Hi!  It’s been a loooong time since I’ve written about Project Runway, and I finally got around to watching Season 9 a few weeks ago.  I won’t talk too much about it here, in case some of you are waaaay behind and haven’t seen it yet – ahem Stormie; and I also don’t want to bore you – it was a bit of a snooze.  Definitely not one of the my favorite seasons.

One of the things on season 9 that I DID like was the strange stilt-walker challenge.  Each of the models looked like a kooky Tim Burton character.  Loved it!

I can’t really remember much about the Season 9 finale…except that Faith Hill was a judge and didn’t really seem to “get” any of the clothes (go figure).  Sometimes I don’t understand their choices of guest judges.

Honestly, with the exception of Season 8 (one of my favs!), ever since Project Runway moved from Bravo to Lifetime, it just hasn’t been as good.  It’s lost it’s edge.  It’s been formulaic and predictable and since it’s shown on Lifetime (television for WOMEN), the past 4 seasons have seen 3 female winners – and all 3 of them didn’t deserve to win…at. all.  Surprise surprise.

Now, I know it’s starting to sound like I really hate this show and that maybe I should stop watching it (and trust me, I’ve had those same thoughts), but I’ve been watching some of the past seasons lately and it has reminded me why I fell in love with it in the first place.

Season 4.  My all-time favorite season and the BEST final collection by Christian Siriano.  I still remember watching these clothes come down the runway for the first time.  The show gave me chills down my back, and made me hold my breath slightly.  Christian wowed me throughout the whole season, and for me, no one on the show has matched his talent to this day.

Season 1.  My 2nd all-time favorite collection by Jay McCarroll.  I remember being completely in awe when I saw this.  His clothes were so unique, eye catching, and COOL.  I would love to wear them – and they still translate to today’s fashion – even after 7 years.  Jay is amazing, and no other contestant has made me laugh so hard. 

Season 8.  My 3rd all-time favorite collection by Mondo Guerra.  I’ve already written about Mondo here, but I just love him too much to leave him out of this post.  His final collection was so bold, bright and beautiful.  I want that skull t-shirt SO much (oh, and the leggings and tights too!).  He had such a sweet presence on the show, and it was his personality that really connected me to his clothes.  And I guess it doesn’t hurt that he’s based here in Colorado:)

Speaking of Mondo, a Project Runway spin-off called Project Runway:  All-Stars just started a few weeks ago, and Mondo is one of the contestants!  So excited to see him and April busting out the cute clothes again.  I really hope that Mondo wins All Stars though….it’s gotta happen right?

P.S.  Wendy Pepper is still evil.

Remember the first time I loosened my grip and shared things from my inspiration folder?  And when I talked about giving away your ideas in favor of obtaining more?  Today is another day to share.

There is really no theme or specific area for these items, they are just pretty things that make me happy to look at.

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

What is inspiring you lately?

I change my Christmas decorations every year.  This year I did a white tree with colorful ornaments, and white lights (see my trees from the past 2 years here) – it makes me happy every time we plug it in.  I have still been buying and adding decorations (mostly vintage), and I still feel like there is more to be added!  I love decorating for Christmas because you can really go big and a bit crazy and it seems pretty normal….right?

We set the tree up between the living room and entryway – we’ve never had it here, but I really like how you can see it from every area of the downstairs.

View from the front door.

I put the tree up on a vintage wooden crate – I like having a large space underneath.

You got a sneak peek of this area in our video Christmas card!  I was fortunate to be able to obtain a shelf that my parents made from my sister’s wedding.  I knew I wanted to create a faux-fireplace looking shelf to house Christmas decorations and other favorite pieces.

“Remembrance, like a candle, burns brightest at Christmastime.”  Charles Dickens

Christmas cards.

I love this little guy!  Totally worth $.49!

Remember when I made these flowers?

12 Days of Christmas.  I cut the dark green edge off of this vintage linen that my mom-in-law gave me.

Garlands hanging from the ceiling make it feel like a party all the time.  I scored this Martha Stewart garland for a buck!

