Sneak Peek: Paul Wedding

Happy New Year everyone!!! What a fun day to get married huh?! And what better colors than white and champagne!

Inspiration Board: White Rehearsal Dinner

DIY: Cardboard Gingerbread House

We do a Gingerbread House party every year and my talented husband whipped this cardboard house up for the kids in 20min! He used a refrigerator box, cut a triangle on the front and back and folded down the sides to form a peak. (Make sense?) I used paper and leftover felt for quick decorations. It was a big hit - and Asa's still playing with it.

Of course - you could paint it brown and add on a lot more "candy" too!

Sneak Peek: Paul Wedding

I have to say that these are some of my favorite winter flowers yet!  The bride did a great job picking colors and varieties.  The purples and greens with succulents just play so well together!

Wedding Prep

I'm loving all these purples and whites! They look like winter without saying "Christmas."

Those are picasso callas in there - so gorgeous!

DIY: Thanksgiving Turkey Cookies

Sorry for the lack of posts- the holidays just get crazy! Asa and I made these little turkey cookies to go at each placle setting. Royal Icing is great for the smooth, hard finish but it just doesn't have that buttery taste. So I experimented and used the royal icing technique with a "buttercream" frosting. I simply melted 1/2c. butter and mixed in nearly a bag of pwd sugar, 1tsp vanilla, and then enough milk to pipe. Then thinned it out for flooding. We let them dry out overnight. It worked pretty well, and tasted great - but we have some perfecting to do before I'm 100% sure! I'll post more if it works out.

Here's our favorite sugar cookie recipe.

Behind the Scenes

We threw this photo shoot together pretty fast, and the sun was setting so we really hurried.  I grabbed some "snow" from Michaels to try and get that winter effect and Naphtali stood on the table throwing snow at Rachel.  Next time we'll plan a little more, but we still had a fun time!

I also found these little frame charms at Michaels and put my Grandma's picture in there.

And we did eat the cake - but not like that.  It was just a funfetti cake mix, but I love love them!!  Those little letters are from Michaels too.

My cute little niece did not feel like having her picture taken.

Winter Bouquet Shoot

Christmas Bouquet

I opted to do a hand wired bridal bouquet as my final project for design school.  (I was really hoping there would be snow on the ground for the pictures but, even though it was cold enough for snow, there wasn't any. C'est la vie.) To add some glamour and shine I criss-crossed wire over the tops.  The bouquet featured ranunculus, lisianthus, hypercium, oregonoia, freesia, and feathers.  I've got some more pictures from our little photo shoot that I'll post tomorrow.  (Thanks to my sister-in-law, Naphtali, for styling help and my friend, Rachel, for modeling!)

Fall Basket

Happy Monday!

Christophersen/Crapuchettes Wedding

Here's the rest of Daniel's photos.  Annike wanted vibrant pinks and oranges to offset the teal of the bridesmaids dresses.  (Here's the inspiration board.)  I used zinnias, birds of paradise, stock, lisianthus, free spirit roses, and hypcericum.  Birds of Paradise are a wonderful flower!  So much character and  color.

I made a wand for the flower girl. I'm a fan or real flowers but for little girls, these are fantastic.  They can use them at the rehearsal, wave them around, drag them on the ground and they'll still look great!  Just make sure to use full headed flowers without a center (daffodils, lilies) that give them away as fake. Carnations, mums, and peonies work great.

Christophersen/Crapuchettes Wedding

Daniel Foucachon sent over some pictures of Annike and Jonathan's wedding! I haven't had a chance to go through all of them yet, but this one caught my eye. So sweet. These flowers were so fun to do - so vibrant! More to come!

