Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! This is our first Thanksgiving in our "new" house! It'll be small, Chris's family will all be in Connecticut so it's just a couple of my family members, I'll be posting some pics of baking our feast on Instagram @wouldntitbelovely, so be sure to check in and see how it's coming along! I'll be enjoying all the holiday festivities, so no posts on Thursday or Friday. Be sure to check in on Monday, the first week of December will be full of gift guides for the holiday season!

Kitchen Reno in Process!

Above is what our kitchen looked like when we bought the house. Notice the lovely brown cabinets, off white appliances and linoleum counter top. My favorite was the time machine sized microwave (that didn't work) and overall dark and depressing feeling! We didn't have the budget for a fancy shmancy full overhaul, so I had to get creative.  We did a couple things right when we moved in a year ago. We painted the cabinets right away, then got a new counter top and some new appliances as the year went on. The past two weekends have been all about the final touches! I decided to move around some of the upper cabinets and we're adding some open shelving and a new backsplash as you can see from the pics below! I can't wait to share the final room when it's all done! I feel like it's finally all coming together to be exactly what I wanted! (How much do you love that picture of my Dad? We had been doing the backsplash all weekend and were both feeling the aches and pains!)

Wood Trim, Keep It or Paint It?

Sources from left to right, top to bottom, one, two, three, four.

I just saw the third picture in the collage above and it got me thinking about wood trim. The trend right now is to paint ALL THE WOOD EVERYWHERE in your house white. When the hubby and I moved into our house, thats what we did, but that's because all the trim in our house was CRAP. If your wood trim is thin, and not great quality, strait builders grade trim, by all means, paint it, it's makes a world of difference. On the other hand, if you have beautiful, heavy. well made trim, do not, under any circumstance paint it. It may look great for a while, and make you feel modern and trendy, but in the long run, you'll regret it, and future generations will rue the day you decided to do it. As shown in the pictures above, you can have a trendy and modern looking home and keep your beautiful wood trim!

Hand Lettering: Fit as a Fiddle

I've had a song from "Singing in the Rain" stuck in my head for what feels like weeks. One of the lines in it it "fit as a fiddle and ready for love" which is just kind of adorable and sweet.

On a personal note, for some crazy reason, when I got home from Russia, I decided that the way to beat jet-lag would be doing a project. A project that would keep me from taking naps. What project you ask? FINALLY FINISHING THE KITCHEN!! Which involves taking down all the upper cabinets, moving them around a bit, and building shelves so I can have an open shelving area, doing the tile backsplash, and touching up all the painting I did right when we moved in! Starting it with only two weekends before Thanksgiving has put me on a serious timeline! So this weekend I need to get busy! It's about 1/2 done and I'm getting pumped for it to be complete!

Custom Wedding Logo Sign

Today I wanted to share one of my favorite little extras for a wedding, custom signage! I made this lighted wooden sign for Elaine and Steve's wedding. It's a wonderful extra decor element for the bar, seating card table, or in this case, the gift table. It's designed to look like all the other elements from their wedding day (see the links below for all the other elements I designed for their wedding day). I love design elements like this because they are great even after the wedding day! Now they have this lovely sign to hang on their walls of their New York apartment!

Other design elements for their wedding can be found at the following links:  invitations, design process, save the dates, guest guidebooks, programs, place cards & holders, word bubble signs, confetti bags, and favors.

Smart Shelf Ideas

I'm am a collector who never seems to have enough storage, which is why I LOVE smart shelving ideas!

1. Art Shelf: If you're someone with a large art collection, or who has a hard time putting holes in your walls, the art shelf is a great solution. You can layer all your art pieces, photos, and little do-dads to make a lovely little collage. I love how this home owner used a clamp lamp on the edge of the shelf! It's such a smart solution when you may not have room for a table in the corner but still need some light
2. Little Corner Shelf: This is such a great solution when there isn't enough space in a bedroom for a side stable, this little corner shelf gives you just enough room to hold a light, a book and a glass of water! 
3. Over the Door Shelf: If you have a small bathroom like me, this little shelf over your door is a smart way to take advantage of unused space
4. Ski Shelves: My Poppop loved skiing and we have a couple sets of antique skis and I have never had any clue what to do with them. I love the idea of turning them into shelves! It keeps the house from feeling like a mountain lodge but still incorporates a fun element of surprise into an art display! 

Travel: Moscow, Russia

So I'm back from my quick trip to Russia. It was very much like what I expected and at the same time, not what I expected at all. Winter in Moscow is grey. Very grey. The architecture was not at all what I expected. The city center is really amazingly beautiful, and the architecture is a lovely mix of styles, and  Red Square is pretty amazing. I missed a crazy protest in Red Square by just one day (it would have been a crazy story to have seen that!). I bought myself a beautiful set of Russian nesting dolls which are now living among with my other travel nick-nacks. I just have to say a little something about all these pictures too:

1. Saint Basil's Cathedral: thats me, I really cant get over how cool this Church is, I just love all the detail and color.
2. The buildings in Red Square are amazing, just look at that brick work! 
3. So I had to snap this pic, you can see a little rainbow hidden in the mural on that building. I like to think it's a little gay pride despite all the persecution going on there at the moment. 
4. I love the lamp posts on this street, I also love wide walkways like this where no cars are allowed. You never find streets like this in America, a place catering completely to pedestrians. 
5. Me and a co-worker getting a pic with Stalin and Lenin looks alikes, just because it's ridiculous that there are people dressing up to make money from tourists like us.
6. Spotted this man walking his dog with his itty bitty kitten sitting on his head. 
7. My perdy new nesting dolls!