Have a great weekend!

It was a crazy week for us with sickies around our house, a canceled birthday party, lots of work projects, and more. All that is behind now (well, almost) and I am really excited for the weekend because we are headed to San Francisco.

Here are a few things that made me happy this week:

*V in her costume for a party
*The fall foliage (shot taken in Park City)
*Some tasty pumpkin whoopie pies I made from this book but you can also find the recipe here.
* I also liked this quote by Mallika Chopra in this month's Whole Living magazine:

"Set the intention to make someone else happy -- and cause a ripple effect for positive change in our world."

What are your plans for the Halloween/Autumn weekend? You can follow what we are up to in San Francisco on twitter if you want. Have a good one everyone!

a lil' nursery sneak peek

So the nursery is pretty much finished but there are still a couple little things I want to add to it before I post it. But because I know everyone wants to see it...I decided to share a section of it that I love! I had a ton of amazing fabric swatches from Tonic Living left over from when I was picking out the pillow and curtain fabrics. I kept looking at the pile of them sitting by my desk and I wanted to use them in some way but didn't know how since they were just tiny pieces. And then I thought...pennant flags!! So one Saturday afternoon Melanie Bloomer and I got our "Home Ec Circa 1990's" on and managed to figure out how to use my Mom's old Singer sewing machine. It was so much fun!! I think I'd like to do more Home Ec projects in the near future!

First we had to decide which fabrics made it in...I wanted them all!

Ouchy finger cramps from cutting them all into little triangles!

Our Home Ec moment...do we know how to thread a bobbin?!

Voila!! Project complete!

Can't wait to show you the rest of the room...just waiting for one more yummy design detail to arrive...oh yah and the baby!!

Friday flowers

Dahlias, in the tiniest of jam jars.

{dahlias, jam jar}

I've been playing more with my 50 mm lens lately. Shooting wide open (keeping the f stop at 1.8) gives you that lovely blur in the background, which is also helpful for distracting the eye from the chronically busy condition of our dining room table.

{dahlias, jam jar, table}

Interestingly enough, this is sort of how the world looks to me without my glasses on (I'm almost unbelievably nearsighted) - perhaps that's why I find it so appealing.

Tricks and Treats

It’s almost time for one of my favorite holidays, Mongilloween! Hi, it’s Meghan. :) When I was a child, my mom would go all out for this spooky holiday. Each year she decorated the house, made our costumes and would dress up as a witch and chase us around the house yelling, "I’ll get you my pretty."  I must admit I’ve inherited her Halloween enthusiasm. I even hid a fake rat in the shower to scare my sister one morning this week! (it worked)

Since early September, orange and black has dominated my decor. There is a little cobweb craziness and monster mania going on in my Norwood home. If you check out the picture you can see floating monster heads hanging from my chandelier and scary creatures sitting around the dining room. In the vases I arranged sticks that I spray painted black and added fake mice and snakes.

Besides creating tricks around my house I also love making treats. Caramel apples, Reese's Pieces peanut butter cookies, iced cut-out cookies, orange brownies and Oreo eyes are waiting my ghostly guests. If you aren’t a baker, no problem.  The Oreo eyes were super easy. I bought football shaped Oreo’s at the store, dipped them in white chocolate and used icing and an M&M's to complete the look. Yummy!

As for costumes, I actually have two this year.  One night you can just call me Supergirl.  Another night I’m going to dress-up as Medusa, complete with snakes entwined in my hair.  Here's wishing you a safe and Happy Halloween! :)

Pellegrino meets Missoni

A little while ago a friend and I had dinner at Cucina Toscana an amazing Salt Lake City Italian Restaurant that I would highly recommend, and when they brought us a bottle of Pellegrino we immediately both noticed that the label was a little different. It is Pellegrino meets Missoni! So, what would any label-loving design geek do? I asked for the bottle after we were through of course! Isn't it beautiful? Anybody else seeing these limited edition beauties floating around?

(photo on left from here // photo on right by me)

Mini banners for Halloween

I have a guest post up over at the Irreference blog which is run by Quirk books, the wonderful company that published Witch Craft.

I made some simple mini banners for Halloween - they're a quick last minute project and you can download the file to print out at home.

{trick or treat banner}

Hop on over and check it out.

P.S. Thank you to everyone who entered in the super short giveaway for Witch Craft last week. The two lucky winners have been notified and the books are currently winging their way to them. Enjoy!

