Our Wedding Guestbook

I talked about our wedding guestbook, in my post on Wednesday.  I showed some photos of our thumbprint tree, and a photo of Aaron's grandparent's looking at our guestbook, but today I want to share some photos of the actual book.  (if you'd like to catch up on the previous post in my One Year Wedding Anniversary check out our Wedding Ceremony, and you'll find the rest of the links there.  

Here is what the cover looked like, pretty boring, but what's in the book is what I added to jazz it up.  I went with a cheap guestbook, because I knew I was going to put a lot of work into personalizing it.  

I sent out a bunch of photos from both our childhoods, and our time dating to shutterfly, and had them print a bunch of 4x5 prints.  I used handmade and scrapbook paper to make irregular frames for each image I chose to use.  

I spent hours going through the photos and placing them in the book, before I carefully cut out their delicate frames, and glued them in place.  

I tried to match photos of Aaron and I at similar ages.

This is our mom page.  We are both close with our moms, and it was important for us to have a page special for them.  

Aaron has a ton of super cute kid photos, of him wearing the most adorable outfits with matching hats.  

We both had homemade halloween costumes.  Aaron's definitely steals the cake.  

Us with our families in our awkward teenage years. 

We both still make these faces.  I guess some things we never grow out of.  :)  Or like loving mac & cheese, or anything with melty cheese really!  

I thought it was perfect that our photographers signed this page, our only formal portraits I included.  Especially since I know them from work, and we are school photographers.  

Our sibling page.  Oh!  Completely unrelated, when I'm photographing kids and I come across someone with an unusual name, I usually ask if they have any siblings.  Ya know, cause I want to know how creative their parent's are. :)  However, I've been finding that loads of kids don't know what siblings are!!  I've asked kids between second and sixth grade, and I get these blank stares, or kids saying, 'huh, what do you mean?'.  

Our grandparent's, from our mother's side of the family.  My father's mother passed before I was born, and my father's father passed when I was 11 years old.  My stepfather's parent's passed when I was a teenager.  I don't have many photos of any of them.  I think I have one photo of me with my father's father.  

Aaron's father's parent's passed when he was a teenager too.  I thought this would be a great photo to commemorate them.  He grew up spending a lot of time at their house.  

One last photo of us being cute babies.  Hope you enjoyed.  Happy DIYing, chris!

Wedding Ceremony Decor

Back to the One Year Wedding Anniversary Series!  Today I'm sharing with ya'll the way I decorated for the ceremony.  If you'd like to catch up on my previous post in the series you can start with How We Met, then Our Wedding Stationary, Cupcake Toppers, and Wedding Decor.  Hope you enjoy!

Photo taken by Kaelyn Michaels Ryan

We held the ceremony in a historical Quaker church.  I love how the pews are curved.  I made the bunting with scrapbook paper.  I cutout triangles, and then folded the top half inch over baby yarn, and glued them in place.  I made three sections, reaching about ten feet in length.  My friends helped wrap tulle around the top of the banister. 

Photo taken by Kaelyn Michaels Ryan

We bought these paper lanterns and ribbon at the dollar store!  My mom made the bows, and my friends help hang them on the pews.  I should have bought those plastic picnic tablecloth clips to hold them in place, but I really thought they would easily hang there.  My friends worked really hard to keep them in place for me, they were awesome!  

Photo taken by Kaelyn Michaels Ryan

This is our altar. We did a unity candle, but I bought the cheapest candles and stands I could find.  I made a cute matchstick holder, so we wouldn't have an ugly matchbox sitting there.  You can check out this tutorial, if you'd like to see how I made my matchstick holder.  My mother-in-law, who married us contributed that lovely seashell with the stand, we used it to drop the used matchsticks in.  As part of the ceremony Aaron's mom wrapped the ribbon around our wrist as a symbol of everlasting bond.  Luckily the table and lace came with the location!  

