we had a "snow day" in dallas

...so this is what we did...

played around with our 35mm lens

capturing the beauty in nature

debuted my new haircut; 5 inches gone, baby!

 headed into astoria for a pick-me-up, dek went for his usual latte & i opted for a frozen coffee beverage (java chip!) with an espresso shot :)

have a great week!

i start my new job on monday and am super excited!!

i have some news...

barista life no mas.

beginning march 2 i will merge into the corporate world and join the 'at home' marketing team. fka (formerly known as) garden ridge, this company has undergone a major re-branding transformation to become 'at home' (you can read more about that here!) & i am so excited to be a part of the thriving marketing team and face new adventures & challenges. 

i will dearly miss my starbucks partners, they are really like a second family to me. knowing and working with them has been such a pleasure! honest and creative people work at starbucks and i was privileged to have gotten to know some of these people i speak about. i will miss the amazing coffee (not to mention the endless flow of espresso), the customers i have come to know & enjoy catching up with, multi-tasking like crazy (it's definitely an adrenaline rush working there sometimes!) and also getting the hookup at chipotle, since we work right next door :) i plan to continue attending coffee master meetings, a few of us baristas took it upon ourselves to delve into coffee knowledge and begin the process of becoming a "coffee master." this is a paid, self-paced program you can go through at starbucks where you master five levels of training on how coffee comes to fruition, bean to cup, and everything in between. we are on our 3rd meeting and currently covering the 3 major coffee-growing regions (which are latin america, africa & asia/pacific) and i plan to continue along with my partners in this journey. while i will be attending as a customer in these future cases, it will keep me connected to my passion (coffee!), while giving me a chance to see & sit with my partners (score!).

just for fun, here are some pretty pictures of coffee cherries/beans:

this is an unroasted, unprocessed bean in a coffee cherry.
red means ripe.

 via
coffee cherries on a branch

 via
sooooo many coffee cherries!

via

cheers to a new beginning at a new job!

home tour

dekel & i have really made this little apartment of ours feel like a home.
we have personalized it, added our touches of our own, cooked here, we've cleaned (luckily it only takes about 15 minutes max!) and we love our neighborhood. chillin here with the windows and patio door open is amazing & we love that we're up on the 2nd floor so we have privacy from down below. also our whole place gets so much natural light, which creates such a bright & cheerful atmosphere. 

here are photos of our home, if you would like to see:

colorful flowers from my mom in a weizen glass  on our bar

beautiful bar stools, found here.

 i wanted to create a designated place for our keys, sunglasses a random things we grab out the door or need to set down right when we walk in. (or to remind me to grab my phone on the way out; i'm always forgetting it!) i found this double-decker mail holder at genesis benefit thrift store and spray painted it with black chalk paint with the intention of changing up the sayings/ reminders every few weeks :) we also needed to put up some hooks so when we drop off our coats/my purse it doesn't end up on the couch or bar stools. we found these at ikea and they keep our coats hidden behind the front door. perfect. if you are wondering what the brown little hanging sack is by my our keys in the photo below, it is fresh lavender & i've become obsessed with this scent & placing little sachets all around our apartment/ in my car, etc...

 
the kitchen area

as previously mentioned, i really wanted to keep things off the floor of our apartment as well as off the counters, clutter reduction was in full effect when we decided to find a way to hang our utensils and knives in the kitchen. these were also found at ikea, i love the end result & i LOVE that very little stuff "lives" on our counters.

we lined each cabinet with black lining for a more firm grip for dishes and mugs + it just looks nicer!

storing items in my dishwasher?

how sex & the city of me!

entrance to our bathroom with a positive mantra; this sign was found at an estate sale for .50 cents! i spray painted it with black chalkboard paint & love the result. i think i love chalkboard home decor. 

you can call me obsessed. 

simple shower curtain, $7

 amazing wooden towel rack with hooks that we scored here, $8

now, my closet is still a work in progress, as i own waaayyy too many accessories and clothing items and really need to do a full closet clean-out, like this one, before summer rolls around. but in my opinion, i found some creative ways to utilize this one small closet that we share. i took over the left side and hung my jewelry & accessories all over the place. my thought is "if you don't see it, you wont wear it" - so of course i needed to make it visually appealing. 

necklaces + lavender

 i hang extra purses on the back of the closet door & belts hangout next to our super cute laundry bag (from here!) with my craft supplies stacked neatly behind them. 

 shoe rack found here.

the living area

view from the patio

our dining area;

coffee bean sack found at lulu b's, gifted from my sister as a 'housewarming' 

our bed & bedside tables floating shelves 

(i have found that keeping items off the ground is key when working with little space)

this is a little corner of our living room behind the couch, where we added some more floating shelves to create a stacked effect. (& again to keep things off the floor!) i wanted to showcase some cute bronze camels from a market in jerusalem, a photo of me & dekel on our wedding day which always overwhelms me with emotion when i look at it & a photo of my mom, grandmother & grandfather bathing me, in awe of me. one of my favorite photos of all time because it's like now the tables have turned and i am in awe of them. a style book by lauren conrad also resides on these floating shelves for outfit inspiration or shopping guidance, when needed.

this game lives on our coffee table! have you tried it? 
it's so vulgar, so fitting for my family- ha!

