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Tag Archive for 'hope'

Bohemian Garden Party

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Last weekend, I hosted a birthday party (on the front lawn) for one of my beloved gal pals, Hope… she’s the kind of person who doesn’t know strangers, always makes everything fun, always includes everyone (aka the anti-mean-girl – and you can’t get enough of those), has an easy-breezy and ever-positive spirit, an infectious love of life and a larger-than-life love for Taylor Swift.  Which has infected ALL OF US, including yours truly:

Taylor Swift Concert | Covet Living

Anyhoo.  Besides kicking ass at life, Hopes (a fellow design guru) is also insanely creative and has mad ingenuity.  For her birthday this year, she wanted to do a “laid back dinner outside” with just a handful of her closest friends… and had a fun, boho vision of laying out blankets and lanterns around a low table.  As soon as she said that, I knew we were about to embark on something magical in a Woodstock / flower power sort of way. This was the vibe we were going for:

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

And – YOU GUYS – I gotta tell ya… this was SO EASY.  So I promise you can do it at home this weekend if you wanna.  We only had a few days to plan and for a second, Lilly (my co-conspirator, aka Princess Jasmine) and I panicked and thought we were going to have to rush order all sorts of hippie hoopla from Etsy, buy West Elm out of lanterns, etc… And theeeeennnn we decided to just chillax and try to use what we already had.  Here’s what we needed:

  • String Lights (and some way to hoist/rig ’em up over the table)
  • Low Table (at the height you can sit on the ground and eat)
  • Blankets
  • Pillows
  • Lanterns
  • Flowers (for centerpieces)
  • Flowers (for flower crowns – more of Hope’s genius vision)
  • Tableware
  • Gold chargers
  • Temporary tattoos (duh)

We also thought about trying to make everything match and coordinate, and then (psssssht) threw caution to the wind and decided that – whateva – it’s boho, yo.  The curtains aren’t supposed to match the drapes… (this all goes back to my theory about how when you put a bunch of things in a room that you love, they somehow miraculously look great.)  Here’s how it all shook out:

SATURDAY, 12PM:

Hope (with her Chicago besties in tow) brings over some stuff she had at home: blankets, pillows, votives, tea lights & gold chargers.  And flowers she picked up from the market… for centerpieces and (duh) for flower crowns.

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Boho Party Inspo | Covet Living

SATURDAY, 12:30PM

Some dude delivers a massive, 300lb parquet dining table that Hope just bought off of Craigslist for $20.  Girlfriend can scout a deal, I tell ya.

Craigslist Table | Covet Living

But since she wants us to sit on the ground, we know we have to hack off the legs. So we plop down around my coffee table to gage how high we want it, settle on 17″H, and measure/mark the legs on the new table… remove them (luckily, they screwed off) and Hope ran to Home Depot to have them cut down (there’s usually a small fee to do this, but the nice fella with the saw did it for free for her.  Aww.)

SATURDAY, 1:30PM

Temporary tattoos {from Pigment}, check.

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Pick up cupcakes from Pure Cupcakes down the street. #nomnomnom // {Meanwhile, Princess Jasmine is baking a homemade lasagna and scooping up a salted caramel cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.  Otherwise, we pot lucked it.}

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

SATURDAY, 2PM

Gus resting up for the festivities.  The excitement of party prep has already sidelined him.  Obviously.

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

SATURDAY, 5PM

Hope comes over to help start setting up.  Neither of us have showered, and nothing’s set up yet.  Party starts at 6:30pm.  NBD.

First order of biz: rigging the string lights.  We only had one measly string of lights and no trees close enough to hang them from, so we stuck some old pieces of molding (pulled from a heap of &^$# in my landlord’s garage) in a pot and weighted it down with bricks.  It only fell about 18x before we finally stuck the landing:

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Then we heave-ho’d the table out and laid blankets/pillows around it.  I scored the vintage batik runner on Etsy a few months ago:

Boho Garden Party | Covet Living

We set the table with the votives and flowers Hopers brought + a bunch of mismatched antique glassware I’ve been collecting since before Baby Jesus was born.

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Extra blankets got draped over the backs of the Adirondack chairs to make them a bit cozier.  I bought the giant lily lanterns at Celadon Home in Charleston about 10 years ago.

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

{Hopes putting out the last few Moroccan poufs}

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

6:30PM: TABLE SET!

