Thursday, February 24, 2011

Dreaming of home ownership - bedrooms

I like our current bedroom a lot. It's nice and big, and has two separate closets for James and me (mine's a little bigger :) I love the size and the neutral tan wall color too. In the future, I'd love to have a walk-in closet.


And nice matching furniture (I say the next bed we get should be a king!). Now let's not kid ourselves by putting up a photo of fancy schmancy thousands of dollar furniture when I know well that I will never spend that kind of money on anything! I've heard good reviews of this line of dressers from Ikea and that works for me!
We already have nice side tables that James got me for Christmas a few years ago, so I want to match those (they're dark brown).

I'd also love to find and renovate an older piece like this this beauty by the amazing John and Sherry at YoungHouseLove. They bought it like this


And made it into this! Love them!

  
Our bedding is kind of worn out, but I'm waiting to move to buy a new set. Hey, maybe we'll decide to put our bed in the new guest room and need a king for ours - then the bedding would be a different size!

I'm loving dark browns for bedding, but of course the one we registered for is no longer online so I can't show you :(

This one from Bed Bath & Beyond is so pretty right?


Overall I love the feel of these pretty rooms (source)


Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Tulip trees

One of my favorite things about spring is going for a walk on a beautiful day and seeing the blooming tulip trees. They're so cheerful, fresh and pretty!





All photos from Google Images.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Dreaming of home ownership - kitchens

Since we're now starting the house hunting process, I want to share some of the details I'd like to find in our next home, or in some cases my dream home (some details are small, some aren't!).

Today... kitchens. I actually really like our current kitchen. It's big enough - although I wouldn't mind a little additional counter space, I'm pretty happy with the amount of cabinet storage available.

For a long timed I've dreamed of a kitchen with a nice apple green paint color.



We currently have linoleum floors in the kitchen. Please, anything but that! It's not even the way they look - it's SO hard to get sparkly clean no matter how hard you scrub it!


I have a magnetic knife rack from Ikea that I love, and that's definitely coming with us!


An under-cabinet wine rack was gifted to me at my bridal shower,


but it doesn't have the bottom part for the glasses, so I hope to complement it with a wine glass holder as well!


As for large details, I really want a kitchen island, but unfortunately most of the homes in our budget don't have them or room to add one.


Many of them also have old, dated cabinets that I'd love to paint a crisp white! I think white cabinets make a kitchen so bright and clean-looking.


A walk-in pantry would be fab... we have a small one currently and I'm hoping our next one will at least be comparable.


All photos from Yahoo images

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Our wedding day: Details

My last wedding post - some shots of the details I worked so hard on for over a year!

Programs: I blogged about these here. I have a bunch of pictures of people reading them, so hopefully they were helpful. They were at least pretty!


Invitation: I blogged about our invitations here. They were completely DIY and I love them!



Arch: My dad made this beautiful bamboo arch for us, which I blogged about here. I emailed him a few inspiration photos last spring, and this is what he came up with.


It's decorated with these sheer curtains from Ikea. I had them for a few years and they weren't in use at our current house, so I dug them up for our wedding.


The strand of flowers is about 25 feet long, made by me. I bought a bunch of fake flowers at Michael's in our colors. I took them apart and strung them on string, with 1-inch segments of clear straws in between ("borrowed" from Jack in the Box). I tried to make the colors be in random order... I think it looked pretty cool and beachy.

Reserved Signs: I blogged about these here.



The only other ceremony decor was white rose petals in the grass aisle. Perfect!


Rings: All three of our rings are from Shane Co.




Bouquets: I made these for myself and my Maid of Honor the day before the wedding - you can see the process here. This is one of the details I'm super proud of because they turned out so beautifully! We didn't do corsages or boutonnieres and they were not missed.


I ordered green and white roses, white dahlias, blue hydrangeas and green poms through our day of coordinator, who happens to have a wholesale floral license.


Card Jar: I blogged about making this here.


Guestbook: We had Oh, The Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss read during our ceremony, and that book served as the guestbook as well.


It was on a table as you walked into the reception, but James' mom ended up passing it around during the cocktail hour - which I'm so glad that she did because people were able to take the time to write some really sweet messages!


Cake: Hoffman's Bakery provided the cake, which was a delicious princess torte. They delivered it plain, and  our coordinator decorated it with flowers.



The cake stand was brought by my parents. I saw pictures of a neat tree stump cake stand and asked if they could find/make something similar. It turns out that they had a friend with this stump segment who let us borrow it. So cool.


Favors: I'm so sad about these favors. Not because of how they look - I mean, they're pretty darn cute. And they were filled with delicious candy... but our guests never even saw them. The people setting up forgot about them, and we didn't notice at our reception. So all the time I put into making 70 of these bags (and buying the candy and supplies) was wasted.


Moss Letters: I don't like how they hung these. I asked them to put them on the corners of the gazebo entrance, C on one side and J on the other. I don't think it makes sense how it says "CJ." Maybe if it said "C+J" it would work, but... whatevs. You can see my post about making these here.


Centerpieces: I don't love how they set these up, and the candles look weird this way. When I went to get my food I saw that a bunch of vases were just sitting on the ground. WTF? So I asked them to put them on tables, as un-bridezilla as possible :)



All the flowers were DIY the day before the wedding. Read about that process here.



Chalkboard Signs: We had these three DIY chalkboard signs up, which I blogged about making here.


My dad made the bamboo easels they're sitting on.



Overall our wedding day turned out pretty much perfectly. I'm so happy we were able to pull it off on a budget, while capturing our styles and personalities so well.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Our wedding day: The reception (Part 4)

Our photographers left at 9 p.m., so the rest of the reception photos were taken by family and friends.











We didn't even notice that anyone snuck out, but my family left to decorate our car!




Drivers were so nice to us that night!