Tablescape Thursday -Halloween Glamour

Please join our hostess, Susan, over at Between Naps on the Porch, for more beautiful and inspiring tablescapes.
Being the first day of October, I was finally inspired yesterday to get some Halloween decorations out and a tablescape put together. My tablescape this week is very Glam...let's take a look. (Front door wreath from HomeGoods, $24.99)
Well, I put this table together using things I already owned. The runner is from HomeGoods bought a couple of months ago for $12.99, the chargers are from Horchow, the ones I've shown you previously that I spray painted white. Black plates from Target, bought many, many years ago and my orange plates are made by Waechtersbach and the color is orange peel. I think I bought them at dinnerplates.com, but not positive.

I bought these urns have off at Joann's along with the black glitter pumpkins last year. That is a funkin on top. Wasn't really happy with it sitting there, not sparkly enough.
So I sprayed it with spray adheasive and sprinkled glitter on it and Viola! a sparkly pumpkin. Much happier now. It took all of 10 minutes for both pumpkins. Spray adheasive is the way to go, I tried glue last year and it was a mess and the glitter didn't stick well. The orange grass was bought at Roger's gardens and those little ornament balls are from Joann's.



Towle silver, not sure of name of the pattern. Bling napkin rings from Zgallerie. Water glasses from Anthropology. Very inexpensive, I want to say about $12.00 each.
Dessert glasses or margarita glasses from Zgallerie. Very inexpensive as well.
The finished product. This table is so sparkly, I don't know if you can see it or not. Very fun, glamorous halloween table. I left out the scary, next week, you might not be as lucky!!! Thanks for stopping by.

Workout Playlist - For Marlene

There is nothing more important to a good, solid, fast paced workout than music. I have a new routine in the morning and for the cardio portion, I try to burn 700 calories each morning. If you are not talking to your friends, you need music to pump you up!!! Nothing is worse than going along at a good pace and then being slowed down by a slow song. My girlfriend was getting exasperated by having to change songs all the time during her workout. I told her to make a "workout" playlist. I got this idea from my husband, who has been working out forever and cannot live without his ipod.

Every song must be face paced, nothing slow. You have to be picky. I don't even like songs that start out slow and build up, they just wreck your pace. Pick songs that make you want to dance, songs you love, you will be listening to them alot and pick way more than you think you need. Sometimes I start my playlist at the beginning, sometimes in the middle and sometimes at the end. Looking at my playlist, I'm embarrased. You would think I'm only 17, but I just have to accept who I am...

Here is my playlist:

Pretty Girl (The Way) by Sugarcult (love Sugarcult)

Piece of Me = Brittany Spears

Mercy-Duffy

The Way I Are - Timbaland

Just Dance - Lady Gaga

What You Waiting For - Gwen Stefani (FAVORITE)

Paralyzed - Rock Kills Kid

Waiting for Tonight - Jennifer Lopez

Gimme More- Brittany Spears

Dirty - Christina Aquilera

Sexy Back - Justin Timberlake

Shut Up and Drive - Rhianna

Rich Girl - Gwen Stefani

The Sweet Escape - Gwen Stefani

Fergalicious - Fergie

Disturbia - Rhianna

There were so many songs that I picked that I thought were fast, by the Rolling Stones, Beatles etc. But I found that I respond better to songs with a dance beat. You will find the best ones for you through trial and error.

The Universal Wish List / Button

Amazon .com has been kind enough to provide a wish list for you to share with your family and friends. It is easy to use (too easy!) and it helps everyone get just what they wanted for their birthday, Christmas or just for fun. You can add items from Amazon.com or if you put the "add to wish list" button in your browser bar, you can add whatever you what from whatever website you are browsing to your wish list.

This is how it works:

Go to Amazon.com

Click on the wish list button

Click on the create a wish list (you can create either a public or private list)

Add "add to wish list" button to your browser.

Begin shopping and creating your list

When you are at say, Anthropology, and you see that must have item. You open up the window and just click the "add to wish list" button in your browser. It is added to wish list. It also lets you add comments like how many you would like or what size and color.

The list will show a picture of what you want, how much it costs and when you click on the item it takes you directly to the website.

This is an excellent tool for shopping for others and letting others know what you will like. Whenever anyone asks me what I want, I can never think of anything. Now, I will just refer them to my list!

Do you Zumba?

