BIG News!

You may have noticed my sporadic posting lately and wondering what I've been up to. Well I can finally tell you that I got a new job! No more in between for me!

Where is this new job? I'll give you a hint...

Need another one?

How about this?

That's right, I'm now proudly employed at Wisteria!!!

I know right?! I'm on the creative team as the creative assistant. That means I'll be working on styling and producing the catalogs. Total drool! I'll be spending my days building sets and running photo shoots and I couldn't be happier. The employee discount doesn't hurt either!

When I got the job I jetted off to NYC for a few days to celebrate and have one last hurrah. I had an epic trip with a celebrity sighting, subway bruhaha, an earthquake, and I even got to meet the awesome Courtney from BBB! I am very excited about my new opportunity and hopefully now that I have all new things to be inspired by I will be back to a regular blogging schedule!

Have a wonderful weekend!

No Backsplash, Am I Wrong?

Our bathroom reno was severely delayed due to the snowpocalypse going on in Dallas. We're expecting more tomorrow, methinks it will get delayed again. It's a bunch of suck!

One if the recent decisions I made was to have no backsplash around our sinks. We have a six inche backsplash with a pencil trim made of marble going around the tub. I had originally planned to have the same thing around our sinks. But after some difficulty making it look right around the tub I decided to nix the ones around the sinks. There are some very awkward angles in our bathroom and I prefer not to make them stand out even more with awkward tiling. I just really strived for clean lines in the reno so I killed the ones around the sink.

The only thing is, my mother and several other people almost recoiled in horror upon hearing this news. Reasoning with me that the wall would get ruined and wet. But I disagree. It's a bathroom sink, not a kitchen sink. I don't do anything splashy in my bathroom sink. I don't even wash my face there, I do it in the shower. Plus I thought that not having a back splash would make it look more modern. It would make the sink appear more like a piece of furniture than a sink.

Then I began to search for images. It was hard. If there wasn't a trued back splash then the wall behind the sink was tiled. I began to feel anxious. I managed to find a few examples however...

So my question to you is, am I wrong?

Couch...and Social!

It's mine! MINE MINE MINE!

Behold!

Now the fabric hunt begins. I'm expecting this to be a long and painful process. It took almost 6 months for me to find curtain fabric for the dining room and this is a whole couch! I'm going to be as picky as a 5th grader with a wedgie. Thankfully, I'm going back to my hometown of Houston this weekend where I can stop by the amazing High Fashion Home fabric store and collect swatches to ruminate on.

Here is my inspiration

 

And for my future chairs...

Also tonight I'm going to meet bunches of other Dallas bloggers at my first Blogger Social, I can't wait!

In other news, this happened yesterday, blerg...

There was a person making an illegal U-turn causing a traffic jam and subsequent 4 car pile up and since I technically rear ended someone, it's my fault. I also don't have collision insurance so my insurance is not only not going to pay for my car but raise my rate for "causing" an accident. Some justice right? Can someone please explain this logic to me? No matter what some driver does to block traffic and drive all stupid it's technically MY fault for not driving defensively? Makes no sense people! BTW no one was hurt at least, just a lot of extremely pissed drivers, and oh yeah, the person making the u turn drove off of course. AWESOME!

Anyways, what's done is done and I'm ready to accept it and move on. What else can you do really?

So what's new with you?

I Have a Confession To Make...

Paisley is not my real name.

I'm sorry. Please don't be mad.

Let me explain...

When I first started this blog I had no idea what I wanted to do with it (I still feel this way sometimes). I didn't know how much about my personal life I would share, if I would post my picture, or what I would even feel inspired to write about.

A year later I feel I've made quite a few friends here and shared a lot about myself. Going by the name Paisley has recently had me feeling quite guilty, like I'm being dishonest with you, my readers, and you deserve to know the truth. Not that it's anything shady but I just want to be truthful with you. I look forward to all your comments and your blog posts everyday and I consider this world very valuable. I'd love to even meet any of you should you ever be in my neck of the woods.

So I've decided to come clean! My real name is...

Brandi

There I said it. Why did I choose the name paisley? For one I love paisleys, anything with a paisley on it I will buy, it's sad really. It's also a name I hope to name my future daughter.

So that's it. I'm changing everything to Brandi from now on. I hope you aren't too upset, we're still friends right?

My Life as a Wedding Planner

My brother is getting married to a lovely lady on June 5th at our parents "farm". I say "farm" because the only animals they have are a bunch of cats, but it's a place in the country with a barn nonetheless. My brother's fiance, Jackie, is in her last semester of college, taking classes, student teaching, getting ready to move, so I offered to help plan the wedding. Not that I wouldn't have wanted to anyways :). A few weekends ago my aunts threw her a lovely bridal shower, they threw mine last year and they are the best hostesses if I do say so!

They used vintage hankies as napkins, so cute!

Jackie opening gifts

A good time was had by all. Did I mention my aunt has a super cute house? Because she does...

It's a victorian style house with a huge wooded lot.

She hung vintage hand mirrors with plate holders in a diamond pattern, it looked beautiful.

My grandpa's picture from the navy, isn't he a cutie?

My mom is also making Jackie's wedding dress by hand which I helped design. Can you believe my mom's skillz?! I'm so happy Jackie was open to the idea of adding the blue lining, it's what makes this dress special. Here is Jackie at her recent fitting. She will be wearing the same jewelry that I wore and designed myself for my wedding. It makes me happy that some one else will get to enjoy it.

Here are some inspiration pictures I've been collecting for the wedding. It's going to be so charming and country chic. My mom and I have been collecting bottles, tins, and vintage table cloths for months. I can't wait to see everything all set up!

Her dress was inspired from these images...

