I was out running errands on Sunday afternoon and decided to see if JC Penney Home had 96″ long draperies that weren’t hideous. They do have a lot of drapery options that are very nice, and I mentally bookmarked them for client projects, but none that worked for me. While I was there, I decided to check out their new designer collaboration furniture collections to see if they were as good as I’d heard.

The short answer is yes. I saw so many pieces that I loved and wouldn’t hesitate to bring home if I had the room or the budget. There are four major lines: Happy Chic by Jonathon Adler, Martha Decor by you know whom, Michael Graves Design and Design by Conran. Interesting to note – when I first spotted the Martha Decor tag, I couldn’t tell it was the Martha, though I assumed it was (because who would dare to use the name Martha in reference to a home decor line). The branding just didn’t seem in line with her previous collections, but that’s a tiny complaint.

This sofa table from the Conran collection is pretty much perfection. The top is marble and the base is oak.

I preferred the table lamp version of Design by Conran Bleep Lamp much more than the floor lamp.

This is the Elder Chair by Design by Conran. I really really liked this chair and wanted to buy it, but Keegan didn’t love it as much as I did. The blue is the stock color, and it also comes in the gray shown on the sofa and a natural linen. None of the colors was a great option for us with a new puppy, but the chair was very comfortable, and I really liked the classic shape and modern legs.

The Michael Graves accessories were much more appealing to me than his previous designs for Target. I particularly liked the enameled cookware and wooden frames. Simple but really good.

The Happy Chic Jonathan Adler collection is fun and colorful…pretty much what we’ve come to expect from Jonathan Adler. Some of my favorite pieces included this floor lamp, dresser (and vases), and blue bedding ensemble. I was pleasantly surprised that they didn’t appear to be cheap or dumbed down versions of his more expensive designs, which often seems to happen with these types of collections, especially with textiles.

There are many many more pieces on the JC Penney website and in the store. All of the furniture seemed to be of good quality and the upholstered pieces were surprisingly comfortable. We actually ended up purchasing this sofa and coordinating chair for 50% off. When we were checking out, the salesperson told us that they’ll be running another sale June 6th-9th when the home sections of the regular JC Penney stores reopen after being remodeled. Since our store is a standalone location, it remained open all along. I think I’m going back for the floor lamp in the white/walnut combination.

On April 12th, I defended my thesis and received approval from my committee to graduate. Over the following week, I tied up some loose ends and started a new full time job. Finishing school was bittersweet. I was incredibly anxious to get back into the workforce and feel like an adult again, but I miss the projects, the professors and the academic environment.

On April 20th – Saturday – we woke up around seven o’clock. It was a beautiful day…something we didn’t see too much of during April here in Iowa. Keegan got dressed and left for a morning at the office, and I started my morning by changing the sheets on our bed, putting water on to boil for my coffee and watering my house plants. I realized that I’d let our dog Eddie out but not Miles, which wasn’t unusual. As Miles got older, he liked to sleep in more and more…usually stretched out in the early morning square of sunshine on our bed. As I suspected, I found him in our bedroom, lying on the floor. I said, come on, Bubba, let’s go out. But, he just lay there looking up at me with sad brown eyes. I offered him car rides and walks and treats and bones, but he couldn’t move.

Miles came into my life as a ten week old puppy, when I was 21 years old, a senior in college. He was my best friend and constant companion for twelve and half years. He accompanied me every time I moved, though I could tell he hated being uprooted yet again. He lived in five different states and rode cross country – from Pennsylvania to California –  at my side, then back again. He kept me company on the long nights during my pending divorce and when I was lonely and sad after leaving my family and friends behind to move to Iowa. He protected me from strangers on the streets of San Francisco, Portland and Phoenix, and he made me feel safe with his warm presence whenever I was home alone and scared.

Miles was bold as a puppy, as Labs often are, but he matured into the most affectionate, loyal and personable dog. Everyone who knew him loved him. He loved face rubs, belly rubs, hugs and kisses, swimming and hikes, and he hated squirrels, kitties and bicycle riders along with most vegetables. His welcome was loud and unforgettable, and if he really liked you, he’d offer you two shoes instead of one. He was prone to jumping out car windows and ripping up grass. In his youth, he was quite the escape artist, requiring us to give chase on more than one memorable occasion. He could often be seen dragging me and our other dog Eddie around Windsor Heights at a breakneck pace, even though he should have been arthritic and slowing down. He had the softest ears and the sweetest face, and he slept by my side every night. When anxiety or nerves or too much caffeine kept me up, I would reach over and rest my hand on his warm back for comfort.

