Jordan's Dinner: A Few Details

I hope you all had a great Valentine's Day (and birthday, my love...) We definitely had a great night, starting with a delicious dinner at Vinoteca 902, one of our new favorite restaurants located on Market Street in Wilmington. We exchanged Valentine/Birthday gifts once we got home after dinner. Let me take a moment to give a proper shout out to Pinterest. When shopping for my Valentine gift, Jordan actually looked at my Pinterest boards and picked out clothes based on pictures I've been pinning. I was pretty impressed and proud of him for being so creative and thoughtful (and have to mention he did a darn good job picking out clothes). 

Going back to Jordan's birthday, I thought I'd share with you just a few small things I did to prepare for his surprise dinner we had last weekend. Of course you should all know by now that I can't resist a DIY project when I see an opportunity. 

When we first started planning the party, I asked Jordan's parents for a few pictures of him as a child. I originally wasn't quite sure how I was going to use them, but I knew it would be fun to implement them into the decor of the dinner. I had a ton of metal table number holders leftover from our wedding. Since we weren't necessarily 'assigning' tables to our guests, instead of table numbers I made these decorative cards with various pictures from Jordan's childhood.

I also used some scrapbook paper, white paint and leftover jute rope to create this banner. I made it similar to the Valentine Banner I created last week, but cut a different shape for the each piece of bunting. I also attached the paper to the rope using hot glue rather than clothespins. Each piece of bunting was cut by hand and each letter was hand painted using Martha Stewart craft paint.

I also printed a large picture of Jordan on his first birthday (but I don't have a picture of it). Let's just say it looks like Lucy in a high chair with a Train-shaped cake in front of her. I kid you not, those two are identical. I didn't do much else decoration-wise as the room we had dinner in was very small and left little to no room to decorate.

One other fun 'project' I did for Jordan's birthday was asking each of the guests to write a letter to Jordan (in lieu of a birthday card or gift). In that letter, I suggested that they tell Jordan a favorite memory with or a funny story of Jordan. We received a great number of responses, some of which took their own version of the instructions and each created an amazing letter for Jordan. He took them home and read them later that night after the dinner and was touched by the kind words of his family and best friends.

Now that Jordan's birthday and Valentine's Day are both over, I'm excited to shift my attention and focus on the guest room and other projects I hope to complete around the house. Stay tuned for lots of projects and updates coming up soon!

Guest Room Painting - DONE

The day has come! The walls and trim in the guest room have been painted and are finally finished! It took a little longer than I had anticipated, but I still was able to complete the project in just under two weeks. 

Just for comparison's sake, here is the progression of the wall painting, starting with how the room used to look with the dark green walls:

and then after the primer,

after the first coat of paint,

and now here is how the room now looks with the second coat on the walls and the bed pushed back against the window. 

I wish this picture gave justice to how bright the guest room now looks, and even how much bigger the space seems with the lighter, brighter walls. 

I'll admit that I haven't painted inside the closet just yet. I'm actually debating what I'd like to do with the closet. It's only a guest room and we don't necessarily need the space for clothing, since our guests usually only stay 1-2 nights. I've considered making some sort of storage system, or even transforming it into one of those "offices in a closet" I've seen a lot recently.

You can see my new gold ottoman I scored from Target. I was anxious to see how it looked in the all-white room, but I'm not sure where it will permanently reside.

For this upcoming weekend, I am hoping to get a lot of the decor planned and started. I'm going to do some thrifting at a few of my favorite spots and find some great gold frames for a wall collage, and hopefully plan some art to go in those frames. I also have an old black "window" mirror I bought from Target over a year ago that I'm thinking of refinishing in either a gold or white.

I started to refinish my wine crate into a storage box last week. The crate has been stained and all that is left is drilling the holes and attaching the rope handles. I can't wait to show you all. I'm loving how it's turning out. Textile-wise, a curtain rod and curtain is needed for guest privacy at night, as well as some great accent pillow.

Look forward to some progress updates next week!

Happy Birthday Jordan!

Valentine, shmalentine. For me, today is so much more than Valentine's Day.

Today is Jordan's birthday.. and not just any birthday. The big 3-0.

In honor of his 30th birthday, I thought it was fitting to share with you just 30 of the millions of reasons why I love this man.

1. He is my best friend.

2. Six and a half years later and he still opens the car door for me every time we go somewhere.

3. He is an amazing father who has no problem playing Mr. Mom when I'm at work during the day. I'm pretty sure I fell in love with him all over again the first moment I saw him with Lucy. I have no doubt that he was truly meant to be a father.

4. He puts up with all my crazy projects and constant changes to the house. He even offers to help with them.

5. He always ends every phone conversation, no matter how quick, with "I love you."

6. He laughs at my jokes, no matter how bad they are.

7. He notices when we need 'us' time and does what it takes to make it happen, even if that means a 2am date when he gets home from work.

8. When it snows he always cleans my car off for me before I leave for work.

9. He loves my crazy family as much as they love him and will wake up early just to go to brunch at my grandparents' house even when he worked the night before and didn't get to bed until 3am.

