Thanksgivukkah Menorah

For those who do not know this past Thanksgiving coincided with Hanukkah and inspired my family to create a lot of cross-overs with decor and recipes.

Crafting a Wedding: Programs and Confetti

For the wedding I crafted a lot of items mostly because I knew what I wanted and couldn't find it otherwise (or it was way too expensive). I made my programs and bags of confetti for throwing at the end of the ceremony.

Newlywed Chrsitmas

Ornament Christmas Trees

made with small balls from Micheal's Craft Store. Star From Dollar Tree

This year we actually have a house and are not traveling for the holidays since my parents now live like 5 minutes away. Because we aren't usually home for the Christmas Holiday we don't really have any Christmas decorations. I went to stores to find some but I could not find anything that I liked (that wasn't super expensive) so I had to make my own.

Crafting a Wedding: Wedding Shoes

I wanted special shoes complete with lots of sparkle, the problem being that if ordered these shoes run for hundreds of dollars. I don't have that kind of cash so I took it into my own hands to add the sparkle. I ordered some shoes in a nice blue color to go with the color-scheme of the wedding and then went crazy with some bling.

a picture when I was half finished with the shoes. 

I got a special tool that heats up the 'hotfix' stones which makes it a lot easier than trying to use tweezers.

You can see in the picture above I started with a line around the opening of the shoe and then went out from there with a pattern that got increasingly spread out. It took a while but was totally worth it! they look so cool. I am very happy with how they turned out.

not an awesome photo, but you can see how they look finished.

I am hoping to get a much better picture during the wedding of my awesome shoes! will update later.

UPDATE**

The wedding was amazing and the shoes were fabulous! here are some good pictures. I want to get the first put on a big canvas and the second shows us breaking the glass at the end of the ceremony (that's right we both stepped on it).

Photo Credit Kyle Ellis http://thisiskyle.com/

Crafting A Wedding: Bridesmaids Bouquets

the template and instructions can be found
 at :http://www.elli.com/blog/paper-rose-bouquet/

To go with our "love story" themed wedding I made paper flowers and put them into a bouquet for my bridesmaids.

I found the template online after much searching on Google and Pinterest and then glued them with some pearlized centers found at Hobby Lobby.

I then got a punch for the small flowers from someone on theknot.com's classifieds page. Everything was clued to wire stems.

To put the bouquets together I had to take it step by step and used white duct tape for each couple of flowers. after I was happy with the formatting I wrapped them with a turquoise ribbon with a jeweled flower pin at the base for a finishing touch.

I ordered the flowers for my bouquet from Etsy and am now going to be working on that one.

UPDATE**
I was very happy with how my bouquets turned out!! The Bridesmaid's bouquet.

My Bouquet with ordered flowers that I arranged:

photo credit Kyle Ellis: http://thisiskyle.com/

Crafting a Wedding: Boutonnieres

The Boutonnieres...

I have been planning my wedding for a while now and looking at pinterest pictures since pinterest started. I had not really found any boutonnieres that i actually liked. Especially since i am not having real flowers but rather paper flowers.

It was pretty easy. I
made all the elements except I got the black branches with pearls at Hobby Lobby.

I was able to make small flowers with a whole punch I got from The Knot Classifieds and i just cut out leaf shaped paper.

I attached them to some wire and wrapped it all with a ribbon. Not bad for a first try.

Update: I finished all of the boutonnieres and included blue pearls in most of them to accent the colors of the wedding. They turned out great and I cannot wait to see it on all the groomsmen.