New Beginnings!

Today was the last day and the first day all rolled into one! It was my last day working for Crate & Barrel, and it was a day providing approval for Kyle's next business venture. Honestly, it was an answered prayer! I've had to field all kinds of concern from people who think I'm slightly off my rocker for leaving something that is "guaranteed" to do something that might not be. If I never took chances, the only sure thing would be never doing anything. So I sent up a little prayer for a sign that everything would be OK, not just OK, but great! As a mother I doubted myself for bringing my "uncertainty" to Kyle's uncertainty and having all of that transfer onto Dablet. However, all of our hard work has paid off!
On my way home from my last day at Crate & Barrel, Kyle told me this would be the start of his next first! Top that off with the fact that I literally made money in my sleep last night! I remember one day in middle school when someone told me how much money Bill Gates makes in his sleep because of all of the interest his money earns. I thought it was such a novel concept...make money while you're sleeping, and I promised myself that one day I would be able to do that. Not because I don't want to actually WORK for what I earn, but because I want the work I do today to keep working for me every day after. I had online orders last night while I was sleeping! My networking worked for me while I got to rest up and recharge for another day full of it!
Even as I type this, I am learning how more of the seeds I took the time to plant in the world are starting to grow!! It is proof that even when you put your family first above what "society" calls "Normal Employment" and stay true to yourself and your priorities you CAN succeed!!

Do you want to learn more about how to make your wildest dreams come true?! Email me! Or take the quiz online through my website!!

Be the most beautiful person you were meant to be!

Pay it Forward

In case you missed the Pink Bubble introduction to 2013, you can find it here! One of the MANY reasons that I love being a part of Mary Kay is the nonprofit efforts the company supports. Even with incentives like a Makeover Contest, part of the Grand Prize is a donation to a charity benefiting women and children.

So what do you need to do? 

Get on the books for a makeover and set aside an hour to be pampered! You'll have before and after pictures of your looks, and YOU get to upload them to tell your story. The submissions will be accepted starting in March, but the sooner you get your new look done the more buzz you can create! You get to share your fabulous New Year New Look with friends and family and get votes! Best part is that on top of the prizes you can win, you can also win a $5,000 donation to your favorite charity benefiting women and children. 

Enthusiasm and Confidence can be contagious, and I cannot think of a better way to pay forward your satisfaction than to create an opportunity for other women to have the same feelings about themselves!

If you're interested, email me!

"Act as if what you do matters. It does!"

Labor Day Weekend & Before Pics!

Labor Day Weekend has proved to be fun-filled and inspiring! We spent Saturday and part of Sunday up on Lake Gaston with friends and Dablet got to enjoy more water festivities! She even gave her daddy a special touch on the fishing pole off the dock for a little catch and release:

After the quick hour drive back it was time to get back to it! I have been planning and dreaming about a home makeover for months now; finally, the ideas are starting to come together. In case you don't know the back story, Kyle and I moved into a fabulous house in Durham, NC just over two years ago. It's been a whirlwind since then and our home has been neglected. Our walls are (for the most part) "Blah Builder's Beige" and when we sold our printing company it seems like half of the office contents came home with us...utter CHAOS!!

I have been attacking the home makeover with the highest need rooms and the small neglected spaces coming first. Part of the benefit from this is I can have some extra time to make the decisions for colors and style for our largest spaces. However, I have given myself the goal of having our first floor (essentially) complete by Dablet's first birthday party just 2.5 short weeks away! After having "Hoarders" on in the background for 10 minutes yesterday afternoon Kyle an I started tackling the mud room and laundry room. I will preface this by telling you that our mudroom is where the dogs hang out when we're not home and I have recently repaired a few holes chewed in the dry wall....I'm thinking about some sort of wall reinforcement....luckily there have been no new holes in months!

We had this sign made at a fair representing our Golden Retriever, Husky, and Rottweiler

Classic find from the San Diego Zoo gift shop! Every pet owner needs a copy of this one!

Our mudroom is more than just a room, it actually has a granite built in desk and lots of cabinets. I use the cabinets for paper goods storage, flashlights, first aid kits, and such...I'm working on a creative use for the desk that is also pet friendly.

