this week's clicks.

get your week off to a colorful start...
LISTEN.

• This remix of Starley's "Call on Me" is my current upbeat friendship/saving the world anthem/workout jam.

SWOON.

The Habitat Collective via Front + Main

• Sophisticated bohemian style in a small apartment.
• A stunning Charleston NYE wedding at Boone Hall...
• (they were building this venue when we visited in 2015)
• From Lia Griffith, a pretty watercolor wedding invite.

SMILE.

• Desktops: Amber Lotus, Flipsnack, Sarah Hearts, Gennine.
• 2017 in Google searches - always an interesting video!
• This unusual love story is so, so touching - a must-read.
• Oprah's powerful speech from last night's Golden Globes.

FLASHBACK.

• 2017: favorite Golden Globes looks, and a winter Stitch Fix review.
• 2016: January favorites, winter TV, Golden Globes looks, and goals for the year.
• 2015: my first Stitch Fix, winter Pinspiration, and the PMT Style Challenge.
• 2014: Golden Globes styles and beauty and reflections on 2013.
• 2013: all about blogging, favorite Golden Globes looks, and ideas for bridal portraits.

What's coloring your week? Share a link to your favorite recent blog
 or Tumblr post, Tweet, or Instagram pic in the comments!

this week's clicks: happy 2018!

And now we welcome the new year. Full of things 
that have never been. - Rainer Maria Rilke

get your week off to a colorful start...

SWOON.

Brooke Images via Wedding Chicks

• From Wedding Chicks, an elegant New Year's wedding.
• A sweet mint and cobalt wedding from the Elli blog.
• Preppy hunt club winter wedding inspiration from SMP.

SMILE.

• January desktops: Red Stamp, Cross Cards, Oh So Lovely.
• 2018 book challenges from Book Riot, MMD, and PopSugar.
• How Harry Potter characters would decorate their homes.

REFLECT.

• Could you commit to a no-shopping year? I don't think I could.
• New Year goal-setting activities from Living Well Spending Less...
• and the ones I use yearly, from Rosie Molinary and Lara Casey.

FLASHBACK.

• 2017: sage green Pinspiration,
• 2016: An end of year book survey, Instagram faves, and 5 ways I grew in 2015.
• 2015: Jamie's end of year book survey and my favorite things for January.
• 2014: challenges and gratitude, what worked in 2013, and winter in entertainment.
• 2013: expectations for the new year and my goal to show more compassion.

What's coloring your week? Share a link to your favorite recent blog

 or Tumblr post, Tweet, or Instagram pic in the comments!

pinspiration: new year's eve

I recently saw a post where someone described 2017 as "personally, great; internationally; a mess," and I couldn't agree more. While our New Year's Eves tend to skew toward the cozy (our friends plan a night of Minute to Win It games and appetizers), if this year's fashion offerings are any indication we're all dreaming of a little Studio 54 throwback style. Even a cozy night at home needs a little sparkle and glitter, in my opinion. Let's do this, 2018. We're ready.

this week's clicks: merry christmas!

get your week off to a colorful start...
SWOON.

Victoria Elizabeth Photography via Wedding Chicks

• So cute and romantic: a surprise tree farm engagement!
• A fairytale coastal wedding from Found Vintage Rentals.
• From SMP, an intimate New England Christmas wedding.

SMILE.

• The Habits of Highly Successful Women, from Darling.
• These DIY mini star cake toppers would be great for NYE.
• The actual best New Year's resolutions, via A Cup of Jo.

FLASHBACK.

• 2016: millenial pink inspiration for New Year's Eve, remembering Carrie Fisher, my  favorite things from December
• 2015: rose gold NYE inspiration, Literary Junkies, December in Instagram, my most popular posts of 2015 and my personal favorite posts.
• 2014: most popular posts of 2014 and personal favorites.
• 2013: most popular posts of 2013, personal favorites, and a NYE tablescape.
• 2012: favorite posts of 2012, gold and blush NYE inspiration, favorite movies and books of 2012, and organization goals for 2013.
• 2011: gold/champagne inspiration for New Year's Eve and organization goals for 2012.

this week's clicks.

get your week off to a colorful start...
SWOON.

