Some Faux Plants & A Wreath

Last Thursday was my 27th birthday and of course my family and friends did not fail to deliver. My sweet hubby whisked me out to a yummy Mediterranean restaurant (Cous Cous!) and the next morning we headed up to his parents’ beach house in Delaware for a birthday weekend with my mom and stepdad along with the in-laws. Before I knew it we were loading present after present into the car and heading home on Sunday. Time flies when you are having lively (and ripping open some house-related birthday gifts). Here are the goods…

John’s a big proponent of a birthday list, which is consistently a lot of lively to create. I only need to drop in on a few of my go-to online stores and before I know it I have a slew of links that he can send out to his family (and mine!). I in fact spotted these faux topiaries a while back, and was especially excited that they were still around to add to my little b-day list. Do not they look glad in the sunroom?

These fake rosemary and mint topiaries (or as I enjoy to call them: fauxpiaries) add some green to our sunroom, which cannot truly sustain actual greenery year round since it gets freezing cold in the winter (it is not temperature controlled in there, and we have tried everything from boxwoods to evergreens with limited luck). I am not truly opposed to fake plants, as long as they look real and are not especially ostentatious (and there are real plants around too). Thankfully, these folks look simply as good in person as they do online… which is not consistently the case. Whew.

My mom also gave me the consistently-appreciated birthday check along with a little basket of goodies for the kitchen (organic parsley that you can grow right in the bag, gourmet popcorn and Barefoot Contessa brownies, mmmm).

John’s mom and dad also got me this excellent Pottery Barn wreath which I have had my eye on since December. And now that it has been marked down from $99 to $29, it is certainly a steal. I was so excited about it I even took it for a test run when we got home (and in fact considered keeping it up year-round, but John managed to convince me that the pinecones made it a bit less all-season than I originally thought). Oh well, bringing it out every Christmas will make it feel like a especially special occasion. Only nine more months and counting…

Here is a detail shot of those vivid bleached paper-thin leaves and the festive flowers, pinecones and pom poms (the pics on the PB website do not even do it justice- and it is large!).

From John and his sister I got two of these remarkable ZGallerie candle sconces that I have been sweating since the moment they were brought in to the site a few weeks ago. The graphic shape works with so many things that already reside in Casa Petersik- the outline mimics our yellow living room rug, and they even look fabulous with the patterned quilt in our guest bedroom:

Ultimately we chose to hang them in the master suite so we could enjoy them a bit more regularly- and as luck would have it, they also look lovely with our blue and white duvet- who knew those babies would be so versatile?!

Here is the blank wall that was simply crying out for attention (we believe in waiting to hang something that we truly enjoy instead of rushing into anything that we may regret- and a blank wall in a bedroom is in fact surprisingly soothing):

And here is the hubs hanging my birthday sconces while I stepped back and perfected the placement (it is certainly IMPERATIVE to stand back and take a good look at everything you are hanging while someone else holds it up to avoid about a million “oops holes” as we call ’em). We also used anchors to ensure that they are pleasant and secure (do not wanna mess around when there is an open flame involved).

Here they are all purrrty on the wall. I enjoy the staggered placement (John’s idea- he’s quite the decorator) and the way the mirrors bounce around the candlelight so liberally. Are not birthdays the best?

Here is the gratuitous detail shot. I think I am in love…

So that is the birthday present play by play. Thanks so much to my lovely friends and family (and especially my sweet hubby- who already made us those Barefoot Contessa brownies). Best birthday ever! And speaking of birthdays, what do you folks do when yours rolls around? Do you ever go for house-related items? Consistently ask for cold hard cash? Make a b-day list to send around? Do tell.