Craftyminx

What we're doing for our anniversary

Today Sheldon and I leave for our Anniversary get-away. I'm super excited because we are staying in a tree-house (enter our excited faces above)!! 

Neither of us has ever been to Eureka Springs so this will be a really fun trip. We really just want to relax a lot and enjoy our awesome treehouse, but we have a couple of fun things planned, like visiting a working mill, and taking a dinner train. 

And of course I'll probably scouring the many antique stores hoping to come across something that isn't too overpriced in this tourist destination. 

Be ready for awesome treehouse pictures next week :D

My Top Five Handmade Wedding Details

You all remember how much I made for the wedding, right? If you're new to the blog, you can see it all for yourself by browsing the wedding posts. I DIYed about 85% of the wedding. When I think back on all the work I put into the day I think that I was crazy. Back then, however, I needed the projects and would have gone insane without everything keeping me busy. 

The advice I give everyone else though is to NOT be like me. Don't do it unless you either need to be busy constantly or are extremely crafty and really want a full on DIY wedding. What I tell brides to be is to pick a couple of things to make yourself and buy the rest (comission pieces, or shop etsy for a crafty feel) or do without. So if I were following my own advice and doing this all again, here are the 5 handmade details I couldn't live without.

5. The quilted mason jar vases. This was probably one of the easiest projects and one of the prettiest. I loved the simple arrangements and color they brought to the reception and wedding aisles. 

4. Our cake toppers - These were made on a whim a few days before the wedding, but they are just too stinking cute and I'm so glad I will always have them. 

3. The DIY photobooth - Probably the most entertaining thing at the wedding. Everyone loved it, and now we have all these awesome photos of our friends. :D

2. My dress - Not because it was the most beautiful dress on the planet (even though I loved it) but because I made it with my mom and all those hours we spent together probably wouldn't have happened if we hadn't decided to make the dress together. 

1. Our invitations (and other wedding correspondence) - I have to admit it people--Our invitations kicked ass. 

This time last year...

Levi and I were making list after list of things that needed to be done. 

We were worrying about flowers being shipped on time. 

I was crafting my butt off making boutonnieres, finishing fabric flowers, painting displays, making our cake toppers.

My mother was a mad woman in the kitchen preparing food for 150 people. 

I was anxiously awaiting my best friends arriving at the ranch to help and just be there to calm my nerves. 

I was fixing Sheldon's vest and hemming his pants. 

I was making cupcakes with my mom, aunt, and cousin. 

Family and friends were putting up tents, hauling hay, and building a dance floor. 

My parent's dog was killing and skinning baby bunnies in front of everyone and making me hate her. (side-note: Ranch dogs kill things. We tried to stop her. It was traumatic.)

I was flipping out because I forgot the flower girl dresses. 

I was beyond ecstatic to be marrying the love of my life in just a few short days. 

We were putting together over 100 paper lanterns.

That's right! I've been married for almost a year!! Can you believe it? It seriously feels like all of this stuff was happening a month ago, not a year ago. I thought I'd do a little wedding sharing during these days before our anniversary just to re-live all the fun I had getting ready for the greatest day of my life. Oh and on our anniversary (September 18th), I'll share our wedding video so you can feel like you were at the ceremony and reception with us. All of our friends and family said it was the best wedding they've ever been to, and I hope you feel the same!

Fall Faves

Fall is so close I can almost feel it! Finally breaking the 100+ degree highs around here has been amazing. I thought I'd share some of my Fall must haves this year to celebrate. 

Brightly colored cardigans and tights. (I love the plus size nylon/lycra tights from We Love Colors)

My new favorite pair of sandals (which look super cute with tights or ruffle socks.) These are from target and are a knock-off of the wonderfull swedish hasbeens and they are incredibly comfortable. I would try to see if they are still available but the Missoni for Target has totally crashed their website today. I'll probably still be wearing these until there is ice on the ground. I just love them and they make me super tall! 

Colder weather means chapped hands and cuticles so I always carry my LUSH Lemony Flutter Cuticle Butter with me. This stuff smells amazing and works really well!

I've been loving deep purples recently and that has been coming out a lot in my nail polish choices. These are my three favorites for fall right now: Hard Candy in "beetle",  Finger Paints in "Free Form Fawn", and OPI Glitzerland (this was from the swiss collection last winter, but it is still readily available online). 

One of the best things about fall for me is that I can pull out my deep berry colored lipsticks. These two are from the MAC Cult of Cherry collection in Kirsch on the left and Rapturous on the right. The MAC mattenes are my all-time FAVORITE lipstick formulas and while this collection is no longer available MAC just released a new collection, Posh Paradise, with 10 limited edition mattene lipsticks. I'm going to have to get my hands on all the reds. I'm really loving Legendary and Eden Rouge. If only they would re-release Classic Dame.

