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Chic Dogs & Magnolia Dreams

The Art of Intentional Living

Chic Dogs & Magnolia Dreams
The Art of Intentional Living
  • A Womanโ€™s Right to Choose: On Shoes, Womanhood, and Quiet Revolutions

    A Womanโ€™s Right to Choose: On Shoes, Womanhood, and Quiet Revolutions

    May 25, 2025March 30, 2026 Quiet Notes
    1 Comment

    Iโ€™ve always loved watching the original series of Sex and the City, not just for the fashion or city scenes, but for the connection between the women and how fiercely they protected each otherโ€™s well-being. At first glance, the show seemed fun and lighthearted, but beneath the surface…

    Read More A Womanโ€™s Right to Choose: On Shoes, Womanhood, and Quiet RevolutionsContinue

  • Your Brain on Beauty: What Monet Taught Me About Art and the Mind

    Your Brain on Beauty: What Monet Taught Me About Art and the Mind

    April 28, 2025March 30, 2026 Books, Quiet Notes

    Stepping Inside a Painting Last month, I stepped into a painting and I donโ€™t mean that metaphorically. I found myself standing in a softly lit space in Antwerp, where Claude Monetโ€™s brushstrokes bloomed across the walls, floor, and ceiling. Water lilies rippled around my feet. Flowers shimmered and…

    Read More Your Brain on Beauty: What Monet Taught Me About Art and the MindContinue

  • The Quiet Rebellion of Reading: Choosing Depth Over Distraction

    The Quiet Rebellion of Reading: Choosing Depth Over Distraction

    April 21, 2025May 26, 2025 Books, Quiet Notes

    Thereโ€™s something quietly radical about curling up with a book in a world that urges you to scroll. Even more so when you choose a physical book, your eyes will thank you for the relief. We often donโ€™t realize just how surrounded we are by screens until we…

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  • Reclaiming My Focus: Is Instagram Still Worth It?

    Reclaiming My Focus: Is Instagram Still Worth It?

    March 31, 2025March 31, 2025 Quiet Notes
    8 Comments

    In a world designed to capture and monetize our attention, maintaining focus has become a daily battle. Reclaiming our attention, focus and energy has become a quiet, yet profound act of defiance. Five years ago, during the Covid pandemic, I found myself in a similar placeโ€”reevaluating what truly…

    Read More Reclaiming My Focus: Is Instagram Still Worth It?Continue

  • Note to Self

    Note to Self

    January 25, 2025March 30, 2026 Quiet Notes

    Stop rejecting yourself! Stop rejecting your sensitivity, your emotions, your wants and needs. Stop rejecting your darkness and your light. Yes, even your own light makes you uncomfortable. We spend a lifetime of rejecting ourselves and for what? Are we waiting for someone else to give us permission?…

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  • Note to self

    Note to self

    November 24, 2024November 24, 2024 Quiet Notes
    1 Comment

    Slow down You have time. This idea of not having enough time is what makes you feel anxious, agitated and in a continuous state of perceived urgency. Itโ€™s what makes you feel overwhelmed to the point of shutting down. It makes you enter into freeze mode which results…

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  • Note to Self

    Note to Self

    November 7, 2024March 30, 2026 Quiet Notes
    2 Comments

    Dear readers, I’m starting a brand new series on the blog and I’m calling it ‘Note to Self’. What are ‘Notes to Self’? These are words of comfort, encouragement ย and inspiration to help remind you of certain things while navigating this world and this human experience. I write…

    Read More Note to SelfContinue

  • What does it mean to have the courage to stay in your own lane?

    What does it mean to have the courage to stay in your own lane?

    February 10, 2024March 30, 2026 Home & Garden, Quiet Notes

    The allure of others Just think about how much time, energy and effort we expend by focusing on other peopleโ€™s lives. Time, energy and effort we then lack for ourselves and the lives we wish to build for ourselves. It often manifests as comparison to others which then…

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  • The power of acceptance in our daily lives and relationships

    The power of acceptance in our daily lives and relationships

    January 3, 2024January 3, 2024 Quiet Notes

    Before I decided to sit down at my desk and start writing, I had a clear picture of what it was I wanted to write about. Practically an entire paragraph mapped out of why the word โ€˜acceptanceโ€™ has been lingering in my mind for weeks, if not months….

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  • The sensitive child and her dog

    The sensitive child and her dog

    July 7, 2023September 3, 2023 Quiet Notes

    It must have been the early 90s and I was around 7 or 8 years old. We still lived in Portugal, not far from Lisbon, the capital, and we lived in an apartment on the 6th floor. I remember it was a beautiful and spacious apartment with two…

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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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