Awakening from the Food Coma

Happy Monday morning all. To the U.S. readers - How was your Thanksgiving? Mine was fab. It appears I took an unplanned week off from blogging. Crazy me thought I was going to have time to write last week in addition to working and cooking a meal for eleven. I thought it might be nice to share some photos of our holiday fest, especially since it kept me away from you for so long.

My table setting ways pretty simple so I thought it would be fun to liven things up with some party poms.

Most of the items on the table were traditional Thanksgiving - fall colored fiestaware bowls, autumn leaf table cloth, floral centerpiece of mums and orange roses. I love the colors of the season so I don't step too far out of the box when it comes to Thanksgiving decorating.

I'm a little obsessed with these poms and don't want to take them down. Problem is they clash with my Christmas decor. I love them so much they inspired a little blog makeover this weekend. Yes I gave my blog a fall themed makeover two days before December. How does it look?


I usually make favors for my guests but this year I decided to order cardamom marshmallows from Whimsy & Spice and they were a huge hit. I don't think anyone had seen handmade marshmallows before, certainly not cardamom flavored ones. I ordered extra for myself of course. My plaid napkin wraps made an appearance on the table as well.

Man, look at all of that food. You should have seen the dessert table, it was equally obscene. No one wonder why my mother and I had to start cooking on Tuesday evening. It may take days to pull together such a fest but it's worth it. We all enjoyed every bite and I have way too many left overs. I hope your Thanksgiving was as wonderful as mine. I'd love to hear how you spent your holiday. If you were the host(ess) please share your cooking successes or disasters.

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Free Download - Fall Plaid Napkin Wraps

I created these cute plaid napkin wraps to use on my Thanksgiving table and I thought I would share then with all of you. Just print out on some nice heavy weight paper, wrap around napkins, and tape closed. There is space available to write in guests names so the napkin wraps can also double as place cards. Just a little note, the colors got a little over saturated when I created the image below, they're much nicer in the actual pdf that is available for download.

Click this link to download the Plaid Thanksgiving Napkin Wraps

Enjoy and I hope you all have wonderful plans for Thanksgiving. I'd love to here what you have planned so please share. Who's hosting diner, will this be your first time serving the turkey, are travelling to see family and friends?

XOXO, Michelle

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Favorite Post of the Week, Part Deux

I couldn't pick just one favorite post this week. I had one of those weeks where I was feeling kind of down in the dumps so I really appreciated reading posts that didn't try to be anything more than silly and fun. I laughed too hard at this random stream of consciousness from Becky over at TheBubbReport. The last two sentence are genius, you must go read it.

*Click the image to be read the entire post.

Related Posts:

Favorite Post of the Week

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Le Love....Le Sigh

Today how about a bit of a departure from the usual decor related musings. Instead let's spend the morning getting lost in this beautiful blog dedicated to love - the good, the bad, and the unknown.











But more than just sweet images about love, the blog is full of poems and stories submitted by readers that tell tales of love found and lost, of pain, of absolute joy, of regret, of all the things that can be associated with true love. It's a beautiful escape for the afternoon so make yourself a cup of tea and try not to let your coworkers see you tearing up at your desk.

*Each photo is linked to a different blog post. The original blog posts contain the source information for the photographs.

Related Posts:

Just More Love

Sending You a Bit More Love

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Steal This Idea...

...Bring some color and pattern into a bland rental with wallpaper. What's that you say? How can I consider wallpapering a rental when the landlord won't even let me paint?

Use a brightly colored wallpaper, even more fun if it happens to be vintage, to cover a sheet of plywood from Home Depot. Lean the plywood against the wall behind your desk to delineate an office space.

And what's great about this idea is that it's completely portable. Rest the wallpapered plywood behind your dining table and it looks equally great as a backdrop there.

Related Posts:

Steal This Idea... A Simple Painted Headboard

Small Space Solutions Courtesy of a Chic French Flat
Steal This Idea... A Contemporary Doll House

Photo Credits: Canadian House & Home

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Favorite Post of the Week

You can expect to see Favorite Posts of the Week occur at a regular frequency. I read a lot of blogs and at least once a week a particular post stands out and makes me smile, makes me really happy, or makes me flat out drool. This is one for those posts and it made me laugh out loud. I present to you my favorite post of the week courtesy of The Brick House:

Hope you didn't spit your Diet Coke all over your computer screen.

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2010 Calendar Round-Up... Round-Up

The idea behind today's post my seem a little silly but my intention is for it to be helpful. If you are shopping for a 2010 calendar for yourself or perhaps for a gift I thought you might appreciate a list of what I consider the best 2010 Calendar Round-Ups. So essentially this is a round-up of round-ups, still with me? I pulled a few of my favorites from each list so you get a taste of what is out there but be sure to visit the original posts to view the multitude of wonderful calendars that are available. Each photo links to the shop where the calendar is available for purchase.

The first round-up is brought to us by Decor8 and in true Holly form it is undoubtedly the most comprehensive and organized group of round-ups. She has broken her posts down into groupings of wall, desk, poster style, downloadable, and miscellaneous style calendars.

