amy jo royall photography

have you ever met someone that you just immediately know you were meant to be friends? that some how you think the same, act the same and can agree on almost everything? 

thats how i felt when i met amy jo. now if you have met amy jo you know what i am talking about. she is one of the most uplifting, happy, inspiring and beautiful people on this earth. i am so grateful to call her my friend. she has been just what i have needed these last couple of months. 

now not only is amy jo amazing she is an incredibly talented photographer. long story short i actually discovered amy jo before i knew amy jo. i'm one of those weird people that looks for new photographers before she moved to chicago....haha i know! i ran across amy jo's website and fell in love. over time i discovered that we had mutual friends in chicago. but i was too much of a chicken to say anything to her.

fast forward a couple of months....amy jo and her husband moved just a couple of blocks from us. we've been fast friends ever since. when we found out we were expecting i wanted some pictures. amy jo was on board and i couldn't be more excited.

i'll post some more of those pictures later but i wanted to show off some she took of our family room. i love how she can make a family room look beautiful. i also love that i get to keep these pictures forever and have a reminder of our favorite chicago apartment. i just wish i would have had her take pictures of our old place. 

thanks amy jo for making our little home look beautiful! now i just need to clean my bedroom and kitchen so you can come back and document those!!!

our photo wall....i had too may pictures to share and not enough wall space! thank you ikea shelves

love our over stuffed game baskets. we are just game people i guess

thanks to my beautiful mother i have the most perfect fabric for my windows....now i just need to finish the last 3.

so random but i am in love with our brick walls. i didn't realize how much i wanted some until we started looking at new places.

our glider for the baby. we bought this before we moved to chicago. i can't wait to finally have a baby to rock in it!

my next project

(some of my most recent ideas/inspirations via my pinterest board) 

so to make a long story short a couple of months ago i was struggling with wanting something new. life hasn't planned out how i expected (not necessarily a bad thing) but i found myself doing the whole "what's my purpose?" thing. i think i do that about once a year...haha. anyway by this time in life i expected to be a stay at home mom. since that isn't the case i needed to change my mind set a bit. i still love my job but i've gotten to know the ins and outs and for the most part it isn't super challenging. i do have a few new work events but still.

i have thought about a masters degree for some time now. last fall i started my application. but then it just didn't feel right. then again in february i started my application. after a lot of thought and prayer it again didn't feel right. at first i was confused. but i went with it and didn't apply to the program i wanted. 

since then i have been trying to figure out what my next step is. where do i go from here. about two months ago i was really having a hard time. i felt like i wasn't growing or doing anything worth while. i asked heavenly father to give me a new project. something i would love and could spend my time working on and growing. 

a few weeks after that we found out our landlord wants to sell our apartment. at first we were both floored. it was not what we were expecting. we had planned on staying in our cute little place for the next 3 years. after some freaking out we realized our next step. to find a new place to live.

little did i know that this was going to be my new project. at least for the next couple of months. i spent all last month getting to know chicago real-estate. i learned the ins and outs of each neighborhood we were looking into, the prices of the rental market right now, distance from school and the like. honestly i became a pro at craigslist and dominated the google search. 

we finally found our new home. it's almost perfect. the neighborhood is dreamy although a bit more north (sorry babe for the longer commute). we get to stay in our current ward and we're moving closer to one of my good friends. so now i have a beautiful two bed two bath apartment to decorate. i'm excited about this new project. i keep daydreaming about what i want to do in the rooms. surprisingly i most excited about decorating the bathrooms. i have no idea why ;-) 

so we'll move in a couple of weeks. from there i'll take my time putting our new place together. i'm excited to share all my ideas along the way. it may not be the master program in interior design i was planning on (at least not right now) but it's something i can work on and put my heart into. i love putting together spaces, especially my own! i'm trying to learn more about interior design as i go. really put together our "house" the way it should be. someway that looks and feels like home. 

so here is to the next couple of months. now i just need to find a good (cheap) moving company and start parking. oh joy! 

finding my style one tween room at a time

so i've been trying to determine my "style" and what you could really call our little place. i've gone from one direction to another but lately it's mostly just color. i love color. and i've come to realize there is nothing wrong with that. i'm not a black and white kind of girl. i don't love monochromatic. and thats okay. i eye tends to follow the blues and pinks. spence of course hates the pinks but has been okay with a few pops of coral here and there. i've been wanting to share my inspiration for a few of our rooms but today i just had to share this post by emily henderson. one of my most favorite designers. i simply love almost everything she does. 

today she posted this tween room (get that, a tween...not even a teen) and i found myself saying...."oh gosh i want this to be my room". now, i would do a bit less pink and maybe mix in some navy but seriously. apparently my style is tween. oh gosh people what am i supposed to do. ha. 

maybe one day i'll grow up. but i guess for now i'm just lovin' the tween stage. 

i guess i need to have kids fast so i can design rooms for them and just live vicariously through them.

a master bedroom redo update....finally

so i've slowly been working on our bedroom. the room is a good size but it's tucked in the back and doesn't get great light (unlike the rest of our place...boo). i haven't loved the room since we moved it. i didn't really care to keep it clean because honestly i didn't love being in there so i thought "why keep it clean". after our long dark chicago winter i decided it needed some love. so after some thinking we decided we needed to brighten up the room, change the layout and add some much needed color.

