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Love and Specs

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2020 Summer Bucket List featured by top US cottage lifestyle blogger, Love and Specs

Entertaining, Home, Lifestyle, Travel

Our 2020 Summer Bucket List Progress Report & Our Fun Family S’mores Night

We’re sharing a little progress report on our fun summer bucket that we shared earlier this summer & one of our favorite activities on said list – a fireside s’mores hangout with the family – with help from our go-to neighborhood grocery store Albertsons & the summer-perfect drink we stock & sip all summer long, Sparkling Ice!

Home, Home Decor, Tour Our Cottage Style Home

A 5-Month Review of Our Pottery Barn White Couch: The Townsend Reversible Storage Chaise Sectional in Performance Boucle Oatmeal

We’re giving you a thorough update about how we’re liking our white Pottery Barn couch, the Townsend Reverse Chaise Sectional in their Performance Boucle Oatmeal fabric and how it’s holding up after 6 months of daily use. We’re also talking about how we clean this white couch and how it held up in the face of some pretty scary stains. Come see our full review and hear all about how the white couch saga panned out!

Entertaining, Holiday Favorites, Home, Home Decor

Fun 4th of July Inspired Red White and Blue Decorations to Love This Year!

Summer is officially here, and that means we have our mind on one of our favorite, festive holidays of the year that just so happens to be just a week and a half away – 4th of July! Our Independence Day celebrations may look a little bit more intimate this year, but that didn’t stop us from rounding up all of our favorite red, white and blue 4th of July inspired decorations from around the web that are perfect for small celebrations and general summer fun of all kinds, even if it’s just a backyard BBQ for two!

Entertaining, Food, Home, Lifestyle

Our Husband vs. Wife Battle for the Best Easy Summer Cocktail with Q Mixers & Albertsons

To celebrate the summer season the best way we know how we’re mixing up not one, but two tastier than tasty summer cocktails, inspired by two of our favorite Q Mixers flavors from Albertsons! Come see the easy recipes for Chris’ refreshing Basil Lime Gin & Tonic and my bright, delicious Blood Orange Mezcal Mule and vote for which Carter cocktail is your favorite summer sipper!

Home, Home Decor

Cheap & Affordable Cottage Style Wall Sconces That Instantly Upgrade Any Space

Sconces are just so much fun, aren’t they? After spending so much time at home as of late, we’ve been focusing on easy and affordable ways to upgrade the spaces around our home, and I can’t think of a more approachable way to upgrade a room than to swap out or add fun lighting, specifically a wall sconce or two! So today I’m rounding up all of my favorite cheap, super stylish, cottage-perfect sconces from around the web for every single space inside and outside your home. Come see all of the wall sconce styles to love!

Home, Home Decor

My Favorite Cottage Style Backyard Patio Decor for Summer + Memorial Day Sales Galore!

This summer may look slightly different than the last, but there’s one activity that will remain unchanged in our household and that’s a good backyard hang sesh! Whether it’s lounging […]

Home, Home Decor

My Favorite Cottage Style Summer Entertaining Ideas & Decor + Memorial Day Sales Galore

I feel like the name of the game when it comes to cottage style decor in the summer is outdoor entertaining. Am I right? When I think of the cottage […]

Arcadia Neighborhood Home Tours, Home

Unique Home Design (And Cute Corners) in Arcadia, Phoenix, Arizona: Round 3

The spring Arcadia neighborhood tour is finally here, and oh what a charmfest do I have for you today, my friends! Today’s virtual home tour of this little slice of heaven here in Phoenix, Arizona, appropriately called Arcadia, is full of flower-lined walkways, colorful front doors, charming cottage and farmhouse details galore and so much dream home design inspiration my heart may explode with happiness. So step inside and feast your eyes.

Home, Home Decor

Sunny Cottage Style Summer Decor Ideas to Love

Those summer scenes we daydream about during the winter months may look a little bit different this year, but the arrival of the punchy, peppy summer decor I love so much is giving me seriously happy summer feels from behind my keyboard! I’m sharing tons of my favorite cottage style summer decor finds and ideas from around the web in hopes that it might inspire some fun summer decor daydreams of your own or just inject a little summer sunshine into your day!

Beauty + Grooming, Holiday Favorites, Home, Home Decor, Lifestyle

14 Game-Changing Products I’ve Fallen in Love With at Home That Make Genius Mother’s Day Gift Ideas!

After hunkering down at home over the last month and a half or so, I’ve made some revelations, friends. Home revelations, garment revelations, cleaning revelations, life revelations & it’s made what’s essential, what’s useful, what works and what just downright makes our lives at home easier and more comfortable so much more clear, so I thought it would be really fun to take a different approach to Mother’s Day gifting & use what I’ve discovered to guide my Mother’s Day gift ideas! Gone are the tchotchkes of old & in are the unique things that make mom’s life easier or better in some meaningful or useful way! I’m going into detail about why each product has been such a game-changer in my life at home over the last month or so in hopes that something in there speaks to the mom in your life or… even just to you. Because treating yourself is always appropriate.

