Easter Fun

I'm back, everyone - and finally coming up for air! Life sure gets busy sometimes, I don't know how parents of more than one kid even get anything done. Here is my incredibly delayed Easter post...

We spent most of April being sick - colds and coughs rolled through our house like waves and no one was immune. So Easter was a laid-back affair (most things are, in our household.) B seemed to enjoy his holiday basket, filled with a new puppy lunchbox, little treats in plastic eggs, and a Thomas the Train farm set. We also had a special family breakfast. Afterwards it was time to dye eggs! This was the first year we braved this messy activity but all went well. Boyd spent a lot of time dipping each egg into each glass of dye - it was a multicolored set we ended up with.

Crafty bird mobile

First saw this uber-adorable bird mobile on Design*Sponge, and then downloaded the pattern from Spool Sewing.


Photo credit: Spool Sewing

 It's so easy that a novice at sewing (i.e. me!) can handle the project. I made 8 little birdies this weekend, working on and off in-between errands and doing housework. The fabric is all from old projects and scraps. The green solid print fabric is from the material my wedding dress sash was made of. The polkadots are remnants I bought from Joanne's a couple years ago and the white fabric is old cotton curtains. I used poly-fil from Wal-Mart - it didn't take much to fill out the little bodies. And the branch is from the backyard. They are attached with thin wire that I threaded through the belly of each bird and spooled around the branch.

What I'm working on - March edition

Going to take a quick break from Hawaii photos...back to those later this week.

With our boost in daylight hours from daylight saving time (5 minutes, 44 seconds today!) everyone has been feeling the benefit of the longer days. I definitely have spring fever and can't wait for the season to really start here in Alaska. My annual "wash every sheet, blanket, comforter and pillow" extravaganza will happen sometime in April so here are the other things keeping me busy in the meantime...

This lovely blue pussywillow canvas caught my eye in IKEA years ago and my sister managed to track one down using San Jose Craigslist for a quarter of the cost. Her boyfriend Gabe removed it from the wood frame and mailed it in a tube to Anchorage. I figured it was time to rescue it from dustbunny purgatory under the bed. I had an old canvas that I removed from its frame and stretched this one over instead. It was larger than the frame but I just cut the excess and used my staple gun with gusto! If you don't have a staple gun, you are MISSING OUT on fun craft projects!



Not sure where to hang it yet, but it's nice and big.



My sister and I have a little shop on Etsy: Sumie & Sukie Boutique. It's a bit sparse now but I've been working on some new jewelry pieces and fun clothespins.

Necklace pendants. I love working with pretty paper.

Colorful clothespins.

I have lots and lots of pretty jewelry - but it's never enough, right ladies? I needed a better storage solution for my dangly earrings and came up with this framed option. The mesh is an old black screen that I cut up and framed. I'm on the lookout for a nice wooden version that I can paint and then staple mesh onto. My post earrings still live in my jewelry box since there's no way to affix them right now.

One of my very good friends at work is having her third baby (and she's only 32!). We're all so happy for her but she's been having some tough times lately, so our supper club is hosting a very special baby shower for her in 2 weeks. I've been working on a "diaper cake"- basically it's a structure created from diapers and decorated to look like a cake. And I have ordered a bunch of items from her gift registry for all of us to chip in for. I'm so excited!

My diaper cake creation. The diapers are hidden under the patterned the tissue paper overlay. Still needs some finishing touches.

Nine months is a long time between a wedding and ordering photos but what can I say, I got busy and it was a rough fall and winter, to say the least. So I finally sat down a couple weeks ago to upload most of our wedding images to Adoramapix.com (recommended by my wonderful photographer brother-in-law Doug). The prints arrived very quickly and look really great. I could not believe how affordable it was compared to the printing costs from our wedding photographer (Chugach Peaks) - although I did order prints from Chugach as well since we had some free ones as part of our package.

The photos look great in the frames I got on sale from Michaels, Joann Fabrics and Kohls. Now it's time to figure out which images will go in which frames. To my mom & Mim - I have prints to send you both too!



Ok - I'm on my way to craft night with the ladies. Happy Wednesday everyone!

