The One For The Engagement Shin-Dig

One of my very best friends is getting married in February (not to be confused with my very best friend who is getting married in July - wooo hooo) so we're throwing a small get together this Saturday night. It's going to be tons of fun to get together with people I haven't seen in a while - and people who are brand new to me! Plus - it will be the first party in the new house. It's been great incentive to get our butts in gear and make it look like a legitimate place to be living.

In honor of this occasion, and the fact that I haven't blogged in about 100 years...here are a few of the things I'm hoping to include in the party planning for this weekend.

image from Once Wed, by Our Labor of Love Photography

Beautiful (and simple) floral arrangements, with burlap (is that burlap?) tablecloths. Lucky for me, my mom works at our church and is letting me tap into the chairs and tables that live there.

image from skillenlauren

Twinkle lights in trees and around the fence in our backyard. Pure magic.

image by :MPG:

Some sort of delicious sangria, margarita type thing. Something that can go in my new drink dispenser, which is not actually this gorgeous one from Pottery Barn and cost me $20 at Home Goods, maybe in my next life...

We're serving barbecue and my mom has offered to let us use her really pretty pottery as serving pieces. Score. Friends - we're going to have to take care of these!

For dessert, I'm thinking something cold and delicious. Mainly because it's been hot as blue blazes around here lately. My office door fogs up in the afternoon from all of the humidity. It's gross. Maybe something like this, or maybe this, and then this showed up in my email...YUM.

Either way, the whole night is sure to be tons of fun!!

Now...I just need to start making a playlist that will last all night. No repeats. Any suggestions?

The One About The Oscars

I feel like this weekend had too much going on - and I think this week is only going to get more jampacked. Friday night my friend Ian and I went to see Roger Creager which was so much fun! He's fabulous, and the crowd at Zydeco provided enough entertainment in and of themselves. One woman was out with her child and continually danced (inappropriately) with her friend, some guy who could not have been over 20. Awkward.

Saturday we did Chili Cook-Off along with everyone else in Birmingham. It was so great getting to see people that have been MIA in my life recently. Coopers - Mark sends a big hug and hello!

We did top it off a very weird weekend yesterday evening with a party to watch The Academy Awards. I made gumbo (this one) but added some new spices and shrimp. It was delicious if I do say so myself. We also made these precious ballots - and provided our friend Grace (who won) with a bottle of wine to take home.

The weekend was so jam packed we ended up having a smaller crowd than we planned on but it was so much fun! There were some pretty gorgeous people walking the red carpet, and lots of my favorites won Oscars!

I will say, the highlight of the night might have been Roger Ross Williams being accosted on stage by a producer who worked on his film Music By Prudence. Elinor Burkett (whoever she is, is a nutcase). You can watch the video here, if you were unlucky enough to miss it.

Some of my favorite dresses were Sara Jessica Parker, Zoe Saldana, Carey Mulligan, Tina Fey and Elizabeth Banks.

Penelope Cruz (always), Mariska Hargitay, Sigourney Weaver, and Mariah Carey (I know, shocked) looked beautiful too.

People I thought looked weird? Charlize Theron, Cameron Diaz, Kristen Stewart, and Miley Cyrus. Miley's and Kristen's hadn't been fit very well, Charlize's was just unattractive and Cameron looked more like Barbie than herself. She looks so much better in something with a little more personality.

My favorite though, HANDS DOWN was Rachel McAdams. Isn't she gorgeous?

The One About Our Kitchen

The roommate and I are trying to figure out something fun to do (inexpensively) that would liven up our kitchen a little bit. We've run through everything from painting (thank you to me for choosing the most time-consuming, least practical idea), to blowing up photographs, to buying one of those giant pieces of "art" from Home Goods and hanging it on the wall.

Our problem is really many-fold. Our walls are plaster and therefore IMPOSSIBLE to hang things on. It can happen, but it involves a strong guy, an even stronger drill and a little prayer that pieces of my wall aren't going to come crumbling off. Also, our kitchen is really dark - so we're definitely looking for something fun, but not too overpowering. And our kitchen is also our laundry room...which means the wall in question is a really large blank space that spans over the toaster oven/island situation, the stove and the dryer. We're not looking for anything that we'd be upset if it happened to get steamy, or rattled right off the wall.

