The Gathering Project

Today, I’m really excited to share with you a cool project I’ve been working on for the past few months! One of my friends, Chelsea Rose Moore, and I have started a creative workshop that’s debuting on January 25th. It’s a one-day retreat in DC with four sessions hosted by local artisans from the Northern Virginia area. 

Do you like working with your hands? Making your home beautiful? Entertaining and organizing pretty events? I think you might just like the Gathering Project. We have four amazing workshop hosts who will be teaching you about their favorite things and then help you make them! Bonus: You’ll get to take home something you make from each workshop!

During the event, you will learn to style a winter table with Rebecca Gallop of A Daily Something, make seasonal drinks with Rebekah Pizana, craft a winter wreath with Amy Showalter, and paint signage art and lettering with Erik Landstrom. 

We really want you to come to our first event. We are also providing breakfast and lunch during the day! From 8-4:30pm, you’ll be hanging out in an awesome DC loft (The Loft at 600 F), which is super chic and artsy. We also have a ton of amazing sponsors including (but not limited to)  Eric Nielsen of Mahogany Print Productions, LoCo Joe’s Coffee, ScrapCuts, Lily and Val, Knead and Know, June Jars, Kaufmann Mercantile, and Birch Fields Photography.

Some of these sponsors have even offered amazing things for us to give away so you won’t want to miss that!

Hey look, it’s me and Chelsea! 

To sign up, click here and enter the promo code: friends for a 50% discount. I would love to meet you there, so get your tickets today!

Sharpie Therapy / 6

In case you’ve missed past weeks of Sharpie Therapy and don’t know what I’m talking about, check out my introductory post here! This week I’ve drawn out some of my  favorite J.R.R. Tolkien quotes. His birthday was last week and he has sure said some incredible things! Which of his quotes are your favorite?

Kinfolk Workshop / Natural Holiday Decor

Last Friday, I had the privilege of attending my first Kinfolk event. They provide different themes for each month’s gathering and December’s workshop theme was Natural Holiday Decor. Kinfolk’s website describes the event as follows:

We are looking to good old-fashioned nature to creatively refresh us, as well as to provide the materials needed for bringing something fresh indoors. The earth’s widespread palette of color and texture are a tried-and-true source for creating unique decor not merely for the holiday season.

Rebecca Gallop, my dear friend who I met in college and has since become a well-known blogger, prop styling, and wedding designer, hosted this particular event. She, along with the ladies of Sweet Root Village, taught us how to bring the outdoors inside and make them into beautiful decorations for the holiday season.

I’m excited to show you some pictures I took from the event! It was a great workshop where fellow creatives came together, ate a great meal, and made beautiful wreaths and garlands.

The location was just around the corner from the National Portrait Gallery and the Spy Museum and is called the Loft at 600 F. You’ll see how beautiful this space is in the next few pictures!

Here is what the entrance to the building looks like. Rebecca had set up this sign to direct us upstairs.

What did I tell you? This loft is darling and super classy! I can’t wait to host the Gathering Project’s first workshop here in January.

They decorated with natural greenery and those glass balls hanging from the rafters have tiny candles in them.

This was the workshop space where we crafted natural greenery in to holiday decor for our homes. 

The natural light in this space was gorgeous!

Rebecca shared with us a way to make beautiful greenery imprints on cloth! (this project featured: hammers and strong arms)

Favors at our lunch spots! Such beautiful taper candles by Talia Olmstead and a forage guide to greenery by Jennifer Olmstead.

Lunch showcased amazing soups, accompanied by a mixed greens salad and hearty bread. 

After lunch, we started the wreath and garland making! I couldn’t help but snack on some fresh pomegranate and delicious chocolate cake while listening to Lauren teach.

They brought so much fresh greenery from the generous Wollam Gardens. I used cedar branches for my wreath.

Finished product!

By the afternoon, the entire loft smelled of the natural outdoors.

As soon as I got home, this wreath went up on my front door. Such a nice touch to the apartment! If you ever get the chance to attend a Kinfolk event, I would highly recommend you do. It was so much fun to taste amazing food, learn a new skill, and meet other creative types! You won’t be disappointed.

Sharpie Therapy / 5

So many worship songs have such amazing lyrics. I can’t help but write them down. Today, I’m taking Sharpie Therapy to a new level and trying out some new fonts! What do you think? I’d love to see some of your favorite worship songs in sharpie art. Send them to joodlesdoodles@gmail.com and I’ll share them here in an upcoming Sharpie Therapy column. 🙂

Sharpie Therapy / Friendship

I was planning on showing you guys some more of my Sharpie Therapy Christmas stuff but that will have to wait until next week. I have been thinking about my friendships this week and happened about a few great quotes.

