Peaches and Cream Bridal Shower by Elizabeth Kaye

Morning guys! Today I have a sweet little treat for you; a peaches and cream themed bridal shower sent over from my lovely friend and photog extraordinaire, Elizabeth Kaye. I absolutely love when brides hire a photographer to capture their bridal shower because from what I remember my own shower was one of the most memorable days of my life. Then when a bride goes above and beyond to get crafty and carry out a theme throughout the whole celebration (an adorable theme might I add) the results are too delicious for words. Even better, those little peach drinks with the peach ring garnishes? I do believe that was the signature drink at our own wedding! After you scroll through the photos check out all the helpful cost-saving and planning tips from the beautiful bride to be, Sabrina. Enjoy your Wednesday blogettes; be back later this afternoon with more goodies :)

{From the cute bride to be, Sabrina} Bridal showers are becoming more and more elaborate these days. Rather than writing the name of my guests on individual, folded pieces of paper for their seating placements, I chose to buy mini canvases. I painted each canvas peach and wrote guest's names in cursive. Then I placed the small canvas on an easel that I had spray painted sea foam green. This was easy and very affordable and the small easels came in mini packs at the Dollar Store. Bigger canvases stood by the entrance to display what tables guests were seated at. These were also purchased from the Dollar Store. The larger canvases were painted peach and matched well with their little canvas friends. Among these, I also spotted fake fruit further down the craft aisle. I bought several bags of fake peaches and combined them into my floral centerpieces to tie in to the theme.

Even though Dollar Stores are great bargain places to shop at, there are times you can't find exactly what you need. When I visited my local Michaels, I checked the discounted bin and found adorable mini calendars for .39 cents each. Browsing through the months, I noticed lovely designs bordering the back side of each month. I decided to buy as many calendars as I needed and then ripped out the beautiful paper. I then traced my table numbers onto coloured stock paper and pasted it into the beautifully bordered paper. It added a really pretty touch and incorporated the colours I was after. Laminating the table number cards also really polished the look. 

Lastly, DIY projects are always a lot of fun, especially when you have a clear vision of what you want. Plan everything out and give yourself enough time to make your vision a reality. Depending on what DIY project you're working on, start early enough to achieve your goal without worrying about a sudden deadline. Put love and passion into your project and it will shine. Tackle on project at a time so it isn't too overwhelming. If something doesn't turn out exactly the way you want, well then, just remember, when life gives you peaches, make peach juice. Or something like that :)

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DIY Wedding Bouquet

Guys, not that I'm one to toot my own horn or anything but I seriously love this little gem of a bouquet. More so, I'm rather impressed with how pretty it turned out considering I have no previous floral experience or know-how when it comes to putting together a bunch of blooms. Can any of you brides out there please use these colours for your own wedding? I may have a new fave palette, lemme tell you. Below are some photos from my little DIY adventure and as always, a slight disclaimer about this tutorial; I am not a professional, and I am confident there is a correct way quite different from my way, to make a proper bouquet. However I am a firm believer that DIY sort of tosses out all means of professionalism and right-way-of-doing-things-ness out the door because after all, you're doin it by yo-self. So here's how I did it.

{Step 1} First things first, get your flowers from a flower market; they'll be cheaper. Then once you've picked your flowers for the bouquet, remove all leaves and thorns from the stems using your hands. Be careful not to pull apart parts of the base stem or flowers as you pull the leaves off. Lay out your blooms on your work station by type (roses with roses, carnations with carnations) as it'll be easier to see what you're working with when you construct the bouquet.

{Step 2} For blooms like lisianthus or spray roses where their stems are more delicate or there are multiple sprigs off of one stem, I used green floral table to fasten the stems together. I found this helped the multiple blooms on one stem sort of stick together and stand up straighter once they were clustered together with the other stems. Lisianthus blooms are so thin and tend to droop a little so this really helped with keeping them fresh looking.

{Step 3} For some of the thicker stemmed flowers like any type of rose, I used long floral wire strands to reinforce the stems. I started at the top of the stem closest to the flower and wrapped the wire strands down and around the stem. But after wiring a few roses I realized that most stems were either strong enough on their own that they didn't need wiring, or they were too delicate that the stems were snapping when I did try to wire them (which was the case with the lone daisy I had). Essentially I found that this step could have been left out.

