Mason Jars and Twinkle Lights

We booked the venue, Box Hill Mansion, we set the date 09/22/12, we have our photographer, and I found my dress (but it's a secret) except to my lovely bridal party and mother! Last weekend we all took a trip to Harleysville, PA where we visited the friendliest bridal shop owners on the planet and then made our way to Skippack. Skippack couldn't have been a more perfect a place for our girls day. It is a quaint little town for walking around and lucky for us the bridesmaid dresses were at a shop right in town, Page Six.

We have our engagement photo shoot tomorrow which I'm very excited about...this unbelievable weather (5 inches of snow?) threw a wrench in having the shoot today. Nonetheless we are exploring lighting ideas for the reception. We're crossing our fingers, praying to the weather gods, and pressing on with having our wedding reception outside under twinkling lights and the stars, on the mansion's patio. Of course we have a tent back up just in case the gods don't hear us. 

 These are a few of our ideas for the reception's illumination!

 We want tea lights strung in close strands above our guests heads with Chinese lanterns placed randomly around for more dimension and fun.  

These lights are a bit larger but you can see how beautiful they are in pictures it really adds a bit more romance to the photographs.

These Chinese lanterns add a whimsical feel and I love the hanging strands of tea lights, it would be neat to have a wall of tea lights in vertical strands hanging behind the head table at dinner. 

This is a bit of a winter wonderful theme but you can see the effect the lights have on the evening, such a beautiful scene. 


Aside from twinkle lights hung in the air I love the idea of using mason jars it gives a bit of a down home feel for the reception and I've found some awesome ideas that I will undoubtedly steal! We plan to have a string quartet for the ceremony music and I'm hoping to incorporate a bit of folksy sounding music to the ceremony and throughout the evening...mason jars will simply emphasize this vision :)

 
How perfect are these? Using mason jars as accent lighting. Place colored tissue paper on the inside (orange for our orange and navy color theme) and using battery operated candles to illuminate the jars!  They can be placed on stairs, tables, & around the mansion. The mason jars with family wedding photos, or even baby photos are so nostalgic and a great way for each family to glimpse into the past. 

I thought this idea would also work wonderfully for our venue. When visiting Box Hill they had these same type of plant hangers. The wedding taking place used baskets of flowers with ribbon to hold the basket onto the hanger. I like continuing the mason jar idea for hanging our flowers down the walk ways. For nighttime we can dye the water and place waterproof battery operated LED lights in the jars!
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Fall Engagement Photo Session

I love Lo Boheme like really love! The Bohemian style is so sweet and radiates a sense of freeness. I've been having a tough time coming up with ideas for our fall engagement photo shoot that won't make Aaron run for the car. He's to much of a guy to make him do anything too staged or too frilly. Below are some ideas I have for photo's that Paula at Richest Wine Photography will be capturing during our shoot. Prop ideas are very welcome!

Chalkboards seem to be quite popular in a lot of shoots so I stole the idea from the bottom picture and re-created save the date chalkboards for all three of us (yes the dog too!)

So the venue has been chosen - Box Hill Mansion in York, PA and we're doing an outside reception, fingers crossed all goes according to plan! Think tea lights tea lights tea lights.

Ciao

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Pausing from summer and hiding from winter

There are racks full of  magazines with great fall ideas to put on the shelf for next fall's wedding. Vintage & Rustic meet Concrete Castle. Wedding dress shopping in a few weeks so here is a little preview of what I'm thinking for the most important aspects of the wedding...dress - shoes - veil

We're Engaged!

Aaron and I have returned from our beautiful St. Lucian vacation engaged :) Now I can start planning the wedding I've been planning in my head for the past year! 

Amongst our house renovations and my craft projects I can now start sharing wedding inspiration - hooray!!! There are so many great wedding blogs out there with lots of diy ideas. We have about 13 months of planning and lots of ideas to hone in on so here is a little taste of what we're thinking...color-wise.

 Shades of blue and pops of orange. Fall weddings by the bay, the colors of the water and the warm colors of fall that we all love. This was not my idea all along, I thought green and yellow, but my sweet fiance*** pointed out that he really would like the color blue. Thus my inspiration board above will hopefully spike some color combination imagination!!

"The future is no place to place your better days" -DMB

About a month ago we went to the DMB Caravan in Atlantic City and it was memorable! There is so much musical talent out there and I'm always amazed by the things people can do with instruments :) One day...

We've been slightly busy this summer with the house, it's been a hot one, but I wanted to share some before and after pictures of a few changes that took place.

The Front Flower Bed Before                       Flower Bed After

All the hedges in the front were torn out, we added a natural stone wall, and mulched the bed. Now I just need to figure out what to plant. I have added some flowers under the bow window but they're growing slow.



I painted the guest room, re-finished the side table "pick" my dad gave us in an antique white finish, and picked up a few key pieces from home goods (the table lamp, picture frame, and a few choice pictures for the wall not shown in the photo below)

                             The Guest Room Before...Messy!

The Guest Room Afterish, still waiting to make our headboard from the luvered door we took down off the dining room

Most recently, as in today, we had our new living room furniture delivered. It's so huge! ha, it's giant furniture, we're not quite use to it but it definitely feels more cozy and put together with our newest addition!

