On My List + Giveaway Winner

ONE: The Staredown, Minted

TWO: Kasbah Rug, West Elm

THREE: Serena and Lily Pom Pom Throw

FOUR: Von Trapp Drops, Bauble Bar

FIVE: Pour La Victorie Tote, Piperlime

Each week I end up with a list of items I love and it's fun to see trends emerge. Turns out, I'm really loving neutral prints right now. I've been trying to decide on the Staredown print and it's frame for weeks now and in that time Minted actually came out with a new frame leaving me with more decisions to make - black, white, etched white...What do you think?

One of my favorite groups of bloggers just finished their One Room Challenge's last week, and their before and afters are incredible. I am now obsessed with this patterned rug after seeing it in Mimosa Lane's One Room Challenge. The rug looks fluffy and lush and like the perfect add to our living room floor to layer with our cowhide now that it's winter. I'm trying to get to West Elm today to feel it in person as sometimes with rugs looks can be deceiving. 

The pom pom throw I just thought was really cute and a fun for the back of a couch or chair. Loved these earrings for winter time to go with winter white and this leopard print back that looks perfect for toting my laptop back and forth from work. What's on your current want list?

In other news, the Harvest Snaps giveaway has ended. Thanks to everyone who entered! The lucky winner is...

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Happy Monday everyone!

Thanksgiving Pineapple Cheese Casserole

This is a family favorite at our house for Thanksgiving and by far my favorite dish for the holiday! If you haven't ever tried it - don't be put off by the unusual mixture, it's delicious.

Ingredients:
2 cans pineapple, drained and reserved - 1 can pineapple chunks and 1 can pineapple tidbits
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup  and 1 tbsp of flour
4 tbsp pineapple juice
2 cups grated cheddar cheese
2/3 cups (10 tbsps) melted butter
20 Ritz crackers, crushed
11x7 casserole dish
Mixing bowl

I also love this recipe because it is relatively easy, and you can make this the day before and refrigerate until it's ready to be popped in the oven on Thanksgiving.

Mix the first five ingredients in a bowl until all flour and sugar have been mixed in. Next, heat 10 tbsps (or 2/3 cups) of butter in a microwave safe dish and heat for around 50 seconds. Add the melted butter to the mixture and stir. Then, lightly butter your casserole dish and pour the mixture in making sure the pineapple chunks and tidbits are spread evenly. Crush the Ritz crackers and spread them evenly over the top of the mixture as well. 

If you are cooking it that day, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and cook for 40 minutes or until golden brown.

Once cooked, let stand for 10-15 minutes to cool off and serve. Is it Thanksgiving yet? 

What's your favorite dish for Thanksgiving?

These table linens are my favorite print for the Thanksgiving holidays from a company called, Pomegranate. Super cute and festive! Shop the print here:

Free Save The Date Printables from Wedding Chicks

Get printable from Wedding Chicks here.

Picking out a Save The Date can be really difficult and time consuming. First, taking the engagement pictures, and building the guest list then picking out a design, printing and mailing. Phew. Plus, they can get really expensive ($600+ depending upon the number). When I was looking for our save the date I visited pretty much every site out there, but I couldn't quite find the right design for our image or one for the right cost. Then I stumbled upon this awesome site, Wedding Chicks that has a lot of wedding inspiration, AND free save the date printables! You guys know I love a good DIY so this was right up my alley. 

I fell in love the one above with it's mix of block letters and Bombshell font. Here's how ours turned out and it only cost us around $100 for printing and stamps!

The one thing I would call out that I didn't know until it was too late is that when the postcard goes through the machine the top front of the card gets stamped too. Evidently, you can ask the Post Office to hand-cancel your cards so I'd recommend it. We ended up with some black smudges on our face once mailed :/

In case you missed it, I'm hosting a giveaway this week...

 for these amazing healthy, low-fat, low-calorie and gluten-free snacks from Harvest Snaps! Don't forget to enter here. Winner will be announced Monday.

A Guilt Free Snack + Giveaway

*This post was created in partnership with Harvest Snaps. I have been compensated for this post. However, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

I am always looking for new healthy snacks, so when Harvest Snaps reached out to me to do a product review of six of their snacks I was excited to give them a try. Harvest Snaps boasts being a healthy alternative to potato chips with 40-50% less fat giving you a guilt and gluten-free snack option that is low in sodium and fat, but high in protein and fiber. Um...yes please!

