Hand-me-down Guestbook

One of the last few things on my to-do list for the wedding was the guestbook. I really disliked the padded, white guestbooks that you see in stores and I had made up my mind to do something unique, but I didn't want it to take much time.

My mom suggested we use their old guestbook. I was not convinced at all that this would work, until she showed the book to me. My grandfather had made the cover out of wood and varnished it himself. This alone was enough to make me fall in love with it. The pages were simple brown butcher paper that my mom had copied her handwritten design on. It was held together with 2 adjustable metal rings. There was nothing written on the cover, the beautiful wood spoke for itself.


So, i took the book back to Chicago and crafted some of myself into it. I used our brown bag theme with ribbon to create a simple cover detail. Then I cut pages from our large supply of brown grocery bags and printed a simple layout on the front and back of each. Instead of using the metal rings, I found some old hemp string back in my closet and used it to bind the book together. Once all the pages have been put in, I will trim the hemp cord.


The last thing we're going to do is include my parents guestbook pages in the back of the book. It may be fun for our guests to flip back time and see who attended my parents wedding in 1980. And who knows, maybe this book will be passed down for generations. Wouldn't that be something?! :-)

12 days left!

Table Runner and Garters!

I much apologize if my brain is turning to scrambled eggs, but there are only 16 days left until the BIG DAY!!! Derek and I went back to Iowa over the long Labor Day Weekend and accomplished a TON of wedding stuff.

Project #!: Handmade vintage garter
My grandmother brought some of her old handkerchiefs that were given to her by her grandmother. I am using one that is in very good condition, along with a handkerchief of my late grandfather's from when he was in the service to wrap around my bouquet. The other handkerchief had lots of stains on it, so I cut it up to make a long lace. I used ribbon my mother had found and extra ribbon from our boutonnieres and sat down with my Aunt who is a wonderful seamstress. In about 30 minutes we had a finished garter!


Project #2: Brown Grocery Bag table runners
The table centerpieces were difficult for me. Besides the flowers from my mom's garden in her canning jars, I didn't know how to finish the design. I purchased some votive candles that were leftover from a friend's wedding and had reluctantly given in to the idea of just a fabric runner.
Then shear genius struck me. There was a piece of a bag leftover from our card box (crumpled, then ironed with wax paper to give it a texture) and I happened to set my canning jar full of wine corks on it. BINGO. Grocery Bag table runners! Ok, so this idea wasn't entirely mine. Derek came up with the finishing touch of adding a strip of ribbon down the center. Just another reason why together, we rock!
Over the weekend, we were measuring the reception hall for various things and I decided to mock up what our tables will look like. We have an array of garage sale vases mixed with canning jars to hold the garden flowers, real plates and silverware, and my thrift store wine glasses with homemade charms as the favor! I think they look pretty nifty and simple!


I am also nearly finished with the ring bearer's book. However, in our rush to get back to Chicago, I left it at home! Hopefully mom will send me some pictures of it, so I can post them. Otherwise I will post it as soon as I get home the week of the wedding. Exciting times! The countdown begins!!!! :-)

Recycled projects!

I have so much to post, but it's hard to find the time to organize and actually post! We've done a couple more crafty-recycled-green projects in the last few weeks! One idea was the ring bearer "pillow". I knew that I did not want an actual pillow (unless I made it or found one that was handmade), so I was looking at other ideas such as a large leaf, small gord, chunk of wood....you get the picture. Something different.
Then I came across this posting at Offbeat Bride (Click here for the full post) explaining step by step how to make a ring book! I feel in LOVE with this idea! I found an old book that was falling apart from its cover. Derek still wanted to read it, so I only used the hard cover for this project and kept the pages in tact and readable for him. I used an old 2005 market book that was out-of-date and cut down the pages to fit. I then covered it with our signature brown grocery bags, crumpled and iron with wax paper! When it's finished I will post pictures, but here's a picture from the original idea from Zephyr at Offbeatbride.com



There's another project I'm working on, but I have to run out the door for a meeting, so I will post that later! 26 DAYS LEFT!!!

Recycled wedding card box!

Wow, sorry for the long hiatus...again. It's tough to post when the hours in each day just seem to fly by! We have bout 45 days left until our wedding day! It seems unreal that it is this close! And a little scary since I still have a long list of things to do for that day! Well, let me update you on our last little project!

Our wedding card box! I wanted to make this simple and follow our green theme, so I saved a bunch of boxes from the mail, a couple large pizza boxes and grabbed a few brown paper bags from my mom's house. This box is nearly 100% recycled! Here's what we did!

