Thursday, November 29, 2012
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Wedding Projects 1
So my project frenzy started when we decided to move our wedding from August to February. My previous obsession with Pinterest only heightened and I literally became glued to my iPhone.
I had been scouring and pinning for several months. Given the success of my first project (see previous post) and the fact that I fancy myself as quite crafty, surely an event as large as my wedding would not need any trial runs for any of my projects (cough**mistake**cough). Also, being pregnant, having morning sickness, and being unable to bend over due to injection sites in abdomen are all pretty unproductive for projects. Did I consider any of this? Nope. Just organized the supplies I thought I needed/wanted and waited for my mother to arrive the week before the wedding. Hey mom, welcome to Cleveland, and I saved some spray paint and epoxy for ya!
Here are my hits and misses for our small and intimate wedding. We decided to do immediate family only at the country club we had already paid our deposit on for the summer wedding. I did not like the backdrop so we had to make our own. I also did not see the point in spending a lot on decorations for only 30 people, so I tried to dress the place up a lot with handmade decorations.
I knew I wanted a picture clothesline like these to help personalize the space of our reception. What I didn't account for was where would I put it. I thoughtfully picked out almost 100 pictures from our dating journey, had them printed and this cute clothesline I was ready to paint silver. Mom spray-painted for me and we quickly realized we needed more string and clothespins. We found those cute mini ones for scrapbooking and painted them silver too. This was all going perfectly in my head.
Well morning of wedding comes and we head over to the venue to set up and we are not allowed to tape or pin anything ANYWHERE (file under, questions you should've asked months ago), but since I have so much string, I'm welcome to tie it to anything that's already existing.....which is not much. My dad and about to be FIL notice a security light (yep, we're classy) and an old nail that we manage to make bunting-like clotheslines above the favors and seating card table. Here is the inspiration photo and what is clearly my unprofessional photo after.
What I would do differently next time is scout out a place to put this! And if I couldn't use it (come up with an alternate plan. I had not really planned where to put things until that morning...bad idea. Also, as I look back at all the other clotheslines, I see the pictures are all uniform size. This looks much more polished than my mishmosh of horizontal and vertical.
Then there is the original pin from babble.com for my lighted backdrop to cover the accordion fold wall:
My poor mother was handed a tangled mess of Christmas lights, some chiffon curtains I found on clearance at Bed, Bath & Beyond, and shown this picture. She looked at me like I was crazy. So we went shopping. We found additional purple curtains and curtain rod on clearance at Target, and a super cute wrought iron garden table at JoAnns. Combine this with some curtain rods I had at home, fishing wire, and silver spray paint, and we (by we, I mean my mom on this one) went to town. See, mom is smart enough to realize you have to make sure it works before you take it all the way to the event venue and set up. Two days later she had it working. With all that, and mostly set up, it still took two hours to set up at the venue. Here is her awesome handiwork:
It was at this point my mother turns to me and says, what goes on the table? The unity candle. Where is that? Um.....So we went to my favorite craft store (did I mention this is the morning of the wedding, btw???), Pat Catans, and grabbed three candles and some ribbon. I convinced my mother I did not need tape that I had plenty at home. Turns out all I had was bright blue painters tape, so we have no pictures of my really awesome unity candles. :) But it all turned out quite nice in the end:
I had been scouring and pinning for several months. Given the success of my first project (see previous post) and the fact that I fancy myself as quite crafty, surely an event as large as my wedding would not need any trial runs for any of my projects (cough**mistake**cough). Also, being pregnant, having morning sickness, and being unable to bend over due to injection sites in abdomen are all pretty unproductive for projects. Did I consider any of this? Nope. Just organized the supplies I thought I needed/wanted and waited for my mother to arrive the week before the wedding. Hey mom, welcome to Cleveland, and I saved some spray paint and epoxy for ya!
Here are my hits and misses for our small and intimate wedding. We decided to do immediate family only at the country club we had already paid our deposit on for the summer wedding. I did not like the backdrop so we had to make our own. I also did not see the point in spending a lot on decorations for only 30 people, so I tried to dress the place up a lot with handmade decorations.
I knew I wanted a picture clothesline like these to help personalize the space of our reception. What I didn't account for was where would I put it. I thoughtfully picked out almost 100 pictures from our dating journey, had them printed and this cute clothesline I was ready to paint silver. Mom spray-painted for me and we quickly realized we needed more string and clothespins. We found those cute mini ones for scrapbooking and painted them silver too. This was all going perfectly in my head.