Here's a "spin around" into our laundry room to cover our before photos. The paint has already been picked out and I'm working on taping tonight. Whoever designed the cabinets was not someone who does laundry frequently because they are WAY too shallow given how far out the laundry machines come. Thus I am ALWAYS jumping up to get detergent and I'm 5' 10"!!!!! I will be making something "better" happen here!

I hope you all have had a fabulous Labor Day weekend. Enjoy your family and your time!!

Sharks, Sox, and Family Apps

Happy Mommy Monday everyone! I feel like I have been in a whirlwind the past several days, and this week isn't going to provide any relief. Is that a bad thing? NOPE!! I cannot wait to keep pulling things together in my two main makeover rooms (office and playroom)! On a Cape Cod note, did you hear about the Great White Shark attack?! That was one town north of us, and Dablet has something to say about it:

 After our week in Wellfleet, the antiquing, participating in Olioboard's Mom Spot OlioHop, and taking Kyle deep sea fishing for bluefish, we headed into Boston for a couple days. Thanks to Facebook as a tool to stay connected, we were able to meet up with a couple we met on our Honeymoon over two years ago, in St. Lucia, for dinner in Boston. Also, as an early birthday gift for Kyle (he'll be 27 on Thursday!!!!!) my mom got us tickets to see the Red Sox! Here are a few pics from the game:

As always, a great crowd at Fenway!

Did I mention that our seats were two rows behind the Sox dugout?! Thanks again mom!

After that we hit the road! Now, given that it was a night game this meant we started driving back to NC from Boston at 11:40pm. Crazy?! Yup! But did it work out?! YUP! The thing about road trips with kids Dablet's age is you have to prioritize. She is still rear-facing until she turns one so I can't default to DVDs, she doesn't talk yet so we can't ask her what she wants, and it's a little hard to feed her while driving (even with someone in the back seat with her) so we have to stop every couple of hours for a diaper change, food, etc. Thus, driving while she's sleeping overnight is the perfect solution! We made it home before noon yesterday and proceeded to win both of our coed softball games in a double header! After that you better believe I passed out!!
Trying to keep up with work, family, pets, "vacations", and home is challenging to say the least! I've blogged before about some great organizational tools for family communication, but have we talked about the apps?! Do you have favorite apps that help keep you organized and communicating with you family? Share them!!! I need all the help and new ideas I can get!

This is the app I use to have our family organized on our iPhones, why?

• Shopping lists - categorized by store, type, importance
• Family calendar - color coded by person
• Add your pets! - They have appointments too right?!
• Sends you an email at the beginning of each month with your calendar
• SO MUCH MORE!!
• Anyone who has access can update shopping lists/schedule/appts/ etc.

Here's to a productive and organized week!!

Why I love Benjamin Moore - Reason 1

This may end up being more than one reason if you piece it apart, but let's just say this is the first blog dedicated to why I love Benjamin Moore! Today was a day of local travel. We knocked out the local farmer's market early and snagged some homemade sweet potato gnocchi, spinach/artichoke ravioli, wild mushroom ravioli, fresh sausage, and these beauties

The greenery in the back is actually a fresh basil plant that will live in my kitchen!

After that, I made a delivery for a client, we did some home based things, I "checked in" with my Olioboard for my new home office, and my mom and I went off to our local Ace Hardware Store (closest place that sells Benjamin Moore paint); that is where Steve came into my life. Steve is the paint department guy, and yes, they sell more types of paint in addition to Benjamin Moore. I've been in there a few times and chit chatted with him about the Color Capture app for my phone, but this time we really got to talking.

I showed him my Olioboard design for the home office, and told him about the applicator kit I won by tweeting to Benjamin Moore. His response was, "they're great about promotions and donating, and they have the best colors; everyone should use Benjamin Moore!" I have to agree with him! I of course told him I would love it if they'd decide to donate the paint for my total home makeover...I'm still dreaming!

After he rung me up for my pints, gallons, and a few planters I bought, he told me to bring up some business cards and leave them on the counter for customers to pick up. Then....wait for it.....he handed me two shrink wrapped bundles and said "I'm sorry I don't have any 'Color Preview' extras, or I would have given you all three"...He had handed me the color swatch book for all of the Classic Colors and the Affinity Colors!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Here's a fun trick with the Affinity Colors:

Any...yes ANY....three, four, or five (I'll stick to three) colors you pick from the swatch book will go together! I tried this a couple times by picking blindly, and here's what I got:

I love this second one. It's a little hard to see in the picture but the middle is a bone color and the color stacked on top is a blush, with the bottom a deep purple.

