Monday, June 7, 2010

I love pretty pictures

Can I just say that I am officially in LOVE with Laura Nelson's home?? I want everything in it!!

Check it out here! Here are a few of my favorite pictures...







Pictures via Design*Sponge

Monday, May 24, 2010

Dreaming big...and my vacation!

Maybe I’m dreaming big…but I’d really like to start my own business. After a week-long vacation, it’s REALLY hard to go back to work! I’ve been thinking of all the things I could make and sell on Etsy to earn a living from home. I’ve got ideas for various sewn goods, paper goods, knitted goods (although I only recently learned to knit…like a few days ago, so that would be later after I gain more experience and confidence) and a few other misc. crafty goods. My oh so supportive husband is all for my ideas. It’s just a matter of getting started. And where do you begin?! Oh, and I need a company name. I have yet to think of anything clever (suggestions are welcome). And I still want to go back to school for interior design and/or digital design. I guess I feel like not having a degree in that stuff makes me less talented or less capable in some way. But maybe I don’t need a degree. Maybe I can just take a few classes that would be helpful. It’s a goal…maybe a long-term one…maybe I’ll achieve it faster than I realize. Who knows. It all sort of depends on the timing of life and other things going on, I guess. And money. You need money to get a business started. Not lots, but I need enough to cover my initial start-up expenses before I start making a profit. Most small businesses don’t make a profit for the first year, so I should be prepared for that. I suppose my Business Management Degree might come in handy after all :) And I thought I’d never use it…I entered the corporate world and realized that this was NOT where I wanted to spend my life and my career, so I felt like my degree and schooling was all in vain. But maybe God has a plan for it all. He’s awesome like that ;)

My vacation was MUCH needed and not long enough, as always. The weekend before I left was spent at the beach (Ocean Shores) with my hubby and in-laws. We just relaxed, walked the beach, rented mopeds, watched movies and napped. I fell asleep on the sand for a good couple of hours. It was wonderful. We had a little pod of whales swimming within view of our condo. I had never seen whales in the wild before, so that was an exciting experience.

Last Monday I left for California and spent the week with my best friend, both catching up and planning her wedding. She’s getting married in September, so we were getting our craft on and shopping for apparel basically all week. Aaaand we took a pleasure trip to Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie in San Francisco…because they have the best stores around. Their UO is four stories! Four stories of awesomeness! The Anthro is two stories. Lots to look at and drool over. It was a good week. Less than four months to go for her, and I’m so excited! She has an awesome guy, and they’ll be so great together. He gets extra points in my book because her marrying him means she’ll only live a little under 2 hours away! In our entire lives, we’ve never lived closer than 8 hours apart (how we ever became friends in the first place is another story for another day). Being two hours away is basically like being neighbors for us! I’m so stinking excited!!! :D

And now I’m back to the grind. My dear husband rearranged our bedroom while I was away…and I actually rather like what he did with it! It’s got me inspired a bit…now if I can just rake in a little extra cash to buy some things and finish our bedroom. I’ve got lots of ideas, just not enough resources (ahem…money…) to accomplish it all. I’m planning to do a lot of it myself to save us money and make it more unique, but even that can get pricey. Urban Outfitters has a huge influence on the inspiration for our room, so if you know their style, you can pretty well picture my plans.

And I’m off to clean my house and wash me some laundry! Projects and picture posts coming soon!

Monday, May 10, 2010

Bedroom redecorating

Pretty UO ruffle curtains

The coolest looking coat rack (UO)

Owl bank (like a piggy bank, but it's an owl!)
Corey's nightstand

My nightstand

Curtain tie backs

Love these pictures frames from UO!

Storage bench from UO that I'm in love with


Our sheets


I'm still looking for dressers and trying to figure out what to do for a duvet cover. I haven't bought everything you see...it's a work in progress. It's just to give you an overall feel for the style I'm going for. Pretty much I just want to buy everything at Urban Outfitters (UO). If anyone wants to take me there for a shopping spree, I would gladly oblige!

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Weekend Musings

Overall, it was a rather successful weekend. This is going to be a picture post of my great finds...

Awesome nightstand from DanaLee's...now I just need to find a 2nd one of similar style and paint it to match

A cool old toolbox painted aqua...it will be used to store fabric in my sewing room :)

Sweet lamp. Like the color, but it won't match my room, so it's going to get a makeover.

LOVED the shape of this lamp, but not the brass. It too is getting a makeover (before & after pics to come)

A couple chairs from a moving sale...$40 for both! Need to be badly reupholstered.

New sheets to match the nighstand...$20 at Macy's (50% plus a 25% off coupon!)

A close-up of the new sheets
Initially, I wasn't huge on the color of the nightstand...until I put it in my room. It brightened the place right up! And now I love it! I just need to come up with a new color scheme for our bedroom (which is fine because I was planning to redecorate anyway). I think the sheets match rather nicely and will go well with my ivory duvet cover. Busy sheets but a plain duvet cover...still need to put them on the bed.

The toolbox was just too cool and only $5. I'm always looking for unique ways to store fabric because I just have WAY too much! Why not store it in something super awesome? I need to clean the inside out first, but it'll look great in my sewing room next to the briefcase I'm also using to store fabric. :)

The lamps...the first one was a find at an antique store. I actually like the color of it, but it's not going to match anything in my house...except the kitchen. But I have no place for a lamp in my kitchen. So it'll get a makeover and will sit atop a green nightstand in our bedroom. I'm thinking of painting it a darker dusty blue (the blue of the darker flowers from the sheets) and finding a cool linen shade to match. I'll paint the brass one (a $2.99 score at Value Village...loved the shape but not the color) to match.

