Pinspiration Monday (Guest Post): DIY burlap-wrapped candle holder

April 30, 2012 8 Comments

Good morning and happy Monday to you! John and I are catching a plane to our tropical honeymoon destination as you read this – Wish me luck as this is my first time flying and I’m sure my nerves are a bit frayed…Can’t wait to share all of the wild stories, which I’m sure we are bound to fill up on. In the meantime, we have Amanda of Bullfrogs and Bulldogs here today to share a precious DIY craft with you. Enjoy!

Hello! I’m Amanda from over at Bullfrogs and Bulldogs and I am so excited to be guest posting today while Carrie is off on her HONEYMOON! A big congrats to you two, Carrie and John!

I’d love for you to stop by my place and say “hi” sometime! You can find me here or on facebook, twitter and pinterest as well!

Despite our mutual love of budget friendly decorating and thrift store hunting, Carrie and I actually have something else in common. She just got married and I am on my way to the alter in just about two weeks! So, in the spirit of love, today I’m here to share my super easy (and super inexpensive) DIY Burlap Love Votive Candle Holder inspired by something I saw on Pinterest a few weeks ago.

Source: Gilt Groupe

Instead of the numbers, which I may have to do down the road, I decided to stencil the word “L.O.V.E” because well, right now there is a lot of celebrating of just that very thing going around!

So here you have it! Enjoy!

How to make burlap love votive candle holders for yourself:

1. Find any votive candle holder that suits your fancy.

2. Get enough burlap (there are so many colors to choose from!) to cover the votive. Cut the burlap to fit your needs.

3. Use foam glue or some kind of clear glue to prime the edges of the burlap from fringing. I just used a paintbrush and literally painted it around the whole parameter.

4. Once I knew the look I wanted, I used masking tape as my stencil and created the lines and the lettering. Using a foam brush, I dabbed the paint on where it needed to go.

And viola! Here is the finished product!

I hope you are having the best time on your honeymoon, Carrie and John!

Amanda is the blogger behind Bullfrogs & Bulldogs, a personal account of her transition from living in the city to living a more sustainable life with her fiance on the family vineyard and farm.  Amanda’s blog is full of storytelling, beautiful photos of the farm and its many furry friends, vegan/gluten-free recipes and DIY projects – All elements that keep me coming back from more! Bullfrogs and Bulldogs can be found here, here, here, and here.

Stay tuned Wednesday for a guest post from Lisa of SpareFoot Storage Finder – She’ll be sharing her tips on achieving an organized, balanced home.

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Gifts, Gluten-Free Lifestyle, How-To, Inspiring, Our Wedding, Weekly Pinspiration Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

One Word: Wedding

April 27, 2012 14 Comments

Good gracious!! Tomorrow I am getting married…Like any girl, I have been waiting for this day, dreaming about this day and praying for this day ever since I was little.

Life has thrown me some major curve balls along my journey to this moment, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. I’m the kind of person who has no regrets – Everything that has happened to me, good or bad has led me to this fate. I am marrying my very best friend tomorrow and, if that’s the culmination of my choices over my 26 years of life, then I’m happy to accept it all…I can’t wait!!

Although we will be jet setting to the tropics for a week-long honeymoon next week, I have made sure to line up some fun features via guest bloggers – You’ll get an adorable tutorial for fun burlap-wrapped candle holders, tips on organizing your home and ways to kick the excuses and get on track with a healthy diet (as long as my remote publication works as it should, that is – Not sure if we’ll have internet access to double check…). I hope that you enjoy them.

See you in a week!!

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Filed Under: Inspiring, One Word, Our Influences, Our Wedding, Weekly Pinspiration Tagged With: , , ,

Wedding favors = DONE!

April 20, 2012 12 Comments

So pleased to have finally finished up our wedding favors. This project took a bit longer than originally planned, but I suppose that’s bound to happen when dealing with lots of fragile and tiny materials. When last I left you, we had completed 1/3 of the project, having filled the first round of test tubes with wildflower seeds.