As we pulled out of the driveway to take him to the vet, I sat with his head cradled in my arms and knew he wouldn’t be coming back with us. I’ve had only a few moments in my life that I think of in before and after terms…moments in which a switch flipped and my life completely changed in a permanent way. That was one of them.

I know a lot of people would say he was just a dog, but I never really thought of him that way. Miles taught me what it was like to unconditionally love another living thing. After college, I had to learn to be completely responsible for him…I never, not once, stayed out all night or at happy hour too long and left him home alone. I made major life decisions because I couldn’t bear the thought of giving him up. I talked to him like he was a person, because to me, he kind of was. Whenever I looked into his eyes, I felt like he understood me.

I’ve missed him so much these past 20 days that I haven’t had any interest in doing much of anything. For the first week, I avoided home by working, and I neglected Eddie who probably needed me. I had this gaping hole in my heart and all this love but no where to put it. The house felt empty and quiet and sad. I knew I needed something to distract me and keep me busy, and so we impulsively adopted a twelve week old white labrador whom we named Booker. And, life changed again.

I’m still sad and permanently exhausted…still prone to breaking into tears in the middle of the day when something jogs a memory of Miles. But, Booker needs constant attention and training, and so I’m keeping afloat by staying busy and distracted. I have high hopes that someday Booker will become a good, happy, lovable dog like Miles, and as cute as puppies are, I can’t wait for that day to come.

In the meantime, I am in keeping in mind a sentiment that I read in Danielle Laporte’s newsletter earlier this week: “Love your sadness. It won’t last long.”

In between writing and data analyzing, I’ve been sneaking over to Pinterest for some creative relief and visual inspiration. Today I spotted these floral illustrations by photographer Kari Herer that are so feminine and ethereal. I just love the combination of the delicate pen and ink line work with the colorful, three-dimensional flowers. They would be beautiful mounted in delicate gold frames for a bedroom or dressing room. You can see the rest of Kari’s work in her Etsy shop and on her website.

I am so ready for the warm weather to just get here already!

I was particularly thrilled with the vase and the book. The vase is a pretty gray green – like the color of succulent leaves – with a crackle finish, and the fluting with the raised flower design is so pretty. I’ve never seen a vase or planter like it before, and it has no markings on it.

The book was published around 1933 in conjunction with the release of the film starring Katherine Hepburn. There are a few photos of the actresses who play the sisters at the front of the book.

This edition has pretty aqua endpapers featuring line drawings of houses and trees and is marked “Courtesy of Stehli Silks Corporation.” It would make beautiful wallpaper or printed fabric. There’s also an inscription in the front…I love finding them in old books. This one reads “Christmas 1935. [to] Arda from Rhea and Ed.”

I hope you had a nice week-end as well! I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for Spring. We woke up this morning to more snow on the ground and bitter biting winds.

I was a little lazy for this post, so I took all of the photos with my iPhone and edited them with Afterglow (or Afterlight) and added the text with Over, which are my two new favorite apps.

A little background…before we left for Mexico, we signed up for Wedding Party App, which is a really cool app for iPhone and Android that lets you create a private website for your event and invite your guests to share their photos to a live feed. We collected almost 300 snapshots from the week-end this way. In addition, there were tons of photos floating around on various Facebook pages, but since not all of our guests are Facebook friends with each other, they couldn’t see all of the photos. So, we thought we’d make photo books for everyone with our favorite photos and send them out.

I did some initial research on various photo book printing services, but I eventually went with Prinstagr.am because I liked the clean, crisp layout and the mini size of the book – 3.5×2.4 inches with 50 photos. The photos from the Wedding Party App were small, so a typical 6×4 inch book would have been pixelated when it was printed out.

Prinstagr.am lets you print photos from your Instagram photo feed, so I had to do quite a bit of work downloading all of the photos that I wanted to use from the Wedding Party App website (they make it easy by creating a .zip file for you) and from Facebook, then running them through Instagram on my phone (I apologize to my 42 Instagram followers!). This took me the better part of a week-end, because I wanted to create different books for different groups of friends. I ended up with six different versions of photo books.

I ordered the books (and a bunch of 4×4 prints, pictured above) on a Thursday and had them by the middle of the next week. I was really impressed with the turnaround time on the printing and shipping. The books are adorable in person. They have a silver finish spiral spine, white acrylic back and clear acrylic front. The corners of the front and back covers are slightly rounded. The photo pages are glossy white with the square Instagram images centered on the pages. Each page is printed with a photo front and back.