The paper flowers were used at our sister’s bridal shower and wedding.  It was good timing to be able to reuse those for Christmas.

Hope you enjoyed this little tour of my decorations!  See Stormie’s decorations here if you haven’t already.  Merry Christmas:)

I felt so inspired by this post on Design Sponge, I HAD to tell you about it here.  These are Before and After photos of a kids’ bedroom, but not just any bedroom – it is a small bedroom that is shared by THREE young kids.  Meg Spaeth’s blog, Elsie Marley is the original source of this design goodness.  I was so excited to see this because, all 3 of my kids share a bedroom, and that is not something that you see very often!  It can be very hard to find good examples of shared rooms for more than 2 children, and I think that this room is incredible, special, and just plain fun:)

The loft bed!!  Love it:)

Such a cute surprise when the drawers are pulled out!

The animal heads on the wall are such a cute and colorful touch.  And I love the map!

The whole transformation was done for $250!  You can see even more photos of the space and read about the makeover here & here.  Thank you Meg for inspiring me so much!  You have definitely found a new reader in me:)

The roomie officially moved out her stuff last night.

No hard feelings here, she just got married (yay!).

For the past few months, through the engagement period, I have been thinking about what to do in this extra room I now have.  The plan is to turn it into an office/MayDae work room.  Currently, everything from our Etsy shop is housed in my basement on shelves but we will be moving it all upstairs into the closet and may even do some fun displays in the office just because we have some really pretty items.

For some inspiration, these are my current favorite office areas:

This is the photograph that convinced me to paint my floors white.  The original plan was to paint the floors throughout my entire house white, but now I may just keep that to the office area – tbd.  I have this exact desk – love.

All images are via Pinterest in my “Be Productive” board.  You can also follow Stephanie May on Pinterest if you haven’t already – she, of course, has some fantastic stuff!

Unfortunately no, you are not being invited to a wedding right now.  This wedding happened a week and a half ago – for our sister Tredessa and her dear husband, Ryan.  Hopefully within the next few days we will be able to share with you a few photos from the wedding – we know we’ve been promising and we will deliver soon, we promise(more)!

I had the great honor of designing the invitation and programs for their wedding which were such a blast to do!  My sister had some fantastic ideas so we chatted through specifics and went to work.

Each invitation consisted of a canvas book tied with a puzzle piece.

Inside was a 25-minute DVD with their love story and a wedding wheel invitation.  I’ve never had to use so much math on an invitation before in my life…

We also recreated the “story” feel for the programs which I have seen around recently and LOVE.

{Photo by Lilac Photography}

In addition to a few other small design elements like labels for bottles and things of that nature, the last project I worked on was a poster for the foyer at the church which told who the wedding party were.

{Photo by Lilac Photography}

At the end of the 25-minute DVD included with the invitations, I put together a fun little montage of Ryan and Tredessa with some of the extra footage.  Don’t worry – this isn’t the full 25-minutes.  Enjoy!

The design work for their wedding was so much fun to do and I couldn’t be happier that they trusted me to work on it with them.

{All photos taken by MayDae unless otherwise labeled}

Happy married life Dess and Ryan!!

Among my current reads right now is a book on advertising by Paul Arden entitled, “It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be.”  It is a very short book with simple ideas on the creative process – simple, but extremely thought-provoking.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a person who keeps my ideas very close to the vest.  If I haven’t followed through on an idea yet, I don’t want other people to do it before me.  I am learning this is something I need to let go of.  Honestly, that is a large reason why it took me so long to get involved with Pinterest.  The whole concept of the website is to share ideas and creativity – not an easy thing for me.

So in spite of that, I created a poster that I plan to print and hang in my house – to remind me that I need to let go and share.

I don’t particularly relish the thought of living off my reserves.  I’m like a child, learning to share.

Let me just preface this with: I may or may not have gone completely off the deep end.