Photo taken by Kaelyn Michaels Ryan

This was the vestibule where everyone entered the church, and I placed our programs and some tissues there.  I bought a basket at the dollar store.  Printed out some 'programs', cut out the letters, and carefully tied them together with sewing thread.  I added the heart at the top, and wrote 'help yourself' on it.  

Photo taken by Kaelyn Michaels Ryan

 I made the programs by printing out the middle pages from my computer.  Then cutting scrapbook paper to the same size the the book pages.  Once I paired all the pages up I poked two holes half an inch in, and then ran some baby yarn through to tie it all together.  

Hope ya'll have a fantastic weekend!  I'm going to try to get all my post done for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday on Saturday while Aaron is at work.  Wish me luck!  :)  Happy DIYing, chris

Doggies and The Grandparent's

I need a little break from the Wedding Anniversary Series I've been posting.  Things have been really stressful here, and I need some cute happy pictures.  Here are some of the adorable dogs my family owns.  I snapped these photos on Easter.  There were three dogs there, but sadly I didn't get any photos of my uncle's dog.  

This is my aunt and my cousin's dogs.  I love watching dogs play!  My cousin's dog in the back is making an awesome face at my aunt's dog.  My aunt's dog is so perfectly happy.  She was hard to photograph, because she's a fast little lady.  I was please to get a tongue photo of the lil' girlie.  

My cousin's dog Bella was a little model.  

See here she goes again. 

And again with a lil' tongue this time. Aren't those baby blues beautiful?  My family owns some cute doggies!  

Here are my grandparent's.  I love them tons.  I lived in this house with them for a few years, and I spent pretty much every summer until college at their house.  I wish I visited them more.  I used to hang out with my grandmother all the time when I was a kid.  I have many fond memories of time spent with her.  It's hard now.  She's hard of hearing, and has tons of health problems, which makes it hard for her to get around.  She's still a beautiful woman at 81, she'll be 82 in June!  

This is the only photo I got of all three dogs.  I was sad about that, but this was only the first of many opportunities I hope to have to photograph them all together.  Plus my uncle asked if I could take some photos of his pup jumping, because he is a fantastic jumper.  You can kind of see him hiding in the back there.  

I took some super cute photos of my niece too, but I didn't give myself enough time to ask permission from her parent's to use them (hope I didn't need to ask permission to post photos of the doggies ... I never know what is kosher with t his sort of thing) .  Opps!  That's okay, puppies and babies would be too much cute!  

Well, those cute dog pics definitely helped make me smile a little, which I definitely need to do more right now.  Hope they lightened your day too, happy DIYing, chris!

Wedding Decor

With last week being a holiday, I only worked one day, but this week I'm already up to three, and I have another early day tomorrow.  Most work days I wake up around quarter of five in the morning.  Well it being Wednesday all those early morning are catching up to me.  I feel ready for bed, so I apologize now, if this is a little off.  I'm continuing with my One Year Wedding Anniversary series.  To catch up you can read  How We Met, our Wedding Stationary, and our Cupcake Toppers.  Today I'm going to share some of the decorations we had.  

photo taken by Tanya Keenan

Photo taken by Tanya Keenan

This was our favor, a Candy Bar!  All the guest loved filling up on candy before they left, and I didn't mind taking home any leftovers.  There really wasn't much leftover, but the salt water taffy, because I over-bought it.  The taffy was cheapest to buy in gigantic bags.  We really shopped around for this one, because this can get super spendy.  The good thing is candy keeps for a long time, so we started this a few months before the wedding.

I made a few hundred of these double layer paper flowers.  I used them all over the place.  We had the wedding in a historical building, so we were not allowed to hang anything or really do much decorating.  The place was fabulously beautiful on it own, but I needed to add my own little touch.  I love these beautiful flowers, I even made some of the paper for a small portion of the flowers.  If you'd like to know how I these cute dudes, you can check out this tutorial.

