Craftyminx

Halloween Photobooth

We had another diy photobooth at our party on Friday night. We bought a bunch of props and had one of Rachel Denbow's thought bubble chalkboards for our guests. It was a lot of fun. Here's a few photos from the night:

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Happy Halloween!

We decorated quite a bit this year since we had a Halloween party. 

We didn't have a lot of time to do everything ourselves so we only made a few things this year. I have a list of things I want to make for next year though!

I have a confession to make

Our pumpkins are fake this year...

...  and I still have 8 more to carve.

This is the only part of my costume that is completely finished:

And the studio is so full of wedding stuff I may never see my sewing machine again.

I made a boy a dress

But I haven't hemmed it yet and he needs it by our party tomorrow.

Halloween is totally happening this year whether I catch up to it or not and we'll have about 30 people in our tiny house tomorrow night so I need to get my butt in gear. Thankfully, I've been working 10 hour days this week so I can take tomorrow off. yay!

Wedding Wednesday - DIY Photobooth

One of the things I absolutely HAD to have at our wedding was a photobooth. After realizing how much it would cost to rent one and get it out to the middle of nowhere, I was a little crestfallen. But it wasn't long until I thought, "really, all you need is a camera and a backdrop and a way to let people take photos of themselves. I can TOTALLY do this myself!" I often have these little talks to myself, which usually end up with me spending hours researching and trying to figure something out. It usually works out, but I have my fair share of "God, why did I try this?"

I'm going to show you how to do this yourself on Saturday because I have to set one up on Friday for our Halloween Party. It's really quite easy. Especially since we didn't use a printer or get all technical. We knew kids would be there to get ahold of the remote and take a million pictures, and there are always more photos taken after the drinking has been going on awhile and we didn't want to have all this automated printing going on. So we just set it up to take photos and one of my friends (Thanks Jamie!) was kind enough to keep watch and make sure everything went smoothly. Plus she let us borrow her camera because I was without one after the break-in. Friends are seriously everything when you get married. Don't forget that!!

A monitor to view photos is always a plus...

...because everyone's first picture is going to look like this:

Much better ;)

 We had about 700 photos total. I posted all of the unedited ones on facebook for our friends to be able to see right away. There you can see lovelies like this:

 
I picked out the best of the bunch (193 of them) and edited them, took away all the sweat (because after dark we all looked like a hot mess) and made them look pretty. You can see all of the edited ones here. Here are a few of my favorites:

These were our party all night guests!

And I thought this one needed something for Halloween :)

Weekend Fun

We had the best October weekend ever :)

We babysat miss Olive for the first time on Friday.

There was a minor crisis (nothing horrible or life-threatening) but I think her parents will be willing to give us a second go-round some time.

I got my hair cut!!! This was one of my 4 simple goals before 2011 and I'm very happy with the results :)

We went to the 4th annual Ghouls Gone Wild Parade here in Downtown OKC on Saturday night. It is always a good time. It's always a hard event to take pictures at, but every year I try and I'm getting better at it, but still not good enough. These are my favorite moments and pictures from this year. It was my very first time to use my new camera! Probably not the best time to break it in.

  Sunday was family pumpkin carving day!

October is my favorite month! What is your favorite thing to do in October?

You can see more pictures of pumpkins and the parade on my flickr page.

The Reception - Part Two, Details (mostly handmade)

 



 

 

Click on a picture for more information about the photo.
Photographer - Juniper Photography

The Reception - Part one, the food...

My reception, my reception! Oops, sometimes when thinking about weddings I inexplicably start quoting Steel Magnolias. 

We had a really great reception! In fact, I'm pretty sure everyone forgot how hot it was once they saw the barbecue sauce fountain.

Yeah, we went there.

Other food served included Smoked brisket and chicken breasts (my dad spent days smoking meat for the wedding), baked beans, vinegar based coleslaw with bacon, Pioneer woman's Fancy Macaroni for the adults and some regular homemade mac and cheese for the kids. We made all of the food ourselves with some help of friends and family members. We also had rolls, a fruit tray and veggie tray. I love this pic of the veggie tray. They look so yummy and ready to eat!

What about the dessert?

Well we had quite the spread: Seven flavors of cupcakes, pecan pie, and blackberry cobbler made from wild blackberries that my mom picked on the ranch (we may or may not have actually made the cobbler, I can't remember if we decided against it at the last minute). You can't see the seventh flavor on our cupcake list there, but it was german chocolate. I was so happy to help bake and ice cupcakes. When I'm stressed, I like to bake so it helped me stay calm the day before the wedding.

Levi and I made that sandwich board out of two pieces of wood I had laying about. We sprayed it with chalkboard spray paint, added hinges to the top and some wire to the sides so it wouldn't fall open all the way. I added instax mini photos of all of the cupcakes and wrote the flavors with a chalk marker and ta-da a cupcake listing of cuteness!

Beverages:

Pink Lemonade, Iced Tea, some bottles of pink lemonade vodka, a keg of Pabst Blue Ribbon, a half keg of Shiner Black, an assortment of white and red wine and some sparkling white grape juice for those not imbibing alcohol.

We didn't get to eat any of the food. I think between us, we ate like 4 bites of food. We were hot and our nerves were going crazy so we weren't hungry at all. At about midnight we were both starving and all we wanted was mac and cheese and there wasn't any left over! The next morning, I had my mom pack up one of each of the cupcakes and we halved them and ate them for breakfast on the way to the airport. They were all sooo good. The strawberry and lemon cupcakes were my favorite. 

Wedding Wednesday - The Dress

It seems like everyone started asking about what I was going to wear the minute we got engaged, you know after the question "have you set a date yet?" For me, wedding dress boutiques were out of the question. I refused to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars on a dress that wasn't absolutely me. Also, I HATE wedding boutiques, there's always a crazy bride vibe going on there with full wedding partys watching a bride try on dress after dress, stress, tears, crazy mothers, selfishness. Anyways, back to the dress... I really wanted something vintage, but finding the perfect vintage gown in my size and then altering it to fit seemed like an impossible task. So I went to a beloved standby. Vintage Vogue reproduction patterns. I have all of them even if I don't sew all the time and one day I will make them all!

I chose pattern V2960 for the dress.
 
 I loved the scooping neck and back with the off the shoulder cap sleeves.

And the fabric was an easy choice; Ivory dupioni silk which I bought from Mood Fabrics. I also thought it would be nice to have some lace at the top to break up the dress some and add to the vintage look.

The bound buttonholes were a first but I dove right into them and they were really quite easy.

Here's some process photos that I've had to keep under wraps for months:

We made a simple underskirt out of tulle and chiffon using the Simplicity 5006 pattern. (this was probably the worst part of the dressmaking process because chiffon is awful to work with!)

 It was so great getting to spend all the time making my dress with my mom. It took many weekends and numerous hours, but I would totally do it again. I LOVE the dress and I'm so proud that I was able to make it myself!

Ok I'll stop talking, here's some more pictures :)