Inviting!

I think the invitations went out long enough ago that this won't be a spoiler...

When we started planning, the only certainty was that I wanted to make my own invites. I knew the typewriter would be involved, but beyond that I just saw endless craft possibilities, with little project certainty. Then, this summer a wonderful local stationary store, Scribbles, in Burlington went sadly out of business. Sale on paper. Dangerous words. Their remaining inventory determined the color scheme. I wanted to use some metallic, but didn't want it to go kitsch. I tried to walk the line. The envelopes were delightful and I just bought a box of various papers up, hoping something would come to me.

Drew claims it took 6 weeks. That's an exaggeration, but not much of one. My mom was a life saver. Joining the assembly line at the surface formerly known as our kitchen table.  Here's the final product:

Can't get enough of that typewriter. Or those king & queen stamps...

Isn't that the best envelope lip? I was afraid that the post office would read it as the addressee line and after mailing I'd get 50 envelopes back, but all seems to have worked.

Would I do it all over again? I'd say no, but I'm already anxious to get started on your Valentine's Day cards. Old habits die hard.

Holiday Open Studio and Art Sale

For those in the Burlington area, my studio space is having a little impromptu art open studio & art sale this Saturday. I'll have quilts and other sewn sundries and will be knee deep in some final wedding projects. Grab coffee at Speeder & Earls and then swing on by!

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Holiday Open Studio and Art Sale

SATURDAY, DEC. 19, from 11am - 4pm
at Eight Space Art Studios

4 HOWARD ST., 1st floor (near the corner of Pine)

Artists Jen Berger, Bonnie Anderson, Rachel Trooper and Emily Blistein will be opening their doors to all, selling paintings, cards, prints, jewelry, fabric art and more. Enjoy refreshments as you browse!
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Here's to a vague memory of all of the free time I had last year to make quilts!

Happiness is a (hot glue) gun.

I don't know why I haven't used my hot glue gun yet. I just found this recipe for fabric pompoms. Supplies needed include: fabric, scissors, a hot glue gun and paper lanterns (I used styrofoam balls). How can you not love that supply list. After the fabric was cut, I whipped these up in 30 minutes. I added a few circles of vintage sheet music too. Simple, fluttery and another recipe that works for fabric & paper. My favorite.

Beware the hot glue gun though. You know the saying: When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail? So goes the hot glue gun. When you have one, everything looks like it should be bound.

All I know is...

Tonight I made pompoms. Or: tonight I continued making pom poms. These days many things are in various states of continuing to be made. I have hunks of yarn sprawling from bags from next to the couch. Little pompoms are stuffed into one bag, yarn in another. And that's just the living room.

At one point, I dumped the pompoms out on the couch. Drew was here. He smiled. I asked if he liked them. He smiled. What? I said. All I know, he told me, is that this is just stage one. I prodded. He went on:

Stage two involves artfully arranging them somewhere. Fabric comes out. Things get tweaked. The camera comes out. More tweaking. Lighting is adjusted. Little details are typed up. He went on.

For the record, Drew is a terrible impersonator. Terrible. He has one universal voice for all women. It's high pitched, tone deaf and pretty darn bad. But his recitation of how I make things was spot on. It went on with detail. It was painfully accurate and absolutely hilarious.

I threw pompoms, a plaintive attempt to make it stop (and frankly to see what they look like thrown).  But despite my pride, I thought for posterity, and maybe a smidge of truth-in-advertising, here's how it looks - in all of it's rumpled banality- for real. Stage one:

This is how we spend our Saturday nights.

On Sunday, he'll spend the day at the mountain and I'll spend the day with my sewing machine (and, a hot glue gun.)

We've got three weeks to go. Vows unwritten.

All I know is, whatever forever we get is slated to include a hell of a lot of laughing.

Pompoms optional.

Finders Keepers

 

I had a banner day at the Quechee antique store.  I was picking up a few odds and ends. Actually, I was picking up a wedding band, which is neither an odd nor an end, and is sweet as can be (in addition to being a platinum steal!).

On my way to the jewelry case I found some of my new favorite things: Glass bottles and tins and pony shoes, oh my! And a 1950s cocktail dress that fits like a glove.

Everything looked so great together. As they were wrapping and ringing me up,  I couldn't wait to get home to unwrap and photograph. Once again, our painfully creamsicle colored dining room transforms into a divinely muted color when photographed in the afternoon light. Frankly, I think it's magic that these photos aren't a blurry mess. I like magic.

Smith Corona Typewriter (perfectly usable for $30!)

Added to the collection of bottles... (the little blue one says 3-in-one potion!...why oh why do we package everything in plastic.)

Plus some old tobacco tins. Pictured here with all of the pony shoes because they just seem to go together like peas & carrots.

If only I had been able to find a "Quechee is GORGE-ous" Tshirt, the day would have been complete.

Buy your Linen, Rent your forks

In the early days of wedding planning I swore I could get it done for $5000.  I was quickly disabused of this notion. But it made me mildly nauseous as I realized how much money could be spent for a few hours of our lives (even if it will, blah-da-de-blah, last forever in our memories). So I made a few early decisions which I'm fairly certain, kept me to only doubling, not infinitely multiplying, my original figure. Here are the wedding planning rules I lived by: 1) I'll make what I can 2) I'll buy local and antique whenever possible 3) Instead of renting, I'll buy things we'll want to keep.

Aside from loving Drew to infinity in the eyes of the State, item #3 brings me to my favorite part: I'm doing my own linens. The theory being: 1) Renting linens is insanely expensive and generally uninspiring 2) If it's fabric, I can reuse or re-purpose it, 3) Vintage cotton and linen are outstandingly lovely and create exactly the aesthetic I want. More proof?

That said, I had planned on buying my forks too. Oh, and all of the china. Can you imagine dozens of sets of mismatched silver plated silverware and a variety of vintage china on the linens above?
I can.
But I had to stop somewhere.