purple..seriously gorgeous!

To be honest, purple has never been a favorite color of mine. I hardly ever use it for graphic design or other creative purposes! But, this LOVELY purple wedding has changed my mind! I was reminded by a sweet little color lesson...ANY color can look great when used in the right amount and in the right context. 

I am pretty smitten with the top image. Hanging lavender stock upside down...breathtaking! Visually, it just grabs your attention!..beautiful ceremony backdrop!!

images via SMP

great paint color resource

I am a lover of House Beautiful Magazine. It always inspires me to get creative around our house! I was at Barnes and Noble today and saw their "favorite paint color" edition and just had to browse through it! If you are going to tackle any painting projects this summer, this is the magazine for you! It is quite a fun lesson on color theory!...I read a lot about choosing the perfect white paint and they give the brand and name of paint which is extremely helpful! I think I'll stop back by B&N and pick this magazine up..it was just too helpful not to buy!

cute mr+mrs

My sweet friend Katie is getting married this summer. Her colors are navy+yellow & she is having her wedding reception in a barn in North Carolina...I can't wait! I have been on a hunt for lovely and inspirational barn/yellow+navy weddings. I found this image and loved it. Though it is only a tiny detail, it is truly the unique details that reveal the personality of the couple. 

two future projects

Kitchen projects have been on my mind! Currently, our cabinets are a medium oak color. It's not a horribly unpleasant color but I would prefer white much better! I would also love to add glass to a few of the cabinet doors. Though I am a lover of color, I want to go with a fresh color scheme in the kitchen. I am loving the subway tile backslash in the image above! Thankfully I have a handy husband who to know how to tile! I haven't really thought much about counter tops altough I'd love to change them. Our counter tops are currently white (I've never had white counter tops before!) and it is a nightmare. I clean and clean and clean and they still look dirty because every little crumb shows up on those counters! Gosh, it drives me crazy! I love the wood block counter tops but we're trying to keep the budget within reason. Okay, so on to the next project...

Building a built in...

Can you believe it? We don't have a single bookshelf in our home and it is killing me. I just can't seem to find one that I LOVE. I have stacks of lovely design books in our guest bedroom waiting to have a home on a shelf! So, we've decided to custom design and build our own, and by build I mean hire someone to build it. We have a great open wall in our other living area that would be perfect for a large white built in. I was first inspired from this pottery barn shelving system..but its expensive and not exactly what I want..but you get the idea, right?

pretty! Love the closed cabinets on the bottom.

So those are the "summer project" plans! Oh, and add can lighting to the kitchen..but those aren't super exciting to post pictures of!

vintage brooch bouquets. LOVE.

I love brooches. I started a vintage collection junior year in high school and wore a brooch just about every single day that year. I was obsessed. I still love my collection dearly but I love how brooches are not being translated in other areas besides just adornments for clothing.


I have seen images of brooch bouquets a lot over the past few months on blogs...and I am loving them quite a bit. I love the amount of color and visual interest they bring to photographs! This style doesn't fit every bride...but if you are going for a vintage inspired wedding...this might just be the perfect little detail for you and your bridesmaids! The bouquet brooch style dates back to about the 1930's.

necklace love, I got it!

SOOO I got THE necklace that I loved so much. 

Oh I am so excited to wear this lovely little statement! 

creative invitations!!

How darn sweet! Simply printed on paper lunch bags...love the sticker too: read, re-use, recycle me!
I love when an invitation can be printed on the unexpected. 

bubbles OH MY!

Bubbles!!!!! I love that the bubbles give such a dreamy quality to these images...I love that the photographer worked with the soapy circles and the direction they were floating in to make sure that the bubbles were framing the couple..not covering them up! What a lovely prop...

images via Simple Bloom 

Wedding Ceremony on the dance floor?

I thought this was an interesting way of handling a space problem at a wedding venue. Why not use chairs for the reception and the dance floor to create a place for the ceremony! Also, if you're already spending the money on uplighting, it makes for a beautiful backdrop. Honestly, not much prep done for this ceremony because everything was already in place for the reception! I also loved how the chairs are placed. An innovative solution to solving a space problem!

Happy Mother's Day MOM!!!!!!!

Happy Mother's Day! Mom, I love you so much and am forever thankful to have you as my mom.

Hope you have a relaxing and special day. You deserve it!

it's in the little details...

I am loving this table setting from StyleMePretty. A few pieces of ribbon and s small flower...so much beauty in something so simple. I love the rustic texture of the table combined with the beauty of the colors, flower and ribbon. Lovely!

necklace love.

Yep, I am LOVING this little lovely from Madewell

I love the colors (red + turquoise is fabulous in my opinion) and I love gold jewelry.

A colorful wedding farewell

How FUN is this?!?! Someone please use this idea for their wedding farewell! How perfectly colorful is this photo? LOVE love love!


photo via StyleMePretty

Senior Design Project: How to Design Your Wedding

Here it is. This has been my baby for the past month or so. This was my senior design project. We had to choose a design direction in something that within our design strengths. My strengths are color and print. So, I just went with it and I love how it turned out! I wanted the book to be filled with photos to inspire any bride. I also wrote all of the content but if the reader chose not to read it, they would still get a lot of great ideas from the photographs.

Remember when I showed this lovely image? At first I was simply organizing my color palettes for each chapter but I loved how it looked so much (happy design accident!!) that I made it the design for the inside first + last spreads . I love fabric inspired patterns so for the front of each title page, I added a bit of advice to help the reader with "color tips" showing the color schemes for the colors I used in each chapter. Since I chose to use those color boxes...I had to have consistency throughout the book so I continued the "square color box palette" theme in the table of contents and next to each page number.

Hope you all like it as much as I do! :)

*This book was a school project. If it were to ever be published, permission and full photography credit would be given to all.

an inspiration wall

Forget an inspiration board, I wouldn't mind having this inspiration WALL in my home...

image via Shelter via Elle Decor