Maybe I'll make better friends with my pal Steve, and maybe I'll get some paint out of the deal so my decorating dollars can go further. If not, that's OK too because I have all of the color inspiration I could possibly need to make this home complete! Thank you to Steve from Ace Hardware for loving Benjamin Moore as much as I do!

Dabble's New Office

I recently retweeted the link to my old post Definition of Self and Style. Sometimes it makes sense to go "back to the stacks" and blow the dust off an old blog post to reintroduce it to your readers, or to make sure your new readers had a chance to see it! This post was important to me because it was my "Hi world, I'm Kate!" post that told everyone to define themselves before they started trying to determine their style. Also, in the post I made a list of how to go about designing and decorating a room that is pretty foolproof if you execute it appropriately and put the time into your "homework". In case you missed it, here's the list:

• Go room by room and pick a vision - this can be inspiration boards (made easy by our friends at Olioboard)
• Collect your favorite patterns, colors, furniture....and then do some old fashioned editing
• Set a budget for the entire house - or however many rooms you want to do
• Prioritize the rooms in your house
• Break down your budget by room
• Edit again if needed
• REMOVE EVERYTHING FROM ROOM
• Start with canvas - your paint and wallpaper
• Move furniture back in
• Decorate with accents

Here's the KEY to making this work:

• IF IT DOESN'T HAVE A SPACE IN YOUR NEW ROOM....IT DOESN'T GO BACK IN...IT FINDS A NEW HOME OUT OF YOURS!

Sounds pretty easy right?! Then WHY is it so hard? A few reasons come to mind:
Sentimentality: that "one thing" you got somewhere that you can't get rid of, but never use, or look at until you wonder for the third time this month if you should throw it out
Time: Isn't it ALWAYS a matter of time?
Expense: Somehow what you dream of putting in your room is always more than you have to spend (at least in my world!) That's why I'm bound and determined to pair up with some fabulous DIY experts and "thrifters" to make your dreams come true!
Inspiration: I know it's hard sometimes to pull your ideas together, hopefully the blog can help! Also, take 10 minutes and pull some things together on Olioboard. You'll be surprised how easy it is and how inspired you can really be!

Here's what I have come up with for my first BIG room project: My home office and client meeting space. Yesterday I posted the room layout and some before pictures. Now, this will show you what I've come up with on Olioboard:

You can shop the items in this look here 

Items from CB2, Zinc Door, Layla Grayce, Kirklands, West Elm, Modern Furniture, and Benjamin Moore

I'm off to Goodwill and HomeGoods this weekend to see if I can find anything the budget friendly way! I hope this has sparked a first phase of inspiration, and as always please share your design ideas as well!

Loving Grayce-fully

It's not a secret, I love Layla Grayce and Zinc Door. Why does this matter? On my quest to define my sense of style and of self it's fabulous to have brands that I can align myself with that really make me feel "at home". This week has been long...already. I spent over an hour last night in the space between the ceiling of our first floor and the floor of our second floor among the fiberglass insulation. Why? because one of our cats somehow managed to get in there are refused to come out. Three showers later, I am still itchy, bumped, and bruised and in desperate need of a pick me up. This morning I headed to twitter and was "Grayced" with this!

This Bungalow 5 lamp is new to Layla Grayce and can be found here. Like it? be sure to follow Layla Grayce and Bungalow 5 on twitter for more great finds!

Sure, the lamp was a great design pick me up, and spurred me to delve into the Bungalow 5 collection on Layla Grayce's site (sharing some favorites in a second!). The best pick me up was that even after I "threatened" to ship myself in a box to Layla Grayce's distribution center they still showed me some love! Kyle laughed when I told him this, but he may have been concerned that I would never come home if I shipped myself out there! I wonder if Zinc Door ships from the same space...he may never see me again!

Here are my Bungalow 5 favorites:

Polo Etargere

Brigitte Dresser

Marco Side Table

Once I finish my list of "wants" for the home makeover, I'll have to go back and edit it down. You can be sure that some of these will remain in place on that list!! 

