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Doily Christmas Wrapping

“Brown paper packages tied up with strings, these are a few of my favorite things…” What better wrapping for Christmas presents?

Brown paper, paper doilies and string. Simple and pretty. I love that it gives a more handmade look to gift wrapping. I originally wanted to use brown jute string, but my mom already had this twine on hand, so I used it instead.

So simple and such a pretty alternative to store bought wrapping paper. Plus, a roll of brown paper, a package of doilies, and some string would only be a few dollars (my mom had them all on hand already). Inexpensive as well! Perfect!

Would also be great to do something similar with birthday or wedding present wrapping!

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One Year Ago

One year ago today, I was on the beach in California, when the cutest, curly-headed boy got down on one knee in front of me and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. I can’t believe that it has been an entire year since we got engaged!

For ring pictures, the engagement story, and to see what I wrote on that day, visit last year’s post, here.

This year has seriously gone by fast! I’m sure the next 6 months will go by even faster and before I know it we will be married! It was nice today to look back on the pictures from our trip and re-live those memories. Our trip to California last December was really our first vacation together (just the two of us) and it was such a wonderful trip! We had such a great time and it was of course made all the more exciting by the ring on my finger that we couldn’t stop staring at the whole time. I never posted any pictures from our trip, so here are some never-before-seen pictures from last year’s trip to San Diego:

Such great memories! I’m so blessed!

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Postcard Save-the-Dates & Thank Yous

It took Drew and I nearly an entire year to decide on our wedding stationary. (We will have been engaged a year this Thursday!) We seriously designed tons and tons of options and liked them all, but couldn’t pin down a single one to actually use for our save-the-dates and thank you cards. We knew that we had to get them in the mail soon so that out-of-town guests could start thinking about their travel plans and everyone could go ahead and get our date written down on their calendars. So this is what we ended up with:

Super simple really. We had more intricate and detailed designs made that used our engagement pictures, but when it came down to it, we really liked the simplicity of this design. We liked the subtle background texture (it is the same as the background of my blog) paired with the simple font, typographically lined up.

We designed them ourselves and had them printed through a company that we have a trade account with and use to print all of our P.S. Designs print products. They actually ended up being free, because we had a credit on our account from a previous business order that had been misprinted.

If you are interested in designing something yourself and having them printed like we did, but don’t have a business trade account, you can try a company like GotPrint. An estimate from them for what we had printed for our save-the-dates (250 4×6 postcards, 16 pt dull cover with matte finish, color both sides) is about $30 plus shipping. That does mean though that you have to have some kind of design software to make your card design in the right format with the correct bleeds and everything.  If you are looking for something similar and can’t do it yourself, send me an e-mail through my contact page, I do graphic design and offer printing services.

We printed ours out as 4×6 postcards. On the back of our save-the-dates we simply had our return address printed in the upper left corner and then left the rest of the card blank so that we could add labels with the guest’s addresses on them. On the thank-you cards, we  just printed a little line to separate where we could write a personal thank-you message and then write the guest’s address down on the other side.

If you are planning your wedding, you might consider going the postcard route as well. Both save-the-dates and thank-you cards are supposed to be sweet, personal, and informal, and I think that postcards really convey that well. In addition, we saved money by not having to buy envelopes for them and also saved 20 cents a card on postage since we could use 29 cent postcard stamps instead of 49 cent regular letter stamps. When you are talking about mailing so many of them, those few cents really add up!

So happy to have them all addressed and mailed now! The challenge now is going to be trying to decide on a design for the actual invitations… Maybe we need another year? 🙂

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Looking Like Christmas

I love Christmastime! The decorations just make me feel warm and cozy and happy! I love being at home, baking cookies, listening to Christmas music and watching the sparkly glow of Christmas tree lights.

Here is what our little home is looking like lately:

Our tree is decorated in Mardi Gras beads that we caught ourselves from Mardi Gras parades our first year living in New Orleans. The ornaments are all silver and colored balls that I got at Target a couple years ago during their day after Christmas sales. We got our tree last year at Wal-Mart.

This year in the Target dollar aisle, I found packs of 8 ornaments that are the same as the ones on our tree, only slightly smaller, for $1. I bought 4 packs of them and hung them with lace crochet thread from our living room curtain rod and in our foyer windows as well.

I think they turned out so pretty! I love that they look kind-of like big, round, glittery snowflakes falling.

I also made a wreath for our front door. I used a straw wreath form and wrapped strips of linen fabric around it and then attached ribbons and Mardi Gras beads. I like that it echos the sparkly-ness of the hanging ornaments in the foyer and living room and the beads from the tree. I love when decor is all tied together somehow.

On our television table, I have my little Russian Christmas Dolls that Drew’s mom gave me a few years ago. The red snowflake throw blanket on the couch in the pictures above is from her as well.

Our coffee table is also festive, hosting a jar of candy canes and a couple tins of Christmas cookies.

