Monroe & Main Holiday Outfit of The Day & a Giveaway!

 This is a Fashionista Event Opportunity, and is hosted by Still Blonde after all these YEARS and Modly Chic.

The holidays are officially here and that means the colder weather has finally hit Florida. While I'm excited to be spending more time cuddled up under blankets, I'm also pretty excited about all the fashion options cold weather opens up for me. From old sweaters to new fringe dusters, I'm all about rocking new fashions to keep me warm!

I'm super excited to share one of my favorite new outfits that I plan on rocking all season long! With such a fun and funky, vintage vibe - I love every single little detail about my Monroe & Main outfit.The cozy pants are the perfect fit and provide just enough winter warmth, the jacket is super fun and makes me feel a little flirty, and the top has a polished looked to it that I absolutely adore!

With stunning attention to detail in all the garments, specifically all the intricate details on the shirt and the beaded leggings, it's hard not to fall in love with this outfit. I can't wait to show this look off while running errands, spending time with family, or maybe even a dinner date with the hubs! It's also the perfect look to rock on Thanksgiving so you better believe this is what I'll be wearing!

Enough about me though, do you want to get your hands on something from Monroe & Main? Look no further...There are giveaways involved!

Do you want to spoil yourself with something from Monroe & Main as well? Don't miss your chance to win an adorable purse from one of my favorite stores! Use the giveaway tools form below:

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Still Blonde after all these Years, Modly Chic, and Fashionista Events bloggers are not responsible if prize is not delivered.  We will make every attempt to help you claim your prize.

You've learned why I love my new outfit so much and how you can add a new accessory to your closet, now I can't wait to hear all about which item from the Monroe & Main holiday collection you love the most - don't forget to leave me a comment below! Plus, enter all 25 of the awesome giveaways from the bloggers listed below as well as enter to win the main prize, a $250 shopping spree!

An InLinkz Link-up

Revealing My Adore Me Secret + a $500 Gift Card Giveaway!

This post was sponsored by Adore Me as part of an Influencer Activation for Influence Central. I received complimentary products to facilitate my review.

I'm a bit of subscription box fanatic; with so many amazing companies offering such a wide variety of products via mail, it's easy to see why I love getting these boxes full of goodies each month. I have a subscription box for clothing, jewelry, food, and even beauty products, but I was missing a subscription box for one really important thing, one kind of secret thing... until recently.

Adore Me is my newest box I've added to my collection of subscriptions and since I'm loving the box so much, I've decided to share all the details about something I usually keep a secret... Adore Me is the perfect way to treat myself to pretty "unmentionables" and since they make a variety of sizes, I guarantee you'll fall in love with the service too! Plus, with over 500 styles of beautiful lingerie to choose from, I think I'll be a fan of this box for a very, very long time! After signing up, I also learned they add pieces to a new collection each and every month, providing access to the newest fashions in lingerie and sleepwear to their VIP members only! Hello gorgeous new undergarments, all the time!

If you're new to the subscription box thing or haven't heard about Adore Me yet, I bet you are wondering "how does Adore Me work exactly"? It's simple, for $39.95 a month, you will become a VIP & you'll receive the opportunity to pick a matching set from Adore Me’s new collection! That means you get the choice of what is sent to you, from a wide variety of classic styles and those super fashionable new items that come in each month! The membership is flexible though, so you can simply skip a month if you decide you don't need or want anything or you can just save your credit for a future month when you really want to spoil yourself - the choice is yours!

Want some good news? If you decide to become a VIP member between now and November 30th, you'll receive your first set for just $19.95 using the code "GETGLAM19"!

That's not all the benefits you'll reap by signing up to become a VIP though; I'm super excited to share that VIP Adore Me members also receive $10 off any style, any time, a free set (every 6th set is on the house), free shipping and exchanges, and exclusive access to VIP only sales and sets.

