Currently Digging: Transitional Kitchen

It's no secret that I'm a huge HGTV fan. Every day I watch and devour info. from their shows. That passion plus a desire to learn how things are built and installed in houses has me constantly browsing home decor and furniture sites and trends.

Today, after reading up on chimney repair (this is a shout out to my friend Tiffany!), I saw this (how to create a vinyl backsplash) article. I saved this in the future projects file in my cluttered brain and spent an hour browsing/researching different styles of kitchens.

Considering I just moved and don't have full rights to redoing the kitchen, I can at least save ideas I like! (Which I do on my Houzz account.) So, when I stumbled upon this particular kitchen, I couldn't help but dig the mess out of it!

It is NO surprise to me that Anthony Carrino of HGTV's Kitchen Cousins and Cousins on Call was the designer of this space.

Six quick reasons why I LOVE this kitchen:

1. Even though the cabinets are black (which I love!) the windows have white trim. Some kitchens I've seen make EVERYTHING match and it can really drag down a room. The white windows keep the room from being "heavy."

2. The cabinets may be black and the door and windows may be white but the backsplash is a series of dark copper tiles and it just seems to work. Having this color gives you the option to incorporate browns in the kitchen without looking odd.

3. Stainless steel appliances coupled with black cabinetry equal visual bliss for me.

4. These countertops are quartz which give you the look and feel of stone while forgoing the hassle of being high maintenance. Plus the gray specks match wonderfully with the black of the cabinets!

5. Copper finishes. Copper stove hood. Yes and yes. Gives the kitchen that attractive shine that doesn't seem to butt heads with the steel, just enhance the glam factor.

6. They have a separate section for the alcohol. I'm not a big drinker but I can appreciate not having to stick your wine or vodka in random cabinets. This kitchen has an allocated alcohol space.

I just think this kitchen is wonderful. Anthony designed it with our staples of black and white with copper and steel thrown in so you could bring in pops of yellow, orange, and brown and the space would still look great!

This kitchen is definitely on my Kitchen Love list!

-Tyler Anne (aka Chick Tyler)

Free Wedding Planning Advice from Industry Professionals

If you have been following our #hollicon blogs, you may have heard me mention my big, fun, DIY wedding that's going to run me around $3,000 when it's all said and done. 

My inspiration for blogging about my wedding, besides the heavy amount of DIYs I'm doing, is that I had trouble finding wedding planning advice for having an affordable wedding that didn't call me to make huge compromises. There are some great sites out there for sure, like the Broke Ass Bride, so don't get me wrong there. We couldn't downsize our families and we sure couldn't leave out our dearest friends!

So, a combination of my intense stubbornness and some good old-fashioned thinking outside the box has led me here. 

With #hollicon, yes, I do want to keep blogging about my wedding, showing fun DIYs and sharing some girly details (because I just can't help myself, there!)

But I also want to use this event as an opportunity to let you get some wedding planning advice on a budget that I may not blog about here.

I'm obviously not an expert on wedding planning, but I have been researching a lot during my engagement process and well, even if I'm not doing something for my wedding, there's a chance I have had many a back-up idea in my head. 

I've also invited some of my dear wedding vendors to partner with Tyler and I on this event. 

Photographers-Crazy Love Studios, Wedding Stationery-Wiregrass Weddings and my nail tech, Theresa Kiernan are all partners. In addition, we have a caterer Divine Dinners and an event planner Distinctive Soirees who will be offering some wedding advice (and I'm sure they might answer some questions, too).

Here's how this works. From now until March 9, 2013, you can tweet a question with #hollicon and I (or one of our professionals) will answer ANY wedding planning question you have here on the blog. For free!

If you don't have Twitter you can comment below or send us an e-mail chasingthere(at)gmail(dot)com. 

In the meantime, we hope you'll enjoy our guests' and our many wedding blogs! 