Dabble

My First Mother's Day

Last year I was pregnant for Mother's Day, but I still counted myself as a mother. That's the interesting thing about having kids. From the moment you find out your pregnant, they become the most important part of your life int the most amazing way possible. This morning my day started with breakfast in bed, but not breakfast for me! Kyle got up and got Abby up, got her bottle, and brought her to hand out in bed with me while she fed herself her morning bottle. (I CANNOT believe how big she's getting!) I was then presented with another tech accessory for Mother's Day to make sure that I protected my new iPad in style!

It's perfect! With a chic black and white cover and a coral red inside with slots for business cards and small papers! So much more than just a cover, but a functional cover! LOVING it!!

After that Kyle made a Dunkin Donuts run and returned with coffee and donuts! YAY! This was followed by bacon and eggs while I ate my breakfast with Dablet!

As if my morning needed to get any better, Fairy Godmommy sent me a text with a picture of her Mother's Day gift from her hubby. It was a beautiful boquet of flowers with a certificate entitling her to a round trip ticket to come visit her god daughter in NC! (oh, and some shopping $$ for our excursions!) I was SOOO excited!
Softball brought two losses (not the greatest, but we were missing people) and I may need to go get an x-ray of my hand later this week. I took a BAD hop of a ball hit VERY hard to me at 2nd right at the base of my thumb on my right hand. As if that wasn't enough, I later got a bad hop to the chest. Tonight will DEFINITELY include a nice bath with some Lush Products!
Speaking of Lush Products...we have some giveaway winners!
For our Twitter followers we are giving away a Serenity Gift Box, and for Facebook we are doing 3 bath bombs! The winners are.....
Twitter: @gidgetmel09
Facebook: I got a kick out of this drawing...it's one of my former Professors Dr. Weyler! Hopefully she doesn't cringe over the grammar of my blog!
Congratulations to you both!

To all of the mamas and mamas to be out there...Happy Mother's Day! Make sure to take an extra moment for you!! Coming up this week I'm going to reveal the preliminary color choices for our painting project of the home makeover, show you our new hardwoods, and some recent accent purchases! There is A LOT going on over here so hold on for the ride!!
Until Next Time

 Dabble

The "Great" Room

I've avoided this part of the house because it involves the most commitment. We have a fabulous open floor plan on our first floor with the only doors going to our bedroom, half bath, and a mudroom. We have medium dark cherry hardwood floors and a HUGE two story ceiling in our great room that also has a wall of big windows. Recently I've been dabbling with Olioboard and using their color tool from Benjamin Moore. Through all of this I have been expanding my connections on Twitter and have been loving the love I have received and the advice to be had for our home makeover. Today Benjamin Moore asked me what we already had in our "Great" room so they could give me their opinion on a color choice. So, ask and you shall receive! Here's what we have!

This is the best current picture to show the Lipstick Red rug. It has a pattern like an opening flower. You can also get an idea of some of our large walls.

See our wall of windows?

More walls!

Dark Coffee wood entertainment center

This is a painting we got in Rome last year when I was pregnant with Dablet. It is FULL of colors, and with that, would go with just about anything and provides a lot of inspiration!

With that all being shown, the rug can always move! What will stay for sure is the couch and the entertainment area. Any personal opinions or advice is always welcome and appreciated and we can't wait to see what colors Benjamin Moore comes up with for us! 

Dabble

Room #1

I'm starting with our front guest room because it's a room that is literally not connected to anything else. Dablet's room connects through a Jack & Jill bathroom to our back guest room, so for sake of isolation this seemed like the best place to start. Let's face it, it's also a room that I can just make decisions about without affecting anyone else that lives here....aka my husband! Here's the layout for the room:

Recently I posted about design ADD through pillows. While it is an easy way to change up your style and feel of your room quickly (based on the assumption that the rest of the room is somewhat neutral), in this case I am going to use 2 pillows as the inspiration for this room. Both of them came from Pier 1.

Here is what I'm looking at for a wall color from Benjamin Moore (under more color combos) It's called Iris Bliss and paired with Baby Seal Black and Grey Owl. 

Before I dive in the deep end, here's what is already in the room:

Queen size bed and box "spring" I never really understood that term when most of them are really just boxes...but alas we have a "box spring". There's a small basic wood side table that I'm not even going to photograph and then this beauty:

This is Kyle's and it clearly needs some new knobs and I'm thinking about painting it one of my accent colors to tie it in a bit more. Ideas?

