Sewing SUCCESS!!!!

After our first sewing day didn't go so well Gail ended up taking some of the fabrics home and starting on the linens herself (amazing).  A few days later she returned with her sewing machine in tow to let me borrow it.  It is amazing what a difference a working machine is!  A brief lesson from Gail has turned me into a very novice, but excited seamstress!

Here I am successfully working with some scrap fabric!

To date I've nearly completed all 4 curtain panels and the crib skirt.  There is still more to do, but until the nursery gets a little further along I'm at a bit of a standstill as to how to finish off the curtains.  I also need to pick up the last bit needed for the bumper that Gail started.  Her bumper looks way better than anything I've done so far (the crib skirt looks pretty rough folks), but it's been pretty fun learning! 

Sarah was also in attendance this day, but alas someone has to take the pictures.  :) I can't wait until I can show off some of the completed projects.  It's great to have talented friends!

Nursery Project: Dresser

Sick of hearing about the nursery?  Sorry, but too bad.  I've been working on a bunch of nursery/baby related projects lately and have a bunch of stuff almost ready to share - but not quite yet!  I promise to try and do some event planning posts soon!

My plan for the nursery included finding an old dresser and painting it in the green accent color we are using.  I searched Craigslist every day and scoured every local thrift store regularly in search of the perfect dresser (in the price I was willing to pay).  I was looking for an older, short dresser that needed a little TLC that I could work some magic on.  In the back of my head I was looking for a dresser similar to the one in our guest room:

One day I came across an ad on Craigslist by a guy who said he had multiple dressers and wanted them gone.  The ad had no pics but said to email for more details, so I did.  After a week or so I ended up getting a couple of photos of the dressers the guy had.  I wasn't sold on any of them 100% but Chris liked one of them so I went over to look at it...especially because they guy told me it was only $30!

When I got to the man's house it turns out he was well into his 70's and was just the absolute sweetest old man!  He was rehabbing his house getting it ready to sell later this year so he could get married.  While I was there he told me all about his daughter and her husband (who are the same age as Chris and I) and even pulled out their picture in his wallet to show me.  The dresser isn't at all what I was looking for, it is WAY more modern than what I had in mind, but it was in great shape, was solid wood, and that old man won me over!  So here's a cell phone picture that shows the before:

One of the reasons I wasn't sold on this piece is that I was wanting a short dresser to use as a changing table, as you can see this is a tall dresser.  Or so it appears.  The top piece of the dresser (where the 4 white drawers are) is actually a seperate piece that can be placed on top of the lower drawers or used seperatly.  We're not sure how we're going to use it yet, but isn't that neat?  Since the dresser was overall in good shape with the exceptions of the drawers which needed a new coat of paint, and the inside of them which had some crayon on them we decided to not paint the entire piece. 

Here's what we did:

Yep, I just painted the drawer fronts with the green accent paint and lined them with this super fun wrapping paper I found at Target!  When I saw that paper I thought it was perfect, but then it ended up being just $0.87 a roll - that's when I knew it was destiny!

So now I am really loving the dresser, but am still very concerned that the room is going to look like a mish-mash of random stuff pulled together. For now this is all I'm going to show on the dresser, but once we pull the rest of the dresser upstairs and more of the details start coming together you'll see more details of it (I actually haven't even put the whole thing together yet since I brought the drawers upstairs to work on and the rest of it is downstairs waiting for the room to get ready for it).

Pretty papers

I had the camera out photographing my upcoming baby shower invitations (did you see them?) and ended up thumbing through the vase we keep with invitations, thank yous, postcards, programs, etc from our friends & family.  Last year we were sent a couple of really fabulously stylish invitations and today I'm going to share them with you!

I should preface this by saying we had a lot of friends get married last year.  Two of the weddings had a bicycle motif.  Here is Pat & Jenny's invite.  It was really cute.  They also had programs and their thank you cards printed to match.  It really was a treat to recieve!

An obvious favorite from Ms. Sarah.  You saw the invite she designed for me - this one she designed as well! This matched the wedding really well.

Here's the save-the-date from our friends Bunch & Kaitlyn.  Their actual invite was just as cute, but I wasn't able to capture it as well on film (and our copy was really beat up). 

This last one isn't an invite we recieved, but was actually apart of an Event Design Sarah and I just presented to one of our clients for a Retro Rock-n-Roll themed wedding.  We can't take credit for the design at all because it is a free template online actually.  But isn't it cute?

Isn't getting good mail so fun?  That's why I find it so hard to throw away some times!  So if you ever send me something cute, you can feel good knowing that I'm probably going to keep it around for a little while :)

Spring Table Setting

We've finally gotten a brief reprieve from the cold, nasty weather here in the midwest.  The sun was shining through my windows and warming up my spirit!  As much as I told myself to do something more useful I just couldn't resist giving my tabletop a spring makeover.  A few weeks ago I picked up these plates from Target for about $1 each.  I've been waiting until it warms up to do something with them. 

