Jenna’s Bridal Shower was beautiful! It was held at Opa! in Vernon Hills and everything was perfect…accept the snow today…what is up with that?! The centerpieces were made of a sculptural mix of curly willow branches, bear grass, and tulips. I loved them–and more importantly–so did Jenna!
Kara Schultz of Karatography did a brilliant job capturing our wedding reception through her camera lens. She took fabulous stills of the decor and accents and also captured beautiful moments between Matt and I…and of course she got great shots of the crazy dancing & camaraderie. We loved her! (PS…I did all of the flowers, table numbers & other decor!!!)
I just did a shower this weekend (photos to come in my next post!) and purchased some extra flowers for my home. I made five centerpieces to decorate my home…and they make me so happy! Flowers breathe life into a space; they add color and an organic quality unmatched by anything else. I just love them!
While at the wholesaler I looked at different items in the cooler. Saturday is the end of the week, so some of the stuff in the cooler is picked over or a week old. I found fresh blue hydrangea and beautiful pink tulips. I also picked up beargrass and ti leaves as my foliage accents. I love wrapping ti leaves around the inside of vases to hide the stems. The bear grass can be bent and wound to make interesting shapes and it really gives a more modern look to anything add it to. I did very simple “clump” style arrangements (sometimes referred to as the “Martha Stewart Style” which really anyone can do. They are just a cluster one single flower type together in a glass container with a few foliage accents. Nothing overly complicated. In addition to these simple centerpieces, I also made one slightly more complicated with light blue delphinium and curly willow and greens. It has a totally different feel; it is wild and very natural looking.
Art and floral design are truly my two passions and I just really love making new things with my creative talents. I love what I do and I am so glad I get to do creative things every day.
I just made a bunch of cupcakes for Matt’s 30th birthday. I tried 2 new gourmet cupcake recipes that I found online and made snow white buttercream icing as well. I displayed half of them on a cupcake stand and the others on 2 of my late Grandmother’s crystal cake stands. They look fabulous! To top them off, I made these cute cupcake flags which feature phrases on them including, “Happy Birthday Matt!”, “You’re 30!!!”, “Sooo Tasty!”, etc. If my cupcakes are a hit tomorrow at our dinner party, maybe I will think about doing this as another random creative-job-o-mine. This type of thing would be perfect for birthdays, wedding and baby showers! Yum yum!
They always say that a can of paint can make a big difference…Well, whoever “they” are, they were right!!! I recently revamped our downstairs powder room in a grayish blue that we love and did a loosely “Door County” theme. There are only earthy neutrals in the room, from the rich wood tones to the soft browns and hues of tan and taupe. In addition to paint, items I bought for the room include frame to put around the existing mirror, a 3-D frame for 6 photos, a leather-covered box for magazines, blue accent towels and a new garbage can. We were gifted a fabulous rug for the space, and everything else I already had. This included the vertical mirror, small picture frame with curvy mats, branches and urn, alabaster pillar/column, antique bottles, tan and ivory towels, shells and beach glass from Lake Michigan, and smooth river rocks. All of the photos displayed were taken by either me or my sister, Amy. The giant painting in the room is a print of a painting of Rock Island in Door County, WI that I did my senior year of college. It remains one of my favorite paintings I have ever done! 🙂 In addition to painting this room the beautiful blue, I added blue as an accent wall in our living room as well. It really looks great. Now we just need to save up for some crown moulding!
I also painted and our guest bathroom a lively yellowish green color. It looks awesome in the space. The color was inspired by a candle I already had. I brought the candle with to Home Depot and just matched it to a swatch. Originally this room was a muted grayish purple that the previous owner had chosen. It was livable, but not “us”. Knowing I wanted to make some changes to the guest bath this year, I registered us for new bath accessories including a sleek white toothbrush holder, trash can, tissue box cover and soap holder. I also registered for a black shower curtain and black and white towels. We got all of these items and they fit perfectly in the space. I added accessories that I already had like the candle, reed diffuser, soap, antique green glass floral design frogs, hanging shower caddy, and my vintage-looking shower hooks and “sundries” container with “Wash” hook in it. The B&W with a punch of bright yellowish-green is awesome, energetic and modern. The perfect finishing touch to the room is a brilliant photo that my sister took of Aloe matted and framed in a black gallery frame. It’s perfect and we totally love it!
