Bridget Jones & Her Enchanting Home February 27, 2012

Isn’t this such a romantic mantle perfect for Valentine’s month? Only my good friend Karla could create this.  I was able to spend a whole day with her a couple weeks ago and it was just wonderful!

Here she is with her little ones and her main squeeze. She’s just adorable and always makes me laugh. She’s definitely got some Bridget Jones in her, always has and probably always will. In fact, during our day together we decided to load the kids up in the mini van and head over to a garage sale that her sister had called her about. Okay, I was kind of thinking garage sale in the middle of winter? hmmm.  We stopped for a coffee and hot chocolate on our way (that’s a whole other story) and headed over to the house.  We pulled up to a nice house, 4-5 cars in the driveway and a FSBO sign in the yard.  So we tromped down the steep driveway and up to the house where Karla opened the front door, walked in and peeked around the corner then stopped in her tracks and said “HELLO???”. I’m behind her with the kids on the porch and all we hear is a teenager-ish boy saying “hello”? Then Karla asks if this is where the garage sale is and he says ummm, let me go find my parents.  So Karla turns around and says okay, we’ll meet you at the garage (the garage doors that were closed should have been our first sign). She shuts the door, busts out laughing then says, “well that was awkward” and next thing I know her little ones are giggling like no other and repeating “that was awkward”!! So incredibly cute.  So we hang out for a few seconds, the garage door opens and the kid says, “umm, my parents said the garage sale is next weekend!!!!”  Low and behold, we check the posting online when we get home and true to what he said, the ad is dated for the following weekend! Bridget Jones strikes again!

Oh how I love her for making me laugh!! And not at her, it’s always with her. Karla blogs over at Back At Ya Babe. Over the last year or so she has been repurposing old sweaters into beautiful scarves and shawls. Yes, she’s amazing and so is her house.  It’s an old arts & crafts house and is just gorgeous, her style fits perfectly with it and I was able to snap a few photos of it to share with you! Her house was recently featured on the “Christmas Walk” so she did a few posts on her blog with many photos of her house during the holidays, please be sure to check it out!

It’s all in the details, sparkly details that is.

And look at that repurposed piece of artwork above her piano, she made that out of an old broken down piano!  If you look close you can see the very cute pieces created at Pink-a-bella. See, Karla’s sister Lynn is also amazingly creative and each year they take their daughters out of town, stay in a hotel and craft and create all weekend long and they’ve named their weekend Pink-a-bella! Very special.

Not to brag about this one or anything but Karla did say I inspired this one, she spray painted this piece that used to be a nasty old dirty gold color!

She sanded it a bit to make it look weathered and worn.

Looks perfect adorning the wall in her creative space now, doesn’t it?

Lots of fun and eclectic details in her creative space.

Who would have thought an old door, with a crystal door know, set against a wall and decorated with a wonderful deep mustard rose vine would turn into such beautiful wall decor?

Even her old mason jars hold cute, random things that just work together!

Thank you for always inspiring my creativity Karla!

Where do you get your creative inspiration?

Smiles!

Megan

Customer Experience At It’s Finest – The Grey Plume February 15, 2012

Brian took me to the Grey Plume for dinner on Valentine’s Day (yes, I am very very lucky). This was my second trip to this fine establishment, it’s always such an escape, it makes me feel like I’m at a fancy dinner while on vacation! I appreciate the attention to detail at the Grey Plume, from the table settings to the charcuterie plates made by a local artist to the design of their plating, every little detail is important to them.

 

 

But as we enjoyed the evening what I noticed the most was the customer service. From being able to make our reservation through Open Table, to kind, warm greeting as we entered the restaurant and a smile at each time a server came to our table, it was impeccable. But the thing that stood out the most was that everyone that worked there was so proud of the restaurant, of the food, of the chef’s, and they shared that with you. They were sincere in expressing their excitement over the wine selections the sommelier had for the night and delighted to compliment the dessert chef on his creative flower themed dessert.  Our server started the dinner and ended the dinner thanking us for spending Valentine’s Day at the Grey Plume.

