Wedding - A Closer Look

I explained in a previous post where we had gotten our cake topper,

but I want to take a moment to rave about two more favorite pieces to the wedding:

My invitations and "Mrs DeMaio" hanger.

The hanger was another Esty find. 

I visited Esty a lot during wedding planning. There was so much more I wanted to buy and incorporate but didn't want to have too much going on so I narrowed it down to a few.

 

LilaFrances made the wedding hanger. She offers a number of options ("bride", names, etc) but they are slightly restricted by the number of characters. For example, a heart is considered two characters. I still have my hanger and it hangs on a wall in our our master bedroom next one of our wedding photos and a framed copy of our invitations.  

And now the invitations.

Sigh.

I LOVED my invitations.

I ordered our invitations from The Aerialist Press and worked directly with Alexandra who was an absolute dream. She answered my first email within hours and was always quick with each correspondence. I had complete confidence in her company and couldn't be happier with the results. I spent weeks and weeks researching invitations. I really wanted to have letterpress but every place I found them they were incredibly expensive and I couldn't justify spending that kind of money. I eventually gave myself an ultimatum that I had to decide on invites by end of day when I stumbled across the Aerialist Press website. I can't even remember how I found it, but I couldn't believe she had gorgeous and affordable letterpress invitations. 

I remember having to take two trips to the post office to get them. I showed up too early the first day and they were not ready to be picked up. So bright and early Saturday morning I went to the post office (7am?) and waited in line for it to open. I even teared up as I looked them over because things were finally feeling real.

They were just wrapped perfectly into two boxes with a little note from Alexandra.

I still love them and hope I have some other event in the future to make invitations for!

Oh, and here are a few snapshots I took while making my favors/table numbers. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, I used these to designate food choice as well.

Yes, there were a lot. And they took quite some time to make. 

Under age guests were given a jar of white and green candies. 

Except my flower girl was given a jar of only blue M&Ms. Her favorite. 

Our Wedding in Pictures 5.15.10

A peek at just a few of our favorite wedding photos.

Tour de Living Room

While the hubby is still in snoozetown I decided to snap a few photos and give a mini tour of our living room. I'm finally pretty content with the room and may actually leave it alone for a few months (ha, ha).


Here is the room before we even moved in.
I snapped these photos during inspection so I could begin planning asap.

Those vertical blinds still make me shudder.

And as a refresher, here is the room when the walls were red:

And now:

The couch is from Boscovs and I bought it right before moving in. 

Originally $1000.00 but with a 20% off coupon, got it for $800.00

The side and coffee tables are both Ikea.

(you will quickly learn that most of the house is furnished by Ikea)

Here is a closer look at the pillows and throw I bought about three weeks ago.

I think they are the perfect pop of color that I needed after painting over the red.

They are also Lyla-approved if you can see the little blonde hairs all over the black one.

The mirrors above the couch were a Marshalls find.

We originally wanted one long mirror and preferably in a dark wood. We didn't have much lucking finding one that wasn't damaged. When we came across these two babies we  knew they'd look perfect against the red wall. I'm actually really happy with how they look with the new color. (Wall color is Glidden's "Cafe Latte") 

Those curtains are from Ikea, too. However their easy iron-on hem doesn't work so well. 

The hem fell within a few days so I need to sew the hem. TV stand - also Ikea. 

(Hi Lyla!)

This chair and bookcase are to the left of the TV unit. 

The walls ends to the left of the chair as it opens up into our kitchen. 

(We'll tour that room another time.)

The chair was J's (JC Penney I think) and he brought it when we started living together.

The bookcase is Ikea "Markor" collection which we found out has been discontinued!

If you take a closer peek at the bookcase you will see two little wedding pieces.

I've saved a few of my favorite wedding items and scattered them about as little memories. The first are mini champagne bottles that we used as both favors and table markers. Green ribbon indicated chicken and black was beef. I designed the labels myself.

This little knit bride and groom set was an engagement gift made by my cousin.

J is a huge Sox fan (hence the hat) and my wedding colors were originally green and cranberry. I eventually switched to green, black and white. This adorable couple sat on our sweetheart table at our reception.

This side table and chair are to the right of our couch. The chair is actually one of the few pieces left over from the kitchen set my parents had when we grew up. My oldest brother took the rest of the set for one of his apartments. The side table is Ikea and originally was used as a nightstand but I moved it downstairs a few months ago and I think it perfectly fits it's new spot. :)

If you take a peek on the bottle shelf of the side table you will see another wedding memoir. 

This was our cake topper and one of my favorite pieces from the wedding.

I ordered from Cynthia at Red Light Studio.

