Preparing for a Wedding!

First of all thank you to my new followers! :) Thank you verry much!! I will be showing you a little more of my living room soon - All we need is our little accent chair and it is FINISHED!! I can't wait!!

I have been very busy the past couple months helping my older sister plan her wedding! She got engaged last October and finally the big day has come [October 18th actually!] But we are reaaaally busy helping her plan - my older sister, my mom and her mom [my siblings and I have the same dad but my brother and older sisters have a different mom than me and my younger one. AND we get along great with their mom :) including my mom!] have been helping her with the centerpieces and my mom is printing out the programs and menus. I am in charge of stamping maple leaves on the placecards.

My tools:

And my result:

Trust me it is not an easy job... it takes alot more time than you think it would! Each leaf has to be filled out perfectly! But anyway, my sister is having a small wedding and really trying to do it as cheap as possible which is why we all are helping her figure out her centerpieces. Flowers cost too much so instead of that, she wanted something with candles. Alot of ideas were thrown around and FINALLY we knew what our candles were going to look like...

The beads on it are gorgeous and I couldn't help from take some macro pics of them... and they actually came out frame worthy.

I can't wait to take pictures at the wedding on Sunday and show you how all our hard work paid off! But now I'm off to stamping away!

The Living Room Transformation: The Before

We have recently COMPLETELY re done our living room and are still waiting on some tiny little things to make it feel "done" - and is annoying because Jose will not let me buy one little thing for any other room until the living room is done [same thing he did when I was doing my office makeover which you can see here on my blog a couple entries back!]


But for now I dug up some "before" pictures of my living room to show you what I had. You see, this whole makeover started with the color on our walls. After 4 months living here in this apartment, I could not stand the blue walls anymore. But I decided to deal with it AT LEAST until we were here a year. And than after the paint color bothered me, this lovely wall unit below started to bother me as well. Here it is in the midst of our doing our office makeover:

I could not figure out what to fill those bookshelves with, I started to hate them there. So we took em off, painted them white and now they reside happily in our office :)

Here:

And here:

And the best picture I could find to proudly display our wall color is the picture I snapped at Christmas... I can't wait til this Christmas, my mantle is going to look muuuccch better. Besides! We were only living together for 2 weeks when Christmas decorations were put up! My apartment was scarce!

And than we just needed some new things - particulary an actual coffee table. We had this ottoman but that now is happily living in the office as well!

Well now we've got the new paint color, the bookshelves are gone and a brand new [actual] coffee table which we got for $20!! What a steal!

But for now you will have to use your imagination and wait til my living room is ready to show off!

Mellow Yellow...

Yellow is such a bright and happy color - why would you not want hints of it in your house, or even better - why not be surrounded by it?

My mother's living room is a bright yellow and I love how it looks! It makes me feel so calm and happy when I walk in her house. And when I look at these pictures it pretty much does the same.

This kitchen is perfection...

Ooh la la... a yellow bathroom!

All images courtesy of MyHomeIdeas.com

This Is Halloween!

October is finally here and so is Halloween! I know in my heart that Christmas is my absolute favorite holiday but every year when Halloween rolls around, I feel like it's testing me. I love Halloween and have so much fun with it! This is our first Halloween in our apartment since we moved in last November so I am having fun!

We have painted our living room [finally] and now I am able to decorate for Halloween! I won't post pictures of my finished living room because I still need to show the before BUT you will see a peek at my new wall color :) Which my man and I are both VERY happy with! It was a cape cod blue before - well thats what I call it :) lol and it didn't fit us anymore.

But anyway... this post is about the little halloween decorations I have around our apartment that I LOVE!

Like this little haunted house that lights up from a tea light candle that my sister got me ... at HomeGoods! [ooh and check out my spider "placemat" I bought at the Metropolitan Plant Exchange - BEST place to buy halloween decorations!]

I also got my candleabra there [I'm in the process of making bloody candles to put on it - stay tuned] and my purple flameless candle I bought at CVS. I thought it looked awesome so I picked it up.

And this little guy I got for a DOLLAR at Michaels!

My bloody hands are in my front window [and on my door] which I got at CVS both sets of hands for a dollar!


And Hitchcock is hanging with one of the mice that hangs out on top of our speakers - the other mouse is on top of the other one

And my witch's floating head [she moves and speaks] is chilling in the Dining Room on top of our wine holding table. I picked her up at Target last year for 30.

I'm still putting out some more [and always buying some more] Plus I have to get me some pumpkins for outside! [And show you my outdoor decorations!] Stay tuned!!

::Sigh::

I posted some pictures on my facebook page my living room, asking for suggestions from people [because I am REDOING IT!!] And someone told me if I was looking for a new rug to hop over to Dash & Albert Rug Company. Well I did and I die! The rugs are adorable! Nice, cute patterned area rugs. And on top of that they sell throws, decorative pillows and totes! Check it out!


And check out some of my favorites too below.

This pillow is soo cute!!

And this throw's pattern makes me swoon... ::sigh::

William Sonoma Home??

I was scoping out William Sonoma's website. I love that website but a little too expensive for me but hey, a girl can look! Than I notice on the bottom left screen W.S. HOME.


What???

So I went browsing and turns out they got some pretty cute stuff! Just as unaffordable as William Sonoma Cooking but still cute! Here are some goodies I found :)

I love coral and this coral pillow SCREAMED to me!! Too cute!!

I am not crazy about animal prints but I LOVED this giraffe print rug. I can't tell you why I just thought it was adorable.

These porcelein candle holders are gorgeous!

And lately I am loving garden seats - especially white ones :) I tried to convince to buy one the other day at home goods but he wasn't convinced it was cute. I'll get him to see my way!!

And I am in love with both of these pillows! On sale ... for 69.99? I dont think so :(

Who Know's Where the Time Goes?

