weekend fun...

My mom flew up from Southern California this weekend to visit my sister and me so we had a wonderful girls weekend. We did a little cooking, decorating, shopping and baking. The weather was nice and cool here in San Francisco so it was the perfect fall weekend!

I think my mom and sister bring be good luck because I always seem to find the perfect things when I'm shopping with them! It definitely held true this weekend when we walked outside my house and saw a great garage sale on my street, where I picked up these two little gems...

As soon as I saw these beautiful vintage gilt sconces I had to have them!

How great are they? I can't wait to see how the mirrored one reflects candle light!

The jar and two decorative mossy balls were thrown in with the sconces, very cute!

We also did a little pumpkin carving, though, it might be a little early and I'm hoping the pumpkins won't go rotten before Halloween. I might keep them inside for a couple of weeks.

While carving, we learned that the white pumpkins are probably better un-carved....we didn't realize that the shell is about 3 inches thick!

Still made for a cute pumpkin, I think it looks like a puppy, or a panda. That is my sister, very proud of her pumpkin, which I have to say is the perfect classic jack-o-lantern!

Their cuteness again.

(my sister had to flip the cake upside down on the cloth covered in powdered sugar, you can't see it as well in the picture, but the sugar when everywhere, all over her pants and my floor!)

And now for the baking! I found this recipe for a pumpkin roulade in the September issue of House Beautiful and I had been wanting to make it. I thought this would be the perfect weekend to bake, because baking is always more fun with other people!

This is the finished Pumpkin Roulade, you can just slice and eat. Very yummy, and easy to make!

I love Halloween decorations, and of course I had to be totally cheesy and put up my fake cob-webs!--there's more in the living room and hallway :)

Mother and daughter!

We had such a great weekend!

one kings lane must haves...

Found these on the One Kings Lane "must have" list, and I think I agree. I must have these things, all of them. Or maybe just the lamp!--The lamp is $79, which isn't bad at all, but still a little expensive for me. But I want it so bad!!

Should I buy it? Help me out here....

Other adorable things below with an orange theme because, well, it is October....

If anyone wants an invite to One Kings Lane let me know!--It will also help me out in buying that lamp because I will get $25 (because I'm dying to have it! hehe)!

quick monday post, I'm super busy...

I've been super busy today so I only have time for a quick post! I just wanted to share some pretties that I have found recently...

Canadian House and Home (I think!)

Wallpaper? or paint? I love whatever it is.

flickr

This is my Halloween spirit for the day! Counting down the days!

Canadian House and Home

Reminds me of a blood orange, blood reminds me of Halloween, Halloween makes me happy, therefore I like this room.

just because it's almost october...

I took these pictures last December for an architecture project where we were asked by a member of Preservation Napa Valley to figure out some clever ways to restore these barns to make them usable for the new owner of the property. The owner wanted to build some fairly large homes and was originally going to tear down these barns, unless we could convince him other wise. Along with out professor, our group took a little field trip up to Napa to view the site. The site has 2 barns--actually they were winery's--and one of the barns had this very strange addition in the back that was once an apartment. Since I'm in the spirit of fall and Halloween, I wanted to share some of my pictures from the creepy abandoned addition....

In the picture above you can see the addition peeking out from the back of the barn.

This is a better picture after we had climbed up the hill a little to find the front door, which was in the back?

You can kind of see the door in this picture on the left side of the picture, just a simple wooden door.

Taken from the inside in the "foyer". I can't imagine this door kept any heat in!

Above is the kitchen, that window looks out to the back of the house, or I guess since the door is in the back, that makes this the front? Walking in here was like a 1920s time warp, it looked like the last time anyone lived here was maybe in the 40s and for some reason dropped everything and left one day. The picture is kind of dark, but you can kind of see the cute wood burning stove on the left.

This is the other side of the kitchen, that window looks out to the front (you could see this window in the first picture of the red barn). This room was definitely creepy, and yes that is a doctor's bag on the coffee table, close-up below...

