Christmas Styling and Decoration Ideas

 

There are 54 sleeps until Christmas and now that Halloween is out the way, I have started thinking and planning for Christmas.

 

I absolutely love this time of year where there are so many amazing creative people starting to blog very magical, twinkling images inspiring us all to decorate our homes beautifully and enjoy what is a very pretty and festive occasion, it can never come around quickly enough for me! 

 

In fact the reason I trained as a window dresser was because as a small child I absolutely loved the magic of the Christmas displays in London in Selfridges, Harrods and Hamleys and by the age of 20 I was a fully fledged display designer creating them!

 

Torie Jayne is one of my favorite designers that I follow as I love her work and the clean crisp style she adopts and I was immediately entranced tonight by these beautiful Christmas images she shared from Lisabeth Dahl. 

 

So as Christmas approaches and the land of creative blogging becomes magical and wondrous I will share many inspirations with you from my rather fabulous reading list :)

Adding Pinterest to Blogger

I am bouncing around tonight with excitement as finally I have worked out how to add the coveted Pinterest buttons to my blog :)!!

 

Not just a follow me Pinterest badge, which I did quickly tonight as this is easy, but to add Pin It to every image on my blog.

 

 

I have posted a lovely image of one of my obsessions, ribbons :) just so you can see the Pin It in action!

 

 I was not bought up with computers, so everything I know and continue to learn has been self taught through many hours of googling, watching tutorials, and really just finding my way around.  Plus I do find my daughters very helpful as from the ages of six they were teaching me how to do predicitive texting and more recently uploading apps to my iphone for me :)  I am beginning to sound like a Geek!

 

 I have spent years learning how to create websites, studying online social marketing and keeping up to date with trends, it is a subject I find hugely interesting and fascinating, I could never have started my business without the wonderful world of worldwide web.

 

Technology, as far as I am concerned, is still rocket science but I am hooked and do love finding out how to do things and always love a challenge.

 

 Tonight having added the very popular Pinterest buttons to the photos on this blog I thought I would share how I did it with you.

 

 There are many creative people out there with fabulous blogs that are probably the same as me and spend hours googling to find out how to do teccie things on their blogs! 

 

 

Having been googling for hours tonight and reading goodness knows how many tutorials with many what seemed hugely complicated HTML things to do I finally fell upon, you guessed it, a wonderful blog written by a woman, in woman terminology, Code it Pretty. 

 

Call me biased but men seem to make things seem more complicated!

 

Everything I wanted to do on my blog was here, it was so easy to follow.

 

I have to admit when I hit the edit HTML code I always freeze and having had a few disasters in my time I always expect to lose five years of work and my heart is in my throat whilst tweaking away at these computer things!

 

Reassuringly I am told to do a back up of my blog which I dutifully do before making any changes and then with lump still in throat I hit the save HTML template button and view blog, nothing?! 

 

I go through the whole process again and wham the buttons have appeared, I am delighted, another achievement under my belt!

 

Do head over to Code it Pretty if you want Pin It´s on each photo on your blog it really is very easy.

Happy Halloween!

 

 

 

Everyone likes scary, spooky, ghoulish stuff on Halloween and we will be no exception this evening!

 

But as we also love stylish pretty things, we had to share these gorgeous pumpkin inspirations with you found on one of our current favourite blogs Heart And Handmade facebook page, if you love pretty images you really should hook up to them. 

 

I really wish I had seen these images before, as this would work perfectly in my own home, but now stored in the ideas file for next year!

 

These images via Heart and Handmade are from Chatelaine, another fabulous website I have just discovered and now will be spending even more time on the computer, sigh!

 

Happy trick and treating and I am hoping for chocolate :)

Hats Off to Google

I just wanted to shout out to Google who have been amazing this week.

 

I was alerted to a Copycat blogger earlier this week by

 Joseba Sandoval.

 

 

This blogger was copying my blog posts as if they were their own, word for word, picture for picture.  It is always very intrusive when this happens and very disconcerting especially when they are copying personal posts about events in my life.