Right now I'm wearing the Finger Paints "Free Form Fawn" under one coat of the Hard Candy "beetle" it makes the prettiest shade of sparkly purple with a duochrome of green and gold. This combination may be on my fingers for the rest of the season.

Disclaimer - I'm not affiliated with any companies. I just share what I love. 

Weekend Workings... Zombie Edition

Sheldon and I got to be zombies on Saturday for a special project for work. I have never done zombie makeup before (I've never even dressed in a scary costume for Halloween) so with the help of some YouTube videos, the Ben Nye Death Wheel, and lots of steel grey eyeshadow, I was sucessfully zombified. Here are some photos of our day:

Niece Challenge and my weekend

So remember when my niece Rosie had her sleepover a couple of weeks ago and she requested we make cookies and brownies which resulted in the quite popular Cookiebrowniecupcakes?

This weekend is our niece Anna's turn for a sleepover and she requested Spaghetti and Meatballs for dinner and she wanted to make cookies and brownies sandwiched together with chocolate chips. haha these girls. So tonight I'm going to try some cookie/brownie whoopie pies and see what she thinks. I think these will be better than the cookiebrowniecupcakes and Anna loves her frosting so she'll love these.  We're going to make these brownie mix cookies and some easy refridgerated chocolate chip cookies and then sandwich them together with some frosting. I have some leftover peanut butter frosting that is dying to get in on this action. It should be really fun and yummy!

My goals/plans this weekend:

• Super fun sleepover with Anna.
• Finish the last row on the blanket I'm working on.
• Catch up my granny a day blog posts - I totally dropped the ball this week.
• Work on a guest post DIY
• Photo some upcoming blog posts
• Take Dash to the vet for his last round of puppy shots.
• Have a crafty friends date.
• Be a zombie for an evening.
• Go to the gospel drag brunch. 
• Start teaching Dash to shake. (He's mastered Sit, speak and Lay Down.) 

Do you have any big weekend plans? Notice blogging this weekend is not one of my plans, haha I'll see you all on Monday!

My DIY Blog Organizer

Well the time is here. The blog has gotten bigger than I ever dreamed it would become. A few weeks ago I realized my brain isn't big enough to contain my to-do list and the notecards I use for every-day thoughts and lists aren't cutting it either. It was time to make a blog organizer.

My organizer had to have the following things:

• A Calendar
• Blank pages for brainstorming and drawing up ideas
• places for list making
• and places to keep track of deadlines for guest posts and what-not. 
• a place to keep track of regular features.

For the design I turned to Kitschy Digitals by the wonderful Danielle Thompson. Awhile back she realeased the calico dreams kit and I knew I had to use it for something as soon as I saw it. And you know what, it worked out PERFECTLY for my plans with this organizer. I knew it would be comb-bound ( I have a binding machine available at work and a stash of combs that I bought during grad school that I needed something to use them on) and I wanted to print it on both sides (my printer prints borderless) so I drew out my ideas and created the pages. 

Here's my finished book! I went ahead and made enough pages to last through 2012 so it is nice and thick. 

Do you keep a blog organizer? What do you keep track of in yours?

Happiness is...

1. Iced coffee drink and zombieland. #ilovesundays, 2. I have a sidekick helping with photo editing today :), 3. Getting my hairs dyed :) finally!!, 4. Woot! Urban decay clearance haul!!,
5. trying to take a nap with a squirmy puppy, 6. Yummy poppy seed strawberry cake!!, 7. Nails... All black :), 8. Sooo pathetic!,
9. Dewey cuddles, 10. New vintage bag, 11. Connect-athon 2011, 12. Quilt shows with my mom,
13. Editing crochet videos :), 14. They love their pop pop!, 15. Trouble!, 16. Puppy paws <3

Music:

I can't believe I had never seen this video before Laurendy posted it the other day. I love Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt so much and this is such a cute little dance number!

Also something else happy is that Maria is interviewing me on her blog today. So you should totally check it out. She asked some really interesting questions!

We spent the long weekend with my parents. I wasn't expecting to take a blog break, but I found myself doing nothing but connecting granny squares together all weekend. I have all but two rows finished! The dogs had a blast chasing each other all over the ranch and wore each other out every day.  My dad really enjoyed getting to play with Dash and "riling him up." Sheldon enjoyed getting to go to his parent's house to watch the first OU game of the season with his family. It's nice that our folks live so close to each other. 

So I have a question for you all. Now that it is finally starting to feel like fall outside, I'm ready to start thinking about fall DIYs! Do any of you have any requests? I want to do a couple of posts before October gets here, because October 1st starts crochet school!!! I'll share more info later about crochet school, but if you have any requests for fall posts, let me know!