Personalized Christmas Stocking Tutorial

Ok, so I am going to show you a recent craft project I made for Christmas. No, it is not related to our wedding at all, but I thought what the hay, I will show it to you anyway. :)

Right now at my work we are having a contest for who can decorate their plain red Christmas stocking the best. I love crafting so I got really excited!

The cute kitty in the picture is my roommates cat, Burrito.

I just love the little guy. :)

Below is a picture of the plain red stocking they gave us to start off with and they told us to decorate it however we pleased.

I was in Hancock Fabrics the other day looking for fabric for my wedding and took the opportunity to pic out a really cute fabric for my stocking as well.

My sister learned how to make fabric flowers a few months ago and I was intrigued so I decided to make one to put on my stocking.

First you cut out a long strip of fabric and then fold it in half. Take a needle and thread and start threading it through both layers of the fabric along the edge. As you pull the thread tight the fabric naturally starts to gather and spiral into the shape of a flower. For more detailed instructions on how to make these go to the Creation Corner.

Next I wanted to make a center for my flower so I took some Aleene's Fabric Fusion and glued it down onto the center of the flower.

Next I cut up squares from the fabric and glued them down flat onto the stocking with Aleene's Fabric Fusion as well. I had a red and white flannel ribbon that was left over from a wrapped gift that I tied and glued onto the top of the stocking. I used some of the extra pieces to cut out little hearts too. I had some left over letters from the project I did to ask my bridesmaids to be in our wedding. I used these to put my name on my stocking.

And it was finished!

There's Burrito again, checking out the stocking hanging from the fireplace in my room. :)

And here is a close up of my new fabulous Christmas stocking!

Sneak Peak!

Today I have decided to give you all a sneak peak of the fabrics that we will be using for decoration at our wedding reception. I haven't decided yet whether or not to tell you what they will be used for because I think I might want to make it a surprise. :) During the last couple of weeks my mom and I have gone to a few fabric stores to find the perfect fabric. All of these were found at Jo-Ann Fabric and Crafts. I am so excited because I feel like my look is finally coming together!

200 days to go!!!

It is officially 200 days until our wedding!! So excited! Yes, 200 days is still quite a while but I think it will be here before we know it. With the holidays coming up and a few of my friends weddings and showers to go to, it will fly by (or at least I hope so!). I think when we hit 100 days, that is when the real count down will begin. :)

Cake Inspiration

Next week we are meeting with Sweet Dreams Bakery located in Oakhurst, CA for a cake tasting/meeting. We have heard many great things about this bakery so we thought we would meet with them first.

Jon is especially excited about meeting with the bakers because of the cake tastings, of course. I think this may be the most exciting part of wedding planning for him. lol. And... my dad wants to come to the cake tasting too! Figures! So next week on Thursday the four of us, my mom, dad, Jon, and I will be tasting cake. :)

The fun part for me is picking out the design of the cake. Don't get me wrong, I love cake, but since I found out that I have an intolerance to gluten there haven't been as many flavor options for me. Although I have heard that pretty much any wedding bakeries make gluten free cakes now that taste as good, almost as good, or better than the real thing. I do love that Betty Crocker has a line of gluten free baking mixes (I think the gluten free chocolate cake is better than the regular kind) and I discovered the other day that they have Bisquick gluten free pancake mix and it tastes just the same as the regular stuff.

Soooo, I am thinking we will make the whole cake regular and then just have one of the tiers (probably the small top one) gluten free for Jon and me. I don't want to make all our guests eat gluten free cake just because of me! Although, no one would probably know the difference. I bet it is more expensive though.

Anyway, to the fun part (at least for me).... the cake design! I have been looking on various websites for cakes I like the look of lately. I found some inspiration at Martha Stewart Weddings and The Knot. Since my dress has lace on it, I'm thinking of incorporating a "lace-look" to our cake. I love how bakers can do just about anything anymore these days. They can make frosting look like lace! Check out these cakes I like below. Aren't they beautiful?!

Ps. It's Jon's birthday today!!!! If you know him make sure you wish him the very best! :-)

Wedding Gift Registries

Over the last few days my fi (short for fiance :)) and I started our wedding gift registries. We registered at Bed Bath and Beyond, Pottery Barn and Macy's. This seems like a good mix.

Bed Bath and Beyond is for every little thing you need at a good price and an advantage is that they are located pretty much everywhere. Jon is from Michigan (and most of his family lives over there) so we have to keep in mind that we need to register at places that they have too. Macy's is good for this as well. I do not think they have Pottery Barn so that will be for just people in Cali. I love that store (I actually worked there about 3 years ago as a seasonal employee). They have very nice furniture, decor, and dinnerware, etc.

And then last night I went to Anthropologie.com and created a wish list. Sadly they do not have wedding gift registries. :( But they do have a wish list and it looks just like a registry because anyone can look up your wish list to see what it is you want. The list tells you how many of each item they want and how many have been bought for them already. Sounds like a gift registry to me! I got the idea from my friend Erika who is also getting married and she created a wish list at Anthro. I took a look at her wish list last night and got super excited, maybe a little too excited, because I ended up staying up until almost 2 in the morning adding items to my own wish list. I just love how everything there is so unique. The pieces that we get from there will add lots of personality and style to our house.

