I made the mistake of telling Ella a few weeks ago that I was going to, for her big girl room, add letters to her wall just like her big bother has in his. I didn’t anticipate her being so excited about this, and she would ask, “my letters up yet?” every day when she got home from school. I had to think quickly of an idea. I love the look of the “Lake Life” letters I did for a previous project (link here) but I didn’t really want to duplicate it in her room. I also was tempted to purchase these from Anthropologie, but I wanted more color and something lighter – for ease of hanging and because I have a thing about placing heavy and/or glass things over my kids’ beds, as I’m worried they will ding around and knock something off the wall and onto their heads. If anyone is fact-checking and looks back on the post about Taylor’s room from several months ago (link here), yes, there are frames above his bed. But they are dang near bolted to the wall, and I pulled the headboard away, presuming that if they were knocked loose they will fall into the space between the wall and the bed. But I digress. I went with a floral motif for Ella’s letters, the materials and the steps for which are included below.
May 2015 archive
Orange Crush
I love breaking out the bright colors in the spring and summer. I suppose it comes from so many months of cloudy winter weather – during which time my outfits often blend in with the landscape – lots of gray, black, and navy, sometimes with a pop of bright color but usually just in an accessory. I’ll be honest, this dress first caught my eye online because of the price (around $36 after the discount) but I also really loved the color. Colors can be deceiving online, but the dress arrived in the same bright red orange I was expecting. Although it’s a little bit shorter than what I would usually wear for work attire, I think the longer length in the back and loose fit make it appropriate for more causal functions (I wore this to two separate evening work events in the span of a week).
Banana Republic dress (sold out, but same color and great style here – on sale too!) and necklace (plus a similar version here) | Tory Burch shoes (old, similar here) and ring (love the two tone version here) | Coach bag (similar here) | Alexis Bittar earrings (old, love these for summer) | Kate Spade sunglasses | Michael Kors watch | Madewell bracelet
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Chicken Pasta Salad
For those of you who asked for the chicken salad recipe from last week’s Entertaining post, here it is! Easy and delicious. Plus, the flavors blend really nicely over a day or two, so this is a great option if you need to make it ahead of time – which seems to be increasingly important to me when planning to host friends or to bring a dish to an event. The salad is also great as a leftover for the following day’s lunch.