1. My live-in architect helped create a stable box structure and lid with his amazing modeling skills!


2. I crumpled the brown paper bags and ironed them with wax paper to get a neat effect! Then I wrapped the box and lid with the paper.


3. I used paints and ribbon leftover from our boutonnieres to put the finishing touches on our box!


It definitely looks different, but I think it fits us!


Our invitations have been sent out! Hopefully the mail does not eat them like it did some of my shower invitations! I can't wait to see everyone! It is going to be a great weekend! Check out our wedding website that Derek and I designed! That's all for now! Check back soon as we start to design our wedding programs! :-)

Eco-friendly, Homemade Boutonnieres!

I've been googling and estying around to find a simple, yet catchy homemade boutonniere style. One that I easily make 30 from without ripping my eyes out at the last minute! Flowers are nice, but not very environmentally friendly if your flower choice is not in season or grown locally, not to mention by the end of the night they are wilted and mangled from dancing! My mother is growing the flowers for our centerpieces and we could have used those flowers to make the boutonnieres, but I had a dream of chaos erupting the day before the wedding when the floral boutonnieres fell apart because we did not know how to make them!

So, instead of using the traditional flowers from a florist for boutonnieres, we decided to make our own sans flowers! Using clearance ribbon from a craft store and old buttons from my mother's button jar, we came up with these! The buttons are hand-painted to correspond with our color theme and each design is simply sewn together (with the help of a little double-sided tape too! haha!)





I'm excited to see how these look on everyone! They turned out spectacularly! The great thing about this is that I can get all of them finished ahead of time and we do not have to worry about refrigeration, or putting them on too early! I recommend hand-making boutonnieres to anyone planning a wedding! It's a special touch and you get to see your craftiness on everyone throughout the night! Plus, it's a little sentimental gift for each person who took part in your special day! What could be better?! :-)

Wine Charm Party!

I recently had an "OH SHIT" moment when I realized that this past weekend was the last free weekend I have until August 29th. Our Sept 26th wedding is coming up VERY QUICKLY and I seem to be getting more DIY ideas as the days go by! So I sent out a party invite to my lovely Chicago women and they all came over for a wine charm-making cocktail party! IT. WAS. FABULOUS!
I cannot thank them enough! We made over 250 wine charms! Charms ranging from old clip on earrings, keyboard keys, puzzle pieces, fishing lures and seashells! I'm storing them on clothes hangers for now and 100 fit nicely per hanger! It's a great way to keep track of the numbers! Here are some of my favorites that I quickly picked out. The charms will be on the wine glasses and the entire set-up (glass + charm) will be the wedding favor for guests to take home with them! All the charms were made from recycled items, things that normally would have been thrown away, or found at a garage sale/thrift store! Thank you so much ladies! I know it was last minute but it was tons of fun! You were so helpful! And the free beer at Duffy's definitely made the night even better! I can't wait to see all your shiny, happy faces at my wedding! It's going to be quite the party!

Wine Glasses & Invitations

GARAGE SALE WINE GLASSES
I mentioned in a previous post that my family & friends agreed to help me search for garage sale or thrift store wine glasses. Well, I have had EXTREMELY good luck with this search and Craig's List has become my new best friend! Last week I found 138 wine glasses for 50 cents each from an art gallery that went out of business and yesterday I found possibly 100-200 glasses (again 50 cents each) from a recently married couple who did not end up using all of them! So total I have 238, possibly 338! I can't believe how easy this was!

Thank you so much to all my friends who have collected wine glasses for me! I think we finally have enough! It wasn't as hard or painful as I originally thought this search would be! One thing to cross off the wedding to-do list!

DIY WEDDING INVITATION
It has been a while since my last post, so I thought I'd give everyone something to read/look at and post our wedding invitation that we finally designed! We're having them printed at a local business in Carroll and using 100% recycled paper. The only issue is color since Derek and I do most of our work for web, we've become unfamiliar with all the print options such as PMS colors. The test print looked like red and green instead of teracotta and peridot! It may look different on every screen too, but we'll get all that figured out soon. What do you think?! We've changed "family" to "families", but haven't found any other spelling/grammar errors. We wanted to include our parents names, but the spacing seemed too cramped for the 5 x 7 size we are using. Our wedding website sort of follows the same design, but we've been so busy with work that we haven't had a chance to finish it! There's a lot of content to think about! I will post that link as soon as we get it finished.
Heading out to Iowa this weekend for one of my best friend's weddings! So excited to see everyone (and take secret notes of how she does things! haha!)
Thanks for reading!