Hmmm

I just realized I have an odd assortment of things in my suitcase for this weekend, including:
* Vanilla beans
* Wood electric sander and sandpaper
* B's shaving kit
* New shoes
* Grudgy garden clothes
* Jewelry
* Glue gun
* B's new suit
* 14 rolls of ribbon
* 100 cardboard squares

Hm. If I get hit by the craft fairy on my way down to the Eug, I'm satisfactorily armed.

Circles and invites

I totally relaxi-taxied last night. It.was.wonderful. I didn't want to get up to too much, but I made a mock-up of our invitations, that way if B likes it, he can get to work on them with a friend this weekend. I like it, though I'm not posting a picture of it until AFTER they're sent and received.

I spent the rest of the evening cutting out circles. Each lantern on the string of lanterns requires 20 little circles. TWENTY. SO I figured I could totally veg and love the fact that stress is over for the week... and cut out circles.

I made a stencil, so it's easier. I can do 15 circles per page (they're small for the size of lanterns on the strings), and I can cut 10 pages at a time. So each time I finish cutting out one page of stencils I've made 150 circles.... so almost 8 lanterns. I did 5 stencils last night, so 750 circles. Yay! So almost 38 lanterns worth. Granted, I still have to fold and construct.... But I think it takes less time to do one BIG job of each step rather than do it incrimentally. Ie: make a TON of circles. then, make a TON of folds. Then make a ton of lanterns. Definitely saves time over making one latern at a time. I want to have 20 strands done by next Friday.... here's hoping.

Centerpieces

So at long last I'm posting a picture of the centerpiece. Well, of one of them (there will be 15). This didn't take the shortest time to make (there are something like 200 paper roses on there!), but I love how it turned out.

I wanted them to be all pretty much uniform, and so the question became: HOW? I bought a package of balloons, and then I flour/water paper mached the balloons. I figure, that way the shape will be approximately the same for all of them. That dried, then I painted the mache red so that any of it that showed through would be red (thus not noticeable) and not newspaper-y. Then I glued on the roses. I made a stencil for the roses, so that way they're all about the same size. What's great is that they all LOOK different because they're individually made and rolled. I like that they're tightly clustered.

B learned how to make these too. He was helping me. SO CUTE! Gosh I love him.

SNOW!

It's supposed to snow again. 

I swear, Goldie, my almost-teenager car, hates me.

She's originally a San Diegan

and really detests I moved her here.

That's why she's hiding in the right corner of the picture.

She's cold and mad at me. 

But Rumpole will again have something to watch.

He loves staring at the falling snow. 

What must he think is going on?

Please ignore the unmade bed.

Human again!

Oh it feels sooo good to have stress weight off my shoulders!

Breathing

There are days like today and the following two which truly make me think that there should be breathing lessons for more than just lamaze. Granted, there isn't any massive physical pain or babies involved here, but a "how to not panic" or "how to not hyperventilate 101" would come in handy. 

Inhale. Exhale. Repeat (preferably in regular, not fast or slow, intervals). 

Vanilla beans, part II...

$15 for 150 vanilla beans, including shipping. Bird nest here I come!

Vanilla beans!!

How great of an idea is this: Vanilla beans for branches on a wedding cake. I LOVE it. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. 

And, if I can find them cheaply enough, they'd make great bird's nest materials for our cake topper:

 I suspect that might be too expensive, so I may stick to nest materials out of peeled/sliced chocolate. But still... VANILLA BEANS! Genius.

Work work work and more work

I feel like I am only on the left-hand side right now. I cannot wait-- just a few more days and I can spend more time and home and enjoy myself. Work has been in such full swing. I can't wait to be able to go home and work on projects. 

SIGH. Ok, break over. Back to work.

Chair Covers

So here is my aspiration to achieve re: the chair covers. We think white covers would look great, as well as the yellow sash (though our sash would be out of material, not flimy ribbon). Instead of a live flower though, we thought we'd put one of the rose droplets there.  I think it will look really pretty, especially if the rose droplets are either red or orange. Hm. The pattern for the chairs should be really simple, and I have nice cotton material (easy to work with). It should just be a matter of cut and sew. I can get B to help out with the cutting part. :) Sewing, not so much, though he's pretty darn handy and wants to learn.

I think my back panel on the chair will be all one piece though. That way there will be 4 pieces total: Back panel, front of the backpanel/seat/front of chair and the two square side panels. It's not a garment for a person, so it should be error-hiding and relatively forgiving.

