My Love Don't Cost a Thing

First, let me say that I hate that song. But it seemed like a good title for this post. Except technically I guess my "love" (or at least my Valentine's decorations) cost $.49. But who's counting?

I've never been big on Valentine's Day but I decided to decorate a little for it this year. I didn't want to invest a lot of money in decorations though, so I challenged myself to use only things I already had. I knew I had a ton of brown accessories and hoped I had just enough pink ones to pull together a pink and brown color scheme. Its not a very elaborate spread, but the tablescape didn't cost me anything.

Valentine's Day Centerpiece. I had a lot of pink and brown polka dot grosgrain ribbon so I wrapped a piece of it around the candles and attached it with a decorative thumbtack I had used on a bulletin board in the past. I did the same thing around the napkins.

I put some pink, brown, and white glass "rocks" in a glass vase with two pink feathers and some floral stems that I hadn't used in a loooong time (they were from the days when the only centerpieces I knew how to create involved fake flowers, so this is kind of a throw back!).

In my huge plastic container filled with more napkins that I care to admit, I found these beauties that I bought a few years back without any idea of what I was going to do with them. I loved the vintage look feel of them though and still do. And they turned out to be perfect for this tablescape!

I realized I had a ridiculous amount of pink and brown scrapbook paper for the scrapbook that I'm never going to actually make (and yet I keep buying paper for it). I tried to make a cute wreath out of it but it didn't quite pan out. Instead I ended up with a kind of garland/banner thing that I'm not real happy about. It did give me a reason to use at least a few pieces of my huge stack of scrapbook paper though so all is not lost.

And this is my pride and joy!!!!!! This wreath almost didn't happen. The whole concept for it came from a spool of pink curling ribbon that my English bulldog got ahold of and unwound. I didn't want to throw it away so I put it in the bag with my gift wrapping supplies. I came across it while looking for things to use in my Valentine's decorating extravaganza. I felt like I could use it for something and wondered if I could make a wreath out of it. I enlisted the help of my BF and we got a wire clothes hanger, shaped it like a heart, and threaded it through the unwound ribbon. It looked like crap! I left it laying in the kitchen for a few days and was about to throw it away when my BF suggested we work on it a little more. So I used some of my endless supply of pink and brown grosgrain ribbon to make a hanger for it and to give it a little more shape. Well, technically, I came up with the idea to use the ribbon and the ever helpful BF actually engineered it. Then we tied a bow on the bottom of it to make a little tail.

I saw this foam cupid at Hobby Lobby and fell in love! He was only $.49 (this was my big splurge!) so I bought him and glued some pink and white glass beads on him. Then we attached him to the middle of the wreath.

I'm proudly linking this project on Tater Tots and Jello's Weekend Wrap Up Party!
http://tatertotsandjello.blogspot.com/2010/02/weekend-wrap-up-party.html
For only $.49 I'm pretty happy with the outcome! I put some old stuff to good use and got my pics posted in time to participate in Tabletops Tuesday at Grits and Glamour and Tablescape Thursday at http://betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com!
Now I'm ready to decorate for Spring! Too bad there's still snow on the ground...

Mantel Party!

We got hit by a winter storm today so I am home on a Snow Day! Right now we still have power so I'm enjoying the luxury of a rare lazy day on the couch. My sweet babies (my two dogs) are napping on the couch and I have spent the day playing on the internet and finding some fabulous blogs. I came across The Stories of A to Z and they have a Mantel Party every Friday where people share pictures of their mantel creations. What an awesome idea! So I decided to join in the party and posted a link to my Winterscape mantel. I added a link above in case you want to take a look and join in the fun too. I also drooled over some of the mantels other people have created and got some inspiration for some new projects. I'm not much of a Valentine's Girl but after seeing some of the super cute things other people have created I might do a little mini Valentine's project myself. I've been thinking about changing up my front door for each season/holiday and that might be the perfect place to start. So it looks like I might be getting off the couch and getting to work on some projects. Too bad I'm snowed in and can't get to Hobby Lobby! :(

Winterscape

"I please myself with the graces of wintery scenery, and believe that we are as much touched by it as by the genial influences of summer."
-Ralf Waldo Emerson
"O Winter! ruler of the inverted year, . . . I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturb’d Retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening, know."
—William Cowper
"Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk
beside the fire: it is the time for home."
-Edith Sitwell

Looking through quotes about winter I noticed that most of the ones I found referred to the bleakness of winter and waiting for spring. I, however, love winter. I love the peacefulness and the stillness of winter. Everything is simplified. So I wanted to come up with a concept for decorating my fireplace mantel to celebrate the beauty of winter. I also hoped it would help with the transition from all of the glitter and sparkle of my Christmas decorations and avoid the depressing bareness and emptiness of "After Christmas". I knew I wanted a lot of white and sparkle but also wanted to incorporate shades of brown for the bare branches. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays

Christmas is tied with fall for my most favorite time of the year to decorate! And I had a blast decorating my new apartment for Christmas this year! Here are some pics of what I did:
Dining Room:



Razorback Room:



Living Room

Razorback Room

I wanted my spare bedroom to be a girly Razorback themed room. I've always wanted a Razorback room and this way I got to re-use a lot of the white and black accents from my master bedroom at my old house. Its still a work in progress but here are a few of the projects I've done so far.

