It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas...

Earlier this year, we had zero Christmas decorations since this is our first Christmas in our own home. But thanks to my Granny and a tinsel tree from ebay, we are at least now off to a good start! ;) 

Wedding Jitters

So in less than two weeks I'm getting married! It has been a lot of fun (yes, a little stressful too, but mostly fun!) planning and designing everything. We decided to go with a vintage travel theme, and I thought I'd share some of our ideas here. We DIY'd a lot of stuff, like the votive mercury glasses, favors (heart shaped soaps in canvas baggies) and cake toppers (painted wood knobs and mini flower pots from Michael's). I also designed a custom stamp which I had made through The Stamp Maker, which is easy, reasonably priced, and has the fun old-school wooden handle! I found a lot of items in antique and thrift stores like the books and bronze cups for the centerpieces. And Marshall's had some very affordable globes (they can be SOOO expensive!).

Can't wait to see my family and how it all comes together, and most of all to go from a Miss to a Mrs! :O

Fall Themed Party

So the fall themed party for my church went really well! A lot of people came, and we served some really great food. We had games of cornhole and trackball, beer and wine, fall themed foods, and of course pumpkin pie milkshake! Anyway, it was a lot of fun to design and to attend.

Fall-ing Into Place

I got really excited when a friend of mine asked me today to help her plan for a fall-themed party at our church. That means leaves, nature, burlap, and pretty colors! :D

The first two photos are of a decoration I want to hang a few strands of from the doorways. I found a wooden leaf at Michael's and used that to trace and cut out the shapes for the leaves on cardstock sheets with the color palette I picked. Then I just punched a small hole at the end of each "stem" and tied a knot so they wouldn't all fall into each other. This might even work with a tree branch hanging above them...if there's a way to get it to stay up there!

Next is a bouquet I picked out as a centerpiece. Michael's is having a 60% off sale for these flowers this week, so they came out to a great price!

The next picture is the container for my edible contribution...I'm going to make some kind of a smoothie or milk shake or something like that and put them in these cute jars! I thought the tag was a good idea so people can write their names and they won't get mixed up!

The next few pictures are of the candle jars I picked out—I really liked the texture on the glasses. I also thought this would be another good idea for a bouquet, which is even cheaper and includes the exact colors from the leaves. It's the same technique I used for the one on my dresser. Basically you just pick out some fallen branches, cut out some circles and string them on.

I also wanted to include a photo of these really cute pumpkin baskets I found. These were also on sale (yay sales!) at Michael's so I bought these for my own fall decorations. I love that they're made of such rustic elements like burlap, branches, and wicker.

For the tablecloths, I'm thinking a brown checkerboard with a burlap table runner. But we will see about that. I'll post more as I go along!

Ready for My Close-Ups

A Whole is made of many Parts. To me, the "feel" of a space has a lot to do with all the little details that come together. I thought it would be neat to try and give the essence of my apartment through close-up photographs. So yeah, here it is!

Home Sweet Home

My house was built around the 1920s, and later turned into a duplex. The house has great character, especially the doors and little idiosyncrasies here and there. It's been really fun to decorate; and I know I am enjoying it much more than a modern apartment, which basically is a plain white box. I like to blend a little of the vintage and a little of the modern, which ends up being my style. Below are some pictures of what I've done with my house. I think it's nice to share ideas, since that's how I came up with a lot of mine to begin with.

This is my living room. It's a pretty open space, so I put the bookshelf there to create a hallway where my front door opens up. My brother says I win the defective television contest every time. Sometimes the screen rolls and you just have to wait for it to finish. And other times everything is yellow but all you have to do then is pull a Fonzie on it and everything turns back to normal. But I love it (despite its defects and that it reminds me of a station wagon), and won't trade it for anything until it absolutely dies. I hung up vintage LIFE magazine ads for decoration on the old accordion door. A lot of this stuff is thrift store finds, but the couch and bookshelf were from IKEA.

This is to the right of my bookshelf in the living room; it's basically my front hallway, looking in from the door. 

Here is the view from about where my television sits. I love how open this place is, even though its pretty small. You can see all the way back to the kitchen. The pennants on the archway were the first decorations I hung up when I moved in. I see those on blogs everywhere. The only problem is mine are made of paper and the humidity here in the south is finally getting to them and making them curl. Eventually I'd like to make them out of fabric. 

This is my bedroom furniture. I love the style. Found it at a thrift store for a great deal, but the only catch was the thrift store was in Illinois. So after I moved down south, I ended up having to drive 12 hours (and that's just one way!) back to Illinois to get these little stinkers to my house. It was worth it though! But I might add, I am never doing that again! haha!

This is looking in to my kitchen from the archway by the bedroom. My diner table was the first piece of furniture I bought, and the color basically inspired everything else! The kitchen has been my favorite room to shop for just because of how colorful it is. 

This is another view of my kitchen of my stove, and the back door that leads out to my driveway. 

This is the entrance to my bathroom, basically looking forward from my bed. I used twine and mini clothespins to hang up old photos.

And finally, this is my bathroom. I have the original sink and clawfoot tub, but thank goodness, a modern toilet :P It's very tiny but quaint.