books, books & more books!

I *fluffy heart* my Hubs SO much. He's just the sweetest! A while back I went into complete meltdown mode... I'm currently unemployed which means finding the money to make even small purchases can sometimes be hard. When you are as visual a person as I am, its also hard to made decisions without being able to put together mock ups and really playing with different things. Well, my sweetheart knew he couldn't afford to go out and buy all things needed to start centerpiece mock ups (more on that front soon) but he did stop at borders and pick me up these:




Hubs knows {obviously!} that I am a HUGE list person. I can sometime write a list 3, 4 even 5 times over again, just to help me flush out thoughts or ideas. This book is great because it has everything that you could possibly need. I'm sure to save a lot of time by using their generalized list and then adding on to it to make it my own.

The other "book" is also great. Its really more of a binder than book. It has places to hold business cards, graph paper to lay out floor plans, a guest list tracker, and a lot more! One book to help me remember and one book to help me keep things together.

I am still thinking about putting together a binder with page protectors to house all my inspiration photos, contracts and anything else I collect all the way!

Color....

Okay, so I know many of you will think that we are crazy, but after much pondering we have given in.

Our wedding colors were/are Navy blue, Eggplant purple & Gray. Don't know how many of you have ever tried to find anything in these colors but its not easy. Mainly because blue and purple are so close to each other on the color wheel. What I could find was red! Navy & red; Eggplant & red; Even gray and red! Four colors seems like a little much... Hubs thought 3 colors was a little much but agreed that navy and purple was going to need a lighter color to help round it out. Dark colors are our thing.. if you haven't noticed?! =0) So of course the first color that comes to mind is Crimson!!! But can you say emo/gothic chic?? Doesn't really play into that whole fun, whimsical mindset huh? I don't know about anybody else and I'm not knocking anything but just no! ya know?! So began combing through the options...

1) Ditch Navy.. so colors would be Crimson, Eggplant & Gray. But we've already bought blue items.

2) Ditch Eggplant.. so colors would be Navy, Crimson & Gray. But in my mind it just looked like a 4th of July party! Ummm, NO.

3) Ditch Gray.. so colors would be Navy, Eggplant & Crimson. Okay, even to dark for me. Plus this combo just screams gothic and that's so not what we want conveyed at our celebration
so after much debate we went with option

4)Ditch our favorite red but add a red that works with the color scheme already chosen! Our improved color scheme is:

Navy blue, Eggplant purple, Candy Apple red & Gray.

Ring Pillow

So almost everything I buy has to have some sort of alteration. My wedding colors just aren't that popular, especially in the spring/summer seasons! Anyway, I had to share this find with you! I was in Shelbyville visiting family and decided to go browse the goodwill! I LOVE the goodwill for their prices {most of the time} and their ever evolving selections!

On this day there happened to by a whole rack of wedding items. Unity candles and their base, flower basket, guest book & this pillow:
I'm not huge on the fact that it is bright white but that can be changed! I feel in love for 2 reasons: One. Its small. Our bearer will be a few months shy of 3 years old when we have our celebration so having a huge pillow would look off. And Two. it was 50 cents!

My thinking was that I could take this small pillow, take the ribbons off, buy new fabric and just use this as the pillow form but a crafty friend suggested that it would be easier & cheaper if we just "un-stitched" a corner took whatever is in it out and dyed the pillow whatever color we wanted! I'm super excited about this DIY, dying is always fun!!! And if were not happy after its done... will I still have my pillow stuffing don't I?!

Odds & Ends

For the time being {I say this because Hubs works for a restaurant so schedules are always changing} Hubs is home on Saturday mornings! So, needless to say we've been hitting the neighborhood yard sales. We aren't hard core about it or anything but have had a little bit of luck. {probably would have more luck but I just can't bring myself to dig through things!} In one such outing I found the perfect empty frame prop for our DIY photo booth for 25 cents! I never took a picture of it so I can't share {sorry} right now, but I was truly excited especially after venturing to the local goodwill where they wanted close to 5$ for a frame this size! Right now its in the to be painted pile of the "wedding war room" which used to be our dining room! As per everything else I have no idea what color I'd like to paint it! Right now its just your plain old wooden frame... and that just wont do! =)

On to another yard sale where I found this guy!
Obviously, this guy is that start of my "jar/vase" collection that will turn into our candy bar! This jar was 4$ and I love it! Of course I'll have to play up our colors with ribbon and I'll have a tag as to what candies are in the different jars!

