New Year's Eve

So, I'm not much anything eventful this New Year's Eve and so I thought I would make a board on Pinterest to explore options of a fantasies of New Years Eve looks.  Hope you all have a wonderful holiday and keep up with your New Year's resolutions! I'll share more of mine later! 

Christmas Inspiration

I LOVE PINTEREST!  This is where I get most of my inspiration these days.  It especially helped when I was looking for ideas to decorate the McCabe Marlowe house last month.  I love the "new" rustic Christmas decor that everyone is keen to these days.  Here are just a few pictures to get those gears of yours turning for a new kind of Christmas inspiration:

McCabe Marlowe Home

Here it is! Our masterpiece.  I'm so excited to show you all of the hard work that went into decorating the McCabe Marlowe house in Downtown GR.  Our team (me, Ondrea, and Melissa) from my display and visual merchandising class got inspiration from just about everywhere but a big helper was Pinterest.  Enjoy! (oh! and I foolishly forgot to take a picture of the entire room so I apologize!)

More Paper Flowers

I just watched Julie and Julia with my mom and it inspired me to blog!  Right now I have been decorating a historical home downtown Grand Rapids for my Visual Merchandising and Display class.  It has been a wonderful experience and I will share much more later.  But I decided to make some paper flowers to put in the living room there and have been making them the last 2 (or so) hours and my back aches.  Every time I focus too hard on something small my back tenses up.  But the results are worth it!
These are the same flowers I made for my tea party this summer and I thought I would end up with much more but I only got 6.  Anyway a step by step tutorial can be found here.

Began folding

Pom Pom Cowl part 2

I made another scarf!  If you want to know the instructions and what my other pom pom cowl looked like just go here.  The only difference to this one I made is I wanted it a bit longer so i could double it up so it ended up being about 72 inches long before all sewn together.  I had to make some alterations (yay for seam rippers!) but it ended up turning out great.  Take a look:

Pom Pom Cowl

I wanted to share what I made this week!  I found a great tutorial of how to make a long pom pom cowl at purlbee.com and it turned out great!  I actually ended up throwing it together before work and it took about a half an hour.  The only things I did differently is used cotton instead of linen and only put pom poms on one side of the cowl (so I just hemmed up the other side).  You should really check out the tutorial because I'm even going to make another one because it was so simple!

Floral Design

I just finished my 5 week floral design class and when i first started I was a bit worried because we had to buy all of our own artificial flowers and supplies.  We also had 3 hours a week to fill with arranging flowers and I had no idea how I would use that time!  But as I went along I realized I needed all the time I could get.  I had so much fun those 5 weeks, I wish we had the opportunity to do more arrangements.

We had to a traditional arrangement even on all sides for the first arrangement.  My arrangement is on the left and the inspiration on the right.  This one sits on my nightstand.

Crafty: Take 2

So summer is officially done with school starting tomorrow and I thought I would update all ya'll on the crafts I have started (and some finished!) this crafty summer!  I'm so glad I got to do so many things with all of my free time.  Hopefully I will keep knitting, sewing, crocheting, painting, and gluing through the rest of the year.  I included some links to patterns so I hope you have fun crafting too!

My tea party dress. Just made it up as I went.

Emma Watson Fashion

In lou of Harry Potter 7 pt. 2 coming out this weekend, I thought I would pay tribute to one of my favourite fashion icons of the moment, Emma Watson.

here's from her photo shoots:

Getting Crafty

Oh hey everyone. It's been a while.  Just wanted to share with you what my summer has consisted of: CRAFTS!  I've gonna a little buck wild and have started and stopped (and occasionally finished) quite a good amount of crafts ranging from knitting to endless paper flowers to string bracelets so....Enjoy!

Penguin bracelet for my Nathan

In the Next Few Months

This weekend was crazy and eventful.  Started off with a rehearsal dinner Friday night and off to CU for fun and games.  Saturday was nonstop insanity with Meghan's graduation in the morning, then loads of pictures taken and then the wedding, more pictures, and the wedding reception.  Sunday was relaxing :)  Then today I went antique shopping with Julie and Teresa and got great finds (me, a lace tablecloth for our tea party...coming soon).

