What is the value of a Wedding Planner?

Happy Easter and Happy April Fool's Day! Yesterday was a beautiful spring day, which is very fitting with the holiday for renewal and new beginnings.

I celebrated yesterday with an Easter brunch at a friend's house, which was great, except.... there were a ton of families. Families... with kids.... totally fine, but Ben and I were totally not in their club. My friend surprised me with an Easter gift, a Wedding Organizer.

To read my review/opinion/rant about wedding organizers, follow the jump...


BUT FIRST: Look at my Easter outfit! I loved being able to wear my mint green lace dress with fun magenta and purple hounds tooth tights! Felt and looked like an Easter egg!!

From Ghetto to Glitter: DIY Towel Box

Have you ever lived in a rental or small house with absolutely no space? I have... a few times over, in fact.

The worst part of living in a non-permanent space is the lack of storage space! Also, it is a total bummer that you cannot do any semi-permanent decorating in a rental home or apartment :(

 I began noticing this during my second year of college, when I worked and attended school full time (all through loans which is totally biting me in the ass right now). During this time I moved from trash pit to trash pit and picked up a few ways to beautify my ghetto belongings and use them to resolve my storage issues! Right now, my amazing fiance is working hard and paying most of our bills, but we don't live any sort of Jones' lifestyle (I think it's because Seattle LOVES being pricey!), so I resort to my low-cash-day training when attempting to decorate and arrange our tiny rental house. Below I have laid out the steps I took to decorate my "towel box."

This is the box I have been using as a towel box since I moved to Seattle....9 months ago... whoops!! As you can tell, I cut off the top flaps and attempted to tape the raw edges with Scotch brand duct tape... um, didn't work... I will definitely spend the extra few dollars to get the original duck tape brand.

I AM SO SORRY I DIDN'T SWEEP BEFORE TALKING PHOTOS! My house is always hairy since 4 out of 5 residents are covered in hair ( he he Ben is hairy). The two rolls of wrapping paper were purchased at my nearby Marshalls for $3.99 each!!! The second I saw them I grabbed them since I have never seen wrapping paper with glitter on it before. Anyways, I ended up only using half of one roll so in total cost this project used up $2.00 worth of new supplies.

Here is my towel box wrapped!! HOW PRETTY!!!!! As you can tell, I cannot wrap very well.... I ended up having to use an extra piece to cover the open gap my wrapping job left... Overall, It was really easy and fun to wrap a gift to myself... sort of ;)

Next, I decided my towel box needed a liner to keep the hair from getting in my box... this made sense when I was making this, ok? Ha ha! It definitely looks prettier with a liner, so at least there is that!

I made sure to cut 3 strips of my LEFT OVER POLYESTER lining fabric that would cover all sides of the box, and then an extra strip for the bottom. Then I hot glued the lining in place. PS- This takes A LOT of glue so be sure to grab a stick or two just in case.

Here is my box with it's hot glued Polyester lining! GORGEOUS! Much better than having Paula Deen's face look at me every time I grabbed a towel!

Sorry for the ONE off photo, but I turned my phone when taking this one...
VOILA! My finished  and pretty towel  holder!

I am so luck that this towel box/holder fits right outside of our bathroom door! I know it's kinda weird to have your towels on the floor, but if you don't have space then create it! I love the colors of the wrapping paper and the bronze/silver glitter polka dots. I am definitely happy with the result! 

So there you go! If you ever need a storage box do not overlook those moving boxes you've saved. They may be the difference between a cheap DIY alternative and a $15 towel rack.

As dead as O-Ren

OK, so this has nothing to do with Kill Bill, but I just recently watched the two films and fell in love with that line...

This post is actually about my DIY Save the Dates!

My fiance is a very laid back guy that really has no qualms giving me full control of wedding plans... which drives me nuts! Before anyone gets a bad impression, my love is such a great man and I know I am very lucky but that still does not mean that I don't want to punch his face in a few days a year :)

Back to the Save the Dates:

I love the postcard invitations that have been trending for a while now. My Pinterest board is stocked high with all of the wedding postcards that inspired me to make my own. The only difference between the Pinterest postcards and mine is $$$! I've checked out zazzle.com and vistaprint.com but both sites turned out to be quite pricey, and the sites didn't allow me to edit the images (which for a person without Photoshop is very important). Instead of shelling out $1.75-2.00/card I decided to buy the AVERY brand Matte White Postacards (item #8387) and print them myself! Initially my little sister (creative, photoshop owning type) was supposed to make them, but she is so busy working hard and having a life (I can't blame her for having fun, can I?) that I resorted to using Microsoft Power Point and the Avery Design Pro program. It didn't turn out half-bad! I had to do a couple of trial prints and fiddle around with background transparency, but they turned out nice enough for a card that just announces our wedding date.

Here are some photos that may help you create your own special Save the Dates:

I'd love to make this up-right but it wouldn't go along with the others. So please cock your head to the left when looking.

This is the final edit for the back of our Save the Dates! It may seem too light on the computer but the words POP better when the background image is at a transparency of 62%. The photo below is of one the first I printed. The background image was at a transparency of  54% and looked "fine." Unfortunately the green grass interrupted the green in the font.

Side-by-side comparison of the two backs of our Save the Date postcards.

The front of our postcards show off my very amazing engagement ring! I am proud to say that it was custom made and my fiance planned it all himself. I am so lucky to have a man that knows what I want. Please ignore our messy desk!

This is my planner. I thought it was hilarious that I wrote "Print STD Cards." Let's just say that abbreviating Save the Dates is a BAD idea! AAAAND now you know I paid rent on Friday! ha ha.