They sent me 6 different flavors to try from their Snapea Crisps and Lentil Snaps snacks, so CT and I did a taste test this weekend. We tried...

Snapea Crisps -
Lightly Salted
Black Pepper
Caesar
Wasabi Ranch

Lentil Crisps -
Tomato Basil
Onion Thyme

The verdict? These snacks are the bomb! Seriously... I might be addicted.

They are crunchy like potato chips and flavorful. CT's favorite flavor was the Lightly Salted Snapea Crisps, which if you ask me is a testament of the great taste. The snapea crisp taste without heavy flavor is great by itself and perfect for dipping like hummus or a veggie dip. My favorite flavor was a close tie between the Wasabi Ranch Snapea Crisps (I love spicy things) and the Onion Thyme Lentil Snaps. So good. I will be eating these snacks all week!

Now it's your turn to try them! One lucky Decor-Eat reader will win a Harvest Snaps Snack Box. 
To enter, comment below with what flavor you'd like to try. The winner will be announced Monday, November 10th.

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OFFICIAL RULES: No purchase or payment of any kind is necessary to enter or win this sweepstakes. By entering this promotion, entrants accept and agree to be bound by these official rules. Limit one daily entry per IP address. Entry open to anyone 18 years of age and over, US only. Giveaway ends at 11:59pm on November 9, 2014. Winner will be chosen at random from all eligible entries and will have 48 hours to respond to email notification. Giveaway is sponsored by Calbee; Decor-Eat is not responsible for prize fulfillment.

Pumpkins on Pumpkins on Pumpkins

There have been some pretty amazingly creative pumpkin carving and no-carve decorative ideas going around this year that I had to share. Pumpkins are looking very spooky chic this season. I am obsessed with this constellation pumpkin idea. I hadn't thought about using a drill to make small holes for patterned decorations before.A new trick of the trade to try this year.

We're going to be carving pumpkins tonight -so check out our end product on Instagram @decoreat.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

 DIY Pumpkin Constellation - Design Sponge

 Foilage Decoupage Pumpkin - Poppy Talk

Anthropologie Pumpkin DIY

 Chic Pumpkin Painting

 Chic Pumpkin Painting - Domaine 

Rainbow Pumpkin - Domaine

My Fiddle Leaf Fig Is Going Gangbusters

If Fiddle Leaf Figs had a spot on the hot/crazy matrix, it would be in the danger zone. This trees are beautiful, but have a bad rap for being really hard to take care of. Since these trees can be tough to take care of I wanted to share some tips I've picked up over the past 5 months with anyone who's trying to keep one of these guys alive. Here is my tree when I first got it. It had a lot of growth up top and was a little lopsided.

LEANING GROWTH

To fix the leaning, this was actually an easy fix it just took time. Like most plants, the tree tends to lean towards the light, so rotating it weekly will help keep the growth straight and even. Fiddle Leaf 

LIGHT

Fiddle leaf figs are supposed to have bright, indirect light. I think this has worked best for us in our western facing window that has more indirect light in the mornings and bright sun in the afternoon. In the summer, I watched the tree closely on the sun intake and on some days when the sun was just beaming in closed the blinds or angled them to make the light more indirect. Another funny thing I learned here is to dust the leaves, so they aren't block from absorbing the light.

WATER

When I bought the tree it came with some brown spots on the leaves edges and the buds looked pretty much burnt to a crisp when I first got the plant. I noticed the buds once I got home and really wasn't sure if they would grow again. It took my some time to figure out the right amount of water for the plant size. Around the time when I first got the plant I was be overly cautious about over watering. A few weeks in and some of the leaves at the top were dropping and felt more like leather than crisp like the others. I started watering a little bit more and the leaves perked right up. My pot has a 30" diameter, and I have been watering it once weekly with about 2 cups of water. No more brown spots have appeared and the buds are actually starting to grow again!

Making sure you're watching the plant closely can go along way.  I have yet to have to fertilizer (you don't fertilize in the winter), but would love suggestions. I've heard some fertilizers can burn the plant.

Would love to hear any of your tips and tricks in the comments!

