You can fool the fans - but not the players.... John Cage

Our own custom road trip game

When you have friends with memories like steel traps and a way of looking at the world that makes every event potential for a story you end up with gifts like your own customized road game. We do and we did.

 

This has been a constant source of chuckles and guffaws since we opened it. Our friends up north made this for us and it has its roots in trips fraught with disaster. In fact it seems that we can't make a plan to visit these friends without something breaking down and that has become the source of endless jokes.

 

There is nothing I like more than people who know how to take bad and twist it around into something to laugh about. When you have friends who know how to laugh in the face of adversity you know you have good friends, folks who aren't afraid to have a good time even when life isn't cooperating.

 

So all the details of our trip disasters are here for us to remember and along with that the absolutely wonderful times we have had with these friends - eating good food, laughing deep belly laughs over some story, drinking beer, bourbon, and DD's wicked creamsicle cocktails.

 

It is the kind of gift that money can't buy and that you want to treaure forever. In fact we will treasure it forever, along with the memories of those past road trips and the anticipation of the future trips we'll take with *hopefully* fewer catastrophes.

 

These maps are made by the Best Made Company and I think they should offer custom maps - we'd send in our routes and they send us back a map with "Everything Here is Wonderful"! Cause it really is.

Wrapping up the wedding - part 2

Time to put this baby to rest for awhile! We're married already. I'm sure that as photos continue to trickle in there are elements that I'd like to post. I don't have any photos of how beautiful the lodge looked except glimpses here and there.

 

While I was drinking champagne and having my make-up done, there was an army of family and friends transforming the lodge and the cafe into wedding wonderland. And just my style with plenty of pine boughs, little white lights, handmade goodness. Hopefully some lodge photos will find their way to me and I will post them.

 

The lighting wasn't the best for photos in the lodge - it was mainly lit with our branch light arrangements and candles, so most of the photos were taken over at the reception. We didn't have a traditional wedding photographer but a friend generously stepped in and took some posed photos of us so that we would have something to grace the cover of a photo album should I ever have time to do one.

Over in the cafe Michelle and her staff had already transformed the look of the place from everyday eaterie to winter lodge and then the army began the finishing touches.

 

The table arrangments,

 

the snow globes,

 

and the finishing touches (thought of last minute) of mason jars with artificial snow and the flameless candles on each table. Adding just that little bit of glow.

I hope someone got a photo of the cupcakes. We had them on silver trays, we had them on the tiered servers I made from vintage plates, we had  black pin-striped boxes for take-home cupcakes. We had carrot cake, chocolate with salted caramel frosting, and red velvet.

The DJ was a hit and he got us on the dance floor early and often.

There was a lady's dance, a men's dance and the chicken dance. There was the obligatory "YMCA" dance. There was the first dance, the father-daughter dance, the money dance. And so many people got up and danced!

 

The photo booth was a huge hit. I wished I'd gone in there with each and every person but kept getting pulled away back to the dance floor. And I'm loving looking through the files on our computer. We're going to market and rent our booth locally, and we are going to sell kits for other DIYers. We learned a lot from building this booth and want to make it easier on other DIY brides and grooms.

At the last minute I decided I didn't want a guest book and went looking online for alternatives. We decided on cutting quilt squares and asking our guests to sign them.

 

There was a table set up in the store adjoining the cafe, where the photo booth resided, and enough light and space there to sit down and focus on a square. We'll send those off to a quilter friend and ask her to do her magic.

I wish I could hit the rerun button and do it all again. So much of the day and the evening are a blur. I suppose that is what the photos are for, and the few videos that were shot.

All the work was worth it. The flowers turned out wonderfully, the details were pretty much as I'd hoped, and everyone seemed to have a good time - which really was the goal. All through the planning we'd kept our eye on that one objective. We wanted our friends to come to celebrate with us and leave with wonderful memories of a fun, happy evening.

