Happy Valentine's Day! ♥

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!  

If you're reading this you are awesome, and I thank you humbly for reading my little nonsense of a blog :) I may not be as active on here as I once was (ugh, life always getting in the way!), but I do cherish this little venue of thought and creativity. And it is nice indeed to know some people stop by!! 

So  here, for you, some flower pictures. It's what I do best! ;)

And not just any flowers, but tulips. Pink tulips. 

They were what my wedding bouquet consisted of.

They are the definition of spring and romance. ♥

And I rewarded myself for getting through a tough work week and weekend on Monday.

Then proceeded to take a ridiculous amount of pictures of them on Tuesday when I was off work. 

:) 

I tried the penny in a tulip vase trick I saw a looooooooong time ago on pinterest and you know what, it works!

These have stood so tall and proud instead of toppling over like they usually do. 

I recommend trying it if you bring home tulips this spring!

And of course, no Valentine's Day is complete without chocolate.

So here's a plate full of mini chocolate cupcakes with whipped chocolate ganache frosting.

Lemme tell ya --- deeeeeeelish!

 

Thanks to my MIL for sending me mini cupcake liners for the tin I bought at Christmas. And thanks for the colorful spring sprinkles, love them!!

Oh and the baby and I indulged and have found the chocolate ganache to be particularly irresistible. It tastes like chocolate ice cream!

She's the size of a grapefruit apparently.

I wonder if it's a large or small grapefruit. 

Either way, she's making me look bigger by the week...

23 weeks now. 

17 weeks to go.

Hahahhahahaha

I love the awkwardness of my face after taking a MILLION self-portraits with the camera remote and tripod. Talk about a challenge! :D 

Ah, I'm loving this spring!

Now if only the weather would cooperate and get a little more sunny!!

Anywho, best start packing since I have a little time before work! 

Thanks again for reading and hope you get spoiled today! :)

Home decorating explosion post

Holy moly! TWO posts in ONE week!? Wow, this hasn't happened in a loooong time! :)

I'm off work tomorrow since I (unfortunately) work the weekend... therefore, I am super inspired to do all kinds of amazing things on my day off. Oh my goodness me, the length of this to-do list!!

Pinterest, you're not helping!

In addition to the not so fun phone calls I have to make... I need to call some florists about a friend's wedding (I'm a bridesmaid! First time since my sister's wedding in 2000!)... We've brainstormed and being the flower-oriented person I am, I've even started a pinterest board for mainly wedding flower ideas :) Go check it out! 

In addition to phone calls, I need to clean. Actually, hubby is off to so I should say we need to clean! I know having a baby is going to mean I will have less time to keep this place in order (or well, the new place!), but I still firmly believe that the disarray that befalls our home when I work all the time will be mostly avoided while I'm on maternity leave. I found this helpful spring cleaning checklist on pinterest and I figure if I  we do as much on this as we can, it'll be a good head start to the final big clean before we move. That, and this place is... gross.

I suppose this would also be a good time to start really packing (!) !! 

I can't wait to be moved and settled in again.

Which brings me to decorating. Oooh, how I love this topic!

I've been obsessed lately with how we are going to set up the new place. I have the furniture situation pretty well planned, but oh those walls and textiles. It's the funnest but hardest part. We've been smart and acquired or bought only neutral color furniture (white, black, wood) so we can really play up the color with textiles (curtains, rugs, pillows etc), and we have a whole boatload of things I'd like to hang on the walls. It's the themes and arrangements that get me, the colors too. I have enlisted the help of my newly graduated designer friend to help me out when it's time for the final touches, because I feel like I get too excited and just throw stuff up on the wall and rush the process...leaving the house looking, well...rushed and unstylish.

