Making Sea Salt

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Fiddling Around

Um, so…I sat down at my computer this morning, and decided to play around with a few new looks for my website, and now it looks completely different than it used to.

Haha oops.

The funny thing is, I’ve been planning a site redesign for January, and today I got antsy enough that I’d “try some things out” myself. I’m not sure if I’ll keep this look since it was so spur-of-the-moment, but I do like it! There were so many things that annoyed me about my last theme, and it looked a bit dated anyway.

So this new look will carry me through the New Year, but you might see a few more tweaks here and there because apparently, I have no impulse control

If you’re reading in Reader, click on over and let me know what you think!

Dec 22, 2010

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Dressed to the Nines, Married on the Tens: Flower Drama

The week before the wedding, everything was crazy busy, but going well. We had our DIY projects out of the way, all of our stuff was gathered in the guest bedroom, ready to be taken to Ladder 15, and all we had left to do were the flowers.

If you’ll remember, I decided early on to DIY our flowers. We ordered the following flowers from fiftyflowers.com:

Yellow Toulouse Lautrec Roses, Orange Ranunculous and Craspedia.

I took the Friday before my wedding off from work specifically to put the flowers together, when lo and behold, the craspedia arrived a day early on Thursday. No matter, they were fine and would hold up until Sunday.

But on Thursday evening, I checked the shipping status of my other two orders, and saw that my roses were in Ecuador. They wouldn’t be delivered until Monday. Um…cue bride freakout.

It was too late to call FiftyFlowers that evening, so I woke up at 6am on Friday and began calling their customer service line as soon as it opened. No one picked up. They were playing the song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” until a voice mail picked up. Over. And Over. I left messages. I left my number. I called again. And again. I called for a solid 2 hours with no answer, progressively getting into scary-bride mode.

For serious. YOU listen to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” for two hours and tell me you wouldn’t be doing the same thing.

Mr. Socks suggested I call the line to place an ORDER instead of customer service. Ohhh! Well of COURSE they picked up right away. That poor customer service woman really got it though. Really. Because I had left how many messages, the office is open, she’s answering only calls that get them business instead of calls from customers with issues, my flowers weren’t going to be delivered until Monday, and “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” was the biggest slap in the face to listen to for 2 hours.

She insisted that my flowers WOULD be delivered that day, that fedex was incorrect, but I wasn’t convinced. I asked to speak to a manager, and the manager eventually told me that the flowers probably wouldn’t be delivered that day, but might get to my house on Saturday.

Well, I hung up with the manager (getting her name and direct line while I was at it) and waited for my flowers. Hoping that by some miracle, they’d arrive that day. And if they didn’t arrive, I thought I could make my bouquets out of the Orange Ranunculous and get a refund on the yellow roses.

Well, just the ranunculouses arrived. I opened the box and found these:

Ohhhhhh Myyyyyyy Gooooooood.

BRIGHT, SESAME STREET GREEN FLOWERS. With red exterior petals.

FiftyFlowers now had me in dangerous, murderous bride zone.

Photo by Georgi Anastasov

Where was I going to find comparable flowers in any flower shop in the Philly region in October? What could I put together for bouquets now? I buy fresh flowers almost weekly, and definitely hadn’t seen ranunculous available in months. No one had roses like those special Ecuadorian roses.

I demanded an immediate refund for both the roses and the ranunculous. I sent pictures in to Fifty Flowers of all of the ranunculous flowers that were delivered so they could review my case.

We went to every. single. flower shop around. Most of the roses we found weren’t in great shape, and the only yellow flowers were sunflowers or pom mums. I didn’t want them. And this will probably seem so silly to people, but there was a reason for my picking the flowers that I did: my wedding was a statement about who I was, what my tastes were, and honestly, I had no interest in settling. I thought it would be better to walk down the aisle with nothing than to carry flowers that didn’t represent me or the wedding. Yep, I just went there: I was a flower snob.

After a few hours scouting out the area for flowers, Mr. Socks and I came home empty handed. I called the manager back, and told her that because of the company’s mistakes, I’d be walking down the aisle without anything in hand. She was very apologetic, but as emotional as I was, it didn’t help. I also told her, in a desperate attempt to maybe, just maybe get something more out of the deal, that I was a blogger, and that I would not be giving FiftyFlowers a positive review.

Well, Hive, she came through for me at that point: She had the roses delivered to me the next day, and still refunded me the money. The ranunculous were unusable for our bouquets, but I could work with the roses, even though it was a major time crunch.

