Growing up

It feels like I legit aged five years in July. My little sister had her bachelorette party, got married, and I got promoted--all in the span of four weeks (okay, admittedly the wedding stuff has been in the works for the last year and a half but still, it all came down this month). 

First, the bachelorette party. We spent the night being entertained by drag queens, watching wet underwear contests, and being showered (literally) by champagne all in the Hillcrest area of San Diego. I think I speak for everyone when I say it really was a night to forget after all the alcohol consumed remember! Our theme was animal print, and the invitations that went out stated it was going to be a "wild" night, hence all of us dressed up like jungle queens!

Next, the wedding. There were a lot of DIY aspects and it was a ton of work. But I know when my sister looks back at her photos, she won't remember all of the stress and running around; she will remember how utterly gorgeous she looked, and how we transformed a conference room into a sparkling garden for her special night. 

Me cheesing it up as a bridesmaid (hey, it's my blog; I have to add a gratuitous shot). Besides, our dresses were too cute not to show off (her colors were navy blue, apple green, and touches of white and ivory--proud to say I helped her pick that combo)! 

I totally came home with the top portion of this centerpiece (the birdcage, complete with faux-feather friend and nest inside). Plans currently include painting the cage in either an oil rubbed bronze finish, or the same rusted-look finish I still hope to do on our bed. 

By the way, they got this super adorable, super customized cake topper on etsy. The bride bird's dress looked just like my sister's wedding gown! And normally her husband (my new brother-in-law!!) wears glasses, so we were totally tickled that they included those on the groom bird. Cutest. Cake topper. Ever!

The hanging light orbs are actually baby's breath pomanders with LED's wrapped inside. In the background you can also see the fugly carpet wrapped pole we hid with fabric and more baby's breath, the blue lights they had glowing up on the stage, and the trees they rented to create a more outdoorsy feel inside (I so didn't know you could rent trees!). They also had votives flickering on metal screens our dad made just for the occasion (shameless family business plug here). 

And last but not least: my promotion! I totally wanted to include it in this post, but it was getting so ridiculously long, even I was getting tired of reading it! Ha! So you'll have to forgive this minor cliff hanger, but I'll be back Wednesday with more gossip on the new corporate frontier. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy skimming over my sister's gorgeous nuptial photos again, and check out the shameless family plug if you're a SoCal local.

BTW: I'm shocked at how many random Jersey Shore moments we had at the reception. Imagine myself and my baby sister's British boyfriend fist pumping the air and screaming, "Oh yeah! Fist pump yeah! Oh yeah! Wedding yeah!" in the spirit of Pauly D. #culturalfail  

Knock-off bedding

West Elm's Organic Cotton Pinch Pleat bedding. Super sweet without being too girly in a ruffled Shabby Chic way, but still has something modern-ish about it. Too bad even on sale it's over $100 for the duvet and two standard shams. 

Awesome alternative: Target's 100% cotton Pinched Pleat duvet set. No, it's not organic but it's not full of synthetic fibers either. And a queen set was only $70. 

But let's pretend it's not on our still-green bed, that I'm not hiding the rest of the room from view right now in its mid-makeover state. It's not quite as "pleaty" as the West Elm version, but I can't honestly say that bothers me. I'm dying to get a wide shot of the bed and the room, but it's very mismatched right now (and not in an eclectic collected way). But for now, it's l♥ve.

Americana tea towels

When I was hunting down a graphic for my Pinterest challenge, the one I settled on actually made me remember another project I had seen (and pinned), ironically also from YHL.

Source: younghouselove.com via Amber on Pinterest

I loved this pop of red from the bike. The image was so cute and fun, and my first thought was it would be so easy to make something like that! I'm a huge fan of iron-on transfer paper for just about any project involving prints and fabrics (I guess I'm old school since I haven't jumped on the Cricut or Silhouette bandwagon). I recently picked up some super cute tea towels from IKEA (for all of 79¢) at the beginning of the month and I thought, along with the red stripe on the towel, some blue images would add that sweet little Americana kick I seem to be on (I blame the month of July; how can you not be patriotic?). 

My bike image came from The Graphics Fairy (it's the same image I used on my galvanized tin, just minus the advertising words), and the other two images I found on Google. I really wanted to stick to the whole vintage transportation theme, and I wanted the pictures to look hand drawn or sketched. 

I changed to tint to blue (I use PowerPoint to edit all my images--I'm way old school) so they all looked alike. I pressed the towels in a folded position so I knew exactly where to place my images. The iron-on paper says not to use an ironing board, but a hard surface covered with a pillow case (??). This created way more trouble than it was worth, so I just laid a towel over our ironing board and it seemed to work just fine. I really don't understand how iron-on paper isn't supposed to be used on an ironing board. But whatever.

Thanks to the nubby texture of the tea towels, the graphic take one an almost ghostly transparent effect. I really like the way they turned out, even though they're not as crisp and bold as my inspiration. They look a little more time-worn which actually pleases me more than I expected.

I may grab a few more towels on our next trip to IKEA and add some orange or brown images for fall, and some green ones for Christmas.