I have also bought some just standard clear scoops to go with my candy bar that I will be dressing up. I'm thinking ribbon and maybe some rhinestones on the handle. What do you think? I have 2 of each size {although, I don't know if I'll be using the largest size, Its really big}. 6 scoops cost me 3$. That didn't seem to bad to me! Now I just have to decide what candy I want! I feel as though I'm doing certain things backwards but I guess that's what you've got to do when you find great deals!!

The Getaway!

Picture it.. its the end of the night, we're ready for our "grand" exit, all the guest have gathered outside for the photo op, we open the doors and all the guests have ________!
Okay, its time to fill in the blank!

Originally, I wanted these!

Aren't they great? Ribbon wands; they are simple, fun and as you can tell make for a cool picture! It would be another DIY but who cared? I am up for anything that is going to make my wedding day and especially the pictures {because we will not have enough money in the budget for a cinematographer} look AMAZING!!

Then in dawned on me! You dummy. Our ceremony and reception are in the same place. There won't be a day exit {i.e. leaving church to go to reception/picture location or an afternoon reception that involves a grand exit during day light hours!} I was sad to see this idea go because I thought it was really cute. So now the brainstorming begins. I'm determined to have a "grand" exit. Hubs hated the idea. He didn't think we needed one and when I found out, the only thing that I could think of for a night time exit, sparklers, were not permitted at my venue I figured it was fate telling me that I just really didn't need that exit... A week or so later I stumbled across this picture and everything changed! Even the Hubs thought it was fun and agreed that if I could find some that wouldn't break the bank, this would be our exit.

Fast forward to last week... OH how I love the holidays! Knowing that I'm renewing my vows on my 3rd anniversary has given me 21 months to plan my celebration that's 2 of almost every holiday to take advantage of the savings and sales they have to offer. I bring this up because Target now has 4th of July goodies in there 1$ section, including, you guessed it, glow bracelets! As long as these bad boys stay in the dark they are good for basically ever! There are 15 per tube and I got 5 tubes. That's a little less than the number of invited guests but I'm sure some won't want to participate and some older guests may have already left the party by the time the exit rolls around!In a previous trip to Marshalls {my time in this store}, way back when I was still thinking that I was going to be using the wands I came across these:
They are just your standard pencil cup but I love the design of them and thought they'd work great for holding the wands until the time came for the big exit! There job has changed only slightly. Now that they'll be holding the glow bracelets I think I'll only need to use one. Any ideas for the other could be used for?? These are black so they will be spray painted before we use them. Here is a close up if the detail {again, sorry for the poor picture quality}
All in all, we'll have spent 8$ on our super cool exit!

What kind of exit did you have/going to have at your wedding?

The Budget & My 2$ Toasting Flutes!!!

The magic number! The number in which all our dreams are based around... is floating?! With this being technically a vow renewal, the Hubs and I wouldn't feel right about asking my parents to contribute any funds and his mother doesn't speak to us (his father passed away several years ago), so we aren't holding our breathe for contributions from her! Not that we'd ask, we knew that when we started this adventure that the majority, if not all the expense would fall on our shoulders and while times can be hard we are doing our best to scrimp, scrap and save in order to have the wedding of our dreams!!! We are competitive people so we are always trying to "beat" our budgets! Meaning we usually always find a way to come in under budget! Currently our budget is "floating" somewhere between 7,000 & 10,000 dollars. I have no doubt that with the right savvy choices we will come in closer to the 7,000$ mark.

& finding great deals at our local Dollar Tree is one of the great strategies we employ! Now Hubs and I had "done" our homework once before and knew/were told that finding toasting flutes and serving sets at great prices was easy as long as we were willing to do the ebay route. I'm sure that ebay is great and I've read where people have gotten great deals on everything from vase filler to their big day dress! But here and now I openly admit that I'm not a HUGE ebay person. Hell, I'm not even a huge Internet person {I know, I know}. So I had come to terms with that unless I lucked out with an awesome yard sale or goodwill find, I'd be spending roughly $25 on a toasting flutes! I have to say, spending that much on a set of glasses I was going to use MAYBE once a year sucked!! So you can imagine my delight when on a recent DT trip I happened to run across this babies! {I know its a terrible pic! Sorry} They are a darker blue in person, not navy but dark enough to make me happy. Especially at the price of 1$ each!! I even let the Hubs take his pick as they also had goblets in this color!

I'm debating If I should do anything else to them.. I could put rhinestones on the base.. Or maybe ribbon around the stem. I don't know. What do you think??

Heartbroken!

I couldn't sleep so I thought I'd hop over to my favorite blog {http://queencitybride.blogspot.com} for some late night reading but was instead told that this blog is now only viewable by INVITATION ONLY!

O...M...G!!! What am I supposed to do for inspiration now? 8( It's a very sad nite...