One Year Later

It's been almost a year since our wedding (our anniversary is this Saturday, Feb 15) and I realize I never posted any finished photographs. Let me do this now.

The wedding party. I did the flowers! I also did the circlet for the flower girl and her basket. And the boutonnieres.

A close up of the bouquets I did. Ordered the flowers wholesale and made them myself.

I actually forgot the precious moments cake topper I had bought, so this was an emergency one. The cake was done by a friend of a friend.

The bride and groom's table. Decorated by us!

The rest of the table, also decorated by us!

It was a great time. We had great friends. I cooked almost all the good too. If I had it to do over again, I'd delegate a bit more. other than that? perfect for me. And less than $5000 for EVERYTHING.

23 days!

There's not a lot going on craft wise lately with the wedding. Well, last night was an exception. Finally went to Hobby Lobby and Michael's. I have also been ordering things on amazon. I got the cake server set, purple gems for centerpieces, and toasting glasses for us, and then the flower girl basket. It needed customizing though, so that was the first project for last night:

At the stores yesterday I also bought the guest book, and I still have coming to me 1000 silver and purple rose petals, a precious moments cake topper, and 75 yards of sparkly purple tulle. Yesterday from the stuff I got I made butonneres (I know that's spelled wrong. sigh) for the boy, his wedding party, and my dad. I really love the way they turned out!

I had enough product left over that I made a pretty corsage pin for the boy's beautiful mom (and her beautiful dress! She showed it to me the other day and it's going to look awesome on her).

Over the next day or two, I'm going to be spray painting wine bottles metallic silver, getting centerpieces decided and ready to go, and basically freaking out because there are 23 days left. ER:KJEWRH@#IRH@#RH@#H@# (That is me slamming my head against the keyboard)

So long, so long.. Sigh.

I feel like a complete tool. I saw my last post was November 19, and I just was like - wow. Has it really been that long? In my defense there were three holidays, one of which I drove solo across country for, and then things just got away from me. I've been doing a whole lot for the wedding though, so get ready for a photo intensive post!

We got the boy fitted for his suit. He'll have grey pants to match the jacket, but they only had black to try on. He needed a size larger than he was used to. I giggled a bit.

Found our flower girl's dress - at Costco. For $18.99. I was floored. It was in the "holiday dresses" but look at it! It's perfect for her. And I made the crown myself. It's got little bits of tulle streaming down the back.

My handsome fiance got me this jewelry set for Christmas. It's tanzanite, and it's either blue or purple depending on the light which I think makes it perfect for my something blue. He got it with the intention for me to wear to the wedding. I love this man - is there any wonder why?

I had my bridesmaids lunch too. They each got one of these wonderful baskets and some good Mexican food, and we had a good time. And that is the end of the photos! I will be getting back on track with more posting - oh! We also had to move the wedding to February 15. Which means it's even closer. And I still have so much to do!

PS - EVERYONE LOVED THE INVITATIONS! =D

Spa Goods Done!

Oh, I'm so pleased with the way this stuff turned out. It was even better than I had planned on, because I got these epsom salts with eucalyptus and spearmint already in them... I added some mint oil, grapefruit essential oil, and peppermint extract and a few drops of red food coloring to make it pink. That's all I did for the amazing smelling bath salts. For the sugar scrub, I took equal parts of white sugar and brown sugar, then filled up with grapeseed oil, lavender essential oil, and vanilla extract. You don't want to oversaturate with oil, but you do want it to be moist enough to use as a scrub.

ADORABLE RIGHT?
(the tall container is the bath salt, the square is the scrub)

The soap was fun too. I got some white glycerin from Michael's and a few heart molds. I melted the glycerin, added honey, cinnamon and food coloring, then poured it into the heart molds (making sure to spray liberally with Pam before doing so). It hardened back up, I popped it out, and wrapped it pretty. And voila! My maids are going to have some awesome stuff to pamper themselves with. I gotta get the nail polishes and stuff into the cosmetic bags, and then package the whole thing up. I also need to schedule a bridesmaids luncheon for the end of next month.

So that's what I've been doing today. It was a clean the house and stuff kind of day, and I'll probably assemble some more invitations tonight.

Overwhelmed!

Have you ever had those days where just nothing seems to go right? It's been one of those days. From the moment I dropped my dad off at work it seemed and started driving right into the sun, then the weird guy at the laundry that manhandled my undies (and eliciting a threat from me) ... having a super bad tummy ache and spending more time out than I really had planned - it just started out terrible. Then got into a few misunderstandings with the boy (which eventually worked themselves out) and I couldn't catch a break at all today. It was like 50 billion little things all adding up to terribleness. I did get some ghirardelli holiday chocolates though, and all in all they were awesome. The pumpkin spice caramel chocolates were my favorite!

None of this has to do with my wedding. I spent the morning putting the finishing touches on my holiday wreath. It is absolutely beautiful and I can't wait to put it on the door. I then went to try to work on wedding stuff this afternoon. I tied tulle to the tins that will hold the bath salts and scrub. I managed to make the scrub yesterday between batches of cookies, and it smells amazing (lavender vanilla for those of you that don't remember). It's not enough though. I used two cups each sugar and it didn't make enough for four tins much less the extra I wanted to make to take to my friend as a hospitality gift (she's letting me crash at her place on the way to and from TN in December). And of course, I'm low on sugar after cookies, so it will wait until after the store tomorrow.

