The Honeymoon!!!!

Today we officially booked our honeymoon!!! I'm SO excited! When we first got engaged I really wasn't sure if we'd be in the right financial state to actually go on a nice honeymoon. However, then my mom and future step-father decided that they would pay for our honeymoon as a wedding present! (Thanks mom!)

Anyway, we search and researched and evaluated and decided that the best bang for our buck would be the Mayan Riviera. It's got everything we were looking for (ocean front room, all inclusive, jacuzzi in my room, etc) and I. CAN. NOT. WAIT.

We will be leaving the day after the wedding and spending 5 days at the Now Jade Resort and Spa.

In less than 7 months I'll be relaxing here!

Source for both pictures

I can't wait to relax and unwind with my new husband.   :-)

The chair cover situation

Chair covers are not a necessity by any means. However, the chairs at our reception site aren't the most eye-pleasing things to go look at and I really think it'd just help pull things together if I had chair covers. Also, the white tablecloths included in our reception price aren't floor length, so I feel like chair covers help give the illusion of longer table cloths and cover the gap between the table cloth and the floor.

Anyway.... I contemplated trying to make them myself, but then realized that between the price of fabric and my very novice sewing skills that it just wouldn't be worth it.

Then I talked to our reception place yesterday about renting them. The problems with this were 1) It's $2.50 per chair cover w/ sash. 2) They don't even have any of my colors in sashes yet. They said they might be ordering a pale pink sash later this year, but there was no guarantee. 3) I hate paying almost $300 only to have nothing to show for it in the end.

Then I scoured the wedding sites to see if I could buy used ones. Typically they were all sold before I could get to them. Apparently I'm not quick enough on the WeddingBee classifieds. lol. It's also a little scary to buy from someone you don't know and have never heard of, not to mention that most of the sellers on there are asking a price close to what I can buy my own for.

So... in the end I decided to buy new chair covers (hopefully I can sell them to another bride after our wedding and recoup some of the cost) from linentablecloth.com.  They are having a sale right now where their white polyester banquet chair covers are $1.97 each, plus I had a 10% off coupon code for January (they give them out on their Twitter account), AND they have free shipping right now if your order is over $50.

So.... I bought 110 brand new chair covers for $195. That comes out to about $1.77 per chair cover!

This does not include a sash. I have not purchased sashes yet, though I will probably also buy the sashes from the same site. I am waiting because they have a rewards point program and for every 1000 points you accrue you can get $10 off an order. Rewards points can be accrued by registering on their site, signing up for the e-mail newsletter, reviewing a product, and for every dollar you spend there. Hopefully I'll accrue enough to get $10 off my sash order at a later date. I have been searching other places to see if I can find any cheaper, but no luck yet.

Once I receive the chair covers I'll let you know what I think about them.


*I have absolutely no affiliation with www.linentablecloth.com. They did not pay me or give me any sort of additional discount for this post. I simply liked their site and made my purchase.*

DIY: Groomsmen gifts- Etched glass mugs

I love the look of the personalized large beer mugs for groomsmen gifts, but I don't love the $40+ price tag. So, I decided to DIY this one too. I chose to do just the first letter of each guy's last name.

Supplies:

- Contact paper ($1 at The Dollar Tree)

- Printed letter in preferred font (Free. Done from my computer and printed at home on regular paper.)

- Small paint brush (Free. Already had on hand)

- Exacto knife (Free. Already had on hand)

- Glass etching cream (Free. Given to me by one of my BFF's who used it for her wedding last year and had some left over.

- Glass mug ($1 each at The Dollar Tree. Seriously... these are heavy, about 7 inches tall, and look like nice quality too!)

1- Tape your printed letter to a piece of contact paper (The side that you'll be looking at after you stick it to the mug.)

2- Cut carefully around the letter (also cutting through the contact paper since it's taped underneath) with the knife, leaving a stencil made of contact paper when finished.

3- Stick your contact paper stencil on the mug. Be sure to center and smooth out and make sure all edges are stuck securely to the glass so that cream doesn't ooze under any parts of the stencil.

4- Paint over open part of stencil with glass etching cream (read directions on your brand for instruction on how long to leave it on. Also... be careful not to get too much on yourself as this can burn your skin. So maybe wear some gloves, ok?)

5- Wash cream off (I left mine on for about 2-3 minutes each time) with warm water until all is removed from the glass.

6- Peel off stencil and admire your handy work.

Ta-Da! I love them! No, they aren't perfect, but they are still great! (trying so hard to not be such a control-freak/perfectionist when it comes to all things wedding related). So, there you have it.... 4 personalized etched glass large beer mugs for a total of $5! That's a TOTAL budget bride victory!!!

