Let me do you a favour

I'm going to preface this by saying I have amazing friends and family. I know I've said it before, but I feel it needs to be said again. You guys are incredible and I'm one lucky girl to have you all! A good few months back, I knew I wanted to make homemade caramel for our favours. It's a recipe I discovered online and it's been a hit around our house ever since! I enlisted a bridesmaid to help me cut the skirts after the jars had arrived, while I made coordinating buttons. 

Since caramel is a perishable item I couldn't make it until a week or so before the wedding. So after I got the Sears/fridge debacle sorted out and had a fridge to store said caramel in, another lovely bridesmaid came out to lend a hand. We had a great afternoon of cooking, jarring, and decorating the jars, along with a few surprise guests! 

A few notes from our experience: We made the caramel in double batches which had turned out badly for me previously, but this time worked out beautifully thanks to my awesome new pots. If you have old hand me down pots, make this in single batches, trust me. We had two pots going at the same time, a larger pot makes the batches go much faster since the simple syrup is a bit shallower and can reduce and caramelize faster. I used fleur de sel rather than plain old rock salt to bring out the flavour and add a little of that salty/sweet combo I love! Use good vanilla, not the artificial $1.99 stuff from the baking aisle at the grocery store. The Kirkland brand Madagascar vanilla at Costco is actually pretty decent!

   

Start with your line up of jars, and a handy dandy cappucino milk pot thingy for pouring. 

Next, look perplexed at the recipe since it's been a while since you've made it. Also be impressed by the new Gordon Ramsay pots that were a shower/wedding gift from the parents. Ooooh even cooking! They're amazing, I totally love them!!! They made such a huge difference, I didn't burn one batch of caramel! 

Next, make your simple syrup, let it caramelize, and then turn off the heat. 

Stand back when you add in the cream and whisk that caramel wearing an oven mitt because that's a lot of really hot steam that comes off that sucker. 

 Third degree burns are not sexy bridal accessories.

Enlist one cute bridesmaid to pour into jars as you get the next batch going. 

Don't forget to test for "quality control". Having a few apples on hand 

for dipping good health is a great idea. 

Make sure your lids are on tight!

A couple surprise guests pop by while they're in the neighbourhood 

and are put to work cutting twine, putting on skirts and tags, 

and are rewarded with a few samples. You guys are awesome! 

(Please ignore my hideous lack of make up. Clearly I forgot about the 

whole "photos for the blog" thing that morning!)

Finally the big moment! Ta daaa!!!! Homemade caramel favours! One tag says

"From our kitchen to your belly" and the other says "Love is sweet". 

Many thanks again to my caramel helper elves. You guys are amazing! T-minus eight days people!!!!

Practice Makes Perfect - DIY Rehearsal Invitations

I love paper. I love paper products. I love how much paper I get to play with for our wedding. Our invitations were streamlined, simple, and graphic. I wanted a more fun invitation for our rehearsal dinner since it will be a laid back, fun evening. I took inspiration from this:

(Source)

Using Adobe Illustrator, I started playing with fonts and borders to create the invite. Then the fun stuff: the map. I have a love/hate relationship with map making. I hate doing it, but when it's done I feel so satisfied and proud of myself! Basically I just take a screen shot of a Google map, then trace it with the pencil tool in Illustrator. I nudge around the lines via the anchor points until it looks right and then add in the text for the street names. It some times involves a lot of swearing, but it gets done. I also copied the street directions directly from the venue website which helped a lot. So voila! Here they are!

 (Personal Photo)

Of course, me being me, I can't stop there. I bought some rolls of craft paper super duper on sale and used my handy Martha Stewart Scoreboard with its envelope guide and made me some envelopes! Then I scored the folds into my invite and map pages, folded those bad boys up together and tied with pretty red bakers twine. 

  (Personal Photos)

Before I sealed them up I embossed the back flap with our address and our wedding logo. I tried to address the front a bit funky and neat since the invites are so much fun!

  (Personal Photos)

I'm loving the Roadside Attraction stamp series Canada Post has out right now. They're adorable and remind me so much of our roadtrip to the East coast that my dad Dan one of the men in my life proposed at the beginning of! All in all, this project probably took me a day between the layouts, fighting with the maps, and making envelopes. I think it's worth it :)

I'm MIA, and reasons not to have a wedding under a tent in Ontario

My bridesmaid/"cousin" (You know those close friends of the family type people you call aunts and uncles and cousins? Ya, that's her. Funny thing is, I think I'm closer to them than some of my own family!) is visiting from Kansas right now. I don't get to see her often since Kansas is a heck of a long ways away, so we've been spending the week doing wedding related stuffs. She's been keeping me honest and making sure I work hard on wedding items. So far we've hunted for the big tall vases (a no go, as the only ones we found were $85 a piece, yikes!), made the place cards, make little accessories for the place cards (more to come on that), started cutting the menus on the Cricut, unpacked all my shower gifts, reorganized my kitchen to fit in all the shower gifts, gone to Michaels for supplies a million times, and picked up the liquor license and building permit. 