A new appreciation for websites

Complete wedding websites are really a blessing. Need directions? Done. Need to know what the ceremony will be like? Done. Hotel info? Done. It's all in one place and organized.

However.... gosh do they take time! Finding photos, finding good directions, describing stuff, making sure all the links work, etc etc. What a task.

So, we decided to start a little early, that way by the time we send invites out, the website will be packed with organized, helpful information. At least, that's the hope. I suppose it will pay off in the end because our guests will have information at their fingertips (including information about where to eat and what to see in their non-wedding time in town), but it is a lot of work to enter it all! Kinda fun though in a way. Though my desktop is now littered with jpg files...

Gifts!

I'm not going to give too much away, but aren't these drawstring teabags ADORABLE?!

Yellow ribbon acquired

So I bought this yellow ribbon yesterday off ebay (great place to buy in bulk, especially with combined shipping).

I like the look of a satin-y ribbon for the placemats, but then I realized that things would look weird if the satin there did not nicely match the yellow elsewhere. Organza is great because it allows for much more cheating when it comes to matching. Plus, in a way, the organza yellow "matches" the other ribbons because it is, well, organza. 

I'm thinking about making all the rose droplets in the eating areas yellow, hanging by this yellow organza. I think making rose droplets in orange and red would make it look too busy because of all the orange and red lanterns as well.  We might put some rose balls on the tables... but that's to be determined based on our table mockup that we'll be doing later in March. 

Placemat mockup...

No, this isn't an actual placemat (if it was, it'd be huge). I was trying to decide whether to order something for placemat materials... So I did a mock-up. The white ribbon will actually be a yellow ribbon matching the yellow we choose for other things. We may move the red organza up a bit; it looks too half-and-halfy right now. But I think we both like the design enough to purchase the materials. We have most, but we needed the wood backing. 

And yes, I whole-heartedly acknowledge that I made a mess by knocking everything out of the way to do this. 

Honeymoon location

We decided to keep our honeymoon low-key. So we're heading here, in Idaho. See the yurt on the left-hand side? 

Rose droplets!

Here are the rose droplets. They match the centerpieces (as in the roses are the same size), but these are smaller in overall diameter. The centerpieces are about 10 inches in diameter, whereas these are about 5 inches. The bases are... ping pong balls. Yea, no joke. You can get them really cheap on ebay. I have a ton. You should have seen the weird look the post office gal gave me when she handed me the box and you could hear all the balls rolling around. 

This is sort of a sucky picture because the flash bleached out the deep red color, but you get the drift.

This one's better, though it's not actually hanging. But the color, though still not deep enough, is a bit better. They're hanging on the same organza strips that the lanterns are hung on. 

B had a great idea that we hang the rose balls in a chain. Strip of organza, rose ball, strip of organza, rose ball, strip, rose ball. I LOVE that idea, especially above the dance area. It will offset the lanterns really well, especially since most of the lanterns there will be larger and with the lights inside. 

I also like that we can choose not to put the ribbon on the rose balls and instead have them lying on the tables. I think it matches our decor better than rose petals or crystals or whatever. 

The whole wedding industry is disgusting

Seriously. These people prey on your commitment to a nice day. Just for fun, I looked online at how much garter belts cost. Do I plan to wear one? I dunno. But you're obligated to do the funny bit where the guys fall all over themselves when it's thrown, right? Dang, they're expensive! A small bit of elastic, maybe some lace, maybe some satin. Brava, done. And what, they're $25+ !??? Seriously. I doubt that guys out there are not as wedding-excited as girls.

A girl catches a bouquet and she'll save it. Probably as a reminder that she was thrilled ot be the center of attention or something. But does a guy save a garter belt he catches? More likely his GIRLFRIEND at the time will display it prominently as a constant reminder that it is somehow indicative that he must propose soon.

I really don't want or need something else that I will be making for this wedding, but the prohibitive cost of the garter belt, coupled with the likely "oh whoop dee doo" sentiment from the guy who catches it... I think I might just make it.

Ugh. Wedding people are scammers. I should start a business to show people how to deal with wedding leeches who want to take all your money.

New dress, fun night

I got my amazingly wonderful blue dress for the dress rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. I LOVE it. It's even prettier than in the photographs online. I got it from a vendor's ebay store that I have used previously. All new stuff, all high-quality, but no want-to-shoot-yourself prices. 

The skirt is this beautiful textured chiffon. The ribbon (which I'll need to steam/press) around the waist is lovely silk which matches the neck collar. It's the same collar style in the back, except there are two blue silk-covered buttons so if you're head is huge you can unbutton it to get the dress over your head (I guess I don't have a huge head because I don't need to unbutton it). The buttons have a bit of a keyhole opening beneath them, but it's more for neckline/head space than it is for style, I think. 

