meet my plants!

This year I've gotten into growing plants, and I thought I'd share my little plant family with you! This year a lot of things in my life have felt crazy and out of control, so it's been really nice to have these plants (and my cat, obviously!) to take care of, and fuss over. It's rewarding to see them getting bigger and flourishing as I learn the best way to take care of them. I've been opening my blinds in the afternoon so the light-hungry ones can get some much needed rays. I rotate them around my room so everyone has a chance to soak up the sun, and my grandmom has been helping me learn the exact amount of water to give them since I had a bit of an overwatering habit at first (oops!)

All but one of these plants are pet-friendly. Arrietty is a really well-behaved cat and doesn't get into them anyway, but it's nice to know that even if she does decide to munch on one of the leaves when I'm not looking, she'll be just fine. I bought most of my plants from The Sill, and they have a section specifically for pet-friendly plants so I've been ordering from that section exclusively. You can also check out the ASPCA list of toxic and non-toxic plants if you're ordering from a greenhouse that doesn't specify which plants are pet-friendly.



This is a Peperomia Green plant, and it's one of the ones that I've had the best luck with so far. It's grown SO MUCH since I first got it (I think it's going to need an even bigger pot soon!) and I haven't had any leaves drop. The planter is vintage. I'm a sucker for creepy/cute cat planters :)



This one is a Calathea Freddie. It was a little itty bitty plant when I first got it and it's getting so big! The leaves kind of droop and close up at night and then perk up during the day when they're soaking up sunlight. It's so neat when you can really see that your plants are living (if that makes sense?)



This is a Bird’s Nest Fern, and it's really thriving, too! It's so nice to know this one is pet-friendly because its tentacles are starting to droop down to cat height and I'm pretty sure that even though she's not usually interested in plants, Arrietty is definitely going to start getting curious. I have this one in an IKEA canister right now but I think this one is going to need a larger pot soon, too.



I think this one is called a Peperomia Ripple, and it's been one of my trickiest plants. Some days it looks so healthy, like in this photo you can see how well the stems are holding up, but some days it just looks kind of droopy. Maybe it depends on how sunny it is out. I think this is my most delicate plant, so I'm especially happy to see that it's surviving, lol! The vase is vintage, but there are a TON of lady head vases on etsy and I. want. all. of. them.



This is another Peperomia Green plant, and it is also doing really well! I don't know if they are especially hearty plants or if they're just really well suited to the particular lighting and atmosphere of my room, but whenever I decide I want to add to my plant family I'm definitely going to be buying more of these. The flamingo planter is from At Home.



This one is a Staghorn Fern and it's doing so-so. It seems to be holding up well, the leaves aren't very droopy or anything, but the ends got crispy the first week I had it (I probably didn't water it enough) and it's just kind of stayed that way. My grandmom said that eventually those leaves will fall off and new ones that aren't crispy will take their place, but in the mean time it just looks a little sad.. The planter is one of my all-time favorite vintage buys.



Another Peperomia Green! haha! This one is from the Horti pet-friendly subscription plan. Each month you get a pet-friendly plant and a pot and a very awesome disc of soil that expands with water (I am definitely recording that for my IG stories when I get my next shipment!) This was my first shipment on the plan and I was super happy with it. I ended up using a different pot, that I decorated with Danielle Thompson's happy face decals.



This one is a Parlor Palm (and I'm just now realizing I have another one of these that I forgot to photograph for the post!) and it's doing pretty well considering UPS totally smashed the box it was shipped in, and all of the leaves were totally bent. It's recovering nicely and I'm just making sure it gets lots of light and the correct amount of water so it gets over that little hump in its development. I have this one in a tin that I got at Michaels.



This is my one single not-pet-friendly plant. It's hanging in a place that Arrietty can't get to (for anyone who's worried, trust me, she literally cannot get there, I would never take chances) so I feel safe with it being there. It's not the sunniest area, so I needed a plant that would thrive in low light and the Pothos Jade met my requirements. It's growing kind of wonky (it's supposed to have trailing vines but mine are all sitting straight with their shoulders back, lol!) but hopefully eventually it'll start looking the way it's supposed to. The blue planter is from Target, and the white hanging plant holder is from Amazon.



This is a Peperomia Marble hanging out in a super cute mug that I got as a gift from Casey. Even though this and my favorite plant are both called Peperomia, this variety is my least favorite plant that I own. I just can't get it to thrive. I had two of these (I gave one to my brother) and they are stubborn little guys! Every time I thought it was doing well, the leaves would fall off. This one is finally looking a little bit healthier, but considering the luck I've had with two of them I don't think I'll be getting any more of this variety.