 

We're getting back to normal life and these posts will return to horses, dogs and making things. What shall I focus on next?

Wrapping up the wedding posts - part 1

I really can't believe it is over. So many months of thinking, planning and preparation and now, like Christmas ten times over, it is in the past. I'm not sad about that, but a little amazed and a little unsettled. Planning and doing for the wedding has been so much a part of my life the last 12 months.

The week following the wedding was a busy one with family trailing off day by day until Tuesday, when the last loaded-up car drove away. Then I had to hop in a car and drive away for three days of work. Friday night JC and I heaved a sigh of relief, looked around at the heaps of wedding stuff piled around the house and made tackling it a priority for the weekend.

The flowers turned out so pretty in the end and I really didn't have to make many more of the knit flowers - just some smaller gray ones for my bouquet. My flower geniuses had lots of filler and ribbon and tulle to make magic with.

 

It was gorgeous and not over the top. And something I can keep for a long time. The guys wore boutonnieres of coffee filter roses:

 

There were a lot of last-minute details to finish and I ended up abandoning my ideas for printing itineraries for the weekend, menus, paper placemats, etc. My advice for the DIY bride? Get all this stuff out of the way EARLY. No doubt you know what is on the menu for the wedding dinner months in advance so there is no excuse for waiting (like I did) until the end. It will end up on the cutting room floor. And you know what? No one missed it but me.

I can't remember what night this was - Wednesday or Thursday... but we were stamping signs and making labels for the cigars...

I bought gray matboard and used white acrylic paint to stamp these and they turned out okay... I could have used a size of alphabet stamp somewhere in between the really large ones here and the next size down I had, which was quite a bit smaller. Again, if I had started this task earlier I would have had the opportunity to find just the right size stamp but at the last minute, in a small town, that isn't going to happen. You work with what you have.

 

JC and my father cut out and printed the labels for the cigars, which were favors for the guys. JC had this humidor already and found a good deal on decent cigars on the internet. Some of these were consumed on Friday night out by the fire pit, but some made it to the wedding.

My dad and mom II had been here all week helping us to prepare, and the rest of the family began arriving a day or two before the wedding. We had planned a catered event at our house on Friday night to take the place of a rehearsal dinner and to give everyone a chance to visit before the wedding. I had the house cleaned on Wednesday, we started carting things up to the venue on Friday (we had a cabin for two nights that became a storage unit on Friday), and by Friday night the party was in full swing.

 

We hired a fabulous caterer and she was a one-woman show - pouring wine, heating and assembling food, clearing plates, cleaning up. She was awesome and so was the food she served. It was all a blur to me but a good blur - the blur of laughter, wine, family, friends from far away, and happiness.

Only one of my sisters was missing and not for lack of trying. She fell victim to the fickle forces of nature and the airlines.... her flight was cancelled Friday afternoon and then again Saturday morning. She was (and we were) bitterly disappointed.

The rest of the sisters and the lone brother were here and it was a rare opportunity for catching up. Of course no one thought to pull us all together for one big family portrait - so we have bits and pieces.

I don't have all the photos from Friday night yet and I hope there are more of our friends eventually... and I'm just now wading through what I do have. I thought this Friday night event was really fun and worthwhile. It gave us all the chance to hang out before the wedding. And there were some opportunities for priceless photos.

 

Such fun.

And finally, the day of the wedding. We were blessed with snow. Unbelievable. A gift completely unexpected and fleeting - but it did last the wedding and a few days beyond.

The photo booth was assembled and tested...

...and I have to continue this post later as this is as far as I've gotten with the photo editing...

Stay tuned for part II!

Post-wedding post

Snow for our wedding and snow all the way down to the valley floor to welcome me back to reality.

As family old and new slowly leaves in waves, I am beginning to look around, sort, clean, assess, and whatever other verbs apply to what you do post-wedding. Re-group.

 

By late this morning we will be back to just us and I feel a whopper of a cold coming on. I will be slamming the zinc and trying to nip it in the bud... who needs a cold to end such a wonderful week?

