Christmas morning has come early!!!!!!!!!

I can't believe that I'm finally typing this, but the new blog is officially launched! 

From now on all of my posting will be done at Effortless-Style:

Head on over and check out my new home.

If you have a second it would be amazing if you could change your blog rolls, google readers, etc to my new URL. I would hate to lose any of my readers. :)

Fan Page

I've been at the computer all day long, every day for the last couple of days trying to finish up the new blog. It's exhausting. I think I'm going to need a massage appointment after it finally launches.

One of the items on my to-do list was set up a fan page for Effortless Style, which I did! Yay for that! Of course because me and technology are known to have a love/hate relationship I've spent hours searching for how to make my blog feed show up on the fan page and while I can find a million and one instructions every time I try and follow the steps I find that my page doesn't have all of the buttons/tabs/etc that are required.

Anyone have any ideas?

If you haven't yet take a second to sign up for the Giveaway!

How to pick out a graphic designer

Hi All,

Hope you all a great weekend. Mine was full of family time as we helped Dad recoup from his procedure and celebrated Mom's birthday!

I wanted to thank everyone for their very sweet comments and emails about my professional site  being up and running!

I've gotten a couple of questions from readers asking me how to find a graphic designer for their blog so I figured it was time for a blog post.

1. Check out all of your favorite sites! They can be online stores, blogs or business sites. Jot down some notes and figure out what you like about them. Do you love the layout, color, fonts used, easy to navigate. Start piecing together all your favorites. It can be a search bar from one and a header from another. If you love everything about one particular site then contact the site and find out who did their design.

Sunday Suppers:



2. Once you have narrowed down a handful of your favorite sites and acquired emails for all of the designers go ahead and email them and describe the scope of your project. Make sure you spell it all out. If it's for a blog do you want to stick with blogger or move to wordpress? If you want a store website with shopping cart capability let them know. If you are working on budget let them know a price range for what yo want to spend. Your dream designer may be out of budget, but they could refer you to something they know with a similar design aesthetic or sometimes they have interns that take on their own clients as well.

Darling Studio:




3. After you contact your favorite designers you should have emails coming in with price quotes. Now before you fork over your cash make sure you ask for referrals. Working on a website is a long process you want to make sure you will get along with your designer. It's good to get someone's point of view that has worked with the same person. Some web designers already have write ups from former clients that they quickly send you. If you don't want to ask the designer then try and email sites that were designed by the designer and ask them for a brief recap on their experience well. If they had a negative experience ask them to explain. Their negatives might not be a negative to you.

Shop Ten 25:



4. Now that you have researched sites, emailed designers, acquired quotes and gotten referrals you are probably ready to make your final choice. Most designers work with contracts. Make sure you read the contract! You need to know what your rights are in case things some how end up badly. You also want to make sure you let your designer know all the little extras you want. Do you want an ad button, special buttons for facebook, twitter, etc. All of things add time and will therefore raise your quote. You also want to finalize your deadline. Make sure you let your designer know when you need the project finished. Make them put this in the contract! In the contract it will also state how many proofs/changes you will have. This is really important. Some designer leave it open ended and you can work until you get it right. Others give you only 3 proofs and that's it. Also discuss with them what a proof is. Are they going to give you a drawn up sketch or show you a mock-up on powerpoint?

Katie Fine Design:



5. Payment. Never pay in full. You will normally have to pay a deposit to start your project. Sometimes it's simply a set fee like $125 to get started. Other times it's 25% or 50% of your total. You will normally have to pay the remainder right before you go live. Also find out if your graphic designer will be programming the site or if they will sending it to a programmer they work with. Perhaps if you have friend that can help you with coding you will only hire the designer for the design and do the programming on your own to save costs.



Once your deposit is paid it is now time to enjoy the process. You have finally found someone that has your design style and understands your vision. Now it's the fun time. The only thing I can stress is that you need to be really clear & detailed with what you want. You may say you want green on site and in your mind you are thinking olive green, but your designer may be thinking emerald green yet you both just keep describing at as green. Then the time comes for you to see a proof and you are disappointed that the green is wrong and your designer doesn't get it, because they did what you said. I also found it helpful to cut & paste things I wanted like font, colors, etc and place them in a photoshop ( powerpoint & word would work too) and use arrows to point things out and clearly explained what I wanted.

Hope these tips help you out if you are going through this process. If you want recommendations I know/have worked with people in a number of price ranges that I love.

*Images are screenshots of sites I referred to for inspiration during my design process.

Spreading the word

Have you seen it yet?



I knew I wanted to do some blog advertising once my site launched, but it couldn't be with just anyone. I wanted a blog that believed in the same sort of ideals and design style as mine and with Katie from The Neo Traditionalist I found a perfect fit.

I get a smile every time I log on and see it! Still trying to brainstorm other blogs to form relationships with. Any suggestions?



***Thank you for all of your sweet comments on this mornings post. I really needed it. My sweet dad was at the hospital having a procedure done this morning. I went with him and Mom and your lovely comments helped to distract me. Fingers crossed all is good with Dad. We are all now back at home and he is resting.