And so I did. Mr. Socks and his friend Ryan stood in the kitchen with me all day Saturday, stripping leaves, trimming stems and thorns, and peeling outer layers of petals from the roses. By the time we had to leave for the rehearsal dinner, I had four bouquets ready to go. They weren’t perfect, and they weren’t professional, and I was definitely a stressed out bride, but…they did turn out pretty well.

Would I recommend FiftyFlowers? Part of me knows that my experience with them was probably extreme and not the usual case. They did end up giving me free flowers, but they also gave me more stress than I cared to deal with before the wedding. If you go the route of DIY flowers, I would suggest either another company, or if you do go with FiftyFlowers, definitely track your order closely, and even call multiple times in the week before to confirm your order. If your order is screwed up by them, I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you to go the mean, scary bride route. It wasn’t until I threatened to leave them bad reviews that they gave in, and seriously…if it means being a bit of a bitch to correct their errors…eh, what can you do? Oh, and maybe have a back-up plan in case something goes wrong.

Did you have a bad DIY flower experience? Did it turn out okay in the end?

Oct 7, 2010

The Final Countdown

Seriously. SERIOUSLY. How did our wedding all of a sudden get here?? Mr. Socks and I have been churning out all of our DIY projects like ca-raaazy over here. Wanna see?

Our card picnic basket is ready!

Our OOT Boxes are completed–our sticker logo included! (PS–I wonder what our guest bedroom will look like without wedding stuff everywhere! Won’t that be nice?)

They’re full of Philly Goodness as well! Two tastykakes, two bags of local Herr’s chips, two Ascher’s chocolate pretzels, and our brochure/map!

Our table numbers are put together like a tent:

I’m actually very pleased with how they look–I had thought of getting frames for each number, but I decided that I didn’t need to spend the money on them!

Our menus are printed and cut!

I printed up some restroom signs (the guy at Kinko’s couldn’t stop laughing at me for being this ridiculous!) and our wine/beer menus:

I thought I’d give you the .jpg so you can see the amazingness of Ladder 15 for giving us so much freedom with our food, wine, and beer menus! I hope you can read it–I can’t believe how many beers and wines we get to serve! Yum!

Here’s Momma Socks getting our cookies ready for our welcoming dinner!

We put all of the cookies in these little paper bags I bought from Michael’s. The only problem is that they’re…uh… pretty thin and the cookie grease has been seeping through a bit:

Ughh…seriously, paper bags? Do you have to look so ugly? But whatevs, the cookies inside are delicious, and I just don’t feel like freaking out over some paper bags.

Dad Socks cut out our sticker logos!

Mr. Socks was cutting our escort cards and other things!

Our Thank-you cards, for example…

We’re also going to hand some special guests some cards with our anniversary numbers on them–Once we reach the date of that anniversary, we can open the cards and read them! Hopefully we’ll get nuggets of wisdom from our friends and family!

Our poms are almost finished!! I think I have about 10 more to do, which can easily be accomplished tonight!

And here I am wearing one, just so you know what they’ll look like on! (PS–When did my hair get so long??)

And that’s it for now! I have a few more things to print out tonight, we have to finish the poms, and then take our OOT boxes to the hotel this evening as well.

Sister Socks arrives tomorrow with her hubby and puppy, so I’m super excited to spend all day tomorrow with them as I put together our (real) flowers!

Overall, things are perfectly on track right now! I had wanted to finish all of our paper and poms by this evening so I can have all day Friday and Saturday to get things together, hang out with family and straighten the house up!

Did you have a lot of projects come together in the last week? Did it all get done, or did you have to say eff it to a few things?

Oct 5, 2010

Pom-Pom Fail-Fail

Remember these?

And how badly I wanted them to look like this:

Well. Guys. I tried. I really, really super tried, but I just couldn’t get them to lay flat against the chest. I bought smaller magnets, I tried making them bigger and smaller, I tried smashing them down…and I failed.

But I wasn’t quite ready to give up on the whole “every guest gets a flower pom pin” project.

So I made new ones. Well…I’m still making new ones. I have 37 so far, so I’m halfway finished.

Here’s a sneek peek:

I plan on doing something similar to Mrs Ribbons with her escort cards, where the names and table numbers of our guests will be attached to them, and then they’ll get to wear the pin for the rest of the evening if they choose!