 

With no more wedding to plan I can turn my attention back to horses, weather permitting...

 

This one in particular is coming along so well and I want to keep "us" going. Which mostly means keeping me on her back without big gaps in riding.

 

I am so happy that it snowed - I really thought it was too late to hope for any this low. It might be the only snow this year, but then again, who knows? It has been such a weird winter.

 

We just don't get it all that often and it was truly frosting on the cake.

 

I'll be wrapping up the wedding in a couple of posts and moving on to other things... it feels good to be married and to have our household returning to normal.

Watching the flower magicians.

Some people are able to see order out of chaos... some people are merely able to supply the raw materials. Yesterday I was an assistant to two women taking all these piles of fabric, thrift store flowers, weeds, and paper and making beautiful arrangements.

 

Almost everything was used up.... and almost everything was completed in an afternoon.

Bouquets....

 

A wreath...

 

table arrangements...

 

centerpiece...

 

corsages and boutonnieres...

 

and floor arrangements just waiting for the pine boughs.

I am completely thrilled with how these turned out and I never would have known how to pull all these materials together. And in such a short amount of time. I am truly blessed to have these people in my life and willing to help me.

Then my dad and JC worked on the guy favors...

It is all coming together.

Wedding flowers are out the door

We were busy yesterday and sent most of the flowers out the door to VR's house in preparation of a flower workday today. It is strange not seeing all my knit flowers lined up, but I had a few left to make, along with painting the roses. Thank goodness I have help right now in the form of my Mom II.... who has diligently sat and rolled roses and mums.

We drove up to our venue to meet with Michelle, who has been so accommodating and kind. I'm trying not to turn into 'bridezilla' although I feel myself short tempered at times and am getting increasingly tired. We are all excited about the lodge and how it will look with the lights and the pine boughs and the decorations I've made and we'll make today....

 

The sachets arrived and they are breathtaking. If only Southern Charm and I lived closer together  - we could really make an business together. These I am particularly happy with and they have the mark of both of us on them.

 

Mom II got into making some smaller roses, more bud-like, and it was time to paint them last night. I have to say that getting the watercolors out, mixing colors and painting was so satisfying and I'd love to start painting again, even if only in a journal.

 

These show the roses a little damp still - but the base color is a creamy white... and I used white gouache with just a little yellow oxide added, and very watery. A flat brush and the petals went really quickly.

Then I mixed up a brownish red using burnt sienna, raw sienna and a little alizarin crimson with much less water and touched just the edges. The coffee filters take the paint really easily and with the petals already damp there is a nice bleed to the edges.

 

It takes awhile for them to dry so today we'll curl the edges again and take them with us to VR's for arranging.

I really can't wait to see the arrangements now... and the bouquets, boutonnieres, and anything else we think of.

By tomorrow evening everything that is going to be made will be made. Once the family starts rolling in there will only be time for doing - arranging, transporting, installing, hanging, etc. I hope I can power through - one of my classes started this week too so I was up until midnight checking in with my students and I'm sure I'll be doing the same tonight.

We all started taking Airborne last night - just in case.

Help is here and the countdown is single digits...

Reinforcements arrived and the scene around the house is increasingly cluttered and chaotic with dried flowers strewn around, snow globes half assembled, fabric and ribbon all over the place, food, people, dogs. And it will only build up until the big day.

Last night my Mom II and I were knee deep in coffee filter roses - trying to find the key. We watched YouTube videos and had tutorials up on the laptop...

Everyone who's done hundreds says they are easy to make and maybe they are when you hit that magic number. We obviously aren't there yet and were struggling to master them in a night. I had a head start since I'd made those first two using a different technique than "Mommy Makes Roses" showed on Martha Stewart (video here) but even I wasn't exactly cranking out beautiful roses.