Favors

People who know that I have a side business (and know that I occasionally take on wedding favors as part of that business) have asked if I am creating a special set of favors for my own wedding. The answer was always "no" because I could not decide on what to make! Soap? Magnets? Then my sister offered an amazing gift!

Here are the amazing ceramic pieces that Risha and her boyfriend Gabe handcrafted for our wedding favors. I made mini tissue paper poufs to place in each cup.

I do love the bright green of this tissue paper, but it looks slightly like lettuce to me...

Each cup/bowl will also include a favor tag with a thank-you note. This is a lot of tissue paper and I am SO OVER making these things. :-)

Invitations: step by step

Begin with a lovely green cardstock envelopement from Paper Source.

Use a diecut punch to round the edges of the flap.

Use leaf paper punch to add interesting visual detail. Be sure to measure 1.5" from each edge for each leaf. And then trek back to Michaels to exchange the tool becuse it cannot stand up to 175 consecutive punches.

Add a bit of brown ribbon and make a bow through the punched leaves.

I ordered a custom address stamp from Etsy for the RSVP envelopes. The invitation envelopes are sporting a stamp with my parents address (since they are generously hosting this wedding event!) but I figured we would deal with the RSVP's here at home, so those will come to us in Anchorage. I used white ink so the image would show up on the brown envelopes, but they are smearing a tiny bit. Oops.

Insert elements!

Final product:

Invites & USPS

For pete's sake, what is up with the invites?! One thing after another with these things. The latest hiccup is postage on some of the envelopes. Before sending out the first test invitation, I marched on down to the post office and had one weighed. Perfect, the lady said. One $0.44 stamp is fine.

So then I mailed out the remainder in batches until my parents called to say that some were coming to them (theirs is the return address) with "postage due" on the front. Argh. Now they are affixing extra postage (sorry mom & dad!) and re-mailing. I ended up using my leftover postcard stamps for the envelopes still remaining here at the house. What's weird is some have been making it to their destinations while others get returned.

I was just given a huge project at work, so with that added to my workload I will really not be blogging much in the coming weeks.

Craft night

It snowed hard yesterday, but most of it has melted off and today is a slightly sunny day. D has been gone all week but should be home by the time I get off of work. He saw some bears, but no shooters.

Hosted girls' craft night at our house on Wednesday evening. It was a great night! I really need to have everyone over more often. I had planned on making caribou lasagna, but (surprise, surprise) got too busy and ended up serving pizza - along with side dishes of fruit salad, salmon dip, summer sausage, cheese and some salad. And wine. Lots of wine!

This is my last free weekend for the next 5 weeks, so I'll be making the most of it! After that, 5 weeks of pure h@*# will ensue, work-wise. (FYI...don't expect many coherent, happy-go-lucky posts during that time.)

Invites

The wedding invites arrived at our house on Sunday (thanks to Gabe for making a mail run for us!) It's always my worst nightmare to open up a print job and see a mistake. Well peeps - there was a MISTAKE! The printers forgot to ink the second side of our RSVP card, so they're all blank.

Honestly it's not the end of the world, but I had a special design for the back side and I'm kind of disappointed. The company offered to reprint the RSVP cards but it will take at least a week to print / mail out, and we don't have that kind of time. So I'm taking a discount code instead and will use that for a future project.

Overall the paper products turned out beautiful. Great paper, good weight, color matching was pretty spot-on!. I spent all of last evening tying ribbons and stuffing envelopes. Current status: 1/3 complete. The outer envelopes all have mailing labels - I know that technically I am supposed to handwrite all of the addresses but (here come the excuses): 1) I have work tasks and stress up the wazzoo; 2) my fiance' has been gone 24 days out of the last 30 and does not have time to help me address envelopes; 3) invitations would be arriving in guests' mailboxes, oh, by next year if I had to handwrite out each one.  So I hope no one is offended, but something had to go and it was this!

Wedding project: dessert stand

When I started wedding planning last fall, one of my first to-do's was price out wedding cakes. I was shocked at what I found out. $5 a slice for cake and $500 total? REALLY?! It's difficult not to get jaded about the wedding industry when you are faced with inflated costs left and right. My solution for most of these overpriced options is to DIM (do-it-myself) or DIWDH (do-it-with-D's-help).

