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Farmer’s Market & Homemade Muffins

When I was 14, I moved to St. Louis, MO for the summer to live with my older sister and be a nanny to my baby niece, Evie. Often on Saturday mornings, we would get up and go walk around and get fresh produce from the Soulard farmers market. I have many fond memories of that summer, farmers market included.

Just a couple weekends ago, Drew and I tried out the Saturday farmers market in New Orleans. I had wanted to go for a while, we just hadn’t because it is downtown, not close to our house, and only open for a couple hours on Saturday morning. Saturday morning is Drew’s day to sleep in and then get fresh croissants from the Patisserie upon waking at 2 in the afternoon. 😉 It was much smaller than I expected (not anything like I remember from St. Louis), but it was definitely worth waking up earlier for.

We ended up with a bouquet of fresh cut zinnias, creole tomatoes, fresh peaches, blueberries and several pots of fresh herbs to plant in our windowbox. Everything we bought was delicious. It so makes me miss living in the country and having a garden! For the city, it’s the next best thing.

With all the fresh blueberries we have, I’ve made blueberry walnut muffins with fresh lemon zest several times the last two weeks! So delicious! This muffin recipe is really great. My mom always uses this recipe too and it can easily be adapted for whatever kind of muffins you want to make.

blueberry walnut muffins with fresh lemon zest (or whatever kind you want to make)

ingredients:

-1 3/4 cup flour
-1/3 cup sugar
-2 tsp baking powder
-1/4 tsp salt
-3/4 cup milk
-1/4 cup oil
-1 beaten egg

for blueberry/walnut/lemon:
-3/4 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
-1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I like nuts, so I usually use closer to 1 cup)
-fresh zest from 1 lemon (or less, according to taste)

for banana/nut:
-reduce milk above to 1/2 cup
-3/4 cup mashed bananas
-1/2 cup chopped walnuts or other nuts (again I use more like 1 cup)

for cinnamon/peach:
-3/4 cup diced peaches
-1 tsp cinnamon
-1/2 tsp nutmeg (optional)

directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin cups.
2. Mix dry ingredients together.
3. Mix wet ingredients together in separate bowl.
4. Add wet ingredients into dry and add in fruit/nut mix-ins. Stir just until moistened. Batter should be lumpy.
**Important–do not overmix your muffin dough or your muffins won’t be as fluffy and will have a tougher texture.
5. Fill greased muffin cups 2/3 full.
6. Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

Enjoy!

P.S. Don’t those peaches look fabulous in that yellow bowl? I love that bright sunny pop of yellow in the kitchen! That bowl, along with the rest of its set in different colors, was a wedding gift from my friend, Jessica. Love them! 🙂

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DIY Glass Jar Candle Luminaries

One of the biggest decor-related projects that I did for the wedding was decorate tons of glass jars for candles to be placed in on tables around the winery for the wedding reception.

This was a big impact project, but was actually really inexpensive. It would have been pretty to use mason jars, but those can get kind-of pricey when you are talking about 150+ of them. So what we did was have all of our closest family and friends collect used glass jars for us– jelly jars, pickle jars, spaghetti sauce jars, peanut butter jars, applesauce jars, etc… (Jars that most people would just be throwing out or recycling anyway!) Once these were cleaned, the labels were taken off and the remaining glue from the labels was scraped off (plan to use lots of GooGone!) they are really pretty and you can’t even tell what their previous life was:

I definitely recruited the help from two of my best friends and bridesmaids, Tonya and Jessica, to help me clean and decorate them. I also really loved how different the shapes and sizes of all of them were. I think it made the project look even better than if we had just bought mason jars. Plus it was really sweet that my they were all collected and given to me by my friends, my friend’s roommates, my cousins, my sister, my mom, my mother-in-law, my mother-in-law’s friends, etc. It was definitely a group project. (Plus, my friend Tonya is reusing them in her wedding next summer!)

The next part was fun and it was a nice time I got to spend with my close friends/bridesmaids the week before the wedding. I had a big collection of different types of ribbons, laces, trims, burlap ribbon, jute twine, etc and a few hot glue guns and we just glued and decorated to our hearts content.