Here is a peek at the wreath! I'm thinking of selling them on Etsy.

I tinned up 3.5 tins of scrub and set them aside, and after some theraputic WoW with the boy and some Sweet Tomatoes, I started working on tulle bows for the pews. I didn't know how to make bows so I set to google and youtube. Yeah, they look stupid. I'm going to have to redo them. I made one that is kind of nice but I don't think it'll work for the pews. Maybe it will work for the seat backs. Hopefully his mom knows how to tie them better than I do. I think we're going to need a lot more tulle too.

The point of all this is that today I'm just overwhelmed and uninspired. And I suppose it's ok to have those days. You can't be 100% all the time. It seems the closer he is to coming home, the less I want to do for the wedding. I haven't done any more invitations since the day I shot the tutorial. Maybe I just need a couple of days off of wedding stuff to refresh my mind. Maybe I just need him to come home and then I can go OK! onto wedding stuff. Sigh.

DIY Post: Invitation Invocation

I FINALLY GOT IT DOWN!! I had so many issues figuring out how I wanted to do the invitations. I got this really pretty cream colored card stock with flecks of purple, blue, and other colors. It was marketed as stardust and it is very celestial. I then got some pretty purple card stock for the outside. I grabbed some white and purple tissue paper at wal mart. Then I also got some really super thin cream ribbon from the craft section. It was like $1 a spool. I have a guillotine paper slicer which came in real handy for this project, and I had a real cute edger puncher (you can find them in the scrapbook section of Michael's or Hobby Lobby and they have all kinds of cute designs). I also had a heart-shaped hole puncher (you can save the hole punches if you want to make confetti later too - great multi tasking!).

Step one: (cut a hole in the box - ok, not really)

Print out and cut your invitation the way you want it. I printed four per page because that will fit our envelopes perfect. I then trimmed most of the space around it like you can see above.

Step two:

Cut the card stock to fit around the invite itself. I used the invite, held it up to the stock, and sliced away.

Step three:

Use the edger to make the ends look all nice and pretty.

Step four:

I used the ruler part of my paper cutter for this to get it exact. Measure to the center of the backing card stock, and drop dots of glue all the way down. Then settle your invitation in the center, like so. Then fold the sides up.

Step five:

Punch two holes on each folded up side. This is to thread your ribbon though.

Step six:

Cut a piece of tissue paper to fit over top of the invitation. That'll be how it's presented - they'll see that first, so make sure it looks nice.

Step seven:

Thread the ribbon through. I tried it a few different ways, and it seemed that the ribbon sticking out OVER the folds instead of under looked better.

like this

Step eight:

And this is what it looks like all tied up! Isn't that pretty?

I can't wait for my friends and family to open these up. They take some time, but doing them myself was such a great idea. I love how they look!

Wedding Fashion

I am feeling pretty good right now. Today I took care of all kinds of hurdles. Clayton's mom called and woke me up this morning to talk about the church and that we were going to be able to get it without breaking the bank. Reception area too. That was a huge load off my mind. Last night I utilized a coupon code that Clayton's brother gave us from a friend whose wedding he was in - Tungsten rings costing $300 on average for free - just pay $25 per ring for shipping and if you want engraving that's extra (pro tip: if you use them, don't order the engraving. Before it ships they will call and offer it to you 1/2 price). (click here) JVL Jewelry and the coupon code is 291120. It'll take it off when you add it at checkout. Hopefully if there is another bride out there this will help her!

This is the Devotion Ring which we ordered I ordered my dress about two months ago. I ordered it from a site called In Wedding Dress. There are a few reasons why I ordered the dress from here. First off, look at it!

I got the sash in purple, which is what my colors are going to be. It was $300 dollars base. I wanted a few alterations and since I'm a weird shaped fattie, I wanted the dress custom tailored to my specific measurements. Those are the plusses. The minus, well it came from China. Ordering anything online is always a gamble, especially clothing. Would it arrive okay? Would it fit? Would it look like the picture? Those are the things I had to deal with. I eagerly awaited my dress and after some initial back and forth with the sellers, it arrived in a giant DHL package. You should have seen me open it up so carefully yet with so much excitement! And when I got it out of the package it looked just as beautiful as the photo - even more so because the sash was in my color. My dad said it looked like a $2000 dress. I had to agree!

The cool thing is that at the site, I could pick out the bridesmaids dresses and they could order them in the same color as my sash. So after some back and forth, we all picked out one that everyone could agree on.

This, but in the purple color. I had them get two alterations: (a) they added a 2nd ruffle sleeve (most of my girls have big ta tas and this is to help with the bra situation) (b) Got it lengthened to tea-length. It's going to be gorgeous and my ladies are going to be gorgeous!

The only thing left to do fashion wise is to hash out a dress for his baby sister, our flower girl, and to go to Al's Formal Wear to pick out the men's attire. I know it's going to be grey, and I know that Clayton and my dad will be wearing suits - the rest of the party will be wearing vests and no suit jacket. It's going to look AWESOME.

So all in all today was a good day. Fashion's going well, church is booked. I moved the sweet peas I'm growing over into a larger planter and gave them some water. Now I just need to get working on these invitations!