There were a few downsides to the books for me. I wish that they let you choose the photo that you wanted to use for the cover. I ordered 30 books and had to disassemble each one so I could change the cover photo…some of the cover photos they arrived with were not what I wanted! Or, it would be great if you could add a title page to the front with some text. Small quibble there. Second, you have to order the books in pairs. This worked out ok for me, and I only had one extra, but I could see that being annoying in the future. Last, I wish that you could name the book you were creating. When I had all of the different versions in my cart, I panicked a few times thinking that I was ordering the wrong quantity of each one. Also, at one point, I had all of my books made, and I left my computer for a few hours and came back to find my cart emptied, so I had to start all over. These last two issues wouldn’t deter me from using the service again, but it would be nice to be able to create an account, save your work and gave each book or group of prints a name.

I really loved the way the books turned out, and I definitely plan to order more. They are so cute and a great way to print out your Instagram photos and save them. They would make great baby books for grandparents as well, since you can easily tuck them in your purse.

One of the reasons for my long blog silence was that Keegan and I were planning a destination wedding in Mexico. We got married at an all inclusive resort on the Riviera Maya on February 2nd. It wasn’t difficult for us to choose to have a destination wedding. I was married once before, and I wanted my wedding with Keegan to be different…mainly I wanted it to be more about us and our family and friends and less about all the planning stuff that can tend to take over a traditional wedding. Keegan doesn’t work during the winter but is incredibly busy from March through November, which would have made taking time off for a summer wedding here in Iowa difficult. Most of our friends are married with children, and we knew that asking them to travel to our wedding was going to be a huge financial and time commitment, so we wanted them to be able to make a real vacation out of it. A destination wedding just seemed like the the perfect solution for us and our lifestyle.

Even though I knew going on vacation with 50 of our closest family and friends would be awesome (and it really was), I was a little sad that I wouldn’t be able to try out all of the cool wedding crafts and ideas that are all over Pinterest and the wedding blogs. I never even really chose a color palette…just asked the girls to wears colors in the blue, green, purple area of the color wheel. Sometimes I wished we chose the Iowa summer wedding, so I could have succulent centerpieces and handmade favors and whatever else I could dream up, but in the end, I’m really glad I didn’t send myself down that path. Between working and school and the holidays, I would have made myself crazy.

And, we knew by choosing the destination wedding that our guest list would be smaller and that a number of people wouldn’t be able to make it, including some of our aunts and uncles and cousins. But, on the plus side, we knew that since we’d all be on vacation together for multiple days, we’d actually get to spend quality time with mostly everyone who chose to make the trip. That’s exactly what happened, and it was by far my favorite part of the experience…along with finally getting to introduce all of our different groups of friends to each other.

I used two websites for all of my research – Trip Advisor and Best Destination Weddings (BDW). BDW was pretty much the answer to my prayers…the members of the site are full of help and tips, reviews, feedback and advice. After I used Trip Advisor to narrow down my list of resorts based on price and amenities, I used BDW to really evaluate each resort in the running and ended up making my final choice based on the rave reviews on BDW for the wedding planners.

Six months before the wedding, we created a Facebook group for our guests, send out Save the Dates and then did pretty much nothing for five months. After much debate, I did buy a dress from a local boutique, but we left mostly everything else until after the holidays. We knew that the resort wouldn’t be in touch until right before we left, and we decided not to worry about things like the flowers or menu until we arrived. I decided early on that I wasn’t going to be lugging suitcases full of vases for centerpieces of bags full of goodies through customs (though I have tons of respect for anyone who can pull that off without having a nervous breakdown). Those little things weren’t important to me. All I really wanted was to have a memorable experience with our closest family and friends and marry my best friend.

We did prioritize the ceremony and went to counseling sessions with Keegan’s step-father, who was our officiant and a minister. I spent a fair amount of time reading the archives on A Practical Wedding (my favorite wedding related site) and looking for inspiration on how to plan a non-religious wedding ceremony and how to keep it personal. We both love music, so we chose the songs for the ceremony together. And, we opted to have our wedding party participate by giving the readings.

On the day of the wedding, I got up at 9:00 and ate breakfast with a few of our guests. Then I sat on the beach with my friends for a couple hours until I went to get my hair and makeup done with my bridesmaids. I was so relaxed and had the perfect day from start to finish. No running around, no worry about the photographer being late, guests getting lost, or the flowers not looking perfect.

After the ceremony, which was held in the early evening overlooking the ocean, we had a cocktail hour and dinner and dancing. Most of our guests stayed until Monday morning, so we were able to see everyone again the next day, talk about the night, and relax on the beach or by the pool.

My thoughts for any couple thinking about having a destination wedding…

I mindfully and intentionally chose not to worry about things like the color or style of my flowers, favors, or menus, or centerpieces. Although I had some crazy perfectionist (break down) moments along the way, eventually, I decided to embrace whatever the resort had to offer and be happy with it. I think it’s easier to let go of some of these details with a destination wedding…everyone is so happy to be on vacation that everything else is so much less significant than it might be back home.