You can custom make your own based on color, veil style, etc.

Did you notice I also changed the window treatments?

These faux wood blinds were nabbed at Target for an easy $30 or so. 

And of course the wedding photos. One of the biggest reasons for the new color.

That's about it! You've officially had your first mini peek into our home. 

I hope you enjoyed it. :)

Home Sweet Home

I'm anxiously awaiting the hubby's call that he is done work and heading home. I just got back from NY where I had been since Wednesday for work. I haven't seen him since he dropped me off at work Wednesday morning so we are overdue for some QT together. We are hitting up our favorite local spot for dinner. Ole is a tapas restaurant about a mile from our neighborhood. We love it and used to go on a regular basis. Things have been so hectic lately that I don't even remember the last time we went. They have amazing tapas and yummy sangria. Added bonus: the tapas are half priced and the sangria pitchers are only $20 tonight from 9pm until close.  I remember J and I were raving about Ole in front of my grandparents one day and the next time we saw them they told us they went because we said it was so good! They were disappointed at the portions. I don't think my grandparents understand the concept of tapas. :)

I promised pictures of our updated living room and I am not going to disappoint. These pictures aren't the best. I'm still trying to get the hang of this camera. That and it was raining when I took the pictures. But you get the idea. 

I'm very pleased with the results. :)

(Note: Please ignore our ugly carpet. It's berber and a stain trap and it's been here since we moved in. I'm dying to rip it out and replace the carpet with a dark, sexy hardwood. A girl can dream...)

J has off tomorrow (not common on weekends) so we have big plans to take the pup to the bark park! It's supposed to be a beautiful 60 degree day (in November!) and a few hours running around with the other dogs will put this puppy to sleep for the rest of the day. We have no other plans besides that so far and I am A-OK with that. Just a day off together after not seeing each other for three days is good enough for me. 

Meet our pupperoni Lyla:

She is the two year old, German Shepherd mix, spoiled rotten love of our lives. 

She's forcing me to give her a rub down as I type. 

I may also try to work a little more on my latest project. Check out this fab bench I snagged from my neighbor's trash pile. (Ok, and by "I snagged" I mean I made J grab while I waited in the car. At 11:00 at night. After a night out for drinks on a random weekday night.)

I have already sanded it down and put the first coat of white paint on it. I'm very excited and pleased with how it's turning out. I just need to finish it. I'm also debating breaking out my sewing machine and making a pillow/seat cushion out of some left over material from Ikea curtains I purchased and hemmed a while back.  I'm not exactly sure where to put it but J has already claimed it as his "guitar bench." I supposed I can give that to him since he did the dirty work and grabbed the stool.

Back Into the Swing of Things

It is six months to the day since our wedding. 

The absolute best day of my life. 
And the most amazing honeymoon in Bermuda. 

Posts on each of those later.

I realized it has been 7 months since my last post and I am officially kicking myself in the butt to get back to blogging. I recently looked back to my first post and am proud to say that I have accomplished half of my post wedding to-do list. Dining room has been painted along with the back wall of our master bedroom. And I somewhat worked on our outdoor space, although that has become the hub's territory.

At the moment I am the happiest with our most dramatic change. I successfully tackled the not-so-fun task of painting over the two red walls in our living room. The walls were Behr's "Spicy Cayenne" which we painted a little over a year ago. Here was how the room looked shortly after the original paint job:

 

(please excuse the iPhone quality photo)

I absolutely loved the walls after we painted them. It was the perfect pop of color I was craving and just we needed to compliment our couch and other furniture. We chose to only paint the two walls so to not overwhelm the room. You can't see but the living room connects into our kitchen in a somewhat open floorplan. I'll have to post a picture of that later. There is also a slider to the left of the window that leads onto our deck. So in the end, it actually wasn't a lot of wall space painted. 

Well, a few weeks ago I decided I was over the red. I think what really made me decide was after we received prints of our wedding photos. I framed them I wanted to hang them on the wall. I was disappointed that the deep color of the walls took away from the wedding pictures. Since I printed the pictures in black and white they seemed to blend in with the rest of the room and the dark wall. 

Repainting the walls was actually an easier task than I thought. I simply chose the color that the remaining two walls were painted (along with the adjoining kitchen and hallway). Luckily we had just enough left over that with two coats of primer and two coats of paint - bye bye red walls!

I also ditched the red and yellow pillows for some fun, low-key Ikea ones and a bright lime green throw. 

I am really pleased with the outcome.

Pictures tomorrow :) 

Along with a few shots of the other side of the room. 

And these ones will not be taken via iPhone!