{Chargers – $1 at Michael’s // ikat plates & plastic silverware – $1 at Wal-Mart // floral napkins & confetti – leftover from a wedding shower Karrie recently threw // antique glassware, Mexican bowl and runner – from the depths of my closet}

Bohemian Table | Covet Living

6:45PM: BOHO YARD PARTY COMMENCES

{to the tune of T-Swift – if you really wanna play along listen here}

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

boho yard party | covet living

7PM: DIY FLOWER CROWN CRAFTING COMMENCES

{Easy tutorial here}

DIY Flower Crowns | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

…even Gus was in on it.

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

He loves his Aunt Hope.

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

8PM: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

How cute is she?? Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

8PM – MIDNIGHT

Taylor gets louder & louder… Gus takes 400 laps around the table to show everyone his stuffed animal, then disembowels it on the lawn… neighbors try to complain about the noise but then decide coming over for birthday cake is a better plan, we may or may not have camped on the lawn, etc.  Good times.

boho garden party | covet living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living
Bohemian Yard Party | Covet Living

So the moral of the story is: Gowel… don’t stress!  Use as much of what you already have around the house as you can, don’t worry about everything matching, and have everybody bring a dish so you don’t have to do all the cooking.  Teamwork is a wonderful thing. #Girlsquad #easybutton

Howeva – if you don’t happen to have string lights & kanthas & colorful tableware just laying (is it laying or lying??) around, here are a few picks I love:

Boho Yard Party | Covet Living

edison bulb string lights, target, $24.99 :: vintage hmong batik runner, similar to shown, about $79 :: chatoyant tumbler, anthropologie, $10 :: geometric appliqué pillow, target, $24.99 :: tie dye lumbar pillow, target, $24.99 :: fleur & frond bowls, west elm, $8 each :: faceted lanterns, west elm, $49-$69 :: bohemian kantha quilt, etsy, $89 (UM – I *LOVE* THIS ONE – somebody better go buy it before I do.)

As for the morning after… have truer words ever been spoken?

the morning after | covet living

xoxo!!

Steph's Scanned Signature

Bachelorette Recap: Week 4

Before we start dishing about last night’s epic train wreck, this is the Chicken Chili Verde I dished out to the flooze pops who came over last night.  It’s from Heather Christo and it’s **SO** good (and so good for you).  Only changes I make to her recipe are:

a) Sub rotisserie chicken for pulled pork (Easy button!),

b) Make the chicken broth out of Better Than Boullion (1 tsp boullion per 1 cup of water), and

c) Double the quantities of cilantro and jalapeño for the salsa verde.

Screen Shot 2015-06-09 at 9.11.30 AM chicken chili verde

Also: Make sure you put your friends to work when they come over.  (Thanks Hope!!)

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One more thing… single tear & big thanks to Ali Fedotowsky for the props!  PS y’all should follow her on Insta / sign up for liketoknowit so you can copy off of all her insanely adorable fashion finds.

ali

ALRIGHT CAMPERS, HERE WE GO.  GAME ON:

1.  Somebody get this slick little narcissist some of those Neutrogena oil blotting pads.  Or just a sweat towel.  Or maybe just a new attitude.

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2.  “Clint and I are best best best friends and we’re very very very very very close.”  Could somebody help Baby Oscar weave some shiny new superlatives into his vocab so he doesn’t feel like he has to repeat the same word 95x to get his point across? ALSO.  Hearing her say, “I’m done.  I don’t trust you.” makes me love her even more than I did last week.  Gotta respect a girl who goes with her gut and knows her own mind.  Boom.

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3.  20 Second Timeout: Tanner has a promising future as the next Bob Costas.  This guy is a solid commentator.

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4.  Friendship bromance is so fickle (!)  I feel like they’re either about to make out, or someone’s about to commit a crime of passion.

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5.  Best line of the night:  “Hey – that tie goes really good with your shirt. (BEEEEEEEEEEP).” -Clint.  I hate to encourage toddler-tantrum-esque behavior but I literally spat out my chicken chili cackling.  Sometimes kids man babies say the darndest things!

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6.  HANDS-DOWN THE BEST CAT FIGHT / SWORDS MATCH THESE EYES HAVE EVER SEEN.

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7.  There is no camera shutter fast enough to capture JJ b*tch slapping himself in the face, but you all know what I’m talking about.  We had to rewind it 3x to make sure we all saw what we thought we saw.  #suckitup!