This first one makes me think of a few friends I have that I can be real with. You know what I mean because you thought of a specific friend or two when you read the quote below. A friend who you can share your heart with but also be a little silly with and, yes, maybe even act stupidly along side sometime.  Go send a text to that friend and thank them for allowing you to be yourself. Bets are you are already talking to them. 🙂

This next quote is something I’ve had to remember. I’m not one that makes friends easily. It’s actually something I’ve had to learn. I have never had many friends. Part of that is because I’m an INFJ and we prefer to have a few super close friends than thousands of surface-y friendships. However, I’ve learned that the #1 way to make friends is to reach out and take the first step toward friendship. Whether that is a call for coffee or a friendly FB post, reach out to a new friend!Now this quote is all about the loyal friends in your life. Loyalty is big for me and something that makes it on the top 3 list of friend qualities I hold most dear. These are people who never leave your side even when the times are tough. These are the Best friends. Call your best friend up tonight and let them know how much you appreciate them. Then show them the same loyalty in return.
What are some of your favorite quote on friendship?

Weekend Recap / 6

This past weekend was amazing! It felt like Christmas, birthday and vacation all in one. This is mostly because of the snow that came down yesterday. You can ask Bradley, I was basically giddy all day. 🙂

And I was happy to have gotten these guys at Target right before Thanksgiving. So cute!

On Saturday, my friend Chelsea and I launched the facebook page for a new project we are working on called The Gathering Project. It’s a day long workshop in January where local artisans will be teaching guests about bringing warmth into winter through their individual skills: wreath making, table styling, lettering and typography and drink mixing. We are so excited!

I also started working on Christmas present for a few of my friends. However, since they are all reading this now, I can’t post any more pictures than these few below. 😉 I love making gifts for those special people in my life. Homemade presents are the best!

As you can see, the Sharpie Therapy of the day also had to do with snow. 🙂 Such truth in this verse.
Did you have fun this weekend? Maybe making gifts or wishing you were enjoying the snow? I’d love to hear all about it.

Apartment Design / Christmas Decorations

Bradley and I just decorated our apartment last night. Our place always feels more cozy when we have those white twinkly lights, green boughs, and brown pinecones scattered about. Since our place is the size it is, we don’t need that many decorations for the holidays, just some here and there to bring life into our home.

Most of these decorations I made last year. This one is from a stencil (lettering) and two pieces of card stock, strung together with black and white baker’s twine.

Since our tree is so small, we have to pick just a few ornaments to display. Mom gave this one to us last year.

I love having a shelf to decorate.

Favorite decor spot!

Enjoy the little taste of our home for the holiday! Which decoration was your favorite?

Sharpie Therapy / Christmas Cards

This week, Sharpie Therapy is looking at some Christmas card designs.  My favorite Christmas cards each year are those based on Scripture and carols and ones with a great design. Here I used grey and white card stock for these cards along with the ever bold, black Sharpie.

Want to use one of these designs as your own? Email me at joodlesdoodles@gmail.com and I’ll send you the image!

Sharpie Therapy / 4

Happy Thanksgiving week! This week Sharpie Therapy is covering quotes and verses about gratefulness and thankfulness. Practicing thankfulness renews your spirit so I thought it was appropriate to draw these out on green card stock. Let me know what you think and Be Thankful!

 

Apartment Design / Kitchen Walls

I’ve been wanting to write a couple posts about updating our lovely apartment after two years of living in it. The pictures below are from our eat-in kitchen area. I love Julia Child quotes so I found these printables on a blog. (Unfortunately, I printed the off so long ago that by the time I actually got them up and took pictures I can’t seem to find where they were from.) Here are a couple other options in case you’re also looking for some great “typographically sound” printable Julia Child wall art (design 1) (design 2) (design 3) (design 4).

Here I am looking into a mirror I refinished.

It used to be a gold-ish black color and unfortunately matched the previous look I was attempting to achieve. After the inspiration to put up a white floating shelf with white frames and colorful quotes, I knew the mirror had to change as well.

I took it outside and spray painted it white. However, it didn’t really change the mirror frame color white. It became more of a salmon pink. Against our light tan walls, let me tell you, it was a gorgeous color (not). So I ran to the store and grabbed another can of spray paint. This time a soft and dark grey color. It really covered up the awful pink nicely.

When it dried (after several attempts while it was still wet), I used two different weights of sandpaper to rough up the frame. It reveals some of the “white” underneath and gives it a washed and worn effect.
I really like the looks of where this new kitchen is going! Sometimes inspiration hits and when it does, I like to grab spray paint and get some design work going!