On Cloud 9

Hi everyone! Did you miss me? Well, we're officially moved into the new house...and by "officially moved in" I mean I have a bed (with sheets) and boxes stretched out over the floor as far as the eye can see. I haven't seen my favorite jeans in 4 days.

I'm hoping that explains my long absense. And I hope you're willing to forgive me. But, now that we've moved, wedding planning is moving to the top of my to-do list. So what's next on that list? A ring-bearer plate of course!

A long, long time ago, I saw this fabulous necklace from BlockPartyPress on Etsy.

And, a long time ago, I purchased it at Crafty Bastards!

I love it. I wear it all the time. I get lots of compliments on it. I like compliments. :)

So when I discovered that BlockPartyPress had ventured into making ring dishes. I knew it was meant to be.


While the "Wood you love me" dish is downright adorable, the "Cloud 9" style is more my staple (plus it's blue!)

A couple quick emails later, she agreed to make me a custom ring dish!


I don't have it yet, but I was too excited to wait to post about it! So just picture the ring dish above but in light blue, with little white clouds, and a navy "9".

I'll post some pics when it's done! Yay!

Hair Trial

Last Friday I had a day off and decided to make an appointment to do my wedding hair trial run. I had a long week of field work the week before and it was so nice to just sit back and let the fabulous people at my favorite little salon in Annapolis do my hair.

I brought some of my favorite styles and my DIY flower and let them do their magic.

Now, it's killing me to not post every photo and every idea and every little thing I'm planning, but I guess I've got to keep some things a surprise.

So having said that, here's a little "sneak peak" of what we came up with.

The flower is perfect and I'm pretty sure Carrie would be proud.

Inspiration Overload

Let me introduce you to my new favorite website:

weddinggawker.com

If you're familiar with foodgawker or craftgawker, it's a similar format. People upload pictures of fabulous (in this case) wedding ideas. It's brand new so there are only a few pages of submissions so far, but I'm willing to bet that photos and links will be flooding in! For example, foodgawker has 1118 pages and craft gawker has 267 to date.

Anyone can submit an idea. All you need is a quality photo and a link to the site. I'm not sure they even have to be your photos (as long as you give appropriate credit - boo to copyright infringement!)

Or you can just sit back and click, click, click, and find pages of inspiring ideas!

DIY Calligraphy - Addressing Envelopes

For someone who's so fabulously artistic, I have terrible handwriting. Not only do I have terrible handwriting, I make typos. I didn't even know you could make typos while handwriting, but I miss letters or they run together all the time. It's not that I don't know how to spell the word (usually), but someone that doesn't translate on paper very well. And, even when I get the words spelled correctly, I'm lucky if anyone else can interpret them.

So, when it came to my wedding invitation envelopes, I was left with a dilemma. What was the best way to address them? I figured I had a couple options:

1. Be traditional and handwrite the addresses, drop them off at the post office, and, like a mother dropping her kids off at school for the first time, wave at my little darlings, cry softly, and whisper, "Godspeed little doodles" in the hopes that the post office would be able to read my chicken scratch.

2. Buy labels and *gasp* computer print them. Well that might work, just don't tell grandma.

3. Pay a calligrapher to write each one with a gorgeous sweeping, elegant, style that I can only dream of...Hmm...let's see. $2.00 x 150 invitations = how much were labels again?

4. Run the envelopes through my computer printer! Oh wait, the haste of a 20% Paper Source sale, I already purchased 200 A7 envelopes in "night." And, unless HP has come out with the best printer since sliced bread (i.e., can print light ink on dark paper), that's not going to work.

What's a DIY-er to do?

and then...I found the solution!

Look, I did these myself!

Was it calligraphy class?

Bribing a relative with good handwriting?

Surgically transplanting my hand with Laura Hooper?

Nope!

It was...Wedding Bee and the AMAZINGLY clever Jennifer.

Ok, here's the secret: tracing (shhh...don't tell)

Start by computer printing the address in a color similar to the color or your envelope.

Can you see that?

What about this one?

It is hard to see, but with the right light, and some patience, it's not so bad.

Templates and printer settings will vary from computer/printer to computer/printer, but I can tell you that I used Adobe Illustrator to make sure everything was lined up correctly, changed my printer settings to "5.25 x 7.25" and "envelope" and just ran them through one at a time. I did have to copy/paste each address into Illustrator, but I got into a rhythm and it went pretty quickly. (Plus, I've computer-printed addresses for wedding invitation clients in the past, so I'm kind of use to it by now).

Then I used a Uni-Ball Singo broad white gel pen and just traced! The ink wasn't perfect, and I had to trace a few lines over as I wrote, but overall, I think the one's I've completed came out gorgeous!

They have a wonderful handmade quality, but I didn't have to pay a lot or risk people knowing what my actual handwriting looks like.

A couple vintage stamps to complete the look... and ta-da!

So I still have a lot more to do, but at least it's progress, right?

Hair-brained

I live in ponytails. That's it. And, after years of hearing "Get that hair out of your pretty face." (thanks, Grandma), having hair in my face drives me crazy. And, let's be honest, I like to sleep in. There is no such thing as a hair dryer in my morning routine.

Now, that doesn't mean that I don't like when my hair is all done up, but after years of not styling it, I really don't know what to do or how to do it. But I am totally looking forward to having someone who actually knows what they're doing, make me look all fancy like :).

I've already made the hair piece.

So here's what I'm thinking:

(photo credit: Nothing but Bonfires)

and I like the looseness of this one

(photo credit: The Knot)

and I like the height of this one:

(photo credit: comicpie)

I love this one too - wish I had a photo from the front, but It looks so romantic.

(photo credit: damned_cat)

But, this is probably my favorite. I especially like that it was for a wedding, so it's got a little more modern feel. Although, I think I might be interested in something less curly in back. Maybe we can combine this one with the above.

(photo credit: Carriephotos.com)

I'm picturing the flower either centered in back or off to one side and a veil tucked under the bun-thing in back. I'll probably do I a trial run in March, so we'll see what happens :).

Baby, It's Cold Inside

Well, let's see...

It's been over a week since my last blog entry.

I've went to the Mojave Desert for a couple days for work:


and I came home to a broken heater.
(I didn't think I'd want to go back to the desert once I got home)

But no heat means that it's a good day to bake (and stand in front of the oven). So hopefully, I'll have something new to post soon.

Until then, check out my next Guest Blog post on WedLoft by WeddingWindow.com on how to personalize a post-wedding brunch!

Keeping Kids Occupied

Wondering how to keep busy hands, uh, busy during your wedding? Check out some suggestions in my guest post on the WedLoft by WeddingWindow.com blog.

(photo credit: Martha Stewart)

Thanks!

Design*Sponge Feature

As I'm sure many of you know (since that's how you found this blog), my cookie stands were recently featured on Design*Sponge. How exciting is that?

If you haven't already, check it out!

Thanks, D*Sponge!