8.  I like the guy but let’s be real.  By 30 do they actually mean 49?

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9.  I missed a doppelgänger…  Justin from Naperville is actually the dude from Boardwalk Empire.  Also – omg I JUST saw that t-shirt this weekend.  On a 4-year old. Who got it at Gymboree.

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10.  Ben in a DILF sweater is a perfect example of two amazing things becoming greater than the sum of their parts when combined.  In other news: this is Kid n Play’s “surprised” face.  And this is JJ’s, “Ew – what’s rap music?  I only listen to classical music while I dye my teeth purple” face.

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Also – this is the EXACT face I make every time he comes on screen.  OMG, we’re MFEO.

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11.  Justin: now representing painted-on pants for men.  Also, I’m guessing he lost about half his sperm count when he wedged himself into those bad boys this morning.  With a shoe horn.

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12.  “I’ve listened to Broadway showtunes my whole life”  ………..So there’s that.  Most smug + most overconfident + confused contestant in history.

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13.  Chews on Rocks + Tarantulashes in the same shot = my mind just got blown.

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PS: I gotta give my girl props – she looks GREAT.  Is it the side part?  Is it that she’s not wearing a crown?  Can’t put my finger on it, but demure becomes her.

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14.  She’s hilarious.  “I don’t think there’s ever been a rap battle with 2 guys in khaki pants.”  ….aBbahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahsha
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15.  HOLY TESTICLE TUESDAY.  I’m sorry but: a) WHY IS HE HERE?  Did Salesforce let him go?  Can the Bachelor(ette) let him go – like, permanently?  The only place this guy belongs is Bachelor Pad.  And that’s a maybe.

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b) Why is he trying to eat his sippy cup?

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c) I love her but I’m confused about how she’s THIS excited to see Nick.  AKA Count Dracula.

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d) When she said Nick complimented her for the way that she carried herself during Farmer Chris’ season, I had to scratch my head and wonder if she saw the way he carried HIMSELF on Andi’s?  Otherwise known as: like a JACK A$$.  Did Kaitlyn take a nap during the ultimate display of slime when Nick outed Andi for boinking him in the fantasy suite on national TV?

outed

e) Why isn’t Nick coming back for Andi?  You know – the girl he was gonna propose to a year ago who just broke off her engagement?  Just a question.  Probably cuz he knows it’d fall on deaf ears… judging from the fact that she tweeted Kaitlyn last night and told her to RUN.  FAST.  Sing it sister!

andi kaitlyn nick

f)  I have a dream…. and it’s called Nick, JJ, Chris Bukowski and Juan Pablo being put in Bachelor timeout FOREVER.

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16.  One year later, and the kid still always looks like he just got out of bed – complete with bed head, sweats and lookin’ like he just ate a bowl of rocky pebbles. And, this is a legit question:  Do we think that’s a cowlick, or do we think when he blow dries his hair in the morning, he aims the dryer at the side of his head from point-blank range?  It’s like what happens when a helicopter lands in a field and blows down the tall grass all around it.

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17.  Oh, sweet Ben H.  You’re like a breath of fresh air.  A sight for sore eyes.  A vision in plaid.  An oasis in the middle of the Mohave desert.  Please tell me a bedtime story in cartoons about reproduction.  Or we can just play show & tell.

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18.  Next time I need sage relationship advice, I’m calling Courtney Thorne Smith:  “You’re going to have parts of your life where you’re not in sync and you have to fall back on other parts.  Like friendship.”  Best thing she’s ever said.  This woman is a Bachelor franchise treasure.

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19.  Denny’s cleans up good!

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…except he forgot to shave.  I feel like he should just sh*t or get off the pot with that thing.  It’s like going to work with only one leg in a pair of pants.  Just shave it all or slap some Propecia or Miracle Gro on the parts that are barren.  That said…  he really is a good egg.

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…and she luuuuuuvs him.

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And to be fair, I have Mufasa/Nick Nolte hair when I wake up in the morning. Remember?

nick nolte

20.  I have no words.

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21.  I don’t know what was more endearing…  Bart Simpson saying that singing and dancing are pretty much the two things he’s worst at…

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…watching Bart Simpson try to dance, or watching Bart Simpson improv the words to A Whole New World.

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Bart for President.  The End.

xoxo,

Steph's Scanned Signature