Kate Ignatowski via Style Me Pretty

• From SMP, a chic Washington DC wedding.
• A Chicago loft with mod black and white decor.
• Jennifer's inspiring before & after home photos.
• Adore these Quaker wedding vows from S&I.

SMILE.

• Desktops: Smashing, Red Stamp, Amber Lotus.
• Meryl Streep's mic-drop Golden Globes speech.
• Beauty and heartbreak in NatGeo's photos of 2016.
• From Yes and Yes, traditions to start 2017 strong.

FLASHBACK.

• 2016: January favorites, winter TV, fave Golden Globes looks, and goals for the year.
• 2015: my first Stitch Fix, winter Pinspiration, and the PMT Style Challenge.
• 2014: favorite Golden Globes styles and beauty, and reflections on 2013.
• 2013: all about blogging, favorite Golden Globes looks, and ideas for bridal portraits.
• 2012: the big wedding trend was side braid hairstyles.

 I'd love to keep in touch - share a link to your favorite recent blog
 or Tumblr post, Tweet, or Instagram pic in the comments!

this week's clicks: 2017!

get your week off to a colorful start...
LISTEN.

• I went to see Moana with my childhood best friend and her mini-me yesterday, and I'm officially in love with the soundtrack (can we just go ahead and give Lin-Manuel Miranda the EGOT?). 

SWOON.

Loft Photography

• A classic chapel wedding from Loft Photography.
• I approve of all of these furniture trends for 2017.
• Loving this Virginia wedding's soft color palette.
• Pinterest inspiration for New Year's goal setting.

SMILE.

• Desktops: Sarah ❤'s, Cross Cards, Flipsnack.
• 2017 reading challenges from MMD and PopSugar.
• These ring dishes would be such a sweet gift.
• Made these PB cheesecake brownies for NYE - A+!

FLASHBACK.

• 2016: An end of year book survey, Instagram faves, Felicia Day's adorkable book, and 5 5 ways I grew in 2015.
• 2015: Jamie's end of year book survey and my favorite things for January.
• 2014: challenges and gratitude, what worked in 2013, organization goals, winter in entertainment, IG faves, ideas for a radiant orchid winter wedding, and favorite things.
• 2013: white and cozy neutral winter wedding inspiration, expectations for the new year, and my goal to show more compassion.

sunday simplicity.

Courtney Beck Photography

“Hope

Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,

Whispering 'it will be happier'...”

― Alfred, Lord Tennyson

pinspiration: millennial pink new year's eve

Well, darlings, we're wrapping up another year here at Beyond the Aisle, and my thoughts this week are on 2017, and, of course, New Year's Eve. While the experts at Pantone have named Greenery the new Color of the Year, I'm honestly not over 2016's Rose Quartz and it's many permutations - fall's Dusty Cedar with its decadent 70's vibe, and of course the ubiquitous shade journalists have dubbed "millennial pink." My ideal New Year's Eve party would be laid-back with a bohemian vibe, plenty of champagne, a plethora of pink, the potential for a Nerf gun war, and, okay, some actual greenery thrown in as a nod to the New Year to come and all of its possibilities.

What are your plans for New Year's Eve?

this week's clicks: happy boxing day!

get your week off to a colorful start...

• I hope that you're all having a wonderful holiday week with your families. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to actually rest and relax with a good book (currently, The Queen of the Tearling) - that stack of papers to grade can wait until 2017, right?

LISTEN.

• Hat tip to my hip mom for telling me about this amazing year-end Carpool Karaoke from James Corden and friends! How did he keep this a secret???

SWOON.

