We’ve all been there — moving is no joke. And while I recently moved in with my bf (who deferred all design decisions to me, thank god), my former roommate, Emily, was moving into a new apartment with virtually no furniture. While moving can be the perfect reset opportunity to your own style, it can get overwhelming pretty quickly. So she enlisted me to help.

Online shopping gives me life (even when I’m not the one buying things), so I jumped at the chance to help her decorate her new space. Since I’m pretty obsessed with design and decor, helping Em was a treat — instead of decorating one new home, I got to decorate two! So we huddled up and got to work. I filled a Google doc with all the cute things I could find on the internet within her set budget range.

I figured some of these gems would make a cute little graphic, so here are a few of the things I recommended for a classic, light and airy, natural feeling living room setup (plus, some extra splurges that I’d like to get myself).

Her apartment has tons of natural light, and Emily was set on becoming a crazy plant lady (which has already begun, as she adopted lots of large plants from a friend moving across the country). With that in mind, I wanted to include some warm woods, light-colored surfaces, and clean lines to keep things feeling modern, but also cozy and expensive.

The Frame TV, 43 inches, $860 // Bird of Paradise plant (it’s real!), $36
Fox & Fern 12-inch matte white plant pot, $59 // Safavieh Boston Collection flatweave rug in gray, $129 // Set of 6 pear-shaped vases, $37 // Faux marble coffee table, $106
Globe floor lamp, $75 // Belleeze Mid-Century Armchair, $140
Posner TV stand, $309 // Rituals book, $20 // California Living book, $24
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Let’s talk about bread. And let’s talk about life.

For those of you who go way back with me — you’ll already know that Arabic classes took up the majority of my time in college. I met some of my favorite people, discovered my favorite foods, and daydreamed about someday living in the Middle East, basking in the heat and eating my weight in mana’eesh.

But something that we learned early in our intro courses was the word for bread: khubz. And in the Egyptian dialect, there was a synonym for bread — the same word you used for life: aishe.

That stuck with me.

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Having just moved into a new house, I can speak from firsthand experience that figuring out what to hang on the walls can take the longest — especially when you want to share meaningful artwork.

I’ve recently begun buying artwork while traveling — but honestly, I haven’t done it enough! So in a pinch, I love turning to sites like Etsy and Society6 to supplement my artwork. Plus, supporting other artists like myself feels good.

Since I’ve been spending so much time browsing artwork (without committing enough to actually pull the trigger on any), I figured I’d share some of my favorites with you here. Hope you enjoy my alternate names for them 🙂

1. Bull portrait // 2. Sassy tigers swimming in a pool // 3. Palms and fronds
4. Tangello, Limoncello! // 5. Calm mountains // 6. Positano, in pink
7. Le sigh // 8. Sassy yellow lady

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Photo by Ella Jardim on Unsplash

Two days in a row! We are on such a roll over here.

One of my favorite things to do, back in my Sweetsonian days, was creating playlists — ya know, back at the desk job when you listen to Spotify nonstop, before my life was taken over by conference calls.

Well, as a freelancer, I’m rarely at in-person meetings, and I spend 90% of my days on my own — and silence is the enemy these days. Insert my beloved Sonos + Spotify.

While I haven’t been blogging or sharing monthly playlists, you better believe I’ve been still building them — so here goes. Chill vibes for headphones at your desk, or unwinding to in the privacy of your living room.

Whoa, it’s been a minute.

Just about a year ago, Emily and I decided that our big trip would just have to be to Vietnam. She had never been to Asia (and the only Asian country I had been to was Singapore, which is basically “Asia light”), and we wanted a big, two-week trip to push us out of our comfort zones and help us really escape the grind that’s been life in DC.

So we did it. And oh, did Vietnam push our comfort boundaries. To start, we were a little worried about the flight situation — DC to LA is 6 hours, LA to Tokyo was 14, and then Tokyo to Ho Chi Min City was another 7 hours. So to say the least, we were trying to find all the hacks in the world to make this bearable (fwiw — this hack was a game changer for me).

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