Aliya
Hi! my name is Aliya and I'm so glad you stopped by today! Truly you have no idea how much it means to me. I live in Ohio with my husband and 3 little girls. I believe that once we start opening our doors, that hearts will start to open around us as well. You can head over to the About Aliya page to get my whole story.
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Cottage Garden Update: How to Manage Garden Pests
Gardening is much like life. Sometimes you walk through the garden and everything is perfect. But other times you’re walking through the garden and realize some of the plants aren’t behaving the way you expected them to. Disclosure: There are some affiliate links below, but these are products I recommend. I won’t put anything on this page that I haven’t verified and/or personally used. I’ve been asked about our garden a lot lately. With good reason! It’s been forever since I’ve shared an update on our garden. Generally, I’d say the garden is doing well! We have produce for sure. Although at this point it’s not piling up on my…
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Create an Inviting Dining Room: Mixing Vintage and New
Disclosure: There are some affiliate links below, but these are products I recommend. I won’t put anything on this page that I haven’t verified and/or personally used. During the dining room makeover, we tried to analyze all the ways we use this space to ensure everyone felt like they belonged in this room. Life happens in our dining room and we wanted everyone to feel invited here. I’m so excited to finally be sharing the whole dining room with you! It’s officially the first room we’ve refinished and I couldn’t be happier about it. It’s one of my favorite rooms in our home. From a design perspective, it’s my favorite…
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Simple and Easy: DIY Paint Transformation
Colors can completely change the way objects and spaces look and feel. Whether the colors are dark, vibrant, or soft and light you are going to feel a certain way simply based on the color. What a wonderful thing that so many things can receive a color change fairly easily and inexpensively. Que: DIY Paint Project! Disclosure: There are some affiliate links below, but these are products I recommend. I won’t put anything on this page that I haven’t verified and/or personally used. Garage sale season is upon us and you know I love it! You can snatch up some awesome finds for great prices at garage sales. The only…
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Zucchini Recipe: Summer Produce Pizza
We have a garden for many reasons. We love watching the butterflies and bees pollinating everything, having garden picnics, and honestly, I even love sitting beside the beds pulling weeds. There is something magical about the garden. I feel so much peace listening to the birds and I especially love watching the girls run around the paths between the beds. While this is all beautiful, the main reason we have a garden is to eat fresh fruit and vegetables. We picked our first zucchini and we are going to use it in one of our favorite zucchini recipes today. When we had our first garden I struggled with the zucchini.…
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Creating A Simple and Beautiful Table Setting
Creating a beautiful table setting using dishes and glassware that belonged to my great grandmothers was special. As the girls and I put the dishes on the table I was able to see the past, present, and future at the same time. Last week I shared a little about preparing for our adoption fundraiser garage sale. Before the garage sale, Mom had me come over and go through all the stuff she was donating. I ended up taking home 4 boxes of things that belonged to my great grandmother’s years ago. After I got everything home, I decided I wanted to create a beautiful and simple table setting using at…
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How to Easily Add Flower Arrangements to Your Home
Disclosure: There are some affiliate links below, but these are products I recommend. I won’t put anything on this page that I haven’t verified and/or personally used Today I wanted to share some tips and tricks I’ve learned along to help you feel confident to use flowers in your home decor! When I first started doing this I was extremely intimidated. I felt like there were so many rules and regulations surrounding flowers and I just knew I wasn’t ever going to be any good at it. But I’ve learned there are definitely easy ways to add flower arrangements in your home, so I want to share these ideas with…
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Welcome Home Sunday Series Guest Host
I’m absolutely thrilled to be joining these lovely ladies as a guest host for their Welcome Home Sunday series! Thank you Kelly (Tattered Pew) for all your help and for asking me to join you girls! These ladies have such beautiful accounts, wonderful DIY’s, and great decorating advice and garden tips and tricks! If you haven’t already you need to go check them out! Thank you all so much for this opportunity! Welcome Home Sunday The Tattered Pew / DIY Cane IKEA Vase White Arrows Home / Summer Outdoor Spaces Tour Noting Grace / Summer Sunroom Refresh Seeking Lavender Lane / Simple Summer Porch Decorating Sincerely, Marie Designs /…
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4 Beautiful Elements for Modern European Farmhouse Style
I love many aspects of many different styles, but once I found European Farmhouse I knew it would become my main inspiration for home decor. I recently decided to nail down my preferred decorating style. If you’ve been following along, you know from my unexpected discovery post that I didn’t learn that one magic word that describes my personal design style. However, I did learn more about it. Today I wanted to share with you my favorite aspects of European Farmhouse Style. What is European Farmhouse Style? European farmhouse style is a casual kind of beautiful. It’s the beauty that is found in simple and livable design decisions. I’ll talk…
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Backyard Picnic – Working with What You’ve Got
Since COVID-19 started we have been doing project after project. Its really been non-stop around here. The thing is, as much as we incorporate the girls, they just don’t wake up and think about how fun it’s going to be to paint the walls, sand a bookcase or replace cabinets with open shelves. So I decided I wanted to do something special for them. I wanted them to know how much I loved and appreciated them. I thought a fun way to do that was to have a fun backyard picnic for dinner. Initially, I thought that I couldn’t do it because the garden wasn’t in full bloom. Everything was…
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Beautiful Raw Wood Finish | Great-Grandpas Bookcase
We recently completed a raw wood finish bookcase makeover and I absolutely love the look and feel of the bookcase now that it’s finished. Somehow I ended up with a bookcase my great-grandpa built. I don’t know how this happened, but I’m glad it did. I loved the bookcase because my great-grandpa built it, but I wanted to refinish it to match my home decor style. It was originally a warm-red color. I started seeing raw wood furniture around and thought that would match the rest of my decor. So the girls and I began the process of giving the bookcase a raw wood makeover! Preparing for the raw wood…
