Red and White Country Tablescape with Blackberries with Overnight Oats

Saturday night my little love asked what we were going to do before heading out for church the next morning. Since our property is just starting to produce a bounty of ripe blackberries we decided to go berry pickin' as a family in the morning. 

After she headed off to bed I decided to set the table all cute in red and white gingham and surprise her. She loves fancy tables and dinner parties. This little breakfast would be enjoyed by just the 3 of us, but it's important to do fun little things with just family as well.

The tablesettings were simple but oh so farmy and cute!

Red speckled enamelware, cherry cloth napkins, a white corelle dish with tiny blue floral pattern, and a cute little star shaped bowl to set our mason jar of overnight oats in. 

I know overnight oats are not a new concept, but we just discovered them a few months ago and loved them! They are yummy and very easy to put together. We usually make them assembly line style and make 9-10 at a time. They last 3-4 days in the fridge. 

There are lots of recipes out there, but this is what we came up with. It's creamy enough without getting the oats too soggy.

Overnight Oats

Place ingredients in a pint size jar in this order:

1/4 c. oats.....
1/3 c. greek yogurt
1/3 c. milk ( great with almond milk too!)
Add toppings, a lid and refrigerate overnight. 
Our favorite toppings have been shredded coconut with pineapple, strawberries or blueberries and cinnamon with honey. I'm thinking a scoop of cookie butter in there would be delectable too!

On this morning I had made the oats as I explained above and added a generous tablespoon of shredded sweetened coconut. The next morning , after picking blackberries, we added them on top with a drizzle of a local honey. Then squish those blackberries as you mix it all in. Heavenly combo!

Isn't this little sugar spoon the cutest! It was a Magnolia Market gift from my mama-in-law. It says, "Hey there sugar!" 

The salt and pepper chicks graced our table even though we didn't need s&p. That's OK, they looked cute!

Thank you for stopping by to check out our little country breakfast!

Have you over tried overnight oats?

What toppings sound good to you!

I'd love to hear in the comments below!

Unless otherwise noted, all photos are taken by yours truly and are exclusive content of this blog.

Roses for the Master Bedroom

Last February hubby was on a business trip in Texas and I made him promise that if he was anywhere near Magnolia Market Silos that he would go... for me... because that store is on my bucketlist and I wanted to live vicariously through him. He thought that he was staying possibly 4+ hours away. But upon arrival he found out that he was actually 2 hours away. Only 2 hours?!?! That's doable right!  

Tulip fields with my little girl... and I'm wearing my Magnolia Farms hat!

Well he was an absolute sweetheart and made the 2 hour trek and braved the lines to surprise me. Oh surprise me he did! Besides a cute hat, tee and tote, he hid one item to be a gift for our anniversary a few weeks later. I had no clue that he had somehow fit this amazing Jimmy Don metal-works sign in his small carry on. 

grow old along with me the best is yet to be...

I squealed with joy when I saw it! I wanted to hang it up right away but was unsure where. I played around with it in several different rooms and on several different walls. But I kept coming back to an empty wall in our master bedroom. At that point we had only been in our dream home for 1 year and several walls were ( and are) still waiting for some love. 

It took a while, but here's the vignette that I came up with a couple months ago and I'm loving it. 

The sign with the N is from hobby lobby, as is the picture frame on the armoire. 

This cute ceramic church was a Boutique find (Goodwill) and used to be perched on top of a cake stand on top of my kitchen cabinets in our last house. 

That darling turquoise dish is part of a set sold by Avon years ago. It had a perfume bottle on top. The dish was my Grandma's and it is full of the very last roses she gave me before she passed. That picture was taken on our anniversary trip this year. It's one of my favorites of the two of us... and I'm wearing my Magnolia Farms hat in the picture!

The large chippy frame was a Fancy Store ( Goodwill Outlet) find from years ago. I just dry brush painted the white haphazardly over the textured brown frame. Easy peasy! Over the years I have displayed different pictures and sayings seasonally. (You know me, I love to decorate seasonally!)

Isn't that rose paper so pretty? Did you know that Hobby Lobby sells large patterned poster board? These were the three I was considering to fill this frame. 

  

Here is each on in the frame to give you an idea. They were all cute, but the pink roses won my heart. 

Now as you may know, my home is my playground. I love to change things up! So I used my non permanent trick for adding paper to empty frames without glass. 

Are you ready? 
It's so high tech it may blow your mind!

