More Paper (Bien Sur!)

As I continue to look for interesting wedding invitations to inspire what I'll be doing for my aunt's invitations, I stumbled across three places that for me, everything I saw was lovely!  These blogs/sites are Wedding Paper Divas, Oh So Beautiful Paper, and Delphine.  These three websites post mostly on printed wedding pieces pieces in a variety of styles and colors. They also act as great inspiration (for me on this project) for fancier events you might be planning or just cute little host gifts or dessert or decor tips in a larger space. 
Here's a few previews from Wedding Paper Divas.

I like how they group images together from weddings with a particular theme, i.e. vineyards or the coast etc.  It's nice to get the whole picture of the event from start to finish, in addition to just showing the invitations the couple sent out.

Bathroom Organization

I'm of the opinion that it is difficult to have an organized bathroom when it is small.  However, as I started looking around for materials on this subject, I found that I was wrong!  I think its all about being creative with the space.   Now most of these are not from my own experience but I'm determined to implement some this winter while trapped inside.
This one is from me, I love the way soap dishes look, many of them are clean simple, this one (from Crate & Barrel) is bright silver with lovely texture.  The only downside to soap dishes is that I don't like giving our guests just a bar of soap to wash their hands!  So, I combined a regular soap dispenser on the soap dish.  It gives the bathroom a more polished look then just a plain dispenser, but doesn't have the mess of a bar of soap.  For me its the perfect marriage.

I don't typically peruse Martha Stewart's website, but when I want organization, that is a key place I will look.

For those like me with small bathrooms, this presents a great solution for storage, installing a nice white shelf above the door.  I also like that they've used apothecary jars and baskets to hold the items, classing it up a bit more then just a bunch of bottles. 

Birthday Designs

Lately I've been working on some exciting designs for one of my good friend's son's 1st birthday!  I was so excited she asked me and this project has been the highlight for me to design lately!  The party is going to be a jungle theme (SO cute!) and the colors are brown, lime green and orange.
I'll be getting some great photographs of the party after it's all put together, but I'm so excited about the fun designs we've come up, I wanted to give everyone a little preview! 

Cupcake toppers

Water bottle wrapper

Party favor tag, isn't that phrase the cutest?!  (Can't take credit for that, all Delane)

Blog Recommendation

I frequent the blog Design*Sponge pretty often and one blog I've learned about through that site is the blog Small Measures by Ashley English.  She recently published books called Canning and Preserving and Keeping Chickens. 
Her blog is excellent.  She always gives great advice on sustainable living, doing things yourself that you always thought would be too difficult (like the subjects of her books keeping chickens and canning both intimidate me a lot!) and her column on d*s ranges from how to make your own hair rinse to cooking recipes to natural stress reducers. 
I also recently found a few videos on YouTube of her talking about the benefits of canning and raising your own chickens.  My favorite one is below, and its very convincing!  I've been doing a lot of freezing this summer but next summer might try a hand a canning because of this video.  Check out her blog when you have a minute.

Wedding Invitations

I did some spring cleaning this weekend and unearthed various parts to our wedding invitations.  I'm the opposite of a pack rack and wanted to throw these things away, but found that difficult.  My compromise was to photograph them to post here, to be memorialized.
I designed these invitations myself, printed most pieces myself (mistake!) and with the help of a few friends, assembled everything, stuffed envelopes and mailed them!  Quite the task, but for someone like me I don't think I would've been content to let someone else design them.  The only piece missing is to show you how the items came in their envelope; tied three times around with twine in a small bow. 

Organization: Office & Desk

A much needed post (probably part 1 of 2) on organizing your desk and office.  Since we don't have a home office, I'm mainly speaking from my work office experience, although hopefully this winter we'll be re-doing the man-room into an office!
For starters I would like to say that if you come in my office at work during the day, it is never that organized!  So I don't claim to have this all under control.  I'm mostly just a firm believer in giving everything its place, and having somewhere to put the 'random misc.' things that don't need their own place.  For example, I have tons of magazines floating around my office most of the time.  To solve that problem, or a similar one, is having a catch all basket/file/place for the 'I'll get to it later' items (like my magazines). Something like this (below) can help you keep those things all together, but it doesn't really have to be organized.  I just contains the mess.  (See it here.) 

At home I use something like this in our makeshift office (the family room!) to hold our magazines/extra paper things that lay around.  I purchased this at Target.

I've also considered pieces such as this to contain paper messes on my desk (found here and here).  They're cute, fun to look at but also serve a purpose.