 

We ended up with about three good roses and two that we'll either discard or rework, and then I have to tackle the watercolor part. Plus I cut out enough fabric for another five mums or so - that will be this evening's task. I don't have too much time left to make this stuff.

 

 

Meanwhile, here's what the dogs are doing...

 

What a life.

Photobooth completed, tested and is now out of my living room!

One major element in the wedding planning is completed and what a fabulous feeling.

The booth has been tested and works - we'll have to assemble it up at the venue and hopefully will have no problems on Saturday, but we waited until my parents arrived last night and let them test it out, including following the Sparkbooth instructions and there was no problem. I plan to make a cover for my laptop keyboard so that only the spacebar is exposed - that way there won't be any ambiguity about which button to push - and the Sparkbooth software can be locked so that no one can accidentally exit out of it.

 

I'm still making props (and flowers) and have some computer work to do printing out an intinerary for the weekend, some signs for the booth, and lots of odds and ends, but getting the booth together was a huge load off my mind.

 

In my first test photos the exposed PVC pipe was very distracting and it took me a little while to figure out how to deal with it - but in the end the solution was pretty simple. I tore strips of matching fabric from a pillowcase (old Ralph Lauren sheets became the backdrop) and, using sticky two-sided carpet tape, wrapped the pipe. Now it blends in with the backdrop.

 

We used two stools from a little bar table we have in our dining room and there is room behind the stools for a couple of people if more than two want to crowd in for a photo.

 

The computer sits on a platform JC incorporated and we really have to acknowledge the Instructable here, Offbeat Bride, and Make for the incredible online instructions, tips and tricks. It is a wonderful helpful online community we have at our fingertips.

 

Since we're doing black and white photos the CFLs in the tree lamp will probably be ok and if we ever do color we can switch them out to daylight bulbs or those pink flattering bulbs. JC picked that up in Fresno when he went over to make the repairs at the resort and I think it set us back all of $25.

 

Prop hats have been very easy to find except we are still waiting for an Elmer Fudd hat to appear. My dad thought that we were heavy on the girl hats and a little shy on the guy hats so I may have to go find some trucker hats or something but I think we are close. I wouldn't mind finding a few more mustache props and I've got a half dozen more glasses to cut out. For the most part we are ready.

 

We did a little customization of the template with our names and the date.. but left room for people to be able to write on the 4"x 6" photos. We'll leave a sharpie near the printer and a basket for the prints so folks don't have to carry them around all night. And I'll put a couple of people in charge of checking the booth periodically for malfunctions, ink changes, paper loading, etc.

We've got ourselves a photo booth!

The joy and the pain of a budget wedding

JC and I are practical people and we set a limit for what we wanted to spend on our wedding. It is a small wedding and a second wedding for both of us but we also wanted to have our close friends and family here to celebrate. It has been a roller-coaster of planning and I've been thinking that writing about it might help those future brides who find themselves in the same situation.

First, be prepared that things are going to pop up and things are going to end up costing more than you think. It seems like every time we turn around there is something we hadn't thought of or something that has a higher price tag than we thought. If you are determined to keep costs down then you have to trade off time and creativity.

The photobooth is a huge example. We've done this thing by the skin of our teeth. JC did a fabulous job pulling together the frame, we were lucky to find a printer at the thrift store, but when I went looking for fabric or sheets or shower curtains to use it was just one more expense that was adding up and pushing us to and over our limit. So I went searching around the house and managed to find a favorite Ralph Lauren flat sheet in a muted paisley pattern, a couple of curtain panels for the doors, and a duvet cover for the front of the booth. It sounds funky, but it is going to work and it doesn't look half bad.

The stools in the booth came from our dining room and we're making the props using downloads from "Oh Happy Day", collecting some fun hats from our Halloween stash, the thrift store, and where-ever else we see something with potential. I think all in all we've spent about $200 on the photo booth so far, and an additional $140 on ink and paper. A far cry from a photobooth rental. But we're using my laptop and we really lucked out with the printer, a Canon Pixma iP2600.

