Little Boys Buttonholes

As I have said we have two little boys being our ring bearers and they already have their adorable bow ties and braces  but I really wanted them to have flowers the same as the full sized groomsmen. I was worried about giving a 2 year old a buttonhole and it a. getting crushed or b. pinning him in the front or c. just straight falling off!

I made these using faux flowers that I had in my stash from home bargains and these buttonhole backers I got for making our adult buttonholes plus blue velvet ribbon and some trim from my stash.

I started by selecting the smallest and most compact flowers I could and removing the leaves. I measured the stems and trimmed them to shorter than the buttonhole stem before using my glue gun to firmly attach them and then once I was happy added the leaf. I secured the ribbon and wrapped the stem real tightly before adding some pearl trim around the base.

These are very sturdy feeling and have a clip on the back so they can be slipped over rather than clipped through hopefully meaning less dangerous!

Since we are doing our own flowers this also means one less thing for me to do on the Friday before which quite frankly I am quite happy with!

What did you deck your little ones in?

Fizz
xoxo

Entertaining Children at Weddings

We have decided to have an all inclusive wedding and although we love kiddos we know that not everyone does and so we had better have something to keep them entertained if we want them to sit through dinner!

We have a good spread of ages from infants (who aren’t getting anything more entertaining than sat next to their parents!) to 7 year olds and i tried to tailor their little gifts accordingly.

All in I think this cost me £14.00 and some of the supplies I always have on hand ( brown paper, washi tape, stampers and some scraps of coloured paper to mention a few.)

So this is what I started with, all of this came from the low end stores (poundland at the bottom to the works at the top of the ££ end!)

For the two bigger girls (7) I found colouring / sticker books at home bargains, coloured pencils (which helpfully came in a two pack) from the works along with a pencil sharpener and rubber because as a long time lover of colouring there is nothing worse than not having a sharpener when you need it and the rubbers came in the pack! They also got DIY necklace kits which were a bougie £2.00 each from poundland which I repacked to make them a little more easily controlled!

For the little kiddos (5 2 to 3 year olds) i used the colouring and activity books from poundland that come in a 8 pack and stuck a colouring book and activity book together and covered them in brown paper, added some coloured paper and a monogram. I also took one package of poundland crayons and divided them up into little envelops that i had decorated with washi tape.

For the babies (2 both around 9 months old) i bought the poundland stacking cups, turned the boxes inside out, covered them in brown paper and accented them with coloured paper and the stamped monogram again.

I packed the gifts up into clear bags to corral the mess and finish them up.

I can not yet speak of their effectiveness but I hope they hit the spot for our young guests while not causing us to file for bankruptcy!

What worked for you to entertain children through your big day?

Fizz
xoxo

Children at Weddings, why we are!

What a decisive topic! I have a friend who said no children at all (even her nephew), I have another who said yes to only the closest children and then we are at the other end with the bring ’em all attitude!

No way is wrong and each of my friends had sound logic to their decision which worked for them and their day, it’s just horses for courses right.

We decided to include children in our wedding for a few reasons. Firstly we are both now of an age where there are a good number of children in our friends and family’s life and we wanted to make it as easy as possible for everyone we love to be able to attend. Our friends and family are spread across the country so to ask people to get babysitters for the weekend as well as travelling to us felt like a big ask. We also have a good spread of ages from a baby who will only be 6 weeks old to 9 year olds. We didn’t feel we could tell the new mother to leave her 6 week old baby with someone else!

And finally we love kiddos! We are having a relaxed enough event with enough space to accommodate so why not. We are using our church hall for our reception and they have a creche room full of toys plus loads of running around outside space so they will be well catered for. I have also worked on little favours for them, tailored to their age and likes details to follow in another post!

And finally gosh aren’t they cute! We are having my god son and our friends little boy as our ring bearers and I can’t wait to see them in their little bowties and braces!

What do you think about children at weddings?

Fizz
xoxo

Wooden Box Poundland Up-cycle

I had stumbled across this video and it inspired me to try getting some of these boxes for myself and giving them a new lease of life.

