The Country Living Fair is coming to Ohio!

Every September, the Country Living Fair comes to Ohio, bringing  the pages of the beloved magazine to life with handmade and vintage vendors sprawled along the charming grounds of the historic Ohio Village. Each year I hope to finally have a chance to attend, but usually am disappointed to find I have booked a wedding to photograph that weekend. This year, though? I not only get to attend, but I’m also honored to be a presenter on the main stage! On Friday at 4PM, I’ll be demonstrating how to make ceiling lights out of wire baskets, showing three ways to customize them in unique ways.

2 Early Bird Tickets to Giveaway!

In addition to presenting at the Country Living Fair in Columbus, I also have two early bird tickets to give away! That’s a value of $80. The event (taking place on Friday, September 12th through Sunday the 14th) is jam packed with handmade, vintage, and food vendors in the heart of Columbus— Ohio’s eclectic capitol city, and a favorite weekend destination of our family. There will also be live demonstrations and seminars all weekend! To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment below. The winner of two early bird tickets will be posted on Monday night, 9/8 at midnight EST. Please only enter the giveaway if you know you are able to attend the event. For more fair information, click here.

Update to Announce Winner:

Danielle, congratulations! Your comment was selected as the winner for two early bird tickets to the Country Living Fair this weekend. I’ll be e-mailing you for details. If Danielle is unable to attend, I’ll select another winner. Thanks for entering, and I hope to meet some of you this weekend!

Images above are from past Country Living Fairs in Columbus.
Click to visit the original source: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

It was about halfway through our kitchen renovation that I started feeling incredibly anxious. It might have been my irrational feeling that my kitchen would never ever be clean again, or maybe the real struggle of keeping a toddler from constantly climbing one of the two ladders that were always standing about. After I forced myself to let go of the pressure (and sent Lucy to my parents for the night), I decided to just plow forward, nose to the grindstone, and bust out as much work as possible so we could get back to normal.

Two 4AM bedtimes later, I went from a near breakdown in a cluttered house and ripped up kitchen with no counters (see image above) to exhaustedly sipping fresh coffee in an almost finished kitchen! (See last image for our current progress.) We still have a few things left to do, like install the ceiling ventilation to replace the hood vent, change out the overhead light, mount the under-shelf lights, and a little bit more accessorizing. But we’re almost there, and I’m so excited to share my post recent progress today at A Beautiful Mess.

Check out all of my kitchen renovation posts below:

• Planning a Budget Kitchen Renovation
• Refinishing Kitchen Cabinets
• Cleaning, Painting, and Drilling into the Brick Wall
• Reconfiguring Existing Cabinets for a Fresh Look
• How to Make an Inexpensive Plank Backsplash

Hunting down the perfect typeface for a project can take some time, especially when it’s for a personal project. I hate designing for myself, but often do it out of necessity, like when I revamped my blog design last week. Hand drawing type is definitely not my strong point, so I usually end up looking for a free or not super expensive typeface that fits the bill. Here are a few of my favorite free typefaces I’ve used in the past year, including one $29 font you can see in my new blog logo, Filmotype Horizon.

Click the links for each typeface below. Enjoy!

• Thirsty Script
• Clear Line
• Colors of Autumn
• Cheddar Jack
• Wolf in the City
• Filmotype Horizon ($29)

Images are from my recent abstract painting. Check out the process here.