Oops... I've been busy and have not written in a while but I do have a bunch to share - including my tiny sprouts of fall decor in my house as well as some lovely additions to my fancy schmancy new office!

And seriously... Who Know's Where the Time Goes?? I mean I blink and it is suddenly 50 degrees every night the past couple days! It is seriously feeling like fall here in Jersey. But I love it since it's my favorite season! Anywhoo... A Bit of Fall Decor to make you all warm and tingly inside :)

My fall flowers on my table along with my fall runner my mom got me courtesy of Berwick Offray Ribbon Company :)

As well as these lovely "hat boxes" and ribbon - both courtesy of Berwick Offray Ribbon Company :)

And these adorable little pumpkin container which I have seen in at least 4 different stores this year - but I snagged mine at CVS because I get my employee discount!



And here is what is going on in my office... a very tiny bright little green picture frame [I'm waiting for the perfect picture of my cat and dog together to fill it]

And the frame next to the green and white lamp. Frame... 4.99 from Home Goods! Yuuup!

As well as 10.99 each Nautica pillows from Home Goods. Home Goods is the best!

That's pretty much it! It certainly gave me a warm and tingly feeling all over again!

And Its You When I Look In the Mirror...

Tomorrow September 12th will mark 5 years since my dad passing away. He had dementia, a type of alzheimers, and it was just horrible. For him, for us. It was devastating watching him suffer for nearly 7 years and just completely lose himself. These days I don't think of my "sick" dad... I think of the dad I grew up with.

The dad that loved [i mean with a passion loved] hockey, Canada, going down the shore every summer, music, The Beatles and of course Elvis [hence the picture hanging in our dining room in the background in the picture below!!] He was a very passionate man and loved all of those things equally and dearly. He is the reason I love those things... especially music. My first tattoo was music notes for him and I plan to get his initials around or intertwining with it.

But on top of those things being the loves of his life, so was his family. All 6 of his brothers, 3 of his sisters, 4 of his daughters [me :)], his son, his 2 granddaughters, 1 grandson... and my mom. We all love him and miss him so much its hard to think about sometimes. Though my sister and I were young when he was diagnosed with alzheimers, I remember everything about him so vividly. Sometimes I can still smell him in the air. I remember the way his hands felt. The way his skin smelled. My father is the love of my life.

He always teased me saying "one day you're gonna meet a guy, fall in love with him and forget all about me". And daddy, I will never forget you. I love you and miss you dearly every day. And everyday I hear a song that you loved and makes me think of you.. I stop and think of you all over again. And I always will. I Love You.

Riddle's Got Talent!

I saw this idea on Young House Love a couple months ago waaay before we got Riddle and LOVED it! Thought it was the cutest personalized present ever! And with Jose's birthday and our anniversary both back to back [literally, our anniversary was yesterday and his birthday is today] I decided to do it for him!

Whats the big idea??

How about some personalized pet art? The youngsters awesome little dog Burger did his own little artwork and Riddle tried it out and did it as well!

Here it is all done up:

And here he is posing next to his masterpiece with this grumpy little face on!

Well I gave it to Jose for our anniversary and he LOVED it! He thought it was the cutest thing and was amazed! And what did it take? Some water based acrylic paint and some cardstock - JUST like what the youngsters did over on their site! Seriously, I can't take any credit for this idea but I LOVED it and even sent them a photo of the finished masterpiece so they could see how great their idea was! [Or actually Sherry since she did it for John's birthday]

Hope you spread the puppy love too! :)

The Office Transformation: The Big Reveal!

With only tiny little details left [like cork boards on the wall and pillows] I decided it is time to debut my new office! I'm telling you sitting in this room just makes me happy. It's totally different than our dark and dingy Before Office.

Also a correction.. the color is said the new wall color is was Summer Splash by Olympic but it is in fact South Pacific. And a beautiful color I must say!

Here is what you see when you walk in the room:

A close up of our desk and our new shaggy cream rug [20 bucks clearance from Target] Obviously this is Riddles favorite place to snuggle up.

We have this ottoman as seating [will put some accent pillows on it soon]... But honestly, you think it goes?? Let me know!

Our bookshelf in the right corner. The top shelf for now holds Jose's met's memorabilia and the first two shelves hold my collection of snowglobes. :)


We fell in LOVE with this lamp from Home Goods and had to have it! We thought the green lamp shade and the white base went perfect. The green looks great next to the blue on our walls.

And Hitchcock is in this room ten times more than he was before :) He just loves our new sheer curtains 10 bucks from Target!

I put our books on our bookshelves but really hated it. So I stood in the room thinking and thinking than decided to put them on top of our desk... but than color coordinated it. AND seperated each color by section AND start each section on the left and right with the tallest books first. Now I love the zig zag effect these books have.

Also we have a BUNCH of markers and colored pencils and really, no where to put them. And I am always doodling and drawing so I bought this set of 4 cups for 1.99 at CVS! :) Who'd thunk!? Also seperated these all by colors as well [pinks and reds together, oranges and yellows, blues green and purples and than blacks, browns and grays]

And I have had my eye on these magnetic containers from the container store for a year or so and FINALLY found a reason and place to get them! Now it holds our rubber bands, usb cords, pins, etc :) And the mugs on the shelves are to hold our litle knick knacks.. I have the cowgirl mug, Jose has the starbucks. But I really want C and J mugs :)

And lastly, the other bookshelf on the left wall across from the desk. The bottom shelf holds ALL my scrap books [yes I scrapbook :)] and my INSTYLE magazines. Than boxes and other goodies :)

And that's it! FINALLY! All we need is some stuff on the walls and some pillows on the ottoman [or just a different type of seating] and this room is done! YaY! We have loved doing our office over and are really so in love with the final product :)