That means there's a handful of benefits waiting for you, as well as an adorable (or seductive) new lingerie set - made in your size & your style, shipped directly to your front door... We all know having a matching set of undies makes a girl feel pretty, even if it's just her little secret...

While you're trying to decide which Adore Me set you want to invest in first, I highly recommend you take the time to enter the giveaway for 1 of 2 $500 Adore Me store credits using the giveaway form below! Plus, don't forget to share the giveaway with your friends... you know we all love the chance to win items that make us feel pretty!

Adore Me Giveaway

Whether you are looking for a gift for yourself, your best friend, or you're looking for your girlfriend - Adore Me is the perfect way to spoil a girl that loves getting girly!

Gift Honey this Holiday with Nature Nate's

Oh, sugar, sugar! Honey, Honey... You should give some honey to your girl!

While those aren't even close to the actual lyrics, I'm obsessing over this adorable gift idea! That's right, I'm on a roll sharing gift ideas this week and I hope you love all the gift ideas I share, including this adorable gift made for anyone that loves honey!

Nature Nate's offers 100% pure, raw, and unfiltered honey in the most adorable holiday themed tins. Making these sweet little gifts the perfect surprise for the chef in your life and since they come in creative little containers, they make the perfect stocking stuffer! 

This unfiltered honey contains pollen, as if it were straight from the hive, and offers the best flavor, aroma, and nutrition values naturally this way. Plus, since it's made from 100% American Bees, it's thought to help to eliminate pesticides and ensures that only the highest quality honey is produced! So you can rest assured gifting Nature Nate's knowing it's the best of the best when it comes to honey!

Nature Nate’s 100% Pure, Raw & Unfiltered Honey in one of their holiday tins is the perfect gift for everyone on your list at the affordable price of $12. So, who would you buy honey for in your life - maybe your honey-darling or your love bug? Tell me all about why honey would make the perfect gift for this person in the comments below, I can't wait to hear all about it!

Thanks to Nature Nate's for providing some samples of this delicious honey in return for this review. Looking for more gift inspiration? Check out the rest of the items in my Holiday Gift Guide:

Holiday Traditions & Hickory Farms Gifts

Thanks to Hickory Farms for sponsoring today's discussion.

It's obvious that I love the holidays, with the joy that's spread through out the season and the loving times I get to spend with family - what's not to love? While hubby and I are celebrating our 7th Christmas married this year, we're still working on building traditions of our own but we both have traditions we follow with our families and those traditions truly matter to us!

This year we're going to try to make new traditions while traveling, with having to make so many stops along our journey in the midwest to see all of our family it should be an adventure. One new tradition that I'm super excited about is our little off-the-beaten-path vacation we're plotting and hopefully going to take. We'll be driving all the way home so we want to stop a few beautiful places along the way and hopefully we'll make a random stop a tradition each year. With that said, another new tradition that I love to partake in around the holidays includes giving (and receiving) food as gifts and now it includes tea parties! What better way to any person's heart than through their tummies & taste buds?!

Receiving a fancy tea party package in the mail from Hickory Farms recently was an amazing experience! With two wonderful tea selections, Belgian truffles, Pretzels, Fruit Spread, and Biscuits - I felt like I had stepped into a regal tea party the second I laid eyes on my new collection!

While I was enjoying my "biscuits" and tea, I suddenly realized I knew just the right person to surprise with a Hickory Farms box first. I decided to check out the variety of gift baskets I could send and realized I could check almost every one off of my list!

Are you a foodie wanting to celebrate the upcoming holiday the right way? I bet you are wondering where can you buy Hickory Farms for your family? Hickory Farms' food gifts are available at Holiday market locations, on HickoryFarms.com, and at most big box retailers!

Not only can you buy Hickory Farms at those locations, you can win an awesome Hickory Farms giveaway here on the blog! Simply fill out the giveaway tools form below & leave a comment completing one simple sentence, "Traditions matter because..." - I may include your quote in an upcoming post as well!

