Happy Halloween

One week until Halloween, I cannot believe how fast the year has gone. It has been a busy and exciting year. These days it seems I rarely get the chance to sit and write anything, so I thought I would share some of my Halloween decorating with you. I am very much in the Halloween and fall mood since we spent a week in Boston last week. We traveled to Cape Cod and the fall decoration on those beautiful homes was inspirational.

My favorite Cape Cod city was Chatham. What a dreamy place (since houses are a few million each, it will definitely be a dream!)!. We arrived into Chatham in the early afternoon and were greeted by the cutest church, with a pumpkin patch out the front :)
We spent the entire weekend in love with every city we visited..I'm already planning to go for a longer vacation there some time next year :) The fall leaves were not at their peak, I read an article in a newspaper in Providence which said the colors are delayed this year due to the unseasonal warm weather. I hope the leaves in Central Park have peaked as we will be in New York next week and that is always a highlight of the trip to New York in the fall.

I haven't done a lot of decorating as we will be in New York most of next week, but I brought out my favorite white pumpkin which I got from a talented lady on ETSY who made it for me with a custom "BOO" (you can also have your name carved into the pumpkin if you prefer).

The Mint Julep cups are now filled with pine cones instead of my spring-look green decorations, and the cranberry candles fill the house with the smell of Autumn!
My mum sent me this amazing paper decoration that her friend makes,

and I teamed it with my Martha Stewart spider garland to give it that Halloween feel. If you want one of these, you can buy them on Amazon (HERE)

Happy Hallo-week decorating :)

Bring on Easter!

Happy April, it's again been a long time between posts for me, something about being busy :)

With one week until my parents arrive, I have been busy cleaning and decorating the house for their visit, and since it is almost Easter, the house is full of eggs and bunnies! I'm leaving the Easter egg painting until my parents are here as we have always traditionally done this together, so I will post about that later. For now I thought I would share how I have decorated our apartment, and where I got all of my decoration pieces.

I was super excited when I opened my Easter decorating box and found my Robins Eggs, they came from Pottery Barn (click here for link). I adore these, and saw that Pottery Barn has them again this year, probably because they are so pretty.

On our door we have a green wreath that hangs there all year round and is decorated for every season and holiday (I have an obsession with wreaths). This past year I was super excited when my mum sent me an awesome egg-string garland (thanks mum). I simply tied it in front of the wreath (which came from Pottery Barn).

Going to Pottery Barn is always dangerous for our bank account, I adore that store! I went in a month ago and could not resist this set of Easter eggs that spell out "Happy Easter" Click here for link. I guess you should put them all in a row, but I split up my "Happy" and "Easter" so I could have them in different parts of our apartment.

I think they look great hanging on the "Pussy Willow" branches. I always have these branches in my vases at home, they are much more appropriate at Easter time of course, when I dress them up with hanging Easter eggs.

The sequined bunnies on the shelf make up what I call my "Disco Easter" corner. They are from another favourite store of ours, West Elm (click here for link). When I saw them earlier this they were on sale, that's why we have five :)

West Elm also had a set of Easter plates with great Easter designs on them, I am not sure if they still have these, as I got these earlier in the year!

The dining table in our apartment always gets a whole bunch of stuff I love placed on it, so we always have trouble finding room for plates...my poor husband! Well, this year is no different, here's what I created:

The bunnies under the glass domes I bought online from Lillian Vernon (click here for link). I am not sure where I bought the domes, but many home decor stores have them.

Recently I have also become very obsessed with mint julep cups, not for drinking, but for decoration. If you want a recipe for mint julep, Martha has one that looks great, click here for the link. The cups are simply beautiful, so I had to have some, and found these great cups on Beau Coup (click here for link). I also got some wooden eggs on ETSY, and painted them green, then put it all together with white shredded paper for a cute table decoration.

That's pretty much it, except one thing...our wall decorations are not immune from my egg decorating either!

Hope you got some inspiration for your decorating! I have to say that for our house, Easter just isn't Easter without chocolate bunnies and eggs (and these adorable carrots from Lindt Chocolates)...yum! These are available at most large chain grocery stores if you want some :)

Happy Easter decorating!!

It's almost V-Day!

Image from the US Cranberries website

Hello dear friends, I know have been away for some time, but I am so glad to be back! Happy 2011, hope the year is off to a great start for you all. It's been an amazing year so far for us, I cannot wait to see what the rest of 2011 holds!! As I think about my Valentine (my lovely husband Daniel) I want to say a huge congratulations to him on opening up his photography studio this past month, exciting times and much success!!

I'm sure you're all aware of what holiday is coming up in 3 days...how could you possibly miss all of the red and pink heart decorations everywhere...lol :) This year I thought I would seek out unusual V-Day decorations and gift ideas, inspired by a link sent to me by my dear friend Arna Banana (thanks AB!). Arna recently sent me a link to a fantastic idea...if you want to give someone your heart this V-Day, you can literally do so...well, A HEART, not specifically yours...check out this fabulous "Anatomical Heart"cake gift idea at "Lily Vanilli Cake Fight".