Michael and Carina Photography via Style Me Pretty

• Speechless over this elegant Charlottesville wedding.
• I look forward to Lia's NYE printable hats every year.
• Sparkly, fun New Year's inspiration from Swooned.
• The perfect low-effort, high-glam hairstyle for NYE.

SMILE.

• Desktops: Dawn Nicole, Oh So Lovely, Soggy Musings
• Love these unique birthstone necklaces - New Year's gift?
• Interesting: Planned Parenthood donations are up 40%.
• Pinning all the best last-minute New Year's Eve ideas.

FLASHBACK.

• 2015: inspiration for a cozy rose gold NYE, Literary Junkies, December in Instagram, most popular posts of 2015 and personal faves.
• 2014: most popular posts of 2014 and personal favorites.
• 2013: most popular posts of 2013, my personal favorites, and a NYE tablescape.
• 2012: avorite posts of 2012, gold and blush NYE inspiration, favorite movies and books of 2012, organization goals for 2013, gray wardrobe picks and home decor ideas. 
• 2011: gold/champagne inspiration for New Year's Eve and organization goals for 2012.

welcome, winter.

Lauren Miller Photography via Junebug Weddings

"One need never be dull as long as one has friends to help, 

gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.”

― D.E. Stevenson

Lauren Miller Photography via Junebug Weddings

this week's clicks.

get your week off to a colorful start...
LISTEN.

• Late Show with Stephen Colbert bandleader Jon Batiste has a new holiday album out this year - love this track with Aloe Blacc.

SWOON.

Carla Choy Photography via Style Me Pretty

• Can I pretty please be invited to this glam dinner party?
• Drooling over Camille Styles' chocolate + cheese board.
• A fun and lovely paper wedding send-off garland.
• Chic NYE inspiration from photographer Izzy Hudgins.

SMILE.

• Desktops: Giants + Pilgrims, Sea of Atlas, Smashing.
• These cute, affordable earrings are perfect for the holidays.
• A DIY CHRISTMAS TREE CAKE from Alana Jones-Mann.
• Have you seen Pinterest's 100 trend predictions for 2017?

FLASHBACK.

• 2015: my treat yourself wish list, decoupaged world map ornaments, and a mini home tour featuring a glam woodland tree.
• 2014: my holiday home tour.
• 2013: my favorite account of Christmas, wrote to Santa, showed off my chalkboard ornaments and shared a holiday home tour.
• 2012: a Sunday Social all about favorites, gave a holiday home tour and ideas for displaying cards, and rounded up my blog loves and my own most popular posts of 2012.  I also shared my December in Instagram.
• 2011: my favorite things in our home. 

2016 moodboard.

Images, L-R: 1, 2, 3 | 4, 5, 6

This month, the theme for The Circle link-up at In Its Time was to create a moodboard for 2016. As I created my moodboard, I thought about how I want to 2016 to feel and what I want each day to look like. Here are some areas of my life I want to prioritize this year.

calm mornings

I've always been something of a night owl, but lately I've really been looking into how my sleep affects my overall health. My mornings are typically very rushed, and it doesn't help me start the day in a very nice mood. I'd like to be able to wake up earlier and spend some quiet time eating a "real" breakfast and actually enjoying my coffee, reading, doing a devotional, practicing yoga, writing in my journal, or setting goals for the day before I have to greet 30 teenagers!

nurturing my passions

• Teaching - I love, love, love my job. I definitely want to be involved with teaching and/or working with young people for the rest of my life. However, I've gotten a little complacent lately - I've gone from being the new teacher who was constantly reading professional development books, taking classes, and attending conferences to being the veteran who recycles lesson plans and goes home to watch Netflix. To try to rekindle that flame, I've applied to several programs for this spring and summer that should help get me back on track. I really want to be a teacher who is always innovating and trying new things.
• Writing - If someone had told me ten years ago that I wouldn't have published anything significant by the age of thirty, I probably would have gotten very depressed. My writing is another thing I think I've gotten complacent about - I use the busy-ness of my teaching job and personal writing, like blogging and Tumblr, to avoid writing for a purpose. Just like with exercise, if I don't make time to write creatively, it's not going to happen. What am I hiding from?