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Disclaimer: Compensation and products for review were provided by Hickory Farms via MomTrends. I received a free sample of the product for the purpose of this review and to facilitate a giveaway.  The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions of Hickory Farms. Must be 18+ to enter to win, US residents only. Lauren Paints | a beautiful life is not responsible for sponsors who do not fulfill prizes, all information submitted via the form is only submitted to LaurenPaints.com. 

Well, now that you've had your chance to enter to win an awesome giveaway and I've shared one of my favorite ways to treat others (and myself), I suppose it's time for you to treat yourself as well!

EASY DIY Photography Wooden Backdrop

It probably comes as no surprise to you, I love having pretty surfaces to take photos of my crafts, recipes, and other little tidbits... while my house has a few counter tops, I'll admit they aren't the most beautiful so I've had to resort to getting crafty to make beautiful backdrops for my photos.  As you've probably noticed if you look at the photos here, I've had an old light wooden board for a while now... but recently I decided I want to "upgrade" to something more fitting for fall and decided to make a new photo backdrop with dark "wood", but this time I want to share how I made it in case you want to make one too!

The last time I made one of these boards, I did it blindly and spent WAY too much on materials. I bought everything from Michael's and while I love the store, their wooden boards are too expensive without a coupon. I still get my thick white poster board from Michael's and I always, always, always shop for props while I'm there... I mean you never know when you'll need a gold charger plate or clear "gems".

This time I bought my "wooden" boards from Home Depot, but I'm certain you could find them at most big box home improvement stores! I bought a stack of about 8 laminate pieces of wood, to cover the entire board with some staggering. Each board costs about 1/3 less than they do at Michael's and you don't have to pay for glue because these come with a sticky coating on the back that works like magic!

So once you have those two items and a pair of scissors, you can get down to business making your board. I love that this project is so easy, it's basically like a cut & paste worksheet from elementary school - I want to make a million boards now!

First you'll want to begin by laying your thick poster board flat, then place each plank approximately where you want them to be glued. Begin with the boards cloest to you, trimming the excess off the edges and peeling and sticking each piece.

Continue strategically placing each board, using ends of other pieces to fill in the gaps. Laying the board without any gaps or white spots showing and pressing firmly for at least 20 seconds per board.

Once completed, make sure to trim to excess off the edges and your new photo prop board is complete! This project can be done, with a store run & all, in less than an hour - it's that easy to have a beautiful backdrop for photos! I set mine up with a gorgeous piece of white bead board and I always have the perfect spot to capture a photo of anything!

The cool thing about these backdrops is that I can paint them at some point if I want, or they can age just like a wooden floor would... Plus, I see lots of wall hanging projects being made from the backdrops I use real wood on! I love all the different ways I can use these "backdrops" and with the simplicity of this project, there are a TON of possibilities!

So tell me, what's your favorite thing to take pictures of? Do you have a favorite spot in your house to take pictures? I love hearing all about other people's photography habits & styles and I can't wait to hear all about yours in the comments below!

"I and Love and You" Pet Food Giveaway

Thanks to I and love and you for providing samples for my pooches & for providing one lucky winner with a prize,
all opinions expressed below are my own.

Choosing the right food to feed my pups has been an experience, to say the least, with so many brands and so many ingredients in every brand - I feel overwhelmed a lot of times. Trying to decipher labels and decide what they really need in their food has been a learning process but I think we may have finally landed on a food that we all can agree on. I love my dogs a lot and they love me a lot, so "I and love and you" is the food I choose to make sure they are healthy, happy, and satiated.

With a picky and particular little poodle and a muscular mix of a dog that seems to have an aversion to most dog foods, we are constantly trying to convince them that dog food is actually made for them. Luckily we found "I and love and you". We all love it so much because it's a wholesome pet food formulated by holistic veterinarians with the highest standards and made with quality food ingredients, found right in the grocery store with our food!

