W.E.S.T. E.L.M.

 

Two words: West Elm 

I have spent many hours browsing the web pages of West Elm, but having never been to an actual retail location, it was time to make a visit. While on our anniversary trip to Philly my husband and I stopped in for a quick peek. Since it was a rainy day and we were decked out in our rain-proof fashion bests, I felt a bit out of place, but the ideas were still everywhere in that store. If you ever get a chance to visit a location make sure you do... they have the neatest stuff! Since I wasn't sure on the protocol for snapping pics in the store, and because the store attendants were already giving me a hairy eyeball for dripping on their displays, I pulled a few pics from their website that I'm loving.... can't wait to re-create them in my own home. 

 This little guy is the first thing I saw when I walked in and made a bee line for it. I'm looking forward to re-creating this lil' buddy in the near future. 

I love all the colors of these recycled glass bottles, and am going to start scoping out the local thrift stores to try and re-create this look. 

 

These are the reason I even found my way onto the West Elm website to begin with. I was looking for something to replace the Christmas ornaments I had hanging in our window, and came across these in a Better Homes and Gardens mag. LOVE them! 

Lastly, I wanted to take these pillows home with me... I have the perfect home for them on our bed, but with a hefty price tag for each,  I had to leave them at the store.

p.e.a.c.e   ...   l.a. p.a.z.

Celebrating 1 year!

Well folks, a milestone has been met in the Swartzentruber family and we are super excited! 

My husband and I just celebrated 1 year of marriage! 

Yahooo! 

A year back I stashed the top tier of our wedding cake in a sealed Tupperware container and stuck it in the freezer, not really knowing how it would taste a year later. 

It was still super good! The icing was a bit crumbly when we were cutting it, but it tasted fantastic. My advice to newlyweds is to put a layer of plastic wrap (in our case Press n' Seal) over the container before putting the lid on and sticking it in the freezer. To thaw it I just let the container sit in the refrigerator for a few hours.

We also took an anniversary trip to Philly and in honor of Adam Richman, the host of our new favorite show: Travel Channel's Man V. Food, and because it was a rainy weekend, we hit up some of the best local food joints to stay dry and cozy.

 

The Franklin Fountain served us up a delicious "Mt. Vesuvius" sundae. The line was worth the wait! 

Yum! 

For lunch we checked out DiNic's at the Reading Terminal Market and had their tasty Roast Pork with cheese and broccoli rabe, topped with some delicious gravy!

To get our chocolate fill we visited The Naked Chocolate Cafe. Yum-o! We sampled their hot chocolate and also brought home some dipped pretzel rods. The hot chocolate is one for the books! So thick and creamy. My husband got the European style which was like eating melted chocolate... rich and tasty! It's a great little cafe atmosphere too!

Cheers to our first year! 

p.e.a.c.e  ...   l.a. p.a.z. 

Stop... Rewind

I realize I haven't been providing you readers with any project updates or fun DIY ideas. Life has been a bit busy with the start of spring, and we're losing an hour tonight! I'll miss the extra time to snooze, but I'm very excited for a few extra rays in my day. Bring on the springtime and summer! 

So here's the lamp project I keep talking about. 

exhibit A: "the lamp"

 I picked up this beauty at a local thrift store for about $5 at one of their great half price sales. I love the concept but the brass parts were starting to rust at the edges and it didn't fit in with the overall room decor. 

Here's a close up of one of the crackled glass globes. See how the brass color plays into the cracks on the globe? Not my favorite color.

I picked up some of this at our local Michael's store. You can't really tell from this picture but the color is "Oxford Blue" and it matches the overall color scheme in our dining room/ my craft room where I wanted to find a home of the lamp.

I disassembled the lamp and since it was snowing out, made a makeshift spray painting both in our basement. 

And the finished product after a few coats of paint:

  

  

I'm really happy with the results! I especially like how the navy and metallic paint give of a silver effect to the cracks in the globes.

p.e.a.c.e.   ...    l.a. p.a.z.

Spicing up the Kitchen

I happen to be one of "those" cooks who looks at an already established recipe and says "hmmm... what if I add a little of this and a little of that." I rarely follow a recipe "to the T" and it's common to see spice containers haphazardly strewn across the counter as I add a pinch to the pot. Because of this my spice cabinet looks a mess... and I spend a lot of time trying to find exactly what I want. 

exhibit A: 

 

 Very messy and hard to find things. 

Enter box: 

 This is a box that once held a sheet set from target. It's nice and sturdy and you know me... I have a knack at making trash into treasure :-) 

 I took a sheet of craft paper and cut it to size to fill in the back. See how pretty? 

Then I placed it in the cabinet and was able to better organize all of my spice containers. They fit perfectly on top and now I can actually see what I need instead of pulling um' all out to find just the right one. 

 

And because I'm a perfectionist and bit of an overachiever I had to organize the rest of the cabinet as well. 

