Sposa

I made these shabby chic style notepads for the lovely ladies at Sposa Bridalwear, which is a gorgeous wedding gown boutique a stones throw from our little cottage. I literally get to drool over the stunning dresses in the window on a daily basis! I can think of worse views ;)

The little story behind my dress! I got my dress before we had even set a date to get married!! We had been engaged just under two years when I found it, or rather my mum did!! We were doing up our new home for 4-5 months prior to moving in and one day on the way back from buying tile grout or something else equally as exciting from B & Q, my mum says to me there is a beautiful dress in the shop over there. Me - we are not getting married yet, no point in looking. Mum - a look in the window won't hurt. Me - go on then. Well it was gorgeous, just the sort of dress I'd imagined me having, in fact if I could draw, I would have drew something very similar from my minds eye. However I was adamant that there was no point, we had spent all our money on buying our first home etc and it would be a while yet before we got married. The looking in the window turned into going in to see how much it was, which turned into me trying it on!!!! I know my mum can be persuasive when she wants to be, lol. Between her and Sue, the lovely lady in the shop, I was talked into seeing what it looked like on. I felt completely unattractive as I'd been running around getting decorating supplies all day!!

Well once it was on, I fell in love with it, it was the One as they say. When I was told it was being discontinued later in the year, I was faced with a tricky decision! My mum kindly said that her and my dad would pay for it if I wanted it. I was not sure what to do! I went back with my sister and Adrian's mum in tow to try it on again and see what they thought, this time it was Fay that helped us in the shop and she helped me in making my decision. My family loved it!! So that was it, it was ordered in feb 2009 and arrived Nov 2009 and we didn't get married until Sept 2011. thank goodness it still fitted, even though I had gained a few pounds since then!! I loved my dress and felt fantastic on the day. It had a vintage look to it that I had been after, I adored the sparkly brooch and the lace detail and edging to the bottom as well as the beading etc. I could wear it stapless or halterneck and had not decided on this until the day. I did not want to take it off at the end of the evening!!

Fay, Sue and Natalie (the seamstress) were so friendly and helpful throughout the whole process and it was always a treat going to Sposa for fittings etc, their shop is beautiful. Their advise and expertise was much appreciated. Natalie did an amazing job with the alterations, she literally had to pick the lace off the bottom of the dress, take it up and then sew it back on again!! A mammoth task. I can't recommend them highly enough. I was so pleased that I took the gamble and ordered the dress. It will be treasured forever.

The lovely wire hanger in the photo was from Etsy, a fab seller called My Amber Coloured World. Oh how I love Etsy! I also got my gorgeous lace trimmed veil from Sposa and my necklace was a present from my mum and sister also from there, they do beautiful one off pieces.

So sorry if anyone is completely bored with the wedding stories. I promise I've got other things to share too! I just wanted to mention and thank these lovely ladies, after all the dress is a big deal to any bride!

I'm also so pleased to be given the opportunity by Faye to make a brooch bouquet for the shop, such a great way for potential customers to see my work and try it out with their dress! I am now working on this one and have recently completed an order for another customer, so I will have some more pics of these to share very soon! I've got so much going on at the moment, all good, lots of exciting news to share!

Hope you are having a great weekend.

xxx

Our Amazing Honeymoon

Thank you so much for all your lovely comments about our wedding invitations! I was beaming ear to ear after reading them, so pleased you liked them too. I have had lots of enquiries about that design which is keeping me busy and is very exciting! I spoke too soon on my last post when I said I was starting to feel better as I ended up with a stinking cold and felt dreadful, hence my absence last week. Thankfully it has cleared up now! So I thought I would share some pics of sunnier climes! If you click on the photo below it will take you to our Picasa web album, but be warned there are over 350 photos!! It took an age to download them and I haven't got around to adding captions etc yet, hopefully I will get chance to do that soon.

We have such wonderful memories of our amazing trip to California for our honeymoon. We loved it there, so much to see and do, nice places to relax too, we had a wonderful time. We knew that we didn't want to jet off to some exotic beach for two weeks, don't get me wrong they look beautiful and I'm sure we would love it, but just not for a long period of time, we like the choice of having different things to do, I like to relax as much as the next person but as I'm usually on the go, I find it too much doing this for a prolonged period, so we want to go somewhere where we could either do things or do nothing!! A choice of sightseeing, beaches or pool, shopping, attractions, eating out etc and as we love America, it was a no brainer! We hadn't been to California before, so that's where we choose to go and boy was it the right choice!

We went for 17 nights, we got married on Friday 9th September and flew out on the Monday. As we have lived together for a while we had everything we needed and were so lucky as our family and friends had given us dollars and money for wedding presents which meant that we could stay at some lovely hotels and had plenty of money to see us through our trip. Thank you to you all, you are the best!! We were so lucky to have had some lovely presents too. Everyone really did spoil us.

Our Amazing Honeymoon! Picasa Web album.

We covered many places on our Road trip, we flew into San Francisco, where we stayed at The Huntingdon Hotel for three nights, then we went to Monterey for a night, we then travelled down the beautiful and picturesque Highway One, where the scenery took our breath away, simply stunning! We then stayed at the gorgeous Apple Farm Inn in San Luis Opisbo for a night (not long enough in my opinion as it was a lovely homely place to stay, with fantastic decor, food and a fab gift shop), but we needed to head to L.A as Adrian had booked tickets at the L.A Galaxy game to see Beckham play (I ask you I can't even get away from football even on my honeymoon, lol, it earned me Brownie points though!!). We stayed in Anaheim for four nights. We went to the Hollywood Hills, Walk of Fame, the shopping malls, the beach and Downtown Disney, we ate out at some lovely places and celebrated my 30th Birthday there! I know I was a lucky girl, also meant that I got to be 29 for a few more hours due to the time difference ;) I was lucky enough to have everyone club together for a digital SLR camera I had wanted for a long time for my main birthday present, so I was able to snap away whilst we were there.

We then travelled to San Diego for four nights and visited Coronado Beach, La Jolla and Solana beach. We also went to the design district in Solana Beach called Cedros Ave, where there were thrift stores, boutiques and one of a kind shops a plenty, I absolutely loved it but was so frustrated I couldn't bring all the gorgeous pieces I saw home!!

We then headed to Las Vegas for the final leg of our trip for four nights, staying at The Four Seasons on the first night, then at The Bellagio. We saw a show whilst there and enjoyed the Razzmatazz! We met up with friends of ours on our last night there and had a fab time!

We met some lovely people, saw some amazing sites, drank lots of Champagne, shopped till we dropped, relaxed when we needed to and ate out a lot ( no cooking for three weeks was bliss!!). We will never forget our adventure and how fortunate we are to have seen so many beautiful places.

Needless to say that we were sad when we had to come home, but happy to have had the time of our lives at our wedding and on our honeymoon! It was great to see our family again once we were home and return to our normal lives as husband and wife!


Love,
xxx

Beautiful Birdcages

I'm starting to feel a bit better thankfully, lots to catch up with now! Thank you to those of you who left comments on my last two posts about our handmade wedding presents from my Dad and sister, it was nice to tell them what you thought of their work :) At last I have managed to photograph our wedding invitations, just before I lost the daylight today!

I must admit I felt under immense pressure, only from myself I might add to produce some lovely invitations as most of our guests knew that I make cards and enjoyed crafting, I had even made some of our friends wedding invites and the fact that I had started a small wedding stationery business meant they needed to be good. I had so many ideas and found it hard to decide,but when it came down to it I knew what I really wanted to include. I knew I wanted to incorporate birdcages into our wedding invitations as we were having them as our centre pieces along with some tea light candelabras. I'm absolutely besotted with birdcages, I don't know why, but I am. I think it's their elegant, romantic, vintage appeal. I do love a birdie too! I also knew I wanted to include a doily, some bunting, bling, pearls and one of my favourite quotes. It was just a matter of how I was going to put all this together. I wanted them to be vintage/shabby chic inspired in soft colours. Therefore crinkled, dyed seam binding and a vintage sheet music background with distressed edges would go perfectly, so I then had my base, it was then just a question of adding the many other elements I wanted to include. This is what I came up with.....

I was really pleased with how they turned out. I love the quote we used, it is from the Papertrey Ink set, Out on a Limb sentiments, there are some beautiful quotes in that set, definitely one of my all time favourite sentiment sets. I feel the invitations reflected all the elements of our day and fitted our vintage theme. We didn't really have a set colour scheme, I wasn't really sure how it would all go together but just hoped that it would on the day! We presented them in boxes with tissue paper and they were tied up with seam binding, on the ones for immediate family and some of the bridal party I also used a brooch on the boxes.

They took forever to make, they were very time consuming and fiddly indeed, but I loved making our wedding stationery myself, it was a once in a lifetime mission afterall :) Therefore it was worth all the many hours spent, a big thank you to my family and friends that helped with some of the production line, you are all stars and they would have been simplified somewhat without your help. You know who you are, love you all so much!! All our family and friends loved them, we had so many wonderful comments. I wanted them to be little surprises wrapped up in those boxes that gave our guests a taste of what was to come. I think I just about managed to pull that off, however, they were very late being sent out due to one thing or another, thank goodness we had sent save the dates! All is well that ends well though!