DIY: Bridesmaid Bouquets

These were basically pre-made bouquets from Michael's. I believe they were originally $7.99, but I used a coupon for each one making them only $3.99 each. (I typically wouldn't have gone with a pre-made bouquet but I love the color of these roses.) And since you can only use one coupon per transaction, I also enlisted my sister (the MOH) and the fiance to each purchase one with one of my coupons so we could condense our trips to Michael's.   :-)

Ok, so then I just wrapped each bouquet in standard brown satin ribbon. They still looked like they were missing something. So I put a single strip of lace, left over from my DIY lace hair flower, around the middle and then inserted 3 diamond type pins in the stems. During the process I arranged the flowers like I wanted them, but then some of the stems were a little too long so I had to trim the ends (see tip below).

I absolutely looooooove them. I can't explain it. They are just the epitome of everything I want in my wedding... they've got the pink, the brown, the lace, the romantic/rustic feel to them.  I. LOVE. THEM.

TIP: Don't cut your finger with scissors during the process like I did. It was quite a deep cut, and was bleeding everywhere and definitely impeded my DIY attempts today. However, now my bridesmaids can know that I put LITERALLY my blood, sweat, and tears into their bouquets. I'm sure they'll love that thought....

These are also going to be sitting on the head tables as decoration at the reception. I will be putting glass jars (recycled from things we use at home so these were free) at several spots along the table for each girl to sit their bouquet in.

DIY: Lace hair flower

Hello again! Long time, no blog!

Threw this random DIY project together as I was recently thinking about how heavy my veil is, which means I may not wear it the entire reception. So, I thought of creating a hair flower.

Supplies:
- 1 sheet of felt (30 cents at Michael's)
- Scissors
- Glue gun and glue stick
- A couple feet of lace (found whole spool on sale at Joann Fabrics for $2.50. Forgot to measure exactly how much I used, but I'm guessing it's around 2 feet or so)
- Decorative button to use as center of flower. (Got mine on sale at Joann Fabrics for $2)
- Hair clip or pin to glue on back.

-Cut out 2 inch circle from sheet of felt.
- I cut my lace off of the seam but I imagine you could probably use it as is, but I liked the look of the flat lace.
- Using hot glue gun start gluing one long section of lace around the felt circle so that there is about 1/2 inch of lace hanging off the outside of the circle.
- Once you have completed one rotation around the felt circle, cut the lace where the edges meet.

Here's what it looked like at this point:

- Start gluing another section of lace onto the flower (cut lace length-wise to make thinner if you so desire. This should be based on how big your felt circle is and how wide your lace is) to make a smaller circle inside (and on top of) the this one.
- Glue a final even smaller circle of lace inside the second one. (hard to explain, but the final picture should hopefully explain it better than I can.)
- Hot glue your decorative button of choice into the middle of the flower covering the visible edge of the smallest lace circle that you just created.
- Finally, hot glue your hair clip or pin of choice onto the back.

You could glue a hair clip on the back like I did but there are also a lot of other possibilities. It could be attached to a headband, could be a broach with a safety pin on the back, or glue a long length of ribbon on the back and it could be a sash of some kind.

365 days and counting!!!

I've been a deadbeat bride (and a deadbeat blogger) lately in terms of DIY projects (and postings).

However, I would just like to make sure it's known that today marks exactly 1 year until our wedding day!

I can't wait to marry him!  <3

Yup, that's the man I'm marrying!

Thursday I was feeling a little down. Alex noticed and hates when I feel sad and tries to cheer me up.
Friday morning comes along...and this is what happened:

Alex leaves for work before I wake up, but he knows my routine.  So, I wake up and go to feed my 2 cats. It's the first thing I do every morning as they are always waiting right by the bedroom door when I wake up and are ready to be fed NOW. lol.

So I go the closet to get the cat food and there's a post-it stuck there:

Then I head to the bathroom to shower. On the bathroom door is another one (which I forgot to take a picture of) that say "Love You!"

Then I go in the bathroom and on the bathroom mirror is this one (Please ignore the 1970s tile in my apartment bathroom. haha):

Then after I've finished getting ready and am heading out the door to work, I find this one on the inside of our front door:

And that's one of the MANY reasons that I am marrying this man.  :-)

I want to win.....

... the giveway at Bridal Gown Blog, that is.  I entered to win one of the awesome personalized hangers.