Perfect Anniversary Gift

Good Morning, Dan Wells writing, I hope this note finds you guys well and in good spirits. So you may have heard the lovely Tracey Johnson mention last week that I was celebrating my anniversary. Well today I thought I’d let you know what I got for my wife. (see the picture below) Shiny. Silver. One-of-a-kind. The Little Love Charmer from Tina Steinberg.

Now let’s back up for a minute…so you get the back story. First off, my wife loves gifts….buying, wrapping, giving, receiving, opening. She loves them actually what woman doesn’t love them. Right?

Well despite that love for gifts in general, it has been a long time since she’s felt this crazy (in a good way) about something she’s received, clothes and shoes just don’t seem to cut it anymore.
So after three and a half weeks of waiting by the door like my daughter waiting for me to come home from work, she saw the mailwoman place the package in the mailbox yesterday and she could not get out that door fast enough. They're here. See, each of my daughters' fingerprint impressions are on one side of each of the charms and their names are inscripted on the other. They are simple, unordinary, and timeless. In my wife’s world, it's pretty much the perfect gift. I think I did good this year. Happy gift giving.

Project De-Suburbanization 1: Dining room table

Well, task #1 of what I like to call Project De-suburbanization is complete. I fully made this term up, by the way. For me, it means "differentiating my house from all the others on the block that look exactly the same." On both the inside and outside, of course. So, for me, de-suburbanization starts with having things that no one else will be able to find (not in an expensive way, just different). SO. I decided to start with my dining room table, and there's a story about why. My best friend Aliya (who has since left me to move to a more exotic, warmer part of the world, sniff sniff...I miss you friend), found this old table on the side of Madison Ave about 5 years ago. Even though it was in rough shape, Aliya has an eye for "junk" with serious potential. She picked it up and brought it home, but didn't have anywhere to put it, due to her nomadic lifestyle. So, into storage it went, but then, when I got my house this summer, we thought, perfect, we will restore it! This is the first restoration project for both us, and I documented the whole process. What do you think?!

To start, here's the junk that was found at the side of the road:

Note the layer of gross veneer on the tabletop (eek). Our initial thought is to try to remove it, then stain it a darker colour:

The legs are also in rough shape...pieces missing, and look what's hiding beneath the poorly painted white:

Step 1 for the tabletop: we try to chisel off the gross veneer, and it works well on one end but not the other. So, we use a hand-held electric planer and plane that nasty stuff away...

Step 1 for the Legs: We apply paint remover to the legs. Ugh. We find a layer of green, then brown underneath that, and it's sticky for some reason! This leg alone has taken me 3 hours...need a new plan:

Tabletop: Look, the veneer is gone!! This is looking yummier than we thought. Could it be possible that we can leave the top natural? Methinks so!

Plan B for the legs: We power wash the ef*ing paint off of there. This is kind of fun, by the way. We each take turns because it's satisfying:

And then...we sand the top. Tedious...

LEGS UPDATE: Meanwhile, the power washing WORKED a LOT better than the paint remover. We sand it down:

TABLETOP UPDATE: we sand some more, but mother ef*er, our backs are starting to hurt!

but look how good it's looking!!!!

Legs: All the pieces that fell off the legs need to be sanded and then glued back on...

...so we glue, and we wait.

BUT while we WAIT, we apply a natural stain, what some more, then put a sealer on top...gotta prevent it from food and drink spills! It shines up NICELY, look:

...and then we FINALLY prime the legs. Ahhh sweet relief, the green is gone:

THEN WE PAINT IT ALL UP, PUT IT ALL BACK TOGETHER AGAIN, AND THEN....are you ready to see the final product?!

Voila, the table, on my NEW marvy hardwood floors (thank you Ryan - and Craig - for your brilliant work!).

Look at how neat the grain looks with the strips of green wood which I learned to appreciate from Aliya...by the way, we are told this wood is probably cherry...

You can see the contrast against my new "graphite" floors. I love combining light natural wood with dark wood. It makes for a lighter, less heavy "old man" vibe:

See the grain again:

And voila, the dining room with my new table thus far...floors CHECK, table CHECK...blinds to come soon, paint to be put on the walls (will keep it white), need a place for my planties and perhaps something cool on the wall...will show you the finished product when I get there!

{PS. Thank you, Aliya, for this project, it was so fun to do this together. I'm so glad we got to finish it before you left on your worldy adventure! Thank you, Grandad, for shaping the last three feet for me!! And thank you, Dad Bloomer, for letting us do this in your driveway and also take over your garage. We should probably get fired for the mess we made, but it's all cleaned up now!}