Slim End Table by Room & Board; Emery Drapes by Pottery Barn (on sale!); Bags by Baggu; Hello Sunshine print by Rifle Paper Co., Hang 10 Hooks ℅ Ocean & Sea (super fun shop, btw)

There’s just something about an entryway, isn’t there? One of my most popular pins is this shot of our entryway in our Oklahoma City house (also seen in Design Mom’s book!).  It was one of the first spaces I couldn’t wait to decorate when we bought our house as it was its very own room and I liked that it provided a landing area (erm, sometimes junk mail pile!) for all our necessaries.

But what do you do if you don’t have a dedicated entryway? What if your front door opens up onto your living space? That’s when you have to get creative.  In the lake house, there are multiple doorways (three!) onto the open floor plan living room/kitchen. I’ve got two landing zones – one at the back door, and the other at the designated “front door” (tricky since there are two sets of doors on the front of the house). The goal is to get all the little things organized that can quickly lead to clutter: keys, iPhones, shoes, sunscreen, all at the ready. In the stripe bag, I keep sunscreen, goggles, and all the little things we need at the pool. The polka dot bag is my diaper bag on the go, for the times when I don’t want to haul the gigantic doomsday prepper diaper bag (haha). It’s got the bare necessities: diapers, wipes, a bottle, and a packet of formula.

And at the back door, there’s more room to spread out: a larger space for shoes (Simon’s shoes are huge!), Nerf guns, footballs, backpacks, purses, the doomsday prepper diaper bag, sunglasses, and more. I want it to be a mix of form and function. Something pretty to look at but still useful, you know?

PARSONS TABLE AT HOME DECORATORS; BASKETS AT HOBBY LOBBY; SHOES BY KEDS (SIMILAR); LAMP AT LAMPS PLUS; PAINTING BY RITA ORTLOFF; SIMPLE STRIPE TRAY BY PENCIL SHAVINGS STUDIO

That Parsons-style desk is such a great buy. It can go in practically any room and in any style decor. I’d originally bought it for the OKC house but ended up bringing it down to the lake since we had a greater need for it there. It’s a simple and flexible piece, and the price isn’t too shabby either.

On Instagram a few weeks back, I showed the new lights along the boardwalk by our house, but it was a crummy dark iPhone photo. So over the weekend, I brought my tripod along and I just love how these photos turned out. It gets SO crazy dark because Carlton Landing is out in the middle of nowhere. There are no street lights to speak of yet, so the lights from the houses have had to light the way. But a couple of months ago, we finally got formal outdoor lighting along the boardwalk where our house is, and we couldn’t be happier. Isn’t it so dreamy?  I set my shutter speed to be super long, and I love that you can see the stars twinkling in the sky.

I love this photo below. It says it all – it’s almost like the world just stops there past our houses. You can get the idea of just how dark it really gets out there.

::sigh:: Now I want to go string lights up everywhere. How many light bulbs will I need? 🙂