The Ghost of Christmas Past

Remember that thing called Christmas, that thing that happened 3 months ago?  Yup, I’m horrible and I never shared the great things I received that have now been living in my home for 3 whole months.  So, let’s pretend we are back at this day…

When I posed with a boat load of gifts.  Please don’t mind my awesome outfit and hair, this is what I look like when I am pumped to start Christmas day.

Anyway, I got some great stuff from our amazing families and I wanted to share some of those things with you.

First up…

See that awe-mazing bison art on the wall?  Ya, that’s from my parents and I am in LOVE with it.  Lately, I have been pretty into bison, I don’t know what it is, I am just digging them.  I actually picked this guy out and hinted(pretty clearly) to my mom that I would love to hang it in my house.  If you’re wondering, it was created by an artist named Dolan Geiman, whom I found on etsy.  His work is A++ in my book, seriously check out this dog art <– click it! Or this guitar art? I am pretty much drooling over it.  I got the 16×20 print from his shop and think it is working well in our little kitchen nook.  While you have been gazing at that beautiful bison, you may have let your eyes wonder and notice that I also got a new table runner.  This however was something I picked up while looking for christmas gifts(I’m horrible, I know).  I got it for only $4 though at Target on clearance! Woot Woot!

I like to think that the runner and the bison have become good friends and I sure hope so, because they look great together.

Justin’s parents got me this antique rocking chair…

Do you love it?  Me too!  They also got me a great throw that lives with the rocking chair…

You may have noticed a copper boiling bin peaking into my last post in this picture…

If you didn’t notice, here it is up close and personal…

I have had my eye on one of these bad boys for a while.  I actually called Justin and asked him if I should buy one while out antiquing the week before Christmas.  Thankfully he said no, maybe he knew all along, hmmmm.  Good thing he didn’t let me get it because it was a gift from Sandy and Kent.  Let’s take another look at my mantel complete with new antiques…

Next up, I got this…

I could not be more in love with this print.  My mom got it from a gallery in Colorado.  Does it remind you of someone?

Like my Zack?

I had it mated and frame and now it is on the wall above our couches…

And since were on the dog topic…

This little bugger is a door stop from my parents.

My sister got me some great stuff too, but my favorite is this…

A sister Alex and Ani bracelet, she has one too.  If you haven’t heard of these yet, check em out.

I got some other great stuff as well that will surely come up in future posts.  Merry Christmas everyone!  Three months late #$!?

Antique Goodies

I thought I would share some great antique I have accumulated lately, I know you all love antiques as much as I do right?  Of course you do!  Remember back when I went to Renninger’s in Mt. Dora?  Forever ago?  Well I got a few things that I never made an appearance here on this blog…

Got these two for $4 a pop.  One is now living with me and one went to live with my sister.

Then I found one more that I had to have, also $4…

They currently live on my sewing table.  Sewing table?  What sewing table you ask?  Well…

I just so happened to pick up this guy while at Renninger’s as well.  Wait, it gets better…

It has a yard stick carved right into the top!  Are you blown away?  I know! I was too.  And it was only $80! Boom!

It also can conveniently collapse and be stored flat.  Why don’t people make stuff like this anymore?

Look how happy my sewing machine is to now have a home.  You’re welcome little sewing machine.  On the right side of my sewing table you might notice these…

Sandy gave me these little antique spools.  I love them!

And see that yard stick right in front of the spools?  That’s also a find from Renninger’s.

This guy caught my eye because it just so happens to be from NY.

Syracuse, NY.  Gotta have upstate NY love!

I also picked up a pretty sweet antique iron.

I have always thought these were really cool.  I love that they are cast iron.

This one even had a little piece of masking tape on the bottom that has a name and a date of 1960.  Pretty interesting.  It is now the doorstop in my laundry room and I have yet to stub my toe on it, which makes me proud.

Lastly, Sandy bought me one of my christmas gifts while we were at Renninger’s…

An English antique bellow.  Do you know why I love it oh so much?  Yup, because it has a girl and a dog on it!

Justin added a hook under our mantel on our fire place and it now hangs there…

That photo was taken when it was still appropriate to have reindeer on your mantel.  Here it is now…

So, there are some goodies I had yet to share with you.  I do have some more Christmas presents that you will hear about real soon.  Promise.

If You Like it Then You Shoulda Put a Doily on it

Yup, just quoted a Beyonce song and added the word doily to it.  Pretty sure I just became the coolest I have ever been in my life.   Now that that’s cleared up, I can explain that this post is all about my wedding invites!  Yes!  I am finally able to share all the details with you, because they went out last week.  Woot woot!!  That means only 2 months to go.

First off, my invites were homemade.  I decided to go the homemade route because I figured it would do two things for me.  1. Save me money and 2. Be absolutely unique.  I have to say that I did accomplish both of these tasks, that is if you consider my time worth $0.  If my time is worth money than these are the most expensive wedding invites ever!

Here’s how it all went down…

I googled around looking for some wedding invitation wording that I like.  Pretty much I was looking for something with a fun and casual feel.  I came up with this…

What are you doing May 10, 2014?

Nothing?

Perfect, because…

Vanessa and Justin

are getting married!

You have to be there!

Meet us under the oak tree.

Dinner, drinks and awkward, but enthusiastic dancing to follow.

Of course there are locations and times included, but I left those out.  Overall, I thought this was more us than the tradition wording that most have.

From there I had to figure out how I was going to print these.  I typed it up and purchased some cream colored card stock.  I went with cream because it was a good neutral base color and it tied in with my save the dates that previously went out…

I also used the same font(yellow peas) that I used on the save the dates.  And see those little yellow flowers?  These guys…

Welp, I wanted to include some of those as well, just to tie everything together with the save the dates.  Last time I attached them with my good ol’ friend the hot glue gun, but this time I wanted to try something else.  Then I came across a couple of ideas like this…

Sewn invitations!!! And guess what?  I have a sewing machine!  And boom!  Just like that I had a plan.

I sewed some of those cute little flowers on each invite and here is the end result…

I went with a zig zag pattern when sewing the flowers on.

I also had to come up with an RSVP for the invites, so I did the same googling and pinteresting thing and found a few I liked…

I was really digging the mad lib idea, I just needed to figure out what I wanted mine to say.  I wanted to keep it simple, since I thought this may confuse people to begin with.  Here is what I came up with…

They also each got a sewn flower.  Next up I wanted to include information about our hotel accommodations…

And lastly I created a map.  I once again googled around for how to create this map, and found a few that I loved on pinterest…

I wanted mine to be a bit simpler than these. I found a great blog post about creating a wedding map, that went step by step on how to create your own.  This is what I ended up with…

and on the back…

Some quick directions written out since it can get a bit tricky.  And here is the whole shebang together…

and one more for fun…

I love how they turned out.  As you can probably see my colors for the wedding are super neutral, with some greens and yellows.  Just how I roll I guess, I like my neutrals.  Anyhow, once I put everything together, I still felt like it needed something.  Then I remember seeing some wedding invites wrapped in doilies…

I then headed out to Michaels so I could jump on the doily bandwagon.  The title of this post might be starting to make some sense now.  I bought some 12 inch circle paper doilies and folded them around each invite, just like in the photos above.  I then wrapped a piece of yellow or green string(I used both) around the doily and tied it into a bow.  Then a trimmed the excess doily that hung above or below the invite.  Not picturing it?  Well here it is…

And when you untie the string…

You’ll first see the invite and then below…

The RSVP, map and accommodations.  Wanna see a heap of invites?

Well, there you go.

The last thing I needed to do was address and stamp these suckers and they are on there way.  Here are the stamps I chose…

Vintage flowers, could it get any better?

As for addressing the envelopes I typed up all of the addresses and printed them on each RSVP envelope and each invitation envelope…

And then I did this for fun…

Overall, I can not say I saved a butt load of money on making these myself, but they are definitely one of a kind and I enjoyed making them my own.  Thanks for reading:)