Instead of a traditional 3- or 4-tiered cake, we will be offering our guests a selection of our favorite desserts, like cheesecake, cookies, cupcakes, etc. I saw this project on the internets somewhere and modified it to fit our needs. It's basically a 4-tiered dessert/cake stand.

I saw these melamine plates at Michael's and immediately snatched up 25 of them for this project. The store also had cute door knobs that matched the color scheme so I bought 5 of those as well. Total cost of these plates and knobs was $30.

At Home Depot, I purchased something called Allthread that matched pretty closely to the diameter of the threaded portion of the door knob. I asked the HD guys to point me in the right direction and ended up finding everything I needed in one aisle. 

After D returned home from hunting, he took up his tools to help out with the technical stuff. He matched his drill bit size to my 1/4" 20 allthread. I planned to make 5 stands, so I bought at least 5 of everything. After some broken and cracked practice plates, D switched to a ceramic tile bit and drilled holes in the center of each plate. (I think we ended up losing 6 plates.)

From one of my Home Depot trips: washers to protect the top and bottom of each plate from my tightening nuts, really long nuts to connect the allthread and doorknob, and rubber feet to make the stands more stable.

D put some weight on a couple levels to test our first stand. It held up!

Overall this project came in under $50 for 5 stands, not including our time, but we definitely would have paid more at the store for something similar. So I consider $10 per stand to be a substantial cost savings over retail.

Bears and wine bottles

My other half is off hunting bears in the wilderness. And from a garbled cell phone message yesterday, it sounds like he will be staying out there another couple days. I always laugh when people say I'm a "fishing widow" because it's not really true -- D and I usually get to fish together. When he does go without me it's usually only for 2-3 days. But a hunting widow? That's definitely the category I fall into. And it takes at least a week to hunt something, most often longer.

Speak of the devil - D just called and may come home today. Woot! There's a chance he will go out again next week because the bears are still staying out of sight, so I'm prepared for that. If he gets back to Anchorage, we can hit up the Sportsmans Show this weekend.

As promised, here is one of the wedding projects I am working on: wine bottle vases. I first saw this on a DIY website and then got the itch to try it out. The first step is to use a glass cutter of some sort and etch a continuous line across the circumference of the bottle. Um, easier said than done. D and I figured out that you need some sort of holder or vise to keep the bottle steady while etching it, otherwise the glass will spider-crack (during the heating process) wherever the lines don't meet up.

Start with a regular ol' wine bottle. The thicker glass is more difficult to work with. I've noticed that this process has a lot of collateral damage. Thank goodness one of my coworkers LOVES wine -- she is keeping me well stocked with bottles to practice with.

The glass cutter that D already had in his tool arsenal...score!

See the etched line? Didn't match up, despite my best efforts.

The next step is to make slow rotations of the etched line over a heat source and then cooling the area with an ice cube. The heating/cooling process causes the bottle to crack along the line. D and I tried the process before he left to go hunting and he used a propane torch to heat the glass.

Truth be told, I was a little intimidated by the propane torch. So when he left town and I wanted to work on this project, I instead went with the tealight method. My thoughts? The tealight sucks. Holding the glass too far away from the flame means the heating process takes forever. Holding it too close leaves a black sooty mess on the bottle.

The frustration finally got to me and I stomped down to the garage to tackle the torch. Result? Not scary at all! It took a fraction of the time as compared to the tealight and no sooty mess on the glass. You can see one of the finished products in the photo below.

Not sure if these will work out because the tops are not perfect enough for me. I still need to experiment with sanding down the rough edges. It's not like anyone will be drinking out of these but we don't need anyone cutting themselves!

Dessert

How cute are these little chickies? They're cake pops! From the genius mind of Bakerella.

And dessert "fast food" too...

3 months

D has been out of town for almost a week now -- he flew back to the midwest to spend time with family and surprise his parents. Sounds like they were very surprised! Needless to say it's been very quiet around the house. Drift and I have been on some walks, but mostly he stalks me around the house and watches the wedding craft extravaganza.

I am seriously pushing it with these wedding invitations when it comes to getting them out in time. Note to brides - don't design them yourself!!! It's too easy to get caught up in the little details. And after taking that Photoshop class, now I want to get all crazy with my images and create new ones. I'm getting quotes from local printers to see if they can match the estimates I have received from online vendors. Online peeps are great, but what they charge for shipping to Alaska is ridiculous.

