Only 4 days left!

I'm sorry that it has been so long since I've updated! I wish I was exaggerating when I say that wedding planning has taken over my life (and the products of it, my apartment!) but alas, there's no exaggeration in that statement. Right now I literally have ribbons, a hot glue gun, numerous list, flower girl baskets, advice envelopes, RSVP cards, announcements and many other wedding items, all within 5 feet of my bed. Why the bed? I know it sounds strange but it's where I tend to do the majority of my crafting. Those boutonnieres I posted on here a few months ago? Entirely constructed on the bed. Maybe one day I'll move to a table like a normal person. :P

As the day has gotten closer and closer I've actually become somewhat more relaxed because at this point I know that the whole thing almost just has a life of its own. There is only so much I can do to drive this thing now. Andy and I will inevitably forget something at home; we're just hoping that the item we forget isn't the wedding certificate or our rings.

I do have a ton of photos to upload at some point, so expect some huge postings once the wedding is over and we get some of the photos from the photographer!

After the wedding, my next goal is going to be to attain a design internship position with Anthropologie in the winter. It's going to be a challenge because I'm not majoring in any art program, but I'm hoping I'll be able to win them over with some of my wedding crafts. Wish me luck!

38 days to go

We only have 38 days to go and I'm still trying to get through finals. This is the longest I've ever had to stay on campus for finals and I can't wait to be done.

I recently entered in a competition on Project Wedding to win a gift certificate from Amazon. Here's my entry: http://www.projectwedding.com/wiki/show/budget-savvy-barn-wedding
It's pretty similar to the post I did a few months ago about cost-saving ideas, but I'll post a link anyway. Hopefully I'll win!

I still have a while to go until I get my wedding dress, since it won't be in until around two weeks before the wedding. Let's see... not too much is new, but I will definitely keep updating as the big day arrives!

Pictures!

First up: Straw Flowers! Andy and I spent a lot of time watching his dad, Albert, grow these and then affix them to wire stems, and now we're loving the idea of having them in the wedding. Here's what we're going to do with them:


Next up: Boutonnieres
Here are the first three for the groomsmen:
The second two for the groomsmen:
The boutonnieres for my dad and Andy's dad:
And last but not least, Andy's!
I considered purchasing the bouts on etsy, but the average price was around $15 each. Instead, I purchased $28 (with shipping) worth of flowers from Papier Valise, and voila! Well, no, it wasn't nearly that easy! It took me an evening but it was definitely worth it. They ended up being around $3.50 each and I had plenty of left over leaves, flowers and feathers. The hardest part was definnitely wrapping the dang ribbon around the stems. Ugh.


This is a picture of the backside of our thank you letters. I won't say more than that but these thank yous are pretty neat!

This is one of 11 designs Andy and I had made for us by a wonderful seller on etsy. I designed them on PhotoShop (this one is a photo of mine, taken of one of the birds on a postcard) and then I emailed them to a woman who made 200 of them for us for only $35 with shipping, and got them to us within a week! If anyone is looking for her name just email me and I'll send you her info.


Lastly I'm going to leave you all with this photo of little tiny chicks that my sister bought Andy and I around Easter. They all fit in one little Easter egg and they're the most adorable things. I got them out recently to play around and they're quite fun and hilarious to pose.


For pictures of our recent trip to Mt. Rainier check out my flickr page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaime_barker/
We had quite a bit of fun looking at the springs up there, and now we're dreaming about possibly camping sometime this summer. Fun! Does anyone have fun plans for the summer?

Newspaper Planters

Hey all. I have been hard at work recently with wedding stuff and I promise I have photos, but I'm not going to post them quite yet. Instead, I'm going to start sharing a few of the awesome links I find in my quest through blog-land.

Here's the first:
Isn't it clever? There is an old Seattle P.I. box in front of my apartment and I'm bummed that I don't have the necessary tools to make the plywood insert, otherwise one of these would be out on 15th!

http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2009/05/flyer_box_planters.html

May 9th - Pic Heavy!

Andy and I had our engagement photos taken yesterday by our wonderful photographer, Brandon Patoc. He was great to work with and he took our photos for over two hours! We walked around different areas on campus, and we're both really excited to see what they turn out like.

The weather is finally starting to heat up, and today I went to the Volunteer Park's Annual Plant Sale. I went last year with Jackie, and we found out we had to take two buses to get there. I ended up hauling the plants I bought back in a suitcase which was interesting to say the least. This year I was able to borrow a car though which made for much happier times! A and I have been touring through a few thrift stores recently and we've found quite a few wonderful things. On the island we used to frequent the Senior Thrift Store, and when we moved out here we discovered that while we were in a larger city, the thrift stores were lacking in comparison to the island's. However, now we've become bi-weekly visitors to the Dearborn Goodwill in the International District. It has to be the largest thrift store I've ever been to and it's full of wonderful things all at *great* prices.