 

So much work and effort goes into creating my blog posts, which occasionally include personal references as I waffle on about my life in Spain, share inspirations, often my own designs, talk about creating our weddings and sharing our weddings, and to see this sprawled across someone else´s blog is upsetting to say the least.

 

Anycase this is not the first time it has happened to me and will not be the last, I have  unfortunately had previous copycats.

 

I must shout out though about how brilliant Google have been from the moment I was alerted to this blog by Joseba , I was shocked and swiftly reported it that same evening to Google.

 

 Within 24 hours I had an email from the Google Team asking me for more information so they could investigate my infringement and copyright complaint. 

 

I sent Google more information which was not easy as there were so many pop ups on this particular blog it shut down my computer whilst I was trying to copy the copycat links.

 

 But having sent the Google Team more information late last night and informed them that over 50 of my blog posts were on this blog with some examples, I received an email tonight telling me they had investigated my infringement copyright complaint, and the offending blog has now been shut down :)

 

I am thrilled and all I can say to this person is go and find something else to blog about that is your own material and stop trying to copy others, that is not what blogs are about, we care, share and love what we do.

 

A Beautifully Chic and Elegant Wedding in Marbella

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It has been a chilly day here in Marbella, well my version of chilly is below 20 degrees and tonight is a meagre 14 degrees, so I have taken up residence on my terrace in my cosy socks, pj´s and my hugely cuddly and warm dressing gown in which apparently I resemble a polar bear according to Twinks ?!

 

I love this time of year as we gather in photos from our weddings and actually have time to sit down and enjoy them, it is wonderful to be curled up looking at so many beautiful images of our gloriously hot and balmy Mediterreanean weddings we created this year.

 

This very chic and elegant wedding was held in June at the Finca de la Concepcion for one of our favorite clients, Niamh and Brian, who were such a delightful couple to meet and work with.

 

Niamh and Brian contacted us and after our initial meeting with them, we were hired as their wedding planners and stylist and had a lot of fun organising and decorating their very elegant wedding.

 

Niamh and Brian are a professional couple whom once they had hired us, trusted us implicity to organise all the details and translate their vision into reality as apart from flying in for the odd visit they really did not have time to devote to creating their day here and wanted to hire someone who would take over every detail and plan their day.

 

Which we did of course! and exceeded their expectations as we created a truly stylish and beautiful wedding day for them.

 

The ceremony was held at one of the lovely local churches in Elviria and after a beautiful and emotional ceremony, the guests were then transported in luxury air conditioned coaches to the Finca for a party to remember!  The Finca is one of my favourite venues and just oozes style.

 

Niamh had chosen a very elegant colour scheme of ivory, navy and blush with silver grey accents.

 

We created many beautiful details from a very magical and twinkling atmosphere with lots of our fairy lights and candles to gorgeous bridal flowers using white peonies, quicksand roses and white orchids.

 

The detail and attention to the five star food and catering from LePanto was outstanding, overseen of course by Carla.  The tables were dressed with polished silver cutlery and sparkling glassware, crisp white napkins decorated with silver grey satin ribbons and white orchids.

 

White hydrangeas, peonies and quicksand roses created elegant centrepieces surrounded with glass tealight votives.

 

A white and silver Moroccan chill out area was set out under the trees and our dancing shoes, aka flip flops proved yet again to be a huge hit.

 

The whole day and night was fabulous and went without a hitch and we love these gorgeous images from Jeremy Standley.

 

Here is an extract from our wonderful testimonial from Niamh and Brian, do take time to read it as the comments about trying to get the drunk friends on the bus did make us giggle!

 

It is strange actually I chose tonight to blog this wedding as shortly after their wedding Niamh and Brian moved to New York for Brian´s work, so we are thinking about them tonight as the storms rage over the city and hope they are safe, as well as our other lovely clients based there.

 

Dear Laura, Carla and Anoulka

Following Friday 15 June, we decided that, once our honeymoon was over, it would be a number one priority for us to take the time to sit down and write you an email to express our heartfelt thanks and admiration for the truly magnificent job you did with our wedding in Spain. I thank my lucky stars that I came across The Wedding Decorator blog in late 2010 ... and that it then turned out that Laura was free to meet us on a sunny day in January 2011 in Arte Cafe .... That much felt like fate! From the moment we met you both, we felt very comfortable having you help plan our wedding in Spain and that feeling only increased and multiplied as time moved on and the wedding day grew closer.