Since we had over 150 of them to decorate, we just kept it simple and didn’t worry about having them perfect or anything. We did make sure that if the jar had a logo or name or anything printed on it that we covered that up with ribbon or something. I think they turned out really pretty!

On the morning of the wedding, once we had them all out at the venue, we filled them with a couple inches of sand and then placed 2×3 inch ivory pillar candles (ordered from here) in them. We scattered them randomly all along the tables inside and out and they looked so, so pretty lighting up the evening.

I was running all around the day of the wedding, so I didn’t take any pictures of that part. I still haven’t gotten our pictures back from the photographer to show you those either. Until I get those to show you, here are a couple from my friend’s Facebook wall (thank you Jaclyn!) of pictures she took at the wedding:

Not the clearest picture to show you how they looked, but you can see how they let off a beautiful glow both inside and out.

We also used a couple of the decorated jars to hold bookmark favors, pens, and ribbon streamers on the guest sign-in table (pictures of that from the photographer too hopefully!) I loved the way they turned out and the best part is that a few of them are great to display around the house with candles or something else in them as a memento from the wedding!

Even if you aren’t getting married anytime soon, this would still be a cute project to do a few to decorate a porch, sunroom or deck for an outdoor summer party or to use to put candles inside the house too. A great way to re-use all those leftover glass food jars!

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Wedding Activity Books

One of the DIY projects that I worked on before the wedding was making wedding activity books for the kids. Drew has 14 nieces and nephews and I have 3. We also have several family friends with small children, so we knew we wanted to have something to entertain the 20+ kids that would be running around the wedding venue.

I had seen several ideas online for wedding coloring/activity books, but all of them seemed short, (just a couple pages), so I combined together ones that I liked and added our own stuff in as well.

Sorry that the pages of these are so wrinkly in these shots. I didn’t take any good pictures of them before the wedding, so these pictures are of two we had leftover after the wedding!

The back said “made with love.” I loved adding the little touches to coordinate with our wedding invitations!

I didn’t take pictures of all the inside pages, but here are a few:

The inside pages included a page with a pretty frame that asked the kiddos to draw a picture of what their wedding day would look like, a crossword puzzle with wedding words, a blank tiered cake for them to decorate, a couple games of tic-tac-toe, a blank page for them to color on or draw a picture of the bride and groom, a bouquet for them to color in, a maze for them to match the bride and groom up with a wedding ring, and the last page included a picture for them to color in of the bride and groom driving away to their honeymoon!

I think they turned out really cute! I just printed them all out on my home printer, used brown kraft paper for the covers (that I ordered from here), and then poked two holes through the spines and all the pages and tied them together in little bows with the same brown hemp jewelry twine (from Wal-Mart) that I used on our wedding invitations.

I wish I had gotten some pictures of the kids coloring in them! Maybe the photographer did though, we are still waiting on our pictures back from her, then I’ll share those with you.

We placed these on the same table as all the guest sign-in stuff and I had a couple of Drew’s nieces there to hand them out to the kids as they came in, that way the really little kids could color during the ceremony as well as during the reception. We also gave them little packets of crayons too. (I don’t think I got any pictures of those, but we just bought a couple huge boxes of crayons and little clear zip bags from Hobby Lobby and fit 8 crayons perfectly in each little bag.)

In addition to the coloring books, we also had a few tables at the reception set aside specifically for the kiddos. Instead of having flowers and candles on their tables for centerpieces, the centerpieces were jars of colored pencils and we had blank paper sitting around for them to color on. My original plan was to get large sheets of white paper and have paper tablecloths on their tables to color on, but I never got around to buying that!

These jars were perfect for holding the colored pencils! They are leftover glass frappuccino jars.

I’m sure there are lots of other ideas and activities for incorporating kids into your wedding plans, but that is what we did! My dad is an ordained minister, so I went to lots of weddings as a kid and I always had fun running around, meeting other kids, and dancing, but something like this would have been so much fun back then!

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Hello There :)

Hello! It has been a while! I’m still here, I’ve just been super busy the last few weeks!