I love the way our decorations look in our house! The only thing that I’m not so crazy about is that when we are sitting in the living room at night, we can barely see the lights from the tree since it is in the foyer. We put it in there because there was more room, but I sort-of wish we got to enjoy it a little more. I might do some re-arranging and move it around, but I haven’t decided where else we could put it really. We do get some reflections from it on the living room doors though:

Hope you all are enjoying the holiday time! I’ve gotten all my Christmas shopping done and only have a week left of finals before I’ll be home visiting with my family and baking more Christmas cookies, listening to lots of Christmas music, wrapping presents with them and enjoying my winter break! Hopefully I’ll get to enjoy some snow and snuggling up by the fireplace while I’m at home as well! I can’t count on those happening in New Orleans!

*****UPDATE*****

Of course after writing this, I pondered it more and decided I wanted to move the tree to enjoy it more. Our living room now looks like this:

I do still need to make a tree skirt for it. Oh well. Even though it may be a little cramped there, I love that we can enjoy the sparkly lights more from the living room. 🙂

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Wedding Registries

I had already started our wedding registries online a while ago, but today Drew and I went into the stores to look around and see what else we wanted to add to our lists and to check things out in person. I’m excited about all the things on our list that could one day potentially be ours, but most of all, I’m super in love with the dishes that I picked out:

 

From the first time I saw those floral plates in the store months ago, I fell in love. I picked out the other white dishes online, so I wanted to go into the store, put them together and see how they looked together. I LOVE the way they look paired together! The colored plates give just enough color and interest and the white plates keep them simple and sophisticated. The coupe style and the shape and size of the plates are perfect together as well!

I wanted to go with white dishes and colored accent plates, that way over time I can collect different styles/colors of accent plates that I can change out for the occasion or holiday season, while still keeping the neutral white main dishes. I love the wide, deep bowls in this collection as well and the classy silverware collection. The name of the silverware is “Louisiana.” How perfect!

You can find more of the floral dishes collection, here, more of the white dishes collection, here, and more of the silverware collection, here.

More of our wedding registry items can be found at Dillard’s, Macy’s, and Target.

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Thankful Tree

I hope everyone is having a wonderful time visiting family and getting prepared for Thanksgiving tomorrow!

In my family, on the day before Thanksgiving, we all get together at my parent’s house to clean and help bake pies and get all the food ready for the next day. The last several years, now that we have little kids in the family again, I’ve come up with little craft projects for us to do with them while the big kids are all cooking and baking. This year I decided to do a thankful tree. We took orange paper, printed out outlines of leaves, cut them out and had everyone write on them what they were thankful for. We punched holes in them, tied on some string and tied them to some branches from the backyard.

It turned into a cute, meaningful centerpiece for the Thanksgiving dinner table.

If I had planned it out better, I would have gotten several different fall colored papers, but we only had orange at home, so I had to improvise. We did color the backs of some of the leaves red and also hung a few real leaves to add some additional color.

Such a cute project to do with kids to help remind them of what the real meaning of Thanksgiving is and to help them “give thanks.” Evie had fun with it. She wrote on almost all the leaves before anyone else really had the chance to.

Here is the template that I found online and used for the leaves. I just printed it right out from there and the leaves were the perfect size! Have fun giving thanks!

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Painting for my Office

After being so inspired by these abstract paintings and our TNASA (Tulane Newcomb Art Student Association) painting workshop, I finally decided it was time I quit telling myself that I didn’t have the time to paint and just get out my paints and get to it. I already had a canvas that I had ready for a painting for my office, so I didn’t have to do any prep work. I just sat down and started painting. I had a good idea of what I wanted to do and the final product went in almost a totally different direction, but I really like the way it turned out. Here is what my office looks like now with the addition of my painting:

I figured this was also a good time to share more updates about my office. I think the last time I shared anything about it was when I shared staining my desk, here. It has definitely changed since then! I love this room and it is such a great place for me to be able to work in. I still love my desk. It is the perfect size to spread out my papers and books on to study, to clear off and be able to work on drawings or art projects for school, and it functions wonderfully as a sewing table as well. I love the way it looks and I haven’t had any problems with it or complaints. I would definitely recommend it if you are looking for a great (and inexpensive) desk. You can find it at IKEA, here.

I love, love, love my tufted linen office chair. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it and knew it would one day be mine. Unfortunately, World Market happened to be out of stock with them all across this half of the country and I had to wait over 3 months for them to get any more in. I stalked them rather frequently just to see if maybe more had arrived. They did finally come in and I brought mine home (with some discounts too for using a coupon that they had e-mailed out). I absolutely love the look of it, the fabric, the tufting, everything. It is also so much more comfortable than my old wooden office chair as well. You can find it online, here. (Although online you can only buy them in sets of two, in the store you can buy them individually)

Last, but not least, I am really pleased with my white shelving unit from IKEA as well. It was inexpensive, easy to put together, and is well made and looks really nice. It is the perfect size for what I needed and it is great for holding all my office supplies and other crafty stuff. I originally wanted some kind of a wooden dresser for storage in here, but I am so happy with this instead. I love that it is lightweight and will be so much more practical to move out of this second story apartment whenever we move. A big wooden dresser would not be so much fun to move. Plus with a wooden desk, I’m happy with the white shelves. You can find it at IKEA, here. The baskets are from Target and I really like that they carry over the wood tones from my desk and I love that they came with linen fabric liners already in them.

