The Lovely Side

Certain parts of the house are coming along. (You can check out the master bedroom and bath, downstairs bathroom, dining room, foyer, and living room in this post.) While other rooms still feel disheveled and hardly unpacked.
My office was one of the first rooms to get set up with furniture since I needed to have a place to work. But style-wise, it's not as colorful or inspiring of a creative space as I'd like. It needs to function as a motivating office for working from home, as an inspiring space for the creative writing and blogging I do as a hobby, and as a pretty room since it's on the main level and will definitely be seen by guests.

To know me is to know I'm afraid of anything with more than four legs - except butterflies. After over a month of living together in our new-to-us, 105-year-old house in a semi-rural small town... G is just finding this out. He's come home to a beetle trapped under a mason jar, fireplace wrapped in tape to keep honeybees out, and me nearly in tears because there were two wasps upstairs.
One of the biggest, scariest adventures in having our own house has been dealing with the uninvited guests. The job has mostly fallen to me since I work from home... and our house is now also my office. So far, I've been pestered by ants, spiders, bees, wasps, and a solitary beetle. And with two furry co-workers - errr, uh... cats - I want to keep my extermination methods as eco-friendly and pet-safe as possible. And I thought I'd share my product reviews and recommendations with you!
Let's get down to the creepy crawlers, shall we?

We've been living here in our beautiful old house for over a month now. And it's been hectic. Mainly because weekends have been consumed by unpacking, landscaping, and trips out of town to graduations. Last weekend, we finally had a weekend to have some much-needed fun - among more landscaping. ;)
We began our weekend with a Friday night fire on our patio. Just the two of us, some hamburgers on the grill, a few beers, and a nice fire going. It was perfect. I can't wait for many more nights on this patio together - and sharing it with friends and family!

I love Burt's Bees. I love beeswax candles. And I love me some honey... especially slurped out of those honey straws from the farmers' market or brewed into a refreshing Kolsch beer.
But I'm a fraidy-cat when it comes to the little buzzers that make honey: the honeybees. I'm embarrassingly afraid. Not embarrassed myself, but bound to embarrass any friends or family standing nearby. Like, flapping-my-arms and running-away, embarrassingly afraid. I know, I know... flapping your arms can make bees upset or afraid, resulting in a sting. And that's why I'm afraid. I'm afraid of being stung. It's a fear of the unknown because I've never been stung. I'm afraid of the pain. I'm afraid of turning out to be allergic. And I'm afraid of watching the bee die because it stung me. Ugh.
So anyway, long story short: For a few weeks, we've been trying to figure out how honeybees are getting in. But now we've seen it with our own eyes. The bees ar…

This post brought to you by Hallmark Jewelry. The content and opinions expressed below are that of The Lovely Side.



Mother's Day is right around the corner, lovelies. Life gets busy and hectic. But life is also filled with love stories and moments to treasure. And some of the most important moments and cherished stories involve our mothers. What are my favorite moments and memories shared with my mom? The first thing that comes to mind is books. From a very early age, Mom instilled within me a love for books and reading. She'd take me to Storytime at the local library. And most nights, we'd curl up and she'd read aloud to me... usually The Boxcar Children. I really believe that had my mom not shared her love of books with me, I would not be the writer and bookworm I am today. I also owe her my love of decorating, fearless use of color (I grew up surrounded by lots of red!), and knack for being thrifty.