Once I had painted them using the same white chalk paint I used this video for inspiration as to the surface decoration. I loosely followed along with her and use a combination of cotton buds (as recommended) and small paintbrushes for the more detailed work. I only did one side of each box and did both at once, it took me the length of her video to come up with something I liked.

Once everything was dry I added the gold top edge (because I can’t get enough gold!) and then waxed them the same way Chelsey does.

We are using these on our wedding bars to hold jam jars of paper straws and napkins (for those little spills) and to generally corral all of the junk you need for a bar. Hopefully the photo bombing dog will be safely away buy then!

I love to be creative but sometime I find myself in a rut and being heavily inspired by other people is the only way out of it. Stealing with pride right!

Where do you go for some DIY inspiration?

Fizz
xoxo

Poundland Wedding Bunting Upgrade

Poundland is a dangerous place, I can never leave with just what I ventured in for but I must confess that sometimes these are a blessing in disguise! Roll in this wedding bunting, £1.00 for 6m. I snaffoed 3 packets because I knew it would be simple to tart it up a little to fit in more with our style!

Weeny bit meh right, I think my main source of umbridge was that the flags are a creamier colour than the very white ribbon so they looked kinda dirty, not cute! All I added was my ginormous ball of garden twine (B&M around £2.50 for a ball as big as my head!) and a glue gun. I started by stripping the pendants from the ribbon, then measuring lengths of twine to the same length as the ribbon I had removed.

I folded the twine in half and marked it with a bit of washi tape before adding my first two flags (either side of my center line marker.) This is the point at which you decided your spacing, play about with it a little then once you are happy dab a bit of hot glue on the center back to secure.

I placed my flags further apart than they were originally so from my 3 packs (of 6m each) I finished up with 4 sets of 6m bunting. I am not sure where in the venue we will use this quite yet but for the princely sum of £3.00 and a couple of hours we will find somewhere for them!

There is a whole lotta real life going down in the background of this picture (‘real life’ meaning mess) but lets skid over that and finish with some therapeutic puppy!

Fizz
xoxo

Easter Tree

The clocks have gone back and it officially feels like spring! Perfect time to decorate, I have rustled up our Easter tree from bits in the house, in the garden, Easter’s past and then these cute little bunnies which I picked up from Hobbycraft.

I picked up four of them and painted them in pastel yellow, green, blue and pink using regular ole acrylic paint. Once they had dried I sprayed them with clear topcoat to give them a shine, changed the strings to colour coordinated bakers twine and used some wide washi tape to cover their little bases.

Overall i’m thrilled with how this came out and it turns out Bitza is too!

Fizz
xoxo

Floral Spring Wreath

We have all been there, wander into home bargains honestly intending to get one thing (for me it was their Yankee candle knock off car scent sticks) and come out confused with a giant bag of stuff!  But could you say no to all those faux flowers, and the prices always just right!

This is the easiest DIY and took me under half a hour (with a coffee stop and a cat head rub) and I really believe it’s the sort of thing anyone can do, and any excuse to buy faux flowers right!

I snagged 2 bunches of the white peony type and 2 of the purple ( plus 2 of the pink for another wedding related project to come.) I already had a wire hoop that actually came from the inside of a stack of hairnets but you can buy them online or a large embroidery hoop would work well too.

Started by removing the leaves from the flowers and laying out all my flowers so I could see what i had to work with. Then it was just a case of wrapping the stems around the wire ring. I then trimmed any stems that were super long and added more flowers all going in the same direction working my way around the wreath.

Once it was all flowered up i took the leaves and used a glue gun to attach them in little bunches round the wreath to fill any blank spots and generally add some more contrast. I did this from the front of the wreath so that I could make sure it looked just as I wanted. Once this was done the wreath was flipped over and i used the hot glue to secure anything that seemed a little wibbly wobbly! I added a string and all done.

Thus far this has weathered the storms (literally) and has survived just dandy brightening up our front door and welcoming in spring.

Fizz
xoxo

 

 

Wedding Planning Bullet Journal

I searched long and hard for the perfect wedding planning book. Lots seemed to steer you towards things we didn’t want (a long engagement and a very elaborate wedding) or were a bit underwhelming in terms of design and paper quality. I am aware that I sound like a complete snob but hot dang it’s really 10/10 annoying to create a beautiful page of notes and doodles only to turn the page and find it replicated in reverse. Not cool. 

