Hepburn and Houndstooth

My friend Hanna’s daughter Abigail just turned the big ONE and her birthday party was amazing!  She allowed me to share the details with you.  You’re going to love it!

Little Miss July?!  Are you kidding me?  How cute is that? LOVE!

Hanna made all these precious decorations herself!

The outfit she wore home was displayed.  How sweet!

Sundae bar? Sign me up!

So loving this chandelier!

Ok, now here’s for the main attraction, Little Miss July’s birthday gift…

OH yes, the Cupcake Express is just for Abigail!  This is no rental folks.  Hannah says she rides it every day and loves it!  She’ll have this for years to come!

There are just not words for how much I love the blog I’m featuring today.  Nearly every room in her house is bookmarked in my “home inspiration” file for the day I actually own a home.  Her style matches mine perfectly.  These rooms are like the ones I dream up in my head.  The best part?  She DIYs a large portion of it!  Some of my favorite pics:

Wow, right?!  She uses nearly all my favorite decor colors… white, grey, black, yellow, taupe.  LOVE.  So go poke around her blog, but be prepared to spend a lot of time and have a lot of house envy.

Once upon a time, all of my jewelry was contained neatly in pretty little jewelry boxes.  Then, I became obsessed with costume jewelry.  Now I can not contain it in boxes without resulting in a huge tangle, much like this:

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In fact, in recent months I have all but stopped wearing jewelry, because I can never dig anything out of the mess.  After months of wanting to create a solution, I spotted my old bulletin board in my brother’s closet and decided to finally take action!

I recruited Dustin to remove the stubborn frame (yeah, he’s going to kill me for putting this in here).  Initially, I had planned to put the frame back on after completion, but it broke a little too much for my taste.  In the end, I liked it without the frame.

I then placed the bulletin board, cork-side down, onto the back of the fabric (pulled from my closet), cut with 4-5 inches around the sides (i didn’t measure it.  You won’t see the back.).

I took out the heavy-duty staple gun and went to work, stretching the fabric tight and stapling.  I flipped the board over to check progress, only to find that I was stapling completely through the board! Oops.

Dustin suggested I cut a new piece of fabric, concerned that the staple holes would show through.  I decided to go ahead with the chambray fabric I was already using.  However, I switched to my desk stapler from college.

I finished stapling the edges on the long sides of the board, then went to work on the corners.  I folded them as if wrapping a gift, rather than cutting the corners.  I really hate cutting, because I always mess something up!  I tried stapling the corners with my desk stapler, but the staples bent.  I got crafty and put used the staple gun at an angle so that the staples wouldn’t come through the front.  Perfect!

After finishing all four corners, I stapled along the short sides and flipped over to check my work.  It’s definitely not perfect, but I was absolutely satisfied!

I then laid out the screw-in hooks (scavenged from my mom’s house), then screwed them in.  They were the perfect size screw, going deep into the cork board without going all the way through.

These are literally the only pieces I could dig out of my jumble to demonstrate how it works.

I am not completely done.  I want to put something at the bottom for rings and smaller earrings.  I’m thinking I will attach some shallow boxes.  I will update when I find something!  I also have to figure out how to mount it.  It won’t last leaning on my nightstand.  So far, I spent $0 on this project, so it will be ok if I have to spend a couple of dollars on the rest.

Check out the simpler version of what I did on According to Lia.   I would have done this if I had a closet door to hang it on the inside of.  Since mine is going to be on full display, I decided to cover it and use nicer hooks.  This is just a temporary solution though, because once we get out of my dad’s house and into our own place, I plan to put up a pegboard similar to this.  (Would also love to have a bustform!)

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For now though, I’m content with my board and I think once I complete it, it will work for me for a long time!

Yep, you read that right.  Everyone remembers those cardboard dressers and storage boxes that were popular before plastic bins and drawers became affordable and available to everyone*.   Well, that is NOT what this post is about!  This is about Nikki, who used a lot of cardboard, paint, and a ton of imagination to create a last-minute guest room.

Image credit goes to the ever-creative Nikki at WhiMSy love, via Apartment Therapy.  Love them both!

*I tried to find images of these in case people didn’t recall them, or were too young to remember them.   However, if you do a Google Image search for “cardboard dresser” or “cardboard drawers”, you will find awesome stuff!

I have a love affair for making and eating trifles.  Actually, I think the love affair is with the trifle dish itself.  I love serving pasta salad and 7-layer salad from my trifle.  Naturally, when I saw this print by Anne Harwell (seller Annechovie) on Etsy, I fell in love!  Would love to hang this in my kitchen.

Definitely check out the entire shop, because she has some beautiful things!