I have been going back and forth with what to do for Christmas decorations in my house for this first year.  With the wedding and everything else going on, I don’t have a ton of time.  In addition to that, most of my decorations were purchased 3 years ago (I’ve been wanting to buy a house for a long time now) and I don’t particularly love most of them anymore.  I haven’t wanted to just put out decorations that I don’t even like because it won’t be enjoyable to me.

I pulled out everything I have tonight and while a majority of it will be heading back down to the basement, I did pull a few things that I like in addition to some vintage items I picked up last weekend from the thrift store.

So here comes the crazy….

Antlers aren’t just for hanging necklaces…

Ummmm yeah – that’s my Christmas “tree”.  I still had a pile of antlers that at the moment I have no plans for.  Problem solved – I think I’m in love now.  I’m still deciding if I will add anything else to it but at this point I don’t think I will.

Unconventional Christmas trees.  Yes, please.

What is the best unconventional tree you’ve seen?

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?  Bad?  Okay so the good news is……

I kid, I kid.  Bad news is that we won’t be posting any photos from our sister’s wedding for a few days.  We know, you all have murderous thoughts toward us right now – but sadly, I hardly took any photos this weekend because Stephanie and I were both too busy getting photos taken of us to do much ourselves.  We want to wait until the professional photos come in so we can show you some truly amazing ones – because, let’s be honest, the wedding was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.  Seriously fantastic…so much fun and the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever been to.

I’ll give you one teaser – and if you follow us on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve probably already seen it so it won’t be that exciting to you.  Admit it though, you’re a cheap date – anything thrills you. {only joking, I love you!}

{Bridesmaid dresses}

Time spent with family was like a little mini vacation and we are so sad to see everyone go home.  We were able to spend Thanksgiving as well as the rest of the weekend with our friends, family and also our now-brother-in-law’s family who are also AMAZING.  We are trying very hard {but probably not succeeding} to convince them to move here from Florida.  We’ll let you know how that goes…

And now for the good news.  You finally get to see some of my house!

I have been so horrible with posting any photos of my house besides very small bits and pieces like my kitchen nook or the chimney.  You’ve also of course seen my closet because it is my pride and joy but because I haven’t felt like anything is “finished”, I haven’t wanted to post any photos.  Today, however, you get to see a bigger section…almost an entire room.  I say almost because I didn’t really take any wide angle shots of the whole thing and I think I missed a wall completely, but there’s not really anything on it so don’t be too disappointed.

My bedroom has been the last place in the house to get anything hung on the walls.  I’ve put more of my focus on the main rooms (even though those are not “finished” either).  With company coming into town and family that hadn’t seen my house yet, I made my room a priority and finally hung some art.  And I. Love. It.

This is “in progress” because I am planning to paint the walls and strip the dark stain off of the floors soon as well as other things, but it makes it so much  more enjoyable to be in my room now that I have some of my favorite pieces hung.  So without further ado, here is my bedroom:

I apologize that the bed is barely made – and to be quite honest, this is my least favorite photo because my coat rack that usually holds all 50 million of my scarves in the corner is missing due to being used for the wedding, which leaves a huge bare spot.  The purpose of this photo is just to show you where everything is in relation to my bed.  Please don’t judge me from this photo alone.  Thanks, I knew you’d understand.

This is my favorite part of the room by far – the view from my bed.  Closet on the right, bathroom on the left.

Don’t hate on the antlers, they make me oh-so-happy.

Like I’ve said before – I prefer to think of it as more of a collection as opposed to an obsession.

*sigh* I love this wall.

So there you go.  Now when you think of me, you will be able to picture where I am.  In a totally non-weird way…

As Stephanie May and I have mentioned, our sister is getting married this week – yay!

We have family coming into town starting tomorrow and things are well on their way to being the most beautiful wedding ever.

Here are some pretty posters I would like to own (hint hint)..I guess I’m liking simple black and white lately?

{All images from Therese Sennerholt}