I admit that being registered at 4 places sounds a little bit excessive and almost greedy. I am considering listing that we are registered at Anthropologie for just my friend showers and not for the wedding. I don't know yet, we will see. I figure my friends and some of my mom's friends would enjoy shopping at Anthropologie more than the other stores. All I know is that I got excited when I found out I could buy Erika something from Anthropologie instead of the usual places.

Registering for wedding gifts is so much fun! It's like Christmas except your wish list includes anything and everything you will ever think you need. I think Jon enjoyed using the scanning gun the best. I think his favorite thing to do is to point the gun at me. He tells me he just wants to make sure I'm on the list. :)

One more thing... in your opinion.... should we register for china or not register for china? Jon and I are leaning more towards not registering for it because we don't know when we will ever use it. We will probably just register for nicer everyday settings that can be dressed up or down depending on the occasion. There are some really pretty designs out there for China, but I gravitate towards the more unique and I know that it will probably go out of style within a few years and then we will never use it again. So what's the point? We would rather have people spend more on other items that we will use more rather than on expensive China we may only use once every few years. In all honesty, what is your opinion?

Antiquing Adventures

This weekend we went antique shopping again! This time we went on a mission to find antique bottles to use as centerpieces and for the ceremony aisle way. My mom, sister and I went looking for blue mason jars specifically and then any other types of small antique bottles that weren't too pricey. We went to antique stores in Clovis and found some great bottles! My plan is to have half the tables with groupings of 3 or so bottles in varying heights and sizes as the centerpieces. Depending on the size of the bottles there will be different amounts of flowers in them. Some of the really little bottles will have one big flower in them.

Here is a photo of all the pieces we collected!

The plan for the other half of the tables is to have much taller centerpieces to balance out the overall look. These will be floral centerpieces as well but they will be in white iron pieces my mom found at Home Goods. They are perfect! We met with two of the florists last week and are pretty sure we know which florist to go with. She just got my vision exactly. She got super excited when we showed her the white iron pieces my mom bought.

We went on another antiquing adventure today at the antique stores in Cayucos. We came here for a few days to stay at our beach house and figured we might as well go shopping here too! This time my fiance came too along with my sister and mom. :) He was a good sport although he was working half the time from his phone, he still joined in on the search. I always knew Cayucos had several great antique stores, but I hadn't really been inside them. A couple of them were 3 stories tall, who would have known? We found some great treasures there as well.

Personal Wedding Websites

This week I created our personal wedding website!

Before I created our wedding website, I did some research on the different ones out there. At first I went straight to theknot.com because they are a phenomenal website for all kinds of great wedding tips and ideas. I browsed through their wedding website templates and although they had several cute ones that you can make in a variety of colors, I just didn't feel like any of them represented the look of our wedding. Then I looked up weddingjojo.com because I had remembered reading about it on other bridal blogs. Unlike theknot.com which has everything you can think of as far as weddings go, weddingjojo is just for creating your own personal wedding websites. I browsed through their templates and I found one in particular that I really liked, but realized that you had to pay 14.99 a month for it. Only one of their templates is free! No thank you! If I can find other websites that don't charge, that is what I am going to do, I don't want to have to pay for something like that. I then google searched wedding websites and looked at ewedding.com and some others I can't think of right now and none of them really had that great of templates or you had to pay for them.

Then I came across weddingwire.com and browsed through their templates. They have 100's of templates all for FREE, I couldn't believe they were free because they had soooo many cute ones I had a hard time choosing which one to use for our site. I got so excited!! They have ones from Vera Wang, Martha Stewart, and all sorts of other designers. I think they have a lot of wedding invitation companies' templates so that if you wanted to, you could have your website match your invitations. What a great marketing idea!

Disney Princess Wedding Dresses!?!

For all you Disney die hard fans out there, I think this may be for you!... Disney princess inspired wedding dresses! Yep, that's right, Alfred Angelo is working with Disney to create wedding gowns inspired by the looks of the Disney princesses. Disney Fairy Tale Weddings by Alfred Angelo

via Coco Perez

I love all Disney movies and I grew up watching them every chance I could, but this doesn't neccessarily make me go gaga. These dresses are beautiful, don't get me wrong, but they don't really look like how they did in the movies.. although I don't know how many brides would actually buy them in their original style anyway, I mean look at Ariel's 80's poof sleeves! haha!

Ps. Thanks Crafty Chica for posting this on your facebook and giving me some inspiration! :)

Flowers Flowers Flowers

The next vendor I would like to book for our wedding is a florist. Before I start meeting with some I wanted to figure out what style of flowers I like best. So this weekend I put together a few pictures I found on various wedding blogs to take with me to the appointments and see which florist gets my vision the most. I am struggling to sum up my vision in a few words... I guess you could call it a romantic, vintage, spring garden wedding.

This first grouping is all bouquets- I like that they are more loose and airy (as opposed to tight balls of flowers) almost as if they were a bunch of wildflowers just picked fresh from a field. I tend to like bright colors vs. pastels. I think the bouquets are pretty when they look really organic with a few leaves sticking out from the bouquet too.