 

 

The enthusiasm and pride was infectious and much appreciated. We made the right choice for dinner. I left our server a note of thanks for being so enthusiastic and wonderful, she deserved it as well as everyone at the Grey Plume. Keep it up, we need more experiences like this in Omaha!

 

 

Smiles!

Megan

PS You may see more posts from me about customer experience, some good, some bad, but always constructive!

Perfectable Spectacle February 13, 2012

What a title, huh?  My sister, who is so creative herself, messaged me on Facebook a week or so ago and said she’s looking for a print of glasses but couldn’t find one. Of course I said, I can make you one! Easiest project ever and it turned out just perfect. Here’s a little step by step.

I told her to send me a few photos off the inter webs of styles that she likes.  This one happened to come from Warby Parker, which my sister just purchased from, are you familiar with them? Warby Parker sells vintage inspired glasses, very good prices, and for every pair purchased, they donate a pair of glasses to one of their non-profit partners.   The other cool thing is they send you glasses to try on at home in a fancy box, then you send them all back and let them know which one you chose! Very good experience.

Anyway, I took the image into Photoshop, simplified it, sized it to final painting size  and printed it out.

I had a 9×12 canvas board in my closet so I measured it off to 8×10 as that’s the size of frame my sister had.

Got out my tub of paints even though I only needed black and white!

I wanted the white background to be warm so I mixed in a little yellow and brown paint.

You can see the difference here between the original gesso canvas board and the warmer white that I painted.

I centered the print out on the canvas and taped it down.

Next step was tracing the image using graphite paper.

Graphite paper worked pretty good!

Because the painting was so small and I had to be precise, the paint needed to be really easy to work with so I mixed it with matte medium. It just makes the paint a little thinner and not as sticky so therefore easier to work with in small spaces.

And there you go!

Not exactly precise but looks pretty good.

Kate loved it!  Easiest project ever for me!

It looks good above her desk. See that chalkboard? That was an old cabinet door, and a Christmas present from me last year!  (can you tell I upgraded my camera? Now i just need to be better about lighting, I should have turned off that desk lamp!)

Her apartment is super cute, she’s a really good decorator.  See that “Work hard and Be Nice” sign? She found that at one of our favorite stores, Voila!

This is a painting in her apartment that only took me 3 years to complete . Well, I started it about 3 years ago as it was going to be a birthday present for her, then I got tired of it when I was 75% of the way through and it just sat on my easel in my art room for 3 years before I finally picked up my paintbrushes again and finished it up!  Merry Christmas to Kate this year!

I’m lucky to have Kate as my sister because she loves decorating with my artwork!  This is one of my favorite paintings from my art school days at Iowa State.  We had to take  a painting we like, this is a Georgia O’Keefe and paint it in a different style than the original artist. I can’t for the life of me remember what style I was trying to attempt!  But I think it turned out super cool.

Back to the glasses, what do you think? I love them and so does Kate which is all that matters!

Smiles!

Megan

Ever Need a Vacation From Your Vacation? February 5, 2012

I did!  I think that’s what happens when you cruise with Team Cocktail on the Carnival Victory, aka the Fun Ship!  Here’s a recap of our most recent travels, it was just so beautiful I had to share because we’ve had gray, dreary weather all weekend and eight inches of snow, I needed a pick me up.  Enjoy!

Brian and I left San Juan, Puerto Rico late on a Sunday evening and headed south, to the southern caribbean.  We couldn’t resist the hats when we spotted them at Canfield’s! Got us in the spirit.

Our first port was St. Thomas where Team Cocktail chartered a boat to take over to the gorgeous island of Jost Van Dyke.  We took a little taxi over the hill to White Bay where we parked ourselves for the day.

Our travel partners, Tricia, Jami and Sarah.

They have four or five little bars on the beach, One Love, Gertrude’s, and the infamous Soggy Dollar Bar.