{Step 4} Figure out what flowers you'd like to make up the center/middle of your bouquet. I used a garden rose, two regular pink roses, a carnation and a lisianthus. Using green floral tape I secured the stems of these flowers together making sure the bouquet had the basic shape I was after. You'll need to really hold on to the stems tightly as the secnd you loosen up your grip you risk losing the shape you had secured. Also be aware that floral tape is rather delicate.

{Step 5} Continue adding more of your blooms to the basic structure you've created, filling in holes and spaces as you feel fit. I added three to five blooms each time before stopping and securing them with floral tape to the base. since I wanted a really texturized feel, I tried to add in different shapes and heights of flowers/greenery to the middle of the bouquet. Continue to add your flowers until all of your blooms are taped to the base.

{Step 6} Using floral wire, tightly wrap the base of all of the taped together stems (this made the stems bundle closer to one another than they would have been had I just of used the floral tape). After the wire was added around the taped together stems, I went back around the spiraled wire with floral tape to sort of smooth out the surface. I added almost three layers of floral tape to make sure everything was perfectly in tact. 

{Step 7} Using floral pins or corsage pins with pearl-heads, I fastened two pieces of fabric to the stems, pushing the pins into the stems upwards. I used six pins to secure the fabric making sure to leave a few inches of bare stems at the bottom. I then used white rope to tied a bow around the pink fabric which was used to hide the floral tape and wire, in lieu of traditional ribbon. Et voila!

Whatcha think, friends? Happy flowering! xoxo

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DIY Pink and White Dessert Table Inspiration

Happy Tuesday everyone; I have something a little bit different for you and your tastebuds tonight so brace yourselves because this feature is all too scrumptious for words. I've been a huge fan of Hungry Girl Por Vida's Flickr stream for the longest time eva so imagine my surprise when I found out the girl behind the lens is the beautiful bride from this stunner of a wedding and is the blogger behind this cutey patootey blog. Turns out Cindy is even sweeter than everything she creates too because true story, she sent me an email wondering if I'd be interested in featuring a custom created sweets table whipped up, styled and photographer by her and I uhm, took about two seconds to respond back with my answer. All I asked is that the desserts by pink. And white. And pretty. And oh em gee. A strawberries and cream themed shower set up anyone? Cindy, I majorly heart you. Come visit me so we can be friends please.

{DIY Strawberries and Cream Dessert Table Menu} Strawberry Milk Panna Cotta with Strawberry Syrup, Vanilla Cake with Strawberry Filling and Whipped Strawberry Buttercream, Pavlovas with Whipped Cream and Fresh Berries. All of these desserts can be made in the days ahead of the shower. Just keep the panna cottas covered well with a plastic wrap, in the refrigerator until ready to serve. The cake can be baked well ahead of time (it will keep for a month well wrapped in the freezer), before filling and frosting. You can fill and frost the cake the day before and store in the refrigerator, just be sure to remove it at least 30 minutes before serving to bring to room temperature. The meringue for the pavlovas can be baked a few days before, and can be stored and cooled completely in an airtight container. You can also whip the cream and macerate the berries the day before and assemble just before serving.

For all of the incredibly mouthwatering recipes and instructions head over to Cindy's Hungry Girl Por Vida blog! 

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DIY Twine-Wrapped Mason Jars

I feel like I'm a little late in joining the rustic chic party but hey better late than never right? In celebration of my latest project in the works which I shared a bit with you here, I thought I'd give these twine-wrapped mason jars a try. After all I certainly love wrapping and gluing anything I can around vases. This project was so easy peasy that you too can create your own with whatever kind of jar, twine and ribbon you want to use. The supplies are few as all you need is some glue (either crazy glue or you can use a glue gun), ribbon, mason jars, flowers and of course, lots and lots of the good stuff. Also known as twine. Oh sweet sweet twine. I heart you.