Well morning of wedding comes and we head over to the venue to set up and we are not allowed to tape or pin anything ANYWHERE (file under, questions you should've asked months ago), but since I have so much string, I'm welcome to tie it to anything that's already existing.....which is not much. My dad and about to be FIL notice a security light (yep, we're classy) and an old nail that we manage to make bunting-like clotheslines above the favors and seating card table. Here is the inspiration photo and what is clearly my unprofessional photo after.
What I would do differently next time is scout out a place to put this! And if I couldn't use it (come up with an alternate plan. I had not really planned where to put things until that morning...bad idea. Also, as I look back at all the other clotheslines, I see the pictures are all uniform size. This looks much more polished than my mishmosh of horizontal and vertical.
Then there is the original pin from babble.com for my lighted backdrop to cover the accordion fold wall:
My poor mother was handed a tangled mess of Christmas lights, some chiffon curtains I found on clearance at Bed, Bath & Beyond, and shown this picture. She looked at me like I was crazy. So we went shopping. We found additional purple curtains and curtain rod on clearance at Target, and a super cute wrought iron garden table at JoAnns. Combine this with some curtain rods I had at home, fishing wire, and silver spray paint, and we (by we, I mean my mom on this one) went to town. See, mom is smart enough to realize you have to make sure it works before you take it all the way to the event venue and set up. Two days later she had it working. With all that, and mostly set up, it still took two hours to set up at the venue. Here is her awesome handiwork:
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
The Pin that started it all
My obsession with Pinterest started the minute we looked at engagement rings. Sorry, dear. But at least I waited until then to start planning, some girls have the whole wedding planned before they graduate high school (is anyone else channeling Monica Gellar?). I really blame my sister-in-law for introducing me to the site where I could find all these amazing ideas in one place, and save the ones I liked in one tidy little place. I would like to apologize to my previous boss and coworkers now for any lack of productivity the Pinterest iPhone app may have caused. :)
It might've remained a pipe dream and just a "wouldn't it be nice" site as most Pinterest boards are had my first attempt at a project not turned out well. It was seriously the cutest thing I had seen and I had to make my very own bridesmaids invitations. Here is the original idea from oncewed.com
It might've remained a pipe dream and just a "wouldn't it be nice" site as most Pinterest boards are had my first attempt at a project not turned out well. It was seriously the cutest thing I had seen and I had to make my very own bridesmaids invitations. Here is the original idea from oncewed.com
Seriously, how cute are those??!!! So, with their awesome instructions (which as we will all learn are the key to successful pins) and a little help from this site on the cute handwriting, here is what we came up with:
Not too shabby, huh? My girlfriends and future sisters dutifully ooohed and aaahed over them. From that day forward Pinterest had me convinced I was the next Martha Stewart.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Why blog
So hubby thinks blogging will be a good outlet for me. He thinks I have Adult ADHD or something. I tried to explain the concept of Mommy Brain, but alas, here I am. I believe the need to organize my thoughts all started about a year ago.
Having just returned from vacation with my fiance and his family, I came down with the stomach flu. I was so tired and could not stop retching. So I finally went to the doctor to be tested for the regular flu. My entire life changed as I sat on a paper lined table and the following conversation occurred:
"Your pregnancy test was positive"
"Um, you have the wrong room. I didn't take one of those."
"Remember peeing in a cup?"
"Yeah, but that was like for mono or something. I'm not pregnant, that's for someone else."
"Deya, it's not mono, you are most definitely pregnant."
Long pause for hysterical crying....."I don't know if I should call my fiance or cardiologist!"
Not my best reaction to what most parents recall to be one of the best days of their lives. I, however, had not planned on getting pregnant. Not for some time and possibly not ever if my cardiology team at Cleveland Clinic did not agree it was a good idea.
I should interject here in case my son ever reads this...yes, you were unplanned. But in the words of Sheryl Crow, "You're My Favorite Mistake". And in the off chance you ever worry we only married due to the pregnancy, you can thank Facebook for forcing the timeline format on Mommy and Daddy's profiles to prove we were engaged long before you came around.
So on December 2, 2011, I learned why I would slowly start losing brain cells for the seemingly indefinite future. I quickly caught "Pregnancy Brain" which has now become the a fore mentioned "Mommy Brain". What's next? I'm scared to find out.
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