—Holli Anne

DIY: Box Letter (Winter Pinterest Challenge)

I'm all about odd decorations. If you read my first post of Home Details: Office then you already know of a few I've recently made and put up. I really want to put more pieces on this wall so when I came across Young House Love's recent post (Winter Pinterest Challenge), I knew exactly which Pinterest pin I wanted to make.

Spearmint Baby has a DIY for Fabric Wrapped Letter for Nursery (see here for the pin) and as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to make my own version of it. Now, I'm not pregnant and I don't have any kids but, again, I like bold decorative pieces. So, I grabbed a box (I literally just unpacked it) and got to work.

First, I cut off two of the box flaps into the shape of a T (for my name, of course). I used regular scissors and it was a four on the pain-in-the-butt meter, but nothing like crying-in-frustration mode I get in when using an Xacto knife.

Next I used the pieces of the box flaps that were leftover and measured out how big they should be to connect the two Ts that I had already cut out. I used a hot glue gun to put these pieces together. 

I highly suggest you watch a TV show while you do this--something that you can focus on but still manage to work without burning your fingers with the lava glue. Netflix was my friend during this DIY.

After I put the T all together I went ahead and grabbed an old shirt to use as the fabric covering. I've always been a fan of the shirt's color and thought it would look really nice on the wall with the other pieces. 

I took the fabric and hot glued the ends on the back. I like the look of bundled cloth so I didn't make the fabric stretch against the cardboard. When I was satisfied with how it turned out, I glued a square piece of cardboard on the back of the T and then two Command Strips (specifically these) on that. Then I stuck that baby to the wall!

I have to say, I'm happy with the outcome! What is also cool about this DIY is that you can alter the design to your liking and use it for parties, decorations, or cute little handmade gifts!

If you haven't check out Young House Love or Spearmint Baby, then I suggest you do. Also, go ahead and participate in YHL's Winter Pinterest Challenge!

-Tyler Anne (aka Chick Tyler)

Wedding: The Jewelry!

Yesterday, I finally finished the jewelry part of accessorizing my outfit for the big day. All it took was a trip to Francesca's. Have you ever been there? It's not very large but I always find I can get lost looking in there for hours!

So to compliment my teal and red colored wedding, I found that necklace above for a nice pop of red.

And these earrings and this bracelet to add in a touch of teal/turquoise.

This headband to wear at the reception.

And this gold bracelet I found at an antique jewelry store a while back or this dainty pearl bracelet just might find their way into my wardrobe.

I wish I could show you with the outfit, but I guess I'll have to wait a few days for that!

Do you like?

—Holli Anne

Home Details: Office

Not many people know, but I've moved into a new house. I could fill up a book with my complaints about the process of moving however, this time around wasn't too bad. Everything I own fits into a 14 foot Uhaul. This new change in my life has inspired me to create a photo home series called Home Details. I want to chronicle the beginnings and works in progresses in this new home.

Right now I'm in the middle of setting up my office. It's fun and also a pain because of all of the random, non-matching things I have. It'll be a few days before I get everything in its proper place but I went ahead and put some time in making one part of the room comfy, fun, and useable so the office doesn't totally look like an explosion.

Below is what I can see from my desk chair.

It may not look like a lot but, for now, it's enough to make me happy. (Plus, I've gotten some compliments already!)

The picture at the beginning of this post shows a close up of the wall decorations I felt worked best with the randomness of the items I have in the office.

Because I don't have a true color scheme to the room, I wanted one piece of art that tied all of the dominant colors together. I was inspired by Ashley Goldberg's piece (here) to make a "messy" painting.  

From there I decided that I wanted something to balance out the visual weight of the painting. Luckily, I held on to this old mirror from a little shop back in the day.

Since I'm such a fan of triangles I wanted to top off these two pieces with something unique. That's when I ran across this plate! I instantly fell in love and drew my own version of it onto a manilla folder (I didn't like the white of printer paper) and put it in a $3 Dollar General frame.