This next one I put together as inspiration for my centerpieces. I love the blue mason jar look. I think having these line the aisle way of the ceremony would be so beautiful. I also like the idea of having other eclectic random antique bottles with fresh flowers in them as well.

The next one is just another grouping of ideas that I liked.

I think I am armed and ready for meeting with the florists! I will have to let you know how it goes!

DIY Pillows & An Indoor/Outdoor Wedding

First of all I would like to show you these awesome handmade pillows I found on Style Me Pretty! They are super cute with the different love words spray painted on. This look can actually be achieved very easily on your own. All you need is some Tulip Fabric Spray Paint and Tulip Fabric Sticky Stencils and you've got yourself a great DIY project. For an alterative to doing this for your wedding you could make some for your bedroom or living room too! Check out the pillows Maya made at the I Love To Create Blog using Tulip Fashion Graffiti products for her bed! So fun!



...Now I would like to talk about how much I love the wedding that had these pretty pillows in it. They literally brought the indoors outdoor for such a beautiful effect...

"What do you do when you love the outdoors but want to get married in a church? You bring the church outdoors! That’s exactly what Cedarwood, an all-inclusive historic venue in Nashville, Tennessee does when they create their stunning Outdoor Cathedral. Ten foot Gothic church windows and antique carved solid Oak church pews set in a green summer meadow is a site to make anyone pause at the beauty of God’s handiwork." - Abby Larson @ Style Me Pretty

LOVE Monogram Mugs

I found this great idea at Style Me Pretty using the Anthropologie monogram mugs as decoration. The flowers are so pretty and the best part is that they spell out "LOVE". I really want to do this for my wedding.... Maybe they could go on the guest book table that I just bought (read last post). That would be so pretty!

Weekend Furniture Find!

This weekend my mom and I went to the Clovis Fest. It is a fun outdoor festival in the quaint little streets of Old Town Clovis. Vendors fill the streets to sell things like handmade crafts, fresh fruit, kettle corn, you name it. Best of all they start the day off with a hot air balloon launch... unfortunately by the time my mom and I got there they were long gone and we couldn't see them anymore.

The fun thing about Old Town Clovis is all the antique shops. I honestly had no idea how many there were until we started browsing through them... And I think I found a new love for antique shopping. I never really saw myself as an antique shopper. I always thought of antique shops as kinda smelly places filled to the brim with stuff that only grandmas would like. Well... I found out that not all of them are like that... sure they are sort of jam packed with lots of stuff and it does smell a little, but some of them are actually pretty organized and nice inside. I found myself picking out pieces in them that I could see myself purchasing someday for my home.

And I actually did purchase one piece!! I am so excited! I think it may be the first piece of furniture I have ever bought. It was sitting outside of a gift shop that was brought over from an antique store for displaying seasonal items. I asked if it was for sale and the lady said yes it is.... $250 but today we are marking it down half price to $125 because we don't want to have to haul it back over to the antique store. What a steal! Or at least I think it was. The lady said she thinks it dates back from the 30's. But anyway, here is a picture of my new find. Just imagine it without the pumpkins, etc on the top. So... what purpose will this piece serve, you ask? Well, I would like to use it first in my wedding, maybe as the guest book table. Can you picture it?... fresh flowers in a vase on top, maybe some iron letters of our initials resting next to it and the guest book sitting on top.... Then I had another idea, why not get two uses out of it? I thought it would be perfect in our new home. I have a house that I live in with roommates right now and Jon will be moving in with me when we get married and the roommates will be out. I am not quite sure where we are going to put this table in the house, but I have several ideas in mind already where I think it will look really nice.

Inspired by Vintage Brooch Bouquets

Today I would like to show you vintage brooch bouquets! This is for the bride who wants to add a unique DIY twist to their wedding. I am definitely a fresh flower girl, but I still find these so inspiring.

via Etsy seller 1amanda- original creator of the Vintage Brooch Bouquets

via Style Me Pretty

Wedding Color Palettes!

I found a great blog all about wedding color palettes! Every blog post shows a new inspiration of color. I am so happy I stumbled upon this little gem.

theperfectpalette.blogspot.com

Here is the color palette I found to be most inspirational for my wedding. It is a really romantic color palette with aqua, chocolate brown, latte, and ivory...

...And the inpiration board to go with it. :)

Previously I thought my wedding colors would be turquoise and yellow, but after I found a bridesmaid dress that I loved in a latte color I began to to think maybe I wanted something different. Here is the dress. What do you think??

And here is the back of the dress... Isn't the bow in the back so cute?!

Engagement Session at the Happiest Place on Earth

I am IN LOVE with this engagement session!!! It is sooooo adorable. When I first came across it I was like, why didn't I think of that! Don't get me wrong, I am VERY happy with how Jon and my engagement session turned out, but I just got so inspired when I saw this one. Engagement session in Disney Land!!??? So fun! What better place for a happy couple to share their love in photos than at the Happiest Place on Earth!

I found the session at Bridal Bar Blog. Photos by Beautiful Day Photography. You can see the entire engagement session here.