The Best Bloggers

Y'all. One of my resolutions was to blog weekly. Here it is 14 days after my resolutions post, and yet I have nothing prepared to blog about. I have tried taking photos of the house with my camera, but with my still limited knowledge and the incessant rain and overcast skies, I have nothing pretty to share. I have tons of old photos of wedding DIY's (all taken with my crummy iPhone), but none have been edited and prettified. Sigh. BUT even with all of these to do's on my list, I have found time (mostly when I take my necessary mental breaks at work) to peruse my daily dose of blogs.

(Hand raised) My name is Francesca, and I am addicted to reading blogs. I have been addicted since I started college and discovered some beauties through Flickr and Tumblr. I then discovered Bloglovin' which made it so much easier to browse through numerous blogs seamlessly (especially when they added their mobile app!) and my collection/obsession grew. Now I follow around 100(!) blogs regularly, and I love them all, but there are a few that stand out to me as favorites.

So, without further ado, here are (in my humble opinion) the best bloggers you should be following, like, now:

(via The Pioneer Woman)

The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Come on, if you aren't already following her blog, you're clearly living under a rock. She's a master of the kitchen and her ranch home. She has AMAZING recipes which she demonstrates with step by step instructions accompanied with beautiful photos. Seriously, whenever I want to try a new recipe, I always Google the name of the dish with "The Pioneer Woman" to ensure I do it her way.

(via The Pioneer Woman)

(via The Pioneer Woman)

The BEST part about her blog is her writing style and the humor she uses while detailing the cooking process. I aspire to be as dang funny as this lady one day. She also now has a cooking show on Food Network, which I've somehow never seen, but am determined to check out in the near future!

(via HGTV)

Young House Love

Ya'll, I am obsessed with the Petersiks. This super humble and cute couple have lived in three fixer-upper houses and used their DIY skills to make some amazing (and cheap) renovations and decorating changes. They have superpowers, truly.

(via Young House Love)

(via Young House Love)

My favorite part about their blog is how transparent they are about costs, the details of the processes, and the mistakes they made - all in an effort to benefit their readers. They take awesome photos along the way, and, of course, have an incredible honest/funny writing style, which makes you feel like you're actually friends with them. For real, I audibly squealed for joy in my cubicle when they announced they were pregnant with a second child. I have a problem.

(via A Beautiful Mess)

A Beautiful Mess

Elsie Larson's blog is one of the first blogs I ever started following when I happened upon her cute photos on Flickr. Back then, she wasn't married, was running a cute vintage shop, and merely blogged little craft projects and outfits. 

(via A Beautiful Mess)

(via A Beautiful Mess)

Fast forward five years, she and her sister, Emma, are running the blog full time and I have witnessed as they have planned weddings, bought/decorated new houses, written two books, made a smartphone app, and covered an array of craft/photo/DIY/food/fashion topics. They are basically just the coolest, and I wish I had the guts to dress like them. Sigh.

Holiday love.

Hello lovelies! I hope your Christmas was as wonderful as mine. Atlanta got its first white Christmas since the late 1800's and we sure took advantage of it!

We celebrated Jesus' birth and spent some wonderful time with family. And, of course, we got presents too. I finally got the Bean Boots I've been pining for! Unfortunately they a wee bit small, so I need to exchange them for a new pair. BUT I have the option of getting the tan, 8" ones my boyfriend initially bought:

Or these dark brown, 10"ones:

I just can't decide! Anyways, I hope the holidays were full of love and relaxation! Here's to a few more weeks of no responsibilities before school starts back up!

A little retail therapy for Christmas.

P.S. I recently bought my first pair of booties! Look at these babies:

And get this: they cost me $3.88. Okay not exactly, but Groupon was selling a coupon for $50 worth of items at Nordstrom rack (for the low, low price of $25) a few weeks ago. Obviously I nabbed that baby and went perusing the aisles until I found this precious pair of Zigi la booties for $49.99. With my coupon the total was $3 and my feet were extremely happy. Lesson: utilize local coupon sites and you will be rewarded. 

Merry Christmas Eve lovelies!

A little retail therapy.

(J.Crew)

So I've had my eyes on some J.Crew swimwear since the beginning of summer, but the prices have always deterred me. Luckily, October is prime time for J.Crew suits to go on sale. I found this adorable seersucker suit for $10 a piece! That's $20 for an originally $94 suit. And its adorable. I love it. I just wish it was warm enough to wear it.

October.

(source free people flickr)

October is one of my favorite months. Georgia finally decides to start to look like fall. I break out my jeans, my cardigans, my scarves and my leather boots. I also start to look forward to Christmas and formulate a wishlist. My current desires are:

• An amazing digital SLR camera (preferably this one).
• A beige pea coat.
• Adobe Creative Suite CS5.
• Black suede booties.
• Duck boots for the snow.
• And last, but not least, new acrylic paints, as I am running low.

There is no way my parents would/could get me all (or even just one, i.e. the camera or photoshop) of these things, but a girl can dream right? And since I'm currently saving all my extra my money to go on a mission trip, I doubt I can buy any of these for myself either. Ha. Oh, the life of a poor college kid.

BUT rather than dwelling on my current economic state, I will choose to focus on what's coming up straight ahead! Which is hopefully a football game in actually tolerable weather, and Halloween, one of my other favorite holidays. Mostly because I love candy corn. Yum.