I used the same orange paint to outline the crusts as I used in the painting. I carried his orange over to make a stripe down the mini cork board that was first in the middle panel. I wanted two more pieces to complete the panel and I wanted them to be unique. That's when I found my mini piñata (a very fun late night DIY!) and a little clay coffee cup I made for fun. Since the piñata already had orange in it, this worked out well!

I'll add more to this wall in the future, but for right now I'm just tickled about it. It's random chic, I say!

Now, to the rest of the little details that make this portion of the office warm and fun!

I hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned for more Home Details!

All wall decor was placed on the wall using Command Strips. They are awesome.

-Tyler Anne (aka Chick Tyler)

Mini DIY: Wedding Excitement Countdown

I will be the first person to admit this little DIY is not super exciting and pretty silly, but I just couldn't help myself.

I am obviously pretty excited to get married in two weeks, but I'm also down home without Joseph and with that, 11 days doesn't sound quite as close. So, I decided to make this mini countdown just to give myself little landmarks to look forward to along the way.

I'm also limited on the amount of craft supplies (that aren't exclusive to wedding things) down here. So, I just found these brightly-colored pieces of paper, and cut out little triangles for the date. You know we like us some triangles over here at Almost There.

Then I glued them on all crazy. Wrote the dates on them and the different people who would be trickling in throughout. (Notice, Tyler Anne coming March 7)!

Anyway, if you are a future bride (or anyone looking forward to any event), maybe a little countdown of the little landmark would be a fun way to help you get through the waiting game! It's silly, but there's really no time for impressive DIY-making at this stage in the game.

Are you looking forward to any big events coming up?

—Holli Anne

Project 365: Day 58

My lion of a cat, Milo. 

Happy Day 58!

-Tyler Anne (aka Chick Tyler)

Project 365: Day 55, 56, 57

Here's Saturday through Monday's 365!

Yay for busy weekends and catching up!

Enjoy!

-Tyler Anne (aka Chick Tyler)

Wedding Prep Weekend Roundup

As Tyler mentioned yesterday, we Anne's have been rather busy this weekend. This Anne had to pack to come home for the next two weeks, get married and go on a honeymoon. "Overpacked" doesn't even describe the amount of things I brought. Above is a hodgepodge of our wedding decorations scattered about my living room floor Friday. Does it look like a badass thrift store to you?

The rest of the weekend was spent at an Engage Encounter marriage prep retreat. It was definitely a long and full weekend, but we did value the time to reflect on our relationship and let the fact that we are getting married sink in. (By the way, the happy crying kicked in full force this weekend).

Immediately after the retreat, we headed to Joseph's grandma's house, where his extended family threw us a wedding shower. It was SO sweet! I got to meet many of them for the first time, and we were doted on with lots of love, registry gifts (wrapped in Christmas paper because we LOVE Christmas so much) and cake.

Then today, we spent the morning recovering and the afternoon shoe-shopping (unsuccessfully) and getting our marriage license! How official are we?! Just look at those matching last names. AND the silly heart pens they had at the courthouse.

Now, Joseph's back in Columbus and I'm down where we are getting married in full-fledge #hollicon mode. It's a good thing too, because I sure will need to stay busy not to miss him too much! 

Get ready for a lot of diy wedding fun this week from me! #hollicon is a blog series on a super fun, simple, DIY wedding. Join us in the planning! 

—Holli Anne

Inspiration: Dschwen

This weekend was busy for both of the Annes. I am finally winding down enough to catch up on the bloggy side of things, though sleepily. However, I wanted to take a moment to make a quick post about this INK361 recent find. 

Dschwen has some of the most creative and inspiring pictures I've seen in a while.

Here are some of my favorites below but make sure to go here for more!

Hope your weekend was great!

-Tyler Anne (aka Chick Tyler)

Project 365: Day 54

Road trips make every passenger sleepy, I'm sure. Should I have taken this panorama pictures (so excited that my phone has the option!) while I was driving of my sleep passenger? Probably not. But am I glad I did? Yes! I went really slow if that helps!