The other two batches of test tubes were to be filled with mini m&ms and lavender-infused bath salts (not together – m&ms + bath salts = yuckkkk). These two took a bit longer to complete because apparently mini m&ms are nearly impossible to track down (we finally found them at Sam’s) and I was waiting on mom to make the bath salts (I’ll share the recipe for that in a post after the honeymoon).

Soon enough, the supplies were acquired and the rest of the test tubes were filled to the brim and topped with a pretty natural cork. As you can see pictured below, the test tubes fill a large basket nicely, but they crowd each other so much that there would be a lot of digging to find the favor of choice.

To make things easier on our guests, we (“we” being mom and I) decided to separate the three types of favors into individual baskets. We found these for 40% off at Michael’s craft store for only a few bucks apiece. They are long and thin, perfect for our long, thin test tubes. Plus, the natural wicker texture is pretty, simple and a nod to the vintage garden party theme that has emerged.

But you know I couldn’t just leave it at that…

To dress up the baskets a bit, I picked up three solid-colored cloth napkins at Pier One. This decision was sort of more complicated than that though…You see, I stood in the aisle for about five minutes staring at the array of cloth napkin options (while John found a comfy perch on a bar stool for sale, occupied by his smart phone). The issue was that I really wanted a patterned napkin, but all they had were solid colors and a stripe that just wasn’t “us.” With fingers to chin in thought (no kidding), I contemplated making my own from the box full of fabric at home, but did I really want to add ANOTHER project to my always overflowing list of things to do for this event?

After finally breaking John’s concentration from his phone and asking his thoughts, he quickly suggested just getting the solid colors because “No” I did not want to add more projects to my list.

Isn’t it funny how men can sometimes break down a decision in .3 seconds?

In the end, I brought home a white napkin, a yellow napkin and a blue one. There is a little bit of detail in the stitch work, which almost satisfied my desire for pattern.

When opened to their full capacity, they were way too big – I really just wanted something to lay across the bottom and inside edges of the basket. But keeping them folded into small squares and laying them at a diagonal did the trick.

Once I finally was able to lay the three different types of favors into their respective baskets, I knew John had steered me in the right direction. If I had gone with patterned fabric, the look would have been entirely too busy. All of the colors and natural texture in the seeds, candy and salts would have been lost in patterned liners. Hooray for happy accidents!

And now for tons of aerial and side detail shots!!!

To accompany the presentation, I used one of my revamped wedding frames (although, if you click back, you’ll notice that I redid the insert text). I think the neon blue kind of balances out all of those spring time pastels. Gotta have a little bit of a pop somewhere, after all.

If you can’t quite read the swirly text via the computer screen, it says “Please take your pick! Grow a plot of wild flowers. Indulge in sweet candy pieces. Relax with lavender bath salts.” Also, I added a little note about the glass test tubes being fragile: “Please handle with care.”

Sorry to any wedding guests who are missing out on the surprise come wedding day by seeing these in advance! I hope they are enjoyed by all next week.

P.S. If you didn’t see via my Facebook page and Twitter feed, I guest blogged for Breathe Magazine yesterday – This time, I shared my tutorial on how to make silhouette portraits. Click here to check that out!

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Gifts, How-To, Our Wedding, The Big Reveal Tagged With: , , , ,

Pinspiration Monday: Wedding sign

April 9, 2012 4 Comments

Only 19 days to go until the big day!!

With our wedding right around the corner, I am in “go” mode with all of the little details we still need to get done. There are a few more crafts that I want to finish up before April 28th, but luckily I was able to wrap up a few and call them DONE over the weekend. Today’s post will focus on a reclaimed pallet wood sign that I had my dad build for me. I’ve seen sweet little rustic wedding signs all over Pinterest when searching DIY wedding crafts, and knew that I just had to try it out for myself.