Aaand the chairs...found them by accident on my way to church at a moving sale. Aren't they amazing?? It was only $35 for both! I'm taking an upholstery class this summer and will use these as my first subjects. Unfortunately, they're sitting in my garage for the time being both because the fabric on back is falling apart and because they smell like cigarette smoke (something I didn't realize until I was driving off with them in my car). Hopefully reupholstering them will be enough to get rid of the smell. If not, I'll have to rent an ozone oxidizer and let them de-stink for a day.

I've got all the fabrics for my new quilt! I think...I'm not entirely sure about the greens. I think they may be a little too yellow, although I love the pattern. What do you think of the color combo? That glacier colored Kona Cotton (2nd from the left) is also a bit dark. Not what I thought it would be online...I'm trying to find something lighter and less green.


And I'm off to do some cleaning and chores. Time to put my house back together after a crazy weekend!

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The completed quilt

And here are pictures of the completed quilt as promised!


Random Crafitness

I can’t tell you how many blogs I’ve STARTED to write these past two weeks and haven’t gotten around to finishing! So sorry. I’m a slacker!

So…update.
The niece’s birthday was this past weekend. My sis-in-law loved the quilt! As did many of the other ladies. My niece could have cared less about it, but that’s to be expected for a 1 year old. She was too busy playing with the toys that lit up and made noises to even notice the quilt :) That’s ok. She’ll [hopefully] like it someday. Amanda sent me a picture of it on her crib already. It looks really cute. I got a lot of good feedback on the quilt…which has inspired me to start mine finally! Well, not quite yet. I have to wait for the fabric to come in the mail. I ordered it online. Want to see the swatches? I won’t tell you what pattern I’ve got in mind yet…it’ll be a surprise, but here are the fabrics I chose:














What do you think? Do you like them?? That grey is going to kind of be the background color and the middle purple (Kona Violet) is going to be the backing. It’ll make an appearance in moderation on the front too, but I just loved the color! And then I’ll use a mix of all the fabrics for the binding like I did with my niece’s quilt. I’m pretty excited to get my hands on these beauties!


But BEFORE I start my quilt, I have to be a good girl and get going on my Mother’s Day projects!! My mom LOVES flowers, so I’m getting her a nice hanging basket and making her a collapsible grocery tote (from the One Yard Wonders book) and some coasters. For mom-in-law, I got lucky at the bookstore in Portland and found her an old copy of Anne of Green Gables and another Louisa May Alcott book (can’t remember which one). She collects old books. And then I also plan to make her some fabric napkins because she likes using those over paper napkins. And THEN I can start my quilt :)

I’m super excited for it! Can you tell??

I head to California in 27 days to see my best friend, and we’ve got a trip to San Francisco planned so we can stop at Britex! I’m so excited. I have to start saving my allowance NOW so I can buy amazing fabric and notions. They have the coolest lace and buttons there! I am seriously considering taking an extra suitcase with me…think the hubby would kill me? Probably…but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right? Just kidding. I don’t hide that stuff from him. He knows the plan. We just have to set a spending limit for me before I got. And I’m going to give my debit card to the best friend so I don’t go over budget! We have plans to get crafty too. It’ll be fun. And crazy. And I’ll probably blog all about it!
I’ll post pictures of my finished quilt later tonight. They’re at home on my MacBook. I’m writing this blog from my work computer (I know, bad me, but whatever…it took me all of ten or fifteen minutes to write, and considering I don’t take my two fifteen minute breaks every day, I think it’s justified, right?).

I think there are a lot of run-on sentences in this blog. Sorry about the terrible grammar!

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Weekend Summary

Sorry, I'm a slacker! Again...I haven't posted in a little over a week. I can happily say that I am OFFICIALLY done with Kahla's quilt! I will post a final picture this week sometime before I wrap it. I'm a little under the weather with a nasty sinus infection and can't get myself off the couch at the moment.

This past week was a bit (that's a huge understatement) chaotic with my boss being on vacation, so the last thing I wanted to do after work was come home and get on the computer again. That's my excuse!

This weekend Corey and I went to Portland to do a little shopping and just spend some time together - despite my being sick. I'm feeling now like I probably should have stayed home and rested, but I really didn't want to cancel our plans since I know we won't have the opportunity to reschedule until June. We got home late last night and then had a photo shoot today. Our good friend Kim asked us to be her models for a couples photo shoot. She's trying to get back into photography and needed a little practice...and we don't have any nice pictures since our wedding, so we happily obliged! I'll share some when I get the edited photos. I hope they come out well! She's really talented, so I'm sure she did great.

While we were in Portland, we got over to Powell's and I found a couple of great books. Powell's is this amazing 68,000 square foot bookstore. Yes, it's HUGE. I love it. If you're ever in Portland, you must go! Anyway, so when we were there, I picked up these books:



So far, I'm loving them both and can't wait to make some of the stuff in them! I'll be sure to document my projects :)

That's it. Sorry, a bit of a random post, but my head is literally in a fog. More soon (including pictures of the quilt!). Good night all!