Anniversary Party Family Tree Decor

This past weekend we celebrated our parents 40th Wedding Anniversary. We kept the celebration simple with an outdoor cookout and bonfire later in the evening. 

Since we were celebrating with family and there were lots of great memories over the years, we knew we needed to display pictures! And so I give you the Family Tree!

I love how cute this turned out!!! (And look at how cute my parents were on their wedding day!!!)

I made the arrow sign with an arrow I bought at Target and my Silhouette Cameo. I love simple projects that come together and look awesome!!

Two nails into the tree and some jute and clothes pins and this is such an easy way to display pictures!

Top Posts of 2012

My top 2012 posts are as follows:

DIY Burlap Wedding Shower Invite

Red Envelope Knock-off Artwork

Craft Room Reveal

Chevron Curtains

And my most popular post of 2012 is my DIY Pouf

I can't wait to share my projects in 2013! Happy 2013 to everyone and thanks for reading!!

Wedding Day Survival Kit

Another day, another wedding post!!

 A good bridesmaid or even the bride will be prepared for any and everything the day of the wedding so that when nothing goes wrong you were just way over prepared! Enter the Wedding Day Survival Kit!

We have had one of these for every wedding I have been in and we may have broke into it once or twice but the most important part was we were way over prepared.

A Wedding Day Survival Kit can be as simple as you want it to be.

My youngest sister actually made this one for her friends wedding. They are going to pass it around among their friends and the only 2 requirements are if you finish something you replace it and you put in your wedding program to document who has all used it!!

Our kit included:

Sewing kit with scissors
Tums
Men's Deodorant
Woman's Deodorant
Q-tips
Static Guard
Make Up Wipes
Bra Tape
Blister Tape
Bean-o
Advil
Tampons
Lotion
Deodorant Remover
Saline Solution
Shout Wipes
Mints
Mouth Wash
Gum
Bobby Pins
Hair Ties
Safety Pins
Hair Spray
Tissue
First Aid Kit

Make sure to check out the rest of my wedding week!! Thanks for reading!

Bridesmaid Canvas Tote Bag!

Hello! Wedding week continues with a post from the recent bride!!

As I was getting my gifts for my maids ready I decided I would try to decorate reusable tote bags instead of buying paper gift bags that would likely just get thrown away! And I'm a little obsessed with anything neon right now so this was the perfect project for me!

I bought the totes at Hobby Lobby. You can buy them individually or as a pack of three, I think it was maybe 7 dollars for the 3 pack, but I used the 40% off coupon they always have on their website so I saved a couple bucks.

I bought neon pink paint from Jo Ann Fabric. I think it was actually puff paint but I just squirted it into a bowl and painted it on. 

Since the bags were bundled up I started by ironing them so I had a nice flat surface to work with. I also put a piece of cardboard inside the bag to have a hard surface and so the paint wouldn't soak through. I used 2 different widths of tape: 2 wider pieces on the bottom and 2 skinnier pieces along the top. I also taped around the handles so they didn't get paint on them. 

I had a ruler next to the bag to have a loose guideline to follow, but I wasn't worried about perfectly spacing the lines or keeping them perfectly straight.

I printed the letters in a large font on sticker printer paper, cut them out and 

stuck them to the bag.

I only used one coat of paint and I put on a pretty thin layer, I didn't want it to bleed through the tape or through the paper letter.

I made one for each of my maids, with their first initial. I love how they turned out. The gifts fit perfectly inside. Hopefully the girls will reuse them this summer :)

 My cat really loved them too :)

DIY Wedding Garter

It's my third day of Wedding Week!! Do you love weddings as much as I do? I have 3 sister's and Kristin is my second sister to be married... so that mean's there is only one more to go!!!

Another project I was asked to create for my sister's wedding was a wedding garter. The pros: I was only told it needed to have blue in it and she liked lace. The cons: I was only told it needed to have blue in it and she liked lace..... This was a project she told me about a good six weeks before her wedding and I finished it 2 days before...

It was very easy once I figured out what to do, that just took me FOREVER to figure out. I sewed a 2 inch wide band of stretchy lace together. I twisted some blue fabric into a rose hot gluing it in place and added a rhinestone bead to the center.

Super easy DIY wedding garter!

Thanks for reading and don't forget to visit the rest of my wedding week posts!

DIY Wedding Chalkboard Place Cards

Welcome to the second day of my Wedding Week! If I didn't make it clear how much I LOVE weddings yesterday..... if I ever got the courage, I would start my own wedding planning business!

For my sister's wedding I created some VERY VERY VERY simple but cute DIY place cards for the rehearsal dinner. This was one of the projects I was told do what ever you want!!! (YEAH!!!)

I spent a while thinking about this and ended up making chalk board coaster place cards!! I bought chipboard coasters from a local craft store (but anywhere has them!!) I then added a few coats of my favorite chalk board spray paint (I am obsessed!!!) I also added a thin layer of cork to the back. After conditioning the coasters....

SUPER easy super cute (and practical and re-useable) chalk board place card coasters!!

I used a liquid chalk pen for these and I wish I would have just used regular chalk. It was REALLY hard to wash the liquid chalk off! BUT they looked great at the rehearsal!

Check out the rest of my wedding week posts!

DIY Printed Wedding Invitations

In honor of June, and my sister's wedding from a few weeks ago, I am doing a week of Weddings!
I LOVE weddings. I love attending them, I love being in them, I love planning them, I love everything about them!! My younger sister Kristin recently got married (a little over 2 weeks ago - even though it seems like months ago!!) Her and her husband dated for a good 7 years! And when we moved to Michigan she said she was waiting until I got back home to get married so I could plan her wedding! Well it didn't take too long after we moved home that they got engaged (Yes I realize it was NOT because we moved home.... :) ) It was SOOO much fun planning her wedding! I was given creative freedom in a few things (more things as the big day got closer!!!) which was fabulously fun!!! We did so many fabulous DIY projects for this wedding!!!

