Home Love Collage

I found all of these prints on Etsy and want to build this collage in our future home (hopefully soon).

Christian gave me the "I dream of Bluegrass" print for Christmas last year. If you didn't guess already, this collage represents everywhere Christian and I have lived together (Cincinnati, Savannah, and New Orleans) and where we each will always call home (Mobile and Kentucky). 

To find any of these shops on Etsy, click the links below (from top right):

New Orleans, Mobile, Georgia on My Mind, I Dream of Bluegrass, Home is where the heart is, Cincinnati 

Here are some of my other favorite state love posters:

Georgia on My Mind

I love you from here to New Orleans 

vintage Cincinnati map 

New House Tour

Check it out, a new update of our house tour by clicking the "our home" link above, or just click here.

Here's what it looked like before:

Decorating Easter Eggs

I know that I promised a full house tour on Wednesday, but our family is in town for Easter, and we are delightfully distracted. It will have to wait for next weekend. Tomorrow will be our 3rd year hosting Easter and we are really excited to plan and prepare another Easter menu for our family and friends. Check out last year's here and the menu here.

To hold you over till the big Easter post, I will share with you the eggs we dyed last night. I found the idea through Apartment Therapy which led me here. And they turned out like this:

Then I let Christian help and they turned out like this:

Can you guess which ones are mine and which ones are his? For the first time in a quarter century of dying Easter eggs, I read the instructions on the back of the dye. They suggested vinegar for ultra vibrant colors, lemon juice for vibrant colors, and water for pastels. It worked great! I had never used anything other than water before and was always soaking them for forever to get the colors I wanted. Happy Easter!

The January Cure

Second to spending time with friends and family, my favorite thing about the holidays is the purge of belongings that comes right after. This year we really went for it, organizing and cleaning like never before. We also signed up for Apartment Therapy's January Cure , so each day we will get a task to get our house in better working order between January 2 and February 1st. We'll update the blog each week to show our progress. So far the tasks were simple: set up an outbox, buy flowers (we always do this), create a needs assessment list for the whole house, buy green cleaners (didn't do this because it seems more green to use the rest of what we have + I clean everything with vinegar), and clean the floors.

Here's our needs assessment list as it stands after week 1:

Living room
Clean out cabinet

Broken drop ceiling tile
clean behind couch

Bedroom
Mending box
Clean out closet
Organize drawers
Dusty chandelier
Burnt out bulbs
Broken drop ceiling tile

Dining room
Old computers
Broken drop ceiling tile
Christians closet
Christians drawers

Kitchen
Clean out fridge
Clean behind fridge
Pantry
Organize utensil drawers
Fix broken drawer

Bathroom
Clean out chest
Organize under sink
Replace shower curtain
Move medicine out

Laundry room
Organize side wall
Organize shelves
Vacuum
Spray paint lamp

Outside
Get furniture
Compost
Move spool to front

I wish there were before photos. Actually, it's probably best that there aren't. Trust me, behind the closet and cabinet doors, we were messy. The end of the day resulted in three boxes and one garbage bag full of stuff ready to be donated. And with the help of a gift card to The Container Store, we can all sleep a little easier.

The Closets: hers and his 

 The Kitchen Drawers 

organized hardware drawer

just forks, spoons, knives, and bottle openers :)

medicine moved to the kitchen

utensil drawer now holds only the most frequently used 

this drawer has everything else

The Pantry 

love from the container store

The Bathroom

Also with the help of the container store

Happy cat in a clean home :)

Where have you been all of December?

It was a busy, busy two months. And although we took lots of pictures, and did lots of blog worthy things, we were just too engrossed in the holidays to take a break and blog. But, with work resuming tomorrow, it's time to resume blogging as well. Here's a peek at the two biggest hits from Nov/Dec 2012, with a full holiday post to come.

Christmas tree decorating: I love our fake white Christmas tree!

A Few Changes Around the House

I saw this idea on on Apartment Therapy (30 DIY Halloween Decorations) and would love to do it larger scale for Mardi Gras; with glittery masks on all the portraits. But, for Halloween I masked the portrait of Picasso and Durer that hangs in our living room.

The next two are semi permanent updates:

This dresser was first in my grandpa's childhood bedroom and then my dad's. Now it functions as a bar, Christian's dresser, and table linens drawer. I got permission to paint it from my grandma over the summer and had fantasies of painting it black! However, I ran out of time over Fall Break and am now thinking more along the lines of stripping and restoring the wood. But for now I replaced the old, dysfunctional knobs with new ones that my mom found at Anthropology on sale for $2.95.

Before:

Lastly, the stack of books in our bedroom was becoming a mess to keep up with. Not to mention the inconvenience of not being able to access any of the books without rebuilding the pile. So I bought a vertical bookshelf from Overstock.com. Much, much better. 

Before:

 After:

Dear World, Happy Halloween. Love, Nola

The month of October begins the best 6 months of the year. First the weather finally cools down, then it's Halloween (second only to Mardi Gras), then my birthday + Thanksgiving, followed by the most wonderful, glorious season of Christmas, and finally culminating in the festivities of Mardi Gras. By Ash Wednesday I am exhausted!

But for now, the focus is on Halloween. This is Christian's favorite holiday and my 3rd favorite holiday (I'll keep you guessing on what #2 is).  Christian's favorite part is dressing up and staying out all night with everyone else who is in costume; mine is carving pumpkins, watching scary movies, and making chili. Here's a look back on some of my favorite Halloween's with Christian:

From left to right: 2008 Charlie Chapman, 2009 Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol, 2010 Lady Gaga and Creepy Cop, and the year tragedy struck, 2011 Dia de Morte 

This year we made dinner at home and invited our new friends, Berthold and Louisa, over. It was their first Nola Halloween and maybe their first Halloween ever, as they are Austrian and there is no such thing as Halloween in Austria. We had a a blast just walking around, bumping into so many great costumes. And I have to say, I think this year was our very best costume yet. Can you guess what we are? Check it out:

   

Frenchmen Street

Sunday we carved pumpkins :) and made chili and baked pumpkin seeds