Our Thanksgiving Home

This Thanksgiving came and went with the blink of an eye. It was beautiful and surprisingly relaxing for having 15 guest in our small home. So before we get deep into December and we're decking the halls and trimming trees, I wanted to share our Thanksgiving/Fall decor here on the blog. I'm super excited that our house looked so festive and cute! So here it is... and if you're looking for the food we cooked, you can find it all here, at the grapeleaf.

This year I really wanted to make invitations, even though we were only having our close family. I made up six of these leaf invites and sent them off. It was so cool getting calls from everyone saying how much they loved it! It sort of made it all a bit magical and exciting!

 

 

 

We had picture up, candles lit, and acorn squash and pumpkins galore. My favorite was the mantle though. It's come a long way and looks so festive with the leaves and bright colors. I'm sad to tear it down, but our box of "fall decor" is growing and will be ready for next year! 

We hope you had an amazing Thanksgiving weekend - I'm so thankful for all of my readers on here!

XO

Project Decorate: In The Garden / Part 2

So earlier this month you got a quick post with some crazy looking kale before I uprooted just about everything in our little plot that we planted back in January. But with birthday craziness, getting the house ready and all the other responsibilities that come with ...you know, being an adult (I guess...), we never really got around to showing you what got done! 

Things have still changed a bit since these photos, and we'll post more soon, but here's a shot at the pretty flowers we bought (I LOVE snap dragons!), and you can see that there are some veggies too! 

In the plot we left the lavender, because unlike the kale, it still looked pretty and mostly, because the bees love it.  I woke up super early and dug up the plants, turned the soil and got it ready... I also realigned the scalloped bricks (which was a LOT of work!). Then I planed two rows of the snap dragons toward the back, and two rows of Indian paintbrushes (those wispy flowers) toward the front, then there were the sunflowers.  

Every year on Earth day my mom and I would plant sunflower seeds. This year, we weren't together on the actual day, but I on the day before we planted seeds in her garden. She gave me a pack to take home, but I put off planting them until I was ready with some good soil and a good spot. So behind the snap dragons and against the wall I planted (a whole pack! of) sunflowers. I can't wait to see how tall they're going to get... before the birdies attack!

It was a ton of work, but it was fun! I kept thinking about our dream garden... a mini farm's worth of vegetables, gorgeous flowers... maybe one day. But for now, our little plants are making us quite happy!  

What kind of plants are you gardening this spring? Do you have veggies? What are your tips and tricks?

XO

Project Decorate: In The Garden / Part 1

Last January I wrote about our garden and the cool things we put in it.  This is what our funky kale look like now. They've sprouted antlers and are trying to eject themselves from the ground. Clearly they are not happy and we are frankly just tired of looking at them. Today they are coming out, the bricks are being re-raised and realigned, and new colorful flowers will be in their place!  Can't wait to show you!

XO

Project Decorate: Kitchen Art

TA DA!  I don't have any pictures to lead into this one of my progress and the days and days of converting  my kitchen into an art studio with paint and brushes everywhere, mostly just because it was all a big mess. But I've been thinking about this painting for a long time and I am so excited that I've finally finished and completed it!

If you follow me on Instagram, I posted a picture not too long ago of a sketch that turned out something like this... impressions of carrots, peas, and tomatoes. I really wanted to make it into a bigger picture and was thrilled when E suggested the exact same thing before I could even say it! I went out and bought some canvas (this one is small, only 18x24) and had to find my paints. Turns out they were still at my mom's so the project was delayed until I could go over to visit again and bring home my box of paints from 7 + years ago. Good thing acrylic doesn't go bad!

So I started working and first started just painting the carrots, on the white background. I soon realized that filling the background in later would be a big problem. So I mixed up the red/brown color and covered everything up for a do-over. And I am so happy I did. Sometimes all you need is a clean slate. The carrots and peas came out better than ever and I love the contrast of the bright colors against the dark backgrounds. My technique is lots of paint... I love the texture that it creates on the canvas. Of course, it was a little harder to achieve this on the detailed little peas, but I worked slowly and practiced patience and I love how it all turned out. 

My first full painting in years, and my first painting signed with my new initials. AND I think it might be the first painting in a series of paintings. We have this one hanging on a big blank wall in the kitchen (it's not blue...even though this picture makes it look that way!) and it just needs something up there with it. I have two smaller 9x12 canvases that might have to join it on either side. But for now, I am loving my kitchen art. 

Another project down!