I want to photograph the whole stsionery suite etc together as I've seen it done on some of the wedding blogs and it looks fab, so if I get around to doing that I'll post a pic of it all together.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you are having a lovely weekend.

Love,


xxx

A stitch in time.....

Sorry I've not been on here as often this past week, I have sinusitis, I think this cold weather is to blame and I also have a muscle in spasm in my back, so haven't been feeling very good at all! It's been playing up since New Year and I finally gave in and went to the doctors (us nurses make the worst patients!) and thankfully the painkillers she has given me have helped to ease it!

Thank you for the comments about my Dad's tree, my mum showed him and they made his day. Enjoying crafts runs in the family as my sister loves cross stitch and baking, and my mum knits and crochets. I showed you my sisters cakes on a previous post, today I wanted to share another of our amazing wedding presents, that was made by my sister, Natalie. It is a cross stitch of a bride and groom and has our names and wedding date embroidered underneath, it is such a beautiful piece of work, we absolutely love it and were again so touched by the effort and care taken to make it for us. It will always have pride of place in our home. We need to get it reframed as it needs to be stretched properly, but it was in this pretty frame as she was doing it right up until the wedding bless her. I like the frame and will put a picture in it afterwards. My sister had placed it on our cake table for us to see when we went into the wedding breakfast. I have only done small cross stitches in the past so can only imagine the work and patience that went into this. Thank you so much Nat, you are a star! I definitely think she has a talent for cross stitch, she has done some gorgeous ones.





Thank you for dropping by and for any comments you may leave, again I will show my sister if you do as it will be a great confidence boost for her. Why do we always criticise our own work, lol!!

I'll hopefully be back soon with the wedding invitations, still need to photograph them!

Love,
xxx

Our Wedding Tree

I was completely blown away when my Dad made this for us as an extra special little wedding present, I actually cried I was so touched and overwhelmed! It was so thoughtful, so original and unique and so much work and effort. We will truly cherish this forever, we love it and it has pride of place on our mantel piece. I really do have such a talented Dad. He always criticises his work and doubts himself, which really frustrates me as I feel he has a real gift. Thank you Dad for all you do for us and for this amazing present.

It is a wedding tree and has our names and the date we were married, as well as our parents and their wedding dates and our siblings on there. So a special family keepsake. I love the in twined hearts on the top and leaf print. This was completely handmade and I think it was such a wonderful idea and design. Especially as it was the first time he had done anything like this!

I really am always excited to see what my dad comes up with in his workshop, he is making the most adorable hand painted egg cups at the moment.

Thank you so much for stopping by and I'd really really appreciate that if you like this you would take the time to leave a comment, so that I can show my Dad and he may then stop doubting himself!!

Some of these photographs are courtesy of the lovely Theresa Furey, who I met at the last wedding fair I did, her photography of my Dad's tree (that's my friend Cheryl holding the tree) and my stand and the fair in general was amazing. I'll be sharing some more on here about that very soon!

Love,

xxx

Marvellous Maps!

I'm back with the post and pics of our little wedding maps. I felt I was missing out a little in designing and making my own wedding stationery, sure if was fun (although a bit stressful!!) and I loved choosing all the materials etc but I felt like there were so many pretty things out there I was missing out on a buying opportunity! lol. So when I saw a post about Hand Drawn Maps on a wedding blog, I was in love, they would compliment our stationery perfectly and I felt like I wouldn't be missing out on the buying wedding stationery bit ccompletely!! I know everyone has Sat Nav's these days but it is courtesy to include a map/directions in your invitations, especially as we had people coming from all over and some of our older relations may not have embraced this marvel of modern technology yet! I also thought it would be a lovely keepsake.

I contacted Lydia, just in time as her baby was due and was about to go on maternity leave, however she squeezed us in and produced a hand drawn map that was wonderful and included all of our little touches/theme perfectly. We were so pleased with them! Thanks Lydia, you have an unbelievable talent!