DIY, Furniture Makeovers, Home

DIY Home Decor Tutorial: Another Fresh, Fun Painted Furniture – How To Paint a Console Table

I warned you that no piece of furniture in our house was safe from my paint brush, and apparently I wasn’t kidding! Today I’m walking you through yet another fresh, fun DIY painted furniture how to via a beat up old Craigslist console table that was in serious need of a Cinderella-style makeover. Plus, I’m talking all about my anxiety when it comes to choosing the perfect paint color and how this project helped me find a new cottage-perfect paint color I absolutely love!

DIY, Furniture Makeovers, Home, Room Makeovers, Tour Our Cottage Style Home

Quarantine Decor: An Easy, Cottage-Perfect DIY IKEA Hemnes Coffee Table & Media Console Hack

We haven’t done an IKEA hack in a while, and definitely didn’t intend to do another one any time soon, but thanks to a inspecting every inch of our house for weeks on end now, no piece of furniture in our home right is safe from my paint brush! So today we’re sharing a super easy IKEA coffee table and media console hack with a DIY furniture makeover tutorial that can be applied to upgrading any old, beat up piece of furniture around your house.

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Maryal Miller Carter

loveandspecs

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Instagram post 17874356132304607 Another look at our backyard home office w/ our pretty new wood French doors! I don’t know how my life took this strange adulthood turn, but I am now obsessed with doors. Had you told my teenage self that I’d spend hours scrolling through the @usdoornmore site just daydreaming about all of the cool doors I could install around my house, I would have spit out my Slurpee & laughed in your face. Yet here I am, pregnant, freaking out about the magic of doors! 🤷‍♀️ I already loved our backyard office, but now it’s about 10x more cottage cozy with these doors & all that natural light streaming in! Working from home never felt so good 🥰 You can see the before & after pics & learn all about how to order custom doors online at the link in my bio!
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Instagram post 17906274784724051 The weather is starting to get pretty perfect here in Phoenix & it’s making me V excited to start exploring the amazing spring front walkway situation around Arcadia! I look forward to riding my bike around, snapping these pretty flower-lined spring paths pretty much all year & from what I’ve already seen around the neighborhood, this year’s spring Arcadia lovefest tour is gonna be GOOD! I think I’m basically just going to focus all my attention on the walkways this year. They’re just so incredible! Are you guys as excited for this year’s spring Arcadia tour as I am?! 🏡🌸🌼💐
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Instagram post 18195918829015109 Oh man am I excited to start sharing our finished exterior remodel of our cozy cottage-cute backyard home office! This space is & has always been a favorite part of our home & tackling the exterior remodel with the help of my parents over the last year has been so much fun & such an education. We’ll be sharing more of how we tackled replacing all of the exterior siding, etc. in the coming weeks but today is all about these beautiful new wood French doors that I’ve dreamed about putting here for years. Years! And they’re even prettier than I’d hoped. Hop over to the link in my bio to see the before & after pics of the front of the office & the doors & hear all about our experience ordering custom wood French doors online, how we easily sealed them to protect them from the elements & more! 🎉
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Instagram post 17897897764829822 You know I love Valentine’s Day so I’m just gonna allow myself to stretch the love fest out a little longer 🥰 💗Chris left this morning for a work trip for a couple of weeks & I swear pregnancy has made me even more sappy for this guy than I already was! 😭 I wish you guys could all know him & have a chance to laugh with him like I do because it’s just the absolute BEST! He’s just an amazing guy. Amazing friend, amazing partner, amazing uncle, amazing everything. I’d never gone through the pics on my phone and saved the photos of us in a folder so I could look back on our relationship over the years & reminisce a little, but I finally did it last night during my typical 3am to 4am pregnancy wake-up & now I’m just over here getting lost in reliving all of the fun we’ve had! 10 snaps doesn’t even come close to covering it. Swipe to the last pic to see our very first photo together that my sister snapped on our first double date to send to my parents so they could scope him out 🤣 Hope you’ve all been able to feel a little love in some way, shape or form this week & if you find yourself needing some more, just DM me & I’ll remind you how awesome you are & how glad I am to have you here! 💗💗💗
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Instagram post 17936172811445601 Man I just 💗 this holiday! I can’t help it! 🥰 Especially now that I get to have this incredible guy as my Valentine for the rest of my life (and my baby daddy). How did I get so darned lucky? So happy Valentine’s Day, my love. You’re my very favorite thing about life & make me the happiest girl alive, day in & day out. May you always find an ocean to ride a wave on! 🏄🏻‍♂️
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Instagram post 17884006397006795 It’s my birthday! And because I love birthdays & basically any reason to celebrate anything, I thought it would be fun to finally share a little secret me & Chris have been cookin’ up for my 36th year 👶🏼🤰We’re closing in on the halfway mark &  it feels pretty awesome. It’s also getting harder & harder to hide this big ol’ belly from you guys 🤣 Everything has been a lot slower around here (well basically me... I’ve been a lot slower) for the last several months, but I have to admit that I’ve kind of loved the slow down. We’ve been in a little bubble of happy. Guess quarantine really got us good 😜 Baby boy arrives this summer & I’ll just be over here fussing over his cozy cottage nursery (which has been SO much fun to design w/ my mom’s help) & Chris will be over there stockpiling all of the kids’ golf & fishing gear he can find. It’s gonna be a heck of a year! 🎉

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