As you have probably noticed, the cards all have weird borders with many different sizes.... It's ok, I freaked out for a whole hot minute too! I then remembered that I work at an elementary school and I can just chop off those borders with that giant blade on a wooden tray... what are those things called? Oh well, I'm going to use it and come back to add photos of my finished products.

As I write this I am assuming that everyone knows how to design things on Power Point, and maybe I am being a bit ignorant in thinking this, but if you need help at all please feel free to leave a comment below and I will do my best to type a step-by-step instruction on how to create custom sized slides and save them individually as JPEGs. 

How much did this DIY save the Rhudy Wedding?

Well, we are having a "destination" wedding of sorts. All of our family members and friends live in Kansas, Texas, California, or Venezuela so we completely understand that this isn't an easy wedding to attend. In lieu of expecting many guests we are still inviting all of the people that we wish could be there to share our special moment. I don't know about them but I LOVE memorabilia, so I keep all the cards and photos I get in the mail. I believe that receiving our Save the Dates will help people know that we love them and hold them special in our hearts. 

Now, to answer the questions, we are printing 120 Save the Dates. If we were to print them online through a custom card website we would spend in the ballpark of $210 JUST on Save the Dates... nothing else. Seriously? People would spend that much on a card that just tells you the wedding date?! Ridiculous! The Avery packet of postcards cost us $15 online and our Amazon Prime account got it shipped to us for free. Also, our ink is free since the printer is used for my fiance's work 98% of the time. I can understand that printing at home can be very expensive when buying your own ink, but if you think about it two new packets of ink (assuming one is black and the other multicolor) will cost you approximately $75. So in total you would spend $90 on printing your Save the Dates at home. That is more than half off the price of printing online! Plus, this allows you to be unique and creative with your design. 

I hope that this post helps any budget brides (as I like to refer to us) or any DIY brides out there!

besos,

VEM

Small step for the Evergreen girl, but giant step for the wedding plans

These past couple of weeks have been so incredibly hectic! I want to just sit and cry, not a bad cry.... I think...

Today my fiance and I viewed houses we are interested in purchasing, had a cake tasting, AND somehow managed to still find the time to eat pizza and watch two episodes of House of Cards (sarcasm).

how cute are these decorations?
yes, I WILL copy them. ha ha.

The cake tasting took place at Stuffed Cakes (an adorable cupcake shop in West Seattle that is owned and operated by the most amazing and kind woman). Ben and I were definitely ready to stuff our faces (I know, I'm like really funny). We taste tested the Banana with PB frosting, Snowberry, and Lemon with cream cheese frosting.  Our mouths were in cupcake heaven. After eating the delicious treats we chose the flavors we wanted to offer at our wedding. We went with the Banana, Snowberry, and Orange Dream (not from the cake tasting, but rather a random flavor we tried the week before). Ben and I did not choose the mini cake flavor ( you know, for the "cutting the cake" photos) but I definitely have wheels turning in my head. I definitely want it to have two dinosaurs being wed OR Poison Ivy (my favorite comic character) and Batman being wed. All I know is that Stuffed Cakes is one of the best cupcake shops in West Seattle  (maybe the world?) AND the owner is such a sweet and comfortable lady to be around. She even let me talk and talk AND talk about decorations (which is nice when your entire wedding party is at least two states away).

so... there we go, one thing that can be crossed off of my Emma Pillsbury style wedding checklist.

Another step towards completing my 2013 goals was exercise! WOO HOO! The lazy bum got off her... ahem, bum. I went running with a mom's meetup group. I know I'm not a mom BUT all of my WS friends are moms and I take care of three babies (cat, small dog, giant dog). Let's just say that I did not last very long. Those crazy, eye-rollable ladies wanted to run 6 miles....... 6 MILES! Whatevs.... freaks.....
Yeah, I'm going again tomorrow to try and keep up :) I also went to local YMCA and worked out! That felt really amazing. I hadn't been to a gym since I graduated from college. I am joining next weekend (after I use another guest pass.... hey, why not?).

The next post will finally be about sewing. I have been sewing but I am REALLY bad about taking photos of the progress or for tutorials. Let's see how this goes!

goodbye internet. I will miss you.

The List- 2013

I am 26 days behind, but I am finally making my 2013 list.

The past six months have truly been an emotional roller coaster for me (which is incredibly hard to deal with in a new city with no friends). This list is my way of telling the universe, "SHUT UP! I am in control... sort of."

My wishes for 2013:
-Plant a bee garden: I've been wanting to do this since 2008, but I have never had the amount of time I have now.

-Have an exciting and stress-free wedding: This truly is a wish since I have no idea how this mess will turn out!

-Sew my own wedding dress: I am a novice but so determined to make this happen.

-Make friends in Seattle: This is my new home, so I better make the most of it!

-Gain confidence: Everyone here is Seattle skinny (not too skinny but somehow super healthy and in shape) and I want to be able to walk by a Seattleite and not feel insecure about myself!

-Train my dogs: My babies know basic commands (one more than the other) but they are SO spoiled. I want to push myself to teach them that I am the pack leader and their boss (right now they are my bosses).

-Keep in touch with my family: This doesn't seem like a hard thing to do.... I mean, pick up the phone and dial, right? Well, I am such a weird state of mind that I find my station in life so meaningless that I don't even want to bother people with what I haven't been doing (also, sadness and anger rubs off on others and I want everyone happy) which leads to...

-Be happy: This one may be my hardest challenge. I am so focused on what I don't have that I ALWAYS overlook what I do have: my health, my fiancé, my pups, my cat, my family, my God, etc. We will see if this is another cynical year for me!



Let's get this blog started, citags.

-VEM