Here is an example of the my pinwheels.  These are larger than the ones I used on the cupcakes.  I used these for my centerpiece arrangements on the tables scattered around.  We didn't have assigned seating, or a sit down meal, that's just really not our style.  We had lush hors d'oeuvres served by waiters, and the guest were free to wander and mingle about.  Plus this saved us a big deal of money.  We did make sure to have a chair for everyone, so they could have a place to sit.   

Photo taken by Tanya Keenan

This is our thumbprint tree, and you could use this as a replacement for a guestbook.  I drew the tree months in advance, with colored pencils, and I wrote our names and date in black marker.  Before the wedding I had Michael's matte and frame it.  They were super helpful, they held onto the glass for me, and then after the wedding I gave it back to them to finish the piece.  

Photo taken by Kaelyn Michaels Ryan

I supplied the thumbprint tree with this cute stackable ink pad, a stack of scratch paper for people to test their thumbprints, and a cup of pens.  Plus I can't forget the basket of Handi Wipes, and the mini trash pale (with lid) for them to easily dispose of all the trash.  

Photo taken by either Tanya or Kaelyn

This is my brother Chris on the right, Aaron's sister Jessica, and his Aunt Teressa all using the thumbprint tree.  

Photo taken by Kaelyn Michaels Ryan

My husband didn't want to get rid of the guestbook all together, so I bought a cheap guestbook, and turned it into a scrapbook of Aaron & my kid pics.  It was a big success at the wedding.  This is Aaron's cute grandparent's Roland and Helen checking out the photos in our guestbook.  I'll make another post later that has some images from the actually guestbook.  

Wow, hope that wasn't too much.  Happy DIYing, chris!

Cupcake Toppers

Happy Tuesday, and welcome back to the One Year Wedding Anniversary Series!  If you are just finding my blog, you can catch up with How We Met, and our Wedding Stationary.  Today I am sharing my cupcake toppers.  I handmade all of my toppers, and gave them to my baker to put them on all the cupcakes.  It was rather nerve racking giving up all my precious babies for someone else to take care of, and make sure they were all perfectly placed.  I'll admit it, I have some a lot of control issues, and I'm a bit of a perfectionist.  

When our baker asked us about what we wanted to do for an anniversary cake, we looked at each other baffled.  We had never heard of such a thing.  When the baker explained that it was a cake you would freeze and eat a YEAR LATER, we were even more confused.  Why did that become a thing?  Why would anyone want to eat a cake that has been frozen for a year????  For all of you who did this, I hope your marriage lasts longer than anyone else's!  You definitely deserve a long marriage, especially if your significant other wanted to eat a year old cake for your first anniversary with you!

We used our cake to cut into during the reception, and share our first piece together.  The top cake was a Oreo marble layered cake, soooo good.  It was the only thing I ate during the wedding.  My tummy was too jittery to try any of the yummy food we bought.  I was sad I never got to try any of our caterer's food!  We never had a tasting before the wedding either, but that was my biggest disappointment with the food, so I really can't complain. 

We had chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting, red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing, yellow cake with buttercream frosting, and the orange icing was peanut butter flavored.  We grabbed a couple peanut butter cupcakes for our train ride to NYC for the first part of our honeymoon.  They were amazing.  Our baker is truly talented.  

All photos taken by Kaelyn Michaels Ryan, and Tanya Keenan.  Cupcakes made by Sweets to You By Ginger.  

Sadly, I don't have any photos of the pinwheel toppers I made.  I'll make some more, and make a post about it.  I also made these super special paper flowers made with fancy origami paper, but they never made it onto our topper cake.  I didn't care about either of these things on the day of the wedding.  I didn't realize I completed failed to ask my fantastic photographers to get a few snaps of all my little handmade details.  Plus I should have taken some photos after I had set-up some of the other things the day before, but I broke the lens mount on my camera a few days before the wedding.  It was an easy repair we took care of on the second day of the honeymoon, but it sucked not having my camera on the pre-wedding days.  I was so angry with myself that day, and it was super embarrassing.  To make up for it, in NYC we bought a macro lens and a sporty camera bag at B & H Photo.  We talked to this awesome jewish dude, and we were elated with our experience there.  Plus they directed us to a great place that fixed my camera for $50 in one hour.  

