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.

Resolutions

It's 2014! I can't believe how quickly this year went by, and it was definitely one for the ages. I planned a wedding, got a promotion at my job, married my love, spent a week in Mexico, moved into a (rental) house, got more involved at the best church, and made new friendships. It was a crazy busy year, but getting to start this new life with Jordan by my side was so wonderful and exciting.

Now that the dust is settling, I am so excited about what I want to experience in 2014.  Last year was about saving and planning for the wedding and our new life together, so this year I'm excited about the freedom to be more spontaneous and take more adventures! This year is going to be about developing skills, visiting new places, making life-long habits and being creative. In order to do these things, I'm making lists and setting specific goals - and sharing them with others to keep myself accountable.

In 2014 I will:

• Cook only organic fruits, veggies and meat
• Blog once a week
• Read my devotional book daily
• Take a calligraphy class
• Read five books
• Take vitamins daily
• Paint a new picture every month
• Take five trips (three on a plane)
• Take a photography class
• Lose ten pounds by our wedding anniversary
• Design one print a week

Some of these are pretty lofty, but I'm excited about giving them the good college try. Regardless of the outcome, I'll be better for giving them a shot! What are your resolutions for 2014?

Bedroom Wish List

No, not that kind of bedroom wish list... my bedroom furniture wish list!  ;)

Right now, we have three bedrooms, but only one bed. Our master bedroom is looking moderately swanky, but our guest bedroom is looking a little lackluster (to say the least).

Our current bedframe is from Ikea and Jordan bought it over a year ago for his on-a-budget bachelor pad apartment. It's great, but we both definitely want something a little more stylish for our room. So we're hoping to move our that bedframe (and the sort-of matching Target nightstands from my college apartment) to the bedless guest room, and Jordan wants to build us a new bed! He's got the blueprints ready to go and has made some progress.

I'm excited to see how it turns out! In my mind it will turn out somewhat like this:


                                                                     (via West Elm)

That's probably a stretch, but how cool is this bedframe from West Elm?! Once the bed is finished, we will need new nightstands too. Dreaming we could have these matching beauties:


                                                                         (via West Elm)

And our current dresser is mine from my childhood. It's even more nostalgic because it was my mother's as a child, and my parents had it refinished for me.

I love it, but it's wood veneer finish is definitely showing some wear and tear. P.S. I learned the difference between laminate and wood veneer furniture here (before I had no clue why my dresser was chipping in such a strange way).

The plan is to sand the chipping finish off and either stain it (if the wood below the veneer will allow) or repaint it (maybe a daring color like this). But I can't say I wouldn't love to replace it with the matching West Elm dresser:


                                                                               (via West Elm)

We also need to spice up the room with a nice rug, and I love this lovely piece:

(via West Elm)

Ahhhhh... Dreaming is so nice. If only, if only. Until we can afford all of this, though, we're excited to pinch our pennies by doing our own DIY versions of these pretties. We'll keep ya posted!

My Book Wish List

I'm not a big reader (unless it's young adult science fiction), but here are three books by some of my favorite bloggers that I really must have:

  


Wouldn't these look great on my coffee table?

Blog Highlight: Decor8

So how much do you love this bedding? One of my FAVORITE interior design blogs just did a post on this gorgeous Virginia Johnson Bedding. I am a sucker for beautiful patterns and accent pillows! Please check out the rest of this post and the other posts on this blog. You will definitely fall in love just like I have!