On the hunt. . .for a Dining Room Rug!

I'm on the hunt to find a lovely rug for my new dining room. I'm afraid to start painting until I find all the components - the rug, the paint, the fabrics. Since the rug will most likely be the most costly of all the items, I feel like I should probably find it first. . .

I'm envisioning one in an orange or persimmon color with white damask, toile, fern, antique design or possibly floral designs on it. I found a few I liked but of course they won't work because of one reason or another. . . so I'm on the hunt. . . give me your thoughts!

Here is one I've found so far. . . This is a definite option and better yet its on sale right now too! Its the from Ballard Designs. Thoughts?!?

I've found a new obsession. . .Madeline Weinrib is fantastic! Check out a few of her rugs that I heart more than anything else! Now I just need to find a vendor who will sell one to me! Check out her website - I'm obsessed with her, I just can't find someone to sell me one!!

I found a few more. . .Check these out from Horchow. . . I sort of love them too!

SO what will I do?!? I love them all. . .and I'm quite indecisive. Thoughts?!?!

Take the Plunge with MacBeth!

So you've been eyeing those beautiful pieces from the MacBeth Collection that I blogged about earlier? Now is the time to take the plunge. . .

Today I received this lovely coupon in my email and I had to share it with you all. . . I blogged about the MacBeth Collection a few weeks back and a number of you commented on how much you loved them! Now is the time to purchase one for yourself or for someone else! Check out this great deal! Enjoy. . .

Just simply enter the code "VIP" at checkout and you're set! Enjoy. . .

She blogged about us. . . WOW!

NEWSFLASH!! CHECK THIS OUT!!

This is so exciting. . . an event planner from Grand Rapids, Michigan blogged about Ben and I!! She recently saw pictures of our wedding from our fabulous photographer, Lisa Kae, and she decided to blog about our wedding!

I was so touched. . . for a couple of reasons.

First. I absolutely adore Aletha's ideas and her blog.

Two. I can't believe a wedding planner blogged about our big day. (YEAH!!)

Check out Miss Aletha's Blog - her business name is Pearls Events - and her blog is unmatched. I absolutely love it and check it just about every day. . . so for her to blog about us, was so special!

Thanks, Lisa for showcasing our photos to Miss Aletha and also to Aletha, for blogging about our big day!

Enjoy. . .

A Revived Love Affair. . .with mercury glass!

I have a new found love affair with mercury glass. I it is so classic yet so trendy - all in one! I'm sort of obsessed. . . These are a few of the items I've got my eyes on currently. . . enjoy!

Check out these mercury glass urns from wisteria - they are beautiful!

Check out this other great find from Wisteria - it fits perfectly with my recent bird love too! For only $25, this will be a great addition to my new dining room!(Thanks Miss Jessica from Under a Green Roof)

My girlfriend, Leslie of Sweet Bride, just recently received this amazing cake stand at her bridal shower a couple weeks ago! I oohed and aaahed over it then - and I've been searching for it ever since! Its from PotteryBarn - but of course they no longer sell it! Bummer for me - but Yeah for Miss Leslie! Its the perfect addition to anyones collection. . .

If you fancy a more modern approach, check out this little lamp from Crate and Barrel.

I'm currently on the hunt for some candlesticks similar to these - a fellow blogger found these for herself and I've been obsessed ever since I saw them! She got them at TJ Maxx - can you even believe something as lovely as these is housed in a store near all of us?!? My goodness, I can't wait to go find mine! Check out these stunning candle sticks! I adore them, please let me buy you and place you in my lovely house oh little candle sticks. . .

If you find any other great finds with mercury glass - let me know! I'm on the hunt. . .

a new job requires a new office. . .

I recently accepted a new position with my company - I'll be traveling quite a lot, but I'll also be working from my home office on my days off the road, here in Indy! Just today, my wonderful husband, said that we should probably make sure our "office" is ready for this new position. . . YEAH, this means more decorating!!

Here are a few pictures of what I may be dreaming of. . .

Check out this lovely idea from Pottery Barn - I'm sort of obsessed with this desk below. . .LOVE IT!

This one from ballard designs is also lovely. . .

That's all I've got for now. . . has anyone seen any others out there? I'm on the hunt now! Enjoy your day. . .

Easy Rosemary, Balsamic and Peach Salmon

This is a delightful dish (that I promised looked better on the plate than it does in this terrible picture!) I threw together this evening for dinner and it was a hit!