Inspiration Board: White Champagne

Disney Bridal Gowns and Rings

I stumbled across this on Pinterest the other day and, really, what hasn't Disney done?!  At least they're not the Disney princesses actual dresses.  Although, if brides have dressed up as Shrek for their wedding, I'm sure some have been Belle or, I shudder to think, Ariel.  These gowns are designed by Alfred Angelo and are influenced by the respective princess.  Much better.  Still, going all Disney for your wedding??  My two year old niece would go nuts.  Can you guess which dress and ring go with which princess? 

via Alfred Angelo

From left to right for the dresses: Ariel, Jasmine, Sleeping Beauty, Tiana, Cinderella, Belle, Snow White, Cinderella Platinum, Rapunzel
From left to right for the rings: Snow White, Jasmine, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Belle, Ariel

Halloween Costumes

Here's our kiddos all set for the party! Thanks to pinterest for inspiration! Ida was a candy corn and our little boy was Johnny Cash.

I sewed a really basic pillowcase dress for the candy corn.  I just googled some pillowcase dresses for reference and here's what it ended up being. It measures about 14in long (all said and done with 5/8in seams) and 16in wide.  I left 5/8in casing up top for the ribbon and cut triangles off the top two corners (for her arms).  I lined it for extra warmth and as an easy way to get the arm holes done.

Johnny Cash was pretty easy.  Asa had the guitar, my husband had the belt buckle and those were his boots when he was little.  A little black hair dye and a trip to Ross for pants and a shirt and there you have it!

Feature Flower: Greens

This was another project for school which required us to showcase six different kinds of foliage and only foliage.  We also had to incorporate a lot of lines throughout and manipulate the greens.  It's definitely a different kind of challenge and surprisingly difficult.  I do love those dramatic monstera leaves on the right though.

Let me know if you're curious about the specific varieties.

Sneak Peek: Ida's Nursery

We're almost almost done with Ida's room! (Now that she's almost 6 months!) I just got a little bookshelf that I need to paint and I'd love to find a rug and small table, but we'll see. Here's her mobile which we finished up last week.

Feature Flower: Bird of Paradise

This was another arrangement for design school showcasing the fibonacci sequence played out in floral design.  It also used birds of paradise, so I thought I'd focus on them!  They're a tropical flower and, like most tropicals, long lasting. They are more expensive but you get size, durability, and long life. They lend a very structured and modern effect to arrangements.  (I used them in a wedding this summer that I still need to post pictures from.)  What do you think?  Do you like them?

Real Parties: Kids Carving Party

Sorry for the blogging silence!  I really don't have any specific excuse other than the normal busy with kids and playing catch up!
My family grew up carving pumpkins together every year and we still regularly get together to carve.    This past weekend we had a casual carving party at our place.  Super easy and fun! The night before I ran out to the dollar tree, grabbed a few things for some decor, and that was that. The best thing about this party was that from the set-up to the clean up it was kid friendly. Asa (he's two in a half by the way) was able to help me decorate everything.  He helped me make the cookies, cut them out, and patiently sat spreading the icing with a toothpick.  I was impressed at how careful he was! He even held off eating them until his friends and cousin came over. (My mom's sugar cookie recipe is really the best. I did a faux royal icing which tastes better than actual royal icing, but nothing beats a buttercream so I added on some canned last minute.)

I got a bunch of googly eyes at the dollar store and Asa and I taped them on the cups and plates.  He saw Monster's Inc recently so this made him extremely excited.

Yup.  Here's my crazy helper.

I despise mice.  I have a phobia of them.  My sister-in-law picked these up for one of our parties a couple years back and I held on to them.  But it really took a lot for me to handle these things.

Plastic tablecloth from the dollar tree works great for cleaning up all the pumpkin goop. 

Mummy dogs have been popping up all over pinterest so we got some crescent dough, cut it into strips, and wrapped them up.  Asa helped wrap them up too!  Great kid activities.

When it came to the actual carving part, well the kids headed downstairs and we carved.  My brother does extremely detailed pumpkins.  He created cinderella's pumpkin coach a week ago for his daughter!   (The garland in the background there is just a package of foam pumpkins from the dollar tree stapled to black ribbon.)

They spent the evening doing a bunch of this.

The finished product.