Weekly Round Up + Another Playlist!
May 3, 2013
So, here it is Friday again and I still don’t have a good name for this shiny new weekly post. Help please! Friday Faves…Weekly Round Up…Weekend Warm Up…yawn, yawn and triple YAWN! What should I call my Friday edition? I’d love to hear your ideas since I don’t seem to be getting anywhere fast. This week felt a little stressful/overwhelming for some reason but we had a houseful of dear friends and kids over for dinner last night and I feel all the better for it. It’s amazing what good friends can do to restore the spirits, isn’t it? Here are a few of my favourite web finds of the week…
1. This print should probably be our new motto at the shop (we paint a lot of #$% gold!)…
2. This Mother’s Day tea party is far too perfect…origami butterflies, anyone? Gorgeous.
3. We’re about to expand our clothing boutique at Spruce so I’ve got outfits like this on my mind…
Off of Broadway4. Pretty taken by the geometric punch of this DIY pendant light…it would look great in Gabe’s room!
5. Loving the curated collections in PJ Mehaffey + Dylan Hightower’s eclectic home…
6. Really trying to make my health a priority, exercising and drinking smoothies like this every day…
Camille Styles7. Determined to break my current “black thumb” streak and get out into my garden…gnomes like this might help!
Tracey AytonAnd since at least a few of you seemed to like my mix tape last week, here’s another to help us roll into the sunshine this weekend! Pretty sure I’ll be enjoying at least one cool drink on my patio…how ’bout you?
- Churchill: The War Within
- Tegan + Sara: How Come You Don’t Want Me Now
- Cayucas: High School Lover
- Miike Snow: Animal
- Vampire Weekend: Run
- Me In You: Kings of Convenience
- We Are the Tide: Blind Pilot
- Plug In Stereo: Oh Darling
- Stars: Hold On When You Get Love, Let Go When You Give It
- Gotye: Save Me
We’ve got plenty of sun and a random heatwave in the forecast so it’s time to dig out the flip flops and get some colour onto my pale winter skin…very much needed! We’ve got 3 kids birthday parties and a Cinco de Mayo shindig packed in over the next couple of days, what do you have planned? So Cheers to the sunshine, Salut to good friends and Cin cin to a Happy Weekend 🙂
Neat + Tidy: Orderly Open Shelves
May 1, 2013
Admittedly, I’ve been feeling spread a little thin these days…again, I know! As I spilled to my partner Elisa at the shop yesterday, I’m really good with lists and deadlines (I’ve got good hustle!) but the reality of being a store owner/mother/wife/friend/daughter/etc/etc/etc is that my lists will never be done.. It’s mostly exciting but I definitely do have my moments of feeling overwhelmed. During one of these “moments” the other day, I dropped everything and did a spontaneous Spring cleaning of my daughters’ shared room. As most parents can relate, hearing yourself make the same pleas to “tidy up” and “put things away” gets very old, as do the teeny bits and bobs that my little hoarders-in-the-making seem to endlessly collect. So, while the girls were outside on the trampoline (sneaky!), I emptied every last nook and cranny in their room and eventually found some order amidst the chaos. It felt so great to organize one entire room from top to bottom! Sometimes it takes clearing the physical cobwebs to rid yourself of the mental ones, would you agree?
A Beautiful MessObviously, I’m a lover of collections and displaying what you love but there’s a fine line between a curated collection and plain old clutter. Art and objects need room to breathe to be appreciated and a little space is good for everyone 😉
The Marion House Book
Style At Home
Dear Me
Stylizimo
Linus Bikes via DesignLoveFest
Academy TilesAre you drawn to minimal displays or are you of the more-is-more mentality? Or do you prefer to hide it all behind closed doors? Either way, it’s always good to reevaluate all of the goods that we collect over time. Whether that means emptying a single shelf or an entire room, putting back only what you truly love and/or find useful is so refreshing. An ongoing challenge, most definitely! Speaking of challenges, my girls were thrilled to come inside and find their room so neat and tidy! They’ve been trying to keep it in exactly the same state ever since….although, we’ll see how long that lasts!
Bright Bits: It’s All in the Details
April 29, 2013
How was your weekend? Mine was full (in a good way) and it’s time to jump right on into a fresh new week. Can you believe it’s the end of April? I honestly don’t know where the month went. It’s raining now but Scratch that….the clouds miraculously disappeared! And there’s plenty more sunshine in the forecast, drawing my eye to bright colour bursts and bold spaces. I can’t seem to get enough of layered texture and patterns and have become mildly obsessed in my hunt for the perfect Persian rug to add some flavour to our living room. It’s out there somewhere!