Rosemary, Balsamic and Peach Salmon:

Ingredients:
- Salmon Filets (2 filets)
- Crushed Rosemary (1/2 teaspoon approx.)
- Peaches (fresh or canned) (1 peach for 2 filets)
- Balsamic Vinegar (6 Tablespoons)
- White Table Wine (3 Tablespoons
- Lemon Juice (2 teaspoons)
- Honey (2 teaspoons)
- Olive Oil

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cover cookie sheet with aluminum foil or use a small amount of olive oil on your cookie sheet. Peel peaches and cut into small squares. Mix white wine, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice and honey in small bowl. Place cut up peach pieces into the mixture. Let the peaches soak for 5-10 minutes. Place salmon filets on aluminum foil covered and baking sheet. Brush salmon with balsamic mixture and spoon peaches on top of salmon. Sprinkle each filet with crushed rosemary. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes in your preheated 350 degree oven. Fish should be light pink in color and flaky. Serve with spinach salad, fresh steamed veggies and garlic mashed potatoes!

Delicious. . .

White. white. White.

In the last edition of Oprah at Home Magazine (which she sadly ended recently) they showed different ways to spruce up your space with a can of white spray paint and some old, antique, slightly overwhelming items! I have seen plenty of these items lately and ever since I read the article, I've been dreaming of the day I finish my dining room and decorate above my antique cabinet with some lovely "white" items. . .

Check these pages out from the recent magazine and let me know your thoughts. . . I sort of love the idea, so don't be too harsh! (ha!)

(Left: vintage ornate vases, Middle: traditional wooden lamp, painted.

Right: Favorite! birds. . . I'm on the hunt)

Can't you just picture some lovely white birds standing out prominently against my beautiful navy walls?!? I can. . .and I can't wait!

Beware if you live in Indy, I'm on the lookout for these lovely little finds - vases, birds, lamps, bunnies (easter, maybe?!?). They are mine. . . Just teasing!

daydreaming of my dark navy dining room. . .

I've been working on some plans for my dining room. I love our large dining room and the space that it provides - but lately I've been dreaming of a new look! I want to be daring, but also brighten our house up a bit with some fun fabrics and vibrant dark walls.

We have a large formal dining room that is arts and crafts inspired with a white plate rail around the entire room! Currently the walls are two toned with a chocolate brown color on the bottom and a dark khaki color on the top portion. We have all of our trim in bright white.

(Current dining room colors )

We have a few antiques and a lovely dining room set that I think could be much better positioned with a new wall color!

(One of our antique cabinets, one that I think could look much better

against a different wall color.)

(Another view of the room and a different china cabinet.)

We have a large wingback chair that was Ben's grandfathers, he has plenty of wonderful memories of crawling all over his granddad on this little gem, so he was excited to have been given the chair when his grandfather went to heaven last year - the only problem is that it is in need of some love and a new look!

Needless to say, I've got some decisions to make and some work to do! I have a few things Here is my list below. . .

1. Find a lovely rug for this large space.

2. Find a beautiful fabric so we can have the wingback chair reupholstered.

3. Find a wonderful coordinating fabric that will tie in with the rug and the arm chair, so I can recover the dining room chairs.

4. Paint the walls a perfect dark navy color! (YEAH!! Can't you just picture it now?!?)

5. Decide if I should paint above the plate rail a slight variation of the navy, a drastic variation from the navy or simply paint it the same navy!?!

Here are a few of my inspirations. . .

Check out a few of the pictures below that are serving as my inspiration for the wall color!

Love. Love. Love.

Here are a few of the fabric choices I've found so far, I'm still on the hunt - so any advice would be fantastic!

I'm waiting to make any decisions until I find a few rugs I love as well. . . any thoughts?!?!

Simply Creative Cards. . .

I recently realized that of my talented girlfriends has started making her own stationary and greeting cards! She has always been extremely creative and artistic. Christina is passionate about stamping and papercrafts and she makes the most delightful cards!

Recently she started working on her Halloween Cards. . . Lets talk about how "on it" she really is - honestly I can't even send a birthday card out on time. . .and she's already making her Halloween cards! Love her.

Check out this little Frankenstein! So adorable. . .

Here is a little more classic jack-o-lantern card with trick or treat note on the inside and outside!
(outside on top, inside on bottom)

Lastly, my favorite one of all! Check out this little mummy card - it has real strips of paper to make the front and let me tell you its adorable!

Regardless, check these lovely little cards out. . . oh and if you are interested in ordering a few, shoot me an email and I'll get you Christina's contact info! I'm hoping she'll decide to put things on etsy soon - but we'll see!! She is simply so talented. . .

Its amazing what a little cupcake will do. . .

My sweet, lovely sister, Sarah, bought me the most delicious red velvet cupcake from the flying cupcake the other day! We are currently dog sitting my sissy's sweet little shitzu, bam-bam! (Yes thats his adorable name - we call him bammy!) This was her thank you for watching him. This splendid little treat is not what my diet dictated, but it surely was what the doctor ordered during this crazy, hectic work week. Thank you my sweet little sissy for bringing this delightful goody into my house

and for making our day!!