I was in my hometown for several weeks attending my bridal shower and finishing up wedding projects! Then, June 2nd was our wedding day! It was an absolutely gorgeous day outside and everything turned out perfectly! It was one of the best days of my life thus far and I will remember it forever. I can’t wait to share pictures and projects from it with you! Then last week, we were on our honeymoon in Boston, New Hampshire and Maine. We had a great time! This week we are finally back in New Orleans, getting our house straightened up and trying to find places for all our wedding gifts!

Stay tuned! I have lots of wedding projects, pictures from our wedding and honeymoon, house projects and cool wedding gifts to share with you soon!

Here is a sneak peek of our wedding pictures from our photographer:

Can’t wait to get our pictures back!

Check out our awesome photographer’s other work, here.

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DIY Wedding Ribbon Wands

This past weekend was my 21st birthday! (May 13th) Last year on my birthday we were moving into our apartment, so this year it was definitely nice and relaxing weekend compared to that. Drew and I went to a local bakery for breakfast, went to the park and watercolor painted, went downtown for an early dinner and walked around the French Quarter, went to an organist concert in St. Louis Cathedral, visited with Drew’s cousin, Howell, at his house in the quarter, and made sure to stop and buy a drink in honor of my 21st! It really was one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had. Totally fun, relaxing and I had a wonderful day spending it with my soon-to-be husband! (The wedding is 2 1/2 weeks away!!) If you want to see some pics from it all, check out my Instagram pics, here.

This weekend was definitely the break I needed after all the wedding and school stresses lately. It was a refreshing and rejuvenating weekend that has helped me to tackle finishing several wedding projects and getting the house all cleaned before we have family in town tomorrow for Drew’s graduation this weekend!

This week we finally finished a project that we’ve literally been working on for months. Ribbon streamer wands for guests to shake as we walk back down the aisle as husband and wife!

My mom and I made these for my older sister’s wedding a few years ago as well. You can see some of them being shaken in the background of this picture.

Here are all 200 of ours now finally finished:

To make these, you need:

-wooden dowel rods (we used 1/4″ x 48″ Birch Dowels, cut into fourths to make 12in long dowels)
-lots and lots of ribbon (cut into 15-16in lengths)
-hot glue gun & hot glue sticks
-wood stain (if you want to stain yours)
-sandpaper (if you cut your dowels)

For our dowel rods, we ordered them online here. We ordered fifty 1/4″ x 48″ Birch Dowels, and then cut each of them into 12in lengths, to give us 200 wooden streamer sticks.

Since we cut these with a little hand saw, there were some little splintery edges on them, so we took some sandpaper and lightly sanded the ends. (This part takes a while, so enlist help from your fiance and bridesmaids!)

You can leave them like this if you want, or you can choose to paint or stain them. For ours, I wanted them to be stained a little darker to coordinate better with my tastes and other wedding stuff. I already had stain on hand from my office desk, so I used that. It really didn’t take that long to coat them all with a rag with some stain on it.

I don’t remember exactly how many spools of ribbon we bought for this, but it was a lot. We got most of ours from Walmart and a sale bin at Michaels, but you could also look online and see if you could find some bulk discounts on it. The ribbon part of this project can make it kind-of pricey.

Since our spools of ribbon were different lengths (3 yards, 6 yards, 10 yards, etc.) we calculated up what length would be best to cut each into, to make sure we weren’t left with any short end pieces. All of our lengths ended up being around 15 or 16 inches. Much shorter than that wouldn’t be as flowy and much longer than that might get all tangled up.

Here are piles of all our cut ribbons. We used a mixture of pinks, greens, oranges, whites, golds, and neutrals. I wanted more salmon/coral colors, but I couldn’t find any ribbons in those colors at Walmart or Michaels.

After the paint or stain on your wooden dowels has dried, it’s time to start gluing on ribbons! We decided to use 3 or 4 ribbons on each streamer.

For ours, we stuck the ribbons on with hot glue like this:

Then we wrapped a piece of wider pink ribbon around it to cover up those ends. In the end, they looked like this:

Here is one finished streamer:

Then repeat the process 200 times! It was definitely a time-consuming activity, but I’m really pleased with how they turned out. I think they will make for some fun pictures of us walking back down the aisle with them all flowing in the air.