Do your homework and take your time choosing a resort that most closely meets all of your needs. And, those needs will be different for everyone. We sat down and really thought about everything we wanted in a resort and what we were willing to sacrifice and want we wouldn’t compromise on. This up front research really paid off.

Be flexible and understand that you’re going to have to put a lot of faith in the resort wedding planners (unless you hire an outside planner). I admit I got pretty nervous the week before when we made some last minute changes, but everything turned out perfectly in the end.

Put extra effort into the aspects of the wedding that do matter. We chose music we loved and wrote our own vows. We paid an additional fee to make sure that we got as many photos as possible. And, we tried to spend as much time as we could with everyone who made the trip. It basically turned into a huge family vacation with the added bonus of all of our friends being there too.

In the end, having a destination wedding was the best possible choice for us, and I will cherish the memories of it forever.

Rejuvenation Blenko Cylinder Glass Table Lamp

Yesterday, I was reading the new issue of Lonny during some down time at a craft show and noticed their newest collection of glass lamps, created in partnership with Blenko Glass Company. When I got home at 3:00, the new catalog was waiting for me with all of these new/old designs printed in full glory. And, they are stunning.

Rejuvenation Blenko Round Glass Table Lamp

According to the Rejuvenation catalog, the Blenko company was first founded in the late 1800s by a British immigrant. The original lamps, debuted in the 1950s, were inspired by colorful glass decanters, the stoppers translated into the lamps’ finials. The reproduction lamps are blown in West Virginia and assembled in Portland with walnut bases and shades available in linen or burlap, just like the originals.

At a price range of $500 plus, I know that these lamps are not within everyone’s budgets, and I think they should be viewed not just as a lamp but as a functional piece of art. The smallest lamp is 30″ and the largest is 48″ high, so one (or a pair) of these beauties would really stand as the focal point of a room.

Rejuvenation Blanko Flare Table Lamp

As a final note, I don’t read many of the catalogs that land in my mailbox, but I always read Rejuvenation’s because of the great stories that accompany the products. My favorite part of the Blenko lamps’ debut was how the catalog shows original sketches, photos from the manufacturing process, and product ads from the 1950s. As a design student, these are the little details that get me really excited to share a new product line and use it in one of my clients’ homes. It’s so much easier for me to sell a product when it’s got a great story behind it.

* These opinions are all my own. I was not compensated by Rejuvenation for writing this post. I just really love their products.

I picked up two mini begonias at Seed at the beginning of the summer, put them in vintage planters, and reconciled myself to the idea that they’d be dead in a few weeks. Surprisingly, they not only survived but have steadily grown and put out new foliage.

I’m fairly sure that this guy is a Rex Begonia. The leaves are an incredible palette of various greens, deep burgundy, and rose violet with shimmering metallic silver. They’re just incredible to look at.

This little guy isn’t quite as showy, but I love the delicate nature of his stems and branches. The petite leaves are a deep rich green with silver spots. The silver actually glitters and shimmers like metal.

I know that I should probably repot both plants fairly soon if I want them to keep growing (and living), which means I can add new planters to my collection and new mini begonias to fill the vacant planters. They’ve firmly replaced succulents as my go-to indoor greenery.

If you want to read more about the myriad types of begonias and how to care for them, the American Begonia Society is great place to start.

Love the brass detail on this one and the worn center.

Such a pretty shade of pale blue.

Reminds me of fine china.

My favorite of the bunch.

Perfect for turning into silver.

Marble Shelf | Mercury Glass Vases

Mercury glass and faux bois are two elements that I’ve been partial to for many years and am glad that they’re so popular at the moment. I would use the marble shelf with metallic branch brackets in a kitchen, bathroom, or laundry room. The mercury glass log vases would look so pretty on my marble mantel filled with berries and branches.

Mini Floral | Hand-blocked Prints 1, 2, 3

Whenever I’m shopping in stores or online, I keep a look out for interesting, well made, patterned pillows to add color and interest to a solid cover sofa. The reversible pillow on the left is from West Elm’s collaboration with Sarah Campbell, and I think it would work well in a clean lined, Scandinavian inspired space. I really love the hand-blocked patterns on the right…they would feel right at home in my own living room.

Martini Table |  Faceted Table

I’ve always liked this simple functionality and clean lines of the Martini Side Table, but I really love it in this new brushed brass finish. The Faceted Ceramic Side Table appears to have a warmer rose gold, almost coppery finish that looks slightly antique. I like how both these tables can worth with and add warmth to a variety of interior styles from more classic traditional to contemporary.

Have you checked out the latest offerings from West Elm? Any favorites?