Laura: your taste and vision brought our wedding to a different level. The unique style of the wedding was always very important to me, even though I struggled at times to articulate precisely what that style was, but I can honestly say it was just 100% us. The bouquets for myself, the four bridesmaids and the two flower girls were the prettiest I have ever seen, while your decoration and lighting turned Finca la Concepcion into a more magical place than we could ever have imagined: the venue was so dreamy, beautiful and very, very classy. The table plan, the place settings and the displaying of the table names in their frames were all perfect and I literally could not find a single fault or think of how any of it could have been done any better. We absolutely loved every bit of it. THANK YOU so much for all your work, interest and infectious enthusiasm - you have a true gift for style and it is inspiring to see you using that talent and being successful doing something you love.

Carla: what can we say? Both Brian and I have always been deeply impressed by, and had a lot of respect for, your professionalism, organisation, attention to detail and dedication to our wedding; but even so, we were blown away by your performance on the day itself. You were extremely discreet and observant, always there in the background, watching what was going on, looking after everything (including, at various points, my dress - which involved you doubling as a fifth bridesmaid) and our wedding would simply not have happened or worked without you. Neither of us will ever forget the stress you strove to take away from us, or the fact that you were at Finca la Concepcion until well after 4am (when you had another wedding the next day in Seville!), herding Brian's drunk friends onto the last shuttle. THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts. You are simply brilliant at your job.

Anoulka: we wish that we had come to you on day one to help us with our invitations. We couldn't have been more pleased with how you stepped in at a very late stage, recreated (and, in our opinion, improved) an existing design and produced a set of stationery of such beautiful quality and style. You were always extremely thorough and responsive and you instilled great confidence from the start. Our guests kept commenting on all the "little touches", including the various items of stationery. Thanks also for bringing our flowers to Le Papillon the day after the wedding: we had hoped to meet you then but Nic, the manager, said you had been and gone already. It was really great to have the flowers the next day as they added to the ambience of the restaurant - so we are very appreciative that you took the time to do that.

Just to let you all know that the feedback from our guests has been exceptional. "Best wedding I have ever been at" was uttered to us numerous times throughout the night and the next day. One of Brian's friends took it even further and told us it was the "best day of his life" (Carla - this may have been one of the guys you were trying to get on that bus ....). The overwhelming message was that people had a very unique and memorable experience - and this is down to all your work.

Reviva Weddings looks like it is deservedly going from strength to strength and I can promise you that I will actively seek out opportunities to promote your company to anyone who will listen in New York, London or Dublin! 

 

So, the best of luck with the rest of the summer - I hope you have a little break in July and August - and THANKS AGAIN for a job amazingly well done.

Love from,

The new Mr and Mrs Maher

xxx

 

An Alternative Pretty White Halloween

 

 

 

After the wonderfully staged and ghoulish Strictly came on tonight, there was much excitement eminating from Twinks, not only practising her fantastic and rather worrying Shakira dance moves but also a hugely animated excitement about Halloween.

 

So I finally succumbed to rummaging in my understairs cupboard and digging out our traditional spooky decorations which consist of:

 

 A Whittards ceramic orange pumpkin and a Whittards white ghost tealight holder

My pumpkin fairy lights and our purple and black hanging bat garland

 

All very tasteful of course and just enough to add a bit of spookiness to the house for the Halloween week! 

 

I did see some rather lovely glittery yet spooky door signs in Dunnes this week, but refrained already knowing my bill on kitting Twinks out with a basic winter wardrobe was going to be quite high!

 

Trying to find a real pumpkin here in Spain takes a master class in driving around all the local supermarkets hoping to spot an object that resembles something round and orange.

 

I suppose this will be my mission on Monday, I may strike lucky at Supersol or El Campo, if not I am considering how a carved aubergine will fair?! 

