Family Treasures, Past and Present

I have always had an obsession with organization, containers, and nick-nacks. Put them all together, and I have a problem decorating table tops, shelves, and end tables.

My decorations are finally, after lots of years, coming together cohesively. Brass and antique colors are some of my favorite, so here are photos of my home decorations.

Kitchen Table: Pastry stands as wedding presents, my grandmother's picture frame with a photo from our wedding, found and dried pinecone, a locally made cutting board, found brass candle holders and vase, dried flowers, and home made napkins by my mom. I am planning on refinishing our kitchen table soon - sanding and staining a dark antique brown.

Living Room Bookshelf: Collection of fabulous books including my mom's copy of The Hobbit and my dad's college copy of the Iliad, more found and dried pinecones, mercury glass candle holders from our wedding, a found brass picture fram with a wedding photo, a skull I bought Steve from Mexico, and the cutest brass elephant Steve bought me for Christmas.

Up close details from bookshelf: My mom's copy of The Hobbit, the beautiful details on the brass elephant Steve gave me, our wedding photo in an ornate brass frame, and my favorite detail- a gold pin with two hearts and my Grandma and Grandpa's names carved in :)

Bookshelf in my Craft Room: Brass picture frames with Steve's Mommom and Poppop on the left, and my Grandma and Grandpa on the right (in a frame from my Grandma), A gold and pearl brooch from Steve's Mommom, Steve's wedding boutonniere, more mercury glass candleholders from our wedding, and lots of art and sewing books!

Bedside table in the Craft Room: A beautiful photo of my Grandma in a brass frame, found wedding vases used in our wedding, antique lace from my mom, a vintage inspired blue glass perfume bottle, all on a handmade wood shelf by yours truly in 7th grade!

Kitchen Nook: Dried roses al from Steve (including the rose from the first bouquet Steve gave me in 2009), a vase from Poland which Jay bought me, an antique syrup canister, more candle holders, a vintage heart shaped sugar dish, a cutting board from my parents, a photo of my brother Chad, a wedding photo of Steve's parents in a brass frame, and found vintage postcards of Paris and London in a frame.

And Mr. Peabody enjoying his 4th birthday - cupcakes for Steve and I, and a can of tuna fish for the 4 year old!

Wedding Favors - Handmade Drawstring Bags with Wildflower Seeds

For our fall time wedding, Steve and I decided to give something that wasn't a one time use/eat/throw away present for our wedding guests. We thought flower seeds were the perfect way that our guests could be reminded of our wedding each year with the blooming of wildflowers.

Not only was it fun to give these little gifts, but we saved a lot of money making the presents ourselves.






Here are the materials and costs for our wedding gifts, makes about 100:

1. Natural Muslin, 2 yards (in case of mistakes, extra is better): $3.98/yard = $7.96
2. Baker's Twine, 40 yards total (I picked two colors, 20 yards each) = $5.99
3. Plastic Bags for seeds, 100 total (I couldn't buy less than 500 on Amazon.com) = $4.29
4. 2 lbs of Wildflower Fall seed mix from Flower Art & Soul (1.5lbs would do, but you have to buy in full pound amounts, so I bought 2 lbs): $48/lb = $72 (since I have a half of pound left over!)
5. 130 Kraft paper tags (bought from a seller no longer listed on Etsy) = $10.50
6. Paper, tea for dying the paper = pennies, negligible cost

Total cost to make: $100.74, about $1.00 per guest
(of course, you can always make this project cheaper.. find less than 500 plastic baggies [I felt strange buying so many little bags from the internet...], buy your muslin or baker's twine on sale [or with a coupon - I never go into ACMoore without a 50% off coupon for myself and Steve!], or find cheaper wildflower seeds).

I measured, cut, ironed and sewed about 105 muslin drawstring bags, half with yellow twine and half with red twine (since those were our wedding colors). I used about 12" of twine for each bag. Steve filled each plastic bag with about 1 generous tablespoon of the seeds and the insert.