I want to do something really simple and graphic - probably in a group. I've seen a few things I like around the internet, but I think I have a better idea. And no...I'm not going to try to paint something myself.

I absolutely LOVE these, but at almost $60 a pop, that's a little more than I wanted to spend.

So...I think my roommate and I both like something like this.


It's definitely basic, and costs a LOT more than we're really thinking we're going to spend...but don't you think I could recreate this? Not only do I think I could paint these pretty easily with some good brushes and a roll of painters tape...but - my roommate had an even better, and simpler idea. How about simple frames (black, silver, etc.) with mats, and using some spray mount...woudn't it be so simple to paste pieces of fabric inside the frames? It would probably take all of an hour (if I'm slow) and we'd wind up with something pretty, useful, simple and not so pricey. I think I'm going to give it a shot this weekend and see how it goes. I guess the first stop is the fabric store...if I can't find anything I like, I'll be hard pressed to make it look good in the end. What are your thoughts?

Doesn't this look so simple and happy!? We need a little happy in our kitchen. Our kitchen is dull and white.

Also, on a totally different note. I'm looking for some antique bottles. Does anyone know where you go to pick those up?

And click on that first image to go purchase these for yourself...if you lucky enough to have a great place to put them and a few extra dollar bills y'all lying around.

The One About My Inherent Craftiness (PT. II)

Guess what!? I finally finished one of my projects...and they looks so pretty. Remember when I was talking about getting some Christmas decorations together...well, I completed this one. And I bought a fake tree (with ornaments), and I have some packages to wrap up and put underneath is. My apartment definitely has a festive sort of feel. Now, if I could only find those dang white lights I want...apparently everywhere in Birmingham is sold out of the classic kind - and I do NOT do icicle lights.

I started with these supplies:

red satin ribbon I bought a roll of this at Hobby Lobby but I wish I had bought by the yard somewhere else, it turned out to be not be very high-quality, but I couldn't tell in the packaging.

styrafoam ball remember that adding the walnuts will add about 2 inches to the size of the ball on all sides, so you can choose a smaller one that what you would want the final product to be.

screw eye I chose a larger on so that the ribbon wouldn't be scrunched together at the top, and spraying it along with the ball blends it in to the final product.

floral wire I bought this because Martha told me to - you don't need it. If you can figure out how to tie a bow on that screw eye, all by yourself, without having weird wire holding it in place - then you're good to go.

gold spray paint just remember - shinier is better. A matte finish will not work as well.

I also needed a hot glue gun, and the glue to go with it - but that was simple. I had the gun and I just bought a new package of glue (you're going to use a lot of it).

The first step is to spray the ball with gold paint, and screw in the screw eye. This part is incredibly easy, the only difficult part was finding a place to let them dry. I had some leftover ribbon from Halloween that I didn't need anymore, so I tied them to a coat hanger with that. Then I hung the coat hanger from the kitchen cabinet knob, and swung the door out past the counter. Voila.

Trying to get the walnuts to lay next to each other, without holes is nearly impossible - which is the reason for spraying the ball first. Spray paint tends to soak into the ball so you won't get a very solid cover - but it makes a slight difference. In the end, no one is going to notice because the walnuts get a great coat and look all shiny and festive.

A note on the walnuts - it takes a much larger amount of walnuts to cover these balls that I anticipated. I bought five bags to cover these three balls, and ended up needing to run back to the store for another three.


See?

Then you just have to tie the bow to the screw eye, and loop more ribbon through it to hang. I hung mine from the curtain rod which was very simple, but you could use a nail too (or another screw eye).

And there is the final product (and a bit of my apartment). Trust me, if I can make this work, so can you. I vaguely wish they were a little bit bigger, but that would have just cost more money, so I'll live with these. Maybe next year I'll make two more and have a larger grouping.

My mom also suggested using this same idea on a styrafoam wreath which I thought would be pretty.

** Trust me - that last picture is bothering me more than it is you. I needed to close those blinds, get some better lighting, move the remote, fluff the pillow and that middle ribbon isn't even. Oh well, I'll try to retake it but the chances of that happening are slim to none.