Style by Emily Henderson
FjeldborgIsn’t this dish collection amazing? Love the shallow open shelves too. And I just bought a bright green filing cabinet from the shop (it actually didn’t even make it in the door…went straight from Elisa’s trunk into mine!) but love the idea of spraying multiple filing cabinets a bright colour for more functional storage like the yellow ones below…
Country Living
Camille Styles
Vintage Revivals
Janis Nicolay
Laure JolietIsn’t that honeycomb wall incredible? My girls would be in heaven if they had that in their room! Is that enough colour to cheer you up this Monday morning? I hope so. Time to refill my coffee before tackling the first of several to-do lists. Enjoy your day 🙂
Friday Favourites + A Mixed Tape
April 26, 2013
Now that I’ve got a spiffy new blog design, I thought I should think up some snazzy new names for regularly occurring blog features. Friday Favourites, hmm. Not exactly original, I know (and my use of the words “spiffy” and “snazzy” is somewhat worrisome too) but it is what it is for today! I’m a visual person and while link lists work well for some, time is short and I need to see inspiring pictures before clicking through so here are some of my top links of the week:
1. This family farmhouse over at Country Living is right up my alley…isn’t that vintage mail cabinet crazy? As in awesome?
Country Living2. I seem to have a black thumb these days but this DIY Succulent Wreath is too pretty not to try…
DIY Succulent Wreath by Prudent Baby
3. Clare Elsaesser‘s art gives me goosbumps…in a good, pull-on-the-heartstrings kind of way…and Victoria over at SF Girl by Bay has a giveaway going on right now for one of her prints. I’d choose this one, “Married to the Sea”. Fingers crossed…
Tastes Orangey (Great contest for a 16×20 print over at SF Girl by Bay!)
4. This peek inside Katie Stratton‘s art studio, featured on A Beautiful Mess is too good not to share…
Katie Stratton‘s Studio featured on A Beautiful Mess
5. Shelley introduced her shop, Dignify, to me this week and I’ve been revisiting it all week. Beautiful Kantha blankets (made from vintage saris!), jewelry and more, all handmade by women around the world. Love the products and LOVE the philosophy behind it all. Stay tuned for more about Dignify…
Loving these Kantha Throws from Dignify
Now, it was only 3 years ago that Rachel and I swore to each other that we’d never share music on Birch + Bird. Keep in mind that I also once swore that brass hardware would never ever see the light of day in my home (click here to see me eat my words). Never say never, right? My close friends know that I’m a huge fan of mix tapes (well, mixed CD’s actually) and I’m pretty prone to slipping them in purses at parties! I think the habit started when I was about 9 years old, secretly taping the Top 10 at 10 when I was supposed to be sleeping! Anyway, new music makes me happy and here are a few tunes from my current playlist, just in time for the weekend :
- Hannah Georgas: Somebody
- Lord Huron: Time to Run
- Ellie Goulding: Anything Could Happen
- Rah Rah: Prairie Girl
- Two Door Cinema Club: Sun
- Chairlift: I Belong in Your Arms
- The Lumineers: Submarines
- Class Actress: Keep You
- Philip Phillips: Gone Gone Gone
- Hey Ocean: Give
My musical tastes are about as eclectic as my decor sensibilities but hopefully you like the mix tape! Have a wonderful weekend 🙂
Trove Vintage Rentals: Part 2
April 24, 2013
How is your week going so far? Mine’s been pretty good, although I feel like I could use a life coach trying to balance it all some days. Or maybe I just need a good housekeeper. Now that’s a good dream to work towards! Do you ever feel like you’re just running in circles juggling all of your hats but not making any real steps forward? Lately I’ve started focussing on what I have accomplished each day rather than what I haven’t. It’s much more encouraging that way, wouldn’t you agree?
As promised last post, here are some more pretty images from the shoot I recently styled with my partners at Spruce Collective. Photographed by Mikaela Ruth, we had so much fun displaying our collection of Trove Vintage Rentals for our new Bohemian-inspired look book…
Trove Vintage Rentals for Spruce Collective. Photos by Mikaela Ruth.
Trove Vintage Rentals for Spruce Collective. Photos by Mikaela Ruth.
Trove Vintage Rentals for Spruce Collective. Photos by Mikaela Ruth.
Trove Vintage Rentals for Spruce Collective. Photos by Mikaela Ruth.
And just in case you thought we were all sipping champagne behind the scenes, um no, it was far from glamourous. How many Spruce Girls does it take to set up a backdrop, you might ask? Four, apparently! But we gained a new fan, well at least Mikaela did. This handsome fellow couldn’t keep his eyes off of her (or maybe it was the desserts?) and he actually showed his pearly whites for me when I pulled out my phone. No Photoshop, scout’s honour!
So, there’s a good taste of our vintage rentals for you and I posted more on Monday, in case you missed them (click here). You can see more over at our Trove website (click here) or pop by Spruce Collective to see them in person. Enjoy the rest of your day and I’ll be back to chat on Friday 🙂
