It is safe to say that I have a lot of obsessions.

Like cereal, for instance. Although that obsession is 26 years in the making. I am happy to declare that Mama Ro was not one to be stingy on the cereals – I had my pick of Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Cookie Crisp, Trix, Honeycomb, Pops – oh my goodness, what ever happened to Pops?!? I’m going to HAVE to go to the grocery store tonight and investigate.

I’m also mildly obsessed with gum. I go through about a pack every two days. I always have at least two kinds on me (ya gotta mix it up – especially when you use gum as a defense to binge eating an entire box of the aforementioned cereal in between meals), and if I happen to leave the house without a pack, you best believe I’m stopping at the nearest 7/11 before you see me.

Same goes with Burt’s Bees chapstick. Learning from experience in losing these yellow little gems, (aka COMPLETE FREAKOUTS), I now keep an extra one in every possible location of my life – one in my coat pocket, one at work, one in the car, one in my gym bag, two extra in my purse. I’m pretty sure I single-handedly keep them in business. But I’m not mad about it.

Another place I keep in business? LOFT. I am a walking billboard for LOFT, not ashamed to admit it. I often blame it on the fact that I worked there for a while, and therefore just HAD to buy everything because I HAD such a great discount. (Key word: HAD.) The addiction stuck with me way past my retail days, and now it is the one store credit card that I consistently hide (and protect) from my “you can’t possibly need any more clothes” husband.

There are so many other obsessions to list (namely: Wegmans, Annie’s Organic Cinnamon Bunnies, The Hunger Games, Lucerne Light string cheese, OPI gel manicures, peanut butter, Ryan Gosling), but for the sake of getting to the point in this post, I’ll just get to the point:

Anthropologie. My most dangerous obsession to date. Especially when I am always in walking distance to one whether I’m at work or at home.

I love everything about that place. I love the way it smells, the way the decorations make you want to drape everything you own in fabric and stack all of your mismatched dishes on your countertops because, seriously – that totally wouldn’t look messy if all of my bowls were from Anthropologie. I love the way you instantly NEED to become a retro, shabby chic hipster after a mere two minutes of walking/running around the entire store. Yes. Yes yes yes. I want to live there. In a tent. Saved by the Bell style.

I also love when they have sales. Especially ridiculous holiday sales that call for 50 percent off the already reduced price! Sales that make it perfectly okay to go three times in one day and then go to one in Jacksonville and buy a duvet and a quilt five minutes before they close on Christmas Eve. Forgetting that you have to carry them onto your plane back to DC. That was fun.

But wait – I really love when you find a shower curtain on sale that comes in the cutest shower curtain packaging that allows you to get all creative and make matching wall décor with embroidery hoops. Which means our bathroom was completely transformed with one “low” Anthropologie price. Check it out:

Before:

After!

Hence, it is totally okay for me to walk there tonight and see if they put anything else on sale. I mean, just look at how creative they make me! I should go, right??

Right. Anyways, this embroidery hoop project quickly became another one of my favorite things. It is so simple and can be made with small amounts of fabric and inexpensive embroidery hoops– making it super easy on the wallet as well. (See – then you can go shop at Anthopologie too with all the money you saved on decorations!) After making just one of these hoops, I was already plotting to cover every space in our teeny apartment with more. The possibilities are endless, as you can use any type of fabric or even paint/stain the embroidery hoop any color your little heart desires.

And if your little heart is like my little heart, besides the whole Anthro thing, it is seriously desiring a bowl of Cookie Crisp right now.

Fabric Embroidery Hoops

Ingredients:

• Fabric of choice – enough to cover the embroidery hoop you’re using
• Embroidery hoop
• Glue gun
• Exacto knife/scissors

Directions:

1) Loosen your embroidery hoop and separate the two hoops.

2) Lay your fabric on your work surface, right side up, and place the smaller hoop under the section of fabric you want to feature.

3) Place the larger hoop on top of the fabric, over the smaller hoop. Pull the fabric taut around the hoop and tighten the embroidery hoop.

4) If needed, cut the access fabric from the back of the hoop, leaving enough to glue down.

5) Using your glue gun, glue down the fabric to the inside hoop. Cut access fabric if needed.

6) Wah-la! You’re done. Don’t you want to make more? Here are mine, filling up the “what are we going to put above the towels?!” space in our bathroom (sorry the lighting is bad):

Obsessed!