The jars I found were from Hobby Lobby as was the twine. I purchased the shorter jars since I was looking to save a bit of cash if you know what I mean, but I think taller jars would have looked really cool as the layers of twine would have crawled up the sides of the jar a little bit higher. Here are a few of the steps I took to wrap the twine around the mason jars. The most important part is obviously fastening the twine to the jar when you start and finish wrapping it around. I also made sure to wrap the twine over and across the exact point where I glued the start of the twine to the glass. This sort of anchored the twine to the glass and allowed me to wrap the twine sooner than it would have taken me if I had waited for the glue to dry. Patience? What's that?

Then you can make the twine sort of wrap around in a diagonal pattern over the first layer of twine. I did this by wrapping the twine in a figure 8 pattern over and over again until I felt like it looked right. And with that you can tie a pretty ribbon bow over both layers of twine to make the little jar flower-ready. Imagine a navy and red ribbon for a nautical them wedding? I think I may have just inspired myself. Love it when that happens.

Et voila! A few carnations, some baby's breath, a spray rose and pink stock complete the look.

Happy crafting!

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DIY Quote Canvas

Our bedroom in our cozy little apartment is rather simple. We have two closets spanning the entire one wall, a bed, a dresser, a window, a floor lamp and a sitting chair; that Andrew loves to use as a clothes hanger of some sort. It's nothing fancy and almost every single item in the room is a flea market find, a quick purchase from IKEA or hand me down. Our dresser is actually a piece my Mom salvaged from a hotel that was renovating and getting rid of all of their furniture. I used it throughout college and we've never really had the time or money to invest in new furniture. While I'm cool with hand me downs, one thing that had drove me crazy since moving in is the huge white space over our bed. We don't have a bed frame and our bedding is white, so everything looks kind of bare, and yuck.

Even our cat matches our room; how convenient right? Since I didn't want to paint another wall in our bedroom, I had an incredibly small budget and I am fairly picky about the kind of art we display I set out to make my own piece. I bought a large thin-width canvas from Hobby Lobby, four little bottles of acrylic paint in a gray shade called "Hippo Gray"some block alphabet stencils and a tube of white acrylic paint. I already had some brushes in my craft box so I had quite the selection to choose from. And I got right to work.

And after lots of careful painting, waiting for the layers to dry, picking out a phrase to stencil on the canvas that would fit (you'd be surprised how hard this was since it took me close to three days to pick something that fit), stencilling and fixing up some areas where the paint got a little messy (our fur baby thought he'd take a walk on the canvas mid paint and when my outburst of a scream scared him I ended up with a cat paw print on the cavas) I think I really like having a bit of love hanging over our heads each night. Ultimately I decided on the line from Train's "Marry Me" since it seemed fitting for our newlywed status and I have to admit I am completely in love with it. Reading this every day makes me want to fall in love with Apb each and every day over and over again.

I think this could be a wonderful way to add a piece of your wedding to your home without using photos or other traditional ways of displaying wedding memories. You could stencil a line form your first dance song or even better imagine creating your own canvas with your wedding date on it for Save the Dates? You could lug it along to your engagement session for some fun photo ops. The spacing on our canvas is a little off with the three lines of letters but I sort of like it that way since our room is a really diverse mixture of things. After all, our marriage isn't perfect either but it was lovingly created just like the canvas. It seems like the most fitting piece of art for the two of us wouldn't you say?

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DIY Project: Will You Be My Bridesmaid?

When a bride-to-be happens to be super cute, super fabulous and super talented, I can't help but squeal with delight when she sends me the most adorable project ever. There's no doubt a whole lot of thought goes into proposals these days. But how often do newly engaged chicks really consider how they'll ask their gal pals to serve as bridesmaids? After you check out this clever tutorial you be sure to rethink how you plan on asking your girls to stand next to you on the biggest day of your life. Don't forget to head on over to Emilee's blog and etsy shop where I'm pretty positive you'll find something to swoon over.

{What You'll Need}

wooden spool

alphabet stamps

an ink pad

scissors

fabric and/or trim

lace and/or glue

any packaging supplies you'd like

{Step 1} Cut your fabric or trim so that the width is just smaller than your wooden spool. You can make it just long enough for your message or longer - I did mine a bit longer to wrap around the spool a little extra.

