Monthly Archives

June 2018

Home

My OFFICE Reveal

June 19, 2018

Hey hey hey cuties, welcome back to another one of my Allison in Wonderland apartment room reveals!  I’m almost finished showing you gals my entire apartment!  As you can tell from the title, today I’m sharing how I designed my office.  My office was the room I decorated last because, at first, I didn’t really know what to do with it.  I wasn’t expecting to have a second bedroom/office space when I began looking for apartments so I was a bit thrown off.  Once I got the rest of my space finished and I could focus on this room, I ended up loving being able to be super creative and have fun with the room!  Keep reading to see where everything is from!

Starting off with the walls, I bought speckled removable wallpaper from Target (click here)!  I researched a bunch of different wallpaper companies but every option was so, so expensive.  Eventually, I found this print at Target and I fell in love!  My favorite part is that it’s black and white so I can bring any other color into the room and it was pretty easy to install.  It only took my boyfriend and I about 2 hours to do the entire wall and it’s stayed up perfectly.  One tip that we realized when hanging it up was to use the plastic tube that the product comes in as a tool to press the wallpaper to the wall evenly as you apply it.

Moving onto the furniture in the room, my desk and chair are from Target as well (click here for the desk and click here for the chair).  I love this mid-century modern line at Target so much that I have the desk, coffee table, and dining room table.  It’s so cute and perfect for a first apartment!  The wooden frame on the wall is from Michael’s (click here) and the desert print is from Etsy (click here).  As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I definitely recommend buying frames and prints separately and putting them together yourself because it saves so much money!

Lastly, the adorable candles on the side of my desk are from Hamilton Wax Co. (click here).  Hamilton Wax Co. is based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (super close for my Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania babes!) and their candles smell INCREDIBLE.  They sent me scents 04 and 05 and I don’t think they could of chosen better ones to send.  I think I like scent 05 a bit better than 04 but they seriously are some of the best smelling candles I’ve ever owned.

That’s all for this week’s blog post!  I only have one more room in my apartment and that’s my kitchen.  Would you be interested in seeing a room reveal for my last room?  Let me know in the comments below.  Thank you for reading and have a great week!

Things I'm Loving Right Now

Tuesday Tunes: Country Edition

June 12, 2018

Hey everyone, happy Tuesday!  Welcome to another post on the Allison in Wonderland blog.  Today, I’m going to quickly share the country songs that have been on repeat in my life lately because, after all, summertime is the best time for country music!  Let’s get started!

Drowns the Whiskey by Jason Aldean ft. Miranda Lambert

Up Down by Morgan Wallen ft. Florida Georgia Line

I Hate Love Songs by Kelsea Ballerini

Mercy by Brett Young

Criminal by Lindsay Ell

Tequila by Dan & Shay

That’s all for today’s post!  I know it was a short one but I’ve been liking mixing up my posts each week with some being longer and some being shorter.  Let me know in the comments if you like longer or shorter blog posts.  Thanks for reading and have a great week!

College

6 Month Post-Grad Update

June 5, 2018

Hey hey hey, welcome back to the Allison in Wonderland blog!  It’s officially been 6 months since I graduated from James Madison University so, for today’s post, I wanted to give you an update on my post-college graduation life.  Let’s get into it!

Starting off with how I feel in general, I’m thankful to say I feel incredible!  I’m so, so, so happy to not be in school anymore.  Although I miss seeing all my friends everyday, I don’t miss the classes or the extracurriculars at all.  Towards the end of my time at JMU, I was feeling very stressed because I was constantly doing a million things at once.  Now, although I’m still very busy, my free time is more filled with things I want to be doing instead of studying and attending mandatory meetings.  I also really like to have a routine and with working full-time, my life lends itself well to having a routine and sticking to it.

Moving onto how I’m liking where I’m living… I love it!  My favorite thing about living in my apartment and not in my college apartments/townhouses is I don’t have to worry about moving out a few months after I moved in.  I have the option to move if I want to but it’s not a constant rotation of moving my home base every few months.  I also am still living in a college town, so it’s nice to continue to have people around me that are my age.

Lastly, I’ll talk about how I like working full-time.  Overall, I really, really like it!  I definitely think I picked correctly when I chose the marketing and advertising industry and I’m so grateful for that.  It’s so important to enjoy what you do for a living because you spend everyday doing it.  The past six months have flown by and I can’t believe I’m already halfway through my first year at my first job!  Have any of you just begun your first job?  Let me know in the comments below.