XO

Project Decorate: The Mantle

You might have seen this picture in last week's post about some around-the-house decorating we've been doing as we prepare to have our family over to the house and start settling in.  A few weeks ago I bought an "E" and an "A" in a pretty green color. I'd wanted and ampersand to go in the middle, but had no such luck. At least not until a week or so later at another store when I found this black ampersand from the same collection.  All was well with the world, except the color. We don't have a lot of black in the living room and it's just too harsh of a color to have in the middle of the mantle right now.  

But I bought it anyway, knowing that I could do something to it.  But mixing the same green color was not an option. Acrylic paint is what I have and what I planned to use, but if there is anything that my 2D design class taught me it's that it's nearly impossible to mix exact matching colors with acrylic without wanting to scratch your eyes out. It's infuriating and a home DIY project should not be that. 

It took some planning and a little bit of back and forth, but I decided on a sort of neutral peachy-brown color. Something that goes well with the green letters, but also with the flow and colors of the room. Turns out, it worked!  

The mantle is still a work in progress, we need something with some height, and definitely something to fill that big blank space above it (maybe a wedding picture on canvas?) but for now, I'm super happy with how my letter's came out...and especially my ampersand. 
Can't wait to share some more exciting decorating projects!
XO

Project Decorate in underway!

Not sure where all the time is going, but E and I celebrated our 6 month wedding anniversary this month. Can you believe it? I can't. We're in a super good place and finally getting settled into our lives together. It's helped so much that I am working during the day time now. We get to spend our evening together despite our work schedules. We don't have those days where we don't see each other at all because things just don't line up. And it's Spring. The garden is coming along (post coming soon...) and now we are prepping for our first "gathering" at our house! Ok, I guess "gathering" makes it sound like people are coming over for some creepy pagan ritual or something. Nothing of the sort, but our family and some friends are coming by next month and it's the first time we'll really get to show off our house and what we've done to it. 

So now we've got to do something to it! So begins "Project Decorate."   I'm not sure how far we will get before people come over, but at least now we're officially starting. And I plan on getting some of it posted here.  The picture above is just a sneak at an ampersand I found at Marshall's the other day. I picked up an "E" and an "A" last month, but they are green, and this is clearly black. Just a bit of gesso and a coat of paint and We have a cute mantel piece in our living room.  

We've got wall art in the laundry room, an almost finished painting for the kitchen and one to start for the living room. We've cleared off the couch in the office and have a cozy work area that I'm sitting on right now!  New table cloths for spring, and hopefully some shopping for a real kitchen table and some living room pieces will be happening soon. 

It's all starting to come together and I can't wait to share it with you soon!

XO

Getting around to decorating...

So we've been married almost 6 months now (WHAT!?) and we've been living in our home since the wedding night. While we've finally got some awesome couches, coffee table and an area rug in the living room, and the kitchen is pretty much complete (sans some wall decor), and we've established functional parts of the house, some with more decoration than others, we still really need to step it up decor-wise and maybe finally put up some pictures and wall art. 

We're getting ready to have some of our family and friends over to our house (finally) and I am hoping this forces us to get around to putting stuff up on the walls and maybe looking for some more furniture the fit our house needs.  So today, despite still feeling blah with a sore throat and a cloudy head, I'm going to try to straighten things up a bit. But before I get started with that, I am enjoying my cup of coffee and flipping through Pinterest and Etsy for some decorating ideas. Here's what I came across so far...

 We've been looking for the right wine rack, and I love that this displays the wine AND the wine glasses, which means we wouldn't have to keep our glasses up on the very top shelf in the kitchen. Plus I think this is a simple enough design that E might even be able to make it with the leftover wood from the previous flooring.

 I would really love to incorporate shelves that can house books, pictures, and maybe some trinkets or plants. I love that these are different and funky, but also uniform so they don't look too weird. 

I really want to put a corner shelf in the kitchen I can store our cookbooks and some more decorative kitchen appliances on then and open up some of the cupboard space. That way the cookbooks can be out and easy to grab too!

This is a cute cabinet, and while it doesn't match our home style, I really like the idea of having a colored/decorative backing to the shelf to give it more flare. 

 These shelves are a simple white and I think they'd work well in the living room. Our walls are almost a light mocha-cream color, so the white stands out in a cool way. I think that having simple shelves allows for you to add more to the shelf without it getting too crowded. 

I love love LOVE these honeycomb shelves, but I don't think E does. Actually, I know he doesn't, but I wanted to give them some credit here because they are so cool!

That's all for now. who knows what we will actually end up doing and if we'll end up getting it done soon or not, but hey, a girl can dream! 

XO