Handmade Touches for a Vintage Style Wedding

This is the message I found in a fortune cookie last June: “You will soon be involved in many gatherings and parties”. I’m not superstitious, but this statement was certainly true - later that month, I was headed up to Gloucester, MA for my little sister’s wedding! It was a beautiful, vintage inspired affair to remember :).

I was so thrilled to be able to contribute some  handmade touches for the ring bearer and the flower girl. My niece, Lila, was the flower girl. I made a flower hair band for her using fabric flowers, felt and some frilly ribbon. I was inspired by the beautiful flower hair crowns you can see on Etsy, like this one.  To make the flower halo, I just removed some fabric flowers from their stems and hot glued them to an oval piece of felt, then I sandwiched a long, ruffled length of ribbon between that and a matching piece of felt. It is easy to wear a floral headband like this one: you just secure it with bobby pins, then tie the ribbon at the nape of your neck.

Our son, Gabe was the ring bearer, and he got to wear the most adorable outfit with a newsboy hat, bow-tie and suspenders. Instead of carrying the wedding rings on a pillow, we wrapped vintage poetry and music books together with some more of the flowers from the flower girl’s hair crown and some vintage lace and twine. The books were to represent the happy couple, whose college majors were Music and English  . Mom contributed the vintage poetry books and I had the old 1930′s children’s song book and vintage lace. This unique ring bearer “pillow” idea also came from Etsy :)!

I shared some more photos from the wedding at Scrapbook Ideas, from the photo book I made everyone for Christmas. I keep meaning to ask my sister and her new husband if they mind if I post some pictures of them too :)!

Beautiful Flowers of the Garden Isle

Kauai, “The Garden Isle”, certainly lived up to its name, with lush tropical plants and flowers spilling over every surface – I felt as if I had entered another world!

The condo we stayed at in Kauai had a lovely gardens all around, and a wonderful orchid garden in front.

I enjoyed seeing so many gorgeous plants and flowers – what an amazing place! Please take a minute to look at my slide show of flower photos from Hawaii and let me know what you think :)!

*Click Here to see a Slide Show of 30 Flower Images from Kauai*

*Click Here to See More of Our Hawaii Photos*

A Lovely Visit to the Botanical Garden

I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart;
I will tell of all your wonders.
I will be glad and rejoice in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

Psalm 9:1&2

On Thursday we met Chris at the Botanical Garden for lunch. It was a GORGEOUS day! We also saw our friends Laurie and Brett there too, which was a nice surprise :). After Chris left to go back to work, we explored the Children’s Garden and Butterfly House a bit before heading home.

Julia sticks her tongue out for almost every photo these days! Of course Gabe has to imitate her for laughs!

The Circle of Life for a Monarch Butterfly!

Check out the photo below, do you see the “before and after” of the monarch butterfly? I thought it was so neat to see both forms sharing the same leaf!!

We truly experienced how amazing God’s creation is!

The fall foliage behind this fountain looked so beautiful! I hope we can fit in lots of visits to the Botanical Gardens this autumn :).

Three Simple Fall Centerpieces for Under $10

On Sunday morning our pastor started talking about the “yard sale sub-culture” and everyone in my family started looking at me and giggling. I am not ashamed to admit that I love a bargain! If I can find great toys, books and games for the kids at a tiny fraction of the original cost, I am a happy camper. When Target comes out with Pottery Barn-like home decor I am all over it (although even Target is a little pricey for me sometimes). I have even picked things up off the side of the road (waiting for trash day). YES – I have and I am totally fine with it as long as I know it is something that can be thoroughly cleaned and isn’t broken.  So with that in mind, it shouldn’t come as a big shock that I love dollar stores :). I was at the Dollar Tree store a few days ago and picked up two little bunches of autumn florals to use in some fall centerpieces around the house. I just added some mini pumpkins, gourds and a few simple white dishes to make these three lovely autumn decorations!

Three Simple Fall Centerpiece Ideas

Supplies:

“Mini Pumpkins” and other small pumpkins (usually 50 – 75 cents each)

Gourds (I bought a bag of 5 at Walmart for a little over $2)

Fabric flowers/leaves/berries etc (I bought two bunches for a dollar each)

Dishes, bowls or baskets you already have on hand. You can use fall-themed, but I think simple containers display the colors and textures of autumn beautifully.

How to Make Autumn Centerpieces:

Step 1: Wash your pumpkins and gourds, pat dry and set aside.

Step 2: Remove the fabric flowers, leaves and berries from their plastic stems and choose a few nice pieces to use in your decorations.

Step 3: For the first centerpiece, arrange three similar pumpkins or gourds in a row on a dish or flat basket, then add a few small berries, leaves and/or flowers in between and at the ends of the row. TIP: Less is more! Try not to over-embellish :).  See the photo at the top of this page for an example – this one works well for a rectangular table.

Step 4: The second centerpiece is super simple: just place several gourds and/or mini pumpkins in a bowl and add fall leaves or flowers here and there. TIP: groups of odd numbers tend to look best together – I used 5 pieces in my bowl, plus one flower (see photo below).

Step 5: Lastly, you can make a cute little pumpkin tower using mini pumpkins and fabric leaves :). This one is pretty small, but it looks great on a small round table or a narrow side table. Choose three mini pumpkins that will stack nicely without easily falling over. Remove all plastic connection pieces from the fabric leaves, and lay the first set of leaves in the center of a flat dish or basket. Place the largest of the three mini pumpkins on top of the leaves, then alternate leaves and pumpkins until you have your sweet little pumpkin tower completed. I also added a few tiny sunflowers to the top and sides.

There you have it! Three quick, simple and best of all – cheap fall decorations you can make yourself :). By-the-way, when I lived in New England it was easy to find REAL Bittersweet berries for free all over the place, plus plenty of colorful fall leaves, but the plus side of using artificial ones is that I can get them back out again next year!

Oh, and one more tip for working with inexpensive fabric flowers: the most tacky looking thing about them is always the plastic stems, so make sure you minimize those as much as possible. Remove any unnecessary plastic parts and tuck the rest under things to keep them hidden :).

For more autumn decorating ideas, check out these old blog posts I wrote in 2006:

~Fall Decorating Part 1~

~Fall Decorating Part 2~

UPDATE: Also check out this fall decorating post by my friend, Emily :)!

Our Sweet Girl’s First Birthday Party!

Today is Julia’s first birthday! We celebrated on Saturday with an “explosion of pink and purple” as Chris called it ;). As you can see, Miss Julia Rose LOVED her first cupcake :).

There were plenty of other yummy treats besides the rose-topped cupcakes.  We also served heart-shaped sandwiches, pink lemonade and strawberries with pink fruit dip. I even found the PERFECT little mints for party favors, which looked like polka-dots and matched the party colors too!

Julia’s face totally lit up when we all sang “Happy Birthday” to her – so adorable! She looked really cute in the birthday hat, outfit and tutu I made for her :)!

Her tutu is so puffy that we had to bunch it up behind her so she could crawl :).

I had an absolute blast making all the froufrou party decorations! Hopefully I will get a chance to share some great links and tutorials for some of these fun projects in a future post.

I will leave you with a photo of one of the birthday gifts from my parents – could this BE any more perfect for the party? Pink, polka-dots, roses and even a tutu!!!