I really like the various ribbons we chose:

I love the mixture of the burlap ribbons, the lace, the colors, and the patterns. So pretty.

I can’t wait for the wedding!! Only 2 1/2 weeks away! Getting exciting! 🙂

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Bad Days

Lately, I’ve had a lot of stress and pressure in my life. Mainly because I feel spread way too thin.

Trying to co-run a business, make time for design work or stuff for clients that Drew needs me to do, trying to finish up all my assignments, papers and projects to end this year of school, study for final exams, trying to wrap up all the ten million little things that still have to be done for our wedding and honeymoon in three weeks, planning to have family and company over for Drew’s graduation next week and not to mention all the bazillion household things like laundry, cleaning, dinner and loading the dishwasher that have to be done on a daily/weekly basis. I’m juggling too many balls in the air, and then that happens, one or all of them are bound to drop at some point.

The last few weeks have been a struggle to keep those balls all up in the air, and lately it feels as if one after another after another keep dropping.

Wedding planning has been really, really stressful lately. That is something I’ve been trying desperately to avoid. I want this planning time to be enjoyable. I want to soak it all in and remember these days as good ones preparing everything for our lives together. It is a day that I’ve been planning for my whole life, and more intensely for the past year and a half that we’ve been engaged. I’ve spent that time making lists to make sure that things got done ahead of time and spaced out so that there wouldn’t be any one time of planning that would get more intensely stressful. I’ve worked extremely hard planning out all the details, talking to vendors, designing the paper and stationary all myself, etc. etc. etc. I have put so much time, energy and hard work into this event and I want it to come across beautifully in the end.

Lately, I’ve had this overwhelming sense of worry about the wedding plans. What if things don’t come together like I’ve envisioned? What if all these ideas that look great in my head look horrible or unfinished together in the end? A million “What ifs.” I’m afraid other people will look at the stuff that I put together and not like it.

Which is a totally silly thing to think. Who cares if someone else doesn’t like it, right? It isn’t their wedding. All that matters is that I like it and at the end of the day we are husband and wife. The food, flowers, decorations, weather, all that doesn’t mean a thing. But it is still so hard to get those thoughts out of my head.

It has been especially hard these last few weeks because I’ve gotten a lot of negative comments about wedding stuff. Vendors, family, friends saying things like “So and so didn’t like the RSVPs,” “Those are too small, why would you pick those?,” “those are too big,” “you really want that color?,” “No one else likes that,” “When are you going to do this,” “Why don’t you do it this way,” “That is going to look horrible together,” “That is going to look like a 5th grader put it together,” etc, etc, etc… I don’t know why so many people feel it necessary to express their negative feelings to a bride three weeks before her wedding day, but it isn’t very nice and it puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on me. It makes me feel self-conscious about myself and my choices and when I let it get to me, it makes me a really sad and unhappy person.

I’ve been really sad the past few weeks. Upset about wedding stuff, pressured to get things done right this second when I don’t have any seconds right now to give to them, stressed about finals and school projects not going the way they should.

I’ve been trying to hold it together the past several weeks, but I’ve fallen apart more than once. Yesterday in particular was a really bad day. Yesterday was my last final. I’ve been done with classes for over a week and have been studying for finals and finishing projects. Surprisingly with everything else on my plate, I feel like I did really well at all my finals and got everything in on time and did my best. I thought I would be relieved once I turned in my printmaking final yesterday. However, I got the news yesterday that my French class that I’ve been working hard to try to take this summer at UNO isn’t going to transfer to Tulane for stupid reasons. I spent the last month, applying to UNO, paying money for application to them, talking to a million people, getting everything taken care of so I could register for classes, messing with residency information and immunization records to try to get this all worked out so that I could pay a bunch of money just to take one French class there. I need another French class to graduate and I need to take it during the summer so that it is all I have to worry about at one time because I really struggled with my previous French classes. I’m getting married and we are going on our honeymooon, so I had to take the class online because I won’t be in New Orleans to go to class everyday during that time. My academic advisor said before I even started the process that it should all be fine. But the French department refuses to offer credit for any online class, and they didn’t feel the need to inform me of that until after I put in all the work to try to make things work at UNO.