That’s about all for this Tuesday’s post!  This week, I’m working on another one of my apartment room reveals so get excited!  Have you read my Living Room Reveal and my Bedroom Reveal?  Click here and here to get caught up on those before the new one comes out in a few weeks.  As always, thanks for reading and have a great week!

Travel

Being a Tourist In: Maine + Road Trip Playlist

June 1, 2018

Hi cuties, welcome back to my blog!  Today’s post is a travel post because I just got back from spending Memorial Day weekend in Maine!  Throughout this post, I’m going to take you through what we did while we were there and what songs I made sure to have on my playlist for the long drive.  Let’s get started!

We started out our drive around 3:30am.  That’s right, 3:30am.  It was way way way earlier than I was hoping to leave but we had about a 10 hour drive ahead of us so we wanted to get an early start to beat the traffic – especially with it being a holiday weekend.  Since we were driving from Maryland, we hit the outskirts of New York City just as the sun was rising and it was so beautiful!  We didn’t hit any traffic on the way up, which was a huge blessing.  The drive did take a bit longer than we had expected however because we decided to take a more scenic route and drive along the coast for most of the way.  It was the best decision!  We got to see a ton of adorable little towns and looking at the ocean all the way up was so much nicer than looking at a highway for hours on end.

Since we were driving for so long, a killer playlist was a must.  I’m the type of person who likes a lot of different types of music so I thought I’d share a few songs that were on repeat to get us through the drive…

Pour Some Sugar On Me by Def Leppard

Re: Stacks by Bon Iver

No Diggity by Blackstreet, Dr. Dre, and Queen Pen

I Still Wonder by The Chain Gang of 1974

Should’ve Been a Cowboy by Toby Keith

Once we finally made it to Maine, we checked into our Airbnb.  We could tell from the photos that it was going to be a nice place to stay but the property was more amazing that we could have hoped for!  It was a little cottage that was located right on the water and it was so, so peaceful!  If you’d like to check it out, click here.  This was my second time using Airbnb, the first time being when my boyfriend and I visited Nashville in December.  I really like staying in a house rather than a hotel room during vacations – it’s so convenient!  If you’re going to book with Airbnb, go to www.airbnb.com/c/allisons3280 to get $40 off your first trip!

The next day was our first full day in Maine.  The main reason we were there was to go to Acadia National Park, so that’s what we started off with!  The largest part of the park is called Mount Desert Island and it was about an hour drive from our Airbnb.  We got there pretty early in the morning and began exploring on the Park Loop Road.  It’s basically just a long road that goes all the way around the park.  Driving it took up the better part of the day but it was so scenic and so incredibly beautiful!  After we had driven all around, we ended up in Bar Harbor – a little tourist town on Mount Desert Island.  We grabbed lunch at a place called the Side Street Cafe and then made our way down to the beach.  We happened to get there during low tide and, if you haven’t heard, the tides in Maine are insane!  There’s about a 15 to 20 foot difference in low tide and high tide.  Because the water dropped so low during low tide, we were actually able to walk out to an island called Bar Island.  It was the coolest thing!

The next day, we started off at a different part of Acadia National Park called the Schoodic Peninsula.  It was a lot smaller than Mount Desert Island but just as stunning.  We had gorgeous sunny weather and were able to stop at a lot of the lookout points to take it all in (and to take photos, of course!).  Once we were done, we headed up to Quoddy Head State Park, which is just below the Canadian border.  There’s a lighthouse there and, when you’re standing by it, you’re standing on the easternmost point in the US.  How cool!  After spending some time at the lighthouse, we headed into a little town called Lubec for some lunch and then made our way back to the Airbnb.

The next day was filled with a lot of driving.  We split up our drive on the way home in two days.  The first day, we drove from Maine to Connecticut.  Since we had the entire day to only do half the drive, we drove the scenic route again but this time we stopped in some of the towns.  Our first stop was Freeport because we wanted to see the L.L. Bean flagship store.  It was humungous!  Since it was actually Memorial Day on this day, there was quite a bit of traffic and it took us a lot longer than expected to get to Connecticut but don’t worry, we still made it to the hotel in time for the Bachelorette premier. 🙂

Where we stayed in Connecticut was right by Yale so we began our last day by walking around the university.  I’d never been there before and it was the most beautiful campus!  There’s so much history in that town and it was cool to be back on a college campus again.  From there, it only took us about four hours to get home so it made the last leg of the trip very bearable.

Overall, I had an absolutely amazing time in Maine.  I would definitely go back!  Have you ever been to Maine?  Let me know in the comments below.  Have a great week and I’ll see you back here next Tuesday for another post!