Gifts for the Groomsmen: Update

Remember back in March when I shared with you guys what we finally decided to do for the guys as gifts??
I just thought I'd give you guys a little update as to how it's all coming along.
My dad knocked out 5 sets of boards in two weekends, and my mom and sister got them all painted in the right base color so my mom could bring them all up to me when she came up here for my shower.
And since then I've been busy working on them.

This set will have two matching Chicago Bears heads for his friend from grade school who is a big Bears fan.  I still have to finish the other one.

This set will have one buck and one bass.  There are two matching sets of these, one for each of his brothers.  We couldn't think of anything more fitting for two guys that love to hunt and fish.
All I have left for these is to do one more bass.

There will be two of these sets for the two guys that Mr. T played football with at U of I.  Each set will probably have this Chief head and a U of I football helmet.  If there's time though, I'd like to do matching Chief heads on each board.  They're just so detailed so I'm not sure how it will go.
I still have to paint the other Chief, and then whatever for the other two boards.

So, I have 5 boards left to paint.  I'm hoping to get them done before I head back to IL next Thursday, but we'll see how that goes.
Then when I get home they all need 3 coats of polyurethane to seal everything in.  I went and bought all of the fabric for the bean bags, but those will have to wait until I get back home also, because we don't have an iron and ironing board yet!

Just thought you might enjoy some pictures of the progress.  I'm so excited to surprise the guys with these at the rehearsal dinner...I think they're going to love them!

The One Month Mark

Well....April 22nd has snuck up on me real quickly!
We officially only have ONE MONTH UNTIL THE WEDDING!

Em knows what I'm talking about! (We're wedding twins)

When we got engaged last March and decided to have the wedding over a year away, I was a little disappointed because I thought it was going to take forever to get here...but it most certainly has not!
Since then we've moved to MN, I graduated from college, we got a puppy, I opened my own Etsy store, and added a million and one things to our to do list.

And now?  Well it's here more or less.  I'll leave MN for IL next Thursday and I'll stay home until the wedding.  All of our vendors are officially paid off except the Country Club, but that all happens 10 days before the wedding.  The hotel unblocks our rooms as of today.  We're sitting down with our pastor today to plan out the ceremony.

It's here and it's coming fast!  I'll be doing nothing but wedding things for the next month in order to tie up all my loose ends that I have floating around.  But no worries, I'm not stressed yet.  It's kind of nice not having a job while you're trying to plan a wedding.  I'll go home and enjoy my second bridal shower next weekend, and the weekend after that we're having our joint bachelor/bachelorette party, and then the weekend after that is my birthday, and then the weekend after that we're getting married!!  So I'll have some ways to let off steam if the projects get the better of me.

One month from today I'll walk down the aisle towards my future husband, and in front of God and our family and friends, we'll pledge to one another to love, honor, and cherish as long as we both shall live.

I'm getting so excited!

For those of you already married gals out there, how did your last month go? Was it hectic or did you try and remember the important things?

My Minnesota Bridal Shower

I just got some pictures back from Mr. T's mom, so I thought it was finally time to share with you guys the shower I had at the end of March.

Since ALL of Mr. T's extended family lives in MN, we decided to have a separate shower up here with all of them.  His aunts went above and beyond planning and getting everything together.  I received the invitation in the mail and all I had to do was show up that day!

My mom and Mr. T's mom drove up from IL on a Friday night and stayed through until Tuesday.  It was really nice having them both around.  Mr. T's mom went to visit her family on Saturday and then left to see her other son after the shower on Sunday and Mr. T was working so I got to spend a lot of time with my mom...which equaled a lot of shopping!
We meant to get to the Mall of America two different times, but it never happened because we got sidetracked with other shopping instead.

But anyways, back to the shower.
My mom and I showed up on Sunday afternoon to Josh's aunt's house.  We got there a little bit early so that I could say hi to everyone as they got there and introduce my mom since none of them had met her yet.