Got a call while out and about that we sold our house.  We will be moving out asap but no later than the beginning of July.  Much mixed feelings to this change.  Some sad because I just redid my room, got more hours at work, and will have to box up everything and shift to a new environment.  I have the decision to make to either move to a condo with my mom (maybe in Byron Center) or move out with Julie and others downtown GR.  This could be a good change because I would be closer to school and CU and fun events that happen around GR.  It could also be a bad change because it's even farther away from church and work.

Another thing: I need to find a new job.  I need to make more money so I can afford tuition and (if I move out) housing payments.  Another reason for finding a new job is so I start working with what I love: clothes (and I need a co-op job).  I will be making some huge steps in the next few months and could use some prayers.

 "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you." Deuteronomy 31:6

Would You Rather

So this is what my week consists of:
M: working all day on 2 projects due for my finals and studying for one test
T: registration day! get those classes before everyone else can (starting at midnight), get up early, exam and project due at 9 a.m. work 4 to 8
W: get up even earlier to babysit two of the cutest little munchkins at 6 a.m. until about 10:30 then last project exam at 1 p.m. work 4 to 8
R: either shop today or friday for Erika and Jake's wedding present (but I get to sleep in!). work 4 to 8
F: finish shopping, rehearsal dinner at 6
Saturday: here we go. get up who knows when to begin getting ready for the day, Meghan's graduation downtown at 10:30, might leave early to do my hair, have to be at church around 12 or 1 I'm guessing, wedding begins at 3:30, pictures and all in between stuff, reception downtown at 6, party the night away.

So glad I'm done with school by this point because I think my head would have popped off otherwise.  If anyone would like to pray for me this week, that would be much appreciated.  I also need to leave a lot of room for God in my busy schedule!

But here are some things I would rather be doing:

After!

Alright, so sorry this took so long but I just put everything up on the walls last week.  And my room was clean enough to take pictures.  (oh and don't mind the puzzle on the floor haha)

A Few of My Favorite Things...

winged tipped eye liner...and alexa chung!

Before

So I'm redoing my room with Meghan this week and I'm hoping it'll turn out awesome.  Probably won't look too much different but I'm hoping paint will make a big change.  I'm getting new organizing cubbies and putting up all my framed stuff that I've want up for a long time and my big gold mirror!  Here's some terrible before pictures because my room is a hot mess!

Castles of Ireland

Today in my Fashion Promotion class, we had to design our own ad for a travel agency that we had to make up.  I decided to do a kind of tour of the castles of Ireland.  I'm going to make it into not as much a tour but an overall experience of these castles like dining and living in them for days at a time.

The thing is, all we have to do for this assignment is make a one page ad and make it alluring and convince people to want to book their travelings with us.  But the more time I spent looking up good castles and pictures, the more I really want to go to Ireland.  It's so beautiful and all the scenery just makes me want to cry.  I can't wait til the day that I have loads and loads of money and I get to travel to places like this:

Ashford Castle

Classy by Derek Blasberg

So I just started reading this book Classy by Derek Blasberg and I am completely in love.  If you are a fashion major (like me) or are interested in throwing a spankin party or are just a girl in general, I totally recommend this book.  It just has everything on how to pack for a long trip, how to identify fake Prada and Louis Vuitton bags, when to thank the host (straight away), how to set a formal dinner table, what to wear on a first date. . .I could go on and on. Everything you need to know is in this book.  It's simply a instructional book on how to act like a lady and how to not act like a tramp.  And Derek Blasberg is a genius.  He has a witty humor that you wouldn't expect from a man writing a book on table manners and proper dress.

Everything in this books seems to be popping up in my life lately too.  I just read about correct place settings and the next day, a girl in one of my classes gave a presentation on it.  One girl asked when you are supposed to place the napkin on your lap (because she thought it was once the meal started ) and I whipped out my book and showed her otherwise (it's right as you sit down if you wanted to know).

Needless to say, I feel like I'm turning into an accomplished lady of modern-day times.  Thanks Julie for the perfect birthday present.