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!

It's been a while!

I spent a half an hour today trying to remember my log-in info for this blog, which tells me that it's been too long since I've updated! I have a ton of photos, so I'll try to post them later today. Yay!

Rainbow Cake, Terrariums, Poufs & others

Since winter quarter came to an end I've been busy with many crafty things. Andy and I did a bit of spring cleaning today, but it's far from finished. All of the miscellaneous things we didn't know what to do with are still hanging out on our living room floor... and the hallway... and of course in the undetermined-use closet.

First Thing: Rainbow Cake
Jackie came over before she headed home for break, and we made a rainbow cake, like I discussed in a previous post. Andy and I have decided that we want our wedding cake to be exactly like this cake, but we're still debating on whether or not it needs to also have the rainbow chip frosting. Either way, our wedding cake is going to be quite colorful!

The bowls almost matched each of the colors of cake
Jackie pouring the yellow...

Me pouring the blue...

Jackie with one of the pre-baked cakes!

Finished cake! Complete with rainbow chip frosting (which is also my favorite!).

Second Thing: Terrariums
Since I saw the article on Craft Make I knew I had to try my hand at this terrarium thing. So I bought my cupcake toppers from BakeItPretty and set to work. I bought one little glass container many months ago at one of our favorite thrift stores, Deserete Industries on Aurora. It came with this ugly candle and fake vine:


I put my pebbles, charcoal, potting soil, plants and gnomes in there and voila!



I also made small terrariums for the concierge desk and gift/husky desk at the bookstore, but I quickly realized that the jars were too short, and it was hard to see the small deer and gnomes inside. I'm going to work on making new ones for them soon!

Third Thing: Deli/Sandwich Paper Poufs
I saw this on Scissor Variations a couple of weeks ago, and I knew right away that it was the answer to the problems I had been having with the Martha Stewart-suggested poufs. The deli paper can be hard to find, but when you do it's cheap (1000 sheets for $12). Use 6 sheets and a bunch of twine and you get these:

Fourth Thing: Invite Envelope Liners
Andy and I finally purchased the necessary stationary for our invites this past week, and I am so glad we did. We bought the kit to make envelope liners, and we decided (per my request) to use the same paper (purchased at the bookstore with our discounts, yeah!) that I used to line our kitchen cabinets (seen in first picture of this post). After a few hours of tracing, cutting, folding and taping, this is one of the 50 results:


Fifth Thing: Shelf Liner
Andy and I had this very utilitarian-looking (well, actually it was utilitarian) bookcase which we weren't really using in the living room. We had to move it for the new 'tabe' so we moved it to the kitchen. Before we did though, we lined the shelves with the same paper as the cabinets and the envelope liners, but in brown.


Sixth Thing: Bird Garland
Another thing I saw on Scissor Variations. It's a Martha Stewart sparrow punch, and I was happy making a garland, which is now on the 'tabe', using various papers and stickers from the bookstore, along with some baker's twine.


When Andy and I went to IKEA we found the perfect straws for the wedding:


I found a great headband at the bookstore which is somewhat like what I'm looking for for my veil:


And for the last picture of a very picture-heavy post, I wanted to share a picture of a great flower I found at QFC. They come in a wide variety of flowers, and I definitely want to incorporate them into the wedding somehow!


How is everyone else's spring break going?