baby shower invites

Here's another project that I recently completed. My friend, and former co-worker, Jessica is expecting a baby girl in May and asked me to design 75 baby shower invitations. I was thrilled! It was quite time consuming tying all of the little ribbons, but it was well worth it - they really complete the look. I also love the unique size and shape - thank you Paper Source!

STDs

Last month I shipped these Save the Dates out to my best friend Ash. She and her fiance are getting married this summer and as my gift to them I am creating all of the paper goods for their wedding. I love how they turned out.

They went from this:

To this:

And then I packaged them up in two stacks in order to ship them out. I think the belly band I created at the last second was one of my favorite parts.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing what we come up with for the invitations.

magical

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I saw this photo recently on Style Me Pretty and think it looks absolutely magical for an outdoor wedding. Definitely a different take on stringing white Christmas lights over the reception space. And they could probably be reused in our home after the wedding. I wonder how difficult it would be to pull something like that off? I remember in high school making a ball like that by dipping twine in watered down glue and placing it around a balloon. Then once it was dry, we popped the balloon and had a pretty decoration to hang from the ceiling. The ones above look like they could be twigs or branches though. Something to think about. Although with all of the other projects floating around in my head, I'll probably end up using whatever our event planner has available in their warehouse.

Has anyone else attempted to tackle such a large DIY project before the wedding?

I have such an amazing fiance

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day! Today's post is about my amazing fiance and fabulous weekend. I will premise things by saying that Thursday was a pretty rotten day - the future mister's car broke down and my iPhone bit the dust. So things could only go up from there, and they sure did!

Friday, the south experienced quite a heavy dose of snow. I got "dismissed" from work around 3:00 and came home to a beautiful bouquet of gerbera daisies for our three year dating anniversary, which is next Sunday. We had dinner reservations planned for my 25th birthday (which was yesterday) and were debating whether or not to cancel. We decided to go because the roads didn't seem too bad and the future mister got a call from one of our friends saying she needed to borrow a book for a class they share together. It was kind of strange that she needed the book that night since I was going to see her for lunch the next day. hmmm.

The meal was wonderful. And afterward we drove over to our friend's apartment. The future mister knocked on the door and we heard them inside telling their dog to sit. Then he told me to open the door and go ahead. SURPRISE!!

My fabulous friends waiting for me to arrive.

My beautiful and delicious cake purchased by my wonderful fiance. And yes, that is a cake made by our wedding cake baker. YUM!

We had some strawberry daiquiris, stuffed ourselves with cake and watched some olympics. It was wonderful. Then on Saturday I met these same girls for lunch and we went to see Valentine's Day. Such a special weekend. I am so incredibly lucky to be marrying a man who took the time to plan and execute such a wonderful surprise! And I am also blessed with wonderful friends who helped him plan and spent their weekend celebrating with me!

Has your fiance/husband/significant other ever done anything to surprise you?

from hate to love: cake (part 2)

While at our tasting in the summer, we were able to sample a few different flavors. Since we're still over a year out, we'll wait until closer to the wedding to make a decision. However, no matter what the flavor ends up being, I do have a few opinions on how I want the cake to look.

I really love this cake with it's pretty ruffles, but it looks like it might be made out of fondant (which I'm not a fan of).

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Instead, I think I'll be going for a more understated, homemade look like these:

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I'm okay with your basic 3+ tier cake. However, I'd love to have a pretty cake display like some of these:

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I've heard that a bunch of one tier cakes can be less expensive than one big wedding cake, so I'm definitely interested in finding out whether or not this is true. What are your thoughts on a cake buffet vs. one big wedding cake?

from hate to love: cake (part 1)

Let's talk about cake. We got on the topic of funfetti cookies today at work and now my sweet tooth is aching. Seriously, has anyone else heard of using funfetti cake mix to make cookies?? I don't/can't bake, but I might have to try this.

Anyway, I've never been much of a cake person. I usually find it to be quite dry, the icing too sweet, and overall not too exciting. Don't get me started on fondant. I love cheesecake, though, and pies - apple, cherry, peach - a la mode of course. And after spending a semester in Italy I always enjoy a good tiramisu. Cake, not so much. Every year for my birthday, my mom (who is also not much of a baker) would make me an angel food cake with strawberries and strawberry flavored whipped cream icing. Yum. It was the total opposite of what I usually found cake to be. In fact, I think it's one of the only cakes I've ever really enjoyed. Until...

Until we moved here and I dragged the future mister to a local restaurant ONLY because I heard the cakes were out of this world. I was definitely skeptical. This restaurant doesn't make the cakes themselves, but rather gets them from a local baker. Dinner was definitely nothing to write home about. Then we ordered a slice of the raspberry cake for dessert - yellow cake with raspberry preserves and vanilla custard and raspberry buttercream icing. OMG. TOTALLY OUT OF THIS WORLD. I died, went to heaven, came back and died again with each bite. Yes, it was THAT GOOD. All of my criteria were met and then some - moist, fruity, creamy, not too sweet, light and fluffy icing. Here's a photo from the baker's website:

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So after my amazing cake experience (I don't think we were engaged yet), I stored the information away for sometime in the (hopefully) near future. Well the near future came, the future mister proposed and then we started looking for venues. At our initial consultation with Epting Events they provided us with a food and cake tasting. In case you don't remember, they are the event planning company that owns The Hill (our venue) and in addition to event planning, they also take care of the catering, rentals, flowers, and cake. See where I'm going with this? Oh yes. They use the same baker for their clients' wedding cakes! Perfect venue, super delicious cake - it was fate.

Next up, I'll show you some of my cake inspiration.

Any other cake haters out there?

back on the train

I can't remember the last time I made a new year's resolution and I'm not sure I'd even consider this one, but now that the holidays are over it's my goal to hop back on the wedding planning train. With that in mind, some of our top "to do's" are to book our remaining vendors: photographer, videographer, DJ and DOC. Well, this Saturday we have a meeting with Heidi from Our Labor of Love. I am so freakin' excited. I have been in love with their photography since I first laid eyes on it. So Saturday can't come soon enough.

Check out Heidi's blog for more eye candy.

Since this is my first time meeting with a potential photographer, what are some good questions I should ask? Did you fall in love with a particular photographer early on in your wedding planning?

*all photos by Heidi at Our Labor of Love