Decorations - Hokie Style

Anyone who knows us knows we love Virginia Tech, after all that's where we met! Now we don't have any VT colored cars or walls painted maroon & orange, but we definitely don't hide our Hokie pride. We have VT decals/magnets on our cars, a Hokie Bird door mat, and just a "few" maroon & orange shirts.

When we first started decorating our home, finding places for our indoor VT decorations was a top priority! I started first by figuring out where to hang a few of the larger pieces: poster size print of the Marching Virginians making the VT on the field at Lane Stadium (I'm on the right 40!), and two wall hangings.

Then as we got settled in I started to add smaller pieces and make a few of my own.  I love the way maroon & orange look with our brick home and black accents, they are perfect!  One of the newest things I've made is a mesh ribbon wreath. I had never heard of mesh ribbon until about a year ago and wasn't quite sure how people used it, but thanks to Pinterest I quickly learned how and of course maroon & orange were my first color choices. I took a few progress photos of the wreath to share:

Two rolls of mesh ribbon, and one wire wreath form (not my favorite version of it, need to find a blank one next time).

After making loops and attaching them with the "garland" this was the final product.

I then topped it off with a maroon painted S and white bow.

So the goal had been to put the mesh wreath on the front door for football season, but it doesn't fit between the door and screen door...whoops.  So I moved a different wreath (a purchased) one to the front that did fit.

Let's Go Hokies!

Here are the last few VT touches to the front yard:

Another use for the mesh ribbon - accent to our brand new HOKIES flag!

VT Gnome is ready for Gameday!

There will definitely be more VT accents added to the home, no worries there.  Another project involving maroon & orange will mostly likely be very soon and I'll make sure to blog about it as well.

It's almost time to start jumping...LET'S GO HOKIES!

Behind the Scenes: Delabeling the Bottles

I mentioned in my first post that, when it comes to making things, I enjoy working with things that aren't what people normally think of when they hear the term "crafts." I don't work with paper, or knitting needles, or beads. I prefer things like wood, nails, glass, twine, and resin. One of my favorite things to do lately is to upcycle empty glass bottles.

So far, my projects with bottles have involved wrapping the bottles in jute twine and adding some sort of accent. You can see examples of both the twine-flower and the stencil-flower versions of my bottles in our Etsy store.

One of the necessary evils in working with empty wine and beer bottles is that I have to remove the labels. Until now, that has meant soaking the bottles in warm, soapy water and going at it with a razor blade. (Side note: This makes Julie very nervous. And considering the number of times I've injured myself doing it, it should.) Fortunately, I came across this blog post from Healthy, Wealthy & DIYs and it made a world of difference.

Before. Apparently we like Barefoot. And Starbucks.

After. More info about what worked and what didn't below

It was SO much easier than just warm, soapy water! All I needed was a rough washcloth and the adhesive came right off. The other trick that I picked up on was filling the bottles with hot water before soaking them. From what I can tell, it helped break down the adhesive more and kept the bottles underwater better (duh, Archimedes).

And now the awards:

Easiest Label to Remove: Sequin Moscato (polka dots). One of the labels actually fell off on it's own in the water. I'm excited that I didn't have to scrub that one — I have plans for those polka-dots.

Hardest Label to Remove: Barefoot Pinot Noir (far left, pale green). I scrubbed, and scrubbed, and scrubbed. There's still adhesive all over the front and back. It's clean enough to wrap in twine, though!

Dishonorable Mention: Starbucks Frappuccino bottles. Turns out plastic labels protect the adhesive really well.

The best part of it all? I have sixteen more bottles ready for upcycling, and no bandages on my hands! Whoo hoo!

Decorating Our Home

One of the really neat things about moving (and I've done a lot of that in my life!) is getting to decorate a place to reflect you and your family.  Growing up that meant for me getting to set up my room a different way after each move or buying new sheets to match my new room.  But as an adult and purchasing your first home that means getting to decide how EVERY room in the house is set-up and even getting to pick paint colors!

When we decided on which house we wanted to buy we immediately started to think about if & when we wanted to paint, what colors we wanted to use, what furniture we needed, and where stuff was going to go.  Because we were leaving a 900 square-foot apartment we knew we weren't going to have all the furniture necessary to begin to fill our new home, so we made specific rooms priorities over others.  The first one on the list - master bedroom. 

*Master Bedroom
We love our bedroom furniture, its all from the same line of furniture from Ikea (if you've never been to an Ikea go to one ASAP, they are awesome!) and it's this beautiful shade of reddish brown. All of the bedding we already had was shades of browns and cremes with hints of light blue.  Since this room was priority #1 we picked out paint colors before we moved in and Will set to work painting as soon as we had keys.  Three of the walls are "Moroccan Moonlight" and the fourth is "Puppy Paws".  After we got the furniture moved in we started to brainstorm what we wanted to put on our freshly painted walls.  I love spending time on Pinterest and one of my favorite categories is Home Decor. I found on there a few different pins about picture collages and those sparked the idea of doing a picture collage above our headboard of our engagement and wedding photos.

