Time For A Change...

Well, as you all know, posting is pretty sparse around these parts. It's few and far between that I get a chance to craft and then post about it on this blog. I love doing this craft blog, but life gets in the way too often. As most of you know, I'm a teacher. A special education teacher. And, if any of you know any teachers you know that some days you come home too exhausted for much of anything, let alone crafting and blogging.

To no fault but my own, I created this blog about crafts. People come here to see crafts, not read about my life. And, while I'm not always crafting, my life is always going on. Things are happening, and I want to be able to share that with my friends and family, but I don't think that this is necessarily the place to do that.

So, I started a new blog with my husband. Life With The Luther's. I'll be posting about whatever tickles our fancy. Life, crafts, our never-ending task to fix up our house, and whatever else comes along. I will leave this blog up though for now. Thanks to pinterest, it still receives over 250 hits a day, which is awesome! I may post things on here, but I wouldn't count on it.

So, thanks for sharing in my blogging with me. If you want to visit us on our new blog, we'd love to have you!

See you around!

Rustic Wedding Flowers

So for the wedding I knew I wanted to have rustic looking flowers. Now, flowers can be VERY expensive! For our wedding on a budget, I knew I wouldn't be able to do big huge flower arrangements. So, I decided very early into our planning that I was going to DIY it! Why not, right? What could go wrong...

So first up was finding bouquet inspiration. I knew our bouquets needed to have Billy Balls in them, so I could bring in that mustard yellow color. If you haven't seen billy balls, or craspedia, before they are beautiful! They have a deep mustard color and the best thing about them in my opinion is that they just dry out when you're done with them. They don't brown or lose their color, so you can keep them in your house afterwards. So to google I went. And this is what I came up with.

I'm unsure of the source since I saved it to my computer. If you know where it's from let me know and I'll credit the photo.

Isn't it beautiful? It was absolutely the look I was going for. After some research I found out that the white flowers in the bouquet are balsa wood, and the little green/brown flowers are called scabiosa pods.

I needed to order all my flowers so I could do them myself. I found the balsa wood flowers on a really helpful site called save-on-crafts.com I used that site a ton in our planning process.I priced scabiosa pods and found they were a little more then I wanted to pay so I tried to look for something comparable in color and size and found these:

Balsa Wood Flowers 18/$3.99  Himalayan Thistle Roses 12/$3.99

Both of the ones I chose didn't have stems (because that made them cheaper!!) So I added stems by buying floral wire and pushing it through them and hot gluing them for extra support.

I ordered my billy balls from a local florist here in town.

Then it was time to assemble the bouquets. I couldn't do this until 2 days before the wedding since the billy balls were fresh at the time of purchase. It made it a little stressful since it was so close to the wedding and the only backup plan I had was that the girls would just carry a handful of billy balls down the aisle.

I grouped the bouquets how I liked them and then used floral tape to secure each one.

I made the girls' bouquets on the smaller size. I didn't want them to be huge, just small and dainty. I made my bouquet slightly bigger. 

For the stems I covered some in burlap and others in twine and just hot glued as I went. They held up very well throughout the night and still til this day.

I loved the colors. I think they turned out great and I was very happy I could save the money! 

Now for some wedding photos. For my Mom, Mother-In-Law, and Grandma I made them singed flower pins with mustard yellow satin and tulle. 

The flowers looked great with the girls.

They were perfect in size. 

I also made the groom's and groomsman's boutonnieres. I used billy balls and smaller balsa wood flowers also purchased from save-on-crafts.

So, if you're worried about DIY-ing your own flowers, don't be!! Just plan it out and don't be nervous, just go for it!

Buffet Redo

So my Mom and sister decided to do some changes to her house this weekend. They found a beautiful buffet at the Salvation Army. It was in need of a little work and I think it turned out amazing! Take a look for yourself.

Before:

And the beautiful after: 

Such a great transformation. If you want my tutorial for the Pottery Barn Numbers Art Knock-Off you can find it here. And if you like that cute little twine spool I'll be posting a tutorial soon. I used them in my wedding decor!

Have a fabulous day!



We Interrupt These Wedding Posts...

I found the pictures from a baby shower gift I made that I wanted to share!

I made another Personalized Name Art for a friend of mine's nursery. I used the fabulous tutorial from Ashley at Lil Blue Boo that you can find here. She gives a very detailed tutorial and it's very easy to follow. She makes hers 5"x7", but I wanted this to be a statement piece so I made mine an 8"x10".

I previously made one of these and it turned out like this

You can find that tutorial here.

I did this one more like Ashley's tutorial and I love it!

Here is the closeup. 

The new Mommy and Daddy loved it and it is now hanging in their little Archie's nursery!

