Contributor DIY: Baking Sheet Plant Trays

Friday! We made it! We’re ramping up for a creative and relaxing weekend. On the agenda: roasting beets and testing herbs, making vanilla extract and loquat granitas and planting a new herb garden. How about you? There’s something so promising about a relaxing weekend ahead, isn’t there?

If you’re looking for a fun gardening project, try out this 5-step DIY from contributor {and one of our amazing past brides} Stephenie! Her darling blog is Nap Time Designzzz and this project was created after she grew tired of dusting dirt off of her patio.

All you need: spray paint and old beat up baking sheets!

 Photos by Nap Time Designzzz

Brilliant, right?  Thank you so much for sharing, Stephenie! Wishing you all a magnificent weekend….do share what you’re up to! We’d love to know!

 

Home Living: West Elm Summer Preview

It’s no secret that we are quite smitten with West Elm. We especially love when they roll out new seasonal goodness and amazing collaborations with talented artists for their collections. We were recently invited to preview the new summer wares and boy, what fun we had dreaming up uses for everything from silk screen printed pillows to gorgeous woven rugs in vibrant colors, nautical stripes and all sorts of lovely goods for summertime entertaining. A huge thanks to Lauren Pryor and Jessica Packard {of With Love, Design} for inviting us and for inspiring us all! What fun! We finally got to meet the sweet Kristina Gulino from Nook & Sea in person and visit with Jenn of Style Your Life. There are far too many favorites to share them all, but here are some of our picks we positively adored!

These colors! You know us – the stripes and hues of blue, ranging from aqua to deep nautical-inspired navy, are right up our alley!

We were utterly impressed with the collections from talented South African artist and photographer Clinton Friedman. His unique work graces ceramic plates {think pincushion protea} and silk pillows and it’s vibrant and beautiful.

We loved the intentional mismatching of this bedroom vignette. A variety of patterns and colors came together to create an eclectic bedroom scene, topped off with an ultra special Moroccan wedding blanket.

If this setting doesn’t say summer, we don’t know what does. We can envision lounging for hours poolside listening to the palm trees blowing in the breeze with a spiked lemonade in hand….

Too cute for words.

Envision one of these hand-painted vessels brimming with white clouds of peonies or hydrangea blooms set atop an Al Fresco table. Lovely, right?

 Photos by Valley & Co.

We took nearly one hundred images – every piece can be used in so many  ways both for entertaining during the summertime and indoors. Hop on over to West Elm to see more of the goodness! But first, we’d love to hear if you have a favorite piece from what we shared!

Spring Cleaning: Small Business Tips

Happy {tax} Tuesday, friends! We’re sharing something a little different today – we’re so grateful for the awesome feedback you give us when we share our planning and small business tips, challenges and ideas. So today we’re sharing our map for spring cleaning your small business…we’re also leading up to an exciting announcement coming your way very soon…..

Here’s a peek at our Spring Cleaning Plan – you can download your own below:

Download our Small Business Spring Cleaning PDF here! ValleyandCoSmallBusinessSpringCleaning

We hope this inspires you to get a handle on those daunting tasks that you might keep pushing to the bottom of your list. That it inspires you to spruce up your work space. To take on a new challenge.

So, please share: how will you use our spring cleaning plan?

Spaces: Patio Corner Transformation

We all have that space {yes, that one} either in our home or yard that just need some happiness. In our instance it was an old wall tarnished by the sea air in our yard that borders on a small patio area. It was just kind of blah – a blank space pleading for something to jazz it up. We had this air plant wall {remember that DIY?} gathering dust so Nick had the idea of putting it up as an art installation to fill this void. The rusty decorative metal of this screen adds such interest and the spiky air plants and magical Spanish moss add a unique look.

Then we added three battered old white pickets we distressed and painted {a la European road signs} with some favorite European spots. Note the mileage is now quite off as we made these for our Seattle home years ago. But they still take us to our favorite crookedy cobbled lanes and shops and memories just the same.

To top it all off, we added some village globe lights and it just perfected this unused corner of the yard. We have two teak chairs anchored on one side and benches and a table flanking the other. These three elements just transformed such a blank canvas in a fantastic way! Now there’s no excuse not to use this corner of the yard for sipping a summertime cocktail or diving into the pages of a good book.

Looks so rustic and lovely, right? A nice contrast to our teak chairs with striped nautical pillows and palm tree garden!

What’s a space you’ve been eager to jazz up for the spring?

 

 

Elements of Fun: Sunday Polo!

We always have a ball with our families, and packing up snacks, wine and champagne and heading to a polo match over near Palm Springs with Aleah’s parents was no exception to the fun. During the winter months {from January – March} they hold polo matches before it gets too hot in the desert and the horses head over to the coast and play in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. The folks are now spending a handful of winter months down at the desert house while the rains whip and the winds blow back up on the home island in Washington, so we get an extra special treat during this time of year. Golfing, pool lounging, more golfing…and polo! What a fun day- it’s sure an experience! Before the match tailgating takes place – lines of cars put their tailgates down and bring out the picnic baskets full of goodness.

These balls become hammered and grass-stained by the heavy wooden mallets, but look how cool they are! We snatched up three with distressed Empire Polo Club logo and they now have a funky place in one of our curio cabinets nestled into an Irish toasting cup.

A peek into our basket: fig jam, fresh watermelon, assorted olives and crackers, Limonata, wine and champagne, and lots of delicious cookies and treats filled the back of the car for our tailgating fun.

When the horses come at you full speed ahead the ground just shakes as their hooves pound. So amazing.

Mid-way through everyone pours flutes of bubble and heads out onto the field to stomp the divots. What an awesome tradition!

A’s favorite seersucker capris {snatched up at the GAP years ago} and Italian wedges.

Get Aleah’s casual white t-shirt, seersucker and baubles look!

 

Wicker Picnic Basket from Williams-Sonoma |  Woven Basket from Crate & Barrel | Manchego & Membrillo | Crisscross Wedge Sandal from GAP | Seersucker Pants from Brooks Brothers |  Yellow Bubble Necklace & Monotone Beaded Necklace in Flame – both from J. Crew

Happy Wednesday, friends!