(Source)

Building permit?! What in the world?! I know. Here's my rant as to why not to have a wedding under a tent in the province of Ontario. At first, you'll think "Oooh we'll have an outdoor wedding under a tent and it'll be beautiful and simple and cheap!". And then you'll book your $2000 tent and think, wow, that price stinks, but oh well, it'll be lovely. And then you'll realize "Oh no, wait, now I need tables and chairs and plates and glasses and linens and salt and pepper and bread baskets and every little thing on the face of the earth! This is not easier OR cheaper!!!". So you book all that. And then you realize you have to apply for a liquor license which in itself is easy enough. The not fun part is notifying the police department, health department, fire department, municipal clerk's office, and building department of said event by letter and having to drive around to all of these places (especially when your venue is an hour plus away in another municipality). And then you find out that you also need a building permit to erect your massive tent for 36 hours and need to pay them $125 for said permit, and give them a stack of paperwork an inch thick for your application. And don't forget to call the conservation authority because your tent extends 5' onto a floodplain and you need their clearance for your permit. AND THEN when you pick up said permit you find out that after the tent is erected and before the event, you have to have a building inspector come out to make sure that the tent is erected properly. If you've made it this far, congratulations. I assume you're headed to Vegas rather than going down this road?!

In all seriousness, it is a huge pain in the a$$, but I've muddled my way through all the bureaucracy and it's done. If I had to do it all over again, I perhaps might have gone down a different road, but I know our tented wedding will be gorgeous and worth every penny. Rules and regulations vary region by region, so perhaps where you live people aren't such killjoys ;)

Flower Power and Trimming a Budget

I had my centrepiece trial with our amazing florist this week. I've been working with Tanya and I love how knowledgeable she is about what's in season throughout the year, what's worth splurging on vs where we can save money. She's been fabulous to work with to say the least. She's also really enthusiastic about the silver teapots and I think we're both really looking forward to seeing it come together! I got to the shop and she filled up my teapot with a mix of dusty miller, lisianthus, wax flowers, freesia and some big gorgeous roses. Swoon.  

I know I know! You're insanely jealous! I'm sorry! Tanya was a sweetheart and packed up the teapot full of flowers and sent them home with me. What the what?! I have to say, the roses opened up a bit more the next day and looked even more beautiful if that's possible! I love the wax flowers and the vintage touch it adds to the arrangement. I'm so glad Tanya suggested it! 

I have a but. BUT as I hauled my centrepiece off to my hair/make up trial, I realized the teapot was leaking! ACK!!! A weld under the spout had given (come on, the thing is how old, it's sort of to be expected) and slowly the teapot was losing water. I don't know why the possibility that the teapots might leak didn't occur to me at any point during this process. When I got home I emptied the teapot and stuffed it full of soaked floral foam wrapped in plastic wrap and attempted to rearrange it as beautifully as Tanya had originally done. It's not perfect, but it'll do. I made sure to shoot Tanya a quick email to let her know floral foam was a must, water was a no go. I'm hoping that's the only teapot of the lot that's pooched, but I'm not willing to risk it! I'm thankful though that it did happen rather than having the teapots leak all over the tables at the wedding!

Now for the budget part. Oh my. So we've added a lot of things to our floral budget. A lot a lot. Clearly that means the price is going to go up. A lot. A lot a lot. Tanya and I talked about what we could do to cut back and we've come up with a few options. 

1) We DIY the moss and orchids around the firepit. Easy peasy. I have a couple of amazingly wonderful friends who have volunteered to wire the orchids to the corkscrew hazel another friend is loaning us, and they're going to lay the moss around the firepit. I found some floral wholesale shops nearby and since I'm an interior designer with my own business, I was allowed to shop there! I got all the moss for $50, and I found orchids for $1.70/stem. That was a very full stem too, like 20 flowers. I can't believe how cheap it is!!! This is going to save us about $300. 

2) We DIY the creamer and sugar bowls. I just wanted to fill them with baby's breath. Considering the man power to fill them, we were quoted $12/bowl, or just about $500 total. Tonight, I decided to do a test run. I bought two big bunches of baby's breath from the florist wholesaler (seriously my new favourite place) for about $15. I filled 7 cream and sugar bowls with plenty of baby's breath to spare in about 45 minutes. Figure in the learning curve with that as well. Not bad!!! I think it should cost us about $45 total to do 40 cream and sugar bowls, a savings of $455. 

(There are two types of baby's breath. Do you like the small ones on

the left, or the mixture of the two on the right?) 