Source: Unknown

Source: True Connection (via Etsy)

Source: Southern Weddings

Sometime last year, John and I managed to snag some weathered pallet wood with big plans to use it in a neat way. Search “pallet wood” on Pinterest and you are bound to see miles-worth of scrollable projects using this inexpensive, pre-distressed wood. Unfortunately, no one aptly explained just how difficult it is to use. I don’t know if it was just our pallets or what, but the wood was nearly impossible to dismantle from the structure and kept breaking/splintering apart. We managed to save one slab of wood before John and I both gave up and took the rest of the pallet to the dump.

With that one little piece of wood in hand, I finally decided that it would be perfect for a weathered, rustic wedding sign – One with a little arrow to direct guests to the reception venue. So I asked my dad to cut the piece of wood in half and attach it to a stake, which is exactly what he did:

Alas, I forgot to mention that I actually wanted the weathered, darker side to be the front of the sign rather than the brighter, fresh-looking side. Here’s the sign flipped around so that you can see the more rustic edge on the back. You can probably notice the darker, almost gray coloration from sitting in the sun and rain for who knows how long. Love those rusty nail heads peeking through too.

So I bit the bullet and decided to flip the wood slats. I did mess up my dad’s beautifully calculated drill holes by flipping the wood around, but it’s still nice and steady in the end. Sorry dad!

Next, I needed to figure out what to write on the sign…I would have loved to put something like “Waller/Williams Wedding” or something descriptive, but I didn’t really have that much room. The wooden slat, once cut in half to create a rectangular sign big enough for writing, was only about a foot and a half across – Not a huge amount of space, and definitely not enough for a long cutesy phrase. So I opted for short and sweet and decided to write one single word across the sign: Wedding.

Not wanting to risk ruining the sign with a typo or botched design, I grabbed some black paint and a sheet of extra paper to practice. I painted the word both in print and in cursive and then asked the opinion of my sister who was in town for Easter. She immediately voted for print, so print it was.

I went slowly during this phase and did my best to take in the entire space visually while painting the words. I wanted to be sure I had enough room, so I just kept looking beyond the letter I was painting to envision the entire word on the sign. Somehow, I managed to fit the whole word and it seems pretty centered too.

Beneath the word, I painted on a simple arrow pointing to the left. My sister and I debated about which way to point the arrow since I’m not entirely sure where this sign will go, but my gut was telling me to make it go to the left so that’s where it went.

After painting another layer of white paint over each word and the arrow for a nice saturated color, we were all done.

I can’t wait to be able to share photos of all of these little crafts I’ve done once they are all situated and in-place at the wedding. Between this project, this project, this project and today’s post, I know it’s a little difficult to see how it will all come together, so I’ll definitely share the wedding photos once we get them back. Then you can truly see my vision.

Hope everyone enjoyed a lovely Easter weekend!

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Inspiring, Our Wedding, Simple Fixes, Weekly Pinspiration Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Trash to treasure: DIY Chalkboard Menu (Part 1)

March 9, 2012 4 Comments

Remember this little gem? One of my best friends, Savannah, salvaged this sad and disheveled frame from her grandfather’s house and generously offered it to us for use at our wedding. It sure needed a lot of work, but envisioning the final product kept me focused.

In this post of yore I explaining that the plan was to clean him up and outfit him with a chalkboard center, fit for our wedding reception as a big menu by the buffet. Something sort of like this:

Source

First order of business? Get rid of that crumbling and slightly spooky portrait. It was a little sad not to be able to salvage what could very well have been a valuable piece of art, but there was nothing that we could have done. In the end, I’m just happy that we were able to salvage at least part of the piece – i.e. the frame itself.

Incredibly (and so not what I had been expecting) the removal of all the junk on the back of the frame was a snap. It was so badly in disrepair that the four pieces of wood holding the glass and portrait to the frame lifted right away. Other than that, it really just needed a good cleaning.

After taking the frame down to the garage so as not to dirty up the kitchen, my mom and I  brushed away the grime and dirt using a little hand-held bristle tool (can be picked up at any grocery store in the cleaning section). A light hand and gentle sweep across the surface got rid of the grit without harming the pretty details on the frame.

