Tag Archives: wedding

Umbrella shower light fixture

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My coworker Rachel gets married a month from today, and yesterday we threw her a surprise bridal shower at work. I was in charge of gifts. I also had to make an umbrella light to tie in with the shower theme. My other coworker found the idea on Pinterest and showed us at a secret shower planning meeting. Another coworker even had the busted umbrella.

I’m embarrassed to admit that even though I’ve been blogging for more than a year now and totally know how this whole before and after thing works, I TOTALLY forgot to take a picture of just the light. I was too excited about the surprising.

Anyway, to make your own umbrella light, you need an umbrella. And lights.

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Carefully remove all of the fabric from your umbrella so it’s naked and rather dangerous-looking.

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Spray paint the heck out of your umbrella. I went with white because my lights had a white cord.

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Let your umbrella dry and touch up any spots that didn’t get adequate coverage. Be careful because those spokes can be dangerous!

Next, wrap your umbrella with lights however you please! You can see the light hanging from the ceiling in the upper right corner of the photo.

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And again, in the middle of the photo.

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I think it would look even cuter in a rustic sort of setting and not a stuff conference room.

Rachel loves chocolate, so we had a ton of chocolate goodies: Fondue, brownies, mousse…. we even had Dana (Little King’s Confections) make a chocolate cake with strawberry filling. How pretty?!

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Rachel was DEFINITELY surprised — especially since she thought she was wayyyyy late for a staff meeting.

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Rookie move not getting a picture of the light by itself, but here’s another photo of the light, the cake and the bride-to-be.

UmbrellaCongrats, Rachel! Glad we were able to totally surprise you :)

Wedding album and just life

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Guess who finally gave the approval to have their wedding album printed — we did!! I can’t wait to see what Stephanie from Angelina Photography created for us. She was an amazing photographer and I would definitely recommend her if you get married in the D.C., Maryland or Virginia area.

Check out her site here – she also takes amazing family photos, which we will definitely be calling her for down the road :) But not quite yet! And if you want to see the fun post she did about our wedding, you can check it out here!

I’ll definitely snap a photo of our album when it arrives because I know it is going to be stunning.

Other than wedding album excitement, it’s been a busy week for me. Between the wedding last weekend, having both of my sisters in town, work this week, and helping out with family stuff…. well, there just hasn’t been much time for crafting! I guess that is how life goes, though.

I did want to wish my step mom a wonderfully happy birthday — we celebrated last weekend and her actual birthday was Tuesday.

The hubby and I are going to a pumpkin carving party tonight, then I plan on crafting my heart out this weekend. I’ve got a lot of projects in the works that I can’t wait to share! One involves an old dress, another involves an old game, and another involves marbles!

Have a great weekend!

A disappearing weekend

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What a fast weekend! My sisters are both in town for a wedding (congrats, Ryan and Amber!) we had a great time last night, but boy are this weekend and this visit wrapping up too quickly.

For now, we’re gonna go get pretzels at the mall and the the hubby and I are gonna watch the Ravens game. I probably won’t have too much time to craft until tonight, but I don’t mind :) I love it when my sisters are both here!

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A wonderful anniversary

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Our one-year wedding anniversary was yesterday and was truly wonderful. The hubby and I waited for 12:01 a.m. on Sept. 17 to roll in to exchange our gifts — we were so excited to share what we made for one another.

I got Brian a set of computer books, made him a digital scrapbook of our honeymoon, made him bookmarks for his new books, and made him a Ravens tray. He made me a dozen paper flowers (**heart melts**) and got me A NAIL GUN!!! BEST. HUSBAND. EVER.

Look at these  beautiful flowers… I seriously think they are my favorite gift ever. My husband is the most amazing crafter alive. So impressed.

 

And then there is my nail gun. Yes, for our first wedding anniversary I got a nail gun. Yes, that is EXACTLY what I asked for. And Brian said he wouldn’t buy me one. I thought I was getting jewelry. Ha! So much better. SOOOOO excited to use this.

 

To celebrate our anniversary we had a yummy breakfast — french toast and sausage… mmmm, what a treat on a Monday morning! Then we looked outside and saw a purple flamingo waiting for us near  our mailbox. This same flamingo, which is dressed as a groom, appeared at Brian’s mom’s house the night before the wedding. A bride flamingo appeared at my mom’s house. So cute.

 

Then, we packed a lunch and headed out to Frederick, Md. to hike Sugar Loaf Mountain. It was a gorgeous day for hiking and the mountain was so pretty.

Check out this crazy car in the parking lot!

And look at this crazy castle house we saw on our drive! Holy cow.

The hike was great. We had a lot of fun.