Our particular poodle seems to have warmed up to I and Love and You and will nudge the bag when he's hungry and our little muscular mix scarfs her food down every time we fill up her bowl, so I think it's safe to say we have found the food for our pups.

I&L&Y's ingredients include the things I look for when choosing food for myself: grain-free, real meat as the first ingredient, prebiotics, probiotics, no artificial preservatives, flavors or colors... I choose to buy food like this to promote optimum health for my dogs and I've noticed they really seem to love the flavor! Plus with a formula made to make their tummy happy &to help them look more beautiful, what more could I ask for in a dog food?

Do you want to let your dog sample I and love and you? Maybe your little feline friend would like a taste of their cat food line? Enter to win a giveaway for an awesome sampler pack with the giveaway form below:

One lucky winner has the choice
between a dog box or a cat box!


Dog Box
(approx. $150 value) includes:
5lb Kibble - Red Meat Medley
1.5lb In the Raw - Raw Raw Beef Boom Ba
Nice Jerky - Venison + Lamb Jerky Bites
$100 in coupons (5 coupons with $20 value each)


Cat Box
(approx. $125 value) includes:
5lb Kibble - Poultry A Plenty     
2 cans - Chicken Lickin'
2 cans - Oh My Cod!
2 cans - Puurky Turkey
$100 in coupons (5 coupons with $20 value each)

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Now that I've shared our new doggie food and how much we love it, I'd love to hear all about your dogs (or cats) and why you think I & Love & You would be a good fit for your little furry friend!

Dreamy Bedroom Makeover with eve!

It's true, our bedroom was a little bland. Nothing to brag about, until recently...

Ever since eve made her debut in our bedroom, we both love her! Now don't get the wrong idea, eve is actually our new mattress, straight from the UK and ridiculously comfortable!

Why did we decide to get a new mattress? Well, after realizing we spend at least 1/3 of our lives in bed, we came to the conclusion that we should be making our bedroom the dreamiest place it can be. So I embarked on a journey, a journey to make over every inch of the room and of course, getting a new mattress was at the top of the list for making our bedroom dreamier. It was easy to decide which mattress we would be upgrading to once I found eve.

While the look of an eve mattress is sleek and gorgeous, I bet you are wondering what makes eve so dreamy? Well, it's simple... they've stripped the mattress buying process of gimmicks, jargon, and nonsense and made a mattress that is comfortable! eve is everything a mattress should be, shipped directly to your front door. With 3 luxurious layers of different types of foam, eve offers a cloud like experience, supports your body in all the right places, and helps relieve aches and pains. Check out the unboxing of my new queen size mattress in the video below:

With the new look and the new mattress, came a new headboard, a new bedspread, a new side table for him, and all kinds of pretty new little items for both of our side tables. It's amazing what a difference our bedroom makeover has made, I want to spend more time cuddled up under the covers than ever before and with a super comfy new mattress, you can't blame me!

On my side of the bed I wanted girly items to look at when I first wake up, so of course, I went with the most feminine of colors - a super light pink. I added a beautiful, modern lamp, a fun & inspiring piece of art work, some light pink flowers, a light pink floral candle, a lavender scented diffuser, and a sparkling picture frame - everything a girl needs to make her smile in the AM!

On his side I placed a succulent planter, a motivational sign, a seasonally scented candle, and a lotus candle burner and on the wall I hung a chalkboard so I can write his "honey-do list" and little love notes, as well as a fun little candle holder. His side of the bed is the perfect little mixture of tranquility and motivation, an ideal scene to wake up to in the morning!

I think you can see, our room is officially the dreamiest it can be and it's all thanks to our new mattress and our adorable little additions to our bedside! It's amazing how easily I was able to transform my room. Are you thinking about giving your bedroom an overhaul? Check out why you should choose an eve mattress - with their 100 day mattress trial money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose and plenty of good nights of sleep & cuddles to gain!