Still looking pretty grimey, huh? Well the next step was to wipe it down with a good bit of alcohol. Using a couple of rags, my sister and I took our time rubbing all the way around the frame, careful to get into the little curves and recesses. As you’ll see by our nasty, dirty rags, we were able to get it pretty darn clean!

Parts of the frame came away from these two cleaning steps looking lux and shimmery, such as this section:

But most of the frame still looked a little dirty and definitely not fit for a wedding reception – Not yet anyway. Even with the brushing and alcohol bath, the frame had tons of discoloration and broken/nicked sections that just couldn’t be fixed with a simple cleaning.

The section below is the worst, with a big chunk of the wood missing. Plus, if you look to the upper left of the photo you’ll see what almost looks like a burn mark. But I wasn’t too anxious – I had a plan.

Nothing a coat of spray paint can’t fix! I admit that I debated going with a bright color, like teal, to freshen up our inherited frame…But eventually decided to start off with something as close to its original finish as possible. My thought on that was, if it ended up looking dull and/or boring, I could always paint over it.

So I bought a can of Rust-Oleum spray paint in a metallic hammered finish. I liked the idea of the textured spray paint because it would really help to cover the frame’s imperfections, while also giving it the look of a still-vintage piece. I was a-okay with the idea of an uneven finish in this case because I didn’t want it to look brand new – Just cleaner.

A few coats of paint later and we were GOLDEN.

We even managed to camouflage that broken section with the spray paint – It’s not P-E-R-F-E-C-T, but I think it’s a lot less noticeable now.

Want to see that “Before” photo again?

And now “After”…

I am so excited with how much better the frame looks, with its bright new finish and clean surface. It’s not quite the yellow-golden sheen of its original state, but I think this fresh, almost milky bronze color really makes it stand out. The next step is to fill the center with a chalkboard surface so that we can write out the buffet menu – John and I picked up the wood on Tuesday and, even though my friends are throwing me a bachelorette party out of town this weekend, I am hoping to get the whole project wrapped up by Monday.

Stay tuned for Part 2 next week! Have a great weekend.

Filed Under: DIY Projects, How-To, Our Wedding, Simple Fixes Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Fit for a wedding: Thrift store frames

March 7, 2012 6 Comments

We are continuing a run down of our epic wedding craft day this past weekend – Monday I chatted about our DIY favors made from glass test tubes filled with things like wildflower seeds and bath salts. We are moving onward and upward today with a quick, affordable craft involving my favorite DIY supply: spray paint. The goal was to create a colorful collection of frames to sit on various tables throughout our reception space to denote things like gifts, cupcakes, favors, guest book, etc. Rather than pay top dollar for said frames, I scoured our local thrift stores to find affordable options that I could give a face lift.

Here are my victims:

I was hoping to find elaborate, traditional frames with scroll work and filigree because all of those beautiful details really pop when painted a bright color. Alas, as you can see, I only found one that was even close to what I was searching for, but that’s okay. This was one such project that I didn’t feel needed a ton of leg work and multiple shopping stops. The frames didn’t really need to be the stars of the show anyway.

Can’t beat the final price tag! Only $10.05 for seven frames.

Time for their fashion-forward makeovers! I removed their “fillings” of glass and backing board and then put them out on the front sidewalk on top of some cardboard. Then my sweet and accommodating fiance did the rest – Spray painting each with either a pop of neon teal or canary yellow. We don’t actually have any specific color scheme for the wedding since we are using colorful mismatched vintage china in place of rented serving ware, and we are also just using whatever wildflowers are in season for the centerpieces, so I simply chose two of my favorite spray paint colors that we had in stock in the garage.

While John took care of the painting, I got to work on what went inside of the frames. To do so, I typed up a few quick phrases for sections I knew I wanted to label for guests’ benefit:

  • “Enjoy a celebratory cupcake!”
  • “In lieu of a guest book, please seal a note of encouragement or advice and toss it in the suitcase for future reading.” (I’ll explain this project in a post very soon)
  • “Favors – Please take your pick:” and “Grow a plot of wild flowers,” “Indulge in sweet candy pieces,” “Relax with aromatic bath salts” (these will all go into the one frame I bought that has two openings in the mat board)
  • “Thank you for your thoughtful gift!”