Sometimes its the littlest things that make you happy - and today it surely was the cupcake!

Yummy. . .

Candy Buffet = Delicious, Sweet, Fun!

Wedding Candy Buffet:

We had an elaborate candy buffet at our wedding reception and it was a HUGE hit! I have seen plenty of wedding blogs, pictures and websites boasting about candy buffets and I thought it would be fun to do one as well. I thought some people would think it was cute and others would bring good bags full of delightful retro candies home to their kids. Never in a million years did I think the Candy Buffet would be such a hit! Our guests raved about it and thought it was the neatest thing, so we were happy with the outcome! If you are thinking about having a candy buffet at your wedding - here are a few helpful hints. . . (all pics by Lisa Kae)

Build your Vision: Make sure you start with a vision of what you want your Candy Buffet to look like and what the overall outcome is going to be? Will it serve as a "favor" for your guests or simply as a fun activity throughout the reception? What will your color vision be? Do you want all jars to be the same height? Do you want the jars to be on various levels? Do you want to label the jars? Do you want to use the same color scheme as your wedding, or switch it up? How many people will partake in your candy buffet? Will you give them bags, boxes, or simply hope that they nibble on these goodies throughout the reception? All things to start to think about when planning a candy buffet!

Choose a Theme: I think it is important to decide on the theme for your candy buffet. Our theme simply matched our wedding colors - so we used mainly bright colored candies that related to our green, coral, and navy theme. I've seen some candy buffets that are retro themed - where they only use retro candies. Often times the theme revolves around one color - maybe you choose all red candies - so every candy is a different shade of red. Maybe your theme is simply in the ribbons you tie around the jars? Or how about a play on words theme - this was a cute one where the bride and groom did a play on words with the names of the various candy (ie - red hots = wedding, love, etc.)

Establish a Budget: After shopping around for jars, candy, packaging, and the labeling materials you can easily see that having a Candy Buffet is simply not pocket change. I think its important to establish a budget and stay within it.

Buy the Jars: We purchased the majority of our apothecary jars at Michaels. They have a huge selection of various jars and they consistently place them on sale! Usually once every two weeks Michaels runs a coupon for 50% off of one item, so you spend $15 per jar instead of $30, etc. We had a fairly large candy buffet, so we utilized these coupons every single time they came out! (In fact, just to stay within budget (ha! as if we did! ha!) we would often times buy multiple Sunday papers so we could all go buy these lovely jars at half price - crazy I know!)

- Michaels - Great Craft store that carries a large selection of glass apothecary jars

Pick your Candy: Let the fun begin! We ordered the majority of our candy online through various websites. Some are listed below - we had great success with all of them. In an effort to work within the budget, I googled for coupon codes for each site, most of them have great coupon offers out there - its just a matter of finding them! How much candy do you need? I used the knot and google to find out how much candy to use, I polled other brides and then went with the amounts that others had said worked for them! For me, it worked out very well.

- Candy Warehouse - They were fabulous to work with!

- Metro Candy - This was my personal favorite - they offer 10% off your first order too!

- Oh Nuts - This is where we ordered our Jordan almonds from - delicious!

- Candy Favorites.com - This is where we ordered our fun colored big lollipops!

Labeling: We chose to label our candy buffet items with small silver frames. In these frames we simply typed the names of the candy we offered and each had our little a & b logo to tie them all in. I've seen plenty of cute ways to label the candy buffet items - search online for various ideas and then let your creative juices flow!

Scoops: We hunted high and low to find the perfect scoops for our candy bar. We ended up ordering a bunch from a restaurant equipment company, they then shipped them to us. We also found a number of small ladle type scoops at Crate & Barrel. We tied some of the larger scoops with ribbon (to make them look prettier of course!) and then we placed the scoops in each of the jars to make sure they fit prior to the big day! (You'll be surprised some will not fit inside your narrow jars - so make sure to check them out prior!)

- Central Restaurant Supply - This is where we ordered most of our metal scoops.

- Crate & Barrel - We ordered our small scoops from crate & Barrel

Packaging: We choose to use small white paper wax bags. We ordered them online and they cost us next to nothing! We then printed our a & b logo on each bag. The bags then were placed in a low glass container that coordinated with the clear glass jars. The bags were easy and we printed them ourselves on our home printer! I've seen so many cute ideas with the takeout food boxes, small clear plastic cylinders, etc. Shop around - there are plenty of cute ideas out there!

- Papermart - We ordered our small white paper wax bags from papermart.