Does your phone have panorama picture capability?

-Tyler Anne (aka Chick Tyler)

Project 365: Day 53

Day 53 can be described as #selfie for you Instagram folks out there. My crafting supplies are miles and miles away and I won't be able to get them until the weekend so I'm recycling through the materials I have here. 

Today I wanted to make really easy DIY wall decor that could be used as a fun little back drop for my Instagraming. So I took some paper, my DIY triangle stamp, and some washi tape and made some triangles on the wall. Why all of the triangles?! I just love them. (I even have a triangle tattoo!) I put it on the wall and then did the whole phone camera flip around thing and took a few pics. It was fun!

Follow me here on Instagram!

-Tyler Anne (aka Chick Tyler)

Simple Tips for Creating a Guest List

When I first started planning my wedding, I pinned some cool tabs that had things like "Wedding for under $500," or another "Under $6,000." 

Those both seemed like numbers in between what my budget would be (see, I never really sat down and made one of those). 

But when I started to read the advice, both of their budgets pretty different in size, I was discouraged because their tips called for a lot of compromise. Luckily, I'm stubborn as hell, and decided that I would do no such thing. I was having a big wedding, with photographers and food and dresses and flowers for a good price. Less than $3,000 and 3 weeks from a wedding, I am happy to say this is happening! 

Since most of the costs do come down to how many people you invite, choosing your guest list is a pretty important element to planning a wedding (or any event for that matter). There are tons of tips out there for helping you draft a guest list, but I'm going to share what worked for us! 

1. Consider the obvious: Venue space, etc.

Some people draft their guest list before choosing their wedding and reception venues. We did it the other way around. Partially because I knew what church I wanted to be married in and partially because we got a deal on our reception hall. Our chapel only holds 250 people, so that gave us a concrete reason we couldn't exceed the limit. 

2. Only invite people you know. 

This seems obvious on paper, but for people with big, southern families, sometimes  there are literally people in your family you don't know. This is the case for my fiance, so we decided it would help us narrow down the list. 

3. Only people you keep in contact with or have talked with in the last year.

When we first drafted our guest list (including the names our parents gave us), we came up with close to 400 people. This tip really helped us narrow the list down. When it came to some family that we are just plain bad at communicating with, we bended a little, but some friends that we had from high school and college that we just don't talk to, didn't make the cut.

4. People we think will be a part of our lives.

This was a big one, as well! It gave us a chance to really evaluate our friendships and see who we think (and hope!) will be a part of our lives for years to come. If they fit in this category there was a good chance they were at least invited to the wedding. This didn't really include our current and past co-workers though. We love them and want them to be part of our lives, but we also just HAD to keep it within the personal life circle for numbers sake.

5. Allow some leniency for keeping the peace.

Let's be real. Our parents are helping us out a ton with this wedding, and not only that, we just love them generally. So when our moms had some best friends they wanted to invite, we let it slide. 

6. Make a mission statement and stick to it.

This is the public administration side of me, but I felt we just couldn't start planning our wedding without a clear, written mission of what we want this wedding to convey. So we did that, not necessarily to show anyone but just to remind ourselves what we wanted. This played a role in who was chosen and just economically how many people we could have join us.

7. Limit the children.

I'm a Catholic, and I love me some kids! But in order to allow for more people, we limited the children invites to just our closest family. Some of the Catholic families I am inviting would easily add another 7 to the list. We were also lenient on this to some extent. Like if some of the parents had some little ones that were particularly attached to mom and dad, we of course are allowing them to come. 

8. Don't be petty.

We aren't one of those, "We have to have equal people on each side of the church." In fact, we aren't doing a side of the church type thing. We are uniting as a family, after all, not competing with each other for who has more loved ones! 

These are just some of the things that helped us out. If you have any more questions about drafting a guest list, feel free to comment below or send me a message with #hollicon on Twitter, and I'll address it for you on the blog! You can find more #hollicon posts here. 

—Holli Anne