She decorated with cute flowers that matched my colors...I loved the centerpiece!  There were even green and white balloons out front on the porch so people knew where to go.

Both sides of the his family got to mingle.  From previous family functions, every one had met multiple times before, so they enjoyed getting to catch up.

We sat down and played a couple of games and then moved on to presents.  Opening presents in front of a bunch of people while sitting in a dress is a little challenging and awkward!

Then we all went and ate a delicious spread of food that Mr. T's aunts and cousin put together.  The shower lasted probably 2 1/2 hours or so before everyone started heading out.  My mom and I stuck around and chatted with his aunt and his cousin's fiancee for awhile before heading out.
All in all, it was a great day and it was nice that my mom could finally meet some of his family.

Here are a few more pictures from the day.

With Mr. T's cousin's little daughter Lily.  She is going to be a "junior bridesmaid" in her uncle's wedding in October.  She's so cute!  She was the only other person in a dress that day =]

With Mr. T's mom's mom.  We call her Grandma Bob.  (p.s. notice in all these pictures my cute outfit?  I bought the dress at JCPenney's and talked my mom into buying the green cardigan at Kohl's for herself and letting me wear it for the shower.  And I bought new shoes!)

With Mr. T's mom and Grandma Emmy trying to sneak out of the way in the background. (It's her mom's 80+ year old ring that I wear as my engagement ring.)

With my mom, future mother-in-law, and my spread of gifts.

Favorite presents from the day?
I don't know if I can pick a favorite.  We just used the pizza pan and pizza ingredients last night for the first time and it was awesome!  I'm also super excited about our sleeping bag and camping stove.  I would HIGHLY recommend the Calphalon 5 piece baking set from Target, it's amazing!  I'm also loving the new Crockpot so I don't have to burn myself on our old one anymore.
They all did a great job, and I didn't end up taking anything back!

Did any of you have a separate shower with your fiance's family??  How did it go and what were your favorite gifts?

Invitation Unveiling

Okay guys...it's finally time for me to share my invitations with you!!
I have probably put a combined 100+ hours into these things.  And I'm not kidding when I tell you that.
I made all of the invitations and pocketfolds from scratch, printed out all of the inserts and individually cut them out, hand addressed all of the envelopes, lined the majority of the invites, and designed and redesigned the layout.
But enough whining about that.  Here's what I know you guys want to see.

First a little of the process?

Building of the envelopes.

Inserts printed 4 to a page.

A small amount of the overall mess I've made over the last two months.

100+ invitations times 5 inserts = a whole lot of cutting!

Stacks of finished invites.  I got so sick of these that I went through the whole process 5 different times.

But now for the details =]
I forgot to take pictures before sending them out, and at the moment I don't have one to keep (but don't worry I still have more to make so I'll be making an extra for myself) so these pictures come from an invitation that got sent back to me.  I noticed that some of the ink smeared from the processing.  I know they didn't all turn out like that though, because I've seen some that other people got.

I'll show you my inspiration pictures that influenced my invites.

Pocketfolds:

Mine

Inspiration

Inside layout:

  Mine

Inspiration

RSVP card and other inserts:

 Mine

Inspiration

Envelopes:

  Mine

Mine

I used the "fauxligraphy" method of printing out the addresses in a very light grey ink, and then tracing over with an ink pen.  It took forever, but I love the way they turned out!

And I just wanted to give you guys a close up of my RSVP cards and the back in case any of you need help with layouts and wording.

I made sure to indicate how many people were invited, because we're inviting a lot of single people and not allowing them to bring a guest, so I wanted it to be clear to the guest how many were invited.  It's helped a lot.  So far we haven't had anyone try and return an RSVP for more than they were allowed.

For the most part, people have been putting their names on the line following the "M"  The only times they didn't, they wrote out their full names on the back so it worked out fine.

At the bottom it says See reverse for entree choices.