We also put up some wall shelves on the other wall for additional storage, although you can’t see them in the pictures above. We also added a longer curtain rod. It bothers me that the curtains I have in here are too short, they were from my dorm room, but they work for now. We added the shelves to the closet in here, and we also put up a towel rod on the back of the door for me to hang my scarves on. We’ve still got a few more things to do, but so far I love this space! 🙂

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Cheesy Chicken Lasagna

One of my favorite things about Fall is warm and delicious comfort food. It hasn’t even gotten very cool in New Orleans yet, but we’ve already made chicken pot pies, chicken and dumplings, and many other yummy dishes. Tonight we tried a new recipe — Cheesy Chicken Lasagna. It was delicious! We will definitely be making it again! Recipe from here, originally from here.

Here is the recipe:

Cheesy Chicken Lasagna

2 cans (12 oz) evaporated milk (not fat-free)
1 (1 oz) pkg. dry Ranch dressing mix
3 C. cubed, cooked, chicken
1/8 tsp pepper
1 (12oz) lasagna noodles, cooked
1 1/2 C cheddar cheese, grated
1 1/2 C mozzarella cheese, grated

Cook the chicken and noodles first at the same time. Once noodles are done–rinse in cold water and set aside (it keeps them from sticking together). Combine evaporated milk (don’t use fat-free version) and Ranch dressing in a 3 quart heavy saucepan. Heat over low heat, stirring frequently until dry ingredients are dissolved. Stir in chicken and pepper. Simmer, uncovered, 25 minutes (don’t do any less), stirring frequently. Layer half of lasagna noodles, poultry sauce, and cheese in well-buttered 9×13 pan. Repeat layers again.  Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes or until hot and bubbly. Let rest 10 minutes before serving.

For extra cheesiness, increase both cheeses by 1/2 cup.

Enjoy! 🙂

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Homemade Chicken & Dumplings

Drew and I made homemade chicken and dumplings for the first time tonight. I don’t know why we hadn’t ever before. They always sound so good. I always thought for some reason that dumplings would be hard or time-consuming to make, but they weren’t hard at all! Actually they were really easy and dinner was done pretty quick.

Here is how I made them:

-1 rotisserie chicken, meat pulled off and shredded (or around 3 cups cooked chicken)

-10 cups chicken/vegetable broth

-3 cups flour (and more for rolling surface)

-2 Tablespoons butter

-1/2 teaspoon baking powder

-salt to taste (I just shook some in)

-1 cup milk

In a large pot, bring broth to a boil. I didn’t have homemade chicken stock, so I used 4 cups vegetable broth, 4 cups chicken broth and 2 cups water mixed with two teaspoons chicken soup base. The flavor was really good with the combination of chicken and vegetable broth. I also added a little salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, in a mixer (or bowl) mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Cut in the butter, mix, and then add the milk. Form the dough into a ball.

Heavily flour your work surface and rolling pin and roll the dough out thin, or until it is about 1/4 of an inch thick. Dip a pizza cutter (or other cutter) into the flour and then cut dough into roughly 2×2 inch squares. Once your broth is boiling, take the dough squares one at a time, dip each side in flour and drop into the broth, stirring while you add them. The extra flour on the dumplings helps to thicken the broth.

Cook for about 20 minutes or until they aren’t doughy tasting when you bite into one. Once the dumplings are cooked, add in the shredded chicken and enjoy!

They were so tasty! The best dumplings I’ve ever had actually. I will definitely be making these again!

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Lamp Refashion

We have this lamp that used to be in Drew’s studio apartment. Now that we are in our new apartment, it lives in our foyer.

Drew’s mom gave it to us, but I’m not sure whose it was before that. It is old and it looks like it too. That crinkled shade just shows its age. Definitely not the decor look that I’m going for in our house. I don’t like the shade or the bronzey-gold color of the base. However, I do like the height of it and I like the shape of the curvy metal base.

Therefore I decided it was time to give it a slight makeover.

I took off the shade, dusted off the base and taped up the electrical part on the top.

Then this entered the picture:

I also taped up a little bit of the electrical cord as well, so that it wouldn’t get painted. This is Rustoleum’s Metallic Metal Spraypaint in Oil Rubbed Bronze.

Then I took it outside and let Drew do the spraying. One coat, thirty minutes later, a slight touch up, tape off and then we ended up with this:

Doesn’t it already look so much better! I love oil rubbed bronze Spraypaint! It looks like a dark charcoal black, but then when light shines on it, it gives off this reddish/bronze sheen. So pretty!

Then I added a new linen-y textured shade from Target, and voila! A whole new lamp!

See, isn’t the oil rubbed bronze so pretty?

It looks so much more modern and updated. I also love that the color and style compliment the living room curtains and rod quite well:

And when the light isn’t shining on the base it looks like this:

I love it so much more!

What do you think? Have you done any home refashioning lately?

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