Ruffle me up!

It's been several seasons since ruffles came into style in the fashion world...my closet can attest to that. One of my favorite purchases in the past year has been these gray satin ruffle heels by nina:

Imagine my excitement, then, when I saw this beauty over on Apartment Therapy:

In fact their whole post was about ruffles in the home. Check it out for more visual goodies. I'm in love.

color me mine

for those of us who wish we could be fashion designers, here is maybe the next best thing: a color-it-yourself dress. the black and white patterned dress comes with a set of permanent markers so you can really make it your own.

Stripes and Stamps?

So I've been married and living in my own place (well, K lives there too I guess) for over a year and a half now, and our living room has yet to have a Look. You can look at it, yes, but it has no Look.

There are several reasons for this. First, we've always had mismatched, hand-me-down seating. Tan. Black. Green. Sofa. Metal futon. Wood futon. Second, we've only made minimal progress on getting anything up on the walls since we move every year (it's hard to break the college habit).

And then it hit me, a solution to bring unity to my hodgepodge living room...

couch pillows

I went to Joann and grabbed some blue upholstery fabric, trying to pull some colors from the photos on our wall of Lake Tahoe, taken during our honeymoon. Then I it, the perfect blue and tan stripe. And then I saw another perfect fabric, a blue and white stamped motif. I had to have them.

Uh...won't that look weird? K asks. No, I tell him, it will look modern! But really, what to I know. A few days later, newly bought fabric not yet touched, I got affirmation.

Enter, Pottery Barn's outdoor pillows:


And my end products:

Did it tie my living room together? Well, nothing is going to remedy that mess completely, but it's a good start!

Fabwrapla

My friend Glo and her friend just started a company called Fabwrapla. Their products look so beautiful so I thought I'd share it with you :) Here's a glimpse of their beautiful products and a little blurb:

"In 2000, Jackie and Gloria collaborated and planned a mutual friend’s wedding. After the wedding, many conversations led to the birth of their first business, Lily B. Special Event Planning in 2001. They soon learned that with Jackie’s eye for exquisite designs and Gloria’s brilliant skills in organization made for a dream team. After five years of designing and planning events, they stumbled onto something much bigger and better. Jackie and Gloria found themselves using fabric to cover vases and creating unique and fun décor items for many events. After years of toying with different ways to use fabric, they launched a new division of Lily B.—fabwrap in 2007. Fabwrap became the perfect jigsaw puzzle piece that brought creativity, imagination, beauty, and functionality together in their work. And as they say, the rest is history…"