Gift Wrap Scheme 2020: Blue & White

Gosh, y'all. I'm out here, surviving, trying to use up produce, doing my make-up frantically at my desk before Zoom meetings like the rest of you. The holiday season seemed to hit me in the face this year, and I've done more online shopping in the past two weeks than maybe my entire life. 

One of the bright spots of this was the revelation I could maybe, perhaps, finally realize my gift wrap dream: a blue-and-white scheme that was not comprised of Hanukkah or baby shower wrapping paper. I'm a sucker for the timeless combo and go weak in the knees for Wedgwood, Spode, Delft and Meissen. 

Usually I pick up my papers while I'm out and about Christmas shopping at Target, Paper Source and TJ Maxx. But this year, I'm staying close to home and decided to nab some paper online, hoping to support some small businesses at the same time.

Cue Carrie Bradshaw voice: "I couldn't help but wonder...could my white whale wrapping paper be lurking right there on the internet?"

And reader, the lovely designers on Etsy and Society 6 speak my love language, and I think this combo may have exceeded my wildest dreams. 

I scooped up the following rolls, supplemented with some sheets of scrapbook paper (that's my favorite hack for small gifts):

• Delft Blue Wrapping Paper
• Ginger Jar Wrapping Paper
• Staffordshire Dogs Wrapping Paper
• Blue Pagoda Chinoiserie Wrapping Paper
• and WILD CARD (not pictured here): Shibori Wrapping Paper

When I compiled my wedding registry 10 years ago and was trying to pick china, I really couldn't commit to a pattern and was not hurt one bit when no one bought any of it. They must have sensed it wasn't meant to be. A few years later I decided to embrace my noncommittal attitude and started buying mismatched blue-and-white and it was the best decision. I'm so delighted to recreate my collection in this cheeky paper mix!

This is, also, the very first time I've allowed red and green in my Christmas wrapping scheme! A momentous occasion. I picked up some moss green and red ribbon options, along with some fake greenery to zhush up some of the wrapping.

My friend Lauren and I had a nearly 24-hour text discourse the other day about how Staffordshire Dogs suddenly became pop icons (we've decided to give some credit to this Gucci collection). This is, by far, my favorite of the papers I ordered because it's just so damn funny. Granny chic forever!

I'm enjoying gazing at the pile for a couple more days before all these packages get boxed up and FedExed to their destinations. Our cat, Freya, is probably already counting down the hours until she gets the solitude of her Christmas nest back. 

Next year will mark 15 years of doing my Christmas wrapping scheme! Hard to believe. 

If you'd like to take a trip down Christmas wrapping memory lane with me, here you go:

• Rainbow, black & white in 2019
• Pink and Green in 2018
• Woodland in 2017
• Blue and Orange in 2016
• Plaid in 2015
• Icy purples and blues in 2014
• Celestial in 2013
• Green and Gold in 2012 
• Silver and Gold in 2011
• Blue and Gold in 2010
• The first four years: pink and black; pink and gold; red, white and turquoise; red and purple

Holy Moly: I Painted a Geometric Tile Backsplash

Like all good DIY-ers, I went into this project with a plan, scrapped it halfway through, and spent approximately 10 more hours than anticipated perfecting it. But in my opinion, every second was worth it because I'm now gazing at my backsplash like it's the multifaceted diamond it almost appears to be.

Here's how it all started.

I was standing in my kitchen a few days after Christmas when it hit me: I don't have to hate my kitchen this much.

I've hated it since the day we toured the house. It was dark, with scuffed wood custom 1981 cabinets that are so custom nothing fits very well — I have cookie sheets that won't even fit.

I hated the precious floral wallpaper, so much so that I ripped it all down a couple years ago on a whim, and then left just a couple scraps peeking out from behind the switch plates I was too lazy to remove.

Perhaps most of all, I hated the Ronald McDonald-themed maroon and yellow backsplash.

Like any red-blooded American woman, I've been fantasizing about my dream kitchen for at least two decades, carefully pinning hardware inspiration to my Pinterest boards. Also like most red-blooded American women, I'm a few thousand short of the budget needed to do the full reno of my dreams. But standing in my kitchen earlier this month, I realized simple paint can solve a lot of ills.

