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Sushi Party

I didn’t like sushi until maybe a year ago. It was gross in concept and similarly gross in texture. Then one day I decided to step out of my comfort zone and try a few different kinds. I was hooked. Not in an every week kind of way, but every once in awhile I think it is fun. A close friend of mine recently spent some time in Japan and took sushi making classes while she was there. So when she asked if I wanted to learn, of course I said “Yes!”

Gemma and I took it upon ourselves to put together a fun night for our friends and host a “Sushi Party”!

You see, Gemma and I have big plans to one day be party planners for the stars! Or at least tea party planners for people we know. We are the perfect team. Gemma has amazing culinary experience (aka: mad skills) and I will literally throw parties just so I can decorate for them. So this plan didn’t take much for us to cook up. Gemma got started on the menu, while I started making 100 paper cranes. I had a few paper lanterns hanging around from a bridal shower I had planned a few years back, and toss in a few strands of fairy lights, and the stage is set.

Here you can spot the rare species planiferous partycus in their natural habitat.

sushi master in training

We invited a few friends over to roll up their sleeves, and roll some sushi! Plus we needed help drinking all the sake. Gemma supplied the tools we needed (some acquired from her trip to Japan) as well as a variety of ingredients for us to try rolling into our sushi. She showed us the proper techniques and then let us loose to create! My favorite roll by far was carrot, cucumber, crab and mango. Gosh, that mango was dreamy. Yum!

Does anyone know what I should do with 100 colorful paper cranes?

-Sarah

Gemma’s travel blog link: https://travelinggemblog.wordpress.com/

photos taken by Scott Mamone and C. Bentler

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Before and After: Dining Room Decor

Coming at you today with another Before and After decor post. This time the transformation is subtle, but effective. A fresh coat of paint and a gallery wall set the stage for an updated vintage dining set and flat pack shoe rack turned wine rack?

Let’s face it, I ran out of funds before being able to buy the buffet/bar of my dreams. So just picture one of these in its place.

DIY ALERT

I would like to bravely point out and showcase, my very first upholstery project. We aren’t going to talk about the orange velvet number that I convinced my mom to store for me until I got around to reupholstering. Let’s just say that ended up back on the curb where I found it.

These sad puppies had been reupholstered in the 70s and were sat on for 40 odd years which left the padding borderline non-existent, and the fabric? It had seen better days. I (with help from my father) made new plywood bases, cut new foam and stapled on some beautiful home decor fabric. Which I had laying around for some odd reason that has nothing to do with an orange velvet chair.

Gallery Wall

That being said, I would like to move onto the focal point of the room and a project that took me ages to complete. Anyone who has attempted the gallery wall will know my struggle. I am sure that I had every piece of art I have ever owned laid out on my living room floor at some point. Every day I would come in and move one item, switch out another. Until finally a deadline of house guests prompted me to make a final selection.

I would like to shout out some of the artists who have contributed to my gallery wall. My sister Amy made the awesome wood burned periodic table letters, and my friend Rebecca painted the abstract trio at the top. The flower photos are done by my friend BPKPhotography, you should check out her work here (https://www.facebook.com/BPKphoto/). The purple and green piece on the left was a middle school art project of mine. While the mason jar string art on the shelf was a craft project from my little sister’s bridal shower.

~Sarah

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Before and After: Living Room Decor

Here you see my living room on moving day paired with the current decor. Notice the luxurious furnishings and spectacularly beige ceilings in the before pictures. I wish I had a close up shot of the electrical outlets for you, but trust me… they nasty. 

Entry way display

For this section of the living room, I wanted to make a “landing pad” for when I come home from work. The bookshelf belonged to my grandmother and the geometric shelves came from Target. A place to toss my keys and sunglasses comes in the form of a handmade basket from Liberia, a gift from a wonderful man in my life. The basket on the bottom shelf hides a bunch of crap that isn’t cute enough for blog photos.

The seating area

Okay, this might be one of my favorite “vignettes” from my living room. It could be due to the fact that these couches were my very first “big girl purchase”. The vintage looking, wire mesh sided end tables were trash picked from my neighbor before I moved, and the carpet and ottoman are wayfair.com purchases. This room was massive and overwhelming when I first moved in. It is really long and kind of awkwardly shaped. In order to put the TV on a wall and be able to see it from the couches, you need a relatively large TV. This led me to my other design challenge… the massive blank wall with no window, door or half-wall.

Vast wall of doom: aka entertainment center

No dinky TV stand here folks, I needed some serious furniture to make this wall work. But I was on a budget. I went to Pinterest and found tons of pictures of these all white, gorgeous entertainment centers built in around magnificent fireplaces. It was decided, I had to make this happen. After lots of research, online shopping and mood board making (check out my post on mood boards ), I had a solid plan including Ikea bookshelves, an electric fireplace from Hayneedle.com, and my extensive knik-knack collection. And yes, if you have a keen eye, you will notice my TV is being held up by books… I’m working on that… sort of.

Overall I am pretty pleased with how this room turned out. I spend a lot of time in here, sipping tea on the couch curled up under a blanket or watching way too much youtube. If I had a few spare dollars, I would probably install hardwood floors, but that will have to wait.

~Sarah

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The Happy Accident: How a mistake can make a project better

We have all been there… the moment when you are putting the finishing touch on a project and you sneeze or flinch and smudge a line. I had one of these moments the other night. I had decided to make up a little watercolor card for a wedding I was attending this weekend. Being a novice to watercolors, I thought I would test my limits with black lettering in the form of a monogram.

A  mistake was made!