If you ever visit St. Thomas or St. John’s or anywhere near here you must spend a day on Jost. Just sail your little boat or yacht or rowboat right into the bay, set your anchor and swim in or like we saw one lady do, have your captain yo-lo board you in.

Trade your “soggy dollars” for the local brew and kick back and soak in the sun.  It was my second favorite stop on the trip and I can’t wait to go back!

On the way back to port I was sad. I didn’t want to leave.  We had to swing by St. John’s and go through customs and crazy as it may seem we passed right by Eric Clapton’s yacht Blue Guitar that was anchored in the bay.  Brian was in awe, he’s the one that spotted it, he may be EC’s number one fan

Jami and Jim, good friends, great travel partners and amazing sun seekers! ha!

We made it to one “elegant” night, if you consider the wait staff getting down to Apple Bottom Jeans in the middle of dinner to be elegant. I guess that’s what you get on the “Fun Ship”!

Our next port was Barbados.  Brian and I took a taxi tour of the island, beautiful!

Then we met our Team Cocktail friends at Weiser’s Beach and bar, totally gorgeous, again. That’s the thing about traveling with Team Cocktail, they arrange something every day so all you have to do is show up and follow the leader. And if you wanted to do your own thing and meet up with them later you could. It was great!

And we drank the bar out of the local beer, Banks!

A typical sailaway – men, drinks and cigars.

And lots of beautiful sunsets.

And then Team Cocktail absolutely spoiled us! They chartered a huge catamaran from Spencer Ambrose and took us to Jalousie Beach on St. Lucia, smack dab in the middle of the unbelievably gorgeous Pitons.

Spencer and his crew served up the most delicious Rum Punch that we definitely indulged in. . . all day. . . I mean it. . . all day, until he broke out the Marigot Bay Coconut Rum!

I mean, really? Would you look at this? It looks like a movie set, right? Oh it was the most beautiful place I have ever seen.  And, I guess it is where part of Jurassic Park was filmed so it’s kind of a movie set!

We snorkeled and sunbathed and chilled in the water but alas, our time had to come to an end.

So we drowned our sorrows in Spencer’s amazing Rum Punch and had the most incredible booze-cruise-I-Love-St.-Lucia-The-Roof-Is-On-Fire-Ice-Ice-Baby-dance-party  I’ve EVER participated in. I felt like we were all 21 again!

Thank you Team Cocktail and Spencer and his crew, this was much-needed fun!  We will definitely be back!

St. Kitts was our next port and we decided to take a Sky Safari tour and go zip-lining!

It was gorgeous and thrilling!

That’s me zip-lining over the rain forest.

Sky Safari is located on Wingfield Estates, a really old rum distillery and sugar cane plantation.  Here you can see the boiler tank (I think that’s what it was called) and the distillery tanks on the right. It was gorgeous but this is the longest blog post in the world so I’m only sharing one photo. If you want more, just let me know!

On St. Martin, our next and last port, Team Cocktail hooked us up with an amazing time at Kakao Beach on Orient Bay.

Comfy chairs, umbrellas, lunch, drinks and a beautiful view. What more could you ask for?

We spent the day in the water and loved every minute of it.

Look at our HUGE cruise ship, the Carnival Victory (on the right). There were five ships in port at St. Martin, if you look close you can see three here.

We explored old San Juan a bit and visited Castillo San Felipe del Morro and Castillo San Cristóbal. These forts were built in the 1600′s to protect San Juan Harbor and were used through World War II.

They offered many opportunities for incredibly beautiful photography, or at least attempting to create amazingly beautiful photography!

The forts also offered many many many encounters with these nasty pests, iguanas!  They are invasive there and people kill and eat them, like chicken, eww!  They were seriously everywhere I looked!! I just wanted to get out of there!!

We were also able to lunch at Barrachina, the birthplace of the Pina Colada!

Now can you see why I needed a vacation from my vacation? Two weeks after and I’m finally back to full steam! Thank you to old friends and new friends for helping us make lifelong memories. I can’t wait to go back to the southern caribbean!

Where is your favorite place to travel?

Smiles!

Megan