And that's how I ended up painstakingly dotting paint with tiny paintbrushes at midnight.

STEP ONE:
I wiped down the whole backsplash with TSP diluted with water and then wiped that dry, followed by wiping with a tack cloth to be sure every little speck of dust was gone. Then, I sanded the tiles to rough up the glaze a bit. That was somewhat unsuccessful, but it's okay. It's didn't hurt anything to try.

STEP TWO: 
I taped around the perimeter and then painted two coats of Zinsser primer and let that cure for a little while I applied the Marie Kondo tidying method to my upper cabinets.

STEP THREE:
I painted 2-3 coats of some Benjamin Moore White Dove in semi-gloss that I had on hand.

STEP FOUR:
Finally I was ready to enact my plan, which was to use a lovely stencil I purchased from Cutting Edge Stencils to mimic the look of painted tiles. See, look! All taped up.

The bad news is that the stencil — ordered in the smallest size — still wasn't small enough for my tiles and my stubborn self insisted on trying to make it work, even though the design was going to split grout lines.

Spoiler alert: It did not work. It was a smudgy mess. I appear to be the one person who can't handle a stencil.

I nursed my wounds for just a few minutes and then resolved to paint over my failed experiment and start back at square one. Or should I say triangle one?

STEP FIVE: 
I googled around a bit for inspiration and found this One Kings Lane post. I decided to complicate that a bit by adding more colors. Ultimately, I used some samples I had of Sherwin Williams Filmy Green, Magnolia Home Earl Grey and Magnolia Home Stormchaser.

I sketched out my design with Crayola markers and then taped it off, marking dots of paint so I wouldn't accidentally use the wrong color in the wrong spot. I used an X-acto knife to trim the corners to get perfect triangles. And finally, I painted. This whole process required HOURS of carefully peeling and migrating blue tape, repainting and touching up, over two nights. It would have been much more seamless if this had been my first plan all along.

But it was ALL worth it because this is infinity better than that maroon-and-goldenrod combo. It's brighter and it looks like high-end tile!

This is just one of the earliest steps of hopefully many to make the kitchen a happier place that feels "us." Eventually we want to paint the cabinets, replace the hardware, get new appliances and, depending on how our budget looks by then, replace the countertops. In the meantime, we'll just marvel at the power of paint.

A Woodland-Themed Baby Shower

This past weekend, we had the pleasure of toasting our friends' baby with a woodland-themed baby shower! I wish I had taken about 1,000 more pictures, but I guess I was having too much fun! Here's a peek at some of what we did:

Our friends are opening Winchester Brew Works later this year, and worked overtime to get it into shape to host the party. It has a gorgeous indoor pergola and a beautiful National Park art-inspired mural. It was such a perfect space for a big co-ed baby shower!

My co-conspirator Bonnie outdid herself in every way, including baking these adorable mushroom-inspired cupcakes.

I was in charge of the S'Mores Bar, featuring Wondermade marshmallows and a crate with sterno balanced among storebought rocks.

We also had a Trail Mix Bar with little baggies so our guests could make their own trail mix! It was such a hit, and I was seriously hitting my trail mix on the ride home the next day.

Shots of my two s'mores, with a Fireball-flavored marshmallow and a stout beer-flavored marshmallow.

We played a few great games that worked well for the co-ed crew, including:

• A celebrity baby name game
• A baby animal name game
• BINGO for the gifts (this was the BEST idea to get people engaged in the gift-opening portion of the day)

and my all-time favorite, the Wishes for Baby. I designed the cards this time, painting a mama bear and cub and then designing it in Photoshop with my favorite Wes Anderson font, Futura.

The happy parents to be!

We also had an awesome onesie-decorating station that featured paint, fabric, stencils and more.

My onesie!

It was a fun day, and we can't wait to meet this little one. For previous baby shower inspiration, here's a shower Wine Club threw for our littlest lady and a tea party baby shower.

Birthday Trip to Philly

Up until this past weekend, Sean and I hadn't been on a trip together — just us — in more than a year! So for my birthday, I declared all I wanted to do was go out of town, and I'd had it in my mind for a while that I wanted to go to Philadelphia and explore. I hadn't been since high school, and only to see the touristy stuff like the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. As a grown-up, I wanted to go eat good food, explore and see world-class art.

