Relay for Life Survivor Dinner

My mom and I attended the Relay for Life's Survivor dinner last Thursday.  My mom is a 2 year breast cancer survivor and this was the first time we had been there.  Since we are one of the teams participating in the relay this year we also volunteered to decorate a table.  The theme for the race is Superheroes and we were supposed to make our own interpretation of that and come up with some ideas.

My mom works in the city school system with junior high kids.  At the end of the school year she had some of them draw a cancer superhero.  We used these laminated pictures as placemats and also had folders of the extras so the attendees could look at what the kids had drawn.
This one was one of my favorites.

My mom had little glass votives in storage we pulled out, wrapped some ribbon around and made a pink ribbon to glue on the front.

Our centerpiece we wanted to just tie into the color scheme.  Looking at it you wouldn't know the theme was superheroes but we wanted something a little elegant.  We took a glass vase from the dollar tree along with clear rocks from the dollar tree, filled it with water and put a  stemmed flower from hobby lobby inside.  The flowers sitting on the table were blooms from the same flower stem as the centerpiece.

Here is the whole table with the centerpiece, placemats, and folders with superheroes inside.

The dinner was really nice.  They took pictures of each person and their guest and provided the survivors with a goody bag including a small photo album. The baskets for the basket raffle were all there as well and each survivor received 5 free tickets to put in whatever basket they wanted.  It was neat to see what ideas other people had for the baskets and see our own too.

The Relay is next weekend and I'm super excited to attend.  We got our t-shirts and are ready to Relay!

Wedding flowers

My aunt was kind enough to lend her creativity for the flowers.  She worked in the floral department in a local grocery store for 2 years and is extremely talented.  I was a very simple bride and didn't want anything elaborate.  I wanted simple bouquets of red roses for me and my bridesmaids without any greenery or anything else.  I did make the small bouquet for my flower girl last minute when the basket I had planned on making turned out an ugly mess.  All I did for hers was take 4 or 5 inexpensive roses from walmart and wrap the stems together with some floral tape purchased at the dollar tree.

Mine and the flower girl's flowers.

All of the flowers (other than the flower girl's) were purchased at Hobby Lobby at 50% off.  The ones for my bouquet were a bit more expensive and you had to purchase them individually.  The bridesmaid flowers were purchased in a bush but still beautiful.  My aunt likes a lot of frills like lace and babies breath, and was not at all satisfied with the simplicity I wanted, haha. 

With the bridesmaid flowers my aunt took about 6 roses and wrapped the stems with green floral ribbon.  She them sprayed them with some glitter spray to make the sparkle.

If you don't have anyone helping you, keep it simple.  The more simple you make them the easier it will be on you.  I had thought of doing these myself until my aunt offered as our wedding gift so keep everything as simple as possible and you won't have an issue making them yourself.

Wedding Invitations

I did my invitations on my computer with Microsoft Publisher.  I love, love, love this program and have contemplated buying it many times for my new computer because I miss it that much.  You can do anything with this program from making postcards, cards, banners, signs, etc.  I found a picture on the website Onewed.com and decided to try my hand at making a similar one.  This is what I ended up with:

For whatever reason I could not find a completely finished invite in my stash of wedding stuff so the one above just needed the black cardstock glued down, and yes that is Grant's hand on the left ready to grab my invite and run.

The invite had 3 layers, the first was the top that you see above with one of our monograms and a quote I found online.  The second layer was the actual invitation and the third had the response card attatched. 

Here is our response card, it is in postcard form.  The opposite side had my address and a stamp.

Unfortunately I can't tell you my exact measurements because for me it was trial and error.  I used white cardstock. You can buy a large package right next to regular computer printer paper at walmart for about $5.  I downloaded the font from dafont.com (it's super easy to download fonts so give it a try) and created my our monogram in Publisher using one of these fonts.  When I had each of the pages printed I cut them with a scrapbook paper cutter so the edges would be even and straight and stapled them together at the top.  Next I cut a strip of black cardstock (you can also get this at walmart in the same section as the white) and used E-6000 glue to attach it to the top and then glued a small red bow on top of that.  The bows were made from $0.97 ribbon from walmart.

I printed the response cards in Publisher as well using the same font and making it into a postcard so there would be no need for envelopes (one less thing to purchase).  I attached them to the back layer of the invite with clear photo corners.  The only thing I would suggest is not to even bother with response cards.  I probably only got a handful back and spent quite a bit on stamps and it seemed pointless in the end when no one really used them.

Wedding Week

Did anyone see the Royal Wedding? 

