Italian style

I leave you with some gorgeous pics of Italian-designed rooms while I'm away soaking up the sun, food, wine, culture, history, art, and architecture with family and great friends in Italy! I promise to bring a taste of it all back to share with you.

Enjoy and until next week, arrivederci!



















Pics courtesy of home-design.com, tuscan-home-101.com, and Savio Firmino.

Happiness is...

...seeing this little monkey in my rearview mirror and listening to her belt out every word to Miley's 'The Climb' with such conviction. It's a swim day at school today which always makes for a good morning. :)

Vacation prep

In preparation for our trip to Italy later this week I just ran a few last minute errands. First stop, Target (love, love, love Target) and I found this, YES!:


If you read my post here, you'll know that I've been searching for a simple, knit, racerback maxi dress. I'd actually given up my search but thought I'd look one more time today for something comfy to wear on the long flight. This dress will be perfect. I bought it in gray and black and figured two ($29.99 each) still didn't cost as much as the one ($79) from my earlier post. I'll probably roll one of these up and take in my carry on with an extra outfit for my daughter just in case (we usually carry on our luggage but not this trip).

Then I ran over to Whole Foods where I picked up these:

I know that jet lag remedies are typically thought of as ineffective but I figured for $10 it was worth a try. Has anyone out there ever tried this stuff? It's new on the market and it replaced the 'no jet lag' product.

Now I just need to pack (UGH, major dread, am I the only one who lays in bed at night with a running 'don't forget to pack this and that' list going through my head?) and sit on an airplane for 12 hours and I'll be here:


And I'll get to see this:

And this:

Silhouette craze

Silhouettes seem to be all the rage right now. While helping my mom pack up her house this weekend we uncovered quite a few sentimental family treasures (including some amazing artwork that my father made), and this silhouette of me. My name is written on the back in my kindergarten-ish handwriting (which hasn't changed much in my adult years) so I think it was something that I made in elementary school.

The talented blogger 'Adventures in Renovating a Brooklyn Limestone' just posted today about a silhouette pillow she recently made here.

And Simply Seleta posted this last month:


Wendy at The Shabby Nest has actually made them herself a few times, here and here, she is quite talented (and patient!).



Houston's own Cindi Rose uses her talent of making silhouettes to benefit breast cancer survivors as seen here.


This is another picture of me that my mom found a few weeks ago. I think this one was drawn during a family trip we took to Orlando back when I was 8 years old or so.


We had this charcoal cartoon sketch done of our daughter in Paris last fall by a street vendor just a block from Notre Dame:


Here are our two silhouette sketches hanging on a side wall in our family room:

Skirted bench

A few weeks ago I decided to attempt to 'temporarily' cover my leather dining room table bench. I say temporarily because a certain man who lives in my house just so happens to love leather and wasn't sold on the idea of a 'skirt' covering his favorite leather bench (as you'll see below, I did it anyway, smile). After seeing a few pictures of skirted tables and benches on some of my favorite blogs, I decided to go for it.

Photo from Willow Decor.

This skirted table that Artie from Color Outside of the Lines made was also part of my inspiration in making this bench skirt.

Before:

Using some extra beige twill fabric, I sewed a few pieces together for the seat, then attached a one-inch wide elastic piece into a seam that I sewed by hand (unfortunately) into the top and voila...
After:



It's Metamorphosis Monday over at Between Naps on the Porch. Be sure to check out the other before and after projects posted by some very talented people!

Extreme homes

*Attention my fellow house and real estate addicts*
Forbes just posted the most expensive homes on the market right now in America, many of which have dropped a few million in asking price.

Julia at Hooked on Houses just so happens to be having her 'Hooked on Friday' party today and I thought I'd join in. Just as Julia is, I'm always hooked on houses, but today I'm hooked on the most expensive homes for sale in the US right now.
Check these out:
The big daddy of them all- $125 million in Beverly Hills, CA:

$100 million in Lake Tahoe, NV:

$85 million in Bel Air, CA:

$75 million in Simi Vally, CA:

$75 million in Greenwich, CT:

$75 million on the Upper East side in Manhattan:

$68 million in Pagosa Springs, CO:

$65 million in Brentwood, CA:

I'll take #6 please, in NYC, how about you?

According to Forbes, the following cities in the US are the best cities to buy a home, considering the real estate market:

Los Angeles, CA
Denver, CO
Boston, MA
Pheonix, AZ
San Diego, CA

Friday show & tell

Today it's shells that we found on the beach in Puerto Rico last month and another bird egg shell(she took another hatched egg last week which I posted about here).

Now if we could only find one of these on our next beach adventure. I'm sure her classmates would be much more impressed then they will with the itsy bitsy shells she's taking today.


Happy Friday everyone!

Tablescape Thursday- a casual affair

This is my first time joining Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for her Tablescape Thursday. Thanks for hosting this event Susan, I've enjoyed seeing what everyone puts together and decided to jump in and try it myself this week.


Overall theme:
Although we have a long dining room table (squeezed into a tiny dining room filled with too much stuff including wine fridge, wine shelves, buffet etc...) I wanted to create something for a more intimate yet casual and cozy get-together with just one other couple. I incorporated some of my favorite things into this tablescape, including: my new antique ironstone dairy slab, burlap, white and tan linen, pewter, milk glass, white tea light candles, wicker, and crystal.


Table linens:
I started by making two short runners out of some leftover burlap and ran them across the width of the table. I added our last initial to the frayed end by using black fabric paint.


The white linen fabric down the center actually has embroidery on it in bright colors so I folded and ironed to keep it simple and white, yet contrast with and soften the look of the burlap.

Centerpiece:
The focal point of my table is my antique English ironstone 'margarine' dairy slab which I posted about here.


I used white hydrangea which I displayed in a silver Nambe pitcher. I simply placed a tan linen napkin on the platter and placed the flowers and my Nambe salt and pepper shakers with some green figs on top.

Place settings:
I found these wicker placemats at a market in Bali years ago. The pewter plates belonged to my grandmother and on top I placed my new milk glass dessert/salad plates (I'm collecting 2 plates in different styles so I'll have a mismatch set of dessert plates).




The white linen napkins were handed down from my grandmother to my mom and then to me (don't look too closely or you'll see age spots). They are folded and have pewter napkin rings on them with a lavender sprig from my yard tucked in and a fresh fig on top for some color.

The flatware came all the way from Tanzania as it belonged to my husband's grandparents. We have the full set and it's never been used (it must be over 100 years old). I know nothing about flatware but it's made by Butler out of England and I like the clean lines, as you can probably already tell I like to keep it simple.

The silver animal place markers were a housewarming gift from our close friends and they got them at the Events store in Houston.

Stemware:
No party in our home is ever complete without decanting a nice bottle of red wine. The stemware I've chosen for this table is Waterford. We will only be drinking wine at this soiree, hence there is no need for water glasses. :-)


Other details:
I love the softness of white tea light candles and also appreciate not worrying about dripping wax. I cut the grape leaves off the vine in our yard just to keep with the pops of green. I found the beaded crystal pedestal plates at Hobby Lobby last month.

Our black dining room chairs (L Hitchcock) belonged to my grandparents and these chairs have been in our family for close to 100 years so they hold a lot of sentimental value for me. They have such pretty details but I'm thinking about putting slipcovers over them for protection.

I recently made the skirted cover for the bench (leather) and am happy with the results, it softens the look of our dark table and black chairs and ties in nicely with the framed botanicals on the wall (which I made and posted about here).




Now all we need to do is open this wine and toast to a fun event!