Blog - at home with Ashley

How to Keep your House Cozy in the Summer

Have you heard of the Danish term Hygge? I’ve recently been hearing about it a lot and love the idea of it. Basically, it is the Danish ritual of enjoying life’s simple pleasures such as friends, family, and graciousness. In Denmark, the winters are long and dark so they embrace hygge as a way to enjoy life, even in the months when they are stuck inside. Now, some tips on how to keep your home cozy in the summer:

how to keep your home cozy in the summer

As I’ve been cleaning up our home after the big kitchen renovation, I’ve been trying to make it cozy or hygge and thought I’d pass on my best tips for doing so.

bring outside in

The beauty of summer is that flowers are fresh so cut some out of your garden and bring them inside! What I love about flowers is they are a simple pleasure- they are beautiful, the smell amazing, and they add color and literally life to your home.

Once a week I stop by either Trader Joe’s or the wholesale flower market and grab a bunch of my favorite in season flower. Flowers are cheapest when then are actually growing outside, so this is an easy way to treat yourself on a budget!

I have a small tip, when you bring home flowers from the store, they come in a plastic sleeve. When you are ready to cut your flowers to place them in a vase, cut the plastic sleeve in half. Then lay the flowers on the plastic and use it as a mini tarp. When you cut off the stems, they will fall on the sleeve. Then, when your flowers are in the vase, you just scoop up the plastic and you have a super quick clean up! The alternative is stems all over your counter top, sink, on the floor- not that I’ve ever done that 😉

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Deck Refresh

Last year we did a full deck reno- completely redoing the flooring, painting, putting up lights, redoing the furniture. This year, we just needed to do a deck refresh after a long winter. The truth is that I wasn’t 100% happy with how everything looked and there were a few projects I wanted to tackle.

The awesome and hard part of working on a house is that it is never done. Above all, I love that I am free to let a space evolve with my needs and taste as time goes on! So if you ever have a room that’s supposed to be “done”, but you don’t love it, this is my permission that it’s ok to go back and perfect things until you like them.

overview

After working on our kitchen, I was ready for a long break from house projects, but our deck was so sad that I decided to commit one weekend to revamping it. Our deck is right off our living room and overlooks the condos in our complex. There is a big tree that blocks most of other condos and we have a pretty view of the Great Salt Lake. During the warmer months we love to hang out here at night! It’s our only outdoor space so we try to get the most out of it. Here’s a picture of last year’s deck project-

rug

I tried hard to love the rug we used last year, but the color was all wrong and just too bright for me. I’ve had my heart set on the Mohave indoor/outdoor rug from Target, but it’s been sold out for months. Finally, I checked the website and saw 2 available and I bought one SO fast! I just love the colors and vibe of this rug. It has a little yellow that brings in the color of the siding and the mint and pink really pull the whole deck together. It even has grey that pulls in the color of the deck carpet.

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How to Organize Letterboard Letters

how to organize letterboard letters

Good morning friends! My new favorite item to use to decorate my house with is the white letterboard by Heidi Swapp. I love using it with my favorite quote (or silly saying) to give personality to my home. The possibilities are endless!

The down side to the letterboard is the letters. When you buy the letters, they are in a clear box so you have to sort through each letter to find what you need. It takes forever and isn’t fun! Sometimes you have to go through the letters multiple times which can make you crazy! I was determined to come up with a solution so I could have my cute letterboard and be organized! [Read more…]

How Much did my Kitchen Renovation Cost?