We drove up on Friday night, listening to the Hamilton soundtrack all the way. 

On Saturday morning, we started the day off right with breakfast at Sabrina's Cafe and Spencer's Too on Callowhill Street, about two blocks from the Barnes Foundation Museum. I had the special from the day's horror-themed menu: Rosemary's Babycakes, featuring pumpkin pancakes filled with jalapeno-pepper jack cornbread crumbles and diced papaya, topped with smoky blueberry syrup and lime basil butter. It was as good and weird as that sounds. I ate until I was stuffed, but these were big enough to feed two people!

From there, we ventured to The Barnes Foundation, now in its new downtown home. The museum houses the unmatched collection of Albert Barnes, an early patron and champion of artists like Renoir, Cezanne, Picasso and Modigliani. He liked to arrange his works in "ensembles," symmetrical hangings designed to create conversations between the art pieces, whether they share shapes, colors, references or nothing at all. 

It's like no other museum I've ever visited, but I will note: buy the guided tour tickets (we didn't feel like waiting and certainly paid a premium for the privilege of not having a tour). Because the museum is meant to mimic Barnes' house museum (formerly located in Merion, Pa.), none of the artworks are identified by wall copy, so a tour might be helpful for anyone unfamiliar with the Barnes collection.

We exhausted ourselves at the Barnes, but I was determined to see more art on my special birthday weekend, so we carried on. We didn't make a stop at the Rodin Museum, except to take the required "Thinker" picture.

For lunch, we wandered into Philly's Fairmount neighborhood, which reminded me a bit of Georgetown with its lovely rowhouses. We stopped at rybread, a highly recommended and adorable sandwich shop.

I had the Tucson panini — roasted turkey breast, swiss, sliced red onion and chipotle mayo on the most delicious ciabatta bread ever.

After lunch, we bounded up the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art like Rocky and, alongside our closest 50 friends, all posed for Rocky-themed pictures.

In honor of the Pope's recent visit, the museum has a special adaptation of Robert Indiana's famous "Love" sculpture.

We didn't have much time, but we breezed through the European and contemporary art sections, seeing great friends like Van Gogh's "Sunflowers," collages by Kurt Schwitters and Robert Rauschenberg, and my new favorite irreverent and wild piece by Marcel DuChamp (here's a great article about it).

For dinner, we uber'd up to the Fishtown neighborhood (hipster-y and artsy) to Pizza Brain, one of the most ironically funny 90s-kid places I've ever been. Billing itself as a "pizza museum," the pizzeria is stuffed with pizza memorabilia, much of it from my childhood. I was dying over the tributes to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Home Alone and Domino's former mascot, The Noid.

Thankfully, the pizza is just as legit as the decor. We each ordered slices, which were gigantic. I had a slice of Wendy Wedgeworth, topped with sun-dried tomatoes, arugula and delicious honey goat cheese. It seems like a great place to hang out. Funny thing we learned about Philly: a LOT of the restaurants are BYOB for alcoholic drinks, so if you want to drank, bring your own beer, wine, etc. 

We uber'd again to a great arthouse movie theater called Ritz East that reminded me of all the times you see someone go to the movies on "Seinfeld" or in Woody Allen movies. It was us and a sea of senior citizens and I didn't even care. We saw "Spotlight," which was a superb movie about real reporting work for the greater good. 

After the movie, we walked up Market Street to Revolution House, a super chic restaurant/bar packed with yuppies. No cocktail menu at the bar here, but if you invite the bartender to get creative, you might be rewarded! I was curious to see how they'd use the hometown favorite Art of the Age Sage spirit, so I asked the bartender to use it and she whipped up a delicious cocktail of Vodka, Sage, St. Germain and a splash of soda.

I was digging on the mix of old and new in the decor, especially this little spot.

On Sunday morning, we walked down to the lovely Rittenhouse Square area, which is surrounded with posh boutiques, upscale and creative eateries and pretty Victorian buildings.

I'm a sucker for shoestring fries and Belgian beer, so I decided to have my birthday meal at a Belgian bar called Monk's Cafe. I had a burger topped with boursin cheese and sprouts, but the real showstopper here are the fries. I think I ate every last one, dipped in the incredible bourbon mayonnaise. Happy Birthday to me!

