Favorite Pinners

Now that I'm in design school, I frequent Pinterest these days more than ever. Gathering inspiration, be it from interiors, outfits, art, or photographs, is critical to my success in my current classes and the program itself. Pinterest helps me organize that inspiration very easily (I've been on Houzz a lot too). If you follow me, you may have noticed that I am pinning things for "ID Project [whatever]", which means that I'm gathering images to use as inspiration or materials to use in my intro to interior design and color theory classes. I realized through all this pinning that there are a few pinners who tend to pin items that are very much in line with my style.

While I really like many different styles, there are some images that I'm just drawn to. Many, many of those images are pinned by Bryn Dunn of Bryn Alexandra Interiors and Jenny Komenda of Jenny Komenda Interiors. Not surprisingly, I tend to visit their blogs daily. Here are just a few of their pins that have caught my eye.

Source: thelennoxx.com via Bryn on Pinterest

Source: architecturaldigest.com via Bryn on Pinterest

Source: 25.media.tumblr.com via Bryn on Pinterest

Source: apartmenttherapy.com via Jenny on Pinterest

Source: onceuponateatime.blogspot.com via Jenny on Pinterest

Source: markdsikes.com via Jenny on Pinterest

Source: cozamia.com via Jenny on Pinterest

IDo you have any favorite pinners?

Back in Action

Welcome to my new and improved blog, Savvy Young Something! I’m thrilled that you found it—it’s always a little nerve-racking to make such a big change. But I’m excited about it.

Sorry if you're really confused right now because you were redirected from the old blog. Hope you'll forgive me. Your eyes definitely will.

To answer a few questions:

Why the new name?

To be quite honest, I was never in love with “Young, Hip & Handy”. I used it because I couldn’t come up with anything else and I just wanted to start posting pictures of my projects. As my blog evolved, I knew that the name didn’t do it justice. I also always knew that there is something…well…not very young and hip about calling yourself “young and hip”.  Through some googling I realized that I was in the company of quite a few “Young, Hip and…” blogs, which further fueled my desire to change the name.

I went through a few options and finally settled on Savvy Young Something. Thanks to all my friends who let me bounce my ideas off of them!

Side note: SavvyYoungSomething is too long for twitter, so I’m using SavvyYoungSarah. I’m only telling you this because I came up with it today and it makes me smile. Oh yes, and because you should follow me.

So what does this new name mean?

A Savvy Young Something is someone who doesn’t always know what she (or he) is doing, but is willing to embark on the process of learning and gaining new skills.

As I wrote my blog over the past year, I realized that I wanted to do a lot more than post about how to refinish furniture.  Between posts about crafting and handiness, I found myself writing about establishing traditions when you’re not living with your parents, thoughts on young love and the royal wedding, my experiencebuying a car, and general appreciation of this quasi-grown up state I’m living in.

This realization coincided with thinking a lot about what I want to do with my life. For the first time in my career, I’ve had the same job for over a year. While I really enjoy the people I work with, I’m not totally in love with the work. I’ve talked with a lot of people my age about this and found that most of them feel the same way I do. We’re all trying to be something, but very few of us have figured out what that something is.

At the same time that I've felt unsure about my professional career, I’ve also found myself better able to gain my footing in places that I wasn’t able to even two years ago. I can go out partying one night, stay at home the next with a book and a glass of wine, and not remotely feeling like I’m going to miss out on something. More now than ever, I can put on an outfit and know immediately whether it’s “me” or not. While I don’t feel completely like an adult, I know that I’m completely capable of growing into one. There are a lot of other things I’m getting quite good at.

I may not always know what I’m doing, but I am getting better at knowing where to look and how to approach challenges of the grown up world. And I feel mega empowered every time I accomplish something new.

My goal in writing this blog is to share my adventures in growing up and let other people learn from my experiences. I’ll still focus on home design and DIY projects—after all, a Savvy Young Something should totally have a sweet place on the cheap—and I plan to keep posting things that I learn (like the buying a car posts) that most young somethings encounter at some point. I’ll also try to expand the information on here to include more “growing up” knowledge, perhaps from other people who are willing to share their experiences with me if I can pull it off.  

Did you design the blog yourself?

Yes! And I’m so pumped about it. I recently bought a new computer and forked over the extra $70 to get Photoshop Elements, which is what I used to design the header. It’s totally still a work in progress, and I have spent a ton of time reading different websites and trying to figure out how to fix certain things, but for now I’m quite happy with the design. And yes, I know I’ll have to tweak it in about a month. Oh well, more fun with Photoshop! 

What happened to all the posts from the old blog?

All of my posts from Young, Hip & Handy are included in this blog. I imported all of them, so they are tagged with all the old labels and everything. I also created a few new pages where I plan to store projects that I’ve completed and topics related to grown up stuff.

OK, I need to stop focusing so much on this redesign and start posting all the stuff I’ve been working on for the past few months! I’ll start with Christmas stuff and reserve a few of the projects I completed over the past couple months for after the holidays.

Thanks so much for making this transition with me!