I used this tutorial, which doesn’t use any needles or thread–just hot glue and fabric, which is perfect for this Bee who is pretty sewing-challenged. They’re super easy and the most time consuming part of them is cutting out enough circles, which is something Mr. Socks has been helping me out on!

Other things that are coming together…

Our programs and brochures for our out of town boxes…

We love our little maps in our out of town brochures!

Our out of town boxes are also almost ready to go–they’re stuffed with Philadelphia-area treats!

(I promise everything will be better organized in a few days and you’ll see everything a bit better!)

So overall, things are going pretty smoothly and I’m not stressing too much yet. I feel like I have plenty of time to get these projects finished by Sunday, and we’re getting super excited!

How are your projects going? Have you worked on something all during your planning only to fail and still not give up?

Sep 13, 2010

Flower Trial

I’ve mentioned a few times that I plan on DIYing my flowers–the bouquets and centerpieces. I wanted to keep the centerpieces super simple and relatively inexpensive, so if you’ll remember, I made a mock-up of what the tables might look like:

Well, I went out and bought some craspedia at a flower shop (paid a painful amount for them too!) and did a mock-up at home!

(Don’t you love that my kitchen coordinates with our wedding colors?)

Success! I think they look pretty good! Now that we’ve decided on having a family-style presentation of our food at dinner, it’s a good thing that we chose a simple table set-up because the rest of the table will be packed with deliciousness!

And those white vases that used to be clear? They look perfect.

I just bought a few cans of all-purpose white spray paint and went to town in our garage one weekend! They look consistent for the most part, but there are a few drip marks. I’d like to think that it’ll blend in to the hobnail dots that are on the vases anyway

I can’t do a full-out bouquet trial with my exact flowers before the wedding since I really don’t feel like shelling out the dough to order them through a flower shop, but this Friday, I’ll head to the local flower shop to pick up some pretties for the civil ceremony. Hopefully they’ll have something similar to what I’m using for the big wedding!

Did you do mock-ups of your table settings if you’re DIYing your flowers? How did they turn out?

Sep 3, 2010

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Paper Projects

This post was going to be all about the vases I spray painted last weekend, but unfortunately, my camera’s SD card broke and I’m still trying to extract the pictures off of it (this also means I lost the Philly Bee Meet pics, sorry ladies!).

So instead, I thought I’d share some of the other projects I’ve been taking on lately that haven’t involved my camera!

First up is our little logo people:

Now that I’m looking at it, the text is a little off center, but you get the idea! This little logo will be featured on our out-of-town boxes, our guide to Philly, and a few other paper pieces. I got this image from istockphoto and edited in Illustrator. Easy peasy!

Our thank-you card design (simple, but effective):

Our menu cards (the food is subject to change–we have a tasting next week!)

Our little wine coasters/tags that we’ll make for each wine we choose to serve:

It may be a $12 bottle, but it’s delicious to me!

Our programs:

This is the outside of the program (will be folded) and to the left, we’ll sign each program.

This is the inside, but we’ll let our guests know everyone’s names

It’s still a work in progress!

The Philly Guide we’ll be putting in our OOT boxes:

(side 1)

(side 2)

Hopefully this wonderful little map that I found on VisitPhilly.com and edited to include our favorite spots will help everyone navigate their way around the city!

Our table numbers (nothing ground breaking or exciting, but still!)

I’ll spare you from listing all 12 of the numbers…you get the idea.

So there you have it! There are other pieces I’m still chipping away at, but it feels good to be able to cross so many off of my list. It’s been a faster-going process than I thought it would be since I’ve kept the same basic design for each piece. And believe it or not, I’m still in love with my colors and I’m not sick of them yet!

Are you designing your paper products to match each other? Have you found it easier to get them all out of the way at once or chip away slowly and steadily?

Sep 2, 2010

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Keep Calm and Cry On

No? That’s not how it goes?

Coulda fooled me. I’d like to think of my wedding mantra as:

Or, in my case…cry a lot. At least as of late.

We are 17 days from our civil ceremony and 37 days from our big wedding. Yeah. I think it’s safe to say that Mr. Socks and I are feeling the pressure. Snapping a little at each other, me bursting into tears at any given moment (Usually after saying something like “why can’t people just be NICE to me??”), Mr. Socks freaking out every Sunday about all of the things we should have done the previous week…

We’re two big messes.