I love it. I want to just walk around a room elegantly sipping a glass of wine in this dress. I think I may just pair it up with a larger, more complicated pair of earrings and go necklace-less because the dress's neckline is just so simplistically classy. Hmm. I think I'm puffing too much about this dress, but hopefully it goes to show that I LOVE it. 

And yes, I bet I could have made something like this myself, but a) the material would have been more expensive than this dress was, and b) I don't have to hassle working with difficult materials like silk and chiffon. And I suppose c) no time expended for dress-making. But yay!

Lanterns

I cannot believe how much I'd rather be making more lanterns right now than working. Which reminds me that I need to order cable, that way when work is all done I can come home at night at the end of Feb and work on stuff and watch TLC. :)

Sigh.

Memory? What memory...

Today I had one of those so-much-needs-to-get-done-and-the-time-flew days. Seriously. Had to clean the apartment because it was beginning to drive me nuts. Couldn't get anything done there because the clutter was distracting. So I cleaned.

Cleaning involved vacuuming (which, I'm not sure we can make it much more on this one. It does not pick up animal fur. This is a problem). Vacuuming TERRIFIES Paddington, so I spent moments over the next 4 hours on my hands and knees, reaching under the bed to scratch the head of a terrified cat. I tried to be good and keep the door shut to the bedroom, but to no avail. I checked inside, and he was hidden. So I vacuumed the bedroom too. He was already scared, right? I felt like a horrible cat mama and I think I probably added an hour to his recuperation time. The other two monsters just gave me this "oh you suck, but whatever" look as they founced out of the room. 

I wooed Paddington later on with tuna juice from the can. I love that I can give that to them as a treat once in a while, and mix it with their kibble. Sigh... I just realized I left the darn bowl under the bed where I gave it to him. 

Tried to go to the post office, missed their hours, and then had the delightful discovery of learning that our post office is not open on Saturdays. Huh? Sigh. I feel badly for people who work during the week and don't get home until after 5:30. How do they ever get packages? Seriously... no late hours any day of the week. Ticked me off-- I couldn't get my (what I suspect is my) ping pong ball package that I'm using for wedding crafty stuff. Darn! Oh well, it probably is a blessing in disguise because now I'm not tempted to work on it this weekend. So much work to do. I cannot wait until the end of February when I have a life again and can work on wedding stuff. SIGH.

However, I did put together (it took me like 10 minutes-- used it as a break from working) two strands of overhead lanterns with my new organza that arrived today. SO EXCITED!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the organza. I have been wondering and wondering how to put together the lanterns we made (and will make... LOTS more), and when I saw this organza online I KNEW this was the solution. And it was cheaper than ribbon, go figure. The shipper/seller was very reasonable on prices, and the good thing is that if I need more, I know where to go to get more. I got seven spools of each color, so I hope that's enough. 

The colors at the right-hand side of this one (above) are pretty accurate to the real-life colors. The red still isn't quite right though.

This last picture shoes the colors a bit better. The red isn't at all pinkish; it's a nice normal red color (no burgundy, no pink. Just RED.). This picture still doesn't do a great job. Darn indoor flash. THe orange is best shown by the last lantern on the bottom left. It's a bright orange. Not a road worker orange, but a little less fluorescent. 

I'm going to hang a cable on opposite sides of the living room, that way I can attach future strands to the cable and only put four holes into the wall (to hold up the cable). I think I'll just hold the strands in place with paper clips or binder clips. It will also be a good way to measure how much to make. I'm going down the week after next to measure the reception hall. Then I can measure my living room, and that'll give me a decent estimate of how many "living rooms" of lantern strands we need for the hall. 

The plan is to have christmas lights (thanks T!!) on the ceiling, pretty much plastered to the ceiling with nothing hanging down. Under them will be these lanterns, as well as strands of plain organza (same colors), because the organza is beautiful. There will also (hopefully, if my idea works out) be dropped balls of the paper roses. I think it will all work nicely. The dance floor will have different but similar decorations, more on that later. 

So yawn. I find myself nearing the day's end with stuff accomplished, but having a long list of stuff to do this weekend. And no more wedding prep for me... all work for the next couple of weeks. Darn.

Not a Kaiser yet. Just practicing.

 Yes, I know I'm not a Kaiser yet. But this is my way of practicing. I have the "er" part of Kaiser down. It's the Kais that needs work.