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A New Book ~ Bridgerton Guide to Entertaining

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And it is the weekend…. the NBA All Star Game is here, and I am trying my hardest to stay away from downtown. I am working from home today and will enjoy every minute of it. I am looking forward to making some time to read the latest copy of Victoria magazine. I had a hard time finding it in my stores! A little scary.

For Valentine’s Day Rick and I kept it simple. He got me a beautiful bouquet of roses and took a Hershey chocolate bar bouquet to Lauren! She was so surprised. It was so sweet!

I really want to make some time to sit and watch Three Coins in a Fountain and read the newest book that I just found!

 

photo credits: Mrs. Shockley

 

Can you all believe that I found this? It was a treasure for sure. I found it while we were waiting for our table for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. We always go into the Barnes and Noble bookstore that is attached. It’s a great place to read and relax. While we were there, I stumbled on this The Official Bridgerton Guide to Entertaining and it is truly a treat!

 

 

As soon as I opened the book, I audible gasped. The photography was so beautiful! Just look at this, the first chapter is called “A Breakfast Visit with the Bridgerton’s”. I mean, come on, who would not be curious about this? In this chapter, they give you recipes for crumpets with salted honey butter, Meyer lemon & poppy seed tea biscuits, crustless quiche with leeks, ham, and English cheddar, kippers on toast, and London Fog lattes! Oh my! 

 

 

Here is the table of contents. Each party is divided into chapters. We have the Queens Lawn Party, Afternoon Tea with the Sharmas, Dinner at Featherington Ball and Lady Danbury’s Den of Iniquity. 

 

photo credits: Mrs. Shockley 

Not only will you be inspired by the recipes, but the photography is inspiring as well. I love these elegant glimpses into the family home, clothes, and decor. 

 

 

This is truly a beautiful book and I hope that if you are a Bridgerton fan that you will order a copy for yourself. It is priced quite well on Amazon so don’t feel bad about ordering this treat of a book! If you do order it and make one of the recipes I would LOVE to know! I will be sharing my recent afternoon tea adventure next week!

I hope you got to see the recent Instagram story from the Little Pink Casa sharing the blush Cameo earrings! They look so lovely on her. Please feel free to use her code: PinkCasa20 for 20% off the entire boutique. Enjoy! 

 

  • Affiliated link attached. 

 

A Candle Project…

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Good Morning,

The weather here in Indy was great this past weekend. We had lots of sunshine on Sunday. It was so needed. I attended a ladies afternoon tea that I can’t wait to share with you soon. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and we intend on spending it at home. What I do want is a beautifully scented bouquet. Something with lots of beautiful greenery and blush colors. So we will see!

Now I want to share something with you that was absolutely spectacular to me! As you all know I am a part of the St. Margaret’s Guild and we are about to gear up for the 2024 Showhouse. I am really looking forward to seeing how the rooms will be transformed. This year a special project has been added.

 

photo credit: Mrs. Shockley 

 

We are working on a signature candle scent for this year’s showhouse, and I am so excited to be a part of this project. I can’t go into details about our specific process, but I can share that working with Penn & Beech candle company was a phenomenal experience!

 

 

The process was so simple and exciting. I have ALWAYS wanted to create my own signature scent and I so glad that I got to experience this process with the Guild. 

 

 

These were some of my favorite oils. I am a floral girl to my core and wanted nothing but floral and clean scents. I can’t wait to share with you all the final product and I will be making an appointment myself to perhaps create a signature candle for A Home for Elegance. I am working with a consultant at this time and hope to start the process soon! I will keep you posted!

 

  • This post is not sponsored. 

 

 

The Blue Lady Project

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Hello!

I had a nice quiet weekend which was a nice beginning to the month of February. Lauren was home for the weekend, and it is always a good thing to catch up with her. She is feeling a little overwhelmed with her Math class. I hated Math as well when I was in school, so I get it. The good thing is she only has to take one Math class for her entire college career. I told her get through it, so you can move on, and focus on your other studies. It’s incredible to think that she only has 3 months left in her freshman year of college! Incredible! It went by so fast. She is definitely looking forward to summer break. 

I am still working small projects around the home, and this was a project that I have been thinking about doing since December. 

 

 

A few of you may be familiar with my blue lady portrait that I found at an antique store a few years ago. I absolutely adore this print. It is called the Sound of Music by Joanne Pemberton Longman JPL 1969.  I saw that another influencer had the same print in her home and I loved how she has it styled with a hanging ribbon.  