Last but not least, we popped into Omoi Zakka, a beautifully curated shop chock full of adorable Japanese office supplies, small batch beauty goods, stationary and art pieces. I picked up a Brainstorm Prints garden poster and awesome First Lady wrapping paper that is now hanging in my office. 

It was a great trip and I have enough food recommendations from friends to merit a series of return visits! 

Creating My Terrific Lady Room

We finally did something we've been wanting to do since we moved in.

We hung the hippo! It didn't feel right not to have this big hippo behind the couch. We've been busy working for the past two weeks to get what I've dubbed my "Terrific Lady Room" ready to host our first houseguest this coming weekend. Fans of The League already know about Terrific Lady Day, a quarterly day where one character's wife gets to do whatever she wants for that entire day. Sample dialogue:

Kevin: A terrific lady day? 

Ruxin: You do whatever they want. And you look interested. The whole day. "What's that? Heirloom tomatoes are different from regular tomatoes? Amazing!"

We have a guest room (that is truly in shambles right now), but thought that it might be good to maximize our hospitality capacity by adding a daybed to my office/painting/crafting room. We picked up IKEA's Hemnes daybed, which is truly awesome because it can expand to be the size of a full bed AND still has drawers for storage. Those Swedes are brilliant.

It is, however, the most complicated item we've ever built. Sean did most of the heavy lifting, and I'd say it took us about six hours start to finish.

It comes with very plain little black drawer knobs and I thought that was such a missed opportunity. Hardware is like jewelry for your room! When there are so many options out there, why stick with the most boring option? So, I went to Anthropologie and got these really pretty brass and copper Gramercy knobs. They add a nice level of elegance.

The funny thing is that I've clearly been decorating with fairly muted colors for the last few years since I've lived with Sean, so when given the chance, I've swung very hard in the girly direction for this room! After I layered in some of my old throw pillows, my painting by Kelsey Witt and some other items, it suddenly looked like a teenager's room. I'm owning it, though. If it's my space to be creative, I can do what I want.

The rug was a closeout clearance option I picked up at World Market for $60; the carpet was a little stained when we moved in, so until I feel ready to replace the carpet, it's a great solution. I liked for guests to always have a lighting option for reading in bed without getting up to turn a light off, so I ordered these plug-in eyeball sconces from Urban Outfitters (the quilt is from there, too). The pillows are a mix of old ones from Target and my wonderful Jackie O pillow from Jonathan Adler.

Next up for this room is organizing my painting supplies and possibly setting up a permanent area for sewing projects. Unfortunately the room is not huge (especially now that half of it has a daybed), but I'm lucky to have the space right now!

In other recent news, my husband bought the loveliest Valentine's Day flowers from Studio Posy, a local shop where I took a terrarium class a couple years ago.

AND we had a snow day yesterday! I kind of wish we had another one because we've now learned, the city will NEVER plow our road, but it is what it is. Back to life, back to reality.

Holiday Wrapping 2014

 In between all the craziness of moving, one of my friends Alex sent me a note that said basically, "I know you're moving and congrats on that, but where's the gift wrapping scheme?!" Every year since I graduated college, I've picked a gift wrapping color scheme. I do this for two reasons: 1) I hate most Christmas wrapping paper and I like to have paper I could use all year and 2) it pushes my creativity and makes me think a lot about color theory.

 Maybe I should just *sings* Let it goooooo, let it gooooo, but I couldn't get the "Frozen" colors out of my mind this year. It's super girly, but I wanted to see if there was a sophisticated way to pull off those wintry colors of blue, silver and purple. Let me tell you, there is very little purple wrapping paper out there right now, but I found a way to work it in with ribbon.

My papers include:

• A gray herringbone print from TJ Maxx
• Blue triangles from Target
• Blue-green geometric print from Target
• Gray gingham from Target's baby shower gift wrap section
• Purple floral from World Market

 I always get my ribbons at Michael's or fabric stores. This year, I bought skinny and fat rolls of purple satin, a wired silver ribbon, a sparkly blue, a braided purple ribbon and this awesome star ribbon from World Market. The rest of the ribbon is left over from previous years.

See all my previous gift wrapping themes: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2006-2009.