I started in the middle. Worked to the right and then went back in to add the first letter before waiting for the paint to dry completely…

I panicked. I saw my life flash before my eyes (ok, maybe not that bad… but my heart sank). It was 11pm the night before we were leaving for the event and I had just spent hours painting beautiful flowers into a wreath on this card. I was NOT starting over. My initial reaction was to cover up the mistake with a cutout piece of paper, but was afraid it would look like I was doing just that. Covering up a mistake.

As I was brainstorming ideas to make this look intentional, I remembered a really posh wedding invitation I was sent that had gold-rimmed cardstock. I remembered thinking it was relatively “extra” at the time, but admitted it made the simple paper stand out. So I did a test on a tiny square of paper with gold nail polish and thought it looked pretty good. I tried again with the black lettering on the little piece and l held it up to the card. Now we were working with something. Naturally I couldn’t stop there, so I gold rimmed the entire card. Go big or go home, right? I will tell you, it took the project to a whole other level. Honestly, the picture doesn’t do it justice. I hope the recipients keep this card on their mantle for all of time.

I will now gold rim all of the things.

This outcome got me thinking about mistakes. I know you learn from them, but I never really thought about using them to your advantage in a creative setting. It if wasn’t for the little mistake, I wouldn’t have come up with a solution that ended up taking the card to the next level. There will be projects that cant be saved by gold nail polish (although I will likely try applying this technique to future mistakes because… gold rimmed, am I right?), but I look forward to challenging myself to continue finding creative solutions to problems that not only fix, but enhance a project.

For anyone who is curious, Martha Stewart watercolor brush pens and inexpensive “dry pan” style watercolors on Strathmore watercolor cold press paper were used.

~Sarah

 

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Creating a mood board for your space

 

After spending hours cultivating specific room decor boards on Pinterest, I realized I still didn’t have a clear idea of how I wanted my house to be decorated. I found that the best way to figure out how I wanted to design my rooms was by making mood boards. For mine, I found that Publisher, PowerPoint or even Word worked just fine.

I started out by taking screen shots of items I knew I wanted, or already had to use, for example a couch or TV stand you love. Next, I positioned them into the “room” and blocked in wall colors and a general floor color to get the “vibe” of the room. From there I went to my Pinterest boards and found room pictures I liked and cropped parts of images that had elements I enjoyed and placed them into my mood board in a general layout that was easy to visualize.

I had seen pictures of big white entertainment centers that housed a fireplace and fell in love with the clean yet cozy feel, so I looked up some IKEA shelving and found an electric fireplace from Overstock.com that I liked, grabbed screen shots of those and pasted them in, it helps to pull the whole look together. The TV, carpet and chair were pieces I already had on hand, so this helped me visualize the “wall unit” concept with my existing furnishings.

After making edits and finding an overall design I liked, I started shopping for pieces that reminded me of the items on my board. I like to shop second hand or discounted if possible, so I wasn’t likely to find exact matches. Still, I ended up with something similar to the original design. I love the way it turned out!

For before and after pics,  click here!

-Sarah

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Three ways to make your home feel like new construction.

 

About a year ago, I made settlement on my quaint one story condo. The floor plan was everything I wanted and the price was right. I had thought about looking for new construction but knew that my budget wouldn’t allow it. And knowing myself and my DIY tendencies, I knew with a little elbow grease, and some hired help I could get this place looking ship shape in no time. These are the first three projects I did and MAN did they make a difference!!

Project 1: Replace grimy old outlets.

OK, here is where the Best Father of All Time award comes in. As a housewarming gift, my dad replaced Every. Single. Outlet in my house with brand spanking new ones. And let me tell you, this alone made me feel like I had purchased new build. Call me crazy but there is something so satisfying about fresh, white outlets. He swapped out most of the light switches too!

Project 2: Replace cheapy, flat apartment doors

Six panel interior doors. These stylish hinged beauties are the stuff of dreams, at least my home décor obsessed dreams. When I moved in, before me stood two doors. Behind door number one, I had the plain jane, distinctly “un” paneled doors that led to each bedroom, and behind door number two I had the terrifying, squeaky metal bi-fold doors that led into most closets. I hated all of them. Only one got to stay, her name is Lou, she’s the louvered door on the utility closet. She was kept for her function, and not her beauty.  Back to the point, I had my uncle come and replace all the doors with six panel wooden doors, and the closets all got “six panel” bi-fold doors (except for one, but that’s another story… hint: it’s a barn door!!).

Project 3: Paint all of the things

Here is where my patience as a new homeowner was tested. A few weeks in, my uncle (different uncle… I have a lot of handy people in my family) came and helped me paint the ceilings in my family room, dining room, kitchen, hallway and master bedroom as a housewarming gift. This alone made a HUGE impact because the previous tenants, or original owner decided a dingy shade of cream was a good choice for a dimly lit first story condo’s ceilings.

Now that I had a taste of what it’s like to have fresh paint, I wanted more! But quite frankly didn’t have the time or energy to paint the walls myself. To paint a picture, it took me 5 hours to paint the living room trim and one wall. This is when I threw in the paint covered towel and called my uncle to talk schedules. After patiently waiting a few months he was able to come paint some walls! I focused on the master bedroom and the living spaces (kitchen, hallway, living and dining rooms). This helped immensely! Having fresh clean walls and ceilings really helped make this place feel new and entirely my own. I know this one is the oldest trick in the book, but it really does work wonders! Its relatively inexpensive, can be done yourself (if you have better patience and a steadier hand than me), and is completely customizable.

So that’s it. Might seem silly and straight forward, but I would not have believed the transformation this place went through with just these three steps. I have since done many more fun projects, but that’s a story for another time.

-Sarah