Arrangement: Make sure you picture how you will have your candy buffet set up. We had ours on a serpentine table (It's an 'S' shape table) we created various height levels with boxes under the table cloths and fabric and we tied ribbon around each glass jar to help tie it back to our color scheme. Make sure you let your friends, family, wedding planner, caterers, etc know what your vision is - we had ours drawn out for our set up crew! Thankfully we had two sets of FANTASTIC Master & Mistress of ceremonies as well as a few other family and friends helping - who all are just as perfectionstic as we are - so it worked out perfectly!

Behind the Scenes: We did a practice Candy Buffet at home in our dining room about three weeks prior to the wedding! We opened all the candies and placed enough in each jar so we had everything measured out perfectly. We then placed the measured amount of candy into a ziploc bag and labeled it. We also then labeled the coordinating jar - making it very easy the day of the wedding for set up! We were also able to sample each of our candies prior to the wedding then too! (This was great as we didn't even touch it on the wedding day because we were so busy mingling!) We set it all up so we could see how we wanted it to look and then we also realized we wanted a bit more height - so we went and bought large pixie stix too. Great idea if you have the time!

Last but not least, make sure to ask your photographer to take a ton of lovely pictures of your candy buffet - because it truly will be something you will remember for ever! I had such a wonderful photographer, I didn't even have to ask her to take the pictures - she just did it!!

More than anything else, make sure you have fun with this. . . having a candy buffet is a great way to showcase your creativity! One last bit of advice, make sure you take the time to walk over and see your candy buffet during your reception - would you believe that I never even made it over to the candy buffet during mine - the first time I saw it was in the pictures! CRAZY!!

Photography at Its Best. . .

I've been asked quite a lot lately about the details of our wedding and of others that I've helped out with. . . as most of you know I love details - so over the next month or so I'll showcase a few of the areas we focused on for our special day and others that I've helped out with or found to be simply splendid! I hope you enjoy. . .

Our lovely wedding photographer just redesigned her website and since I still visit it from time to time - I was excited to see her latest works. She recently did a wedding of a friend of mine that we were not able to attend, so I've been stalking Lisa's site to the wedding photos!

Not only is Lisa a wonderful photographer, but she is a truly amazing woman. Her heartfelt, volunteer efforts, coupled with her natural photography talent, and lovely personality were truly why we chose her. I try to recommend her wherever possible, as her work is unmatched and her passion is powerful.

Lisa Kae Ruff of Elite Photo Design is truly one of a kind. . .

While visiting her site today, I was ever so humbled when I saw two whole entire pages dedicated to our engagement photos and our wedding! My husband and I dated for a total of 8.5 years before we finally got married and I always said the longer he waited the better it would be. . .and was it ever!

We were married up in northern Michigan in Petoskey with a our reception in Bay Harbor. We had a Lutheran wedding with the most wonderful pastor, a tented reception near the marina and the most wonderful group of guests at our sides. . .

Lisa captured every moment from start to finish, she didn't miss even the smallest detail, and truthfully she and her partner were so sweet to work with the entire time. . . we ultimately had a blast with them and their personalities fit into the mix of our wedding weekend perfectly. We worked with a great florist (more to come on her later, Mary, was fantastic!), had a candy buffet that was a huge hit and had did a number of unique things to make it special for all who attended!

Lisa, thank you for capturing our special moments exactly the way I remember them. . .I cannot thank you enough!

Gals, she is based in West Michigan - but she'll travel. She traveled to Indy for our engagement pictures and drove up north nearly 5 hours to be at our wedding. Don't let distance hold you back. . .because photography is one of the most important aspects of your day.

Visit Lisa's site and check out the lovely pictures - Click on 'Galleries' tab and then click on the tabs labeled 'Abby and Ben Engagement' or 'Abby and Ben's Wedding' Many of you will see great pics of yourself as well - you are now famous!

Thank you lovely, Lisa. . .

Oprah at Home Magazine . . . closing up shop?!?

So, this weekend on my way to Cabo I picked up the most fabulous magazine in a small shop in the Indy airport. I'm not sure if I've simply been living under a rock or what, but I somewhere along the line missed this lovely magazine previously.

I have decided that I'm absolutely obsessed with the 'O at Home' magazine. I found this little gem to be stocked full of great finds, fantastic decorating tips and wonderful pieces for the home! I folded down about 20 of the 75 pages in the magazine. . .I loved it so much that I even made my husband read it from front to back!

Today I raced online to sign up for my subscription. . .and my world crumbled as I read that Oprah at Home had decided to close up shop and merge its content into the O magazine. The winter 2008-09 edition was the final issue. They ceased publication because the editors believed that your home is an extension of who you are, and therefore it is the perfect mesh with the original "O" magazine.

Unfortunately the winter 2008-09 issue was my only issue. . .but oh how I did enjoy every single little word throughout its little frame. There are still a few on the racks, if you need a little simple inspiration, surely pick one up before they are gone. . .forever. :(