Oh, and don’t worry – I’m now aware that I misspelled the word “Indulge”…Will need to redo that one at some point ::sigh::

To cut them to size, I used the glass that I had removed as templates. Since the glass is clear, I was able to lay the glass on top of each phrase and then eye-ball it until it looked centered. Then, using a pen, I traced around the edges of the glass and got the perfect line to cut across to fit inside the finished frames. For the two phrases going inside of the mat board, I centered the words in the middle of the mats and traced the edges. I cut a little outside of those lines though so that the mat would overlap the edge of the paper.

Before I show you the final results of our newly-stylish collection of wedding frames, I have to show you one last quick fix. When purchasing anything from a thrift store, you have to know that there might be some less-than-perfect conditions to deal with. Case in point, one of my frames (the largest, in fact) was feeling a little unsteady due to a bent/creased backing arm.

I debated reinforcing it was a dowel rod, but in the end I went with a piece of ribbon and some tape. I cut the ribbon to the length of the distance I wanted the frame arm to swing out (with a little extra on the front and tail of the ribbon). After it was cut to size, I taped one end of the ribbon to the frame’s backing board and then the other end to the arm. This meant that the arm could swing out only so far from the frame, steadying it on whatever surface it sat on.

It’s not the prettiest thing you’ll ever see, but it did the trick.

Here are the finished thrift store frames looking lovely, colorful and definitely fit for our big day in April.

As you can see, we didn’t touch the little brass guy (you know how much I am digging brass these days), and we also didn’t fill all seven frames. I stole one for a project I’ll tell you all about next week, but the rest are empty and waiting should we think of anything else needing signage. Once I fix the spelling of “Indulge,” we will be golden (or should I say “teal”).

Hope you have a great Wednesday!

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Inspiring, Our Wedding, Product Search, Simple Fixes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Pinspiration Monday: Wedding favors

March 5, 2012 17 Comments

Woa. Yesterday was wild. The biggest wedding crafts day that I’ve initiated so far. Only 54 days to go until the big day, so my still-to-do list is heating up:

  • Create a chalkboard menu display for buffet out of a vintage frame
  • Spray paint lots of vintage frames in bright colors to set on tables denoting where gifts go, favors, etc.
  • DIY favors
  • Decorate a vintage suitcase for the guest book
  • Secure a coral flower hair clip for my up do
  • Meeting with florist to talk flowers
  • Purchase burlap for table runners
  • Make about a million more paper pinwheels
  • Create some kind of ribbon garland
  • Am I forgetting anything? Probably…
Thankfully, we were able to knock a few things off of that list yesterday. My sister and mom came over and we got to work right away. Our first order of business was the favors. My inspiration for this DIY favor project came from, you guessed it, Pinterest and I couldn’t be more excited with how they turned out.

Source: DIY with Stef

The idea was to buy glass test tubes (the kind topped with natural cork stoppers) and fill them with something fun that guests would enjoy taking home – None of that monogrammed stuff for us that guests likely won’t use, will toss or will get stuffed in a junk drawer somewhere. Instead, I decided to fill our glass test tubes with three different options, that way guests can choose exactly what they’d like to take home with them. Here are my fillers:

  1. Wildflower seeds
  2. Mini M&M candies
  3. Homemade lavender-scented bath salts
I thought those three options ran the gamete enough to please everyone. To make it easy for guests to find the test tube of their choice, I paired each of the three favor options with a word: The seeds are tagged with the word “Grow,” the candies are tagged with “Indulge” and the bath salts got “Relax.” This will make a bit more sense in a moment…
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First, we needed some test tubes. I bought mine here based on a link in the comments section of my Pinterest inspiration source – The 80 test tubes that I ordered came in under $40, which seemed pretty cost-effective to me!
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In addition to the test tubes and the various fillers, we also needed a funnel to make “stuffing them” a little bit easier. Mom forgot to bring hers, but we made one out of tape and a piece of computer paper – Worked like a charm!

