Product Tests
Product Test: Portable Phone Chargers
Raise your hand if you panic when your phone's low battery notification turns on? (Just me??) There's nothing worse when I'm out on a fun holiday outing taking video memories of my family, and I see that red light. Or I'm traveling and stuck in the airport on a layover...it gives me anxiety! I've tried […]
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December 11, 2024
Lifestyle
Ask Julia: Holiday Hosting Help!
I put out a call on Insta to see if anyone needed help with holiday hosting, and I had so many great replies. There were some questions that popped up multiple times too, so I compiled this Q&A to hopefully help you prep for a smooth and stress-free hosting season. It can feel intimidating to […]
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December 9, 2024
Inspiration
The Best Tips for Road Trips with Kids!
(Above, the girls bags are from Walker Family Goods. I also got them each a matching backpack to use as their carry on. They're cute and I'm feeling very color-coded and organized! We got this cargo box.) Last Casual Friday I mentioned that we are preparing for our 5 day road trip across the country […]
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June 15, 2021
tips
All The Paint Colors in Our House (and why paint colors you see online might look different in person!)
Design
All The Paint Colors in Our House (and why paint colors you see online might look different in person!)
Have you ever spotted a paint color you love online and tried it in person and it doesn't look the same? There are so many reasons this could happen. We get asked several hundred times a day "What paint color is that?!," so we thought it would be fun to do a complete post with all the […]
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April 6, 2021
DIY
10 Home Staging Takeaways from our House Hunting Trips!
Sources Back in February, we spent 2 separate weekends house hunting in Raleigh and it was such an eye-opening experience. Not only were we discovering an area for the very first time and, with that, admiring a new kind of architecture and landscape, but peeking into dozens of homes gave us so many ideas of […]
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March 29, 2021
DIY
Progress + Paint in the Girls' Office!
In case you missed it, we're currently tackling the girls' office! Which, I suppose, is just a normal home office that you might find in other homes, but we have designated it for the girls' use for virtual learning and homework, etc. You can check out our plans and the mood board and lots of […]
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August 31, 2020
Lifestyle
Everything We Learned from Our Big Yard Sale
If you follow along on Instagram Stories, you probably saw that we had a huge yard sale this weekend. We haven't done one for probably five years (or more!), but we knew for the last couple months that it was coming. It was time. How do you know? Well for us, when we pulled out […]
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July 30, 2018
Lifestyle
6 Questions To Ask Yourself if the Instagram Algorithm Has You Down
We've talked about Instagram before. In this post, we shared how we quickly and organically grew our following (and you can, too!) and on episode 48 of our podcast, we discussed why we think the Instagram bubble is going to pop--spoiler: it has a lot to do with people trying to take short cuts. If […]
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January 18, 2018
Design
2 Tips for Making Laundry LOADS easier.
This post is sponsored by Persil ProClean, now available at Target! Laundry is the one chore we have always struggled to stay on top of. Okay, I dreaded it. Since our laundry room renovation, (check out the before and afters here!) the functionality of the space has improved 10 fold. But this year, I made it […]
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April 3, 2017
Decor
5 Tips for Keeping Area Rugs EXACTLY Where You Want Them.
A few months ago, we layered a really gorgeous vintage rug (from here) on top of our FLOR tiles in our entry. While we loved the character it added, and the extra layer of dirt camouflage, we struggled with it constantly bunching and moving around on top of the FLOR carpet squares. Often resulting in a look […]
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January 5, 2017
Chris Cooks
Top 5 Tips for Cooking With Kids
This post is sponsored by Blue Apron While Chris cooks 99.9% of all the meals around here, he doesn't always do it alone. A lot of Sundays, when we all want time to go a little slower, he enlists Greta as his "sous chef" (tiny chef!) and they make the meal together. This past Sunday, […]
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October 25, 2016
Decor
10 Tips For Buying Home Furnishings Online
We live in a pretty remote area of the country, in a small town in Idaho. So while we love to support our local economy through grocery shopping, eating out, and frequenting the hardware stores 8 times a week, when it comes to furnishing and decorating our home, I would say 90% of it comes […]
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August 15, 2016
Decor
Quick Tip: Remove Your Jackets!
File this under: Something you could do right now that would instantly update your shelves. I was reloading the shelves in the reading room after Halloween--truthfully, Thanksgiving day--and it was all looking so busy. I didn't have the energy or time to really redecorate the shelves that day, but I did something simple that changed […]
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December 10, 2014
DIY
New Knobs + A Tip for Always Finding the Best Price
The new hardware for our doors arrived over the weekend and so this little makeover chapter has come to a close. A beautiful, fresh close. Here's a reminder of how our doors were looking before we dove into spraying them with a coat of white paint: And now, new knobs, too! We went with a […]
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December 9, 2014
DIY
PSA: Instantly Fix Your Burnt Out Christmas Lights
We put up our Christmas tree over the weekend, which isn't really news. I think most people did, right? It's not really even "blog worthy." We used silver and gold bulbs we had sprinkled with sentimental ornaments we've collected over the years. But, this post is about how every year our pre-lit tree sends us […]
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December 2, 2014
DIY
(Re)painting the Great Room + Tips on working with Swatches
Several weeks ago, we posted a photo over on Instagram of a few swatches painted on our great room walls. We stared at them for a while, probably too long because we ran out of time to actually paint the walls before our Halloween party. Now the project has resurfaced again and with Thanksgiving next […]
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November 19, 2014
DIY
Frosted Window Spray vs. Etched Window Film
We knew after we hung our barn door in the great room, we'd want to frost the windows. The door leads to our future laundry/mud room which sounds like a potentially messy combination even if we plan to add as much storage and organization as we can. And until that point, it's a construction zone of missing […]
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October 22, 2014
Art
Honey, I Blew Up The Kids | Tips for Making Engineer Prints Look Their Best
I mentioned in yesterday's post we were switching some art around in the living room. I purchased a few new prints that I've been eyeing for awhile and we are moving the main art wall to the larger wall behind the couch in the coming weeks. And while I love art, I love our girls […]
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October 7, 2014
Art
One Tip That Will Improve Your Gallery Wall
I was helping a friend hang a gallery wall in her home a few weeks ago. She had a stack of frames (mostly from Ikea and Target) filled with all beautiful things and memories, but for some reason, she couldn't make her layout feel effortless and casual. Upon looking at the mix of frames and […]
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September 9, 2014
DIY
A Trick To Get The Crispest Paint Lines Ever!
I was in Sherwin Williams a couple weeks ago, getting paint for the entry wall. When I was checking out, the clerk asked me if I needed any painter's tape for my project. The thing is, I have the worst time with painter's tape. In our last house, I remember getting the delicate surface stuff […]
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August 21, 2014
