The Goody Life

Blog Love: This Young House

A fairly new blog on my google reader is This Young House.  This stylish husband and wife duo provide color and decorating consultations and post their recommendations on their blog in the form of "mood boards" this this.
 

It's then up to the homeowner to take the ideas and run with them.  Often they post pictures of the completed rooms, which I like because I'm a fan of a good before-and-after.  There are lots of other great decorating and design ideas too. 

I like their overall design concepts and style, especially their color choices of lots of neutrals and soft blues/greens.

I actually drew some inspiration of my own from this blog, where I saw some mercury glass candles holders that caught my eye.  I looked for some all throughout Christmas break, and ended up getting an awesome deal at Target the day after Christmas.  Because they were included in the holiday clearance, I got four candle holders and all the candles for less than $30 (which is the original price of the largest candle holder!)  I actually wish I had bought one more....now that I have them on the table it looks a little bit too symmetrical.  I think there's some design rule about using odd numbers, but hey, I'm still learning. 
 

(first three images from This Young House)

Favorite Blogs: Smitten Kitchen

A big chunk of my Google Reader consists of food and cooking blogs.  A lot of the new recipes that I've made over the past year have been those that have caught my eye on various blogs.  Smitten Kitchen was one of the first ones I started reading, and remains one of my favorites.  I haven't made many of her recipes- actually, I'm not sure that I've made any- but I have a ton bookmarked that I want to try.  The food always looks delicious, the photography is beautiful, and the writing is usually witty and entertaining. 

On my must-try list:
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake
Noodle Kugel
Apple Cake
Best Challah
Blueberry Crumb Bars
Pumpkin Bread Pudding

 

She does make things other than cakes and sweets, but please, I have my priorities.

 

Favorite Blogs: Oh Happy Day

Blogs are taking over my life.  I spend way too much time going through my google reader each evening and frequently tell myself that I'm going to delete some blogs.  But one I know I won't delete is Oh Happy Day. It was the first non-food blog that I stumbled across and has remained my favorite.  When I first started reading it, I decided to look back through the archives to see what non-food blog people were writing about.  In her first month she wrote about the following:
*Anthropologie (my favorite!)
*globe lights at a wedding (I cleared out every Target in Palm Beach County in preparation for our wedding)
*photobooths (remember our SaveTheDate?)
*Kate Spade
*pretty cleaning supplies 

It's like me, but with more style and living in a cooler city!  Jordan's blog is always full of great photography, pretty things, and general inspiration.  And as if to secure its position as my-favorite-blog, she posted about these X-benches, which I had showed Stewart online less than 24 hours earlier. 
Seriously, if you're in need of a pick-me-up, check out Jordan's blog, she's fabulous.

(Photos Via Oh Happy Day)