That's all for today, hope ya'll enjoyed, happy DIYing, chris!

Mini Pastel Cupcakes

Happy Nom Nom Monday!  Yesterday for Easter I made some mini pastel cupcakes.  I used dollar store yellow cake box mix.  I know making from scratch is nicer, but man, a dollar for cake mix is hard to beat.  To make the cheap cake mix more moist I used milk instead of water, but otherwise I followed the box instructions.  I'm not a fan of dry cake, and I definitely H.A.T.E. store bought icing.  I used to think I didn't like cake either, until I met Aaron's mom!!  That lady knows how to bake a cake!  :)  

For the icing I mixed up a simple buttercream recipe.  I used 1 cup unsalted soft butter, 3 cups powdered sugar, 3 tablespoons whole milk, and 1 tablespoon of vanilla extra, and a pinch of salt.  Begin by lightly beating the butter, then slowly add in the confectioner's sugar.  Then mix in the milk, vanilla, and salt.  Once fully mixed, you should have about 3 cups of icing.  I wanted to make four colors, so I separated the icing into four 3/4 cup batches.  

For the mint colored icing I used just one drop of blue, and one drop of green liquid food coloring.  I used a metal spatula to apply the icing to the mini cupcakes.  For these guys, after I had fully covered the cupcake I would pat the icing with the spatula, to create these fun spikes all over.  

For the orange I used one drop of red, and two drops of yellow.  For this color I left the icing smooth.  

For the blue icing I used two drops of blue dye, and again I went for the spiky look.  

To mix the pink up I used two drops of red.

I am so please with how lovely all the colors turned out.  This recipe makes plenty of icing for one box of cake mix.  I made 44 mini cupcakes, and there was more than plenty of icing.  So don't be stingy with the icing, and spread it on thick!  Oh, and don't mind the cupcake wrappers, they were the only mini ones we had in the house.  They're Halloween themed, my favorite holiday!  :)

Happy DIYing, chris

Happy Easter Bunday!

Happy Easter Bunday!  If you don't celebrate Easter, then Happy Bunday Sunday, and whatever holiday you may or may not celebrate! :)

Let's pretend this is what we wore today.  I wore this outfit earlier in the week, and Aaron wore the bottom half of his outfit today.  They would have been brilliant Easter outfits!  

Aaron's                                                        Mine

top:: cowboy store in Idyllwild, CA                      sweater:: H&M

jeans:: Levi's 514s from Urban Outfitters             dress:: H&M

shoes:: DC                                                            slip:: vintage from London

bunnies:: Pier1                                                     tights:: Target

                                                                             boots:: cowboy store in Cowtown, NJ

                                                                             hair pins:: Handle & Spout

I kind of have crazy eyes in this photo, and my neck is at a weird angle.  We had a couple better ones, but the sun had moved to make some terrible bright spots.  I love these sunny days, and they make me think it's a great day for photos, but it's so hard to deal with all that bright sunny contrast!!!  I need to get better at photographing in the sun.  

This was Aaron's idea.  Isn't he cute?  After taking the photos he told me he had fun, and that it actually made him feel good about himself.  I think we might do more couple photos.  If it does good things for both of our self-esteem, it can't be a bad thing!  I think most normal people need a little self-esteem boost from time to time.  It's important to be happy with who you are, and what you look like!  

I love my cowboy boots but I rarely wear them.  I only own flats, and even though these don't have much of a heel I feel so silly clomping around in them.  It's  not easy to be sneaky with clunky heels on!  I even wore flats on our wedding day, even though Aaron is a whole foot taller than me!

Hope ya'll had a great weekend, happy DIYing, chris!