You may recognize the big floral print that I have behind it. It is from a set that I owned some years ago. I just kept the frames for a project such as this. I used the first frame in 2018 for my magnolia framing project. I was saving the second frame for a future project. 

When I was taking down my Christmas decor a few weeks ago, I was looking at my blue lady portrait and saw how bad the frame looked that it was in and thought, I need to re-frame that. That’s when I remembered my second gold frame. 

 

photo credit: Mrs. Shockley 

 

I could not wait to take it to Michaels. It took us a little while to pick out the background. I went between green, blue, and white but in the end we ended up choosing the light green. It picks up the color of the dress beautifully and gives it the perfect pop of color. 

 

 

It took them about a week to finish it and it was still $50! Wonderful right! If you have some projects that you want to get re-framed, try Michaels. I would encourage you to go to the antique store or Goodwill to get a frame to keep the cost down, but it is quite affordable if you have your own frame. I think she looks so beautiful now. I feel like I have restored her!

 

  • This post is not sponsored. 

 

January Favorites ~ 2024

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Good Morning,

Oh my goodness everyone, I had a good weekend, but I sure do feel like I was hit by a truck this week! I don’t feel sick but I am emotional and physically drained. I had lunch earlier last week with some of my Guild friends to work on a special project for the showhouse this year. During our lunch we started talking menopause and perimenopause which I think I am in the thick of. 

I talked about how I loss 18 pounds during Covid and then last year it ALL came back within a few months. My friends shared a doctor with me that has a podcast, and I have started watching some of her videos regarding symptoms of perimenopause. I am on a journey right now to figure things out, but I will be SURE to share with you all what I am learning and supplements that I have started to take. 

I also binged watched Operation Niki’s organizing videos on Instagram. Oh my goodness! I love them all. I have so many items in my Amazon cart. Lord! I have also joined TikTok! My handle names are of course @ahomeforelegance and @mrs..shockley. I hope you can find me and follow along. Now let’s get into my favorites for the first month of 2024! 

 

 

You all know that I have been on an organizational kick recently and finding this bag was a part of it! I get stopped non-stop about this bag and the trolley that it comes with! I mean even men stop me about it! This has been a game changer. I normally carry two totes to the office every day and having this tote that I am able to put on the trolley and pull it into my office has been wonderful. Now my particular color is quite expensive but there are other colors that are a little less. Let me know if you get one!

 

 

The second was a crazy find! So for Christmas last year I really wanted a Christian Dior advent calendar but at $1,000 (with products) I could not stomach spending that. Also, with products it could be hit or miss with if you like them or not. I really just wanted the calendar part and then it dawned on me, “hey I wonder if anyone will just sell the calendar on Poshmark”. So I checked and found one! This particular seller was selling hers for just $40 and I quickly added it to my cart and purchased it. It is so elegant, and I cannot wait to use it this upcoming holiday season! 

 

photo credit: Mrs. Shockley 

 

 

Now with these shoes I understood the power of an influencer. These shoes were posted on the LTK app. There were about 4 pairs left in my city and I thought I would just pop by one and pick up a pair. Wrong! By the time the evening came there was only ONE pair left and I had to call the Target which took them 2 hours to answer the phone, to find out if the pair was still there! I was able to put them on hold and pick them up but oh my goodness! My city was filling online orders because of the demand! It was incredible! So glad I got a pair but sadly they are sold out! 

 

 

My fourth favorite is a table full of wonder. While I was putting away all of my Christmas decor, I decided to change my floral arrangements around my home as well. I put all of the arrangements on my dining room table and saw this. It was so wonderful! I left it like this for a few hours and just enjoyed it. 

 

photo credit: Mrs. Shockley 

 

Speaking of flowers doesn’t this pink bouquet look wonderful in this vintage vase? This was one of my antique finds during my shopping in January. It is stunning and looks wonderful on my dresser. It is from FrenChic in Franklin, Indiana. 

 

 

My sixth favorite was my very first avocado toast! Yep that is right! My very first avocado toast. This had avocado, poached eggs, bacon, and was marvelous! This was what I ordered at a place called the Garden Table with my Guild friends. 

My last favorite is a newly discovered YouTube channel…

 

This channel is called American Viscountess and it is spectacular if you love touring historical castles and properties! You could seriously binge watch her channel. It is quite enjoyable! 

I hope you all enjoyed my favorites for this month. I will have some more organizational finds and decor ideas coming soon!

 

 

 

A Wardrobe Idea…

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Good Morning,

Goodness gracious! It has been so cold here in Indy. We got down to negative temperatures! Burrrr! I sure do miss my morning walks, but it has been much to cold outside! I am still getting over a cold and trying to learn to listen to my body. So going for a walk in cold temperatures is not ideal. 