Rustic Wedding Cakes

So, our wedding was a "Rustic Chic" theme. I searched many of blogs and spent many of hours on Pinterest (thank goodness for it, right?) looking for the right elements to add to our wedding. I wanted to share with you all the things that were DIY projects!

The one craft project I did not take on myself was our cakes. If you knew my baking/cooking skills, you would know that doing the cakes myself would have led to one big ole' mess. Betty Crocker would have hung her head in shame...  Lucky for me, I work with two FABULOUS teachers who just so happen to have started their own cake business, Thirsty Gourmet. Lucky for me huh?? I love the things they do and I knew they would be able to take on the challenge of our bride and groom's cakes!

I went back and forth on my wedding cake. I knew that I wanted it to be "non-traditional". Actually those words came up a lot in my wedding details. I just didn't want to do anything expected. When my friend, and cake baker, Kara found this picture. I knew we had it!

Photo via Modern Wedding

I knew it had exactly the unexpectedness I was going for. So, I left Kara and Katie to run free with the idea and this is what they came up with.

What do you think? To be honest, I think it's actually better than Hilary's! Sorry Hilary!! I loved it. All of our guests loved it, and best of all it was DELISH! It was a strawberry cake, my favorite.

Then, there was the groom's cake. Is the groom's cake done everywhere? It definitely is done in the South. Usually it is a groom's interest, alma mater, or anything reminiscent of them. My husband makes washer boards. Know what they are? It's a tailgating game, backyard game, similar to the idea of horseshoes, but you throw washers into holes. He also has really gotten the knack of painting washer boards in some fancy fashion. His very favorite washer boards are his "Texas Boards".

So, that's what we wanted his groom's cake to be. Here is what the girls came up with.

Isn't it adorable? I mean.... manly. They did such a great job. We couldn't have been happier!

Check back for more wedding goodies!

 

And I'm Back......

.....I promise this time!  So, I got married two weekends ago! Super exciting, but I'm so happy for things to get back to normal around here. And back to normal means "I Get To Craft!!!!". I'm going to start with some posts on some crafts I did for the wedding (since I did them ALL... like, every little detail), and then hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things! I can't wait to get blogging again!

 

Desserts and Cocktails Bridal Shower

Hello? Anyone still here?

If you are, I appreciate you sticking around.

I've been thinking a lot about this blog. I love doing this blog. I feel great when I'm crafting and I feel even better when I can share what I've done with other people and it helps to inspire you. With that being said... life always seems to get in the way. I'm a teacher. And I realized I starting really posting on this blog during the summer when I had plenty of ample free time. I started to get followers and getting in a real groove of posting and then school started and I got busy, really busy! So, I'm going to try to be better. And if I'm not, we're in luck, because summer is right around the corner and with a wedding coming up the crafts are sure to follow!!

Today I'm going to share a bridal shower that I put together for one of my very best friends, Kristen. Kristen had a total of three wedding showers. One was for her family and one for the groom's family. The one I was throwing was for all of her friends. I wanted this shower to be different. I immediately began brainstorming themes for her shower and I found this photo at Hostess With The Mostess.

Although I didn't use these vases, I took them as inspiration for the entire night. My color palette was red, pink, black, and white. My good friend Jessica made the invitations for the night.

Invitations from Jessica Klima

I wanted to create a dessert buffet that had some pizzaz! I used strips of crepe paper to create a curtain behind the table and then hung a frame from Ikea in the center.

I tried to vary the heights of all the platters to create dimension throughout the table.

Here's a little secret. I don't own very many serving dishes. So most of what I used were my actual plates  with either candlesticks underneath or little votives. Shhh! Don't tell! I used my Dollar Store Hurricanes to hold some tulips.

And now the food! It was all so yummy! We tried to keep the food as close as we could to the theme colors. Cake Balls from Bakerella. Creme Puffs.

Orange Brownies.

Red Candies.

Three Layer Chocolate Pie.

Kristen has a love for all things skull and cross bones. So my friend Kelly at Baby Cakes made some super delish skull and cross bone cookies with matching icing!

Homeade eclairs! Yum-o!

Raspberry Meringue Hearts that I made using this recipe.

Dipped Oreos.

Chess Pie. I had never heard of it, but it was delicious!

Chocolate Dipped Pretzel Rods.

Chocolate Covered Strawberries.

And of course we had to have some cocktails! I made this Champagne Punch that was a real hit.

Yummy punch with OJ, Pineapple Juice, and Ginger Ale.

Well... are you hungry yet??

It was such a great shower. Most importantly the bride had fun!

All of these beautiful photos were taken by the most amazing photographer I know, Jessica Klima!

http://tatertotsandjello.blogspot.com/2011/03/weekend-wrap-up-party-and-aubreyplays.html

http://youngancrafty.blogspot.com/2011/03/free-for-all.html