Weekend Recap

Last week was a bit of a blur. My office was closed Monday for the holiday and then I wrapped up a huge photo shoot on Tuesday for our guest bedroom makeover. It’s completely finished now, and I can’t wait to share it all with you on February 10th!

Shop the sources:

Tuesday afternoon, I flew to Salt Lake City to attend Alt.

Alt is a conference for creatives and bloggers and I had heard so much about it in the past. Admittedly, I was a bit intimidated going into the event because I literally knew no one else that was attending. I’m a talker once I get to know people, but I can definitely be shy with strangers. I met a few new people and learned so much! I was surprised, however, how few home bloggers were at the event. I definitely felt out of my element most of the time. But, it still ended up being a lot of fun.

My parents still live in Utah so I stayed at their house for the event. My mom and I went shopping Wednesday morning, because I was feeling totally unprepared, clothing-wise, for Alt

Wednesday night I had dinner with the hayneedle team and had a lot of fun chatting with the ladies I’ve been working with for the past few months, as well as all the new bloggers I hadn’t met before. The tablescape was so beautiful!

Thursday and Friday, I attended a great group of breakouts, general sessions (Sarah Michelle Gellar spoke, among others!), one-on-one meetings, and more, and I learned so much.

I felt leaving so inspired, but also a bit frightened by my daunting to-do list. Blogging is so much more than just the posts we write each day (if you want to grow your blog). There is so much behind-the-scenes work that goes into keeping things up and running, finding new readers, driving traffic, etc. Whenever I attend conferences, like Alt, the to-do list grows but I also feel inspired to write on so many subjects when surrounded by creatives. The reality is, I just need an extra day in the week to do all I want to do 😉 I’ll plan to talk more about the blog and this topic when I do my survey review post (either this week or next). Overall, I was really glad I attended Alt.

Before I left town, my mom and I did a little home decor shopping at Tai Pan and Rodworks. I always stock up on faux greenery whenever I’m in Utah because I have such a hard time finding it in Omaha. Needless to say, I think I bought out the supply of everything I loved. Here’s most of the greenery I got. I’m not planning to style it all together like this, but it all fit nicely in the iron basket I bought and worked well for traveling. Good, faux greenery is always worth buying and makes rooms instantly feel more fresh!

After shopping, we met my dad for lunch downtown at Market Street. I flew out Saturday afternoon before a snow storm hit Salt Lake!

While I was away, I started getting into Outlander again. I’ve been reading it off an on for a few months now (it’s over 800 pages), and I finally just crossed the 500 page mark of the first book. I’m totally hooked again, so hopefully I can see it through. So many people rave about the whole series.

I shared this sneak peak yesterday on Instagram, but in case you missed it, I wanted to share here just how happy my new kitchen runners are making me! I still need to get some rug pads to help them stick better on the hardwood, but so far, I love the fun vibe they add to our kitchen!

I’ll be sharing more tomorrow on the blog, but for now, you can shop the look here:

Oh, and I think it was the Alt pressure, but I joined Snapchat this past week, as well. I haven’t actually used it yet (because honestly, I’m not 100% sure I know how to), but you can find me @virginiastblog. Are any of you on Snapchat? Do you love it? I’ve heard nothing but great things, so I figured it was time to join 😉 I feel like Instagram used to be that random place where you could share more of ‘real life’ and now it has turned into a perfectly curated image library – so I think Snapchat may just be what I need in my life right now.

I hope you all had a great weekend! Check back tomorrow, when I’ll be sharing some ideas for adding life to your home in the dead of winter (and I’ll also have a new giveaway)! See you then.

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