Another Parlor Palm hanging out on my vanity. This is my favorite area of my bedroom, and it just makes me so happy to see my little plant now when I'm putting on my makeup in the morning. This one is also living in a canister from Michaels, but it's definitely going to need a transplant to a larger pot soon. I have a feeling these could get really tall!



Finally, I snipped off a little piece of one of my Peperomia Marble plants (I know, I know, I just said I don't like them, lol) and I'm trying to see if it will grow roots in water. I probably picked the worst plant to try this with, but it's been a few weeks now and I'm like 5% sure that there's a little hint of a root starting on the right edge of the stem. Do you see it? I'll definitely post updates if this actually turns into a real plant :)

And that wraps up my little plant tour! I'd love to do a follow up to this post a few months from now to see how much they've grown (assuming I manage to keep them all alive, haha!)

Decorating for Christmas

Remember ages ago when I said I was starting a youtube channel? I FINALLY posted a video! :)

I really have the Christmas bug this year, so I decided to just decorate super early. I know a lot of people get annoyed by "the Christmas creep" but personally I've always loved celebrating it as early as possible. But I totally get it if you're someone who's bothered by pre-Thanksgiving holiday festivities, so just bookmark this post and come back early next month if you'd prefer to hold off on Christmas stuff until December ;)

I'm really happy with how this turned out, but I have to say I majorly suck at continuity. I have not one, not two, but three inexplicable outfit changes in this video even though I decorated my whole place in one afternoon. First I put on a sweater, then I realized I was too hot. So I put on a lace dress. Then I decided to shoot footage of me on a ladder hanging up lights and realized the lace dress was way too short for that shot, so I switched to a long sleeve red dress. But all of those clips are interspersed in the video so it looks like I just kept changing clothes all afternoon lol!

Anyway... hopefully this will be the start of semi-consistent posting. I really enjoyed filming and editing this and I'm really looking forward to shooting more in the future! :)

room tour: my movie theater

I was promising a room tour back when I quit blogging in 2014 and I still haven't gotten around to it since I un-quit last summer. Sorry about that!

I thought I would start out with my favorite feature in my room. It's a new addition, and I'm so in love with it I could burst! I installed a 120" roll-up projection screen over my closet. The closet wall faces my bed, so I can sit in bed at night and watch my favorite movies on a giant movie screen! And in the morning, I just roll up the screen and it essentially disappears.



I don't even have words to describe how much I love this! I've had a projector for a few years, but until last month I was projecting onto the ceiling. I know, that sounds really cool actually -- and it was at first! But after a while it's not actually that comfortable and not at all conducive to eating popcorn, haha!

If you are someone who really loves movies, I think this is a really worthwhile investment. It was so much cheaper than buying a tv (the screen and projector combined cost less than the 42" tv I owned before this) it's not as much of an eye-sore as a tv usually is, and the experience is basically like being in a movie theater but also being in your own bed at the same time. It's obviously not the same picture quality as a plasma hdtv whatever, but considering the fact that I mainly watch older films that weren't produced with that kind of technology to begin with, it doesn't make a difference to me.



This is my little projector that I have installed above my headboard. My projector isn't available anymore (which is really sad because it's tiny, quiet, and came with roku built in!) but I think most mini projectors would work the same. I'm obviously not a fan of the black cords, but I think it's a fair trade considering I don't have a giant ugly black tv in my room, right? lol

And that's it for my little mini-movie-theater tour! I also posted a photo of the projector in use (with Arrietty in the foreground, naturally) right here :) And it probably goes without saying, but if you get/have a projection screen I'd recommend watching Purple Noon on it. Watch it, and then you can thank me later ;)

Now I just need to find some good black-out curtains so I can watch movies before 8pm!

Sources for everything: projector / screen / most of my shoes / projector mount / cat bag/ my dress is vintage / bedding is vintage / scalloped rug was from UO aaaages ago

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

I haven't been in a very festive mood this year for some reason, but my Christmas decorations are up and they're helping a little bit. It's hard not to feel at least a *little* holiday cheer when you have like seven mini Christmas trees in your room ;P I didn't add much to my decoration stash this year, but I did buy some sparkly lilac snowflakes at Hobby Lobby and they're soo pretty. I just used clear push-pins to hang them all over my walls. It's going to be hard to part with them when January rolls around!

adventures in lighting

I moved back in with my parents last year, and since I work from home full time I got to move into a larger room in the house to accommodate my workspace. We're thinking about moving out of state next year but to be honest I'm REALLY going to miss this room if we do. It's been my favorite place I've ever lived, I love it even more than my old apartment!