So to assist my brain and my friend, I've been avidly pinning home decor ideas and hopefully it will keep me focused on what I like and what I want to do. Actually, all these pictures are from our Japan (honeymoon) trip from 2011 and ones I would like to hang on our living room wall in some kind of frame arrangement like on my pinterest board linked above. I can't decide on curtain colors or even options as of yet for the living room though. We have a lot of black furniture and there is currently a lot of green going on, but I'm thinking adding blue might be nice since it's my favorite color. Oh the choices!

Another focus point of decorating is the dining nook. We actually will have one for the first time since we lived in the States (feels like FOREVER ago!), so now I'm super excited to make it special. I will hang my giant apple painting on one wall, but I have no idea what I should hang on the opposite wall. We've been thinking about some simple arrangement of color or black and white family photos. Maybe? I definitely want a gorgeous orchid to go in the middle of the table, because I have serious orchid-envy of the clients I visit daily and their gorgeous orchids. :D

The second bedroom is going to be a girly pink and country-esque guest bedroom/atelier. Yup, not giving that up! I am getting all the furniture for it (almost anyway) from my mom and I'm super excited about having my uber-girly room.

I saw this knit strawberry bunting on pinterest and would love to figure out how to crochet something similar.

(since I can't knit)

I'd also love to find time to crochet some gorgeous pastel and pink pillows for the day bed. Ah ♥

Our bedroom has me the most stumped of all. All I know is that we have a white romantic style bed set and we have to fit a crib in there. Other than that, I'm really confused about what I want to use for colors (since I have a pink room, we're going to try some other color...hubby's happy!). I may or  may not have blogged about it, but I got a gorgeous vintage quilt from my godmother on our trip to New York and it had a lot of colors in it, but mainly yellow. I am also having an inexplicable love affair with all things yellow at the moment (which is so not me), so I don't know if I should try incorporating more yellow and use the quilt as my decorating inspiration. Decisions, decisions.

I'd also like to blow up some of my flower photography and hang it, but we'll have to see about that...

And my maybe favorite room... the bathroom. It may seem weird, but I have a slight bathroom fetish. Not only that, but I love any "modernized" bathroom 100x more now that we've had a really icky old bathroom (that always looks dirty no matter how much or how often you scrub it! UGH!). 

I saw this idea on pinterest today for double shower curtains and I must say, I'm intrigued. I've also fallen in love with this idea for DIY ruffled shower curtains, but I doubt my level of sewing experience could pull it off. Sigh...

Either way, I'm super duper excited about having proper bathroom storage (a whole closet!!) and generally a cleaner and newer bathroom!

Wow, that was an explosion of decorating...

Funny where typing takes you when you just let you mind run. :)

Let me know if you have any awesome ideas!! 

 :)

We're moving!!

Yup, moving! Again!

We are moving into a slightly larger apartment which is closer to my parents and my friends...and is so much newer and nicer than our current apartment! The only drawback is losing our wonderful views and being so close to the woods we love, but honestly, we're gaining so much more that moving is more than worth it! YAY!!

Speaking of the view, what a pretty sunny wintery springy day we had!

So now that I've calmed down from my crazy garden planning, I can now lose sleep and be more than excited about moving (packing, eew!) and decorating the new place (woohoo!!)! One of the things I'm most excited about is decorating the balcony -- what to plant out there!?!

Ah, so many plans. :)

So this is what I've been up to since the last time I visited my blog... Oh, and working. I've been working again, and man, it's nice to get a paycheck! 

(funds those decorating plans, wink wink)

Anywho, that's a quick update.

Had a hankering for funfetti cupcakes (as you do if you've ever been pregnant and on pinterest) so hubby and I made some the other night. Yum! Easy recipe, too!

Playing around for a few minutes taking this picture made me suddenly fall madly in love with my camera again and so inspired to get back into taking pictures regularly.

I guess I was taking a much needed break. That, and I think with the increased light (and sunshine!) and general spring state of mind I'm in, I think I'm re-energized creatively. 

Ah, brain! Don't get me started on creative ideas! I'll never get to sleep tonight if I start dreaming up projects! 

:)

Hope you've had a wonderful weekend!