Happiest day of my life… so far! <3
Browsing Tag
wedding
We are back after the most fun wedding and relaxing adventure of a honeymoon. We travelled north to Restoule Provincial Park where we ended up staying for a few days. I used to stay here as a kid, and it was even better than I remember – quiet and serene… we woke up to the sounds of loons every morning and were even greeted by a pair of deer on our campsite one afternoon. We eventually found our way to Killarney – It edges onto boreal forest and is part of the Canadian shield. It looked just like a painting – absolutely beautiful, pink granite and white quartz contrast against the green trees and orange maples…
Over the whole trip we saw countless Deer, raccoons, chipmunks, squirrels, some bears, grouse, beaver… I’ve never seen so much wilderness on a camping trip. Next year, we are hoping to be brave enough to try some back country camping. It was pretty cold this time, going down to 0 degrees Celcius at night, but it was totally worth it. There is nothing better than hiking around a forest by day and sitting around a campfire by night.
Yesterday I made a point of going to the Oro Worlds Fair… The Worlds Fair is something I used to do as a kid every year – and if you grew up in the country, as I did, I’m sure you understand how exciting a Worlds Fair really is. We used to enter Cosmos from our garden, handmade doll clothes, chocolate chip cookies. We’d go and see which duck & chicken won the red ribbon, and guess the weight of a cow for our chance to win $500! I was happy to see the fair had not changed a bit, aside from the addition of a Canine Agility show. The local elementary schools still submit the same adorable crafts and drawings, and people are still submitting Cosmos from their garden…
After the fair we started “winterizing” the apartment, in attempt to save on our energy bills this year. We bought lined curtains for all of the windows, peel-off-caulking to fill in cracks and drafts, plastic shrink wrap for over breezy windows. Our apartment is about 700 square feet and costs a small fortune to heat during the winter…
I’m pretty heartbroken to be going back to work tomorrow… I had too much fun over the last week. The wedding was so much fun, and I will write more about that a little later. Our photographer was absolutely amazing, and I hope to work with her again in the near future.
I spent all day gathering, painting, and crafting finishing touches for the wedding. We are keeping the decorations to a minimum – Dan and I are pretty simple when it comes to our taste. I did want to have something “special” for the head table. I created a bunting to drape across the front, and today, after finding some great frames at the dollar store (which were jazzed up with some crackle medium, white paint, and sand paper), I decided to make “portraits” of Dan and I.
I took a profile picture each of us, turned it black and white, and upped the contrast. I printed it on some heavy cardstock, carefully cut around the lines of our profiles, and used the negative as a stencil. I stencilled on plain old muslin with some black acrylic paint. I’m really happy with how these turned out.
I grabbed a great old tin wash-basin from an antique store to put our wedding programs and bird-seed confetti bags in, as well as some old lace-trimmed linens.
I’m a little worried about what I will craft when this wedding is all over…
I am down to 3 weekends before the wedding weekend! I wanted to add a few more décor items to add to my “vintage” theme, and I noticed The Knot had a whole gallery of vintage themed décor ideas.
I took two ideas – Paper Cut “Cards” Garland and the Vintage Train Case, and mashed them together. Instead of using paper, I glued a piece of cotton to a piece of card stock, printed large Bold Letters on another piece of card stock to use as stencils – traced my stencils (backwards!) on the card stock with the fabric glued to it, and cut out my letters with pinking shears. I draped the garland across the train-case and fixed with with small pieces of tape.
All of our RSVP’s are supposed to be back by today – so this weekend we will catch up with the stragglers, and finish off all of our crafts based on the final headcount. I have designated Dan to be “Official Hole Puncher” for our craft-night, since the last time I used a hole punch I managed to somehow get my fingers under the cutter twice and punched pretty painful holes in my fingers. Crafting is a dangerous business, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
We have also made a few plans to our honeymoon. Because of Dan’s brief stint of unemployment, and my voluntary cutting back of hours at work (though I did get a raise!), we decided to cancel honeymoon plans and just do a roadtrip based on whatever we can afford at the time. We will head up to the Bruce peninsula, ferry to Manitoulin Island, Camp at Killarny Provincial Park, tour through Sudbury and North Bay, Camp at Restoule, and wind our way back home again.