3) We buy the vases for the curly willow accents we have around the room and then re-sell them afterward. The vase rental is $50 each, and we have eight of them, so $400 total. Plus we need to return them within four days of the wedding. Even if we bought them at the same price, at least we wouldn't have to rush to figure out what the heck we're going to do with all the curly willow (they can be rooted and planted in the garden), they can stay in the vases until we come back from our honeymoon, and then we could sell the vases online for a bit less than we bought them. If we sold them at 50% off, we could save $200. So far though, I've been having trouble finding a tall enough vase, but I'm going to keep hunting for them on Monday. 

Just by doing those three things, we could knock over $1000 off our floral budget once you add in taxes. I'm also hoping that if we're transporting all the creamers Tanya will be able to fit everything in one truck rather than two and we can get our delivery cost back down. I love having a vendor that I can be honest with and say "Woah, this is slightly crazy, let's scale back!" and she's so open to suggesting how and where we can do that. Hooray for great vendors! 

Are you DIY-ing your flowers? How are you keeping your floral budget under control? 


** All photos are personal photos.

Taking Care of My Peeps

When it came time to do my bathroom baskets, I'll hit up my local Dollarama. It's possibly one of my favourite places on earth. I stocked up on various toiletries for the guys and girls. I got two boxes (one a bit smaller for the guys, they don't need as much "stuff" as us girls) since I sort of hate traditional woven baskets. That's right. I said it. I don't like woven baskets. 

I got home and filled up my box. It looked.... boring.  

  
That big whisk lookin' thing is a scalp massager. Don't judge until you try. And when you try, your life will be changed ;)

What to do............ I went down to the basement and grabbed a roll of funky wrapping paper, emptied out my box and went to town! 

First, I centered my box on the pattern on the paper (I likely should have done this on a light table, but I didn't feel like dragging my Yudu out, so I just did my best with it).  I traced the bottom of the box. I cut out the rectangle a bit smaller than the tracing and then did a dryfit, trimming as needed.

When it fit correctly, I put some double sided tape in each corner and stuck it down.  

Refill and voila! Much prettier!

 
I'm really happy with the results, I'm even happier I had the perfect wrapping paper on hand. For those of you who are curious, here's a quick list of what's in my baskets (with a few items I still need to add):

For the ladies

• Mini deoderant
• Lip balm
• Mouthwash
• Hand sanitizer
• Kleenex
• Moisturizer
• Little pair of scissors
• Mini-nail clippers
• Tweezers
• Pads
• Emery boards
• Gum
• Tic Tacs
• Breath Savers
• Band-aids
• Bobby pins
• Hair elastics
• And of course, the scalp massager

For the gents:

• Lip balm
• Mouthwash
• Hand sanitizer
• Kleenex
• Moisturizer
• Nail clippers
• Gum
• Tic Tacs
• Breath Savers
• Band-aids
• Floss
• Scalp massager
• I'd like to find the guys a mini-deoderant and some cologne samples

The Big Reveal

I gave you the teaser a few weeks ago of our invitations, and they've all been delivered, so there's no reason to hold these bad boys back any more! Without further ado, the product of much love, sweat, and tears is revealed!

Page One

Page Two

Page Three

Page Four

Page Five

RSVP Postcard Front

RSVP Postcard Back

The whole package

A few tips I learned from other brides that have served me well. On the back of our postcards, I put a little heart, this serves two purposes. First, it matches the heart on the main page of our invite and looks cute. Second, it's my tracking system. Inevitably you'll get someone who RSVPs without a name (we've only gotten one so far). I bought a kids "spy kit" from Chapters online for something like $4 that came with an invisible ink pen and a black light. On my guest list Excel spreadsheet I gave each guest/couple/family a number. I wrote their corresponding number on the heart in the invisible ink on their postcard. Now if I get a blank named RSVP, I can use my blacklight to see that it's card number 38, look that up on my guest list and see that it was Mr & Mrs Smith who forgot to write their names. Magic! 

Don't forget to budget for stamps! When you make a mock up of your invitation make sure you take it to the post office and have it weighed to figure out the postage. There are weight and size restrictions for different classes of mail depending on your country. Don't guess what category you fit in, go to the post office and figure it out! Because I was doing a multi-page invite, it cost us $1.00/invitation to mail within Canada. Had we gone with a simpler design we could have fit in the $0.57 category. However, I never do things the simple way. I'm really happy with how they turned out and I wouldn't change them at all!


So I hope you've enjoyed our invites! I'm so happy I took the time to design, print, and sew them all myself. I loved putting so much of "us" into them. We've gotten nothing but compliments and great feedback from our guests which, of course, puts a huge smile on my face!

DIY Cake Topper

I know I've already made the lobsters cake topper, but I couldn't help myself. I told you before, I love cake toppers!!! They're so cute!!! So here's a little tutorial for how to make your own. I bought all the supplies at Michaels and it all cost me probably less than $10. 