{wall} {desk} {poster} {download} {all others}

Oh So Beautiful Paper is an oh so beautiful blog that has a three part round-up (starting to get tired of the word round-up) of some beautiful calendars, many that I have not seen on other blogs.

{part 1} {part 2} {part 3}

Design Crush is a blog I was not previously familiar with but came across while putting this post together. They have seven, count them seven, posts devoted exclusively to 2010 calendars.

{part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7}

Poppytalk is always on top of what is lovely in the world of handmade products. Check out the three part series on 2010 calendars.

{part 1} {part 2} {part 3}

Paper Crave is another blog that is a new discovery for me and it is gorgeous. An entire blog devoted to beautiful paper, sign me up!

{part 1} {part 2} {part 3} {part 4} {part 5} {part 6}

Last but not least, a few 2010 calendars that I've come across that have not popped up in one of the many calendar round-up posts out there. The last one on my list you've already seen on Design Evolution but I'm smitten with it and had to include it here too.

Happy shopping!

Update: Check out this post for a Free 2010 Planner download.

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Who Wouldn't Love a Perfectly Packaged Whoopie Pie

That time of year when we start to panic about what gifts to get for friends and loved ones is fast approaching. Sorry if I'm stressing you out, that is not at all my intention. What I did want to do is introduce you to a sweet (pun intended) DIY gift idea.

I have a close group of girlfriends with which I exchange gifts with every year. We always keep the gifts inexpensive and I try to come up with handmade gift ideas that they will enjoy. This DIY Whoopie Pies Gift Kit from Little Brown Pen will certainly fit the bill.

The kit includes 8 muslin gift bags each the perfect size for one whoopie pie; 8 gift tags (2"x2") with an original whoopie pie illustration, offset printed on super-thick, uncoated, paper; and a whoopie pie recipe straight from a genuine Lancaster, PA grandma. Lancaster is the home of the whoopie pie and Nichole's grandma's recipe is legendary.

These individually wrapper whoopie pies would also make great favors for an upcoming holiday event.

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Brick Hanger....What's a Brick Hanger?

Our condo is blessed with a lovely faux brick chimney feature. Is my sarcasm translating on screen? I should clarify, it's not faux brick which would be absolutely heinous, but for some reason the fact that it's supposed to look like a chimney but isn't one bugs me. I've never been to keen on artificial architectural accents. On a positive note the brick is a pretty subdue color, more brown then red, and I decided it might be a nice place to display some of the artwork I've been collecting.

One problem, how do you hang pictures on a brick wall without it being a big hassle and with out making a bunch of holes in it? Improvements Catalog to the rescue. I find whenever I have what initially seems like an unsolvable home improvement problem the solution can be find in the Improvements Catalog.

I came across these clever brick hangers that snap right on the brick and according to the product description can hold up to 25 pounds. I think they worked out pretty well for my needs though you kind of have to let go a bit about your exact configuration because you are limited by the location of the bricks.

Starting from top left and moving clockwise, here are the links to the prints seen in the photo above: Jessican Gonacha Swift, Traci French, Traci French, Sharon Montrose, Monko Photography, and Michele Maule. The lamp is from Urban Outfitters, the shade is Anthropologie, the white vases are vintage milk glass and the small white ceramic lamp is Pol's Potten from Le Souk.

I hope you find these quick home improvement and decor tips helpful.

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Bye Bye Ugly Almond Outlets

Hello all, work has been limiting my blogging time (how dare work do that, right?) but I'm back this week with a few things to share. I hope you had a lovely weekend. Mine was rather satisfying. The boyfriend and I tackled a bunch of small projects that we're been putting off for weeks (some months). It's funny how those little projects can actually have a noticeable impact on the feeling of the room.

Most of the projects were pretty mundane and not necessarily "blogworthy" so I'll spare you but this one was simple and makes me very happy so I had to share. Our entire condo was plagued with a case "Hideous Almond Colored Outlet Syndrome" and I could no longer stand the sight of them. The old beige outlets became exponentially less attractive once the walls were given a coat of dove gray paint.

Replacing outlets it really simple. All you need is the new outlet and cover, a screwdriver, and needle-nose pliers. Total project cost - roughly $2.50; Total time require - about 10 minutes.

Since I'm not a license electrician I'll refrain from giving you the exact step by step instructions but I can give you the basic idea of how this works. The most important thing - Cut power to the outlet from the main panel before you start anything.

After the power as been turned off, it's just a matter of unscrewing the old outlet, detaching the wires coming from the wall, reattaching those in the same locations on the new outlet, cramming all of the wires back into the junction box, screwing in the new outlet and adding a shiny new outlet cover.


Viola! Goodbye old, dirty outlets and hello shiny new white outlets. This makes me happier than I think it really should.

(please excuse my dirty windowsill, I'm saving that project for next weekend)

Hope you all had a wonderful, crossing things off the To Do list, weekend!

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