If you’re a fan of HGTV celebrities Chip & Joanna Gains from Fixer Upper, then you’ve heard about Magnolia! Their business had very humble beginnings and has since grown to a large tourist attraction in their hometown Waco, Texas. In college, my seven roommates and I weekly watched their show and always talked about visiting someday. Well, that someday finally happened (with two of them- Lydia & Hannah)! Below I’m sharing recommendations & a little recap (with pictures of course!) of our trip. Hope you enjoy! Any questions? Feel free to leave them in the comments below!

Recommendations:

-Have the mindset that you’re going there to relax and enjoy all things Magnolia! I asked Lydia & Hannah if they felt like Magnolia lived up to the “hype” and we all agreed that it did! However, we also agreed that since we went in off season (beginning of April) it wasn’t super crowded and we had great weather. It may have felt different if it was packed. We did wait in line for a few things but everything seems to move quickly and the sunshine felt so good, we didn’t care!

-Read “The Magnolia Story” before going. Reading it really helped me appreciate SO much more and I really feel like I picked up on a lot more details. It helped me get out of a consumer mindset and appreciate all the hard work, prayer, and small decisions over time that lead to what Magnolia is now!

-Stay at an Airbnb (preferably one Chip & Jo have renovated but if not, there’s plenty of other cute options!) We stayed in this one and really loved it! Great location and the host was super responsive.

-Visit Magnolia Market at the Silos– there you can shop in the large store, eat a meal from the various food truck options, go to the bakery, hang out in the open lawn area, walk around the garden area, shop at Feed + Seed, etc. Honestly my favorite part of our time there was sitting on the bean bag chairs in the lawn people watching, soaking up the sunshine & drinking sweet tea (from a food truck).

-Visit the original Magnolia store on Bosque- there’s a lot of discounted/damaged items that you can purchase!

-Visit the Harp Design Co. shop– Klint & Kelly worked with Chip & Jo a ton on Fixer Upper!

-Do a tour or a self guided tour of some of the homes they flipped on the show. We just googled it and found some of the addresses!

-Eat at Magnolia Table– seriously, its SO good! Highly recommend the biscuits with strawberry jam

–Common Grounds coffee shop & Heritage Creamery– both right next to each other on 8th street (close to Baylor). Both locations have such fun atmospheres! Highly recommend!!

–Spice Village– I would describe it as a high end flee market…or like a bunch of Etsy shops under one roof. Everything Magnolia is closed on Sundays so this was nice to explore something different!

–Torchys– it’s a chain restaurant but decent prices & delicious tacos- highly recommend trying the queso (close to Baylor)

Magnolia Girls Trip Recap:

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The first night we drove to Nashville to visit 2 other college friends (Megan not pictured) and had to stop by 5 Daughters Bakery on our way out the next morning 🙂 You’ll notice that’s a common spot for me while visiting Nashville…

We arrived in Waco on a Sunday & all things Magnolia are closed Sundays. Instead we went to church, brunch, Spice village, Common grounds, Heritage creamery, & hung out at our Airbnb. We did go by the Magnolia Silos and I snagged a few pictures because it wasn’t crowded!

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Chilling in the lawn area was my favorite part of the day! It felt SO relaxing!

We traveled 1,004 #milestomagnolia 🙂

One of the food trucks had the BEST Alabama sweet tea! You get to keep the large glass mug + straw too! There was a lot of yummy food truck options, which is what we ate for lunch.

The image above is some of the designs inside the large store- the leafs on the tree are made from paper! I was seriously blown away by all the beautiful areas in the store!!

I felt silly brining out by big camera while at breakfast so we only took a few iphone pictures then put our phones away. The food was SO GOOD!! I would have eaten there for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if it was an option haha.

We found this fun mural close to where we parked before walking to the silos!

Heritage Creamery & Common Groups coffee shop are right next to each other and very close to Baylor’s campus. We played cards at the coffee shop before picking up pizza (also next door) and ice cream for dinner!

^ Our version of a candlelight dinner haha

We absolutely loved our Airbnb (linked above) & can’t recommend it enough!!

While driving around to look a few houses Chip & Jo flipped on their TV show, we found this winery arboretum. We didn’t get any wine but sure did admire the beautiful cacti!

Hope you enjoyed our Magnolia recap!

Until next time friends!

Cheers,

Mon