If you want to head over and enter too, here's the link:

http://bridalgownblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/its-giveaway-time.html

DIY Lovebirds Cake Topper

I'm sure many of you have seen the variety of sculpted cake toppers. From personalized brides and grooms to animals... there is a large selection.  One of my bridesmaids saw some sculpted birds for cake toppers and I LOVED them! However, these cute toppers usually come with a hefty price tag... and I just can't justify in my mind spending $40+ on a cake topper.

Enter crazy DIY bride notion to make her own.  :-)

I had no idea what to do, what I'd need, or where to start. So I just winged it. (Most of these pictures were taken with my phone as my camera was on the fritz. Sorry).

SUPPLIES:
- Sculpey clay
- Acrylic paint
- Paint brushes
- Oven
- Toothpicks
- Super glue

PROCESS:

- Ok, so I went to Michael's and bought one of the small blocks of Sculpey clay.  This is not the smallest block, but probably counts as the "medium" size at Michael's. I picked this clay because it's the kind that you bake after you've molded it. I like this idea because then I didn't have to rush or worry about changing my sculpture, since this doesn't harden just from being exposed to air for a bit... and because after baking they get very hard so I didn't have worry about messing them up from that point on.

- Ok, so... buy your sculpey and sculpt your birds. Again... I just kind of winged this part. I looked at some other pictures of clay birds for reference though. I chose to sculpt all the parts of my bird separately. The body, the wings, and the beak. I didn't really want my birds to be too realistic looking.... so adding the parts on later seemed to give me the look I was going for.  If you plan on giving your birds legs then you need to make the holes for the legs now as you won't be able to after it's baked and hardened.  Toothpicks ended up being just the appropriate size for my bird legs. (Don't leave the toothpicks in while baking, just make the holes and then remove them.)

- After you've sculpted your birds, you then bake the clay in the oven according to the directions on the side of the Sculpey package. I believe it's like 15 mintes for every 1/4 inch of thickness or something. Read the package, it'll tell you.

- Take the birds (and their various parts) out of the oven and allow them to cool completely.

-After they've cooled you can paint them any color you prefer. Also, paint their various parts and accessories. I painted by birds a pale pink and their beaks a mocha brown color.

-Add accessories. I chose to give my groom a dark brown bow tie that I sculpted from the clay too. The bride has a veil that I created by just cutting a small rectangle shape from a piece of tulle and then sewing with white thread at one end to gather it.

- Super glue the wings, beaks, and accessories onto the birds.

-Paint some eyes on. I gave mine dark brown eyes.... the bride got some cute eyelashes.

And there ya have it. They aren't perfect, but they are handmade and I adore them. And this project probably cost me about $10 total. Awesome!

DIY Coasters

Lots of lots of projects still going on. I had a long weekend from work for Labor Day so I've been doing lots of shopping and lots of DIY.  Here's the more recent one.....

SUPPLIES:
-I purchased a pack of 125 square, 4 inch, chipboard coasters from an Ebay seller for about $14.50 (including shipping).

-I already had the ink pads (have to use the pigment ink on coasters since it's water resistant) from previous projects.

-I purchased the "lovebirds" stamp and "Thank You" stamp at Hobby Lobby for about $2-2.50 each (during one of their stamp sales).

-The heat gun I borrowed from my future father-in-law, who had used it for rebuilding an old car. It's not an actual embossing gun, but it gets the job done just the same (and I didn't have to pay for one, which is awesome).

-The clear sparkly embossing powder I bought from Michael's using a 40% off coupon.

PROCESS:
- This one is pretty easy. I just took the bird stamp and inked it up with the brown ink and stamped them on the coasters. I had to get a good amount of ink on there and then press down really hard on the coaster to make sure that I got all the lines nice and complete, but they came out pretty good.
-Then I took the pink ink and the "Thank You" stamp and stamped it right below the birds. Since I was going to be embossing the pink part I had to have the embossing power open and ready to go since I have to sprinkle it on the ink immediately after stamping to ensure that it sticks.
-So, after stamping the "Thank You", sprinkle on the embossing powder.
-Shake excess embossing powder off the coaster (I shake mine into a bowl that way I can reuse it later by just funneling it back into the powder jar).
-Then take your heat gun and melt the embossing powder until you see it start to become cohesive and shiny.

*TIP: When it comes to embossing I've tried tons of inks, powders, etc.  What I found that works best and gives me the clearest image (this is especially important if you are dealing with a pretty detailed stamp) is to stamp the image with the color of ink you want and then emboss it with the clear powder. Embossing with the colored powders looks more messy for a detailed image, at least in my experience.*

All done! I LOVE them. The birds are so cute!  Not sure how my wedding theme came to involve birds, but I love it. We definitely have a rustic elegance look to most of our stuff.

Have a great rest of the week!