Pretty in Blue

I am officially a delinquent blogger.  I just realized I never blogged about a pretty significant house update that took place this summer- oh in like JUNE!!!  We completely updated the master bedroom and bathroom including doors, closet, vanity, furniture, window treatments etc.  Again by we I mean Nick did it all while I was out of town for the week and it was fabulous to come home to.  Because I wasn't home for most of it I tasked Nick with taking pictures and I also don't have a lot of details to share so enjoy some before and after pictures of the rooms.

Bathroom Before:

 Bathroom After:

Bedroom Before:

Bedroom After:

We still have a little bit of work to do in terms of adding art, etc to the walls and we also want to build a more substantial bed with drawers for storage (which I will do my best to update you on when they happen), but I think this is a huge improvement and just feels so darn cozy!

Baby Alphabet Book

For our niece, Payton's birthday Nick and I made her a custom alphabet book.  

We used an online photobook company to put it together.  Each letter has pictures of family or of Payton doing something like napping or going to the zoo.  Here are a couple of the pages:

G is for Grandparents

L is for Lake
M is for Mommy

S is for Sister

V is for Very Busy
W is for Wedding

Y is for You

The other letters were:

A- Aunts

B-Bathtime

C-Cousins

D-Daddy

E-Easter

F-Friends

G-Grandparents

H-Halloween

I-Itty Bitty Payton

J- John Deere

K-Kisses

L-Lake

M-Mommy

N-Naptime

O-Ohio State

P-Pictures (we used pictures of art that Payton had created at school)

Q- Quite Happy

R-Reading

S-Sisters

T-Toys

U-Uncles

V-Very Busy

W- Wedding

X- X-mas

Y- You

Z- Zoo

It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to put together and as you can see we had to stretch a bit for some of the letters, but in the end I am pretty happy with how it turned out and hopefully Payton has not only an educational book but also a keepsake!

Pinterest Challenge: Kitchen Drawers

Months and months ago two of the blogs I read regularly Young House Love and Bower Power issued a Pinterest Challenge.  The premise was basically to motivate themselves and others to actually do some of the projects that we keep posting on Pinterest.  (Which by the way if you haven't discovered Pinterest it is one of the coolest inventions ever and I may be slightly obsessed so you should go check it out).  My food board has the most pins and I do regularly make recipes from that I have pinned but I must admit that most of my other pins were just looking pretty.  So I finally decided to do something.  I had pinned this picture:

and our drawers were a hot mess:

We had attempted to use a store bought utensil organizer for the silverware drawer but it just wasn't working and we hadn't found any others we thought would do the job.  DIY time it was.  We basically just bought some plywood and cut it to size and then glued it into the drawer.  Nick was excited for an excuse to use his power tools:

The messy glue process:

This was the hardest part of the project and in hindsight we probably should have bought thicker wood so we could use screws or nails to secure the dividers.  I was just worried they would take up too much space in the drawer and not leave enough space for the silverware.  The glue also isn't as secure as I would have hoped so we will see how long it lasts. We may end up picking up thicker wood in the end anyway, but for now here is the finished product:

Much better if I do say so myself!  Like I said I'm not sure how long the glue will last so we may have to start over but either way we will probably also end up painting them at some point so they look more cohesive.

Some Call it Flowers Others Call it a Weapon

I decided instead of having our flower girl throw petals we would have her carry a floral pomander instead.  I thought it would compliment the tutus well and would just be less mess to deal with.  Here were some of the photos I used for inspiration:

I showed these to my sister/mother of our 3 year old flower girl and her first reaction was that Emily would probably end up throwing it at someone, more than likely her baby sister.  Unfortunately I was already set on the idea so I guess we will just have to hope for the best and buy Payton some protective armor.

