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Chic Dogs & Magnolia Dreams

The Art of Intentional Living

Chic Dogs & Magnolia Dreams
The Art of Intentional Living
  • Cleansing the Energy of Home: A Gentle Summer Ritual for Calm and Clarity

    Cleansing the Energy of Home: A Gentle Summer Ritual for Calm and Clarity

    August 14, 2025March 30, 2026 Home & Garden

    A Summer Spent at Home As a teacher and a lifelong homebody, Iโ€™ve always savored my summers off. But this year has been even more delicious and soothing. Weโ€™re halfway through the season, and apart from a week in France, weโ€™ve stayed home. Our summers are usually filled…

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  • 7 Ideas to Create a Soft and Nourishing Morning Routine

    7 Ideas to Create a Soft and Nourishing Morning Routine

    March 22, 2025March 30, 2026 Home & Garden
    4 Comments

    Mornings set the tone for the rest of the day, and how we begin can make all the difference in how we feel, think, and move through life. A soft and nourishing morning routine isnโ€™t about productivity. Itโ€™s about honoring yourself, your needs, and the rhythm of your…

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  • How to Thrift for Home Decor

    How to Thrift for Home Decor

    February 5, 2025February 5, 2025 Home & Garden

    A Guide to Unique & Budget-Friendly Styling One of the most underrated places to find unique and budget-friendly decor, is at thrift stores. In fact, I often find the most beautiful pieces in thrift stores or flea markets. I always loved old world things and have found that…

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  • 10 Inspiring Lessons I Learned From Ina Garten’s Memoir

    10 Inspiring Lessons I Learned From Ina Garten’s Memoir

    January 12, 2025March 30, 2026 Books, Home & Garden
    2 Comments

    Be Ready When the Luck Happens Iโ€™ve read some pretty amazing books in 2024 but the one that stood out the most, and the one I was most eager to start reading, was Ina Gartenโ€™s memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens. The title is absolutely delicious if…

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  • Cozy โ€œLittle Womenโ€ inspired Christmas decorations

    Cozy โ€œLittle Womenโ€ inspired Christmas decorations

    December 8, 2024December 8, 2024 Home & Garden
    2 Comments

    A cozy home! My favorite part about the Christmas season, is decorating the house. Nothing feels more comforting to me than to make the house super cozy during the coldest and darkest season of the year. The warm fairy lights, the scent of oranges and cloves, red velvet…

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  • 14 Autumn garden chores for a healthy garden

    14 Autumn garden chores for a healthy garden

    November 17, 2024March 30, 2026 Home & Garden

    A rookie mistake would be to think that gardening only happens during the growing season (Spring and Summer). In fact, if you want a beautiful, lush and healthy garden, you need to know that most of the โ€˜behind the scenesโ€™ work is what actually makes your garden thrive…

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  • My cozy home office makeover

    My cozy home office makeover

    October 28, 2024October 28, 2024 Home & Garden
    1 Comment

    Cozy home office My home office is one of my favorite places in the house. Itโ€™s the place where I do my writing, make new teaching material and itโ€™s the place where most of my books live. Itโ€™s not a big office but itโ€™s cozy and inspiring to…

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  • My โ€œPractical Magicโ€ inspired garden and how to create one

    My โ€œPractical Magicโ€ inspired garden and how to create one

    September 23, 2024March 30, 2026 Home & Garden
    4 Comments

    September is one of my favorite months. Okay yes I know, Summer break is over and school starts again. And no, I donโ€™t particularly enjoy all the chaos and stress that accompanies all of thatโ€ฆ But, there is a palpable shift in nature that makes me want to…

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  • French inspired Summer skincare routine

    French inspired Summer skincare routine

    July 26, 2024March 30, 2026 Home & Garden

    Did you know that your skin is the biggest organ you have? Not only that, but itโ€™s also the only organ that is exposed to the external world. So no, skincare is not just a vanity thing. It is in fact, about your health. Our skin health is…

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  • 14 ways to have a soft and intentional Summer

    14 ways to have a soft and intentional Summer

    July 2, 2024March 30, 2026 Home & Garden
    2 Comments

    The long-awaited Summer break has finally arrived! At least on my side of the world. Friday was officially the last day of the school year for both teachers and students. Though at the end of every school year I tend to feel the bitter sweetness of time passing,…

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Welcome to the Chic Dogs & Magnolia Dreams Blog! So glad you are here. If you are interested in cultivating the art of intentional living, you are in the right place!

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Gardener // Storyteller // Writer // Dog Mom
Flowers, dogs, books & Paris

What if this is heaven?! This little life of ours What if this is heaven?!

This little life of ours.

In spite of all the heartache and struggles we all eventually face. 

What if this is heaven and we are all too exhausted, too angry to see it?! 

What if we zoom out for a second and really look at the details of life, of ordinary things...

A delicious meal prepared with care, a beautiful flower field, the ocean, a table filled with fresh food and friendly company, music that makes you pause, animals and the comfort they give us, feeling held by love, thrifted treasures, a vase filled with flowers, a garden grown from scratch, comfortable clothes to wear...

We would be in awe. 
We would finally be able to see the magnificence of ordinary things.
We would realize how fragile everything is and how much more care everything deserves.
Including us.

#simplelife #slowlife #ordinarylife things #intentionalliving
A visual diary of a gentle summer. ๐ŸŽจDogs ๐ŸŽจFlower A visual diary of a gentle summer.

