Straws and Jars!

I am so happy how my mason jars and straws turned out! These are the wedding favors!!
They have tiny kissing buffalo and our initials and wedding date!



- Swiss Avenue

Alpha Stamps and Koozies!

I love my Martha Stewart Alpha Stamp Set. I use it all of the time! I make tags with it. See BABY tag here.
I also used it on a wedding gift for Jenna and Tom.

I bought super cute (and inexpensive) foam koozies for beverages. I then stamped BRIDE and GROOM on each one. They turned out great!

I also made a tag for Jenna and Tom to go with the koozies:

I wish the alpha stamp set had numbers in it too.. My handwriting is not so good looking next to the stamps. Ill just have to save up my monies for the numeric set!

Love Letters!

I'm LOVING these letters.

You can buy the whole alphabet in note cards at Laughing Elephant!

Maybe something useful for wedding time? Hummmm...

They also have these Art Deco cards that I want, I want, I want, I need, I need!

And this is just making my heart bleed...ouch. We talked about going to Capri for a honeymoon. Money wise probably can't swing it, so I'll just have to look at this wood sign and daydream instead!

Wouldn't this Little Bo Peep wooden sign be so sweet for a babies room? I love it!

I love it and want it all!!

More DIY, less boring Wedding stuff!

I'm worried about paying for it, #1, worried about picking out the right things that really express you and your partner #2, and worried about having the time to do all the DIY you want to do, #3. The wedding that is.

I think I waited so long, well I was busy too, to post about being engaged because I wasn't exactly sure I wanted this blog to turn into THAT kind of a blog, if you know what I mean... Also not sure if I wanted to start a different blog with all the wedding happenings, or keep it all on one?

From my findings though, bloggers who do two separate blogs find it hard to keep up with both blogs on top of all the wedding stuff... after their wedding, the wedding specific blog just kinda falls by the wayside.

I know that I'm going to make aka DIY a lot of things and would like to showcase them here. But let me preface this with saying that the wedding fru fru, glitz, and overpaying for flour and sugar are the exact opposite of what I am trying to achieve with the wedding.

So I will stick with the DIY and fun postings here I think, bc thats my favorite thing to read about and blog about! Some fun wedding thingys may be thrown in there too!

Thank you for everyone's well wishes and congrats!

Jenna's Wedding Part 2

Let's continue the wedding convo!

Jenna had a great collection of clear glass vases. Mostly cylindrical and different heights, also very green! She purchased these moss covered rocks, grass leaves, and river rocks to make a really pretty contrast to the bright pink gerbera daisies she planned on using. We came up with the idea of floating the moss rocks and gerbera daisies above the river rocks. We also spun a layer of the bright green grass leaves beneath the moss rocks. So the day of my duties included setting up the center pieces, guest book table and cake table.

The center pieces turned out really pretty with so many layers of color:

She also had some goldy brown tulle that I tussled (is that a word? It's the only one I can come up with right now.) on the center of the table to create these little "nests" for the pillar candles and vases.

Jenna wrapped each pillar candle with the shards of grass leaves to give them some visual interest and tied it back in with the vase.

Once I had all of those done I was out of the cylindrical vases, so I called in for reinforcement from the Mother Hoarder of them all... my mom. She brought me three extra vases, two of which I used on the head table.

They weren't exactly the cylinder shape of the others so I sort of disguised them with the tulle. It worked somehow and was a pretty compliment to the sprig of orchids in the middle.

I wanted to keep the orchids in tact because they made a bold statement in the center of the head table.  I floated the moss rocks and sunk the river rocks to make the stem stand straight. I also added a wooden V (for the newly married couple's last name), that I painted black under the center orchid vase. Barely noticeable to anyone but Jenna and Tom, which was the point!

Jenna and Tom were so appreciative and I kept telling them, "Don't thank me! I just love doing it!"

Kissing Balls!

For Jenna's Wedding this past Memorial Day weekend I made kissing balls among other items.

Jenna wanted to order these kissing balls off etsy:

Black Berry Kissing Balls via Etsy

At the time of ordering they were $20 each. (Right now they are on sale 50% off). Well I couldnt swallow that price. I knew I could make them for much less than $20 plus shipping each! So I thought using plastic bead necklaces, and wrapping around 4" styrofoam balls may work!

I hot glued the strands of mardi gras beads. (Which I cut first to make it one continuous piece.)

Then I punched a hole it it at one end with a phillips head screwdriver so I would be able to fill it with hot glue and insert a 30 gage wire:

Then I hung the wire from a broom stick so I could easily spray paint each ball (they do drip a lot!):

I then tied ribbon to the wires and cut the wires off as short as I could with out unwinding:

I tied two knots at the top and made robin's tales with the ends of the ribbon.

They looked really good out on the white ceremony chairs:

The ceremony site was really pretty:

 If you look closely you can see the balls hanging at the end of the three rows. I estimate that Jenna and I spent $20 total making these 6 kissing balls. Not bad at about $3.33 each!

 The wedding was beautiful. Congrats Tom and Jenna!

 Stay tuned for the centerpices and other things related to Jenna's wedding!