I wish I would have opened the bag to see what was inside, but then again I might have had an allergy attack from the half inch layer of dust on top...

Someone left their cup of tea in the cabinet!

Ahh the parlor....and what a parlor it is! Is it weird that part of me wanted to take that table and re-stain it? And those things hanging from the ceiling are old tin ceiling tiles, more detailed pictures below.

Same room as the tables, not sure what happened with the wallpaper only covering half the room. The mattress looks comfortable though...

The picture above and the ones below were taken in the room that was built as a second floor to the barn, but the only entrance to it was from the apartment/addition. In the background you can see the hallway that goes to the front door and the entrances to the "parlor" and kitchen. You can faintly see that, yes, the entire hallway, walls and ceilings were covered in the old tin decorative tiles.

It looked like someone had been using this room as "temporary" storage that ended up being permanent. To be honest, I didn't even know that this corner looked like this. The room was so dark, I could only see what it actually looked like after I had taken a picture with a flash and looked at it on my camera.

Would it be worth it to reupholster? just kidding...

Cool drawings? I don't know the artist who drew these, but they were randomly around the house. Creepy.

More detailed look at the old decorative tiles. There were a few piles leaning against the walls, I should have taken one!

Hope you enjoyed my creepy house tour!

If you're wondering what happened to the project, the project was put on hold for a while--I'm pretty sure nothing has been built yet, and nothing has been torn down--and we ended up working on another restoration project in St. Helena, I posted this project back in May, but you can take a look at it again here.

*source: my own photos

fall love...

My favorite three months are coming up and October can't get here soon enough. Have I ever mentioned that I love fall? Well I LOVE fall! It makes me happy, not to mention my favorite holidays are in October, November and December...

Starting with Halloween. I love it. When I was little Halloween was my favorite holiday and I used to say "happy halloween" to everyone all year long. Seriously. I've watched home movies of myself when I'm like 3 and whenever my dad would tell me to say "bye bye" I would say "happy halloween" instead....didn't matter if it was the middle June.

My addiction to Halloween extended to naming stuffed animals too. When I was in pre-school I won a coloring contest at Long's Drugs (yes, I was an artsy child), my prize was a stuffed animal, it was a dog and I named him "Spooky" in honor of my favorite holiday.

Soon after Halloween is my birthday, November 17th, and I know this sounds really weird, but for some reason I love the way November 17th looks when it's written. I just think the month of November has the prettiest name....but I might be biased because it is my birthday month. I also share that birthday with Rachel McAdams who I think is absolutely adorable, so that's definitely a plus!

...and finally my last two favorite holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thanksgiving for obvious reasons, including food and family, and Christmas because I love our special family traditions that we do on Christmas eve. I know a lot of people probably do this first tradition, but I'm going to tell you anyways....every year both of my sisters and I get a personalized ornament. We each have our own box of ornaments starting from the year we were born. I love opening the box every year and putting them up on the tree because certain ornaments bring back special memories of each Christmas. I also love the fact that our Christmas tree is a complete mish-mash of different ornaments, the only problem is that with every year we've had to get a bigger tree because of the increase in ornaments....I think we're going on 10'. The other special tradition that we do is have the elves come on Christmas eve. Yes, you read that right, elves come to our house every Christmas. My mom started this tradition when we were very little, what happens is on Christmas eve my parents would tell us that Santa's elves came and left gifts on our beds. All three of us would run upstairs to find 3 gifts that were wrapped exactly the same. Each gift had a personalized ornament attached to it for each of us, and each present had a new set a pajamas in it, usually all three of us would get matching matching pajamas. After we open the presents we always change into our new pajamas and put our new ornaments on the tree. The best part of this tradition is that we still do it!, and yes I am 22 years old. What can I say? I like to relive my childhood.

Can I also just say that every single year I like to start October off right by watching Hocus Pocus? Is that weird, because I don't think I will ever let this personal tradition stop...

Just because it's September 1st and October is only 30 days away, here are some pictures of Halloween decor in San Francisco...I believe my roommate took these for my project freshman year in college, yes my project.