake mix pancakes. Butter Pecan cake mix pancakes. Funfetti cake mix pancakes. (Yes, Funfetti cake mix pancakes!) With this 2-ingredient recipe, you can turn your favorite cake mix into your favorite pancakes. Pancake making at its finest. Cake Mix Pancakes Personally, I think my funny napkin is the icing on the (pan)cake. It's Sunday morning and you're planning to do all the things today - scrub those grody baseboards, polish your quartz countertop that was supposed to be low maintenance but actually isn't at all, sort through the disaster that is the freezer.  While on your superhuman kick, you think I'm going to make my family pancakes for breakfast. Not just any pancakes - the best pancakes ever. I may even serve them as breakfast in bed! You pu

10 Canned Cinnamon Roll Hacks

You're in for a treat. Today I'm sharing my best canned cinnamon roll hacks and improvements for turning store-bought cinnamon rolls, like the Pillsbury Grands ones or even the store brand, into something special.  Dry cinnamon rolls? No thank you. They need to be OOEY and GOOEY. That's just Cinnamon Roll 101. All of these ideas keep Pillsbury canned cinnamon rolls soft, company-worthy, and delicious. These are also great for taking homemade cinnamon rolls up a notch, but what a pain that is. With these better-than-homemade canned cinnamon roll hacks, you'll never bother to bake them from scratch again. Test out some of these ideas tomorrow. Won't it be nice to dig into a mouthwatering cinnamon roll for breakfast? You can't get a better start to your day than that. Canned Cinnamon Roll Hacks Actually, make that 11 easy ways to improve store-bought cinnamon rolls: you can top them with homemade coffee whipped cream . Yum! Nope, make that 12 canned cinnam

Chemical Peel Before & After

This article has been updated! My new chemical peel post, which includes pricing, Jessner peel before and after photos, product recommendations, and a helpful timeline for scheduling your treatments, is at the bottom. My original Jessner peel post (one of the most popular on my site of all time) is at the beginning. Original Chemical Peel Article Considering a chemical peel? I recently underwent my first Jessner peel and thought I'd share my results, post a Jessner peel review, and answer some frequently asked chemical peel questions. (I'm guessing that "Does a chemical peel hurt?" is a biggie!) I'd been planning to order an over-the-counter peel when we were in Iceland , but my computer led me a different direction. I decided to do this on a whim after Groupon greeted me one morning with a great $40 chemical peel deal. Now, I can read your mind. You just gasped in horror and thought  You trusted your face to a  discount  chemical peel?!  You're wondering w

How to Move a Mattress

My site is popular for reviewing memory foam mattresses. With today's bed-in-a-box options lasting much longer than the traditional 7 years of a spring mattress, there's a good chance you'll eventually need to move one. But how? This is  how to move a mattress  without damaging it - even by yourself!  When we were faced with the challenge of moving our beloved Amerisleep AS3  to our new home, it seemed like my readers would enjoy the details. This handy tip should work for any memory foam bed, including Casper, Leesa, and Nectar.  I'm happy to report there is an extremely simple way to do it. Apartment and dorm dwellers rejoice! How to Move a Mattress At first, I wasn't sure how to move our king-size mattress down a flight of stairs. It's a problem we've dreaded solving ever since we made the decision to build a new house.  The answer? It was right in the back of our truck.  Ratchet straps . This solution could also serve as a 'How To' for returning

Hello Fresh Complaints

Hello, my bloggy friends. I have a HelloFresh complaint and believe they are pulling a scam. Yours truly came *this close* to falling for it.  Maybe scam is too harsh of a word. Sneaky? You can decide for yourself. The fact that there are so many Hello Fresh complaints online does seem suspicious. My main complaint about Hello Fresh has to do with their promotional rate, which seems like it is set up to be intentionally misleading (more on this below). Despite so many people complaining about being charged more than they thought they'd agreed to, Hello Fresh maintains this as part of their business model and continues to mislead. So it's intentional, right? I do not recommend Hello Fresh. For starters, the service is just ingredients-by-mail with recipes, not meals. You can buy your own ingredients for much less, especially now that most grocery stores conveniently offer pickup and delivery. Excellent recipes are easy to find.  Click here for a list of top-rated, reader-favorit

Window Seat Idea - Dream Home Inspiration of the Day

See it? Waaay at the back of the photo?  I like how the window seat extends past the window all the way to the wall. How about you? If that's not your style, how about one of these lovely window seats? I'll seat you, my pretty, and your little dog too. How perfect would this be in a home office? I'd swap out that wimpy rug with a larger one.

My Instant Pot Explosion!

Like many new Instant Pot owners, I've wondered, How many Instant Pots have exploded?  (Eeek!) I'm happy to report that my research on Snopes and other sites has shown that these do not explode, at least not when used properly. There is a lawsuit between a woman in Texas and the Instant Pot manufacturer, but she admits she had thrown a towel over the steam vent. Do NOT do this.  Still concerned? Consider that on Prime Day of 2018, Amazon sold more than 300,000 Instant Pots. That's more than a quarter of a million sales in only 1 day! If these things were not safe, you would see news stories every day about someone being injured. Still, things can go wrong. We love our Instant Pot, the digital pressure cooker that seems to suddenly be in every home. You can't mess up - just throw in random ingredients and you'll get something yummy every time. It's foolproof. At least, that's how I used to feel about our Instant Pot, until the explosion... Inst

3 Minute Toaster/Convection Oven Smores

These are perfect when you're craving a quick, sugary treat. They work equally well in a toaster oven and a convection oven. Best of all, compared to eating an entire bag of Oreos (something I have never  done), they're quite healthy. What's that, you say? You already know how to make s'mores in the toaster oven? Well then, sit back and enjoy the ooey-gooey marshmallowy photos. (And if you're someone who works with me, please keep the "I've seen her polish off an entire bag of Oreo cookies" nonsense to yourself.)  Step 1: Put desired amount of graham crackers on a toaster oven/convection oven-safe pan.   Looks like it's time to clean this pan, Sexy Nerd Optional 1st step, which is Sexy Nerd's favorite: Spread peanut butter on each graham cracker (I'm not much of a peanut butter fan - WHAT?!? - so I skip this step.) Cover with yummy marshmallows. Top with chocolate chips. Place in the toaster o

Christmas Memes and More

Inspired by the popularity of my other memes posts, Funny Memes and Dog Memes , I have a new collection of memes for you to enjoy. I waste my life on the internet so you don't have to. Bookmark this post because I'll be adding to it as I find new memes for Xmas. Christmas Memes and More Fair warning that some of these are in poor taste. Isn't that usually the funniest meme?

Reuzel: Grooming Tonic Industry Review

I'm looking out for you, my bloggy friends. At my last haircut, the hairdresser shared his favorite hair product of all time, REUZEL (which I'd never heard of), with me and I had enough sense to get the details to share with you. He didn't even have a bottle of it to sell me. It was a genuine, honest review. Also, are they still called hairdressers? Is this the equivalent of calling your flight attendant a stewardess? Stylist? Barber? Reuzel  Grooming Tonic Review You know those men who have the softest, most perfect hair and it seems so unfair because most men don't even care about their hair? (Or so they say.) I think this is their secret. While you're here, be sure to read my  funny haircut story . Geez, I'm awkward. The fact that I was brave enough to ask to take this photo at the salon is proof I love my blog readers. Never heard of it? That's probably because Reuzel Grooming Tonic is marketed toward men. From reading their endless 5-star reviews, men