The only downside has been the light fixture. It came with the house and it's one of the only lamps that my parents never changed. It hangs crooked and every time I had to change the light bulb I was positive it was about to fall on me. It hung high enough that my 5' body had no trouble walking underneath, but anytime I had a taller visitor they'd bump their head.



Here it is! The crooked chandelier. That would be a good name for a mystery novel, wouldn't it? Maybe someone is strangled and left hanging from a chandelier, and it always hangs crooked after that, taunting the guilty party with its crookedness until they finally can't take it anymore and confess their crime.

Actually is this even a chandelier? I think it's just a lamp? Anyway. It was here and I carefully cropped it out of every photo for the last year and a half. Last month I was at IKEA and I saw an awesome 60's mod light fixture that seemed like the perfect replacement. It was one of those "last chance" items so I HAD to get it.



I have no idea why this picture is so grainy but the lamp isn't up anymore so I can't take a new picture :\ Isn't the shape and style awesome, though?! It's basically my dream lamp, if I was the type of person to dream about light fixtures.

So a few weeks ago my dad installed this for me. It took three of us about three hours to get this thing installed. I normally love IKEA but in this case I felt like it was one of those products that everyone complains about... the design is very flawed, the directions were impossible to understand and nothing seemed to actually work. When it was finally up and running we switched the power back on and.... it's essentially a night light. You could barely even tell it was on. Which would be fine if this was hanging over a nightstand I guess (?) but it's supposed to illuminate my work area.

So I started searching for a new lamp. Can I just say, it is REALLY hard to find nice lamps that aren't hundreds of dollars. So many of the ones in my price range looked a lot like the one I had been trying to replace from the beginning. I would have been happy with a simple sphere or something but even the simplest modern fixtures all seemed to be over $300.



Somehow I ended up finding this scalloped lighting fixture from pottery barn kids. It's nice and simple, not super expensive, and the scalloped border adds just a little me-ness ;) And best of all -- it takes two 60 watt bulbs so it should be bright enough. SCORE!

Yesterday we decided to install it, thinking it would be a breeze after that horrible IKEA one. "We'll have this done in 30 minutes, tops!" We were so naive. The wiring went smoothly, but once it was time to actually screw it to the ceiling we ran into multiple setbacks. The screws weren't long enough, so we rested the fixture on a box that was precariously sitting on top of a ladder and ran to Lowe's to get longer screws. Even then we still couldn't figure out how to line up the screws to the holes in the lamp, though. I ended up asking my brother to come over and help, since he's more handy than the rest of us. He managed to get it screwed on (yay!) so I handed him a 60 watt light bulb. And it didn't fit.

It turns out this lamp takes SPECIAL 60 watt bulbs. (Actually they're just the kind that are shaped like candles that go in chandeliers, which aren't too special.. they're just not the kind I keep on hand..) So I still don't have a functioning lamp yet. I'm going to Lowe's later today to see if they sell the right light bulbs. Honestly I think at this point even if it turned out that every store on the planet was sold out of the bulbs I'd just let it go and live without a functioning light fixture. I'd rather my eyesight suffer than have to spend one more minute, nay, second, installing lighting!

Anyway... the new lamp is so pretty though, isn't it? :)

It's beginning to look a lot like Halloween

I just finished adding some Halloween touches to my room! I go overboard at Christmas, but for Halloween it's just some subtle spooky touches here and there to make my room more festive. To be honest 90% of my decorations involve me taping glittery spiders all over the place and putting tiny witch hats on all of my little figurines. At some point I REALLY want to design Halloween costumes for every single Funko Pop vinyl and bobblehead. I think that would be so fun!

My favorite decorations are my zombie flamingo (pictured near the end of this post) and my French poster of The Bride of Frankenstein. I love the idea of switching out that poster for every holiday but, surprisingly, I'm having a really hard time finding a Christmas one that I like. Ideally I'd love a Christmas in Connecticut poster, since that's my favorite holiday movie, but the only reproductions are posters of the DVD cover (like what the heck? why?) and the original posters are WAYYY too expensive.

Oh also I took a giant heap of pictures of my room before I decorated for Halloween, too, and I'm planning on doing a tour post. I had planned on doing it last year before I stopped blogging and obviously never got around to it. I might even do a video tour *gasp!* If you're interested in viewing my old room and my old apartment I have tons of pictures in my room tour tag here.

sneak peek

I'm not quite ready to do a full room tour yet but here are some sneak peeks at my favorite little areas of my room! I'm really happy with how everything is coming along. Honestly I was pretty underwhelmed by how I decorated my apartment (except the kitchen, I loved that room) and every once in a while I'd stare longingly at photos of my old bedroom. But this feels perfect. It's weird how much your surroundings can influence your mood, but I'm just so much happier in this space.