We also have this mirror that I found at a closeout sale and I love it in spite of its dings...should I leave this black? Should I paint it?

Now for the fun new things:

Both of these beauties are from Zinc Door designed by Jonathan Adler. I think that this shade of grey is the PERFECT canvas for just about any room, and it will probably play a large part in the paint for the rest of our house. (I'll show you all those daunting walls soon don't worry!)
I'm still searching for the "perfect" accent chair, and I'm taking suggestions. Some of them might have to be added to the "A Girl Can Dream" list...and others you might actually see in my house! I have a feeling that if I   won the lottery tomorrow I would pull the classic "I'm cheating on fashion with furniture"!

Dablet will be rising soon, so until next time

Dabble

Two short years ago...

I said I would post some detail pictures of our wedding yesterday, but between a softball double header and an unexpectedly (but appreciated) busy work day I must apologize for getting to it a day late! This wedding was 15 months in the making, and I had fabulous day of assistance from Courtney Arnold with Stellar Events. I would advise any bride-to-be to invest in a planner for at least the day of. Family will offer, but by the end of the weekend you'll all be so stressed that it's really not worth it. When it comes to a day you will (hopefully) only do once, unless of course you renew your vows but that's a bit different, having someone who is there to solely bring YOUR vision to life is priceless.
Here we go!

Engraved first toast glasses from The Knot, which we forgot to use (HA!) but I get warm and fuzzy every time I see them on our side bar!

Our Ceremony was on South Beach of Bald Head Island and we had parasols (as seen on the left) for our guests

The "Guys" wore navy and white seersucker suits and had Orchids as their boutineers. Perfect look with the white sunglasses! ....oh boys....

We bought bamboo poles and glued ribbon in two shades of teal and lime green to line the path down to the beach for our guests

At the bottom of the stairs to the beach we had raffia tied bunches of Ginger flowers. This added a nice punch of color outside of the teals and greens from the rest of the wedding

Our wedding cake was a sandcastle inspired by all of the ones I made on the beach with my dad! The baker at Sweet T's in Wilmington was SO excited we wanted the "real sand" look and she did an amazing job on the look, and the taste! In order to make everyone happy, we had 4 flavor combinations:

Marble Cake with peanut butter buttercream - Kyle's pick

Chocolate Cake with Kahlua buttercream - My pick

Strawberry Cake with Chocolate buttercream - for a chocolate covered strawberry effect

Lemon Cake with Raspberry buttercream - just in case you aren't a chocolate person

On our gift, food, and other accent tables we had arrangements like this above with bear grass, shells, and submerged orchids. I fell in love with the look of different levels of flowers versus one big arrangement. We bought all of our flowers wholesale and my aunt put them all together so I got to go a little orchid crazy...

The main wedding flowers were orchids (green and white), roses (desert and cream), hydrangea (blue green and cream), and calla lilies (white and green). We had champagne silk linens with sand dollars on each napkin, shells on the tables, and our table names came from lighthouses (in frames) from North Carolina. Frames we hand painted, distressed, and lettered

Detail of napkin shot

The reception was held at the Bald Head Island Club with indoor and outdoor access. This amazing draped tent was open on the sides and covered our white dance floor (Kyle insisted that it be white). This area offered the perfect sunset setting for this:

I love this picture so much I printed it and stretched it on canvas to make a conversation piece. BIG thanks to Matt McGraw for the talent to snap pictures like this on our big day!

It was my original intent to show you all of my wedding style, at least for my personal day, here but I've realized there are WAY too many pictures to choose from! I am going to do a separate post later about my paper accents like invitations, programs, and gift bag cards. When you have people travel to a destination like this, you need to make sure you say a proper thank you! I personally LOVE putting gift bags together for weddings, and finding all of the perfect things that represent the location and the couple!

One day we'll renew our vows and I'll get to plan something else like this, but until then I will share this part of my passion with other people. For me, I'll have to transition it to my house and the home makeover that will take over most of my upcoming blog posts!

I hope you find a Chic Moment in your day today and remember to Dabble in the things that make you happy!

Until Next Time

Dabble