This photo is from sometime last week when I hand-stamped the outer envelopes. The table is now a total mess, so it's actually a good thing D is out of town because it looks like Martha Stewart's workshop threw up all over our dining room.

Blah

Ugh, had a bad day at work today. Sometimes it's just not your day, right? I cannot WAIT to take my 2 1/2 weeks off from work this summer (for the wedding) and see how much I am appreciated when I return!

Signed up for an all-day Photoshop conference tomorrow so I'll be off learning the ins and outs of this program and expanding my skill set. I know the basics now but it's difficult to advance by reading a manual - I need that hands-on experience.

D approved my design for our wedding invitations/rsvp cards and those will be printed shortly. Last night I spent a couple hours organizing and stamping the return address on our outer envelopes. Hands hurt today.

The weekend arrives

Busy week and glad it's Friday! I helped to babysit those triplets again and wow, babies really change drastically in 4 months. The kiddos are about 9 months old now and crawling all over the place -- the girls are even pulling themselves up and standing. They were so much fun and I came home with a touch of baby fever. :-)

Ladies' craft night this month fell on St. Patrick's Day, so my friend Cindy offered up potato/bacon soup, minty green milkshakes and "Irish" guacamole, which isn't Irish at all but we had to justify it's place on the buffet table. Other girls brought along cookies and beer bread. So very tasty. For my craft I worked on those damn tissue-paper poufs -- they're never ending! I need to make at least 90 and the count is currently at 44.

And aren't these little bowls great!?!? My sister's boyfriend is a very talented ceramics artist/professor and he offered to create these as a wedding favor for our guests. BEST FAVOR EVER! Gabe's website is here: http://www.gabetociart.com/ It's difficult to gauge the size in these photos but all of the bowls can fit in the palm of your hand.

Back to blogging

February is always a busy month at work and I'm up to my eyeballs in Heart Month events. Three seminars and a health fair are out of the way, but we still have 4 remaining seminars plus a symphony concert sponsorship/marketing tie-in. So I'll be volunteering at the symphony this Saturday night, which is not so bad because we also get to enjoy the concert for free.

This week is also girls' craft night (Wednesday) and book club (Thursday). Sometime this week I will continue my search for the right shade of green tissue paper. I need to start on a wedding craft that will go along with the ceramic guest favors that my sister and her boyfriend have so generously begun creating for the big day.

D has found two of these dog booties out on the trails somewhere, so we drive Drift crazy by making him wear them around the house. The dog acts like we wrapped his feet in styrofoam! It's pretty entertaining for us to see him high-stepping around the house like a Lippezaner pony!

2009: Year in Review

January
The year started off with 10 to 15 degree below zero weather. D and I finally took our first real joint vacation (after 3.5 years together!) to Mexico and ended up with some bad luck, but had a great time overall. I did manage to come back with bruised ribs. Boo. We all waited for Mt. Redbout to blow.

February
Still waiting for a volcanic eruption. Bought new dining room furniture. Started ordering organic food through Full Circle Farm CSA. Our crazy high gas prices started to come down a bit. D began snowmachining out to a cabin up north and shooting critters.

March
I attended my second BOW (Becoming an Outdoors Woman) weekend. D continued his love affair with his snowmachine. Mt. Redoubt finally blows its top and luckily Anchorage only receives light ashfall. Of course we went to a party that evening and drove my car through the ash cloud. Figures.

April
We had been living in our new house for one year as of April 1st. In that year, D completed MANY home improvement projects (total kitchen remodel, popcorn ceiling scraping, 2 bathroom renovations, painting, etc.) D finished the master bathroom remodel in record time!We participated in a home energy rating in order to get money back from the state. I took a really neat train trip for a work excursion just as the whole swine flu hysteria broke in the US. Breakup hits Alaska -- temps hit 40 degrees and snow starts melting, making for messy streets and cars. We attend the annual Sportsman show and get pumped for fishing season!

May
D, Drift and I take the boat out to Deep Creek for our first trip of the summer. We had amazing weather and 60 degree temperatures, which is extremely abnormal for the beginning of May. D installed a new sliding glass patio door in the dining room and I finally bought a new dishwasher. Towards the end of the month we took a day trip out of Whittier and experienced the most beautiful (and HOT) weather in the Sound ever. The fishing was ok that day, shrimping was great.

June
Summer officially arrives and I get all of our flowers planted outside. D's parents arrive in Alaska after a long drive from Minnesota and the combat fishing season begins in earnest. D turns 35 and I get him the best present ever: a mission style recliner. We replace our 2-car garage door.

July
We continue to have kick-ass warm and sunny weather, and hit summer solstice. The grass grows faster than D can get around to cutting it. In celebrity news, I see Bear Grylls at Humpy's while out for a pint with friends and Sarah Palin resigns the governorship. D fishes every weekend with his parents and I drive down to the Russian and Kenai Rivers when I can. Dipnetting for salmon happens this month too.Oh, I caught a really nice king! We are vacuum-sealing and canning fish like crazy.

August
Best month ever! We celebrated my 32nd birthday, got ENGAGED and I won $1,000 worth of girly gift certificates from a radio contest. Took a wonderful trip to Tennesssee to see my family. Something not so great: one of my cats begins to bring home mice she has caught in the yard.

September
D goes moose and caribou hunting, and comes home with a really nice caribou that may make it into the Pope & Young record book for Alaska! We finally order my engagement ring from Blue Nile online and it is gorgeous. Construction continues on the main feeder road to our house. We take day trip at the end of the month to Lake Louise and Bonnie Lake for some hiking, canoeing and target practice.

October
We take another day trip, but go down south this time to Seward/Moose Pass to look at possible wedding locations and hike out to Carter Lake. I hit the one-year anniversary of my blog! We start wedding planning in earnest; setting the date and location, hiring a caterer, dj and photographer. Still no snow on the ground, which is odd. I work a lot of Saturdays because of health fairs. I help babysit triplets and realize that I do not want triplets.

November
I visit Texas for my 10-year college reunion. We fiinally get snow on the ground back home and have a snowy Thanksgiving. It's cold.

December
Ice fog hits Anchorage and my sister arrives for her yearly visit. D and I decide to go low-key for Christmas and not do presents. Without discussing it, we end up buying ourselves a big gift anyway! Kindle for me, chainsaw and snowmachine bibs for D. Our wedding save-the-dates finally go out in the mail. Risha and I go wedding dress shopping. Winter solstice means we have the lowest amount of daylight all year. We go x-c skiing one last time before the new year.

Save-the-Dates!

About half of the wedding save-the-date reminders went out yesterday morning. I'm working on getting them all out in batches! Save-the-dates are most often less traditional than a formal wedding invitation, so I designed a whimsical postcard with our colors in mind. The polar bear postcard stamp seems very apt (this being an Alaska wedding and all...)

Here's a sneak peak for my blog readers - yours will be arriving in the post shortly (barring any unforseen roadblocks and Christmas delays):

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Now that these are completed I can really begin thinking about our wedding invitations. I ordered lovely envelopes and enclosures from Paper Source (a store I'd LOVE to spend a few hours in) and am excited about starting the designing process.

On a related note, only 6 more months with my current last name. I'm planning on dropping my middle name (which I never really liked anyway) to become Audry Whalen Patrick, instead of Audry Sumie Whalen.

Poufs and pompoms

I went to girls' craft night yesterday, hosted by my friend Cindy at her home. I didn't have any pressing projects to work on but decided to practice making paper poufs and pompoms for the wedding. Not sure where these will go, but I love that they can be created in any size and then suspended from the ceiling or made into garland to string across the room or placed on the table.

I forgot to take a photo of mine, but here are Martha Stewart's:

I know that people have had questions regarding accomodations during the wedding -- everyone is really being proactive, I love that! Our wedding website is super close to being finished (I'm creating it from scratch in my non-existent spare time, so bear with me!) and it contains a lot of suggestions for lodging, things to do and what to bring. I'm working with three hotels in Seward for discount blocks of rooms: Seward Windsong Lodge, Breeze Inn and the Seward Harbor Holiday Inn Express. Plus there are options to camp or rent a motorhome or reserve a cabin for the weekend.

If you want to get a head start on booking a room or cabin, email me or leave a comment -- I'll forward some of those links!