30 Day Photography Challenge

Happy New Year, guys!  I hope you all had a great Holiday season.  Mine was great...full of relaxation and family time.

To start the year off, I am going to be posting a series of pictures for a 30 day photography challenge.  I came across this idea on pinterest and decided to do this for the new year.  There is a list of 30 pictures to take, one for each day.  Hopefully this will flex my creative muscle a little more and bring on some great ideas! Some of the posts may have just an image, and some may have more details.  Depends on my mood for the day.  Instead of posting 30 times, I might be combining days into one post.  This is all to say check back often or follow me (on the right of this screen) so that you know when I post something new!

Day 1- Self-Photo

Day 2- What I wore

Back to the Future

The internet is a funny place full of inspiration! I came across something tonight that I thought was uber cute and I may consider trying myself...one day.

Photographer Irina Werning is working on a project called "Back to the Future" in which the subject chooses a picture from their childhood and recreates the scene down to the clothes, accessories and even location of the original picture {if possible}. See what I mean?





If I tackle this, I'll let you all know. Perhaps it could be a piece of wall art in my home...

{all images via here}

The Long and {not so} Short of it

Hello good people! Hope all is well. Things around here are starting to pick up...both business wise and interior design wise. Stay tuned for some exciting additions to my shop this spring!

Drapes...it was something that I had been wanting to add to our great room for a year now. last winter was cold, and with nothing but paper shaded to keep the heat in, we were definitely looking to get them up as quick as possible. Fast forward to the following winter, and it's even more cold! Still no drapes! Reason? I'm indecisive...if you didn't know. Well let me rephrase...I'm a decisive person in training. To make a long story short, I decided to make my own drapes because I was having no luck finding the length that I needed for a decent price and a fabric that I liked. Went to the fabric store, and everything happened to be $3.99 a yard that day {score!}. Found a fabric that I liked and purchased it after consulting via text message/picture message with Simon. The fabric sat around for a good month before I cut it into the four panels needed. Another three weeks went by before we actually started putting them together. Thanks to a tutorial from the wonderful couple of Young House Love, we used heavy duty hem tape for the edges since we don't know how to sew {yet}. Okay, okay, enough talking already. Here we go:


The fabric rolled up all nice and tight

Our work area {the great room floor}


Good old trusty iron

Great Room windows before {even before we moved in!}


And after




Another before {in which we were living this time}




The plan is to keep the walls the neutral color that they are and to add color with art work, possibly wall decals, and a nice mirror {more on that mirror later...}. What I really love now is a nice golden glow that greets me every morning when I open my bedroom door to go downstairs!

We decided to stick with neutral colored panels..well...because...who really wants to go through all of that again? We plan to make more curtains for the house, but not that length! It was a wonderful and rewarding experience though, I must admit.

Any DIY projects underway around your way?

Mood Music

I love music. So many genres it's hard to name them all. I like to think of myself as cultured when it comes to music. I find that I perform better when music is playing. Cleaning, cooking, working, reading, they all call for different types of music.

This is what I like to listen to in the following situations:

Driving to Work-

Yeah Yeah Yeahs


Pharrell/N.E.R.D.


J*DaVeY

Roisin Murphy




Working-

Bossa Nova/Latin Jazz {Astrud Gilberto, Stan Getz, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Tito Puente}
{Astrud Gilberto}

Chill {Zero 7, Air}


Radiohead


Beck



Driving Home-

Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Electrik Red

Pharrell/N.E.R.D.
Cake

Cooking-

Classic Jazz {John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra}
{Duke}
Chill {Zero 7, Air}

Cleaning-

90's satellite radio
Grunge
Old School rap
{Salt-n-Pepa}

These can change up at any time, but it's an overall view of my day in music.

What about you?

*all images courtesy of http://www.last.fm/

Staycation Inspiration

It is the eve of my return to work after a great week off. I actually accomplished a respectable amount of things. One of them was much needed cleaning and organizing. I hate cleaning, but I can say that I actually enjoyed it over the past week. Perhaps because I was off of work, so everything seemed a little sweeter?

Anyhow, I took a visit to my local bookstore and picked up a copy of the latest House Beautiful magazine. This issue had so many great ideas in it! I was totally inspired to do something in the house...especially after reading the "Send us a picture of" feature. Apparently readers send in pictures of whatever the magazine will be showcasing, and hopefully their picture will be one of the lucky ones chosen. This month's spotlight was coat closets. Eek...mine was a complete mess. In fact, I would cringe before opening the door because I knew what it looked like. So this is the feature-

This is the embarrassing "I can't believe I'm posting a picture of this for the world to see" before shot-

And this is the "Thank you House Beautiful for giving me the drive to clean up this hell hole" after shot-

Now I look forward to opening the closet door and smile every time. But I can't help but wonder...of the closets that were chosen, how many of them looked like mine before they took their "magazine worthy" picture?

Liberty Belle

Mother's Day is almost here, and I'm just about done packaging card orders. Now that it's spring {AKA wedding season}, I plan to write wedding related posts more often. I haven't posted a wedding inspiration board lately, so I thought I would post this board that I finished a while back {via Polyvore}. I absolutely LOVE this color scheme. An invitation to match this scheme is coming soon...

Liberty Belle by LrnM Design featuring Vivienne Westwood Gold Label dresses

My Little Pony...

I don't know if I'm late, but this is totally new to me. My sister showed me a site today that sells modified versions of My Little Pony. The creator is Finland artist Mari Kasurinen. She starts with a regular pony, and adds costumes, hair, makeup, etc to make them into celebrities and movie characters. I love it! Here are my two favorites-

My Little Lady Gaga

My Little Bride (Kill Bill!)

Thanksgiving Inspiration Board

Since we have a house now, we decided to host Thanksgiving this year! My grandma got us a beautiful set of china (similar to the image below, but our set has a beautiful red, gold and peach design on it), so I am going to base the rest of the design off of it. I created an inspiration board at Polyvore to try to get started with ideas of the feel that I want.

Thoughts?

Packaging Love!

I came across the Annick Goutal website today and absolutely looooved the packaging! It gives me the feeling of being in love in a beautiful city on a mild fall evening

I'm a packaging freak by the way. Packaging is very important when you are selling a product, so the better packaging you have the better for your business. Think about it like this: If there were two products that were made of the same ingredients, were the same size, had the same quality and had the same cost, how would you decide which one to buy? For most people it would come down to the packaging. We're just vain like that I suppose? Or we just like to have nice stuff? At any rate, I have never heard of this company, but I am officially in love. Here's why...

My new favorite song (and dancer)

I'm a So You Think You Can Dance fan. I loooooove to watch it not only for the brilliant dancers and their talent, but also because they have the best songs showcased! The contemporary dancers seem to choose the best songs and they are usually new songs to me. One dancer, Kelsea Taylor, had what I would call one of the best if not THE best auditions this season.



The dance was beautiful, crazy, creative, unique, etc. and the song she chose was perfect. The song is called Tore My Heart by Oona.

Here's a link to her audition
Here's a link to the song {of course you have to click on the song on the right of their page}

It's stuck in my head...it's been there since I heard the song last night.

Inspiration Board II

Hello out there! Hopefully you are enjoying the day. It's finally sunny and not raining here anymore *yay*

Here's another inspiration board that I created on Polyvore. The idea was to create a nature themed board. The greens and blues together always remind me of nature {the sky and grass}. I absolutely love to be outside, and I always say that I would love to have an office in the woods surrounded in glass {hey, I love nature, but I can do without the bugs!}.



Enjoy your Saturday!

One of my favorite things

Cupcakes...hands down!

Cupcakes are so cute!!! They're the perfect portion of a sweet treat, and they are so delicious. I especially love to see the branding of bakeries that specialize in cupcakes. I came across the cutest, most well designed brand for a bakery called Hello Cupcake. The design agency is OrangeYou Glad, and they designed the logo, website, store signage, packaging and menu's.




Great job! I give credit to my fellow designers where credit is due.

If I were a doll II

This would be my house:





















All I can say is OMG! This amazing dollhouse was created by Abura Houses. Take note of all of the details that the designer incorporated. What an amazing home {even if it is the size of a couple of shoe boxes}.

Adieu!