Welcome to My Home, Volume 1: Liberty of London for Target Mixing Bowls

On a recent Target trip, I found a selection of Liberty of London items on clearance, including a set of mixing bowls and several plates, along with jewelry boxes, trays, lampshades and pillows. The mixing bowls immediately caught my eye because I think they are beautiful, and I had recently decided that I needed some serving dishes. As a bonus, they match the "theme" of pink and flowery that I have going in my kitchen. Needless to say, these babies came home with me, and have made an excellent addition to my kitchen. 

Target's website lists these as available for preorder, shipping June 11th.I think they must be getting a new shipment of them. In addition, they have three other color schemes available.

 Another thing I picked up was a pink, flowery salad plate to add to my wall. I was originally hesitant because the plate is plastic and I was afraid it would be obvious. I decided to take the risk because the plate was only $1 and I was sure I could find another use for it if necessary. Lucky for me, when I added the plate to the wall display, you couldn't tell at all. I was very happy!

(all pictures from www.target.com)

Dresses I'm Digging

On Wednesday for a strange reason I was on State st. in Ann Arbor around lunch time. I had just had lunch, and had an hour or so before I needed to be back to school. I decided to check out this new store in town, called Pitaya. Pitaya is kind of like a...smaller, slightly higher quality Forever 21..

They apparently have locations in several college town places. You can check out their website at www.pitayaonline.com. They don't have all of their stuff online unfortunately.

So I was drawn to this dress they had on display that was one shoulder, with a large flower on the collar bone. Turns out it was a "infinite dress"-- you can wear it many different ways, but all of them include a rather open back. I really liked the one shoulder look, but I didn't want to show so much skin. This dress seemed perfect for my department's holiday party. I've spent far too much time searching the internet for a classier version of this dress, finding some nice ones, but with much larger price tags as well.

One Shoulder Dresses by aburlock featuring Tarina Tarantino jewelry

Items in this set:
Chloé dress, $803
Diane von Furstenberg dress, $325
Rag & Bone dress, $248
Alexander McQueen brooch, $295
Miss Selfridge brooch, 18 GBP

Fear not! I found a dress that fits what I was looking for. The dress in the lower left hand corner is from Target. It is part of their Limited Edition collection, for the holidays I guess.

Dilemmas

Ellie smells the flowers.
I bought these candle holders a while ago at Target on a whim. I love the shape of them, but I am unsure if they are strong enough to stand out against the color of the wall. I don't have candles in them because they are for tapers, and I'd like shorter ones. I think I am going to keep these candle holders regardless, because well..I don't have the receipt anymore, plus they were maybe $10 total.

Why Didn't I Think of That?

Today has been a pretty exciting day. Earlier in the week I discovered another sewing store (and a privately owned one, at that) in Ann Arbor. It happens to be the only place within many miles that carries Amy Butler fabric and patterns, and I've been crushing on her stuff. Their hours are weird--only open until 6pm most week nights, and few hours on the weekends, but since I rarely get home before 5:30pm that didn't seem like a viable option. But tonight I was casually browsing their website (www.vikingsewing.com) at about 6:45 PM and saw that on Thursdays they are open until 8!! I was out of my apartment and at the store within 15 minutes. The store is small, and mainly just quilting, but they have a decent selection of fabrics and the Amy Butler stuff! They didn't have the pattern I was looking for, but I did order it. The ladies that work there were also quite interested in my sewing projects and it seems I willbe bringing some by to show them when my pattern comes in. This store also hosts several classes each month, and I think I will attend a couple-- mainly bags, wallets and aprons.
Maybe the most exciting part-- Amy Butler is from Columbus, OH, which is about 4 hours from Ann Arbor. When I was talking to the two ladies about liking her stuff, they mentioned that she is going to be in Ann Arbor!! for a weekend in the coming months--they haven't worked out an exact date. She'd be coming up to hang out at the store, sell patterns, fabric, samples, and lead a couple workshops. How cool would that be?

Second, one of my new activities is browsing the message boards at www.crafter.org. It is basically show and tell for all kinds of crafters, but there are boards specifically catoring to sewing projects, and garments. Someone's post led to their own blog, which was mainly about decorating shoes with fabric, buttons, sequins, you name it. Why haven't I ever tried that? Now I'm looking around at my shoes thinking..hmm..which ones are boring enough to spruce up? I think I'll look for some inexpensive shoes that have a good shape, but maybe aren't the prettiest color at target, and work on those. Using paint and my bedazzler (no, I don't really have one..) I think the shoe would be unrecgonizeable. Glittery shoes...in every color of the rainbow..here I come!

Kitchen

There is a running theme in my apartment: empty walls. I have combated this problem in two cool ways (I THINK!) in my kitchen.
Given that I like to bake, and I like interesting shaped cake pans, I decided to solve two problems at once with my collection of these pans. The first problem is the empty wall, and the second problem is my limited cabinet space. So with a mere 4 nails, and $0 I had some new wall decorations!
The two bundt pans-- large one on the top left and bundt shaped muffin tin on the bottom right, are from the Salvation Army!!, while the red pan is from a lawn sale. I'm not calling the red pan a cake pan, because the woman that sold it to me told me she wasn't sure. I can't imagine what else it could be used for--peanut gallery, what is your guess? It looks like a three-tiered cake, all from one pan. Maybe this is the secret to making awesome tiered cakess--make fake tiers. I don't imagine I will ever use it to make a cake, because it is a HUGE pan. It would probably take a double batch of cake to fill properly. To be honest, I can't remember where I got the small muffin pan, although from the brand I know it is from either Michaels or Target. I can't even remember WHY I bought this particular pan, although it produced some excellent cupcakes (ahem, muffins).

When I was in the dorm in college, I wanted a plate to use that could be microwaved without melting. I found a really nice Isaac Mizrahi plate at Target, with a large, pink flower centered on it. I have had that plate ever since, sitting in my cabinet. Often I use it as a platter, sometimes I just take it out to admire. But it inspired my pink-flowered-plate-collection-wall. In addition to the Isaac plate, I had a plate from the set that my roommates and I used in college. These plates also feature pink, flowers, and pink flowers. One trip to a local favorite discount housewares store and I had three more plates for the collection! I think they make an excellent addition to my kitchen, and its another practical storage solution. I am fully planning on pulling them down to use as serving plates the next time I have people over for food. My only hesitation about this type of decoration is that I have been told by a friend that collecting plates is essentially an incurable disease, and I will never be able to escape the desire to buy plates to go in my 'collection.' I can just see myself in 40 years, sitting at a kitchen table with stacks and stacks of pink, flowered and pink flowered plates. Ahh! Moderation is key, it seems. What's worse, the crazy plate lady or the crazy cat lady?

Pillows

In the Fall I got a new cover for my comforter, brown. I also decided I wanted new sheets, and so I got a contrasting blue color. The blue is lovely, and only more lovely when with brown. However, when my bed is made there are no traces of the blue. So, I decided I needed to take an idea from Olivia Palmero's mirrored pillows. (http://www.jaysonhomeandgarden.com/product.php?productid=3520)
I set out to get what I needed--pillow filling (Ikea), fabric to match the current sheets, little mirrors to attach to pillows(Michaels)..
I found the pillow form at Ikea, and then decided to use pillow cases in the same color as the sheets on the bed to make these smaller pillows. This saved me some time sewing, right? So why not. I sewed the pillow form into the cut-down Target pillow cases, and sewed by hand the last side.
Then I worked to attach the small mirrors to the pillows. I was unable to come up with a good way of sewing them on, and ultimately tried a hot glue gun. This would have worked fine, if the pillows were never touched or used after the mirrors were hot glued on. The next thing I found was liquid stitch. I don't know much about liquid stitch, but it looks like glue, and is holding my mirrors on perfectly.