{Step 2} Stamp out the words "Will You Be My Bridesmaid?" or "Will You Be My Maid of Honour?" on the fabric strip using your alphabet stamps and ink. 

{Step 3} You can use either a piece of tape or a dot of glue to attach your stamped fabric to the spool. Start at the right side (where your message ends) and roll so that when you unroll the fabric your message is revealed.

{Step 4} Once your fabric is all wrapped up you can tie it closed with ribbon or string or lace and add any extra touches you want! Here's how the final product turned out. Would you not squeal with delight if this little creation was handed to you? I absolutely love it! How did you ask your friends to serve as bridesmaids?

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DIY Stir Stick Flags

This past summer I scoured websites and blogs determined to find cute little stir sticks or straws I could buy for the wedding. I really wanted guests to have something cute to stir and or drink their cocktails with and originally settled on this idea. Yet, this didn't seem like the most cost-effective idea and considering this girl has a budget to stick to, set out to find something a little different. Apb ended up getting me my straws (which I still have a lot left of thank goodness. I cannot wait to use these at cocktail parties!) but I never did find stir sticks that I loved both in style and price. So off to the Dollar Store I went and I returned home with a pack of 200 wooden coffee stir sticks, a page of pink Bristol board, a glue stick and a little imagination. 

To make the stir stick flags I cut out an approximately 6 inch long, 1 inch wide strip of Bristol board. I then folded the strip in half over a stir stick making sure to glue the insides of the paper strip so the folded pieces stuck together. Then I cut a triangle out of the end to give the piece of paper it's distinctive flag shape. I wrote a variety of phrases on each of the flags like "Eat, Drink and Be Married," "La La La Love" and "Add Me To Your Drink." I put the stir sticks in with the gray and white straws and voila! Instant cuteness to our bar area. I loved seeing all of my girlfriends walking around with little pink flags in their glasses! Thank you to Amanda for the lovely photos too! What fun and affordable ideas have any of you lovelies thought of or used for personalizing your own wedding?

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DIY Seating Chart

For months and months I was stumped on what to use as our seating chart and what would display where each guest is supposed to sit. I contemplated big intricate designs and printed up canvases which would be flaunted in fancy fonts. I thought that a giant salvaged door finished in a white wash with everyone's names scrolled in silver pen would look pretty fab. I even bought this really old and very cheap shutter to use as a display but my creativity got the best of me and I decided to use that bad boy elsewhere. Instead, I called up my neighbor Matt. You know, the one who helps make really cool things for me. Like these. Because I knew I wanted to have something homemade. And I gave him an idea of what I wanted. We actually went perusing for wood one day and came across these skids in a parking lot. They were being thrown out so we broke out the saw and took what we needed.

And after getting down in his garage-slash-workshop he created for me this stained, vintage looking structure that I just love. It was exactly what I was looking for and Matt left some nails in the wood to give it a worn look. He rounded the bottom egdes to give it a little flair too. I was so thrilled to see this all finished! It's exciting to see a vision come to life don't you think?  

I got right to crafting to spruce this up as a Seating Card Display. So in keeping with the vintage glam feel of our wedding, I picked up some more ivory lace (similar to the kind I used around these) from Fabricland. I measured strips of lace to sit width-wise across the structure. Six strips ended up fitting comfortably down the entire structure. Since the lace I picked is very delicate and not very sturdy I startched the lace to add some firmness. To do so, I simmered 1/2 a cup of cornstarch and two cups of water in a pot, stirring until the mixture got nice and smooth yet pastey and quite thick. I then drenched each strip in the mixture before wringing it out and scraping off the goop. Then I laid the strips on a towel, making sure they were nice and flat as they dried out overnight. By morning they had firmed up and were much easier to work with!

Once the strips firmed up I was ready to start glueing the strips on the structure. I used a glue gun but my goodness, these thing wreak havoc on your fingers. As fabulous as glue guns are for so many different projects, I hate how messy they get! The glue gets so stringy and sticky. Yuck.

Then you'll need some of these:

So you can do a little bit of this..

.

But of course I wanted to spruce things up a tad. So I broke out my favourite stuff, sweet sweet Krylon.