Admittedly this setting has A LOT of color to it, but I just couldn't help myself!  White, yellow, pink, blue, green...the more the better!  Even the hubs found a smile when he walked into the room - hopefully Spring has finally sprung!

This was also the perfect time to bring out my vintage cake stand (a gift from Sarah a few years ago).  YUM.  Hopefully this spring weather stays around to inspire me to do more around the house!

LOOK! SO PRETTY!!!!!!

Did you know that I'm having a baby?  No?  Well I am.  And he's gonna be the cutest dang thing you've ever seen.  Just sayin'.

Sarah is throwing us a baby shower in a month or so and look at the invitation!  She's been scheming behind my back working on what I've now learned is a Breakfast at Tiffany's baby shower theme!  I'm SOOOOOOOO excited!  (notice all of the exclamation points?)  I love that movie and can't wait to see how she pulls it all together.  Isn't this invite one of the most darling things you've ever seen?  What a treat to get in my mailbox!

She designed these herself and I L-O-V-E them!  Here's an up close picture that (hopefully) shows the rhinestone and pearl accents.

Give her some comment love and agree with me that these are SIMPLY MARVELOUS DARLING!

Sewing day

This weekend Sarah and our lovely friend, Gail (with Miss Molly in tow), gathered for a sewing day to being on the nursery linens.  The day started out regular....

Here's Miss Molly - isn't she a doll?

And here's her momma, Gail, beginning the bumper.

The bane of my existence at the moment...Singer Futura II model 925...little did we know that Rocky would be the only one cheering at the end of the day.

Not far into the project we needed the manual, which has been temporarily misplaced.  The internet has everything though, right?  WRONG.  Apparently not when your sewing machine is from 1975.

So alot of this happened....

And a WHOLE lot of this happened....

At the end of the day we parted ways with Gail (who is my new hero) taking the pieces with her to begin work on them and an agreement to reconvene later with her machine another day.  This last picture is a little blurry, but the sentiment is worth posting - love these two gals!



Oscar Party 2011 Recap

Our 2011 Oscar party went off without a hitch and I do believe it is the best one we've thrown to date!  To start things off though Sarah brought me her copy of the invitation for me to share on the blog.  Here is the front...

And here is the inside....

We always lay out a 'red carpet' for our guests to walk down, but this year we added 2 large tripods (paparazzi) to catch everyone's arrival.

Next to the red carpet we had a station with a sign that read, "And the winner is..." and a frame filled with nametags that listed different awards and the guests name.  I won Best Director!  You will also notice that the official sponsor of the 2011 Oscar party is Chris's Film Blog. 

Here is a view from the formal living room (where guests entered) into the Voting Booth (dining room).

In years past the voting booth has only allowed for two people to vote at a time.  This year we changed it up a bit to allow for 4 people to vote at a time. 

The inside of the voting booth.  I really love this tablecloth but find it can be a bit busy.  To help our guests not be so dizzy while in the booth I set each station with a simple red napkin. 

From the Voting Booth guests entered into the food room to find Red Carpet Snacks.  Food was kept simple with just four menu options, cupcakes, bruschetta, cookies, and popcorn.  We kept everything on the food table consistent with the color scheme of red and white.  The cupcake stand was made from empty boxes wrapped in gold wrapping paper.  The Oscar statue at the top was something I already owned (true story), but could be purchased at any party store for $5 or less.  I also made some very simple cupcake toppers out of left over red paper, toothpicks, a star punch, and rubber cement. 

The Oscar viewing area (family room) was also outfitted in red and white.  Generally when we host events at our house nothing is sacred, furniture gets moved, pictures get taken down, etc.  Although I had planned to drape behind the couch and TV and remove the rest of the wall decor it didn't end up happening since I wasn't the one doing much of the manual labor this time around.  Overall though I still thought it turned out well.  We covered all of our throw pillow with extra while pillow cases we had on hand.

Chris subscribes to Film Comment magazine so we laid out several of those for our guests to read through.  I felt like the table needed a tray, but had already used my gold tray elsewhere.  SO an extra black frame got a bit of gold wrapping paper and there you go!

Chris also owns several vintage movie cameras, so placed those around for decor as well.  The two movie projectors flanked the TV.

This is a bit of a misc decor item, but whenever we have large amounts of people over (especially if some have not been to our home before) I like to keep things as straight forward as possible, so I whipped up a couple of theme related Restroom signs to direct people to the facilities.

Last but not least I thought I'd leave you with this awesome picture of Chris and I's debut down the red carpet.  It's hard being this famous.

Here's hoping that 2011 will be host to enough decent movies that Chris deems it ok to host the party again next year!