 

It already has a ghost shape so this is my plan b!  In fact I could perhaps start a new trend of aubergine ghosts covered with gold glitter!

 

Tonight I have found some rather lovely white pumpkin images, I am sure they have another name as they are part of the squash family, but living in a country where we cannot easily find an orange pumpkin the chances of being able to find a white one is non existent!

 

But it is always so refreshing to see and share something different.  I found the first photo on pinterest a few weeks ago and love use of the white pumpkin as a ceiling pendant, although what practical use this has I have no idea but design does not have to always be practical!

 

Tonight on one of my current favourite blogs, Heart Handmade UK, they are sharing a gorgeous white pumpkin Halloween post which I could not resist sharing with you.

 

I love the use of the Liberty fabrics and gold teacups with the mint accents, definitely a popular colour combination for 2013 weddings and very fresh and pretty and what a lovely alternative to the orange and blacks that we are being bombarded with albeit I do love it!

 

So here is wishing you all a wonderful and spooky week and a Happy Halloween!

 

Tutus and Tea

Gosh, as I type this blog post I am sitting curled cosily up on my terrace listening and watching some pretty serious rain! 

 

 

When it finally decides to rain here in Spain it really does chuck it down, hundreds of litres of the wet stuff is currently pouring out the skies along with a bit of lightening and thunder thrown in for good measure.

 

The weather here in Spain is never what I would describe as mild, it is either gloriously sunny or dramatically torrential rain!

 

Many of my clients, past and future, I have noticed are emailing me at the moment asking what I am up to and what we get up to in the winter :)  I thought this was rather sweet so sharing some of my ´what I get up to in the winter months with you!´

 

 

Well today the weather was grotty, and still is so it has been a day of working on wedding designs, blog and new ideas and inspirations, putting quotes together and it seems numerous cups of tea, tea first thing, tea with biscuit, tea with a chicken sandwich and tea with a cake! 

 

I have a dog that hates the rain so have had a day of trying to ply him out his hiding place and put him outside. I also have two cats I hate, they are a nuisance and of course with the rain they have been hanging around all day meowing and driving me insane.  However I ended up with all these animals is due to my two older daughters, pleading with me as children to get pets, now they have both left home and muggings here is left feeding and looking after them?!

 

Currently I am contemplating duck egg blue for my long neglected kitchen and considering making a tutu for Twinks, not sure why would just be fun! 

 

I have new lights and taps for the house but need to find a good handyman to put them all up, bedrooms need tidying up, reorganising and a freshen up and generally some housekeeping is going on!

 

 

We have a Halloween party planned for next week at Twinks´s school and of course now decorating the house with spooky things, so perhaps this is a good excuse to make a tutu for a Halloween party, if not it will be for Christmas fairy things! :)

 

It is a month for me of birthdays, me and my wonderful mother, friends and family visiting us, my aunt arrived last night and so far has not been blessed with the best weather Spain has to offer but nevertheless remaining cheerful!  We will see how she is on Saturday ;)!

 

Yesterday was spent decorating a corporate cocktail party and we are looking forward to a wedding in November so making lists and getting ready for this as well.

 

This evening I made a rather yummy beef curry, it seemed Mercadona had predicted the entire population would all want beef tonight and had a vast amount of it proudly displayed on their fresh meat counter so along with some very yummy Indian green chillis given to me by a lovely caterer this week, I was on a roll in the kitchen this afternoon.  It was delicious and we ate on our terrace albeit we are under cover and garden is currently waterlogged so did not venture out there!

 

We are currently refurbing the shop and also putting together a new very exciting spanish vintage stationery range with one of our brides from this year, updating all our products and planning marketing strategies so it is all very exciting times that we only have time for in the winter.

 

Many new clients are visiting us and we had 4 weddings book with us in the past week including a wedding in Girona which is very exciting as we expand across Spain :)  I have also noticed we are taking bookings for the entire year rather than isolated popular months which is interesting.

 

Life is a strange one though and you have to live it whilst you can, we had some rather tragic news today which I will not blog about as it is not appropriate at this time but life is there for today, make the most of it, I am, you never know what is around the corner x