White Chocolate, White Coffee or Swiss Coffee

Like I've mentioned, nearly everything in our house was original when we first bought it in 2007. The house was built in 1997, so updates are needed. I am pretty sure that the fireplace has been painted at some point, but the green fireplace with our gray/blue walls is nasty and not working. I decided that an off-white color would look good, a color that would be similar to the cabinet in our kitchen. I thought this would help ensure that two big "pieces" in our family room/kitchen area would compliment one another and not compete.

I also wanted a color that would be a white that we could use on other things in our house. So if moulding or doors need to be painted white in the future, everything will tie together. And so far, it has worked. Our fireplace and now the spindles on our stairs are both Swiss Coffee by Behr.

Before painting the fireplace, I checked a couple of blogs about how to paint brick. Some of their tips proved to be helpful, a couple of other tips did not. For instance, they said to use a pretty nappy roller. This = good. Also shared, was you can use any finish you want. I chose flat. This = bad. I would now do a satin or eggshell finish and plan to do so in the future when I go over the entire fireplace again. This will make it way easier to clean and won't allow gunk and makeup to settle into the paint.

It was also shared that I didn't need to use a primer if the brick that I didn't need a primer if the brick had already been painted. This = good, though I still needed three coats of paint. After two coats, I discovered that the little pin holes were not filling up with color and some of the chunks also looked odd. I decided to fill them with caulking, then painted the third coat over everything. This help a lot and made everything look smooth and uniform.

The entire fireplace took a coat of paint.

Then we have painted our new staircase moulding and spindles with the Swiss Coffee, for this one we bought the Primer and Paint in one since it was raw wood. I have since read that it is best to do a wood conditioner on the raw wood so it takes the paint better and the knots don't end up coming through the paint color.

Behr Soft Denim for Kitchen and Family Room

Spruced up our plain white walls in time for my sister's bridal shower that was being held at my house. Man, it was tough finding the right color for our place though. The goal? Gray/blue walls that seem to be so popular right now. There are so many shades and each look different once on the wall and in the space.

The color was to be used in our entry way from the garage, the family room, and the kitchen. It doesn't have a lot of natural light in those areas, so I didn't want a color to make it too dark and cave like.

Look at that horrible carpet and green fireplace, we need color and updates badly!

The color I chose is part of the new Primer and Paint line from Behr at Home Depot, Soft Denim. Though I thought it leans toward the blue side of things, I feel it was the best color that still seemed like a neutral with our couch, decorations, trim, white cabinets, and wood furniture.

Mid painting, with one coat on the right side and none on the left.

Once the entire space was done, I feel like I am really happy with it. It does make our counters look a bit on the pink side, but they need to be replaced anyway. I love the color with my bronze curtain rod (score from Big Lots) and I think it will look great once I paint that green fireplace white.

I've even tested some other paint colors that look gray/blue on my walls since, but they always come out more on the gray side, so it proves that I made the right color choice. One friend came over and immediately asked what colors my walls are. She shared that she has been looking for a gray/blue color forever and really likes ours. Yay! Friend approved too.

Personalize Cocktail Napkins

My friend Ali got married over the weekend and she had so many wonderful and creative ideas. I had personalized the cocktail napkins for our wedding in 2007, but Ali took it to a whole new level. She ordered several different colors and for each one had a fun saying like, "To a lifetime of eating burgers" and "After 439 miles."

So cute and great way to help wedding guests get to know your relationship a little more than they may have before.

Baby Girl Shower Invitations Mix-Match

Recently I made 50 invitations for my sister-in-law's baby shower. We know she is having a girl, so went with some cute girl phrases and poems. We made three different styles since I had a little of this and a little of that in my scrapbook and stationary drawers. Some of the paper was from my own wedding invitations.

 "Thank Heaven for Little Girls."

I love the raspberry and baby pink colors together, along with the foot stamp. Too cute.

What do you think? Also, check out these websites for additional wedding information. They are good to help you find favors and other used wedding decorations. The Wedding Belle Favors is a local business that my friends David and Amy's sister owns. The other is a place (Recycle Your Wedding) to put your wedding decorations up for sale that others might want to purchase for their own wedding.

Love Bird Cake

I went to a bridal shower for my friend Maegan. Check out this cute cake that was at her shower. I guess Maegan saw it on-line at Portland's The Bakery Bar and loved it. It is banana bread with bourbon chocolate mousse frosting. When her BF (who threw the shower) talked to Maegan's fiance about the shower he mentioned the cake to her.