This week I decided it was time to get cracking on making the ball.  I just bought some ribbon, a foam ball and some fake flowers.  The hardest part was getting the ribbon all the way through the ball but with some force, creativity and a wooden spoon it was finally all the way through.  Then I just hot glued the flowers to the ball.  Here is the ball about half way done:

And here it is completely finished:

The whole project probably took me less than an hour and was very easy.  It turned out to be a little larger than I thought it would be but hopefully it won't be too big next to Emily and hopefully she doesn't decide to use it as a weapon.

You're Invited...

The invitations went out over a month ago and I have yet to post about them (and even worse I started this post 2 weeks ago and just realized I never finished it...sorry for being such a terrible blogger).  We decided to create our own invitations rather than purchasing something.  Nick did most of the hard work and gets the credit for how fabulous they turned out.  Here is the whole package together including the invitation to the rehearsal dinner:

I love how colorful they are and how they are uniquely us.  Here are each of the individual pieces:

Invitation

front of reception invitation

Back of Reception Invitation/Directions and Accommodations

Reply Card

Back of reply card

We decided to do post cards for the reply card as a way to save on postage and on the added paper of another envelope.  Since we had some extra space on the post card we decided to make a request.  The left side of the card says " Don't waste all this space share your memories, wishes, wisdom, or advice with us"  This has made getting the reply cards back in the mail that much more fun and hopefully soon I will do a post with some of our favorite responses.  

The last part of the invitation package that not everyone got to see was the rehearsal dinner invitation.  The rehearsal dinner is going to be our way of including our love of baseball into the weekend and Nick's parents have come up with some great ways to make the dinner baseball themed.  We wanted to introduce the night with so here is the invitation that we designed:

So there is the whole package.  I know I am a little biased but I think they turned out pretty darn good!  

Tulle and Tutus

Long before I was ever engaged I was perusing a photographer's website and saw pictures from a fabulous wedding.  The whole wedding was beautiful, but there was one thing that caught my eye and I have been in love with ever since.

Flower girl Tutus!  Seriously how darling are those girls? 

So when we got engaged the flower girl attire was a simple decision- she would be sporting a Tutu.

This weekend while my mom and sister were in town for the wedding I took advantage of having them around and pushed through the "wedding wall" and we started making these:

That is Emily's American Girl doll and her very own tutu. In our family we have a tradition of our special dolls sporting matching outfits like Emily and Baby Doll at Christmas:

We also decided that Payton should get a tutu as well so we spent part of the weekend making 3 tutus.  I don't have any pics of Payton and her tutu but this weekend was her 1 month birthday so I thought you might like a picture of her adorableness!

Boots and Baseball

I believe at this point most of you have received your Save the Date or have seen the post on Nick's blog (yes be finally blogged for the first time since early January!), but just in case you missed it I won't keep you waiting any longer.  Here it is:

We decided to design them ourselves and are pretty proud of how they turned out!  Nick does a pretty good job on his post explaining the meaning and the process so I will refer you there for more detail. So for now- see you on 9-3-2011!

Owl what?

Look what I got this week:

Aren't they cute?  You probably already figured out they have nothing to do with the wedding.  Well that is only partially true.  The 30 invitations on the top of the box have nothing to do with the wedding.  They are invitations for my wonderful friend Darcie's baby shower.  Here is a closer look at the super cute owl:

sorry for the terrible quality I was having lighting issues

Can you tell I am proud of them?  I can only actually take partial credit for them.  Darcie is planning on decorating the nursery in owls, which I think is an adorable idea and I wanted to incorporate that in the invitations, but my technical abilities are limited so I have to give Nick all the credit for the owl- that design was all him!

I am only partially sharing this because I am so stinking proud of them but the real reason is because of what is under those 30 invitations...the Save the Dates! Again Nick gets all the credit for their design but I think he did a pretty good job if I do say so myself.   I am going to be mean and not share pictures of those just yet; mostly because the 5 of you that read the blog will be getting them in the mail and I don't want to ruin the fun of that.  Our goal is to get them out in the next week so hopefully they will be in your mailbox in no time!