Truth be told, the only filler we had on hand yesterday was the wildflower seed, but I figured we could at least get the process started. Once my mom and her friend, Kim, have time to make the bath salts and we are able to track down some mini M&M’s, we’ll fill up the remainder of the test tubes to complete the process.

Here are the completed tubes of wildflower seeds – I love how natural they look and hope that guests will enjoy sprinkling their gardens with the seeds after our wedding!

The last step before calling this project done (for now) was to add those tags I mentioned. A few weeks ago, I went ahead and made little paper labels for my test tubes. All I did was type up a couple of pages of the words in a Word document on my computer and then printed them out on different colored pieces of paper. “Indulge” got yellow paper, “Grow” got green and “Relax” got blue. After cutting them out with a pair of scissors, I finished off the edge with a quick hole punch for a small piece of twine that would eventually hold the tag to the test tube.

So yesterday, my mom, sister and I started a quick assembly line where my sister cut the twine using a templated string of about 3 inches, my mom threaded the twine through the hole punched in the tags, giving it a quick knot near the paper, and then I snipped off the excess. We had to make the twine a little long or else tying the knot would have been a nightmare.

In my Pinspiration image, you may have seen that the tags they used were just tied around the glass test tube – I didn’t think that would be strong enough to stay in place, but wasn’t really sure what our other options were. Mom came to the rescue though with the idea of putting the twine inside the test tube and then squeezing the cork in place on top to hold it in place. It worked like a charm!

Although, word to the wise – I broke four test tubes because I tried to slip the cork all the way back into place, not taking into account that the twine needed a little extra room. So if you try this at home, just be very gentle with this step or else you’ll get super frustrated like I did – It’s not fun to be around a frustrated bride, just ask my mom and sister…

Live and learn! Hopefully stuffing the rest of the tubes will go more smoothly (with fewer casualties). I’ll be sharing the details on the rest of the many projects we did on the blog Wednesday and Friday, so stay tuned.

What do you guys think?? Would you all appreciate something like this as a favor? I wish I could make one for all of YOU guys! You all have been so sweet and supportive of our upcoming wedding…

Hope you have a great Monday!

Filed Under: DIY Projects, How-To, Inspiring, Our Wedding, Weekly Pinspiration Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Our engagement photos

December 30, 2011 12 Comments

Along with our recent blogging face lift with new background and brand spankin’ new pages (a room-by-room project gallery, Etsy store full of thrifted finds you can buy and an updated house tour), you may have also noted a few professional photos of yours truly peppered throughout. We had our much-anticipated and long-awaited (at least for me) engagement photo shoot.

You know how every bride has her “thing?” Well mine is photos. There is absolutely nothing that matters more to me than the photos from our wedding – They are the only things to last beyond the actual day, after all. So I thought long and hard about my choice of photographer. The choice came down to two INCREDIBLY talented photographers in our area, but I eventually chose Katie Stoops. She is an award-winning photographer whose work has been published in a cookbook (which you can peruse and/or purchase here) and has been featured in Southern Living Weddings, Martha Stewart Weddings, Brides and many more! I love that we can go to Barnes & Noble, flip open a glossy wedding mag and see our wedding photographer published!!! Who knows? Maybe you’ll see her photos of us in there someday ;) Kidding…

This is Katie along with her husband, Dave, and two dogs:

(Photos are by Adam Barnes – yet another local photography GENIUS. He did my sister’s senior portraits several years ago and anyone who can make my broody little sister smile is miraculous. Check out his full blog post of the Stoops’ here)

As you can probably tell, we L-O-V-E her and I couldn’t be more pleased with our choice. She’s a down-to-earth gal who adores her dogs (and ours too now) – What’s not to love? The kicker was that, during our entire engagement session romping around in the grass and climbing onto brick walls, she somehow understood John’s odd humor. It was meant to be.