Hi friends! I am a avid blog reader and I always LOVE reading how much the budget was and what the bottom line ended up being, so today I will let you know how much my kitchen renovation cost.

recipe box / gold vase (no longer available)

First up, one of my favorite things to do after completing a big project is to have a party to celebrate. We’ll be having friends over, but first we had a party just for our little family to say thank goodness we no longer have to work on this thing- haha! Oh and that we don’t have to eat out every meal (that gets old with a 2 year old)!stove (no longer available) / tea towel (no longer available) / hand vase (no longer available) / peony art (no longer available) / small knobs / long pulls / tile / quartz (no longer available)/ cabinets

I’m a girl who’s all about the appetizers so I pulled out some ranch dip and made a salsa/cream cheese dip. I paired it with some vegetables and Harvest Snaps.

gold vase / pineapple cutting board (no longer available) [Read more…]

10 Knit Home Decor Ideas

image via A Beautiful Mess

This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. This post was sponsored by We are Knitters and all opinions are my own. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

image via A Beautiful Mess

Confession- I love Elsie from A Beautiful Mess she is totally my girl crush! These are pictures from her home and her taste is flawless. Plus, she uses pink in her decorating, which I (obviously) love! Do you know what one of her decorating secrets is? Adding texture in- the fur pillows, the woven wall hanging, the sisal rug, the trim on the curtains- it all works together to make it interesting! A big trend I’ve been seeing lately is adding texture with yarn or knit items. This adds a bit of a 70’s vibe in an updated, modern way. Here are some of my favorites that you can buy right now:

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Kitchen Reveal!

Hi Friends! I haven’t blogged for a week for one good reason- I’ve been working on my kitchen! Side note, if you ask my two year old son what he wants to do he says “work on the kitchen”- it’s pretty adorable (and only a tiny bit sad). Evidently, we have been tiling, and grouting, and caulking and painting non stop!!! And I’ve missed you guys! Today I get to (finally) share all of the details!

before

Let’s start with a before (this is what it looked like 1.5 years ago):

after

I have been dreaming about updating this kitchen ever since we bought it 9 years ago. And this year (thanks to the One Room Challenge) we finally went for it! After 6 weeks of replacing pretty much everything, here’s our after:

hardware / faucet / soap / candle / brass vase (no longer available) / window shade / brass sconce / sink / cake stand (no longer available) / pineapple cutting board / white & gold dishes / abstract art / The Year of Cozy / Eat Beautiful / bike / shelves (no longer available) / tile (no longer available) / quartz (no longer available) / cabinets [Read more…]

5 Ways you can be the Best Gift Giver

Confession time- with my crazy life right now, I have become a lazy gifter. Which is sad because I love receiving good gifts! I’m the girl 5 minutes before I have to leave the house pulling an old gift card out of my wallet and putting it in a card I happen to have in my closet. So I’ve become the worst (well, I guess that no gift would be worst, but you know). This year I decided to take the time and actually give good gifts. I’ve included some ideas for you and some prompts so you can figure out what your family and friends will love and be the best gift giver ever!

What makes a good gift?

Here are the characteristics of what I consider a good gift:

an item that the person really wants but they won’t splurge for.

My little sister is the best at this- she knows my favorite scent (which is expensive) and gave me the matching candle and hand cream. I would never buy this for myself, but I adore it! She’s given me Chanel lipstick, lunch at a fancy restaurant- things I am too cheap to buy on my own but love receiving.

an experience.

For my birthday, my mom took my sisters and I to see Lion King. I love going to the theater, but don’t budget it in (time or money wise), so this was a real treat! It was fun to go to the new venue in our city and dress up for a night out! [Read more…]

Kitchen Update Week 5

Well, hello there! I’ve got a quick kitchen update for you! If you’ve been following along, I’ve been redoing my kitchen week by week and next week is the projected finish date. Here’s what we’ve completed these past 7 days:

Counter Tops have been Templated

What that means is that Bedrock Quartz sent over someone to digitally measure the space so that the countertops can be cut to perfectly fit my cabinets! That’s the good news. The bad news is that the install date is scheduled for May 9th. I was hoping to finish the whole renovation, have it styled and photographed by 7am on May 11th. I can’t tile all of the walls until the counter tops are in so I’m a little stressed about the tight timeline! Especially since I work and the 10th is a work day. So we’ll see….