These two cups were just .50 each!

This suitcase is in great shape and is the perfect carry-on size. At $5 we couldn't resist.There were two of these tins, one for coffee and the other labeled "tea". $2 each!

Andy has been wanting a martini shaker, and we found this one at the Dearborn Goodwill. It was only $4 and is from Pottery Barn. It turns out P.B. still sells them... at $40 each. Ouch! You can twist the outside cylinder to show different drink recipes which I think is pretty sweet. Now we just have to collect the rest of the drinkware!

These salt and pepper shakers came from what I believe was my first garage sale in Seattle. Only $1!

Recently, Andy and I have been working on the thank you cards and the announcements. We were going to line the envelopes for the announcements with the same paper as the invites, but then we were informed that the paper is no longer being made. A few people ended up with invites that were lacking the liners as well because of this. Luckily were were able to find some paper that is the same as the original paper, just in brown. It wasn't our first choice but it works quite well.



Here are some photos of the plants I got at the sale, and the glass containers I found at the thrift store for a few of them. I always look longingly at some of the glasses and votive holders, etc, at the thrift store but I never knew what to do with them. However, now I'm just going to pot a few plants in them!







We've gathered a few more things for the wedding too. Here are a few:

The birds! We were able to find feathered birds for a great price: 12 for $6.50.

The pins- the glass container we found at the thrift store for just .50.

And last but not least, the promised picture of the finished cupcake garland in our kitchen:
Tada!

Countdown: 3 months

This is how often Andy and I eat onions. Except, we actually do eat onions pretty often, apparently the problem was just that we had too many and this one decided to sprout.

I can't believe that Andy and I only have three months until the wedding. We finally got (almost) the invitations out, but now we're gearing up for working on the announcements and thank you cards. We traveled back to Paper Source and its wonderful papers, and now we just have to get down to making them.

I bought my dress! Due to the lack of time (wedding dresses usually take 5-6 months to arrive) I had to order it with rush shipping, etc, etc, but it's expected to arrive around June 30th! I need to make an appointment with a seamstress soon before they all book up. I ended up actually ordering a bridesmaids dress in white rather than a wedding dress. The style of the dress is more informal (and the price more reasonable) than the wedding dresses I was encountering.

Andy and I booked our honeymoon to Hawaii for the beginning of September, and we're getting really excited just reading about all the neat things there are to do there. Plus, I've been on a diet recently and I read that snorkeling burns 500 calories an hour! I guess I'll just have to snorkel for a while each day to burn off the calories from all the wonderful food. :)

Over Easter weekend we went back to the island which was so incredibly enjoyable. We were able to go on Friday after getting my dress and then we stayed until Monday morning since we didn't have class until 2:30. The thrift store on the island is packed full of great finds, and we've only managed to find two in Seattle that come close to competing with it. Here are some of the things we found:

These are a bunch of old laces that I found. The most expensive one cost me $2.25 for what looks like 10 yards, and I think I'm going to use them with my bouquet and the bridesmaids' bouquets. Our colors too!

This is a beautiful scarf that I think I'm going to use as a table linen. It was only $1!

These napkins were just too cute for me to pass up and they only put me back by $1.25.

I finally got my order from BakeitPretty (I'm not sure why the shipping took two, almost three, weeks) and these are some of the cupcake liners I purchased:
I used some of the other liners I bought from them to use to make a cupcake liner garland. I also used some of the usual blue, pink and yellow ones found in the grocery store, and some from a 1000 pack of white liners that I bought at Cash n' Carry. The 1000 pack only cost $2.38! I hung the garland over our stove, but I couldn't get a good picture of it so here's Andy holding the finished product (Also, Andy isn't this pale in person, the color levels just appear to be skewed in this picture. ;) ) :
I thought a decoration made from kitchen materials was appropriate in the kitchen! I'll try to take a (successful) picture of it hanging in the kitchen soon to share with you all.

And last but not least, some pictures of the cherry trees in the UW's Quad:

Easter Eggs - Picture Heavy

Kaeli's seismograph egg.

Lucas' Bender egg (the character from Futurama)

I think this one is mom's, and it reminds me of a paint chip.

Kaeli's Poop Egg

Dad's campfire egg

Andy's argyle egg

Our (Andy and I) gross attempt to make a tie-dye egg

My eggs and bacon egg!

Andy's camping/hiking/outdoors egg

And my boat egg!