an announcement of the amazing kind

*clears throat and twists rings nervously*

thank you for stopping by today! it's an exciting day for me, and i'm glad you stopped by to peek in on the official announcement i have to make.

let's go back a bit first: while i've known this little secret for a while, i was ever leary about uttering the words out loud until i knew FOR SURE that this was really happening. i mean, who wants to be the kid who says "hey guys, i made the team" only to find they were cut the day before the jerseys were even handed out? NOT THIS KID. also, i have lived and worked enough in life to know that nothing is done until it's actually DONE done. you know this. you get it.

so what's my news? well, to me it's kinda a big deal. i'm going to be in a book! well, not ME, but one of my creations and designs is! it's a style and home design book. it's coming out in the fall. it's authored by none other than her royal style majesty Grace Bonney, creater of the one and only Design*Sponge website, it's the Design Sponge at Home book!

can you stand it?!

so, there was a call a long time ago for projects, i replied with a couple of photos and a link to a blog post and now, one of MY Vintage Suitcase Tables (I won't tell you which one) is going to be in the Design Sponge at Home book. i am so flattered and excited and still convinced it's not really happening that it feels weird to even be typing this out. ANYWAY. the book comes out in September, Grace is heading out on a huge booktour very soon and can already be pre-ordered online.

here's some info from the publisher:

Grace Bonney created her daily Web site Design*Sponge as an antidote to the fussy (and expensive) shelter magazines of her mother’s generation. The New York Times has dubbed the site, with its 60,000 daily readers, “Martha Stewart Living for millennials.”

DESIGN*SPONGE at Home is Bonney’s definitive guide to home décor for her fellow design sponges—those house-proud young homeowners and renters who adore soaking up design ideas and using them as inspiration to decorate and personalize their own homes. This design compendium contains peeks of 75 real-life interiors, where the décor was culled from flea markets and the owners’ imaginations, as well as more than 100 projects (with detailed instructions) from a table made out of abandoned chair legs to a butterfly dome.

Packed with hundreds color photographs and illustrations, this beautiful book includes a decorating basics section with tutorials on everything from stripping and painting furniture to hanging wallpaper and doing your own upholstery. Along the way, Bonney—whose enthusiasm and joy in her subject is infectious—teaches the reader the principles of decorating and collecting, empowering them to create beautiful homes of their own.

Grace Bonney is the creator of Design*Sponge, a daily Web site dedicated to home and product design. A native of Virginia Beach, Grace has worked as a contributing editor at publications like House & Garden, Domino, and Craft Magazine. In 2006 Grace founded the Design*Sponge Biz Ladies series, a traveling event designed to connect women running their own design-based businesses with free legal, financial, and marketing advice.

so a big thank you to Grace, for including me in the book and teaching me my ideas are worth looking at, for answering every e-mail and tweet i sent asking if i had been edited out yet with a swift positive response, and for not editing me out in the end. thank you Grace. you have no idea what this means to me.

also, to my interweb tribe: the comments and feedback and e-mails on any thing i post here is what fuels me. i appreciate any glance at the site, your comments are gold. thank you. thank you. thank you.

♥ leel