Skinny Chicken Pot Pie Recipe

This is one of my favorite recipes for chicken pot pie that brings a healthy twist to your standard chicken pot pie recipe. Plus, it'll keep for about a week, making it a great dish to have on stock for the cold Fall nights when you don't feel like going out or cooking.

Ingredients

Refrigerated pie crust

2 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, chopped

3 stalks celery, chopped

1 can, condensed, cream of chicken soup with herbs or cream of chicken with mushrooms

1.5 cups chicken broth

1/2 teas. thyme

1/2 teas. poultry seasoning

6 large mushrooms, quartered

2 1/2 cups diced cooked chicken (use rotisserie or poach 2-3 halves)

1 10-ounce package from vegetables (peas, corn, green beans, etc.)

1/2 teas. salt

1/2 teas. pepper

1/4 cup of white wine

1/2 tbsp. hot sauce

I'd recommend chopping up your ingredients first- onion, celery, chicken, and thyme and setting aside in separate bowls. You'll need to add ingredients quickly and there isn't much time in between. Also, let the vegetable sit on the counter so they can thaw. You can also cook them according to package, but when the bags says a timeframe like 8-10 minutes just do the lowest amount of time since they will cook slightly in the soup too.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Remove pie crust from refrigerator and let stand for 10-15 mins. Saute onion and celery in butter or oil in a large skillet or pot for 2 mins. Add mushrooms and continue sautéing until soft for about 5 mins or so. Stir in 1 soup can, thyme, and poultry seasoning. Heat to a simmer. Heat to a simmer means to bring it to the point right before boiling. You'll see some small bubbles, but don't let fully boil.

Add in thawed vegetables and heat to a simmer. Feel free to have any vegetables you've been meaning to cook to the mixture. Add 1 can of chicken broth and white wine. Heat to simmer. Add the other half cup of chicken broth.  Add chicken and heat until hot.

For pie crust topping, use a large glass or bowl to cut dough into circles. Cook for 10-15 minutes.

Enjoy :)

Decorate For Fall

Autumn is finally here in Atlanta, so I spent the weekend ogling over Threshold's new Fall line and transitioning the apartment into the season. My goal for decorating was to make the house feel more like Fall without making it feel cheesy. My favorite pick (besides the metallic pumpkins, because let's face it I'm obsessed) are the spooky chic black candles.

Get The Look

Weekly Roundup

This weekend, CT and I are in town! We are so excited to have a weekend at home and actually get to be in Atlanta. 

In other news...There are some awesome Columbus Day sales this weekend - 20% off at Piperlime with code Fall20, 30% off J.Crew with code WEEKENDPLANS, and 50% off Ann Taylor Loft with code EXPLORE. Shop my picks here.

With all our traveling, we somehow missed the Buckhead Development popping up and...OPENING! Seriously being a born and raised Atlantan this project has been decades in the making, and is so exciting to finally see it come to fruition. Did I mention they are also working on an 8-story Restoration Hardware? If the new swanky buildings don't catch your attention while driving down Peachtree the insanely long-line for the New York hailed Shake Shack for sure will. 

Found this new way to do perfume, and it's pretty awesome. Scentbird is a new company where you get to choose a 8oz spray of any of their 300+ fragrances each month. Would you try it or are you a signature scent kind of girl? 

The Threshold Fall Collection has launched at Target with decorative white and gold pumpkins and more.

The pictures on this blog are beautiful.

In case you missed it this chili recipe is the bomb.

To anyone reading this with a blog, I always love to read new blogs so please let your URL in the comments and I'll check it out!

Happy Weekend Everyone - TGIF!

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A New Shop For Affordable Art

I am a huge supporter of the arts as a painter myself, which is one of the reasons I decided to create a gallery wall over our TV. Wedding planning and traveling has been taking a lot of our efforts these days outside of work and the gallery wall has definitely suffered with a few empty frames since I put it up this summer. As a part of my save the date research I ended up finding the site Minted.com, and their art marketplace that supports independent artists - LOVE.

ONE // TWO // THREE // FOUR // FIVE // SIX // SEVEN

{staredown}

This is one of my favorite prints I've found on the site and a perfect fit for the currently empty spot over our couch. This brings some masculinity to the room so I can decorate with more girly accents. I am struggling with what color to choose for the frame. What do you think - black or white frame?

Next up is just deciding what to choose for the gallery wall! Here's my first stab: