besottment by paper relics

Happy Halloween

Pumpkin via Miss Jane via Sweet Paul
Photo © Colin Cooke

I am excited, as always, for halloween. Our neighborhood has lots of young kids who dress up in the best costumes. They all look forward to seeing Tuala in her signature ladybug costume, and she goes nuts for the attention. When the doorbell rings she is the first to respond. She hams it up for cameras and loves the kids squealing in delight at the site of her with her silly antennae bouncing around.

Be safe everyone - have a wonderful Halloween, and I will be here early next week with this weeks journaling!

House Wren & Perch home

This past weekend I attended Charlotte Lyon's House Wren Studio Session to learn how to make a felt cottage. Pam and Amy picked me up, and we headed to Tarrytown, New York for a wonderful weekend.

We meet Charlotte for a quick drink the night before class (before having dinner at The Red Hat, it was delicious!) and I immediately remembered why I like her so much. She is so warm, funny and down to earth. She is a joy to be around.

We headed to the class the next morning and walked into the room with tables set up with vintage pie tins filled with treats from the sponsors and Charlotte herself at every seat (mine even had a tiny bride and groom in it since I was recently married) . There were tables piled high with felts and tables covered with baskets of trims, fabric and lace tumbling out of them, and a sweet vignette of her own felt cottages lined the centers of the student tables. It looked wonderful.

Luckily, Charlotte is very patient and helped me sew the walls of my house (as I am a pre-beginner). It was so fun learning how to assemble the structures, and then decorate them. The day flew by, good friends, a fun course, great teacher, lunch was lovely (catered by Suzanne a friend of Charlotte) and next thing we new, night was falling.

After lots of goodbyes we headed out for dinner before heading back to our hotel to craft some more and reminisce about the wonderful day we had. Below is my felt cottage it still needs some work - it's a fixer-upper.

The next morning we got up and started to head home via Maplewood, NJ where friend and client Michele Bessey has her wonderfully sweet shop, Perch home. I had never been, and was delighted when I walked in. It was a dream...

See! (photo by Perch home.) I bought quite a few things!. She and her Find and Go Seek partner Sandra came with us for lunch at Indigo Smoke, which was great (we really ate very well the entire weekend!), and I loved getting to spend some time with Michele in person after knowing her for over 2 years via email! If you live anywhere near Maplewood, NJ, this shop is a must!

And then I came home, to my new husband - and spent a quite Sunday night with him... the perfect end to a wonderful weekend!

The Wedding

So hard to wrap up the best, most amazing, day of your life in a blog post. But here is a go at it regardless (I figured since Andrea had such a sweet post up about it, I should do something too!) I will do another follow up when we get the professional photos from the photographer.

Our guest list was quite small, immediate family and close friends.

The hotel we got married in was called Mansion of Forstyh Park - and was beautiful - you can get a glimpse of our room in this reflection shot, and the shot of Mike in the wonderfully large vintage style bath tub we had.

Anyway, We arrived in Savannah Friday in time to take my parents to lunch at Back in the Day Bakery- love it there.

Lighting at the bakery

My parents:

Cupcakes for dessert (the serve all food and sweets on vintage trays!):

us:

The party we had for all the guests Friday night was a big hit. Great food, delicious champagne punch and mini cupcakes. Liz Demos (of Vintage General and Elizabeth Demos Event Design & Styling) put it together for us at the Starland Cafe, and it was lovely. Here are some photos from that night:

My parents, us, Mikes' Dad and his wife:

Liz had fresh, beautiful flowers in glass jars on all the tables:

Some of the cupcakes (from Back in the Day Bakery, of course!) had been eaten when my mom snapped this photo:

Photos of me and Mike and then me and Andrea (taken with an instant polaroid like camera, but a small one, so I photoshoped them into cute frames):

The morning of the wedding just family went out to brunch at a local favourite. It was great.

Then around 2 I went down to Amy's room - Rich took Alfredo out so we could get ready. Andrea came by too. Amy ordered mimosa's and a wedge salad for me - insisting I needed to eat. Andrea cut it up for me while Amy was doing my makeup - I remember saying "I love having Mom's for friends!" - they were taking such good care of me! We went down to my room again so we could see the courtyard and what was going on for the wedding. I snapped this shot in the mirror:

Saturday - it was 91 degrees out! NINETY-ONE! I was so upset! Then...it started raining right before the ceremony and I was so happy! Although when I was at the door, the wedding liaison at the hotel said to me "Be careful, the marble floor is a bit wet (the ceremony was outside in a marble courtyard under a huge permanent tent) so be careful not to slip" - which was my BIGGEST fear of the day. But I sailed down the aisle with my dad steadying me. I was looking at Mike - and was so overcome with the moment - I actually laughed out loud!

We were both so nervous - but the ceremony went by fast. then we had some photos taken with the photographer and moved on to a private room for dinner:

Alfredo ran right in to look at the cake:

It was beautiful (thank you Cheryl!! Toppers by Goose Grease)

we had the favors on the table too, along with our secondary cake topper (A gift from Sarah of The Small Object):

Dinner was great - everyone was laughing, talking. My dad made the first toast toast, followed by mike's dad and then Mike did a toast that made me tear up, It was wonderful!

We had so much stuff all the family walked us back to our room - kinda strange - but funny. My sister snapped this last shot for us:

The next day we headed to Charleston, SC for a short honeymoon- it was a bit rainy - but we had a lovely time:

When we got home, I asked Mike what do we do now? Now that the wedding is over? and he said... "live happily ever after."

The end.

This Weeks Journaling

Finally I am back in my groove and getting back on track with journaling. This new journal is only the second one I ever stitched, and I but the signatures too far apart when making it. So to help beef it up, I started using my favourite tape to add in bits of ephemera as sub-pages (for lack of a better words). This makes photographing and sharing my journal a little more difficult though. Does one really want to basically see the same spread twice - just to show the other side of a sub-page? I will do it for now, but if it starts to bore you, please let me know and I will chose just one side to share.

So this first spread was in the works for a while, and I went back to it again and again building on it. The left talks about marrying Mike, and the right some random thoughts, with a sticky from a friend asking me to be honest about something she made for me, but I liked the sentiment so it got added.

Next, is a spread I did after my Dream Box Workshop with Jennifer Lee, hosted by Kimberly Wilson it was a great class. I used left over scraps and wrote about what issues and dreams I addressed in the class. I sat next to Kimberly, and she was such a great listener and had some great words of advice for me. It really was a wonderful night, and the other participants were so friendly!

The spread below is an envelope to stash wedding ephemera (or as I wrote on it, future nostalgia) on the left, and on the right a page about Savannah and why we chose it as our wedding destination.

Now we start with the duplicate spread shots. On the left I did a page about my parents, using a photo from their wedding (and spelling their wrong!) and then made a sub-page of a photo of them the day before our wedding (taken at Back in the Day Bakery - yum!). I love both these photos of them!

No on the right side of this spread - i did a page about defining style, and did a sub-page about some shoes I am crazy from (Anthro) and why I love them.

Moving on to wedding spreads! This one on the left talks about our wedding eve party, which was a big hit (and I still promise to do a wedding post!). The sub-page is a postcard from the hotel in Savannah we stayed in and had the wedding in.

On the right side, it talks about lunch the day before my wedding with my parents (at Back in the Day Bakery, see the cupcakes we had for dessert?! yum!), and a little about the wedding ceremony.

This spread on the left was about friends I was happy to have at the wedding, to help me get ready and to witness this magic day of mine. It also talked about friends who were not there and how I was thinking of them. On the right is about the ceremony (a copy is in that envelope) and the photo of us at our wedding dinner.

Last is a half spread with sub-pages. It is a working page for week on of the unravelling further e-course I am taking. I taped in a worksheet, and a paint card.

So that is it! what do you think of my sub-pages? Should I just share one picture of the spread with whichever sub-page side I prefer? or share both versions?

The Crafting of our Wedding

We had so many hand crafted elements to our wedding that I wanted to dedicate a post to them. So, here is the crafting of our wedding...

I am sure by now you all know that my friend Kathleen illustrated us as a wedding present (below left). The original is something we will cherish all our lives. I then hired Crystal Kluge to do some hand lettering for us (below right).

Using elements from both, I created out save the dates myself (below left), and then worked with Patti of the Queen's Ink to create handmade invitations (below right).

I also used them both to make some other things - like this sign we used at the wedding eve party and at the wedding dinner.

I sent my sweet friend Andrea this link from Martha Stewart Weddings saying "I want one of these for my wedding day" and told her the colors I wanted. And then about a month later she wrote back saying "I made you one, it is on it's way"! It was perfect - I opted to use it in lieu of a bouquet. This photo (below left) does not do it justice! For Mike, I custom ordered his boutonniere from Twigs & Honey on Etsy - look how sweet it turned out as well (photo, below right, by Twigs & Honey)

I also wore the necklace Andrea made for me on my actual wedding day. It looked beautiful with my dress.

For a hair piece and earrings, I turned to etsy. The hair piece was from Modern Romance and the earrings from Amy Hanna (photos below by the artist, each for their respective item).

For our favors I made postcards from photos we have taken over the last few years, and Patti from the Queen's Ink came through again with packaging them and supplying a decorated vintage basket for them.

Kelli, whose shop is opening next week, gave us a beautiful posie pocket to use to carry our rings. I posted about it earlier - but had to share again since it is so lovely! I also posted about our guest book before - and am only showing the same sneak peek here. Once I am done adding to it I will do a full post on it.

And last but not least - the cake and cake toppers. We used a topper from Goose Grease on the cake, but had a topper gifted to us by Sarah of The Small Object next to the cake. It made for a sweet vignette, with our favor basket on the table too. (photos below taken by Goose Grease, left, and The Small Object, right).

And the cake - which after all was hand crafted as well, was beautiful (and very tasty). Cheryl at Back in the Day Bakery out did herself! Hopefully once we get our professional photos (4 weeks!! I am not sure how I will be able to wait that long!) there will be some better photos of the cake to share!