 

Last weekend I went for help with the flowers as I just had all kinds of ideas and pieces and parts but nothing was really coming together for me. I've spent many an hour making the t-shirt mums and realize I have to spend more evenings at it in order to have enough for a bouquet and the tables. You also can't just have a handful of knit flowers in your hand so I've had to get creative, open my eyes and search for things around here to collect and put in the arrangements.

On a walk yesterday morning I finally collected some of the rusty red flower that has been a part of the color palette from the beginning but I never really considered "in" the arrangements. I think they are a type of buckwheat or sage and, although fragile, they'll look great both on the tables and in my bouquet, in the guy's boutonnieres and whatever else. The flowers were an area where I really needed someone to say - "What about here? What about there?" and guide me. What a relief to know that someone else is on that detail.

It can get stressful and we've had to really work at not letting that stress turn to resentment. Resentment that we just can't hand this whole thing over to someone else. Resentment that much of our free time is consumed with some sort of wedding detail, whether it is cleaning up the place in preparation of our guests, or making something that has to do with the wedding, or meeting with people about the wedding, or searching for something for the wedding. It becomes the topic of most of our conversations and we each carry around lists every day.

 

I'm going to add everything up eventually and get a price tag on it... because it is pretty incredible how quickly it adds up. And we're not doing a bunch of fancy stuff. And we've been amazingly blessed with our DJ, friend-photographer, minister, and all the other help we're getting with favors and flowers (bless you SF and VR!).

The main thing is to not let the wedding planning get in the way of the wedding. Or overshadow the reason we are doing this, which is to celebrate our love for each other with our friends and family. We're down to the wire now, with just 10 days to go, and trying to keep our eye on the prize, all the balls in the air, and for goodness sake - just don't forget anything!

Oh, and the upside to doing a budget wedding? We'll walk away without any debt from this day and be able to start the rest of our lives together with a fresh slate. We both get a lot of satisfaction from problem-solving and thinking outside the box, and we've done quite a bit of that lately. We are bargain-shoppers, scavengers, and makers, and get a kick out of finding a good deal. We like that our wedding is ours alone, not some designer's idea of our wedding. And we'll end up with a photobooth, some fancy clothes for future events, and boatload of memories.

I've got a photobooth in my living room!

One of the things I really love about my guy is that he takes on a task with enthusiasm and determination. He thinks it through, problem-solves, and comes out on the other end with a practical solution. So when I told him we needed to make a photobooth frame we scoured the internet for tips, he went shopping at his favorite type of store (hardware) and started building a photobooth. In our living room.

He had the game on, a pile of print-outs from other people's blogs, and all the tools. I was busy making food for a dinner I was going to and before I knew it, he was finished. I'm so proud of him... he thought to use our stools from the dining room which are actually higher and better than the patio stools I was going to use (plus they look nicer), he built a shelf for the computer to sit on and a space for the lamp to stand.

 

The only thing we forgot was to put the clip rings on the PVC before he glued the top frame together... so now we have to come up with another solution for hanging the sheets - we think we'll go with velcro except for the door, which will have to have rings.

The whole thing comes apart except where he glued key pieces together for structural stability. We can transport it in a truck or SUV. I think it'll work out better for us than completely coming apart because there are so many pieces of PVC that are about the same length... it could get very confusing trying to put it together somewhere.

 

Here it is ready for me to hang the sheets we bought for surrounding it, and a test drive. This week I'll paint some of the exposed pieces black before attaching velcro to the top and to the sheets. Then we can start with the fun part, refining the lighting and getting the angles just right.

This weekend was super-productive in the wedding realm. I met with the pro flower lady, we met with the friend who will marry us, the cupcakes are ordered, the DJ is meeting with us tonight... I'm feeling a little better about getting everything done.

Now. I've got to try on the dress today and see if I can zip it up after all the holiday eating. If not... drastic measures are in order.