๐ŸŽจDogs 
๐ŸŽจFlowers
๐ŸŽจHome
๐ŸŽจBooks
๐ŸŽจSimplicity
๐ŸŽจHosting dinners
๐ŸŽจSeasonal cooking
๐ŸŽจIntentional living
๐ŸŽจCreative afternoons
๐ŸŽจIna Garten on repeat

#gentleliving
#August 
#slowsummer 
#slowlife
My babies were never meant to be human. I've kno My babies were never meant to be human. 

I've known, from a very young age that I did not want to become a mother to human babies. I had many adults and peers tell me that I would change my mind or that I would have regrets. They knew me as someone who was caring, someone who loved deeply. So in their minds, it would only be natural for me to become a mother.

I have. 

Just not the kind they had envisioned. Not the kind they think is the only one that matters.

I was a willful child and knew exactly what I wanted and even more so what I didn't want. I knew I wanted a house full of rescue dogs. I knew I wanted their company more than anyone else's. And yes, that is difficult for people to hear because we tend to place humans above any other species. 

I never have and never will understand why so many humans feel inclined to do so.
I don't see why we need to diminish, shrink, minimize any other species just to make ours more relevant. 

We are relevant, we can be magnificent... but so can other species. Acknowledging this doesn't take anything away from us. Quite the opposite. 

My babies were never meant to be human, they were meant to be furry babies. That I have always known.

#dogmom #dogs
Life lately from a homebody's point of view... Wh Life lately from a homebody's point of view...

Where everything centers around the home. Sun -  dried laundry, gardening, preparing home cooked meals with seasonal ingredients, hosting creative girl's nights, evening walks with the pups, flowers and more flowers, reading, writing, cleaning and tidying, flowy dresses, seafood dinners, sun-kissed skin, Brazilian jazz in the background, peaches everywhere, and weekly hydrotherapy dates with Marlow.

My heart is full.๐Ÿฉท๐ŸŒธ๐Ÿ•๐Ÿ‰

I hope yours is too, wherever you may be.๐Ÿฉท

#summer #homebody #slowsummer
May every shelter dog find their peaceful forever May every shelter dog find their peaceful forever home. In this life and the next. 

๐Ÿ• Full bellies.

๐Ÿ• Gentle nose boops.

๐Ÿ• Soft blankets and comfy sofas.

๐Ÿ• "I love yous" every single morning.

๐Ÿ• Flower filled gardens and cool shady spots  under a tree.

๐Ÿ• Consideration and respect.

๐Ÿ• Beach and forest adventures.

#shelterdog #adoptdontshop #rescuedogs #dogsofinstagram #dogmom
We're ready for gentle mornings in the garden, sun We're ready for gentle mornings in the garden, sunkissed skin, slow evening walks with the dogs and peach cake on repeat.

#august #summerinthegarden #summerdays
A life that heals my heart. Again and again. One A life that heals my heart.
Again and again.

One that softens the edges of being a sensitive creature in a loud and cruel world.

Every time I bring a rescue dog into our home, a piece of my soul restores. 

Slightly, gently, irreversibly.

It feels like countering the darkness. As if some kind of balance gets restored. 

A defiance, a refusal to relinquish hope.
Regardless of how the sourness persists.

Every time I sow a flower seed and watch it grow into something that takes my breath away, I am reminded that beauty, awe and wonder are not frivolous. They are life-giving. 

That's what dogs and flowers teach me every single day. 

We refuse to be frozen by the heaviness... 

Instead we persist, we bloom, we experience joy, we create beauty, we take naps, we bring our neighbors brownies and flowers, we keep adopting the "unadoptable".

Not because it will stop all the darkness of this world. But it will stop your heart from turning just as dark, just as detached and sedated.

I know it is hard to be affected by it all, to feel the anguish coursing through your veins, the sense of hopelessness, the heartbreaking contempt you feel for your own species because you can't understand the cruelty and indifference...

Nothing brings you back to your own light like tending a garden, helping dogs trust the world and themselves again. 

It's easy to burn something down to the ground, it's also cowardice. But to lift something up, to create something, to nourish and heal... that is profound power and it's only possible if COURAGE is at the steering wheel.

#kindness #light #dogsandflowers
Turns out I've been a 90s butter dog mom since for Turns out I've been a 90s butter dog mom since forever.

The nostalgic pull of the 90s has always been here. 

๐Ÿ‰Slow, mostly analog summer days.
๐Ÿ‰90s Sandra Bullock movies on repeat.
๐Ÿ‰A life where home and dogs are the main characters.
๐Ÿ‰Homemade cooking.
๐Ÿ‰Gardening like my life depends on it.
๐Ÿ‰A cozy, lived-in home that feels like love.
๐Ÿ‰Books, magazines and iced teas.
๐Ÿ‰Mornings with open doors and windows while the coffee is brewing and the smell of warm toast and salted butter fills the house.
๐Ÿ‰Staying home and enjoying every minute of it.
๐Ÿ‰Bare feet and flowy dresses.
๐Ÿ‰Slow and restorative beach days.

All of this is deeply deeply grounding to me. ๐Ÿฉท๐Ÿ•๐ŸŒธ๐Ÿ‰
Good morning! I hope you are surrounded by flower Good morning!

I hope you are surrounded by flowers, butterflies, sunshine and dogs.

๐Ÿฉท

#kindness 
#softness 
#joiedevivre
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