Painters Tape! Yep, this allows me to change it out for the season or if I need to use the frame for a party I'm hosting and the colored paper doesn't match. All you have to do is cut the paper so that is nestles in the inner lip of the frame where the glass would set. Tape it down. Voila! Instant cuteness. 

This just makes my heart happy!

What are your simple tricks to add instant pretty to you home? 

Have you blogged about it? 

Feel free to link to that post below. 

I'd love to check it out!

All photos are taken by yours truly unless otherwise noted, and are exclusive content of this blog. 
This is not a sponsored post and all opinions are my own.

Why Is Summer So Hard To Decorate For?

Picture me standing up in the middle of a group and solemnly saying, "Hi, my name is Emily. And I decorate my home for every season. I am known to decorate more heavily for some seasons, and I am not ashamed of it. But I struggle with decorating for the summer months." And this is where all of you that belong to the same support group that struggles with summer home decor say, "Hi Emily." and we have punch and cookies while commiserating. 

My home is my playground, so I am always getting some harebrained idea and moving decor and furniture around. But after the cute spring decor goes into the bin I find myself stumped. Don’t get me wrong I love the foundation of my home (furniture, wall colors, neutral decor). But when you decorate seasonally, summer can seem so bland ya know?

Our home is what we call farmhouse chic. Lots of chippy and rusty goodness with a touch of glitz. That makes sense, right? I thought I would try a subdued nautical theme in my living room this summer but nothing seemed quite right. So after having an empty mantle staring at me for weeks I decided that I didn't need a summer theme per say. I could just keep up my anchor items where they were in the house and add a touch of summer here and there. (By the way, my mom is amazing at seasonal decor... even summer! I need to take after her next year.) 

What I did wasn't revolutionary and I wont be winning a Pulitzer for these tips I'm sharing, but I hope it will spark some creativity for you who are summer-decor-challenged like me. 

Here are 4 Easy Tips if you find yourself in a summer décor rut.

1. Add one summer element to an existing large piece of décor.

Meet Petunia the cow. There is a funny story of how she came to reside at our home, but I’ll save that for another day. We mounted her on this old chippy door that we stenciled and added some awesome structural bolts with malleable dock washers for contrast. (It's held on the wall with drywall screws behind the bolts.) 

The magnolia blossoms stay there year round as they are a neutral color and I add in 5-6 décor picks or sprays according to the season. For summer I have chosen 3 apple picks and 2 lemon picks.  It’s a fun nod to the summer bounty of our garden.

Petunia also receives an update seasonally. This summer it’s a checkered ribbon with a cowbell. Cuteness!

Don’t have a cow head of your own? You can buy one here if you fancy. You could also add these fruit picks to an existing bouquet, tuck them around larger items on your mantle, add them to a wreath, the options are endless.

2. Switch out your pillow covers.

I’m not taking about buying all new pillows. Just cute seasonal covers. This is where you can have some fun. If you’re just switching out the covers it is a) less expensive and b) requires much less storage.  A while ago I purchased 2 pillow forms that are exactly the same and these are the ones I change out seasonally when needed. 

Sorry about the glare on the "Welcome Y'all." It was so sunny in there!

The others ( in the background of the pictures) are my anchor pillows. They get switched from room to room throughout the year, but their covers stay the same.

3. Use unexpected items from other rooms in the house.

Mason jars are not just for the kitchen. 

Tiny one hundred year old books, like the black book pictured, are not just for the library. Don’t hide the milk jar and enamel plate in the kitchen, it belongs in the entryway. 

Toy tractors are quite at home in the kitchen windowsill.

4. Bring the outdoors in.

Pick hydrangea blooms, daisies, even the kid’s precious bouquet of dandelions and display them in a row. 

 Hydrangeas are gorgeous fresh, dried right in the jar to retain color or completely dried from the bush you forgot to prune last year.  

Isn't this rustic wash bin perfectly lovely with it's overflowing, blue hydrangeas?  It looks like I have a small bush in there! The secret to getting the stems all close together in a bunch so that they look all bushy is to place three mason jars inside. This keeps them bunched together and looking fuller. It also makes it convenient when I need to change the water.

This is Annabel, my chicken door stopper. She usually lives in the garden, but for the summer she’s sittin’ pretty by my living room fireplace. What else could be brought in? How about a small orchard ladder for the family room? (hint hint hubby!)

Do you decorate seasonally? How do you decorate for summer?

Please comment below!

I’d love to hear what you do to keep your summer décor fresh!

This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own. 
All photos taken by yours truly unless otherwise noted and are exclusive content of this blog.