i started with white bedding. i swear everybody i talked to told me not to get white bedding. but after wanting it for years i decided to just go for it. i highly recommend white bedding. if you can make it work. it goes with almost anything and you can change up the look and feel so easily. we had some more neutral pillows on at first and that was great as well. when i'm board of how it is now i can change up the pillows and blanket for a totally new look.

i searched and searched for pillows but couldn't find what i loved. i even bought a few...but ended up returning all of them. finally i decided to make my own. the fabrics that i choose are a bit bright but the room really needs it. it's fun and spunky which is what we wanted. sometimes i have to remind myself that my style is bright and thats okay.

my fabrics sat out for about 3 months and finally last weekend i decided to pull out the good ol' sewing machine. i pounded out all the pillows in one day. spence laughed and said "man if i would have known it would only take you one day to make all of those i would have forced you to do it sooner". haha...

so there you have it. the rest of our master room re-do is coming together. it's gone from one of my most hated rooms to my favorite room. i love getting ready for the morning in there and relaxing in there in the late afternoons. just what a master bedroom should be like.

something new // interior design

so there is something i haven't really talked about much. i think mostly because i'm scared. but i decided i'm scared no more. and yes....another super long post. i'll work on not doing these all the time but this is for journaling sake!

some background: when i started college i knew just what i wanted to do. i wanted to be a high school math teacher. well that lasted about a year and i knew i wanted a change. i really wanted to do interior design or event planning but after talking to some people and my parents i decided i should get a degree that i could do more with to start with. so political science it was. 

honestly i loved political science. it was a great major for me. i did have thoughts of going to law school or getting a master program but i think i pushed those thoughts because i thought it's what i was supposed to want with going into political science. 

after i graduated i struggled to figure out my life. should i get a job? or should i pursue an internship in event planning or interior design. at that time i decided to focus on event planning. but after a lot of thinking and praying i decided it was best to get a job. 

well along came my dream job which in just under a year would turn into an event planning job. looks like heavenly father knew something i didn't know. i have truly grown to love event planning. i have learned so much and done a ton of research and really feel like it is a great job for me. 

but....

last summer i felt like something was missing. i decided to take the time and really focus on what i love and what i want to do with my life. something i thought i had figured out when i was 19...ha! after a lot of thinking, prayer and exploring interior design kept coming back to me.

for a long time i couldn't admit this. i couldn't tell spence. for some reason i've felt like i couldn't be interested in interior design. i was the one that did political science. i am an event planner. i can't be something else. but it kept nagging at me. i found that i am happiest when i am designing homes. thanks to the world of pinterest i think we all kinda have that but i really do find joy in this. i decided that some people like cooking, i don't really find a ton of joy in that. some people love clothing and outfits, i like clothes but don't love putting together outfits. some people are big on hair and makeup, yeah not me. but design, thats where i get excited.

i found that every new place i went into i would start redesigning it. i would think "if i lived here what would i change...".  honestly this has been a blast to do in some of the chicago apt's i've gone into. 

i finally told spence my dreams. and honestly he wasn't surprised. he was excited for me. so we decided to look into options. i did a bunch of research and found a great masters program in chicago. we have talked about this and planned for this for months now. one day i would feel great about my decision. the next not so much.

last semester i started my application process. but i couldn't finish it. i finally decided it was time. so i went to an open house at the school and began the process all over again. again i couldn't finish it. it just didn't feel right.

after a lot of prayer i have decided to not apply for the master program here in chicago. honestly this has been heartbreaking for me. for some reason i feel like i don't have a legitimate reason to pursue interior design without a masters degree. i know this may seem funny but it's how i've felt. 

a couple of weeks ago i posted a picture on instagram. it wasn't anything special. honestly i was showing off all the sun in our family room. but never the less i got an overwhelming response on our apt. it made me so excited. i couldn't believe others thought our place looked so great. yes, i had spent a lot of time, energy and research to put our little place together. but i didn't think it was anything special. 

it may seem funny but that little instrgram picture changed my outlook. i realized that even though i don't have a masters in interior design, and i don't have a plan for one as of right now, i do have some talent in that area. i have a creative mind and i choose to use it by designing spaces. 

i found that i am happiest reading a design book or looking through design blogs. i get most excited about decorating places and spaces. when i'm sad i'd rather go buy something new for my place than eat chocolate. 

so i've decided to pursue interior design. i'm starting by becoming self taught. i am soaking up design blogs and books. reading the basics and teaching myself. i may not know all the technical stuff or have the fancy computer program knowledge but i'm taking it one step at a time. 

i'll post things that i've learned and my fav. inspirations from time to time. it's made me really excited. something new and exciting. and the mr. is 100% on board which is awesome. he gets excited as i learn new design techniques and such. 

so thank you instragram world for pushing me to do something i've always wanted to do. who knew a little picture would be the push i needed. i'm working on our bedroom redo right now. it's a work in progress but it's coming along. i'll post pictures soon! 

the instragram picture. i'll post more of our family room soon.