So now I have to try to fit that into my schedule next year along with all the other crazy hard classes I have to take to finish up a double major in both English and Studio Art. Talk about balls dropping, next year is going to be nearly impossible.

After dwelling on all that stuff yesterday along with all the other stresses in my life, I was starting to get really depressed. Saddened by the way things are going and how lately it seems like one thing after another keeps going wrong. When you start thinking about all those things, then you find a million other things in your life that you are unsatisfied with and it is a horrible downward cycle.

Last night, while wallowing in my sorrows, I saw this quote that a Facebook friend had shared on her wall. It was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment.

How perfectly true is that. It is so easy to have one bad day (or even a string of them) and then all of a sudden find it hard to remember all the million great things you have in your life. All your blessings, all your talents, all that you are capable of, forgotten in the midst of a few stressful circumstances.

But my words of encouragement didn’t stop there. Every night before I go to bed, I read the bible verse of the day on my Bible app on my phone and focus on that and how it relates to my life and then often go on and read the rest of the chapter it comes from. The past few days, every single scripture has been spot on to things that have been happening in my life lately. God always has the right words to say in every moment. Yesterday’s scripture was from Philippians 4 (one of my favorite chapters of the Bible).

Multiple parts of this scripture were exactly the positive words I needed to hear.

Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”

I was so not rejoicing to God for all the wonderful things he has given me in life by focusing on all the bad things.

Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” 

By spending all day worrying about what I was going to do about my wedding plans, what I was going to do about my French class, how I would handle all those classes next year, talking myself through all the bad things happening, I wasn’t spending enough time praying about those situations and giving them over to God. I was worrying myself to death and for what? Over a French class? It might be a hard class, but it is such a minor detail in the scheme of life.

Philippians 4:8, “Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”

Such an excellent reminder any day, but specifically yesterday, where were my positive and lovely thoughts instead of those negative ones?

Philippians 4:13, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

French class next year, finishing up two majors, hours and hours of art studios each semester. Bring it on. It might not be the most fun year of my life, but I can do it.

One of the things I really like about my Bible, is the study notes that it has for every verse. Those often bring more understanding about the scriptures and give it a better relevance to everyday situations. I found this one particularly pertinent:

“It’s easy to get discouraged about unpleasant circumstances or to take unimportant events too seriously. If you haven’t been joyful lately, you may not be looking at life from the right perspective.”

Umm hello, I think that was written specifically for me to get through yesterday. Really wise words.

So I’m trying, trying to take all that to heart and forget about the unimportant stuff. I should be excited and happy and joyful! My 21st birthday is in 2 days! The love of my life graduates from college in a week! My bridal shower is in two weeks and our wedding is in three weeks! I have a wonderful person to share my life with, we have a cute little house, we have food to eat, we have a nice event planned to share the start of our married lives with the rest of those people closest to us. We have a lot of great things going on! We have a lot of people that care about us and want to be a part of that day.

We have a lot to rejoice in the Lord for!

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Our First Original Painting

Today we purchased our first original piece of fine artwork — a painting  by my absolute favorite artist in New Orleans, Adam Hall. I shared his work before in this post a long time ago. Every month, we go to the Palmer Park Arts Market and look through his booth of paintings. I’ve wanted one for a long time, so I’m so excited to brighten our home with one of his colorful New Orleans works of art.

My older sister and her husband gave us money as a wedding gift and before it all got spent on wedding expenses, we wanted to put some of it aside to make sure we bought something as a wedding gift from them. I love art and Blair and her husband collect fine art, so we thought a painting would make the perfect wedding gift from them.

We missed the Arts Market last month (they switched the weekend because of Jazz Fest and we didn’t know), so we e-mailed Adam to see if he would be showing his paintings anywhere else in the next few weeks. He e-mailed us back and said he would be more than happy to bring some of his paintings over to our house for us to look at them. (How nice!) We told him the average size and price range that we were looking for and he brought over about 15 paintings that fit in that range. They were all so beautiful!! We spread them throughout the living room and foyer and quickly paired them down to our top favorites. I wish we could have bought more than one!