Ceiling is Painted

sconce / flush mount

When we put up our bead board ceiling, the whole reason was to cover the huge holes left from the old soffit. We put the ceiling up and it took one million nail holes to do so. I was the lucky girl who got to patch each hole (twice) and then paint to finish it off. It looks so beautiful now! I love the texture the bead board adds to the space!

new light is up

We ended up exchanging our old light for a different one that matched the finishes in the room better. All of the lights are from Joss and Main and they were so nice to switch it out for us! Isn’t the new light gorgeous?! I’m obsessed!

Cabinets are 90% Assembled

Last week we had the frame of the cabinets in and now they all (mostly) have drawers and door fronts! High five! My husband has worked nights and on his days off doing this project. I love Ikea, but going from flat boxes to beautiful cabinets is a lot of work!

Hardware is Attached

center bar pull / small pull

The beautiful hardware from Joss and Main has been attached! Hardware is like adding accessories to your outfit- it is just that final sparkle that leaves the room feeling special and finished! It feel SO good to get to this point! Now we can start filling the cabinets with all of our stuff- cue the happy dance! That means my dresser won’t be covered in pots and pans anymore!!!

Collecting Accessories

cake stand/ eat beautiful/ the year of cozy/ hand vase

I love me some pretty accessories! A few more accessories have arrived and I am looking forward to styling them in the finished space! The hand brass vase is so perfectly weird- I just love the color and the quirkiness! The marble and wood cake stand is just a beautiful staple piece that will add some great warmth and texture to the space. P.s. Alice Lane has sent over a code that you can get 20% off your entire purchase! Just use ashleywilson20 at checkout (valid May 4-7, 2017),

What I Still Need to do

So there are the updates. Now for the final to do list (note to self, do not hyperventilate looking at this):

Buy tiling supplies
Tile
Buy crown molding
Install crown molding
Install base board
Caulk and paint moldings
Fill sheet rock hole (where we had to move a light switch)
Attach shoe molding
Install Drapes
Install shelves
Fill in cabinets
Put up beam (to bridge gap between the beadboard ceiling and the living room ceiling)
Put up end panels on cabinets
Paint 1/2 wall
Paint Dining room
Install faucet
Hang art

One week people, one week and then this should be all done for the One Room Challenge. Pray for me?!
p.s. want a free course on how to style your accessories to look amazing? Click below to get your free ecourse!

This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

Don’s Nursery Refresh

Good morning! Don’s nursery is a special room for me. It’s the room I poured my soul into decorating before he was born. We’d been scrimping for years to pay off our debt so I decorated his nursery on a budget, and filled it with as much love and personality as I could on as little as possible (you can see how his room looked when I started this blog over 2 years ago here). We’ve made a few updates, so I thought I’d share those with you!

wallpaper / [Read more…]

My Kitchen Renovation- the middle part

Guys, I am officially in the middle part of renovating my kitchen. I now can kind of see progress, but it’s not quite where I want it and I’m scared at how much there is to do in so little time! This is not a fun point to be at 🙂 . I going to show you what we’ve accomplished this week because although the kitchen isn’t getting much better, there is a lot of behind of the scenes stuff happening!

The lights are up

My husband installed the lights! We have a sconce over the sink (we used to have a ceiling light, but liked the idea of moving it down. And since the ceiling and wall were already ripped up, it was easy to do). That’s the good news. The bad news is that I think the ceiling light is too dark of a brass and they don’t look great together. I’m going to try to exchange the ceiling flush mount light for something lighter.

sconce / flush mount

The stove has been delivered

I choose a Samsung range from RC Willey and they delivered it to me and took the old stove with them! It was SO nice and convenient! We choose a convection oven and are excited for the faster time and even cooking. I used to have to rotate the food in my old oven because it cooked so unevenly. We went with a stainless steel finish and it is gorgeous! It is sitting in my living room and we haven’t used it yet (yes, eating meals without a stove, sink, cabinets, or dishwasher is super fun 😉 ).