So when we got a package of our prints and photo DVD at our front door with her seal on it, I was ecstatic and decided to fill our house with the pictures right away (at 6:42 in the evening – sorry for the terrible nighttime, indoor lighting).

When I hung photos in our stairwell gallery last month, I had in mind to eventually replace the photos with our soon-to-be taken engagement shots. So moments after popping the seal on the envelope, I had the frames off the wall and ready to be re-filled.

Here’s what we had to work with after I laid everything out on the kitchen counter:

I popped a few of the 4×6 prints in frames I had lying around (…who am I kidding – JUST for this purpose) and then I put the 8×10′s into the big frames from the staircase. I wanted to fill the collage frames I have up in the stairwell matted for three 4×6 prints, but the orientation of the frame was meant for horizontal photos, which we didn’t get many prints of. So I just left those as is and filled the big 8×10 frames.

I didn’t get any photos of the new prints up on the wall because by this point it was after 7:00 at night and there was absolutely NO natural light to speak of. But trust me when I say that the stairwell is looking pretty schnazzy  now. I adore walking past our new portraits every day.

And since I’m nothing if not excited about this whole thing, I thought I’d leave you with several more shots and the back story behind our shoot locations.

John really wanted to wait until November (he’s a cold weather type of guy) to take our photos and I eventually relented because…Well, because I love him! Although I was dreading the chilly temperature, it turned out to be a beautiful day. The first location was at our home where we got to show off our completely redesigned living room (more on those photos to come) and of course the other main man in my life, Rocky the dog. After that, we headed over to Old City Cemetery for the rest of the session. I know you must think we are crazy to take our engagement photos at a cemetery but this historic landmark is just stunning with its antique buildings, rolling hills, metal archways and hundred-year-old trees. We couldn’t have chosen a better location and the afternoon went by way too fast…

Katie did a beautiful job capturing us that day and I canNOT wait for see what she is able to give us from our wedding day in April.

Thanks for letting me gush!! Oh and this was totally unplanned, but today is Katie’s birthday – Happy birthday, Katie!

If you have any professional photos of yourself gracing the blogisphere, please share! I love looking through crisp, clean photography…

P.S. Katie posted about our fun photo shoot over on her website too – Check that out (with a few extra photos) here.

(In case you didn’t catch on, photo credit and copyright for all images goes to Katie Stoops :) )

Filed Under: Our Wedding, Product Review, The Big Reveal Tagged With: , ,

Wedding Update: Birdcage Veil

December 9, 2011 8 Comments

So I think it’s high time I updated you guys on our wedding plans! I’ve talked about our engagement, the bird theme, our idea to use vintage plates instead of renting plain white ones and our AMAZING cupcake situation. Today, I want to chat about style.

I won’t say TOO much since John’s not to know the specifics, but my dress is of the vintage flair. To go with it, I wanted to wear a birdcage veil. We are forgoing a big ceremony for a private one with just our immediate family present followed by a big reception (we aren’t great with all-eyes-on-us, thus this compromise suited our style a bit better), so I didn’t need a big long veil with a train. A simple, short birdcage veil seemed like a better option for me.

If you are thinking to yourself “Huh?? A what??” here are some visuals I snagged off of Pinterest:

Source: BelledeBenoir

Source: Love My Dress

Source: PowderBlueBijoux

Welp, I decided that I would try to make it myself! You know I’m an all-out DIY gal if I can help it, so this seemed like a perfect project for me. I did a little internet researching and found that the best way to tackle the project was with a needle and thread. Here’s a supply breakdown:

  1. Needle
  2. White thread
  3. Ivory Russian lace
  4. A cear plastic hair comb
  5. A bright colored flower applique

I actually worked on this project with my friend, Savannah (you may remember her from this post and this one) – She generously offered up her dining room table for an hour or so and we got to chatting about life as I fiddled with needle and thread.