I forgot to snap a picture of them inside, but here they are about to be loaded back up into his car:

And for the one we chose, here it is:

Isn’t it gorgeous? The colors are amazing and I love the impressionistic quality. The scene is so pretty and cozy, I would love to be swinging on that porch swing! The title is “The Light Behind the Columns.”

I love the pop of colors it brings into our home and I love that it can be enjoyed from both the living room and the foyer. This picture makes it look small, but it is really 24×36 inches (2×3 feet). It will definitely be a family keepsake for us and is an amazing wedding present! (Thanks Bob & Blair!!)

Anyway, if you live in the New Orleans area, check out Adam Hall at the Palmer Park Arts Market, the last Saturday of every month in Palmer Park. If you aren’t from New Orleans, definitely check out his website or contact him about other paintings. He is a really nice guy and does absolutely amazing work.

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Wedding Invitations

As of today, the wedding is exactly one month away!!

I have so many wedding projects to blog about but with wedding plans, end of school and finals going on, I haven’t had any spare time. The next month is going to be a pretty crazy one! I have two finals left, tons of wedding stuff left to do, my 21st birthday is in 11 days, Drew is graduating in 16 days, my bridal shower is in 24 days and the wedding is in 31 days! It should be a fun month!

The last few weeks we’ve been scrambling to get our wedding invitations designed, ordered/printed, packaged and sent out. It was so hard to actually decide on a design! When you are a designer and can design anything, it makes it so hard to choose! We ended up going with something really sweet and simple that fit well with our wedding theme and our already designed save-the-dates and thank you cards and I’m really happy with how they turned out. We finally got them in the mail last weekend and I’m so relieved to have that done and off my to-do list!

Here is the invitation suite:

We included the actual invitation (5×7) with a directions card to the venue and a rsvp postcard (both 4×6). We are both from Southern Illinois and any family/friends we have coming from out of town know the area already and have places to stay or have hotel information. So, we didn’t include hotel accommodation information in our invitations.

I tied all three cards together with polished hemp twine (found in the jewelry making aisle in Wal-Mart or other stores). I love the sweet little charm it adds. Although my fingers definitely hurt after tying 150 tiny bows! The back of both the invitation and the directions card had a burlap fabric printed pattern on them.

For our rsvp cards, we went with a mad-libs style fill-in-the-blank card. I thought it was more fun and would be funny to read the responses. We also made sure to ask our guests to list their favorite song so we could play some of those at our reception. The back of the cards are already filled out with our address and a little space (like on a normal postcard) for guests to add an additional message if they wish.

We contemplated doing kraft paper/grocery bag brown envelopes, but thought that they might not look as well with our invitations since they were already so simple. We ended up going with a metallic quartz colored envelope that was really pretty. It was a white/cream color with subtle hint of a metallic champagne color. We ordered them here. (I’ve made several envelope orders from envelopes.com and always really liked their products. You can also pay $1 each for samples to be mailed to you, and then you get a coupon to get the money you spent on samples off your final purchase.)

For labels, instead of having to print out both delivery and return address stickers, we went with a long 7×2 in label and printed both on one and folded it over to the back, with the return address on the back of the envelope. If I had more time, I would have fancied the design of it up a little more, but I like the way it turned out. It was definitely quicker and easier than doing it twice! You can buy these blank labels, here.

You can’t read it in these pictures, but the front of the label says,  “please deliver to:” and then the name & address of the guest. On the back we wrote, “with love,” and then our names and address.

This wasn’t part of the invitation, but while we were ordering things to be printed, we also ordered these little cards. They are for guests to write well wishes, messages of love, or wedding advice on in place of a guest book at the wedding. They have the burlap fabric pattern on the back of them as well.

We also ordered these as well. They are bookmark favors to give to the guests at the wedding. They say: “thank you for joining us on the next chapter of our lives,” and yes, we are that cheesy. Plus Drew did work in our hometown library when we were first dating and he used a book to hold the ring during the proposal.

