CB2 Plant Orb.

I ordered these beautiful plant orbs from CB2. Technically, they are for tea lights (or at least that’s how CB2 advertises them), but I needed a home for several of my new air plants and decided these would fit.

I have these hanging now in my dining room in the corner next to a window so that they can (hopefully!) get the right amount of diffused light. I love the simplicity of these orbs. I made a bowl with river stones in this post to display these plants a while back, but I wanted something a little different.

I am always open to news ways to display air plants – I have a nice collection now of about 7! Do any of you have air plants? How do you show them off in your home?

Breakfast.

Breakfast is everything, you guys. Especially when you are 32 weeks pregnant. This is the homemade “Egg McMuffin” on a seed-uction roll that I made on Saturday.  It was worth the heartburn.

Make: Marble Top Table Ikea Hack.

I know this is like the millionth time I have brought up THAT table, but I got such a huge response on Pinterest from it that I decided to give the people what they want – another Ikea hack! It’s not very different from the original one, but the small change make a pretty dramatic difference in style.

I am loving all of the copper and brass and marble I have been seeing out there lately, but I haven’t had any luck finding much at thrift stores. Then I found this post on one of my favorite blogs, Design and Form and decided to try my own version of her clever remodel.

As you remember from the original post, I used an old Ikea laundry hamper to make a really cool modern industrial side table. Well I  actually had two of these GRUNDTAL Ikea hampers to start with, and nowhere in my house is there room for a set of tables this size, so this was kind of the perfect solution to my problem. I decided to do something a little different with the table top portion this time by covering it with marble contact paper to make what I like to call The Poor Man’s Marble Top Table.

It’s your standard Peel & Stick contact paper and I found it at Lowe’s for like $6. I simply cut our a large square to cover the dimensions of the wood (see my original Ikea hack post for measurements).

And there it is. I feel like the possibilities are endless in terms of style – you could paint the table top and table base any color combination to fit your home. I even thought it might be cool to upholster the wood and add tufting to make two stools.

It doesn’t look cheap either – I kind of worried that it would before I made it.

Just add a few details – a plant (or a few), a vase or a cloche, and you have another beautiful Ikea Hack.

There ya go. Marble on a budget. What do you think?

Maternity Photos.

I wanted to share some of the maternity photos I took of myself. These photos were taken at 31 weeks pregnant, about 2 months from our baby’s due date. I had a snow day the day I took them, and when I couldn’t get logged into my remote desktop at work for a little while, I decided to take advantage of the free time and bright light and do some maternity shots! Pro tip – snow days are great for indoor lighting. All of the sunshine bounces off the white on the ground outside, creating a lot more indoor light than usual.

The image above was inspired by this image that I found on Pinterest. I loved the idea of using a children’s book and I really wanted to do the photos on our bed with white bedding. My sweet grandmother gave a copy of Where the Wild Things Are to Connor for Christmas to read to our son, so using the book really added an extra special element to the photo. I was able to get all these shots using the self timer on my DSLR, as well as a tripod.

I wanted to get more poses and angles, but to be honest, getting in and out of that bed was getting a little exhausting. Haha!

Check out my photography website to see more maternity shots!

Make: A leather wallet.

Ive been wanting to try to make something with leather for a while but to be honest, I was a little intimidated. We have a good friend who makes beautiful leather goods, and I follow several companies on Instagram that do, too, like Stash Co., Bison Made and Convoy Goods. I thought that if maybe I started with something simple, I could ease my way into making something more complicated, like this .

Connor has been wanting a thin leather pouch to carry his business cards, so I decided to start with that. Seemed easy enough – two pieces of leather hand sewn together? I got this! No. Turns out the process was a little more tedious than that.

To make the wallet/business card pouch, I used some scrap leather (I found some at a local craft store), regular thread, scissors, a small sized nail and hammer, as well as a service you can nail into. Tools not pictured that you will need are a ruler, a pen or chalk for marking the leather, and a leather stitching needle. If you plan to make a large amount of leather goods, or think this is a hobby you might have for a while, then i would suggest investing in a leather rotary punch.

I traced around a business card to get the approximate size wallet that I wanted, leaving a little room on all four sides. Then I traced the border lines with a sharpie pen (using my ruler to attempt accuracy). I did this on the inside of the leather, or the suede side, so that it wouldn’t show. I did this twice to make two identical pieces. After cutting the two pieces out, I trimmed any super crooked edges. It’s impossible to get perfectly straight lines with hand scissors, but hey, it’s what I had to work with.

Use some sort of clamp – paper clips, binder clips, bobby pins, to hold the two pieces of leather together. All I had were these hair clips – I know it’s a little ridiculous but it’s snowing outside and I wasn’t about to leave the warmth of my home for binder clips. I used the Sharpie pen and ruler to trace 3 border lines, leaving one side open. You will use these lines as a guide to nail the holes through.

Note that I am still on the suede side. All of the markings are on the inside to keep the leather side clean looking. From here, take your nail and hammer holes all the way through both pieces, until you feel the nail go into the wood. Do this all the way around on the lines you drew, as close together as possible. I got this little tip from my friend Susan who saw my first draft on Instagram. Thanks Susan! It worked like a charm!

This process takes about 30 minutes.

After you hammer all of your holes, flip the pieces of leather right side out. You are ready to stitch the pieces together now!

You will need a special needle to stitch leather – you can find a small leather stitching kit at most craft stores. I am using a smaller gauge needle since the size of my leather object is small (I don’t want HUGE stitches on such a small item).  I tripled the thread I had and started stitching:

I like the way it turned out, although next time I would probably just double the thread instead of tripling it. I bought some waxed thread to attempt a bigger project next time. Stay tuned for that. What do you think?