So here is my Wedding Week!! 

The first fabulous DIY project I am sharing is their wedding invitations. I LOVE LOVE LOVE how these turned out!!!

We used 3 sheets of paper to create this invitation. A black, shinny charcoal gray and shinny white. The finished invite was 5.5 by 5.5.

The best part about this invitation is that it is a pocket folded invite with the important information tucked in the back pocket! To create this pocket, we used one 8.5x11 sheet of paper per invitation. We cut the paper to 5.5 by 11. We then folded the paper at the 5.5 mark to create the back pocket.

The size we used, allowed up to simply create a post card that tucked right into the pocket!

We included:
Stay - hotel information
Celebrate - reception information and parking
RSVP - the RSVP post card

 

I LOVE LOVE LOVE how the words are lined up on the back!

I have made the invitations for all of my sister's weddings so far and this is my favorite (even over mine!!) I love how this turned out!!! And it was not really that hard once the design was laid out and lined up!If you do something similar please keep in mind these will require extra postage to mail!!! 1. Because they are square and 2. because they are thick!

Stay turned for the rest of my Wedding Week posts!! We had a lot of fun preparing for this wedding and even more fun at the wedding!!! (Congrats K&B!)

Washi Tape and Silhouette Hotel Gift Bags

I finally joined the Washi Tape craze and picked some up while at Target. I am glad I did because they worked out well for decorating hotel gift bags for the wedding guests next weekend.

I started out my project by using a picture I took of my sister and her future husband a few months back for their Save the Date. I used the same method I used in the past for turning that image into a silhouette image. I then merged the silhouette image with the word love and cut it out with my Silhouette Cameo.

To decorate the bag further, I added 3 rows of cute washi tape I got from Target. I love the completed look and the pop that the washi tape adds.

Inside the hotel gift bags we included 2 bottles of water, pretzels, a tin of mints and some chocolate. We went for simple and easy this time around. 

Wedding Details

With less than two weeks left until my sister's wedding I have a few wedding details on my to-do list!

1. Programs
2. Make a Cake Topper
3. Place cards for reception
4. Place cards for rehersal dinner
5. Sew a garter
6. Sew a bow tie for little man
7. Help with table numbers
8. Collect "vintage" frames for photos
9. Create a 16x20 plus document to guide guests to their correct table
10. Gift bags for hotel guests
11. Wedding day survival kit
12. Bathroom essentials

Hopefully I am not forgetting anything...

Since every post needs a picture... here is a picture of the beautiful bride at her Bachlorette party sporting her beautiful purple veil I made for her and her mustache straw (no we were not drinking wine with straws.....)

Wedding Season

I love weddings!I love going to them and I love helping to plan them! I would love to be a wedding planner (if anyone needs one, feel free to contact me :) ) My sister Kristin is getting married in 2 weeks, so we are in full wedding planning detail mode at the moment! After all when it comes to a wedding, it's all about the details!

So the next couple weeks will be all about weddings for me! Here are a couple pictures of my other sister Brooke's wedding from March of 2008.

The tables! We made the place cards, made tags for the hot sauce and added ribbon to tons of candles! Isn't wedding planning fun!

Burlap Wedding Shower

 Last weekend we hosted my sister's wedding shower. Since my sister wanted a joint shower with both sides of her future family we decided to have it at a restaurant! After the insane April we have had, it was a great decision! My youngest sister put together this cute towel wedding cake display for our sister. We used burlap circles to decorate the "cake" and a rhinestone hair pin on the top for a little extra bling.

 Since we used burlap on the invites (and I am sort of obsessed with it at the moment) I made a burlap banner. ( I wish I would have hung this a bit higher, but oh well it still looks cute!!)

This was so simple to make. I simply cut out 4 - 5.5 x 5 inch burlap squares. I then made a stencil with my Silhouette (you could easily buy something, or free hand if you like) and used my trusty black acrylic paint to fill in my stencil. Once dried I used my sewing machine to sew the squares together onto a piece of jute. So simple and so cute!!!

 Then I made the Bride and Groom initial canvas artwork for them to use as they wish! I found these great linen canvases at a local craft store. I LOVE the color and love how they are not white but already have that great linen texture!! (I bought 4 more for myself for TBD projects!!! I love them THAT much!!!)

I again used my Silhouette to create a stencil for the letters. (Again you could use other options to achieve this looks!) Again used my acrylic black paint (that's what the label said!!) and created this cute simple artwork!

The last project I created for this shower was the favor. You can't have a shower without a favor!!! I ran to Home Depot and picked up a few packages of Gladiolas bulbs. We then cut and wrapped them in burlap. (See how to cut burlap)  I used a stamp set to stamp the phrase "Let love grow" onto a piece of card stock and included basic planting directions (we didn't want anyone to think it was something to eat.....) and there we have a simple but cute favor to match our burlap themed wedding shower!

The best part about using Gladiolas bulbs is this was my grandpa's favorite flowers. He used to grow these flowers and they really remind me of him!

The whole look!!!

DIY Burlap Wedding Shower Invite

Check out these wedding shower invites I created. I saw the concept of "tying the knot" online (I am sorry I don't remember where) but took my own twist on it by using a DIY burlap ribbon. After this project I am annoyed with burlap. It's messy, smelly and very messy!!! We had a major craft fail cutting the ribbon stripes, but luckily I figured it out!! See my How to Cut Burlap post.