A Little IKEA Love...

So a few weeks ago I got an email that made my day:

Hi mgeilman,

Congrats, your space was has great small kitchen space functionality and was chosen as this week’s Pick of the Week!  You can find it featured on the site here: http://www.theshare-space.com/

And also our DesignbyIKEA blogger Noreen wrote about it too!  You can read about why it was chosen here

Thanks!

Katy
Editor at Share Space

I must give proper credit to my husband for actually thinking of and implementing the Grundtal system in the kitchen.  It was a great first apartment for us and we were sad to leave it.  Luckily we moved to Philadelphia, where there are TWO (count 'em, TWO) IKEA's.  Woot woot.

Craigslister

So over the last few months as I have been slowly decorating our apartment via IKEA and Craigslist, I have become somewhat of a very adept hunter of awesomeness.  I also recently got on Pinterest which has been so much more intuitive for me and allowed me to post some of the awesome things that I find on Craigslist but do not have the room or the budget to buy all of them.  Of course we are still working on our place, so some of the best things I find I don't even put on there until I've decided I'm not going to pursue them or I purchase them myself.  Since we are almost done I have also taken to hunting for certain items for my friends.  "Oh your looking for a tufted victorian couch?  Let me find some for you, what is your email and I will forward that to you..."  Don't mind me, but who wouldn't want a friend that finds them stuff like this:

or this...

or this!

Hit me up if you're on the Hunt.

Happy Easter

Organizational Design

So I've recently been sort of combining my two talents/passions: Personal Organization and Interior Design.  It's pretty easy to combine since most Professional Organizers do interior design and vice versa.  I've been calling it organizational design because it's simply designing what is already there--no new furniture (yet) and creating a "place for everything and everything in it's place" (in my mother's voice).  It started with my friend Michelle who just asked me to take a look at her apartment and we ended up tackling the whole kids room.  Unfortunately I didn't have any before pictures so it kinda spoiled the dramatics but she was very happy with it.  When they moved apartments she asked me to come help her again and this time the effect was even better--AND I remembered to take before shots!

Beginner's Luck?

So after I won the first contest, I was told about another Banner Design Contest here in Philadelphia...also in a place called University City but specifically for Baltimore Avenue which is the main drag.  Here were the two concepts I submitted, wish me luck!

Banner Contest for the Win!

So last August while we were home for my sister's wedding I read our town's newsletter.  Low and behold there was a banner design contest.  I love the community I grew up in so I thought why not--winner get's $200...and then I won!  Here is the winning design:

Quilting Dreams

Julie loves quilting and wanted to reflect that in her design--her favorite quilting block is the log cabin, which we made into her background.  They both love books as well and wanted to be able to hand out meaningful favors so we created this useful bookmark for guests to take home and use.  It will be printed on beautiful cream linen textured paper.  Congrats to Scott and Julie!