Me being me, had to make more work of the process though!! I could have had them done and printed in colour, this would cost a little more than the black and white version. So I posed the question, was it possible to colour them myself?! Lydia sent me a few samples to have a go with and they coloured beautifully. Lydia said it's a lovely idea to do them yourself but are you sure about all the work involved! I thought about it but liked the idea of colouring them myself, I find it therapeutic and thought it would be a nice personal touch!! I didn't think it would take nearly as long as it did, but it took an age!!! I managed to colour most of them though and some I just had to distress and make to look old due to lack of time as I hadn't banked on all the things that cropped up and swallowed up my time, but I stuck to it and was so pleased with how they turned out! My lovely Mum even gave it ago and helped to colour them in with me bless her, thanks Mum! I think we did over 50 of them!!!

I still had some to colour in after the wedding for us and our parents to keep, which I'm getting framed and I'll have ours pride of place because I love it and also how much work went in to colouring them, definitely a labour of love, lol! I do have the craziest ideas sometimes, delusions that I actually have a 34 instead of a 24 hour day!!!

The invitations also turned out lovely but they took forever, I'll photograph them when I can get some decent daylight as it's usually dark when I get home from work, so this may be at the weekend now!

Thank you so much for stopping by and following my little wedding story, it means the world to be able to tell it, it feels like I'm reliving it all over again! Which when it goes as quick as it did, it's only a good thing right!

Love,

xxx

My pink typewriter.......

I almost forgot to share a pic of my gorgeous pink typewriter!! When I saw these out there on the net, I knew I wanted one, I had loved my typewriter when I was little, but it wasn't pink!! A vintage display piece that is pretty but also functional, what's not to love!

I searched high and low for a pastel coloured one, raw as rocking horse poop here in the UK to say the least. Then I found one on Ebay and it was going to be mine.........a last minute bidding war ensued but I missed it my an inch as my computer froze on the last refresh press......NO!!! Why didn't I just put a much higher bid on it in the first place, I kicked myself. Adrian told me I would find another one, I knew that was slim. I was in a bit of a sulk I must admit, I was nursing my whiplash injury and a bit peeved that my car had been written off, so was hoping I'd win this to cheer me up. So I sent the seller a message to say that if the highest bidder changed their mind would she please consider contacting me as I really wanted it for a prop/guest book alternative at our wedding. A LONG SHOT!! Well the lady kindly contacted me straight away to say that her friend was bringing another one over from America in the next two weeks for her to sell and would I be interested in that one, would I ever!!!



So I am now the proud owner of this pretty piece. One day it will sit in my craft room/studio too! I had intended to have this there for guests to type a message on if they wanted to instead of writing in the guest book. However in my infinite wisdom I left it out to look at and the ribbon dried out!! Well if the item itself was rare, then the ribbons are just as much so, so I decided to have it as a prop on our guest book table. I suppose that saved the kiddos pounding it with their sticky mitts too, he he. We decorated this table with some photos of us as children and a framed message to our family and friends. This is where everyone left all our lovely cards and gifts, everyone was so generous, we were overwhelmed and couldn't believe how long it took us to open them all. We were very lucky newly weds indeed!

Just to give you a giggle this is me and the hubs as little 'uns!

I hope you are having a great weekend so far! I'm hoping to be back with the coloured maps soon, I left it too late to get a decent photograph today, I was also silly in the fact that I forgot to ask our wonderful photographers to take some of the invitations etc! Doh!

Love,

xxx

Love sweet Love!

Thank you to everyone that has been following my wedding posts and leaving such lovely comments, they make me smile!! Here is another little snippet.

I love sweets!! Who doesn't right?! It brings out the child in us all I think! So I knew I wanted a sweetie buffet at our wedding for guests to help themselves to. I collected some old fashioned jars, including an adorable apothercary jar to put them in, some little pink stripey bags and some scoops and of course the most important ingredient, the sweets; Jelly Belly jelly beans, marshmallows, liquorice allsorts, wine gums, flying saucers etc! It was a hit and went down well with the kiddies, young and old! he he. Cheryl did a fantastic job at displaying it all and she also used some of her gorgeous jars and pieces.

Then for the ladies I decided on a nice little treat, my mum had brought me a set of mini Cath Kidston hand creams and I remember thinking that these would make great favours, they were in such pretty packaging. I found somewhere to order them from in bulk and then make some little handbag shaped boxes to put them in, I used Papertrey Ink's Favour It Box die, some pretty Tilda papers and punched out a heart to decorate the front with the Martha Stewart large lattice heart punch.

We were going to get the men favours but figured that they would just prefer to have more beer on offer from Audrey the Caravan!

The kiddies also had a little goodie bag with some colouring bits and pieces etc in to keep them occupied, thanks to my lovely friend and bridesmaid Becky for organising these!

Left to share about our day is the little wedding maps that I had drawn for us and then coloured, the invitations I made and if anyone is interested our honeymoon to California!

Love,