After over two years of living with someone else’s taste, it is good to have some rooms in our house that reflect US! My next project will be to paint our master bathroom charcoal gray. We already got new bath accessories and towels from our gift registry for this room as well and I had already bought new rugs, shower curtain and additional towels in anticipation of this makeover. I think I will get to the painting of it this coming week. The only things in my way is a lot of sanding and cleaning before painting can begin. The walls need to be sanded down as the previous owner did vertical stripes of tan and darker tan is a very sloppy way. Her taping off lines are really raised and obvious, she painted the room in 2 kinds of paint (eggshell and satin) so there are variations in shininess, etc. Its a big old mess basically. So I’ve already started to razor-off the raised paint seams and now I have to sand and then sweep everything up with the shop vac. Fun stuff. I will post pictures when it’s all done. The color inspiration for our master bath came from the flooring in there. The tile has shades of warm and cool grays in it so I’d like to take that into the walls and accessories.
When I finally get to our actual Master bedroom, I’d like to extend the color palette into our room by using a warm lighter gray on the bulk of the walls with 2 accent walls of raspberry behind the bed and in the alcove. The color combination in the master will be a warm light gray, chocolate brown and raspberry. The colors work perfectly together and will be accented with our birch-colored furniture and white headboard with accents of pewter/silver throughout. I am excited about getting to the master bedroom, but the ceilings are peaked and it is going to require scaffolding so I am not in a rush to get it done. Maybe by the end of the summer…(yeah right!)
Baby Dylan is still on his way but his happy first-time parents, Brian and Karrie Hurley, wanted to welcome him into this world with a newly-painted “Pond-Themed” bedroom. Karrie (and baby) registered for this cute Pond-themed bedding collection and decided that theme would be appropriate throughout the space. They already had the walls painted a light green so my job was already a whole lot easier. I met with them and checked out the space and then did some sketches and a rendering of what parts of the finished room would look like. I had to sell them on the idea of canvas name “blocks” as apposed to having them painted directly on the wall, but once they saw my rendering, they were sold. I was so glad! I spent Thursday and Friday painting the mural for Dylan’s room. When Karrie came home Friday night, I was just finishing up the final painting for the room, a 16″ x 20″ accent piece to the mural. She absolutely loved it! All of it! Yay! I am always so pleased when I have happy customers! I really enjoyed painting this mural and hope to do more soon…hint hint! Put me to work!
The Cake at the Pavilion, originally uploaded by kristenhenschen.When we decided to bump up our tentatively planned June 2010 wedding to November 14, 2008 with a reception on February, 27, 2009–we had no idea what we were in store for!
The CONS: Receptions and everything leading up to them are expen$ive regardless of if you have your celebration on a Friday night in February (like we did) or not. Sure, we saved some dough (about 10%) by having ours then, but 10% is nothing once you add tax and gratuity–the 2 silent budget killers. Say hello to 25% more cost over all. Ugh. Not fun.
Another con is that Friday night wedding receptions have more no-shows. 14 to be exact in our case. You know who you are! Kidding. But really, 14 people did not come (who replied that they were, in fact, coming) and only 2 of the 14 called that day to tell us they could not make it. Those kind souls aside, 12 people times our per plate cost and we are out over $1k in an economy that is a total nightmare to begin with, let alone with the expense of a wedding being thrown in the mix.
Yet another con–Matt and I got sick. Really sick. The week leading up to the reception we were in upper-respiratory infection hell basically. He was better on the day of the reception, but my illness was 2-days behind his and I was feeling the worst of it that morning. I made the best of it though…and our reception was fabulous in spite of the CONS creeping up.
So…let me tell more about the lovely reception. It was everything I ever dreamed it would be (sans my retched cold) and then some! Details to come in my next post…
I’ve had this awesome idea for a while to design an eco-friendly baby line of little tees and onesies. I have cute icons that I designed and am currently looking for both an eco-friendly printer and and eco-friendly t-shirt/onesie source. I think I am the right track to finding both. This is a “pet project” and I hope to get my foot in the door by selling my Tee’s on ETSY and possibly into some baby boutiques.
What makes this line really “TASTEE” is the icons are all little food items you might call your baby. Sweet pea, cupcake, pumpkin, cutie pie, peanut, etc. I am still working on the logo for the line and whatnot but here are the icon ideas below.
TASTEE BABY by Kristen L. Janes
One of my “genius” ideas for this project includes shooting the clothing on some of the recent additions to my friends and family’s lives (a.k.a. super cute new babies). My fabulous friend and wedding assistant Amy Christian will likely be a part of this project–both on the photography side and with over all design consulting. Aside from the logo, I also need to design a design for the “tagless” tag to be printed inside the tee’s as well as a hangtag that expresses the fact that the item is eco-friendly.
I hope things progress steadily on this project! I am very excited about the possibilities! Or should I say, “possibiliTEES”!!!
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