welcoming change

Change is scary to me, but my One Word for 2016 is horizon and when I look at the image of the girl facing the horizon, I see that she's facing the ocean and its ever-changing waves - one of my favorite places to be and one that I find incredibly calming. Change is a constant in life - in relationships, at work, and with our personal interests. I had to reevaluate some friendships in 2015, and gained a stronger sense of self (a little more about that here). Buying a house and being able to turn it into a place to welcome friends and family any time we want will be a big change. Moving to a new school for a semester will be a big change. I need to face the horizon rather than trying to run from it.

health and wellness

• I'm not exaggerating when I say that yoga has changed my life - I'm calmer, more patient, and more centered, and as a nice side effect my body is leaner. I want to keep practicing yoga regularly (at home in addition to the class I attend) and challenge myself to try more difficult poses.
• I've been working to improve my health and diet for almost four years now, since receiving my PCOS diagnosis, but nothing has been as helpful to me so far as the app that came with my Jawbone UP2 band (read more of my thoughts about the UP2 here) - the combination of tracking sleep, workouts, and food and positive reinforcement really seems to be working. I've tried various boot camps, diets, and cleanses, but none of them have really "stuck." Hopefully I'm on to something now!
• One of the things I'm most looking forward to when we do move out of our current townhouse is being able to have a garden and grow our own vegetables. I grew up in a rural area and sometimes I just need a little dirt therapy.

community

The time has come for me to break through my social anxiety and find a place to pray and worship (I wrote a little more about this here). Ever since reading Rachel Held Evans' book Searching for Sunday last year (my review is here), I've been yearning for the kind of transformative experience she writes about. I don't want to be yet another millennial who left the church and never returned - unlike some people I know who thrive on solitary spiritual paths, I am just no good at staying in the Word on my own. I have been making excuses for far too long, and this needs to be the year I find a church home, even if that means going alone. I miss the sense of belonging and understanding that I had in college with my fellowship, small group, and close-knit church. As I've said before, I know that there's no "perfect" church, but there must be one out there (hopefully not too far away) that I can help make wonderful.

this week's clicks: i'll meet you there halfway between...

get your week off to a colorful start...
LISTEN.

• The Brothers Comatose are an acoustic quintet whose music blends bluegrass and folk, so naturally I'm smitten. "Morning Time" features vocals from The Gramblers' Nicki Bluhm, whose voice pairs perfectly with singer Ben Morrison's, and the lyrics seem especially relevant to me at this house-hunting stage in my life with Mr. Q.

SWOON.

Loft Photography via Style Me Pretty

• At EAD, a horizon blue ranch inspiration shoot.
• Glam engagement party invites from Lia Griffith.
• Beautiful Hawaiian portraits from Magnolia Rouge.
• Style Me Pretty features a sweet Texas wedding.

SMILE.

• January desktops: Flipsnack, Front Door, Lily and Val.
• 2016 reading challenges from Modern Mrs. Darcy and Popsugar.
• Have you joined Emma Watson's new feminist book club yet?
• 20 reminders for the New Year, from Sunday Chapters:

"Life literally never goes as planned, so don’t waste your time fretting about the future. Life is never going to work out how you planned and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you will start greeting the unexpected with open arms. Let the unknown, the unplanned and the possibility of change excite you. Let the future take you to places you never knew."

FLASHBACK.

• Last year I got my first Stitch Fix, rounded up winter Pinspiration, and joined the PMT Style Challenge.
• Two years ago, I picked my favorite styles from the Golden Globes along with hair and makeup, and continued to work through Lara Casey's goal setting series by reflecting on what didn't work in 2013.
• Three years ago, Sunday Social was all about blogging.  I picked my favorite Golden Globes looks, collected ideas for bridal portraits, and shared my January blog loves.
• Four years ago I rounded up side braid hairstyles.