Now for the before and after: 

Before= messy and hard to find things

 

After= organized with everything in reach 

And all it took was a box, a sheet of craft paper and about 15mins of my time. 

Have you found any creative ways to get the most use out of your kitchen storage? I'd love to hear your ideas too! 

p.e.a.c.e  ...   l.a. p.a.z.

Hi, I'm Sabrina and I saved $39.00 today!!

$1.97... this would be how much I handed over today for a Creative Memories scrapbook at the good ol' GW (Good Will). What a steal!! 

The book is a completely open canvas... 15 pages free of any signs of a previous owner. After consulting the Creative Memories website it looks like I saved about $39.00! I'm thinking about calling this album "Our First Year" and scrapbooking about "our firsts" in married life. For example, our first Valentine's day as a married couple. 

We made some awesome homemade heart shaped pizzas:

 along with a scrumptious dessert! I found a "Copy That" recipe in my Food Network mag for Chili's Molten Chocolate Cake.... 

 yummmmy!

Have any of you found good deals at while thrifting this week? 

How did you celebrate with your Valentine? 

p.e.a.c.e.   ...    l.a. p.a.z.

Dressin' up the Windows

 

About a month ago I took down the Christmas ornaments I had hanging in the window and packed them away for the year. Yes, I kept them up long after the gifts were given and the New Year was celebrated, but I liked the look of them hanging there and so they stayed. 

I finally replaced them with some decorative handmade flower, ribbon and bead balls (pictured above). I made each of them a little special but the overall theme is continuous... green, blue and white. 

 Aren't they pretty? 

So here's a little history behind the project. I first started with these: 

 I picked these up at a thrift store back on Jan 19th, and the final results of this project have nothing to do with them :-) 

My first idea was to make a topiary with each of the hobnail glasses being a base for a different shape or texture of topiary. I scored some silk flowers for a few pennies and raided my craft supplies to get started. 

Attempt # 1:

 I liked the top topiary ball, but didn't think it connected with with the white hobnail base... wasn't the right style. There was also the issue of the bare green foam ball. Not pretty. 

Attempt #2 

Shucks! I just realized I didn't take any pics after the 1st attempt... probably because I was embarrassed of my creative attempts to cover up that green foam. So, in writing, attempt #2 was something like making little white puff paint dots all over the foam surface. It looked even worse then leaving that foam show. 

Attempt # 3

So then I used some off-white acrylic paint to cover the weird dots. This created some weird clumping looking texture and the off-white looked even worse with the milky white hobnail. Yuk! 

Attempt #4

 Try cuatro led me to a brilliant idea. I raided my craft supply for something to use to cover the gross bumpy clumpy lumpy foam. I found some great white pearl-esque  beads. This was a great idea until I got halfway through and realized I didn't have as many beads as I thought. 

Attempt #5

I think this is where I said screw it and tore the thing apart. After all, I had to save the dignity of my beautiful thrifted hobnail pedestal glasses!  Thus emerged my idea to create some pretty window wear! 

 

 You can see the influences of my numerous attempts in this hanging ornament ball. Cool huh? 

This idea can easily be translated... you can hang just about anything in your window... just check out these from some of my favorite stores:  

This Crate and Barrel gold-tipped pine cone would be great for fall... I'd picture 4 of 5 of them hanging from a good earthy satin ribbon...  yummy! :-) 

Pottery Barn uses the same acorn idea but adds in a cute lantern too... so, so cute! I love the candles too!

 I'm drooling over this gorgeous peacock wreath from Pier 1. This would be perfect hanging in a window. The texture and colors are to die for!

Or this neat star, also from Pier 1

Alright, enough ideas. Here's one last shot of all the decorative balls floating pretty in our window: 

p.e.a.c.e.   ...    l.a. p.a.z. 

Lamp Redo... try 2

So, I'm coming clean about never really completing my list from my October 2010 post about a few DIY projects I wanted done by December 22. 

 Here's one of the victims that fell prey to my overambitious Pre-Christmas DIY craze. I picked up the lamp at Care and Share on a 1/2 price day after studying it on the top shelf a few weeks prior to to the purchase. What can I say, It must have lit a DIY spark in me since I was still thinking about a few weeks later. So, for $5 I brought it home that day.

Since then, I've been trying to fit it into our decor a little better. Admittedly, I didn't realize how BIG it was sitting in the store, but here in casa Swartzentruber it's a bit too big for it's surroundings. 

Back in this post I thought it would be fun to change up the shade to something more like this:

 I still like the look of a bold pattern, and the idea of adding some color, but I'm not sold on the pattern or texture just yet. 

There's also the problem of the outdated brass base and parts holding the glass balls together. More on that to come.

In the meantime, I'm throwing around some of these Shades of Light ideas for the shade...  

Any Favorites? 

p.e.a.c.e.