For the people that said yes, I had them put down their names and what they wanted to eat.  If anyone left this blank, I decided that they were getting chicken (because it's cheaper!)

Well that's it! I suppose it's fitting that the post is super long, since they took me super long to make.  Coming up next is a budget breakdown so you (and I) can find out if I saved any money doing this myself.

DIY: Escort Cards, Revisited

Hey all...it's been forever I know...but I have been following all of you, I've just been to lazy to post anything lately.  So I'm sorry!

But I'm back, for awhile anyways.  I'm going to be crazy busy from now until the wedding...I can't believe it's only 33 days away!

But anyways, I showed you all my escort cards quite awhile back.  If you don't remember, they looked like this:

I was planning on having these all laid out on a table when you first walked in, and each guests' table number would be on the inside.
Well I've since decided against that, and I'll be doing something a little different to show each guest to their table.
But I did realize that we'll need cards at each seat, because we're offering a choice between two entrees and we'll need a way to differentiate that so the waiters know who to serve what.  Our event coordinator recommended doing a little rhinestone or sticker or something on each card, but I wasn't really a fan of any of those options.
So I'm going to do this same design, with a different tent for each entree.

The green tents are for the chicken entree, the black for the steak, and the white is for the kids meals.

I sat down the other day and got done all of the people that have RSVP'd so far.

These will be put at each seat, but I'm going to try to figure out a way to let people know that they are free to move around at their table, they just need to make sure their tent follows them.


Are any of you dealing with multiple entree issues??  How are you distinguishing the two choices?

I actually have something worth sharing!

Hey all...remember me??
Sorry I've been gone for so long, but there really hasn't been much to post.  I'm still in the middle of a million and one projects, so I'll wait until they're finished to share.
I did mail out the invitations about a week ago, so look forward to hearing about those shortly!
But in the meantime, I do have a project I want to share with you that I didn't have anything to do with.  It's kind of hard to imagine because I've had such tight reins on everything wedding related, but this one was out of my hands.  All I saw was the finished product.
Mr. T's mom took on the task of making banners to hang in the church for the ceremony.  She had made some previously for all the boys' confirmations, but those were just out of felt and very simple.  This time she went above and beyond.  She ordered a pattern off the internet, bought all of the fabric, heat'n'bond, adhesive, etc. and went to town.  I think she finished these in about a week once she got started on them.  She picked the pattern, I okayed it, and she went for it.
Here are the results. 

They look amazing and I can't wait to see them hanging in the church.  She also had a great idea to put a "patch" of sorts on the back of one banner with our names, date, and the church.  Then we'll share them with all of our siblings, cousins, etc that would like to use them and add a patch for each couple.  I think it's a great idea and can't wait to be the first!
It's kind of nice to let go of the reins from time to time when you're surprised with awesome results like these!  I just need to remember as it gets closer and closer, that I don't have to do EVERYTHING by myself.

Cards for Satori

I made this card for Satori after hearing her story from her mom on Twitter.  Here's what she has to say.

Her story below as written by her mom:

"For those of you who don't know me, my name is Melissa Lewis, Haut Totes on Etsy, as well as Hauttotes on twitter.My 10 year old daughter Satori has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (type II) She uses a power wheelchair, can't walk, crawl, etc. Despite that she's a rock star!! She has a super sense of humor, gets straight A's even though she misses an average of 40 days of school a year! She's a great sister & daughter & a fantastic person all around. Because she is so physically weak her body doesn't hold its self up well and she has developed severe scoliosis. The curve of her spine it is now starting to crush her lung, so on March 31 she will have full spinal fusion. They will open her back from the neck all the way down, insert 2 titanium rods, one on either side of her spine, wire the whole thing up and place donor bone in between all the vertebrae. Eventually it will all grow together "fusing" her spine into one long bone. We are traveling to California to have this done, with an estimated stay in the hospital of 7-10 days. I am hoping to get people to send her postcards from all over. I think that the messages (and pictures) will be fun for her. I also plan to take an atlas and have her mark off states and countries (sneaking in a little geography). We have great insurance, a FANTASTIC surgeon and a world renowned hospital!!**Satori is not in need of anything more than some fun messages and exiting postmarks!**"

Original blog post: http://postcardsforsatori.blogspot.com/

This is how the post card should be addressed:

Satori Lewis

Surgery date 3-31-10

Davis 7 Pediatrics

UC Davis Children's Hospital

2315 Stockton Blvd.

Sacramento, CA 95817 USA

**Be sure to include the surgery date**

 

If you've got some time to make a card, or you have a card or postcard laying around, send one out to her.  She'll be in the hospital for awhile after her surgery so this will give her something to do.  Remember how fun getting mail was when you were a kid?!  Help make her stay more enjoyable.

I Ordered My Veil!

MR. T.....THIS POST IS NOT FOR YOUR EYES....IT CONTAINS PICTURES OF ME IN MY DRESS, AND I KNOW YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO SEE IT, NOR DO I WANT YOU TO!

This last trip home to IL, I was there for three weeks, and I took another trip down to Champaign to try on my dress again, pay it off, and bring it home.  My mom and Mr. T's mom were able to go with me and we made a night of it by going to Olive Garden afterwards.  Mr. T's mom had never been there before and she absolutely loved it!

A few weeks before my dress came in, I decided that I was going to attempt to make my own veil, because the one I had my heart set on cost about $200.  I figured if I got the right tulle it wouldn't be hard to do, it would just take a lot of time to bead the edges.  So I stopped and got some tulle from JoAnn's and went about cutting out the two layers.  Basically I just laid it out on the floor, folded in half lengthwise and cut a large "U" shape into it.  Then I sewed a running stitch at the top and pulled it tight so it gathered.  I made two layers, and sewed them together onto a comb and brought it down to try on with my dress.
At home I didn't think it was too bad, but when I tried it on with the dress I knew it wasn't going to work.  Compared to the veil I wanted, the tulle was much thicker/coarser/heavier/whatever and it was much fuller as well.  I knew I could have looked for a more delicate tulle and started over since I hadn't put much time into it, but I didn't want to take off the veil in the store, and my mom told me to go ahead and just order it.
It seems like now, some things are just a drop in the hat when you think about the overall budget.  My parents are being absolutely amazing about this wedding and I feel spoiled, but in a good way.  So now my veil is on order and I'm just waiting for it to come in!

Wanna see??  Of course you do, after listening to that long and boring story.

The third picture is the same veil, but in a single layer.  I decided to go with the double layer because I really think I'd like to wear it in front of my face while walking down the aisle.  Might as well go all out right?!

This is one project I'm glad I switched from the DIY list to the buy list.  One less project I have to do, and I know it will turn out perfectly.

Gifts for the Groomsmen

Mr. T has five guys standing up beside him on the day of our wedding.  His two brothers, a friend from grade school, and two guys he played football with at U of I.  They all mean a lot to him, and for the longest time we couldn't think of a good way to thank them for everything.
I wanted to leave the gifts up to him, since they were his brothers and friends, and he should know best what they would like/enjoy.  But he wasn't really coming up with anything, and I couldn't think of much either.  We popped into Things Remembered once and took a look at flasks and beer mugs, but just couldn't get on board with that idea. 
Then I thought it might be nice for them all to have a pair of Crocs that they could wear at the reception.  I said black, but Mr. T said since he and his brothers already have camo ones, that we should get the other three camo Crocs to match.  I was on board.  I even pulled them at work in the sizes we would need, and found a little pair for our ringbearer too.

But then I came up with a different idea and ran it past him.  Bean bag boards.  He was totally on board.  Yup, I signed up my dad to build 5 sets and my mom to paint the base color on all of the sets.  She's going to drive them all up to MN next week when she comes for my first shower so I can handpaint the designs on all of them.  I might be just a little crazy to take on a project like this with just over two months to go, but I think it's going to be awesome!

Here are a few of the boards I've painted over the last year.  Can you tell my family is from Wisconsin?!  Each board takes about 5 hours to hand paint each design.  So I'm looking at about 50 hours of work that I need to find a way to squeeze into my already busy schedule.
Oh and there's the matter of cutting and sewing all of the bags.  No big deal though.  Ha.

So even though I'm probably way crazy to take this on, I'm very excited about it.  We're going to do the Illini Chief head for two of the sets for the boys he played football with.  Then we'll probably do Chicago Bears for one set for his grade school friend.  And for his brothers, we haven't quite decided yet, but it will probably be some sort of buck/fish sort of thing.  So far my dad has all of the sets built, and my mom is going to start getting the boards painted so they'll be ready for me to put the finishing touches on them.
We're looking at about $50/set which isn't bad as a gift considering these could definitely be considered a $150 present.  I think they guys will love them!

My First Hair Trial

MR. T:
THIS POST IS NOT FOR YOUR EYES SINCE YOU WANT TO BE SURPRISED ABOUT EVERYTHING ON THE DAY OF OUR WEDDING =]  AND YOU WILL CATCH GLIMPSES OF MY DRESS IF YOU READ FURTHER...YOU'RE WARNED!


Those of you following me on Twitter may have already seen this, but I had my first hair trial the other week.  I settled on who is doing my hair for the day of the wedding, and we got together to practice since I really had no clue what I wanted to do.
A close family friend will be coming over to my parents' house on the morning of the wedding to do my hair, along with my mom and Mr. T's mom.  The girls have all decided to do their own hair/help each other with their hair.

I've known Theresa for ages, she actually used to babysit me when I was younger.  I ran into her one night downtown and we talked and it was decided!  She's actually going to do my hair for free as part of my wedding gift, and wouldn't take anything for my hair trial either when I went over to her house.
I brought along some of the hair inspiration pictures I've been gathering.  I had narrowed it down to two styles.  One was a low updo, and the other was a half-up updo.

I told her I either wanted something similar to the first one, or I wanted it EXACTLY like the second picture.  I decided for the first time around to do the low updo, because I just really wasn't sure what I wanted.  And obviously I was being wishy-washy because somewhere in the conversation we lost each other and she went ahead with the half updo.  And I'm really glad she did, because I absolutely loved it!  When it was done and we were looking at it, she even said if we wanted to run back to my house on the way to the reception, she would pin up all the hair into a low updo for me and it would only take about 10 minutes.

I get to be a two-hairstyle bride! How exciting?!  This way I can leave my hair down for the ceremony and wear my veil, and then it will be up off my shoulders for the rest of the night and I won't be too hot and worrying about the curls falling out.

Now for the pictures...

 Unfortunately, you don't get to see the front of it, because I don't have a picture of it.  It was after a long night in Chicago, I didn't have any makeup on, and my face and I were fighting.

I don't remember if I told you all or not, but I got a perm about a month ago because I was sick of my half curly hair and wanted a change.  It looks absolutely adorable now and I don't have to put any time into it, but Theresa said they must have left the solution in for too long because my hair is beyond unhealthy now!  So she sent me home with some good shampoo and conditioner and orders to get my hair trimmed and a good deep conditioner at a salon.  This way my hair will hold a curl better and look healthier and shinier on the day of the wedding.  So now I've got some work to do between now and then.

But I'm glad I went ahead and did this trial, because now I know for sure what I want.  All I have to figure out now is what I'm planning on doing with my makeup.  I'm really leaning towards having it done at a salon, because I really want eyelashes applied for the day and I'm horrible at doing them myself.  So we'll see what I decide on that. 
I would definitely recommend a hair trial though if you're stuck between a couple different ideas and you can afford to do it.  It will also give you a feel for how it will hold up throughout the day.

Have any of you done a hair trial before your wedding day??  What are your thoughts on it?