My organizational projects are still going on in my home. I have so many ideas on how to transform my spaces, but my husband is not on board with some of them. I really want to paint my cabinets, but he does not. I am trying to come up with other ways to brighten up my kitchen so we will see.

I recently had an idea about my closet space. I shared this on my recent YouTube video which I will post below. So I am trying to use my space more properly and the last thing that I realized was I need an area to hang my daily outfit. I had a hook in my closet on the wall, but I was hanging my robes on it, and I realized that this was not working. So I moved my robes to the back of my closet door and decided to purchase a vintage door knock as a hanger for my daily outfit. 

 

photo credit: Mrs. Shockley 

 

What I ended up finding was this gorgeous vintage key hook from an Etsy shop called BespokeOnBrookline. Now she only had one which is another reason why I purchased it right away!

It looks so classic on my wall! As soon as I opened the package, I squealed a little. I just loved the way it looked and it was the perfect size. 

 

 

After hanging it in my closet I thought one of my pictures in my storage closet could look wonderful in the space as well. So I hung this photo with lots of names of flowers called “Summer” above the hook and I could not love it more. The gold frame and the gold key hook practically match one another. 

 

 

I share a small video of the hook on my YouTube channel and I found a few on Etsy. You can view one here, here, here, and here. I hope you all have wonderful weekend! I am hoping to get some blog posts done, finish organizing and decorating my home. I actually just hung some of my vintage plates in my closet and family room. I will share those soon! 

 

 

 

My Word of the Year…

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Good Morning Everyone,

It is the first full week of 2024 and I have my word of the year. Well, I have my phrase of the year and it is “radiate calm”. My post from 2018 popped in my head a few days ago. That quote, “radiate calm” really spoke to me. I have had several moments in 2023 where I felt like becoming unhinged. I let things really get to me instead of maintaining a quiet spirit. Maybe that should be my phrase for the year.

I went back to my post. I still can’t believe that I read the book and wrote this post 6 years ago. The book provided four ways to radiate calm under any circumstance. 1) Stay composed, 2) Avoid drama, 3) Find common ground and 4) Maintain perspective. 

I can recall several moments where I should have used those tips! I have decided to take these four tips and for every week for this entire year I will write one of those tips for the week in my Day Designer to remind me what to focus on.

Another tip or thing that I do is pray and try to breathe deeply. I want to keep my mind and emotions in order. Last year was so full of changes that I felt like I did not have perspective. As I get older that has become very important to me.

 

photo credit: L. Shockley 

 

As I begin 2024, I am trying to remain hopeful that staying composed, praying, and keeping perspective will help me to radiate calm this year. 

Enjoy your week!

 

 

My Small Tour of the Columbia Club

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Good Morning,

I am so ready for the weekend. I plan on cleaning up my entire walk-in closet. I ordered a lot of organizational supplies from Amazon. I will be sure to share what I order. I want to clean it out and turn it into my very own boutique. I am looking forward to it.

Lauren will be going back to college this weekend. I am a little sad. We will miss her! Earlier this week one of my Guild friends invited me and a few others over for a late lunch. It was marvelous! She made salmon, lamb chops, red potatoes, asparagus, couscous, polenta, salad and a homemade apple and pear pie. It was sooo good!

 

photo credit: Mrs. Shockley 

She set a beautiful table for us for lunch. 

 

 

What a beautiful lunch! It was such a wonderful time and a great way to start the new year. Then another Guild friend a few weeks prior invited me to lunch and a tour of the Columbia Club. 

 

photo credits: Mrs. Shockley

 

The Columbia Club is a private social club. There is fine dining, fitness, wellness facilities, offices, conference rooms and hotel rooms. I have worked downtown for many years and was ALWAYS curious about this club.

When Sue took me to this room, I thought WOW! I could throw a party here if I was a member. 

 

 

Loving the details.

 

 

There were so many different conference rooms and party rooms. Each one decorated differently. This particular room had all of the blue and white. 

 

 

 

 

This space is used for weddings. Just think as a member you could be using this space. 

 

 

 

 

photo credit: My dear friend

 

Sue took me to all of the office spaces which I could use if I became a member. There is also a hotel which you could stay. There is a spa, and lots of events for members. It was a great experience, and I was so grateful that I got to see it. After looking around we had lunch in the French Room. I order their delicious Harvest Apple Salad. It was so good! I am thinking about getting a membership and if I do, I will be sure to share more about this fantastic club!

 I hope you all have a great weekend!