Unique Wedding Proposal

Hopefully, you can read this ok. I thought this was such a great idea for a wedding proposal. An old coworker of mine, her boyfriend came up with this idea. Knowing they were taking a trip to the beach, he created a playlist on his iPod and had them listen to all the songs while driving. Then he asked her to look at the list and look at the first letter of each song. It spells out Will You Marry Me, going down. Do you see it? Thought it was so cute and fun!

Oh and in case you were wondering, they made it to the beach and had a wonderful time.

Our Fall Wedding Decorations

We were married in a beautiful historic building in downtown Vancouver. Even though The Academy is beautiful on its own, I still wanted to add some "Wack touches". My mom, sisters, and I spent a lot of time planning the decorations for the ceremony, measuring the altar, measuring the length of the aisle, counting candles...you name it, we talked about or planned for it.

I thought I would share some photos taken of our wedding day site, many of these photos are from friends and family members as I didn't think to ask our professional photographer to take pictures of the decor.

The aisle was lined with fall leaves on vines and at every other pew was a lantern with a battery operated candle inside. Loose leaves were also scattered along the entire aisle. I found all the leaves on Craigslist for $20! The gal I bought them from also used them for her wedding.

On either side of the sanctuary are two alcoves where typically "rental arrangements" are used by brides. We tried to come up with our own "window display", so we wouldn't have to rent arrangements from The Academy. We came up with a fall display using lanterns, vases, tree branches from Mom and Dad's yard, and fall leaves. A couple of the stands for the lanterns were indoor plant containers turned upside down. In the end, we spent a little more than if we had rented, but we get to keep everything!

After watching the Sex in the City episode where Miranda gets married, I wanted a bouquet like hers. Her bouquet was fallish, it wasn't too floraly and it seemed to look more natural and not forced together...if there is even such a thing. My mom took the photo of Miranda's bouquet to our local farmer's market and talked with a vendor there; he said he could make a bouquet like that for my bridemaids.

I was very happy with the way the bouquets turned out. The arrangements were more burgundy, than what the picture above shows, and each bouquet was tied with a light pink ribbon. My wrist corsage was made by my friend Ali's mom. She made my two wrist corsages for my high school junior and senior proms, so it was special to have her make my wedding corsage.

Here is a picture after the ceremony with my bridesmaids and their bouquets. Don't they look great?!

Before guests entered the sanctuary, we had a small table set up with the programs and some decor (of course which included a lantern). Stuffed inside each program was our guestbook photobooth card for folks to fill out while they waited for the wedding to start.

Look at all those programs my family and bridesmaids were lucky enough to help me fold and tie a ribbon around! Kelsey really was the brains behind the program, she took my vision and made it happen on the computer.

The altar was the only place we could have real candles lit and I wanted the entire thing filled! Candle holders from Mom's and Grandma's crystal collections were used. It looked so pretty and created quite the mood when it was lit entirely. It worked out well to have so many candles as three of my cousins and three of Evan's cousins were able to light them all pretty quickly.

A special touch was added to the altar, by my mom, without me knowing it. She placed special stones with words like Hope, Trust, Love on them, around the base of the Unity candle (candle seen above in the center of picture). I noticed them as soon as we lit the Unity candle during the ceremony, it was so sweet of her to do that!

The stones are now mixed in with decorative rocks which surround candles placed inside a round plate that is displayed in our home throughout the year.

While planning the ceremony decor, I didn't want to keep the look and feel just inside the sanctuary. We broke a rule by placing decorations on the stairs leading up to the sanctuary! We placed Mason jars on every other stair. A fall leaf and a fall foliage piece were tied to each jar with raffia. Inside was another fake candle.

I just wish I had a picture of how the stairs looked; I only have a small snippet of it on video!

Also as guests came up the stairs, they saw a small display inside an alcove. My guess is this space used to be windows, but have since been closed off. We placed a photo of Evan and I from a few months before the wedding along with a bronze believe sign, fall leaves, and a lantern.

Close-up of some of the candles afterward, you can see they were all placed on a brown runner made especially for the altar. Another believe sign was placed among the candles, it was given to me as a shower gift.

There was so much to set up in the few hours we had, that we couldn't have done it without our fantastic family members and friends.