Martha’s Vineyard {Road Trip 2012}

One of the day trips we took during our summer vacation in New England was to Martha’s Vineyard, the beautiful island where as teens Chris and I held hands for the first time and realized we were “more than friends”. Somehow it seemed even more wonderful and romantic this summer than ever before :)!

It was fun to take them to some of the same places and enjoy the same activities we did back in the early 90′s.

I also took lots of photos of the lovely gingerbread cottages, but I will have to save them for another time :)!

Cape Cod and Patriot Place {Road Trip Pics Continued}

We were really close to Cape Cod while staying with family in Plymouth, so we spent one afternoon visiting the Heritage Museums and Gardens in Sandwich, Ma. Sandwich is a perfectly beautiful little New England town, and the oldest town in Cape Cod. I love driving through that area, and of course I love the gardens there! It was Chris’ first visit, which was perfect timing because they are having a Norman Rockwell exhibit this summer – one of his favorites (and mine)! Later, we ate at Seafood Sam’s, where I had some delicious scallops. Next we walked past the impressive coast guard station to the Cape Cod Canal Visitor’s Center. We ended the day with some rocking on the deck overlooking the water, and a nice little walk along the canal :). Another new place we visited this trip was Patriot Place, a huge shopping and entertainment complex near Gillette Stadium, where the New England Patriots play. There were lots of fun things to do there, including two really fun interactive adventures at 5 Wits! The kids also posed in front of the stadium with Chris and Michael, can you see them?

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 :)!

Photo Books!

Just wanted to share a link to yesterday’s post on my scrapbooking site:

My Photo Book Ideas PLUS Free Greeting Cards.

I know many of you are not scrapbookers, but you still might enjoy looking at the photo books :). Enjoy!

Farewell Look at Our New England Trip

As you have seen over the past couple of weeks, we had a great trip to new England. It was bittersweet because we were only able to see people for very short visits – and missed seeing many friends and family altogether. But I’m happy we went!

We miss these guys!