I made the red and white polka pillow out of my remnant fabric I found at Hobby Lobby. I also found the sequined "A" there. The black and white pillow is one from my old bedding. The black pillow is one that I use to have in my living room. I got the sparkely "HOGS" pin for my birthday and LOVE it! It was the perfect addition to the room!
I also made this lamp from the same remnant fabric I used on the pillows. I used a special lamp shade that was sticky so you just cut the fabric and stick it on there. Then I found a Razorback decal and trimmed it in sequins. I got a black and red boa from Hobby Lobby and used that to trim the bottom.

I bought these letters at Hobby Lobby. They were orignially white. I pained them red and black and glued big silver circle sequins on them and used sequin rope to hang them. I need to try to take a better picture of them!
This is a collection of candles and candlesticks that I had in my old bedroom, except for the addition of the two red sparkely ones. The Razorback santa is coming down now that Christmas is over.

Living Room Pics

I've got the living room mostly finished now. I've got several shelves on the wall behind the couch that still need some accessories on them. But I've got the fireplace wall and loveseat wall done so I decided to go ahead and post pics of them. I'm bringing up my Christmas decorations when I go home for Thanksgiving so I wanted to get as much of the living room designed as I could before I take it all down and put up my Christmas ornaments. Since I didn't get to decorate for Christmas last year because I was moving into the Mitchell St. house, I'm so excited to see all of my glittery, sparkely decorations this year!

Woman on a Mission

I've finally retrieved all of my boxes of stuff from my parents house. They have taken up new residence in my spare bedroom. The only problem is that my sister is coming up Saturday and Sunday and this is her room. So my goal the past 2 days has been to completely get everything unpacked. As you can see, I had my work cut out for me!

Luckily I've got about 2/3 of it done. So my goal today is to finish it all up so she can have a place to sleep!

Black and Brown Bedroom & Pillow Project

The first room I'm almost completely done with is my bedroom. Finding a decorating scheme for this room was a challenge! I had chosen to have an accent wall painted chocolate brown in the bedroom before I moved in. While I LOVE the color I didn't fully think the choice through. I have black bedroom furniture. And while I love the combo of black and brown together it made choosing a new comforter difficult. I needed something that would pull the room together and give it some direction. The great comforter debate was further complicated by the imput of my boyfriend, who is wonderful, but definitely prefers function over form. I, however, don't believe anything can be truly functional if its not pretty to look at. So 5 million comforters later an agreement was reached on one that was incredibly soft but still attractive. While it wasn't even close to what I had in mind, its definitely grown on me and now I couldn't be happier with it (and I have to admit that it is extremely nice to sleep with a light, silky comforter over a scratchy, albeit, beautiful one). I've still got a few finishing touches to put on but here are some pics of the bed wall. I'll add pics of the opposite walls as soon as I get the final accent pieces.

The black and brown pillows on the bed were my art project for today. Since I'm on a super tight budget right now and have some extra time (both of which are a result of having almost 3 weeks off from working) I bought some pillows from Wal-Mart for $5 and a stencil and some paint from Hobby Lobby. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out!

Back to Blogging

So after a very long hiatus from blogging, I'm back. A couple of months ago I put my house in Conway up for sale. It sold pretty quickly and a few weeks ago I moved into an apartment in Northwest Arkansas. While I'm still adjusting to apartment living I am finally getting settled in. And a new place to live means new opportunities to decorate! I don't start my new job until the end of November so this has given me some time to get the apartment decorated and even do a few art projects (and start blogging again). Having this much time on my hands is a BIG change from the way things have been for the past few months and I have to say, I'm ready to go back to work! I'm actually much more productive when I come home after working a full day than I am when I'm around the house all day. But until then, I'm going to post some pics on what all I've been working on lately.

Eye Candy

A friend of mine gave me this link to the website for Amy Atlas Events. The pics under the Eye Candy link are amazing and awe-inspiring! I'm definitely going to keep this link bookmarked and use it for future inspiration. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

www.amyatlas.com