Effortless Style Interiors

Ah the day has finally come it looks like my professional site is finished ( ok not fully finished, but enough is done to show it off!)

For those of you that have been with me from the very beginning you will know it's been a long journey. I started getting my business in order right when I first started my design program and I was able to complete the course and take on clients before the site was finalized.

I had originally started with this color combo:

Business Card Mock-Ups:

Website mock up:

{I still actually really love this color combo, but at the moment it seemed too trendy and I didn't want my site to look "over" after a year}

So I went back to the drawing board and went for a more "fun" look:

Loved this color combo, loved the zebra, but had a really hard time translating it to a site. My fun colors were a bit overwhelming in large doses and they fighting with my project photo's so eventually after trying to make it work a million and one times it just had to go.

After that try I was at a loss. I didn't know what I wanted anymore. I wanted the site to reflect me and be up to date yet classic and fun yet professional. Seems easy to achieve, but it was hard. I think I was a bit lost in the beginning, because I wasn't exactly sure how to classify my design style and it was only after people making comments while visiting my home that I realized I was traditional in a lot of my decorating (shocking to me at the moment) with injections of modern & vintage.

I had originally seen my color & pattern loving less as more of Jonathan Adler type decorator, but in looking around my home I did realize that I loved classic elements (traditional) with a twist ( modern & vintage) and without a new color combo came to life.

Navy was my nod to traditional design and my neutral color.
Orange was a reflection of me. It's my favorite color.
Green made the feel a touch preppy/new traditionalist, which I love and fun.

In this proof the green wasn't bright enough:

Eventually we got it got it right:



The addition of my logo with the nod to my love of elephants just completed the look!

Now I know you are all dying for photo's of my house and my portfolio page still looks like this:



Don't fret they are coming. My photographer is off traveling and will back into town in Mid-Nov. So they are coming!

In the meantime head on over to Effortless Style and familiarize yourself with my new home. The blog will shortly be moving over there as well.

There is a little hidden surprise on my home page let me know if you can find it!

Thank you for your wonderful support during this entire process. On the days where I was in tears and close to pulling out my hair it was my saving grace.

**P.S. There are a couple of typos on the site. They have been fixed on the back end, just waiting for it to update on the site.

Blog design by Front Porch Studio, Logo design by i design.

Happy Halloween!

Hi Loves,

I'm certain many of you are counting down the hours till the weekend were many halloween costumes will be worn and parties will be attended.

I'm pretty low key for Halloween. It's been years since I actually dressed up, but today I started to get the finally that it might be fun to get all dolled up and go out. We'll see what happens.

Wonder if I can talk Jon into something like this:

Don't they look like a fun couple? The picture above is actually part of the NY Times archive photos that are now available for purchase on their site. They asked 5 well know interior designers for their top 10 favorite photo's. Leopard people happens to be one of Jonathan Adler'sfavorites.

My pal Julia was lucky enough to interview him about out. Check it out here!

Now what are you dressing up as for Halloween? I'm sort of leaning towards Sookie and Bill from True Blood or Kourtney and Scott from the Kardashians, but I have a feeling Jon's not going to love my suggestions.

Sitting Pretty

Guess what may or may not have been purchased by me today?

Need a hint?

I texted Jon while at the store and told him I needed it and now wanted to completely re-do the living room. His response, "Are you insane?" My response back, " No, just a decorator."

We are picking it up on Saturday. Smart man that husband of mine is.

Don't worry I'm not re-doing the living room...yet. I just couldn't think of it going home with someone else. :)

Little Ruffled Dress

The lovely ladies over at Nesting Newbies gave me the heads up that their pictures from the NYDC New Curators event was up on their site!



I must tell you that along with getting to meet and hang out with many of favorite bloggers one of my favorite parts of the event was the dress I was wearing!

You all know that I love a good ruffle so when I spotted this dress by Elizabeth McKay it had to be mine. Plus it was navy one of my favorite shades and I made sure to finish up the look with orange heels!

Elizabeth's pieces are classic and I quickly find myself wanting more of them:

Elephant shirt:



Little black dress:



Striped skirt for the holidays:



Totally in love with her collection.

Forget me knot...

I think it's a must to add a bow ring to my jewelry collection.

This striped number caught my eye right away:

It's quickly been added to my Christmas wish list. Of course the thought of having to wait that long is totally sad so I found something just as chic on a budget:

I think both could happily live together in my vanity.

Road Trip...

Part of celebrating Jon's birthday is a trip into Connecticut tomorrow to go here:

Thrilling I know. :) I am more than happy to go since you know the man helps me out so much and his weekends are normally filled with interior design projects. Since it is a rather long drive (2 and half hours) I was hoping some of my lovely readers would let me in on an great thrift stores, home stores, etc in the area so that I could stay entertained while Jon roams through aisles and aisles of fishing lures.

We are going to be in East Hartford, CT.

P.S. : Thanks to all who took some time and left Jon a birthday comment yesterday. He was really excited about it!