It was hard to pick just these 11 pictures!

Our photographer William Mahone did such a beautiful job with the pictures and the colors were perfect for our bedroom.  All of the frames came from Ollie's and are mismatched on purpose. So far that's the extent of the decorating, we're in the hunt for artwork for the largest wall to add some more pops of color to the room.

*Living Room

Top: Wedding day items and sits above the TV
Middle and Bottom: Favorite photos and personal mementos

The next room we were excited to get decorated was the living room.  The biggest thing we wanted to add to the room were floating shelves to help not only display our photos and other items but to also help breakup some of the large white space of the walls.  We didn't decide to paint this room because were weren't sure what colors we wanted yet - we are now already thinking of doing just one wall a color but haven't picked the color.  We got three floating shelves from Ikea (again love that store! wish it were closer...) and after much frustration trying to find studs in the walls hung two behind the couch and one above the TV. The two behind the couch frame in my favorite part of the living room! Ever since I saw this picture from our wedding I knew I wanted it blown up and put on a canvas for above the couch.  It's absolutely stunning! Take a look:

Easily one of my favorite photos from the wedding! Thanks Bill!

The rest of the living room is a work in progress - we have few VT items hung up, some more pictures, and eventually really neat green curtains will frame in Maddy's window.

We've started work on a few other rooms in the house - Master Bathroom has a neat new shower curtain and has a future DIY makeover that I'm sure will get it's own post, the Guest Bathroom will be neutrals, the Office right now is pretty standard until we decide on a new desk, the Guest Bedroom is the next project that I'll let Will share with you all (lots of Pinterest ideas and DIY coming soon!!), and the basement needs some organizing and eventually will house the Craft Room!!  The last room in the house is the Kitchen.  We didn't have to do much here because it's already bigger than our old one and mostly white.  We have put up a few pictures and purchased a wine rack for our apparently growing collection.  The neatest thing we have done is take the chalkboard from our anniversary photo and mounted it to the refrigerator to be our weekly menu and reminder board:

Look even blogging made the To Do list!

We update the board each Sunday with the meals for the week which has turned into a nice habit and helps to keep impulse buying at the grocery store to a minimum when you've got a plan. 

We aren't done decorating the house yet but that's the fun thing about decorating, it takes a while and it's what you want it to be!  Most of the ideas we have planned or have done come from Pinterest - this has allowed us to do a lot on our own instead of just buying something and hanging it on the wall. We've noticed our home matches Maddy really well, which doesn't surprise me because we love her and she's apart of our family too so it's only natural that our color palette has migrated that way as well: white mixed with browns and blacks, and the occasional splash of color.

Thanks for letting me share a little peek into our home decor, I'll share more as we tackle new projects.

-Julie

Crocheted Cancer Awareness Ribbons

I started participating in Relay For Life in 2007-2008 as a freshmen at Virginia Tech and even though I always personally raise funds online and by mailing letters, I never really got into the whole on-site fundraiser portion of the event. As a staff partner with the American Cancer Society I tell teams all the time about how important on-site fundraisers are, but I hadn't really planned one for this year because I'd been busy.

Look at all the colors!

That was, until my Mom found a pattern for crocheted awareness ribbons, and we decided to put together a really neat on-site fundaiser.  We had (and still have!) lots of yarn left over from other projects, and we knew that they would be something quick and fun to make.  I set to work making lots of purple (the official color of Relay For Life and all cancers) and anything else I could find.  We made sure ot cover as many of the cancers as we could -- colon, lung, lymphoma, childhood, breast, cervical, uterine, brain, pancreatic, leukemia, kidney, prostate, liver, sarcoma, and bone.  Each ribbon also has a safety pin with it so it can be worn in support of the fight against cancer.


As I worked on them each ribbon not only represented the fight against the cancer it represents but also everyone I know who has fought cancer -- especially the colors white, pink, peach, and yellow. 

My Grandpa Rex (left and bottom) passed away in January 2001 from lung cancer, and my Grandma Mary (right and top) passed away in November 2009 from a multi-year battle with breast and uterine cancers.

Our dog Gracie passed away earlier this year after a long battle with several medical issues including a tumor.

We still have lots of these crocheted cancer awareness ribbons left and they are now for sale in our SatterThings shop on Etsy.  Proceeds of the sales will be donated to the American Cancer Society to help fun research and patient programs that fight cancer every day.  One day I'll only have to make these to honor survivors, and one day I won't have to make them at all anymore.

If you want more information about the American Cancer Society or how you can help finish the fight please feel free to visit cancer.org, call 1-800-ACS-2345 (1-800-227-2345) or email me at SatterThings@gmail.com and I can help you out.

Thanks for stopping by!
-Julie