RSVP’s are supposed to be in soon and we’re missing quite a few. Like…the difference between having 45 people at the wedding and 75 people at the wedding. I know many brides can relate to this frustration! We aren’t sure how many of these people will actually come, either. It’s much more nerve-wracking to not even be able to guess who is coming and who won’t be able to make it!

Many of our cute RSVP’s that ARE coming in are rather…blank. I know, right?? Who wouldn’t want to fill it out?

Even the front where we left room for a happy little note? Blank.

Come on, people!! I know that it’s a little different/untraditional, that you’re busy (or devoid of a personality in some cases), but seriously?? I’d even be happy with a “Congratulations!” but no such luck. We’ve gotten a few great responses, but more often than not…they’re coming in blank. It makes me feel like no one will appreciate any other details in the wedding, and honestly, my feelings are quite hurt over this.

I know that people like safe and traditional things, but are most of our guests so unwilling to roll with the punches and have fun? It’s not an exceedingly difficult questionnaire that would take more than three minutes to fill out! It’s not like these are distant relatives we sent them to, either! These are our closest blood relatives. I’ve shed more tears over this than I’d really like to admit, and it’s gotten me pretty down.

I’m trying to focus on positive things, but still…I’m getting that naggy voice in the back of my head that keeps whispering “nobody cares…nobody cares” every time I think of a detail I might love and that others won’t notice or appreciate. I’m spending way too much time and money on these details to only have them be appreciated by you guys, my wonderful blog readers, right?

I love my family. Mr. Socks loves his family. But right now, we’re pretty bummed about their reaction to our RSVPs.

Did a cute idea you love backfire with your relatives? How did you handle it?

Aug 11, 2010

I Scream…

Amazingly enough, dessert for the wedding hasn’t come up yet in my posts! For someone with as serious of a sweet tooth as I have, this is practically blasphemy.

I love all desserts. All of them. Cookies, cakes, pies, tarts, custards, donuts, mousse, pastries, pudding, candies, even those little wax bottle things everyone else seems to hate.

So whenever I see pictures of dessert at ANYONE’S wedding, I say “I want that!” Pie bar? Want it. Cookies? Want them. Cake table? Want it. Candy bar? Want it. Mini-desserts? Want, want, want.

For serious, people: I don’t discriminate. I want it all.

Well, I guess I knew I’d have to narrow my choices down at some point, so Ladder 15 sent me a list of desserts the bakery we’re using is capable of making, and on the very last page (after I drooled all over the other 9 pages), I saw a wonderful little blurb:

ICE CREAM AND SORBET

Blackbird Bakery has over 600 flavors [of ice cream and sorbet]. Our ice creams and sorbets are available in 1.5 gallon-$40.00 and 2.5 gallon–$68.00

As I read this, the following thoughts ran through my head:

First of all: YUM!

Second of all: HOLY MOLY YUM!

Third of all: 600 FLAVORS!!

Fourth of all: MISS SOCKS HUNGRY!

And when I saw this:

It sealed the deal. We’re going to have a DIY ice cream sundae buffet!

Mr. Socks and I will provide the toppings and goodies to put with/on the ice cream, we’ll provide the cups for the ice cream, and Blackbird Bakery will provide the yum yum ice cream!

We’ll also serve an additional dessert (tasting is in September, so TBD), and I don’t make promises on this, but I might attempt to make some brownies or cookies as well. I’ve also been toying with the idea of providing root beer for floats, too! Perhaps even some liqueurs as well for adult ice cream sundaes?

And how will we choose what ice cream toppings to use? Well, it was on our invites (that we just sent out this week–more later!)

See that right there? In the middle of the page? We’re taking ice cream topping requests!! Hopefully we’ll be able to accommodate most requests!

Are you a dessert junkie? What flavors and toppings would you like to see at an ice cream bar?

Aug 10, 2010

Vase Fail/Vase Win

Last week, our vases I ordered from Katom Restaurant Supply arrived! I was so excited to get them after waiting about 3 weeks for their arrival.

Apparently I suck at reading and understanding dimensions (bag-zilla, anyone?) and when put against the IKEA vases I thought they’d be the same size as…

Well. You get the idea.

I guess my poor little fried bride brain got WAY too excited over the fact that they were white and 89 cents that I didn’t realize they weren’t the right size. 3.75 inches tall should have tipped me off.

Alas, I had to return the tiny Keebler elf sized vases. I didn’t want to spend $2.99 each for 50 of the IKEA vases above, so I hopped online to IKEA’s site to see what else they might have that would be worthy.

Ohh hiii: