Monday Inspiration: Birds

No, not the scary, murderous birds from this 1960’s thriller:

(Wish I could have found the official trailer…You know I love me a good old film!)

I mean happy, serene birds. More like these:

(Click the photo credit links at the bottom of this post for purchasing info!)

The past week has been a whirlwind of wedding planning and thinking details/ideas for the big day. In typical “Carrie and John” we-are-a-little-OCD fashion, we already have much of it thought out and nailed down. We chose a wedding date for April of next year and reserved/paid for our venue. We also met with our photographer over the weekend and could NOT be more pleased with our choice.

So where do the birds come into the mix?

Well as you may remember, I am a big fan of birds – specifically the owl sort…I wanted to incorporate them in some way but my fear of a tacky “taken too far” wedding decor theme made me shy away from that idea.

However as fate would have it, we fell in love with a wedding venue that is ALL about birds.

The unique 18-sided round building is actually a beautifully restored aviary in the middle of a lush green park. Originally built in 1901 to house exotic animals and birds when the park was a zoo, the space has since gone through many changes – After the zoo it was a library and then later on, a place for conferences and events. But it has always retained it’s name as the Aviary. (pictures to come very soon!!)

It didn’t take long for me to realize that my bird theme was being resurrected without any effort or guilt on my part at all! I guess fate decided not to put up a fight against my bird-obsessed mind…But instead of going with my typical owl shape (since I really did worry that my enthusiasm would go overboard), we are going in more of a “sparrow” direction…

I actually snuck one of our official mascots into the photos above – The third one (a stamp of a flying bird) is on it’s way to our house, along with two other stamps – A larger version of the bird and a vintage bird cage. All three are seen together in this photo from the Etsy shop I bought them from:

(Highly recommend this Etsy seller! Great prices and even puts out a crafty newsletter for interested buyers. She’s also running a special right now: a free accent stamp with the purchase of 4!)

I’m thinking these little beauts will be great on our “Save the Dates” (which is one wedding concept that John can’t wrap his brain around – I guess it does seem a little redundant when combined with the invitations…But I love paper crafts so I don’t care) and possibly the invitations too…We’ll see!

But we are also contemplating using the shape on wine/beer glasses (to double as favors) and a DIY sign if we choose to go that route. Something like this…

…only with our names, the words “Wedding Reception” + an arrow pointing the way and a couple of birds! P.S. You MUST check out the DIY process on the sign above – It’s actually made from an old crib head/foot board! Brought to you by Birch + Bird.

So as you can see, the birds will be present for our special day, just as I always wanted! But I am giving John the sole and unquestionable power to tell me when/if I’ve gone too far 🙂

Stay tuned!!

(Photo credit for stilt-legged birds: here; parakeet clutch: here; flying bird stamps: here; DIY chalkboard sign: here)

Move In! {Part Three}

Again, as I mentioned in the {Part Two} post a few weeks ago this is really more like {Part 25}…I’ve been moving a little bit of this and a little bit of that every time I visit John at the house, so we are FINALLY in the home stretch (pun intended)!

I will certainly show you the move-in progress we’ve made at the house, but maybe the best way for you to REALLY visualize how far we’ve come is to check out the move-OUT shots of my now half-empty apartment…

Here’s my bedroom “Before”:

And now today…

It actually doesn’t even have the little side table in there anymore. Speaking of, wait until you see what we have up our sleeves for that piece of furniture 🙂 As of this moment, it’s sitting in the kitchen at the townhouse, sanded down and ready for a face lift. That’s our big project for the weekend so I’m sure I’ll have a lot to share next week!

But I digress…

Here’s a “Before” shot of my half bathroom at the apartment:

And now today:

And the living room when it was pretty and homey way back when:

And now in all its empty sadness…

Here’s another “Before” angle:

And now “After” moving progress:

While it is VERY exciting to be making the move into John’s house, it’s a little bittersweet to see my “bachelorette pad” looking so sad and empty. This is the first time I’ve ever been able to move incrementally into a new space – Usually it’s a quick one-weekend-get-it-done type deal. Although I am really enjoying the fact that I can move a tiny bit at a time without much effort or strain, dragging it out and having to live between two houses is starting to fray my nerves a bit.

But we are now 14 days away from getting EVERYTHING in place. I’ve set the date for the official and final move-in for the last weekend of June – Can’t wait to be finito with all of this craziness. It’s going to be strange not to have to worry about moving things anymore though. What am I going to do with my time??! Oh that’s right 🙂 Enjoy my amazing fiance and actually RELAX for a change! Did I mention that I can’t wait?

But let’s look at some POSITIVES from the move – Here are some shots from a recent haul:

The hanging necklaces on the white Tupperware ended up in the closet for now – Even though I made and fell in LOVE with my necklace organizer back in March, it can’t hold my entire collection. So I’m going to set up another hanging system from the big walk-in closet walls for the extras and leave just my favorites on the organizer in the bathroom. Here they are temporarily swinging away in the closet from hangers:

And while we’re at it, here’s my growing (color coded) clothing/shoe collection at the house too:

Sorry – You guys probably have NO interest in seeing all of this, but I will go more in-depth on my organization strategies once we get everything in place!

How about the chair you saw a few photos above? Well it came out of my bedroom at the apartment – Here it is in its original home:

We decided to continue with the bedroom placement at the new house too, putting it on the empty wall in our master bedroom:

(Oh DARN…I tried really hard to avoid you guys seeing that John didn’t make his bed that day by straightening the corner of the comforter in the first picture – I’m outing my lack of effort though because you can totally see the disarray in the dresser mirror above ::shakes fist at the powers that be::)

I bought the chair from Pier One on clearance for $40 – It’s not exactly the most COMFORTABLE chair in the universe, but it looks sleek and sophisticated in my opinion, and is great for sitting to put on shoes or to throw clothes on in lieu of cluttering up the floor.

I’m hoping that once this move is done and out-of-the-way, I can focus our blog back on fun DIY projects (including the wedding 🙂 which is already WELL on its way) and decorating tips. I don’t know about you guys, but I miss those…

Have a great weekend everyone!

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