I know what you are thinking, that was months ago, don't worry I am fully aware of that and had intended to post all of this way back when but life happens so you are getting it now.

I was one of those people up at 5 am watching, but in my defense my son woke me up, wouldn't go back to sleep and there is nothing else on at 5am.  I won't lie though,  I really wanted to see what her dress looked like, after all the hype it wasn't what I expected at first.  I was thinking in terms of what is popular here in the states and thought she would be wearing something similar.  Then I learned in the church where they had the ceremony you are not allowed to wear strapless and there are other stipulations, regardless she was beautiful.  Can you imagine getting married and becoming a princess? Isn't that what we all dreamed of when we were little watching Cinderella?

 I love weddings, royal or not.  I love seeing what other people do to create their perfect day.  My husband and I got married a year and a half ago and I planned for an entire year before.  Everything about our wedding was picked, made, and created by us (ok, my husband didn't make a darn thing but I did ask his opinion on everything) and my family.  When it was all said and done, our wedding cost us $2,000 and that includes dress, venue, food, cake, rehearsal dinner, accessories, photographer etc.  These days I think that's pretty good considering most spend upwards of $30,000.  I had no desire to be paying for our wedding after we were married and neither of my parents had that kind of money or could afford that kind of debt. 

I was very fortunate to have a very talented family that helped me in most aspects of the wedding, and I found a few really great diy websites that really helped me.  It probably would have been more fitting to have wedding posts months ago, leading up to the Royal wedding, but things happened and I'm just getting around to it.  I started thinking about our wedding while watching and thought maybe there was someone out there who is planning their wedding or helping someone else plan one and could use a few ideas.  I know when I was planning I was scouring the internet for pictures, ideas, and how-to's.  So, I'm going to do a few posts on different aspects of our Homemade wedding.
Here is the start with some pictures of our wedding.

Here is our card table.  My colors were red and black.  Mainly because I wanted my bridesmaids to pick their own dresses without my being there and everyone can find black.  They each picked a different dress that flattered them and each of them have reworn their dresses to other events (I got a big thank you from each of them) and they didn't spend over $70.  The baskets on the table I bought for $1.50/ea at A.C. Moore and spray painted black.  One held the programs, the other held cry packs.  This table also served as our guest book table. 

We were married in front of the fireplace.  To decorate it I bought a vine of red roses from hobby lobby at 50% off, 2 vases of fresh roses on either side and the photo frames ($2 each at walmart) contained pictures of important people in our lives that had passed away.

You can't see them too well in this photo but I did all my centerpieces.  Borrowed the table cloths and mirrors the centerpieces sat on from a friend.  They consisted of a glass bowl from walmart, partly filled with water, glass stones in bottom, and a rose peeking out of the water.  Rose petals (purchased from the dollar tree around Valentines day) were scattered around the table.

Here is the buffet table (minus the food).  Once again the flower pots were made by me.  I bought regular terra cotta pots and painted them black.  I bought the cheapest fake red roses I could find at walmart for I think $1 a bush and stuck them in foam inside the pot.  More red and white flower petals from the dollar tree scattered around the table.

As I said, I was very fortunate to have talented family members help us.  My cousin worked in a grocery store bakery for 4 years and offered to make our cake.  She did an amazing job.  I provided the cake topper and she did the rest.  Her mother (who also did our flowers) made the small flower arrangements that decorated the cake.

This was her first attempt at fondant and there were some imperfections but luckily I was not a bridezilla and by the time the day rolled around with everything else that had happened (including 2 groomsmen backing out last minute, flower girl with the flu, my mom having surgery for breast cancer just days before, and my husband and I left to decorate the entire hall by ourselves), I had no energy left to be concerned with the little things.

Stay tuned for more wedding goodness tomorrow!

Wedding Gift

Along with being pregnant with twins my cousin recently got married so of course a wedding gift was in order.  They both have lived on their own so buying something was going to be difficult and since it was a quick sort of thing I didn't have alot of time to plan.  Jul loves her coffee in the mornings and since I have a love of coffee mugs I decided to do a Mr. and Mrs. mug for each of them.

I used my Cricut to cut the vinyl and bought the mugs at the Dollar Tree.

I also made these coasters, of course in my rush to get them done I didn't let them dry long enough and ended up ruining them but here they are pre-ruin.

I used my cricut to cut out the letter and numbers then modpodged them on.  I cut felt and glued it on the back so the coasters don't scratch the table.  Before ruining them I was really proud of them.   I wanted something simple with their wedding date.  I bought the tiles at Lowe's for under $.40, which makes this the perfect inexpensive wedding or Christmas gift.