I am using a dotted grid notebook I bought on amazon. that has been amazing. The external cover is sturdy and plain which allowed me to customise it with my dymo label maker (which has stayed well attached despite the fact it comes everywhere with me tossed into my bag!) The paper is  blissfully thick, you do get some shadowing with the Faber Castell pens that I am using but it doesn’t make me want to cry and it lies entirely flat. It doesn’t have numbered pages and the paper is creamy yellow rather than white but neither of those things have bothered me. 3 months in and this notebook gets my full recommendation!

My pen of choice and a close up of the paper, the real important things!

Setting up spreads is something else! I decided that I wanted to use this book as a good mixture of inspiration pages, lists, to do’s and collating final bookings.

To generally catagorise the pages I set up, it’s a lot.

Calendar for the months leading up to and the month of (because getting your dates right is important y’know!)
Booking summary with the details of the vendors booked (with the aim of being able to hand this off the day before and have total peace of mind, I will keep you posted…)
Budget with real, ideal, which page and who has paid for the item
Inspiration pages with colors and pictures and general loveliness!
Guest list
Spreads (and by spreads I generally mean a double page where one page is inspiration (from magazines, swatches, papers) and the other is lists, details and the occasional post it note with a scrawled note each for photographer, food, drinks, party time, toasts, the dress, the suit, the boys and girls (bridesmaid and groomsmen), the little ones (our page boys), beauty, flowers, paper products (invitations, menus all that other guff), reception details, the cake, the rings, extra bridal bits (the borrowed blue, old, new bit), bridesmaids, our getaway plans, cocktails (for cocktail hour), not necessary but fun (just extra tat)
A timeline of my time and the ‘public timeline’ for our guests
The big bit, all of the ceremony details (hymns, readings and so forth), this has been more than I ever thought!
Lists of photos for our photographer
Details of the bookings we have made for our bridal party

Inspiration pages

A typical spread

Work in progress

Post it notes are a great way to make functional to do lists while keeping your book looking pretty

And so far that’s it! It’s still very much a working document so things will change but it has been working really well for me and to be honest that’s the most important thing.

How do you plan?

Fizz
xoxo

The Next Stage

I was once told by someone older and wiser than me that all at once you will look around a realise you have and all of your peers have reached a new stage. All at once everyone will be getting married, you will have a wedding every other weekend and then as if by magic (we all know it’s not really magic) those wedding turn into christenings! I think the crux of her (very good advice) was to get a stock wedding / christening gift sorted and an outfit to go with it!

That’s a very rambling way to say I am now engaged (to the most wonderful man i could never even have imagined).

I am very aware of being that girl. The one who was once fun and interesting (here’s hoping) but who becomes focused only on THE wedding the moment she gets a sparkly rock on that little piggie and so I am endeavoring not to be. Here’s hoping!

Fizz

xoxo

In defense of Hallmark Holidays

Lots of people seem to bash on Hallmark Holidays and gosh that annoys me.

I enjoy decorating, I enjoy a theme and I will take any excuse to add a little sparkle and spread a little love in everyday life. So yeah I embrace the add on holidays (Halloween, Easter, Valentines, Mothering Sunday and Fathers Day). We do not go bonkers for any of these add on holidays, I save all my bonkers for Christmas, but i do add touches and little special things. Some seasonal place mats, napkins, a candle (always a candle!) and normally a little rearrange of the top of our piano.

Let me clarify, I have a seasonal decorations box (old suitcase) that i treat like a Christmas box, only getting things out at for specific times of year and then packing them carefully away after. For me this means I can have the same amount of tat but also have a more empty home, more clear surfaces and less dusting!

I get joy from opening the box and rootling around for the correct seasonal bits and bobs, i will always discover something i forgot we had (or something bought on sale the year before!)  and in some ways it gives me the same feeling as going to the shops and perusing all things that are shiny and new therefore helping me spend a little less and bring a little less tat into our home.

Fizz
xxx