Yes, we will have rows of hay as seating at the ceremony...

So what do you think? Is my stint as a wedding planner going ok?

I'm on Sabbatical...

Sorry about the recent absence...I just wanted to do a quick post to let you all know what I'm up to. Everything happened so fast with getting my new job, leaving my old one that I didn't have much time to share with you my plans. I'm on a two week sabbatical from my "daily life". It's all over on May 4th so I will be back to regular blogging then. I have a lot of things on my to do list to accomplish and unfortunately (or maybe not) blogging and being on the computer just isn't one of them. But I promise that I will have a lot of house projects and not one but two vacations to share with you upon my return. I will also get all caught up on reading all of your posts as well! And truth be told I've missed all of you and it's been hard to stay away but as you all know taking a break and recharging your batteries is a necessity. So for now, I'm off to Lowe's to look at paint colors for my entry way, stay tuned!

I came here to kick ass & chew bubblegum...

...and I'm all out of gum!

This is my motto for the year. In other words, this year I'm making things happen. I feel like I have a lot going on in my life right now(hence the light-to-non-existent blogging). But it's all good things that hopefully will make my life better...

1) The bombshells has their first performance coming up at The Dallas Burlesque Festival on February 5th & 6th. Be there or be square!
2) Speaking of the festival...I will have the first ever Flights of Whimsy vendor booth, operated by my mom, the one and only, while I'm performing. As some of you may have deduced I like vintage things, especially vintage jewelry. I've got a pretty big collection going so I decided to turn this passion into a small business to share the love. I'm going to give it my best shot and see how it goes. I've been photographing everything but since I only get good light in the middle of the day for a few hours I have to wait until weekends to do it.
3) I also am working on photographing all my vintage treasures around the house to start an extension to Flights of Whimsy that I'm going to call treasure hunting (patent pending, lol). My friends have always told me I have a great eye for things and that I am a great bargain hunter. I always manage to find a needle in a vintage haystack and can have a vision for the shabbiest of items. Someone recently suggested starting up a service business of sorts for people who want vintage pieces in their home and don't know how to find it. So basically I would work with someone who is looking for say, a dresser or entry way table and would like to spend X amount of dollars. I would then work to find them a perfect piece within their budget. I would also offer an additional service to offer interior styling advice on how to style said item I found for them with other items they already own to make their homes more stylish. So I'm styling out all my pieces and photographing them to build a portfolio of sorts for my website. Does anyone know a web designer? I NEED HELP!
4) I applied a long time ago to be a stylist for for an Independent Fashion show in Dallas called The Pin Show, and I got in! This is going to be a great addition to my styling portfolio and who know who I'll meet in the process.

So that's the update in the Flights of Whimsy world. I'm movin and groovin to make things happen this year. Wish me luck and if you have any advice for me please share or send me an email. I need all the help I can get!

On New Year's

My motto for 2010. New things are on the horizon, wish me luck...

Bathroom Remodel

You may remember my pleas for help on renovating our bathroom so I have finally decided what to do. We will begin demo on the bathroom very soon and use a generous Lowe's gift card from the in-laws to begin tackling one project at a time. As a christmas gift we asked all our family members to come for a day to help us work on the house, truly the best gift of all is time!



Here is the view looking at my vanity with the shower on the right (please excuse dark picture). We will be knocking out the inner shower walls and relocating the shower head to the back wall. Then we will glass it in and re-tile the inside shower to open up the space and have a nice view from the shower overlooking the tub.

We will also remove the fur-downs over the sink and install a wall mounted light fixture. What the eff is a fur-down you may be thinking? Good question, it's new to me too. It's the drop down with the recessed lights over the vanity near the cieling. It also extends over the shower and will be removed from there as well. I'm hoping all these things really open up the space.

This is the view of my husband's vanity and the toilet area is on the left (my vanity would be to your back, if you need orientation). I think I will make the walls to this area a sort of half wall and take the cabinet (not pictured) over the toilet out and put in open shelving from Ikea. I had already painted the cabinetry bright white and replaced the knobs and hinges with brushed nickel to make it at least a little better. See the before pictures of the bathroom monstrousity here (along with the rest of the horror).

These were things I already knew we wanted to do. My problem was with the design aspect of it. If this were my permanent home I would have mosaic tiles and all kinds of ethnic details but we only plan to live here for about 5 years-ish. So I decided to go with something simple, clean, and classic with a touch of vintage glamour.



I really love the cabinets in this one. Since the bathroom has no true windows and only a skylight I think mirrors would be so nice on the cabinets. I plan on doing white cabinets with glass knobs that I will source from ebay because I think dark cabinets would be too dark in our small-ish space.

Another great example of mirrored cabinets in white this time. So pretty! Now only to find cabinets like this...oy paco! We plan to get one of those self standing vanities rather than go custom because it will be way cheaper. I will get mirrors cut if I have to I guess.

I saved this picture because I love the idea of a border around the floor, so that's in!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this blue in here. I will probably do a shade lighter just to be safe in our small bathroom but I think it will look great.

Did you happen to notice another common theme in these pictures? If you said white marble you would be correctamundo!

So we will be doing this tile on the floor with some type of yet-to-be seen border with the same color marble countertops.

And we will have this tile as the backsplash on the sinks, surrounding the new jetted tub (ooh la la!) and as the floor in the new shower.

I think it will look great with this cabinet I'm using as our linen closet. I'm going to wallpaper the back with something fun and bohemian.


We will also be using glossy white subway tiles to do most of the shower with and I'm currently on the hunt for a fabulous vintage chandelier to hang over the tub.

My hall bath will be getting a similar but less fancy update later as well. We will be doing a lot of work ourselves so wish us luck!

So...what do you think?