And tranformed plain little clothespegs into fabulous gray-hued ones:

I wasn't sure if I actually liked the gray pegs better than the natural wood ones but having that pop of gray to coordinate with our colours is a really lovely touch. I think I will spray paint the next few packs of pegs too, now that I have tested the colour. I also made up a few mock cards to see how they would hang on the lace. And of course I used my Martha Stewart punch to pretty up the mini shipping labels. Gosh I love those things!

I think I likey! What do you think? Stay tuned for more pics of the structure with the completed cards and birdcage set up that will be used in the foyer of the mansion (our venue). There will be the small birdcage shown in the photo, then a larger sized one and a flower arrangement in a lace wrapped vase next to the Seating Chart. I will also use one of my chalkboard frames that will say "Find your seat." I have started to tackle the seating arrangements and my goodness that is one heck of a job! Hope everyone is having a truly fabulous and blessed week xo

{Update} The seating chart ended up being one of my most favourite wedding details and guests surely appreciated the work I put into the project. Here are some photos from our wedding photographer Amanda Wilcher, showing how the seating chart looked set up the day of our wedding, with all of the shipping name tags clipped to the lace. Enjoy!

The details above, and the set up below.

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DIY Favour Bags

I swear this DIY stuff has me head over heels in lurve with arts and crafts. Prior to becoming engaged over two years ago, never would I have thought that I'd want to be so heavily involved in personally creating so many elements of my wedding day. But after many many crafting days - the latest project being these cute favour bags - I feel like a little kid in a candy store. And these bags are just perfect for candy as a matter of fact. I am very excited for our wedding guests to fill them up with cake pops and truffles and macarons and cookies and donuts and Maltesers and jelly beans and this list goes on and on and on....

I started with medium sized brown Kraft bags from Michaels. They come in packs of 16 and with a 50 percent off coupon ends up being $2.81 (I refuse to pay full price at Michaels; it's so pricey there!) Then I  picked a stamp that reads Thank You so guests would understand that the bags and the treats to go in them, are Andrew and I's way of thanking them for sharing in our celebration. Martha Stewart makes a really rad (and expensive) line of paper punches so I picked up a doily pattern edge cutter that is just to die for. And I made sure to get a dark black ink pad so the stamp imprint would show up clearly on the brown paper. Pretty simple list of supplies for such cutey patooty bags!

{Step 1} Punch the tops of the brown bags. I opted to punch each bag just once so that the doily pattern rests in the middle of the bag opening. I found it very difficult to match up the lines of holes in the pattern when I went to carry the pattern across the entire top. It got very messy and I was wasting all of my bags trying to make things look perfect so I decided one punch per bag would do the trick.

{Step 2} Stamp the bags, apply pressure and peel away stamp. This is a pretty self explanatory step, however - and this is a biggie - make sure your ink pad is big enough for your stamp to lay flat down on it. Parts of my stamp like the top of the T and bottom of the Y didn't fit on the pad I bought. I ended up make a big mess of myself and the stamp trying to get equal coverage on the stamp but eventually found a way of rotating the stamp on the pad to pick up enough ink.

You can see in this picture below how the ink would well up inside the curl of the letter Y. I ended up throwing out about three bags since this made a really big blob of a mess. Try stamping your stamp on a scrap piece of paper a few times to make sure it's fairly clean after completing five or six bags. This will keep the ink out of places it shouldn't be and avoids unnecessary build up.

{Step 3} Let the bags dry. It's that easy! The bags dry very quickly so you won't have to wait too long. I ended up making close to 50 bags so I still have about 40 more to go to ensure that all of our guests will get one. But I just adore how they turned out and will be placing all of the bags in one of the drawers of our Dessert Dresser. The tops will hang out slightly and will in my opinion, look so fab!

Not the snazziest DIY projects but one of the cutest and cheapest I have done to date. And unlike some of the others I really think our guests will notice the extra bit of effort put into something homemade like these! What do you think you could use these bags for aside from a wedding? Happy Crafting everyone!  P.S. That doily pattern punched into the tops of the bags will be seen in other areas of our wedding decor so stay tuned; I just cannot wait to share it all with you :) xo

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