10. I love his family and how great they are to me.

11. Before we go to a concert he always puts the band's set list on my iPod for me.

12. Butch Walker - "Don't Move". He IM'ed this song to me (remember AIM? Before the days of Facebook) after the first night we hung out just the two of us. I still love it.

13. He told my best friend he loved me and was going to marry me two weeks of meeting me. Little did I know... 

14. He tells me I'm beautiful, even when I'm unshowered, wearing leggings and a tshirt and exhausted from watching Lucy all day.

15. He is my number one cheerleader and is so incredibly supportive of this silly blog. He shares it with people all the time and was the one who finally convinced me to show it to our family and friends after hiding it for almost a year.

16. He makes me laugh harder than anyone.

17. He is a foodie and loves to go out to new places. He appreciates a good meal from a good restaurant.

18. He also loves going to Grottos for beer, wings and pizza. Or Border Cafe for some good old margaritas and Mexican.

19. He was so nervous when we started dating that it took him several dates before he kissed me. I tease him about it now, but I really think it was very sweet.

20. He holds my hand and walks slow with me when it's icy or snowy and I think it's a good idea to wear 4 inch boots.

21. I am so incredibly proud of him and what he has accomplished both personally and professionally in the years I've known him.

22. He works so hard every single day to provide for his family. (And never complains about it.)

23. The man knows how to clean and appreciates keeping our house nice. He isn't afraid of dishes, laundry, diapers, etc.

24. He understands when I need 'me' time and will take care of Lucy so that I can run errands, do blog things, work out, or even just take a long shower.

25. He puts up with my cat. If you know how much Jordan hates my cat, you know this is huge.

26. He puts up with me.

27. He doesn't mind that I'm a homebody and is totally cool with just staying home on a Friday or Saturday night with me (and beers, of course).

28. He gives me honest opinions, feedback and genuine advice.

29. He has great taste. My man can dress and I'd trust him to pick out clothes for me. 

30. Because he loves me. Plain and simple.

Happy 30th Birthday, Jordan! 

DIY Valentine Decor - Day 5

Today you get a treat: two posts for Valentine's day.

I was still mentally catching up from our busy weekend and didn't have a chance to prepare for yesterday's final DIY Valentine Decor post. On Saturday Jordan's parents and I threw him a surprise 30th birthday dinner. We invited our family and friends and had them waiting at Capers & Lemons, a local restaurant where Jordan thought he was going to have dinner with just me and his parents. Well... he had an idea something was brewing. When we arrived, Jordan was greeted by 40 of our closest family and friends. It was a success nonetheless and Jordan was thrilled. After dinner our friends took him out to his favorite bar and just had a great time all around. I even survived my first night without Lucy! (More on that when we get to her 7 month milestones.)

Back to the final day of DIY Valentine Decor.

My second to last craft is little framed Valentine message.

I'm sure you have all seen variations of this on other blogs, or Pinterest.

I won't take credit for coming up with this one on my own.

To create this, I took an old frame I had stashed away from the dollar store, some Valentine themed tissue paper, and Scrabble letters. (Ok, I cheated a bit and bought the Scrabble letters from the craft store rather than using real tiles from the game.)

I wrapped the tissue paper around the glass and put it back into the frame so that the tissue paper was exposed and the glasss was covered. After I chose my Valentine message, I used my hot glue gun to attach the letters to the framed tissue paper.

Easy enough, right?

There were a variety of versions I played around with before settling on a simple "I Love You."

My last project was a take on a previous craft I did back in November when I guest blogged over at Neat & Tangled. I made owl shaped silverware holders using felt and embroidery thread. (Check out the link to Danielle's blog to find out how I made them!) I took a spin on that project and made similar, heart-shaped silverware holders. These were incredibly simple to create and took less than 10 minutes each.

Well, there you have it. I finally decorated for a holiday!

I honestly had a lot of fun coming up with and doing these crafts.

I'm looking forward to the next holiday I get to plan more DIY fun.

I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did.

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day!

Stay tuned for another special post later today. :)

DIY Valentine Decor Week - Day 4: Candle Holders

(Sorry for missing a post yesterday. Things have been a little busy this week.)

Today's Valentine Craft was an easy "use what you have" project.

I saved these frosted glass votive holders that were leftover from my bridal shower, knowing that I would one day put them to use. They originally had a sticker on them that said "Jessica & Jordan" with our wedding date. I peeled the stickers off and they were as good as new.

I grabbed the glue gun and Mod Podge along with a number of leftover things from previous crafts and got to work dressing these votives up for Valentine's Day.

The last votive you may remember from when I wrote this post about the book page votives I made using mod podge. All of these were super easy to create and took less than 10 minutes a piece to create (except for drying time on the gold painted votive).

I love how the look with the candles lit.

Can you see the romantic vintage theme I have linking my decor?

The dark red, the old book pages, jute rope, delicate lace, and paper cut hearts.

I'll be rounding out the Valentine decor on Monday with my last few crafts.

Have a great weekend!!