I love wearing vintage slips. They make me feel so glamorous, like a vixen from a noir film. I have two vintage slips that I love the most, so I knocked off the pattern and made cut 3 slips, each in two sizes. The only thing I don’t like about vintage slips is they are usually plain, old white. I wanted to make slips that were fun, and vibrant with a vintage-flair.
Each slip has a stretch lace detail across the bust, and lace trim along the edge. I made one in a large, gold floral print (I made bathing suits out of this too!), one in a chocolate and white lace print jersey, and one in a candy-purple floral burnout with creamy lace trim. I bought a ton of each of these jersey knits last spring… they make very comfy slips, silky-soft, great for wearing under a dress or to sleep!
Last week I re-opened shop for a few days to take a last-minute order. A “Tied with a Bow” bra with the side-ruffled panties. I absolutely love how it turned out and will be adding this as a set to my shop too! This set will be shipped off very, after I complete all of the finishing touches…
I’ve gotten so much done the last few days. Our camping trip got rained out, which was disappointing, but I managed to check off a bunch of things from my wedding to-do list, including finishing the Flower Girls Dresses (which now need to be taken in an inch), finishing the alterations on the bridesmaids dresses, ordered the flowers, and filled out the application for the marriage license. I can’t believe we’re down to only 4 weeks!
Little Oliver will be glad when the wedding is over and I have some more time to spend with him. I caught him looking longingly out the window at a brief rain-storm we had this afternoon. I can’t wait until we have a house with a backyard where he can play…
So, Dan is employed at the moment, doing a “Trial” period at a shop in town. The hours are almost too good to be true and we actually get weekends off together! The best part is, they are paying him a decent wage. What did I learn from this whole cafuffle? Unemployment is not the end of the world… and that Dan and I are pretty darn thrifty.
I am going down to 4 days a week at my job and will re-assess the situation shortly after the wedding and honeymoon. My immediate plan, aside from sewing wedding stuff and alterations, is to sew a bunch of ready-made few of a kind accessories, panties, rompers, dresses, and camisoles to re-launch Ohhh Lulu in October, just in time for Christmas.
I am getting some new props for Ohhh Lulu photo shoots, including this Dress Form from Vintage Style Mannequins, and plan on doing a fall-harvest photo shoot, conveniently in the beautiful field behind my parents house.
I also want to start doing some small-time advertising. I had a great opportunity to put a banner on The Vintage Wife’s Blog. I had her link back to my blog, since Ohhh Lulu is currently “oh vacation.” I’ve had a lot of traffic and success without really trying, so I’m hoping advertising will increase sales. Do you know a highly-travelled blog that offers ad-space?
Tomorrow I have my first dress fitting. I love any chance I get to put on my dress and I can’t wait until I have pictures to show everyone, because let’s face it, the dress is one of the most exciting parts of the whole thing!
The count down is officially on. I have 6 weeks until I am a “Mrs.”
I finished off my last two Etsy orders and have put Ohhh Lulu on Vacation Mode. I’ve jumped head first into wedding crafting.
Last night I went a little stencil crazy – hand cutting stencils, words, phrases, laurels, flourishes… I stencilled french lovey-dovey phrases on some rough, natural coloured burlap, and cut them into a bunting banner to drape across the head table. Because I made my own stencil, the bunting cost me less than $10 to make, and I have a ton of burlap left over, enough to likely make 3 more buntings.
Our ceremony is going to be very informal – no seating, just standing room, no ushers… so I wanted to have “help yourself” signs for the programs and birdseed bags, as well as a “Sign the Guest Book” sign for on the guest-book table. I picked up two picture frames from a charity shop for $3 a piece, cut a stencil out of cardstock, and painted on some scrap muslin.
I am getting so excited to see the whole thing come together!
The wedding is coming so fast now. For the longest time it felt like I had so much time to plan and decide on things, and now it’s a month away!
I got to work on my wedding programs this year. I used blank greeting cards as my “cover”. They were on sale at Zellers (soon to be Target, which makes me sad) for $11 for 40. I picked up two and will use the left overs for Thank you Cards for my Shower.
I used a “Marrying Picture” My soon to be nieces drew of Dan and I as the cover page. You can’t really see it very well, as the picture got kind of washed out (I need a new camera), but you get the idea.