 

last but not least, is our beloved patio area. dek & i love sitting outside talking, so it was a necessity that we at least have a small space to put two chairs. 

our view is of railroad tracks which i have already been drawn to

walking path beneath our patio

hope you enjoyed this home tour :)
for home decor and organization accessories, i would highly recommend popping into ikea, at home & world market. these places seriously have some amazing things going on right now.

thanks for reading!

treasure hunt adventure

today is our three year anniversary.

our wedding day was so amazing, i love going back and reliving it.

we are more in love at this point in our relationship than we probably thought possible when we married. marriage is a funny thing. i really do fall more & more in love with my husband everyday. he never ceases to surprise me or make me laugh (usually about some dumb joke), he supports me in every way possible, he's truthful even when its hard to hear, but important to know, he's loyal and worships me, reminds me how beautiful i am several times a day. he is caring and will be an amazing father one day and i love thinking where our relationship will go in future years. 

i had to work today, but when i got home at noon there was a bouquet of beautiful pink & purple wild-looking flowers with a note on them that was the beginning of a treasure hunt around our new neighborhood! how cute is that! i had no idea he was planning this nor was i expecting anything because we mutually agreed not to get each other anything or do anything crazy today, but he really went above and beyond to make me feel special and loved and to create something fun for us to do. 

i'd love to share some photos from my little treasure hunt adventure, if you would like to see! dekel followed me around capturing my confusion. some of the hints needed a little further explanation, let's just put it that way- haha!

gorgeous bouquet. husband did good.

clue no.1 

 i found clue no.2 pretty easily, behind a 'parallel parking' sign

in search of clue no.3

 found clue no.3 & a little friend

 clue no.4!

 looking for clue no.5 by the "blueprints" sculpture at the circle

clue no.5 led me north, past polk-a-dot bakery, to find a park bench with the number 825 on/near it

 found! clue no.6

 clue no.6 6 led me southwest from where i was to another park to locate a black light post. do you see how many black light posts are in the below photo? there were tons...guidance was necessary!

 clue no.7 led me to some trees under the addison water tower, where my treasure was waiting for me! dek sneakishly got my favorite kind of white wine, Gewurztraminer, and printed a sticker label with a photo from our wedding day on it. really special touch! funny note: the wine was in a bag with a note on it explaining that it was a valentine's day gift and to please not touch, since it was sitting out in a public area, haha!

 he even brought glasses! we sat in the park and reminisced about where we were 3 years ago and how far we've come and where we want to go. i love making plans for our future and being so aligned with him.  

 after the little treasure hunt, we decided to grab a bite to eat at a place by our apartment, the lion & crown. it's an english pub located on a corner with an amazing wrap-around outdoor patio that we sat on to enjoy the 70 degree weather! 

my handsome husband

 for him: hoegaarden from the tap, for me: melon fizz 

 dek had the french dip sandwich with au jus & i had the brat on a bun with stoneground mustard 

 neighborhood kitty we call "fat cat," i want him to be my friend so bad but he doesn't trust me yet. 
it will be a love like this one, i can already tell. 

thanks for reading!

happy valentine's day & have a wonderful weekend!

home decor DIY

initially inspired by these, i knew i wanted to use small, wooden crate-like boxes to assemble a "centerpiece" for our living room area. since we live in a simple studio apartment and the floor plan is open, our whole place is basically just one big room, which we love. it feels open, inviting & homey. but there was just one big wall we weren't sure what to do with. we were on the search for free or cheap wooden boxes, i mean we could have made them, but luckily dekel's friend had 5 that he didn't need and they were exactly what we were looking for, so we took them on as the DIY project i have always been wanting to do!

we were going to my grandmother's house today to do some yard work & around-the-house chores, so we brought our boxes and some black spray paint to do this potentially-messy project in a corner of her giant backyard. we first removed leftover stickers that were on the boxes and sanded each box down. then we took a slightly damp cloth to the boxes to wipe them down from debris. to avoid painting the grass black, we cup open a few 45 gallon trash bags and found some weights to hold the bags down. we decided to take advantage of this spray painting opportunity to DIY some patio chairs as well. my sister gave them to us for our little outside seating area and they are perfect, besides the color and the fact that they would leave green residue when you touched them, so a coat of black paint was a necessity & i think they came out great! 

the next step was to decide how wide we wanted the v-shape format on our wall and just nail them in! we honestly just eyeballed the heights, so they might be off a tad, but it looks amazing to me & i love the result! to finish off our centerpiece, we added something to our wall that we've been wanting to mount for a while now, our scratch map! i got this for dekel for his birthday 3 years ago and finally it's up:) (you can find one here!)

dek sanding the boxes

  

 

the straightening tool is crucial so you don't have uneven boxes, really helps!

we need to scratch more countires...i think costa rica will be the next one!

hope you liked this post!

stay tuned if you'd like to see how we decorated our small space of the world; full apartment tour coming up this week!