For the insert, Steve downloaded a typewriter font and I printed on both sides of the paper for our wedding label, and instructions/contents on the back side. I printed 10 tags per page, so I only had to print 11 pages of text (one for mistakes!). I created a tea bath with a big pyrex dish, five tea bags and boiling water. I let the paper soak in the tea for ~15 minutes then hung them up to dry. Instead of having stark white paper contrasted with the natural muslin bags, I thought tea dying the paper would add an extra touch!


My mom was kind enough to calligraphy all the guests names onto the tags, and I went back through and labeled the table numbers after I finalized my lists.





It was a time consuming project, but so much fun to have something to do at the end of the day, and I even got Steve to participate which was definitely the best part! I am looking forward to seeing how the flowers bloom for our families and friends next fall :)

A finished gift bag for my nephew, with a handmade napkin my mom made!

Some Holiday Colors and Inspirations

Now that it's finally December (there was such a long time between the end of Thanksgiving and the start of December), I feel like it is now acceptable to post holiday items/ideas/colors/food.

Here are the three most recent photos I have taken, and they all coordinate so well together!

Winter Wedding Invitation Suite from a family friend!

68 degrees on December 4th - Lunch time walk (and searching for pine cones)

Speculoos Button Cookies

I think aqua and red/coral will forever be my favorite color combination. I even decorate my cookies with these colors, I didn't even plan that! The cookies are from the December issue of Bon Appetit magazine  Speculoos Buttons. Thankfully I read the entire recipe before starting to realize the batch makes ~90 cookies, but you can freeze the dough for up to 2 months! They are mini cookies (mine are about the size of a quarter, but I think I'll make bigger ones next time. Nothing feels worse than admitting you just ate 9 cookies). I have the other half of the dough in my freezer waiting to be gifted. My test batch turned out really well, minus my old baking sheet which did burn the bottoms of about 30 cookies. Is there a way to restore an old baking sheet?

Being a Bachelorette

This past weekend was my bachelorette party - this was the first time I have worn a white dress (actually it was ivory with gold, but close enough!) and I LOVED it - I felt so pretty and classy, and it made me walk more confidently around the city. Plus, I got a lot of compliments (or was it the gaudy "bride" sash/ring/pins/necklaces I was wearing?) and I noticed a lot more beautiful things while walking around the city.
I decided to post some photos, not so much of the bachlorettes, but some pretty photos that re-inspired me (I already bought some new yarn colors at the craft store and planned some new crafts for after the wedding!)

Anthropologie in Center City Philadelphia

My sister and I at Hotel Palomar, Philadelphia. Cheers!

The amazing view from our hotel room - not over looking the famous Philadelphia skyscrapers, but some of the overlooked art deco architecture in the city

Craft room!

Our roommate moved out last weekend. Which means I now have a craft space back! No more cramping in the living room, making a mess and getting mad at myself that I hate to clean it up. The craft space doubles (or quadruples) as a guest bedroom, extra closet space for me, and music room. Most importantly, my craft space! I also have a new area to take Etsy store photos and store my goods for sale (I'll add photos later).

I haven't felt this inspired in a while... I want to run home and paint with my watercolors and listen to my records!

Also, I better get typing on those wedding invites. 4 months and 6 days!
 

I love my new paper lantern.

Close up of my desk.. I leveled and screwed in those shelves my myself. Do you know how hard that was? My arms are super sore today!

oh, did i tell you i'm getting married?

for my wedding next October, I want to make as many items as I can... not only to save money, but it will be something fun to do while waiting for my day.

I saw crochet votives on BHLDN's website, and for $8 each, I don't know who would buy them. But I wanted them! and I knew I could make them cheaper than $1 a piece.

So, I'm saving all my old food jars (small ones, like little pesto jars, etc) and using my leftover yarn from other projects to crochet covers on the jars. I also have a ton of glass tea light holders from my sister's wedding. I think the different sized glasses and colors of our wedding (grey, yellow, red) crocheted on the votive will look better than $8 candle holders. Plus, I'm going to use real candles, not tea lights - will last longer and probably produce better lighting, (25 bucks for 80 real candles? yes!)

Here's the first one I made, and I have two others as well. Just waiting to eat some food and reuse the jars :)I just guessed on the pattern - double crochets with two chain stitches in between. Another one I made is all the scallop stitch - very pretty with the light shining through!