The middle has all the usual boring “thank you” and who’s-who and order of ceremony, by my favorite part is the past page, where I put in a wedding-day word search! I used Puzzle-maker.com to generate a word search and just copy and pasted it into my booklet.
I bound the booklets by punching a hole about 1″ down from the top and bottom edge, along the fold. This actually makes quite a nice binding. A word of warning – punches can be very sharp, and if you are punching while sleepy, you run the risk of punching nearly all the way through your finger-tip, like I did. Not pleasant. We stamped on paper bags for the front page title, cut them out roughly and made the corners fancy with a paper punch you can get at any craft star. All in all our programs cost us $45 – would have been less if I had already had a fancy corner punch… that cost about 1/4 of the cost of the invitations.
So, we have our programs, birdseed bags, invitations mailed and are starting to return, ring pillow, 1 of 2 flower girl dresses, place cards, guest book, chalkboards (and easels) for seating arrangements… What else am I forgetting?I’m looking forward to the big day. I picked up my dress last week and it is so beautiful, looks really cute with the shoes and the shoe clips I bought off of Etsy. I am looking forward to relaxing a little after the wedding…
And here is the BIG news. I am going to be devoting a lot more of my time to Ohhh Lulu in the very near future. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I’ve decided, after the whole heartbreaking house cafuffle, that I need to do this. We have nothing to lose. I talked to my boss last week about either not renewing my contract, or proceeding with just a couple days a week. This is super scary and exciting for me… as well as a huge relief – my “Day Job” has changed considerably since I started and as much as I’ve tried I just am not cut out for the lube business. I think anyone who has been following my blog can tell, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends for too long. I’m so excited to really “live my dream” even if it means it’s a huge failure, at least I can say “I tried.”
Dan and I did not get out to do any camping this weekend… instead I stayed home and filled a bunch of orders and finished a little sewing for the wedding.
I ended up going for headbands, despite the great and thoughtful advice I had gotten on hair clips. It was easiest for me just to do one thing and if the girls find them uncomfrotable, they can take them off during the evening. Two of my three bridesmaids have short-ish hair so the bands should work for everyone… I hope. And if not, you can all say “I told you so!”
I bought a bunch of thin metal headbands off an etsy seller, wrapped them in a strip of dupioni, cut on the bias, stitched the ends down (then plastered it in Fray Check), and then hand sewed the appliqués on. I hope the girls like them.
I also got a start on the flower girl dresses. I didn’t want anything too “princess-y”, so I picked up some coarse linen, seersucker in black and white stripe, a silk eyelet, and some ivory dupioni, as well as pattern.
The dress only took me a about 2 hours to make and $40 worth of materials. Now I just have to make another one because I have 2 flower girls!I really like how it turned out and I hope the girls have fun wearing them.
The Give Away Panties are finished and ready to ship out to the lucky winner! I made them out of my favourite cotton, it’s got hints of pink, blue and brown all on a lovely creamy base. I added a ruffled layer of lace under a ruffled layer of torn chiffon. The legs and waist are trimmed in satin elastic. I really hope she likes them! I will be offering these up for sale in any size in my Etsy shop soon.
I’ve been playing around a lot with ruffled, torn chiffon. I really like the effect of the frayed edges. So delicate and antique looking.
Yesterday I placed the order for my wedding cake and cupcakes. Dan had to work so the decision was left up to me. I’ve been really lucky to have a fiancé who actually likes to be involved with the whole wedding process and has been really helpful, so I was nervous about making the decision alone. We went with cupcakes for the guests, chocolate and vanilla with cream coloured icing. Some will be done with polka dots in black or raspberry, and some will have bows. The cake is just going to be a 6″ cake to cut, and will also have a bow around it. I was surprised that Dan actually liked this idea! I was really worried it would be too girlie, but I think it’s going to look really nice, and hopefully not too “wedding-y”.
My mom and I also picked up some flowers to start thinking about the table arrangements. We got some carnations, a big white flower that looks like a giant aster, and some filler called wax flower. We stuck them in a mason jar, and voila!
I think I might finally have everything sort of under control.
PS. my heartsy deal may be going on sale on Tuesday!