Bouquets

My friend Nikki asked me to do her wedding bouquets after seeing pictures of Julie's. I loved the colors she chose for her wedding and since she finally got hitched, I can share the pictures with you!

This time I remembered to take a few more pictures of the process. First you cut the styrofoam ball in half.

Cut your dowels to size.

Poke a hole with a pen and fill it with hot glue, then push the dowel in.

Wrap it in satin. Tape down the extra fabric.

Wrap the base however you like

Cover with lots and lots of flowers. 

I never like to do the exact same thing twice so we added some fun little details (I was getting paid this round so I didn't mind a little extra work). I stamped metal plates with words she chose and scattered them around the bridal bouquet.

I also made one with the happy couples' initials

I really liked this crocheted ribbon I found for the base of this one.

I really liked how the bridesmaid bouquets worked out with the initials. No confusion on whose was whose. And the charms were just too pretty.

I think I'll let my fingertips recover for a few months before I say yes to any more fabric flowers.I should also mention that afterwards I found about 20 flowers stashed in the trunk of J's little push car. Sneaky little klepto.

Easter Dinner

We invited some friends and neighbors for Easter dinner but I felt self-conscious snapping pictures of them because I don't know them very well. I don't want to seem like the photo-crazy mommy blogger that I really am. I should probably just own it. Anyways, since we were having a good-sized group I decided to make it all pretty.

Can I just tell you how much I love my husband's support of my craziness? He doesn't ever complain about helping me with tablecloths or tables. Or more impressively, no complaining about my frazzled and stressed state when I'm trying to make it all look good 5 minutes before people are supposed to show up. He even acknowledges that it does feel more special when things are staged to look nice. Of course he probably still thinks dying eggs with a purple cabbage (from my garden no less!) is a little ridiculous. Then again, I think it is too, but it doesn't stop me. Tutorial on cabbage egg dying here. Isn't that blue fantastic?

 I was a bad hostess and ignored my guests a little to snap my kids in their Easter outfits. The lighting was so lovely though and I don't think anyone cared. I have to say I'm proud of how her Easter dress turned out.

I had this old tshirt in the back of my car just in case I spilled chemicals on myself at school and had to use the safety shower. I haven't taught for 3 years and that shirt never left the trunk of my car until we sold the car. So I threw it in the wash and it became a size I could barely wear as a 10 year old. With upcycling it in mind, I chose the floral to match. You may recognize the goodwill sheet fabric from its reincarnation as this dress.

I tried to find a pattern I liked on the interwebs but nothing had a combo of Tshirt knit and cotton. Well maybe there was something but I have a 20 click attention span for pattern searches. I get tired easily. So I made this one up with elements I liked from other dresses. Because I'm the ultimate in lazy sewer, I reused the seams on everything so I didn't have to hem anything. The meant the dress came together in about 20 minutes. Until I decided to add pockets. Made by Rae, dana made it, and make it and love it all inspired a part of it. The shirred pockets took forever, but J LOVES anything with a pocket. She likes to store her "handy handy notebook" in them.

Here is what I get when I try and get them to take pictures.

So I hound them for 20 minutes to get more like these

This one is a favorite.

At this point I went back to enjoying my guests. Then I see that the kids had relieved my flowers of far more blossoms than I thought. They were all in the bucket and just needed to be thrown in the air so I picked up my camera to record the festivities. It's not like I could put the flowers back so might as well enjoy them to the fullest.

M didn't know what was going on, but he knew he liked it.

Such joy!

I made myself a new pink pencil skirt to coordinate, you know, so we could be one of those families at church, but Husband was focused not on documenting my fashion for the blog, but on the smiling faces of his girls. Just where it should be :)

I think my daughter might be French

So I found this post in my drafts from forever ago and had no idea what it was about so I opened it up. Lo and behold, it had pictures attached. Oh my little girl is so much bigger now! This was from her early hoarding phase. We've moved on from the car trunk to squirreling things away behind the bean bag and behind the glider in M's room.

At the time I'm sure I had some witty ideas on why this was french behavior but those have left me now.

Perhaps it is because she appreciates fine vehicles?

But probably because she stole the smoked Gouda while I was making dinner and stored it in her getaway car.

I remember how she hoarded these flowers in there too. Then as she got bigger these flowers ended up in cozy coupe. I'm seeing a trend.

Life in May

Autumn has always been my favorite season but Spring might be edging it out now that I live somewhere with so much green growing things. The blossoms are just amazing. I've always read flower names in books and now I can actually connect blossoms to them. Like this amazing azalea bush.

 Husband wanted to pull all of the "grass" from the flower beds but I didn't think it was grass and convinced him to wait. They ended up being tons of wildflowers called harebells.

Husband was gone on another trip and J suggested sushi for dinner. So we grabbed some to go and headed to the park where this amazing wisteria was blooming. We were a hot mess yet again with fights over using public bathrooms alone and throwing sand at toddlers and so many other little things that the pictures don't do justice. So let's just look and pretend it's a charmed life I live.

Then the iris started blooming a few days later and all was well with the world. God bless the person who planted all of these amazing plants. I love you.

Apparently this is what rhododendrons look like. They are the state flower, grow 20 feet tall and come in all different colors. Here's our pink one.

And our red one

Some poppies? hanging out next to a dead rhododendron bush.

My wedding flower, the lovely calla lily.

This tree framing my window has these gorgeous clusters of yellow flowers.

I wish I knew what kind of tree it is because the trunk is cracked and I know it's going to die. But it gives me this view out my window.

Then different shades of irises started blooming!

I love them all!

As a gift for my auntie, I wrote out her favorite quote and painted the flower that's on her wedding china. it ended up being waaaaay more work than I thought it should be. 

M wanted to wear a tie that matched his dad and my heart melted.

J found salamander spawn in the pond and impressed me by knowing it was a salamander by the fuzzy cheek parts. We caught one and put it in the specimen jar from the bug collecting kit she had picked out at the dollar store a week ago. I was kind of bummed when she dumped it back into the pond.

M's preschool had a mother's day tea with a little program. Man, these things are so adorable.

I went to my first pro soccer game with my friend Natalie. We met at the airport once and really connected. It's been a blast hanging out with her and I love out meet cute story.



We watched Penny for a week while Lil Sis went on a cruise. Girlfriend wakes up at 5am. It was hard.

M3 had an amazing time a Elia's bday party. They are my alpaca owning friends up the street and had a pool blown up with four beach balls. This baby's heaven.

I was asked to judge their lego competition. The submissions were extensive.

For memorial day Husband planned a fantastic trip on a ferry and we explored Kingston. It was so fun and LOVED not having to plan or think about a single thing. He did all the work scouting out places to eat and ferry times and stuff to do. The day was perfect weather for it too.

There were the biggest clam shells I've ever seen on a beach. Many of them had little barnacle looking things that M called sea animals. He wanted to put every single one of them back in the ocean so the animals could pop out. We tried explaining that the tides would come in and cover them but he was skeptical.