PART ONE OF HOUSE PAINTING: it's spring and my house's birthday, time to paint....

It's spring (and has been for awhile, I'm kind of behind, I guess)! Spring and Easter are associated with new beginnings and I've recently taken a leap of faith and I quit my awful job.  If all goes as planned, I'll have a job waiting for me when we get back from vacation in May, but for now, I have a few weeks of downtime to work on the Etsy shop, blog, and my house.  

Bizarrely, we've had beautiful weather for the past two months, which almost made me forget that we live in Florida.  It actually felt like real spring for a little while.  We were able to take advantage of a few oddly cool days to paint the house.  (The nice weather is all over though... it's 95 today! Ugh.)

I've been wanting to paint the house forever and with time off from work right now, no time like the present, I guess. The exterior of the house is kind of like the kitchen, in that beyond basic repairs, it's been put off at the expense of everything else.  Last week was my house's "birthday"-- it's been two years since I closed!  I'm celebrating by giving the house a new look.  When I bought it, the house was all contractor white.  It was obvious that they just sprayed it all down in the white.  I hated it and it got dirty so easily.  

I went back and forth for months on what color to paint the house.  I wanted green for awhile, but decided that would blend in too much with all the foliage surrounding my house.  So, of course, I took to Pinterest to attempt to figure out what I wanted instead.  

Some of the pictures I pinned...

via kbhome.com

SAY YES TO THE DRESS!!!

I've been wanting to write this post for awhile... I have the time now and I can't wait to share it.  So, as I've mentioned before, I'm a little obsessed with watching Say Yes to the Dress.  It's even worse now that we've got Netflix and I can watch it on a pretty constant loop.  So not too long ago, we were watching SYYTD and I noticed that the boutonnière on the groom looked crazy familiar. We backed it up (the wonders of Netflix) and looked again... yep, looked like mine.  I went and checked my records and sure enough, that was one of my orders. Craziest surprise ever!

Screen shot from TLC's Say Yes to the Dress

And more of a close up...

Screen shot from TLC's Say Yes to the Dress

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN... KATE + BRAD'S WEDDING

I've recently made some major life changes which will allow me more time to focus on my shop and my blog.  So to kick off this new beginning of sorts, I'm going back to were it all began: Kate and Brad's wedding!  When I first started my shop, I made mostly pincushions and other little things.  Then my college friend Kate approached me about making boutonnières for her wedding..... and now I've made bouts, bouquets, and other wedding-related items for dozens of weddings!

DOES THE WEDDING INDUSTRY HAVE TO BE AWFUL?

So, some deeper thoughts today than I've put on my blog in the past...

I'm not a bride yet but when I was maid of honor for my friend Jessica a few years ago, she introduced me to the blog Offbeat Bride.  OBB was a beacon of common sense for us in the crazy world of weddings and long after her wedding was over, I've continued to read it, inspired by their straight talk and open-minded views on weddings and life in general.

Offbeat Bride and another blog, A Practical Wedding, both write fairly extensively on the issue of the "WIC."  WIC stands for Wedding Industrial Complex and essentially, it refers to the wedding industry as a whole, which is generally characterized by its tendency to pressure people, primarily women, to spend tons of money on ridiculous stuff that they don't need.  This market tends to be full of weight loss supplements, over-priced dresses, and "personal details" that every bride just has to have.  It's perpetrated by slick wedding websites, pushy sales people in overpriced salons, and (my guilty pleasure) wedding TV shows.  

Mason jars and chalkboard. A (beautiful) wedding that was inspired by a bride's desire to incorporate as many of her Pinterest wedding pins as possible into her wedding.  Via weddingchicks.com

The thing is, as OBB bride's editor Ariel wrote, any wedding business, no matter how indie or alternative, becomes by default a part of the wedding industry.  I was reading this article from APW on Friday and I got to thinking, if all of us who are trying to keep it real, but have wedding-related business, are technically part of the WIC... how can the whole thing really be all that bad?

OUTDOOR WEDDING by KRISTY BULSON on ETSY

To me, the idea of an outdoor wedding, especially here in Florida's crazy climate, is pretty daunting.  Rain/hurricanes, bugs, sweltering heat, uneven ground... I could go on and on.  I do love the idea though of bringing the aesthetics of an outdoor wedding to an indoor wedding (or at least one more shielded from the elements).  I was recently featured in this "Outdoor Wedding" treasury on Etsy featuring some awesome items for an outdoor (or wanna-be outdoor) wedding....

Take a peak at the treasury on Etsy for prices and shop sources!

Hope you've had a good week!  It's been crazy for me, but we've gotten a lot done, thankfully!

Robin

NEW BOUQUET IN THE SHOP TODAY!

I've been working hard on this bouquet for the last two weeks or so and I'm super excited to have it finished and posted in the shop.  Getting this bouquet done and some photos taken of it were the last things I wanted to accomplish before I start getting together applications for some new advertising.  Here's hoping I can get accepted to a few good blogs!

Here are some pictures from our little mini-photo shoot this week...

New things are coming soon!

I've disappeared from the blog a bit the last two weeks, work and personal issues are big time suckers for me, like they are for most people, but I've also been hard at work on new things for my shop and the blog.  I've been working on this black rose for a customer, as well as putting together a new bouquet that will be debuting with another photo shoot next week!  

Also, I've been doing lots of research on the new trends for 2014 and I can't wait to get started on some new items in these colors, picked by Pantone for Spring 2014.  I already have items in something like hemlock and, of course, radiant orchid, but I love some of the others too, like the pretty Cayenne below!  I love these bright colors for spring... winter is almost over!

via The Perfect Palette

Thanks for looking... check back soon!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Happy Valentine's Day!  Hope you had a great day, whether it was a day with that special someone or Singles' Awareness Day!

Here are some fun items from my shop in the spirit of Valentine's Day :)