I recently found out...thanks Honey...that in the USA people don't say "Love Heart" to identify the graphical representation that we all recognize as being a heart..apparently the Americans simply use "Heart". My husband laughs when I say "Love Heart", but I just can't help it! We Australians like to distinguish what type of heart we are talking about...how do you know which one it is if you just say "Heart"? Anyways, since receiving Arna's email I thought I would stick with the "Anatomical Heart" theme for this year's V-Day!

There are many cool V-Day cards with this theme that I found. Being a huge fan of pop-up cards, this is one of my favourites:


You can buy it on ETSY from "tracyhong"....very cool!

Ok, so who doesn't need a million bags??? And who wouldn't want their own anatomical heart tote bag to carry around on V-Day? Well, if you want one, then Zazzle has the perfect gift for you...I think this is pretty fun!

ETSY is one of my favourite sites EVER! I browse that site more often than I care to admit, but they really have some fantastic stuff, and most of the time it will be a one-off original, and who doesn't love that? Here are some of my favourite items for this theme from ETSY:

Crochet heart anyone? This cute gift idea comes from "AnOptimisticCynic", she has some fantastic stuff, check out her shop if you have a strange sense of humour like me :)

I really like this beautiful hand blown miniature "Heart in a Jar" necklace from "kivaford"


For those who may need an outfit for that special evening, how about a "skeleton beating heart" dress from "repurposefulpunk"?


Now, not everyone cal pull-off that dress (or wants to), so if your Valentine is a little more conservative, perhaps a "patchwork heart pincushion" from "amazingowl" is more to your taste?


And for those with a sweet tooth, "Think Geek" (another favourite site of mine!) has some delicious looking anatomical heart candy for you!


Happy V-Day everyone <3

Snowflakes galore!

Having received my 2010 Swarovski snowflake ornament today (picture above), I thought I would put up some pictures of the paper snowflakes I made for the house. I went ahead and also took some images so that I could post instructions on how to make snowflakes of your own! Enjoy!!

Paper Snowflake instructions:

1. Take a piece of paper and cut it if you need to, to ensure you have a square

2. Fold the square into a triangle and then fold 1/3 of the triangle across like this:

3. Fold the other 1/3 over across the first 1/3

4. Cut the top off

5. Begin to cut any design you like, this is fun as you can use your imagination.

I found a website this week that did this, so I decided to include images of both the designs that I cut, and the subsequent snowflake pattern that you get with the design (in each set, the first image is the cut-out and the image immediately following it is the snowflake). Have fun with it!

Happy decorating!!

Decorating sans Tree!

Image courtesy of Martha Stewart

Bring on Christmas! I love this time of year, but boy has it snuck up on me!! I cannot believe how quickly the year has flown, so much so that there are no weekends left for me to go to our other home in St.Pete to pick up the Christmas tree, so this year I am decorating WITHOUT a Christmas Tree...this is a first!! This is also a first for my blog, but I have already made all the things I am blogging about, so I have photos of my actual hand made decorations...feeling very organized!

Ok, so I decided to cut snowflakes out of paper and then I realized that I could also make a Christmas tree out of paper. I stumbled upon a great Christmas tree design which you can find HERE ! You can use the instructions on their website or you can follow what I did.

1. First take 4 large pieces of paper and fold them in half lengthwise

2. Glue the outside half of one of the pieces of paper to the outside half of another

3. Continue this until you have glued all of the pieces together and you can open this structure up so that it stands on its own as below

4. Fold all of the pieces so that they all collapse down into a half piece, then sketch your desired design onto the paper, the design below is from the website I mentioned above

5. Once you have cut out the desired design,open up the tree so it stands up...voila!

This design has a more traditional look, if you prefer a more simple look, you can try this tree which has more basic lines.


Popcorn and cranberry garland

This year is my first try at making this great decoration. Since I don't have a tree, I have to create more imaginative decorations for this year. I was so excited to try this, and now that I have eaten a mountain of popcorn, and it's all finished, I am super excited!

1. Pop some plain white popcorn (no butter toping) and leave this out overnight. Fresh popcorn is too brittle, day old popcorn is softer and easier to work with.

2. Buy some fresh cranberries


3. Once you are ready to work, make sure you are wearing clothes that you do not mind getting dirty as cranberries can leak red juice all over you, and work on a surface that is non-porous

4. Use thick string (thread) long enough for your garland and begin by threading the string (thread) onto a needle, double the string over and tie the end in a knot.

5. Thread a cranberry onto the string and ensure the knot can hold it in place. Thread popcorn, then alternate these in the pattern you desire.

6. When you have reached the desired length, tie the end then hang on your tree!
As I mentioned, I don't have a tree this year, so I am placing mine on my wreath!

Pretty easy huh?

I wanted to include one more picture. I bought these gloves in a gift shop at the "Lodge" in Unicoi State Park, Georgia. They go so well with my red/white Christmas decorations this year!

Happy Christmas decorating!!