First, assemble your supplies. I bought two little people in a package for $1.99, plus these little jar shaped wooden "cat" bodies, and some little balls to use as their heads. I also found a little wooden bead from Michaels that I wanted to use as a little bun on the back of my bride head. I may or may not have squeezed it out of another package because I didn't need 20 of them for $5. Don't follow my bad example boys and girls.

Next, get out your drill and drill a little hole into the bottom of your bride and groom. I cut a bamboo skewer and then sanded the ends with a nail file to stick in the hole. This gives you a pick to stick in your cake, but also an easier way to hold it while you're painting. When you put the skewer in, put some wood glue on the end to make sure it stays! The cats already had big holes in them, so I stuck a straw with a glue dot on the end in them. I figure the cats will be placed on the cake, so it's not crucial they have something to keep them upright since they're so small anyways.

 After that was done, I used white craft glue to attach the cats round heads to their bodies and my stolen hair bun to my bride. When that dried, I started sketching out my bride, groom and cats in pencil on my wooden forms. 

 

I had a cardboard box that I stuck the skewers through to keep them upright and help with drying. It was perfect. And now, paint! I used acrylic craft paints that were on sale 2/$1.50 at Michaels. they dried quickly and were really easy to work with. 

Now comes the part where you learn from my mistakes. I didn't have black paint. Cleverly I thought, that's okay, I have a black paint pen with an extra fine tip, that'll work perfectly! And it did. At first. I outlined all of Dan's clothes, put his cute little face on him. Then I did my face. The paint got a bit stuck, so I shook up the pen and tested it on another page and it was fine. I put one eye on my bride, and then.....

ACK!!!!! My paint pen exploded!!!! Don't ever ever use a paint pen for something like this!!! I liked the look of my little people with the wood instead of the skin tone paint, but ummm this is not okay! So I sanded down my mini-bride's face (poor girl) and did a quick run to Michaels to pick up black paint as well as flesh toned paint. Thankfully the flesh toned paint covered over what remained of the black paint and I was able to salvage my cake topper.

Look ma! No more black eye! So now I moved on to the cats. They were pretty straight forward and mostly involved brown paint and dry brushing. It's hard to paint a tabby, they have so many stripes! For our black cat, Peter, I mixed silver and black to give him a bit of a shimmer so he wouldn't look like this big black scary thing on our cake. 

Here's our whole cake topper family, I think they turned out pretty cute! The whole thing took me an afternoon, but it would have been an hour shorter if my paint pen hadn't exploded!

Button button who's got the button?

Ages ago I saw this photo and it's been my inspiration for our escort cards since:

(Source)

I went to Joanns and picked up 10 different coordinating fabrics to use as our jam jar skirts and for our escort card buttons. The trick is to make sure they are all different enough that in the smaller size for the buttons they are still distinct from each other and easily identifiable. I'm still having table numbers but I really liked this added element to the table settings.

I bought my button forms (size 45, or 1-1/8") online at Start To Finish Supplies. 150 buttons plus the button mold/tool cost me just shy of $60 including shipping. This is WAY better than buying them at Joanns where 3 buttons will cost you about $3.50. I also bought a pack of 3 buttons at Joanns previous to shopping online to test it out, and I'm happy I did because it gives you a little half moon template for cutting your fabric. Super important!

Making the buttons is really fast and simple, trust me. First, use your template, fold your fabric over the half moon and cut out your circles. I cut 16 of each since I'm having 16/table (two rectangular tables of eight pushed together). So in the photo below I have my half moon template, my cut fabric circles, the two pieces of the button, the button mold tool above and a finished button.

Next, put a fabric circle into the white bottom piece of the button maker tool and put the larger front piece of the button on top. Push these down to the bottom of the mold. You can turn it over and see if you like how the pattern of your fabric is aligned and make adjustments.

Next, put the back piece of the button on (hook side up) with the edges of the fabric folded inside. 

Now use the blue piece of the tool and push down hard on the back of the button. If your fabric is thick, you may have to try stepping on it with your heel.You'll hear a little pop noise when you've got the back on.

Now pull out your button! Voila!

Make sure you have a good helper to guard your new buttons. They will be coveted by many ;)

Here are our buttons and our matching jam jar skirts! Adorable!

A Sneak Peek

What's been taking up so much of my time? Mostly helping my grandfather sell his condo, but beyond that, I've been working on the invitations. I'm not ready to do the grand reveal just yet, so this will have to tide you over! 

One jerry rigged sewing machine.

Still have some trimming to do.... 

And a heck of a lot more sewing to go! (Crafting is never complete without some trashy day time television. Evidence: Remote within 6" of arm reach.)

This weekend is a wedding crafting bonanza, so I'll be able to bring you some great finished products soon! Have a terrific weekend!

*All photos are personal photos.