 

To end our anniversary, we headed to Aida Wine Bar in Columbia to celebrate. I had the most delicious steak ever. EVER.

And of course, we had champagne out of our wedding flutes :) I love champagne.

What a wonderful day with my wonderful hubby.

 

Smith Family Tree

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Are you ready for the most adorable thing ever? Are you really ready? OK, here goes. LOOKATTHEADORABLEFAMILYTREEIDESIGNEDFORMEANDHUBS!!!!! *breath*

I am so very pleased with how this project turned out. In fact, it might be my favorite thing that I’ve ever designed. EVER. (EVAAAAAARRRRRR, right sisters?)

*drumrollllllllllll*

Welcome to our “family tree!” It’s not a real family tree because those follow some sort of genealogy structure, but I love it just the same.

I designed this print in InDesign using five different fonts (the hearts are a font!) and three different colors (brown, green and pink in different transparencies). InDesign has this great feature where you can draw a line and then make your text curve to the line, so I used that to get some of the names in our tree to curve like tree branches.

The Fonts:

I only did our immediate families because once you get past that we get wayyyyyyy to crazy. Already we have three sets of parents! I had to contain our crazy somehow :) Our parents are in brown and paired with one another and a small pink heart. The dark green names are those of my siblings. The hubby has none, so they are all mine *evil laugh.* Then the lighter green font are the various last names of our family. I am a Bauer turned Smith. My older sister is a Rivera. My dad is a Bauer and my mom a Rowicki-turned-Brown. Tierney is my mother-in-law’s maiden (and now middle) name, and Shaffer is my step mom’s maiden (now middle) name. The date is our wedding date, when our families became one big happy family (our one-year anniversary is coming up so soon! Holy cow.).

I absolutely love how well this print turned out. This might be the first of my designs I have professionally printed for us. It is just perfect.

Do you have a family tree in your home?

 

Sentimental Map Art

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I love maps. There’s something about a map that is so interesting and pretty… it’s probably because they are often blue, and that’s my favorite color. And even though I can’t read a map to save my life, I’ve been into repurposing old maps lately and have used them in several recent projects including decoupaging my craft room drawers and revamping an old silver tray. There’s one project I’ve been saving my State of Maryland map for (the other projects were from thrift store atlases), and it was inspired by Everything Fabulous’s post on map art. I love what they did with their frames, so I was hoping to get a chance to make my own.

Instead of having several frames, I picked out one frame for my sentimental map art. It took me a little while to figure out just what places to cut out, then I decided on four: Fenwick Island, DE., where the hubby and I met; Bowie and Crofton, Md., where the hubby and I first lived together; Mt. Airy, Md., where the hubby and I got married; and Columbia, Md., where the hubby and I live in our first house! So cute, right?

Once I figured out what locations to use, I cut up my map into four hearts, each one surrounding the name of the city.

I then grabbed my backless frame off the wall — I hung it already in our bedroom with nothing in it so there would be a spot on our gallery wall for it. I cleaned the frame really well since you can see pretty much any and all smudges on these types of frames.

Next, I put painters tape on the backs of the four hearts. Painters tape is great with paper because it’s less likely to rip it. It made the next step really easy.

Once all of the hearts had tape, I arranged them in the frame, sticking the tape directly to the back pane of glass. I was able to easily adjust the hearts without ripping the paper because of the painters tape.

With all four hearts in place, I put the frame back together.

I made sure to tape down the little levers holding the frame back on because they move occasionally and I didn’t want to be able to see them through the frame once it was hung on the wall.

And voila! Super cute :)

{A Smith of All Trades} Map Art

It’s a really simple decoration, but I love it. Yay!

A wonderfully meaningful gift

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Brian and I got married seven months ago (tomorrow) — my how time flies! We just received one of the sweetest gifts of all times from my grandma Becky. As I’ve mentioned before, Becky is an awesome quilter. She was kind enough to make us a signature quilt from our wedding, a creative spin on a guest book. Well, she finished the quilt and gave it to us over the Easter holiday. It is gorgeous and definitely something we will treasure forever.

We did have a traditional guest book at the wedding that my momma made us and that we’ve already read through a couple of times. But these messages were new to both of us, and boy were some of them funny.

A monster peeking over a fence (a joke from when my sisters and I were little), from my uncle Mark (who I call Lumpy… looooong story).

A sweet drawing of Chester (Remmy is there, too… but I cut him off in the photo).

A friendly football reference from my cousin Laurel (a Steelers fan), mainly meant for the hubby (a Ravens fan). At least we’re both in the same conference?

And (one of my favorites), a sweet note from my sweet cousin Garrett.

There are a ton more funny ones, along with many many loving words from our friends and family. It’s basically the most meaningful gift ever. We love it.

Thanks Becky!!!