I took a new class at 24 hour fitness on Saturday morning. It is called Zumba. It is a mixture of exercise and latin dance. You will shimmy, roll and shake your booty! You need to get in touch with your inner Latina and a little bit of Beyonce. It was good exercise and fun. It wasn't that hard to catch on to the steps. The time flew by. Each song has 3 to 5 dance steps that you repeat. I still found myself lost at times, but its all good. No one laughed at me. I was pouring sweat about half way through, and looking around, I didn't see anyone as sweaty as me! I vowed to get in the back row next time so I would have easy access to my water and towel. You should try it, it was fun. BTW, I'm not in this picture, just found it on google!

Legally Blonde

On Sunday, my friend Marie and I went to see Legally Blonde at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. It was very cute and light. We liked it! The audience was a total change from the usual. It was filled was young girls. Such a change from last month when we saw Fiddler on the Roof!

Making it your own

On Thursday, I visited Katie in San Diego and we did a little shopping for some things that she needed, one of which was a planner. The perfect planner had the most horrific cover. Really, who wants to buy this? Katie liked everything about it on the inside, nothing on the outside. I told her I could recover it. She didn't think so. So, I bought it for myself and this morning it took me all of 30 minutes to recover (and that was because I had a hard time choosing the paper for the outside cover).
I measured, cut and punched holes. I used the spray mount adhesive to get and even coat on the covers so that would stick and not move or come undone at any one corner.
Viola!!! Finished project. Added a little bling to the center of the flower, a velvet ribbon to hold my current week spot and a little decorative paperclip to hold the calendar showing the current month.
I covered the inside with some contrasting paper and added a little monogram in the corner (two different stickers I put together to make one).
The back. Katie was afraid it would get ruined in her tote, car, etc. To finish it off and not let it get dirty, you could just add some laminate to the front and back covers. Now I have a planner that reflects my personality and it is perfect to keep all my activites straight.

Tablescape Thursday -Blue Fall

Finally, I have been inspired to create another tablescape. My creativity has been waning these last few weeks. My trip to Roger's Gardens really inspired me and I wanted to do something with cream pumpkins. The picture above was taken by my friend Cynthia.
But, today when I arrived at Roger's, all the creamy pumpkins were gone! Apparently everyone was thinking the same as I was. So I grabbed what I thought were pumpkins with a green cast.
When I got home and started putting all the placemats etc. out, I found out they were more of a blue/gray hue.
I paired the blue/gray pumpkins with some smaller cream and green and for the center piece I used grass. I planted it in a creamy urn I already had. I used my gray velvet placemats, blue napkins and cream dishes, all from HomeGoods. I was so surprised that I was using BLUE, at the nursery I imagined GREEN.



EEK! Where did these guys come from? Must have left a door open or something!
I just thought I would spice it up a little for a Halloween idea. If I would have had time, I would have gone through more of my decorations to make it a bit more scary. The idea is there, I think you could really have fun with it.
Thanks for stopping by. Please check out other fabulous tablescapes at Between Naps on the Porch.

Roger's Gardens - A place of Inspiration

Isn't this flower arrangement beautiful? Roger's has a new flower shop. I love the combinations that they put together. White, pink and gray, I never saw that coming. I couldn't take my eyes off of this arrangement. I love the use of the huge Dalias too.


If you are in the mood to plant some containers, Roger's is a great place to go for ideas. They are so creative and put the most unusual plants and containers together. But you can always find your traditional favorites as well.

There is an huge outdoor garden area divided up into specialized areas, then they have several shops.

We love these trees made with vintage costume jewelry. They have a hefty price tag, but if you are a flea market shopper, here is a new outlet for all that wonderful jewelry you find.
I loved this chandelier ornament. It went on this wonderfully creative, shredded newspaper branched tree.

They have an interior design shop with lots of accessories.

I hope you enjoyed your stroll through Roger's. You can find me there on many a beautiful day. Especially because it is in Corona Del Mar, right by the ocean.

Happy Birthday, Emma!

Emma turned 17 yesterday and we celebrated by meeting her and her mom, Cindy, at Disneyland for the day. It was a great day and we had sooo much fun. Emma is pretty, smart, self-motivated, mature and fun to be with. She is looking forward to graduating and going to Europe next summer. She loves horses (like her mom).
Looking through the scrapbooks, I came across these two cute photos of her when she was little.
I've always loved this photo of the kids eating ice cream at Grandma Katie and Papa's house.

We went on every ride (the park was empty) and laughed til we cried!

Happy Birthday, Emma!