What are your plans for this week? Have you made any

resolutions or chosen any mantras for the New Year?

Fellow bloggers, I'd love it if you shared a link to your 

favorite recent post/Tweet/Pin/Insta in the comments!

year in review - favorite posts of 2015

Along with the most popular posts of the year, I always like to shine a little spotlight on my personal favorites. Here are the posts I enjoyed creating and writing, the ones I enjoyed re-reading the most, and the posts that were most meaningful to me in 2015.

Inner Bookworm: My TBR List - I'm a sucker for surveys that encourage me to reflect on my reading preferences and behaviors - which is no surprise, since I'm constantly asking my students to journal about their goals and progress. I practice what I preach, y'all. I wrote a little here about how I use Interactive Notebooks at school, and I completely changed the way I use those this past semester, so I'll probably write a post about them on my classroom blog soon.

A Letter to My Younger Self - This was a really great topic from The Circle link-up. I decided to write to myself as a first-year college student. I'd also like to write to my middle/high school self and add the advice, participate in P.E. class and learn how sports work.

Style: My Second Stitch Fix - Not my most successful Fix, but it did include my favorite dress, which I refer to as my "Fleetwood Mac dress" because it was perfect concert attire.

If I Could... - Totally ripped off the idea from Micah, Holly, Erin, and Katie, but this post ended up being more personal and insightful than I imagined.

16 Weird Ways to Celebrate Star Wars Day - Once in a while I come up with a really oddball idea for a blog post. I still love this post. It truly was the year of Star Wars.

Retro Summer Style: Aquamarine and Gingham - One of Pantone's colors for summer, a major pattern trend, and a TV show/book that were right up my alley all came together to inspire one of my all-time favorite style boards. Nicole called it "daintiest little inspo board" and I think that comment was right on target - I found myself adding little '60s touches to my outfits throughout late summer and fall. I need this kind of inspiration more often.

Travelogue: Charleston, South Carolina - We had an absolutely lovely, though short vacation to Charleston this summer, and I was so happy to finally be in the city I'd read and dreamed about. It was every bit as beautiful as I'd imagined. We're so lucky to have so many amazing places within driving distance, and I'm hoping we'll have the time and budget for even more travel in 2016. I think the biggest lesson I learned from Charleston was that vacations don't have to be long or obsessively planned - exploring random streets and following friends' recommendations or random Yelp reviews can be just as memorable as a scheduled tour or complicated reservation.

Midsummer According to Instagram - I participated in several Instagram style challenges this summer, primarily to keep myself from defaulting to pajamas every day (#teacherproblems). I did not expect so many compliments from real-life friends who genuinely liked seeing my outfits every day and thought they were creative - one friend even asked if I was buying new things just for the challenges (I wasn't!).

#ROANOKESTRONG - This post was very meaningful for me to write, and I wish I hadn't had to write it. My community experienced tragedy this year that I will never forget, and for a while I wasn't sure we'd ever be able to return to normal life. Seeing Alison Parker and Adam Ward's family and friends out and about, experiencing and enjoying life after such an excruciating loss, has been really inspiring. 

#5FandomFriday: Favorite Fictional Teachers - My topic suggestion got picked for October, and I knew exactly who my list would include.

Halloween Recap: Our Adventures as Cap and Peggy - This was my favorite Halloween ever. Peggy Carter is my favorite Marvel character, I love history, and I love dressing up. It was perfect, and I have the best husband in the world.

Holiday Craft: DIY World Map Ornaments - I'm so happy with how these turned out, and really hoping some other crafty folks will use this idea! When my mom came over for Christmas Eve, I asked her if she liked my new DIY ornaments, and she looked at our tree and said, "I don't see any handmade ornaments." Crafting win!

Bloggers, what were your favorite posts from 2015? 

Share your links in the comments!