The first step was to cut the lace to size – I think I used about half of the yard that I bought. Then I sort of pulled the lace into pleats every inch or so to create a little half-dome if you will. After I got the shape the way I wanted, I simply sewed the lace onto the comb by running my needle and thread between the prongs/teeth of the comb. It looks like a MESS, but the lace was held tightly and I knew I’d cover up the thready chaos with my flower.

Lastly, I attached the flower applique using the same technique – I just sewed it right into the lace and comb using more needle and thread. The flower had several layers of petals, so I was able to sew through the bottom petals to attach is securely with no one being the wiser of the thread.

Finally, after a bit of trimming around the edges to give it a curved shape, we were all done!

The process was fairly simple and I think I learned a lot. I say “learned a lot” because I’m pretty sure this is going to be my trial run…The flower ended up being a tad small in proportion to the veil, so I think I’m either going to add more lace (and possibly feathers) to this one in order to beef it up a bit, or scrap it and try again with a larger applique. We’ll see!

Have any of you ever tried this before? Any suggestions?

OR, I could just give up entirely and buy a ready-made veil from an expert! While I lamented over my sort-of failure of a first try at Savannah’s house, she mentioned that her sister-in-law, Aury (who I mentioned here), has started her own enterprise with these vintage veils! Check out her Etsy shop, Love is in the Hair ( isn’t that name ADORABLE?!), here – I am seriously contemplating one of her gorgeous designs because they knock my socks off.

 

All of the designs you see are available for you to snatch up on her site linked to above – Don’t miss out!!

Hope you all have a great weekend!!!

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Inspiring, Our Wedding, Simple Fixes Tagged With: , , , ,

“Thrift Store SCORE!” of the Month {August}

August 4, 2011 6 Comments

Has anybody else missed this feature as much as I have?? I miss going out and “adopting” the perfect unique conversation piece for our home…John and I used to go every weekend to puruse the thrift stores to pick out something fun for the house. But alas…We have run out of room and I don’t want our place to turn into a hoarder’s nightmare (or should I say a hoarder’s dream…?).

Luckily, we have found the perfect new excuse for thrifting!!! Our wedding :)

Since you know we are pretty big DIY-ers, it’s only fitting that our wedding be mostly taken care of by us – Even down to the plates…

Which brings me to today’s “Thrift Store SCORE!” – Instead of doing the standard white rentable plates provided by our caterer, I decided it would be fun to use an assortment of random antique china. Here are some examples of what I hope it will end up looking like…

So my mom and I have been scouring our go-to second-hand shops in town to find as many of these delicate plates as we can get our hands on. So far I think we are up to about 40 plates…And the cost? It all evens out to about $1 a plate, sometimes less than that! For instance, our first stop was to a store downtown where we got 28 plates for $21 – Not bad at all!

Wanna get a sneak peek into some of the little beauties we uncovered from the heaps of old discarded plates? I love turning trash to treasure…Oh, and for those of you who are coming to the wedding and are reading this thinking “EW!”, all of these plates will be washed and rewashed until “like new” :)

Here are some details:

I loooooveeeee the edging on this one…So unique!

This last plate I’m going to show you is my absolute favorite…There is just something so sweet and whimsical about including it in a wedding. Mom, if you read this – I want to save this plate for John and me that day!! I think it would be fun as our special plate to be used every year on our anniversary.

So far here’s our progress on the wedding to-do list:

  • Set the date
  • Guest list
  • Venue
  • Photographer
  • Wedding coordinator (we snagged the best in town!!!!!!!!! gotta love talented and generous family friends…)
  • Bride’s dress
  • Groom’s outfit (well…part of it at least)
  • Music
  • Drinks
  • Cupcakes (you heard all about that here!)
  • Register
  • Food
  • Invitations
  • Flowers
  • Officiant
  • Decorations
  • And all the little details…like timeline, vows, etc.
Ahhh, the joys of wedding planning…

(Photo credit for antique plate image #1: here; #2: here; #3: here; #4: here; #5: here)

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Our Wedding, Product Search, Thrift Store Tell All Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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