He had a couple of words to add to this mornings post. In case you didn't see it here it is again:

Hey everyone it's Jon. I just wanted to thank everyone for all of your sweet thoughts on my birthday. I'm glad that you enjoy our projects. I'm sure Camila will be starting a waiting list for all of you ladies that want to hire me out. Perhaps a road trip across America is in my near future? I'm sure you'll be seeing my hairy arms in many future projects to come. Didn't have to work on any last night, but Camila has a nice list for this weekend. JK you know I love her, but seriously we're working on finishing a project this weekend that was my baby from the beginning. I think you'll all love it.

-Jon

Happy Birthday Hubby!

Today this sweet man turns 29!

Without Jon none of my projects and blog posts would not happen.

We would have never had learned how to install wood floor laminate:



Daniela would have never gotten a new headboard:



My guest room wouldn't have gotten Kate Spade inspired curtains:



My office space that is full of windows would be naked!



Ximena's folding chairs would still look ugly:



My dollar store picture frames wouldn't look like million dollar frames!



Mom's kitchen cabinets wouldn't have a new look:



Our guest room wouldn't have a budget friendly homasote memo board:



I wouldn't have a cool new paint deck:



One of my clients would be without a custom covered ottoman:



Or an Oomph look a like table:



Daniela wouldn't have her chic chevron rug *PS I was at Danay's apt last weekend and the rug is holding up great. It still looks amazing. I'm itching to make one for my own home now.



One of my clients wouldn't have this amazing display for her wall out of wallpaper:



Our man den wouldn't have it's very own diy brickmaker table:



Ximena wouldn't have a free tufted headboard made out of a crib!



I wouldn't have jaw dropping amazing jade colored floors in my kitchen:



No new DIY Colette upholstered bed



Whew I think you guys get the idea. I could go on and on! The man is a saint that puts up with my insainty and loves me the entire time. I've never had a bigger cheerleader and supporter who believes in me when I'm in tears over this little business of mine.

I know that Jon reads my blog everyday so I hope he enjoys this post! I love you boops and wish you the happiest of birthdays!

If you have a second I would love for you guys to leave a comment and wish Jon a Happy Birthday. His favorite part of the day is reading comments and seeing if people liked that days posts.

My life is an open book

Today I get to participate in a blog crawl that was put together by Beth of Hello Splendor.

The blog crawl is a way to form a sense of community within bloggers. Everyone that participated in the blog crawl had to do a post about their life in a nutshell.

I tend to over share on this blog so I'm sure you'll know all of my answers before reading below!

While I would love to take full credit for everything I do on this blog I can't. The majority of it wouldn't get down if I didn't have Jon's help. From DIY projects to client installs the man does it all with a smile!


I was very excited to be able to take part in Beth from Hello Splendor's blog crawl.

Now it can't just be about Jon & I most of the time whether he likes it or not these folks are around:


*Don't worry I swear he doesn't mind that they around a lot. It gives him a lovely excuse to escape and play video games while I'm distracted by my sisters.

The Setting: I was born and raised a city girl. I moved to the suburbs at the start of middle school, but I will always consider myself a Manhattanite. Of course Jon loves grass and trees and things like that so our home remained in the suburbs.



The Plot: Oh you all know the story.

Girl meets Boy
Girl marries Boy
Girl & Boy purchase 1st home.
Girl hits 25 and has massive quarter life crisis.
Girl ditches past in retail buying & art direction and starts blog and studies design!
Girl takes on clients, continues blogging and lives happily ever after.

Here I am doing a little bit of everything: Faux blogging at the design center along with chatting guests up about design:

The twist...
Ah we all know I've had some personal ups and downs with starting a family, but lets just keep this happy and positive! Hopefully all of my twists are behind and I'm finally on the right course. Took long enough this lady turns 30 in May!


I seem to be the last blogger to go on this blog crawl. If you have a chance you can check out Hollie who went yesterday.

Vow Renewal pictures!

We finally got the pictures from the professional photographer of my parents big day!

Jon truly is the son my parents never had so when it came time to figure out who was going to walk down the aisle Mom picked Jon right away. My sisters literally tear up every time they think of this.



Mom & Dad during ceremony:



Mom & Dad during vows:



**No picture of their first kiss. Don't even get me started on how mad I am at the photographer, but what I do now. So just use your imagination. Mwah!***

All of us after it's done!

*Jon had fun congratulation my sisters and I on no longer being bastards. Ah funny guy :) Hope I can write that on a blog if not oh well I just did.

The newlyweds on the grounds of the reception:



Funny shot:

Mom doesn't know what they were laughing at, but it's a good shot of her hair accessory and her ruffled shoes.

Another family shot:


Sister shot:

My hair looks so simple, because I had a bit of fit getting ready. We had our hair down, but the lady did mine like a birds nest. Tried fixing it at home, but rain out of time so I ended up just brushing the mess out and pulling it back.

Mom's bouquet that I made the night before:


Bridesmaid bouquet that I also made:


Cocktail Party fun:



Mom & Dad with our extended family at the reception:


Hope you enjoyed a little sneak peek into a special day in my life. Mom & Dad already planning the next renewal. They had a blast.