In additional wedding news, we also FINALLY finished our wedding website! You can check it out, here.

The wedding is so close!! It’s getting exciting!

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Foyer Curtains

Our foyer is probably the most decorating neglected room of any in our house. This is especially sad because it is the very first room you see and walk into when you come in our little home. I think the main reason we haven’t done much to it is because it functions for a lot of different things, so it is hard to get the right pieces and create the right balance in there. It functions as an entryway/mudroom, a dining room, and also as Drew’s office.

Here is all we had done to it so far:

This room is not so bad compared to how it looked for the first several months we lived here:

All last summer we just closed this room off from the rest of the house and didn’t use it. Then we put up the blinds, got our dining room table, refinished this lamp for in there, and put some plants in there. That was about it. The rest of the room was storage/piling place for things that didn’t have a place.

We are trying to change that and finally give this room some love. (Slowly, but surely!)

We thought the best way to spruce this room up was to add some patterned curtains to the windows. (the regular ones, not the arched ones) I looked for months for curtains online and at the few fabric stores that New Orleans has to find some pretty drapes or fabric to make some. New Orleans is severely lacking in the fabric department, so no luck there. I found some pretty options online, but a lot of them seemed expensive and many didn’t come with 96 inch length options.

Finally, for Valentine’s day we decided that instead of buying each other gifts, we would both go in together and buy something for our home. Foyer curtains seemed like the perfect thing that we had been needing, so we went with these:

These are these curtains from Pottery Barn Teen actually. When I was in middle school and high school I loved looking through the pb teen magazine at all the amazing kids/teen rooms. I hadn’t paid much attention to them in the past few years, but I’m glad I revisited their website to check out their curtain options! I love the geometric pattern of these!

Based on the pictures on the website, I expected them to be more like a printed heavyweight cotton. However, they are made of a much thicker fabric and the gray pattern is very textured and more like velvet. It was unexpected, but I like the more heavy lush quality of these. I really like the warm gray color as well (Although they have several other color options). For the curtain rod, we went with the same one we used in the living room, since the rooms are side by side and you can see them from both rooms.

They definitely add much needed softness and texture to the foyer. They make it look so much more home-y and put together already! (Putting away the bicycle and other storage in there also helped) Now we can move on to other updates in there! Next on the list is a better work/office area for Drew!

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Easter Weekend at the Beach

How was your Easter weekend? Ours was great!

We didn’t get to go home to Illinois to spend it with our family (it is a ten hour drive each way and Drew only had Saturday and Sunday off work– way too long and exhausting to drive each way to only be there for just over 24 hours!). Since the end of school for us and our wedding day are both quickly approaching, we decided the best thing to do on our weekend was to get some much needed rest and relaxation. What better way to do that than with a mini-vacation?!

We decided to head to Gulf Shores, Alabama to the beach! It is only a few hours from here, so it was a nice little weekend trip. I had Friday off school and used that day to get a much needed haircut and work on some wedding projects. Then Saturday morning, we got up, put our stuff in the car, and were on our way. We took a nice little scenic drive through the country for part of the way and stopped in this cute little quaint beach town of Fairhope, Alabama for lunch and to walk through some shops and art galleries. Once we checked into our hotel in Gulf Shores, we spent the afternoon on the beach and then went out for dinner (really great seafood).

We lucked out with a really awesome room in a nice hotel for not too expensive (we only stayed one night). Our room was huge and on the end of the hotel, so we had a nice window and balcony facing the beach and also three more windows that gave us views of the beach and city from the other sides as well. Sunday we got up, watched the waves from the balcony, then went on a walk down the beach. The water right in front of our hotel was really awesome and super clear. There was also this really cool sandbar that allowed you to be able to walk pretty far out without getting in water too deep. It was perfect. We loaded up our stuff, checked out and headed to eat some Easter lunch at a cute little local diner. We spent a little time driving around and shopping, then headed back home.

It was a really perfect and relaxing weekend! I wish it had been longer! Here are some of our photos via Instragram:

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