                                        Living Room Furniture Before

New Living Room Couch

New Living Room

The furniture came from Raymour and Flannigan

Crafting through Spring Showers

Whew! It's been a while since I posted any projects so I have a few to catch everyone up on. So, first things first; We made shutters :) Board and Batten ones to be exact. We found that it would save hundreds of dollars to make our own and I really like the look of these type of shutters over the vinyl louvered shutters. I think we spent under $100 in pine to make 8 shutters.

 We primered the shutters and painted them in Glidden Satin Exterior Premium Paint in Cherries Jubliee. The flower boxes were also primed and painted in the same color, then stuffed with pansies and marigolds :)

I have some seedlings planted with what I hope to be some very colorful cutting flowers. I was getting overly impatient in wanting to start planting flowers back in early April. I made it to May though and the landscaping has begun...hopefully a garden will comence soon as well!

Next on the crafting through spring showers list is this cutsie little apron I made for Jen for her Bridal Shower last weekend! This is the most sewing intense project I've attempted and let me note I need to take a sewing class because I did not understand half of the terminology used on the template. Needless to say the apron is a little rough around the edges but cute none the less!

Keeping with Jen getting married in 7 Days! We went on a mini-cruise for her Bacehlorette Party so I made all the ladies gift bags and my pride and joy are the name tags I made for each bag. I need to reproduce these bad boys and sell them :P I used designer paper I bought at Ollies, crinkle sissors from Aaron's mom, and hot glued little sandle buttons on them.

CUTE!

That concludes my spring shower updates but stay tuned I should have lots more to post about now that it's sunny and warm again! Besos

Vintage Luggage

This weekend Aaron and I went up to his family in Hazleton, PA for his grandmother's 89th birthday! While we were there we did a little 'picking' :) inspired by American Pickers I suppose. I've recently discovered I have a strong fancy for old vintage suitcases, hence the header :P Aaron went up to Hazleton last weekend and was given the grand tour of a barn on a family members property. He came home with an old 30's Stromberg Carlson radio, a cute little thing that kind of matches the big 'Christmas Story' looking radio we picked up at the Antique store down the road. Nonetheless he came home from last weekends trip telling me about some suitcases he saw up in the barn so instantly I was a little curious. When we went up this weekend his cousin took both of us down to the barn so I could poke around myself. He so graciously let me snag the 3 piece starlite luggage set and while I was exploring I discovered some 50's luggage set made my Sears and Roebucks, brand new! still the original boxes. Both sets are a light blue but the one's in the boxes are about 20 years older than the 3 piece set. I was so excited and Brian let me take both sets home with me! Here's a little preview of my finds...

 

 

 

Aaron picked up that little lovely case you see in brown and opened it up and surprise polka dots :) It's

hard to tell but the satin is actually purple and the dots are a light green. It's a really nice little leather case so I snagged it up too. It looks like I'm set in the blue luggage now if I could find some pretty greens and yellows that would be great! I'd like to collect a bunch of sets and upcycle them with little prints or stencil designs. I think I might try and put and an anchor on mine and drag them along with me on Jen's bachelorette cruise coming up in April!

Craft Station!

This weekend I headed up to Motor City to help my good friend Jen with wedding crafting. Jen, Emily (friend and bridesmaid), and I did some embossing with embossing powder, for cute little favors Jen is giving away to the wedding guests. They are little photo booth frames with paper inserts, at the top she is embossing the wedding date (5/14/2011) and at the bottom "Thank You"; in the middle a quote will be stamped. The guests will be able to take photos in the photo booth and later use the frames for their pictures :) Such a cute idea, I know photo booths are becoming quite popular these days. Emily also used Jen's Cricut to do some decorative paper crafting to spice up some guest gift bags for their hotel stays! P.s. The Cricut is awesome and I definitely want one, it looks like all the accessories can really add up though :(

Aaron accomplished a lot this weekend while I was gone, I came home to a very clean house, Thank You Aaron! He also finished hanging our french doors yay...and we went to home depot and bought items needed for my craft station :) I was given a My Home My Style magazine and saw this really cute and functional crafting station that seemed simple to put together. I'm so excited to use it, this is a snap shot of my inspiration.

and here is what

has been created

thus far...

I can't leave out the French Doors, we bought them at a home store in Reading, PA called Heeby's, kind of like a Home Depot or Lowe's except the supplies are leftover stock from big box companies and sold way cheaper. We bought the doors for $89/door! Painted them white and Walah

Did I mention we painted the living room a soft sage as well! It feels so much more like a home with color on the walls! Look for pictures of my decorated craft station soon.

Thrifty Thursday

All of our, mostly Aaron's, hard work didn't go unnoticed this week. Thanks to Michelle over at Thrifty 101 for featuring us in her DIY Thrifty Thursday showcase. We appreciate the feedback and look forward to displaying many more great projects as we attempt to bring our home from 60's to Stylish :)

Before and After

New Year's Resolution...become a better blogger! It seems as though it's been snowing at least once a week this winter, never amounting to more than a couple of inches. Nonetheless the snow is making it difficult to be outside these days. Here it is almost Feburary so it's time to post some before and after pictures of the kitchen. If you've been following our blog you'll realize this has been the theme of our posts up until this point so hopefully I'll have some different projects to talk about from now on.

On to the good stuff, here are the pictures of the kitchen:
                      After                                        Before

Last weekend Aaron installed the under cabinet lighting, if you can see there above the light switch near the sink there is a little black circle (sensor) the lights have three dimmer settings. It looks so great! Isn't the white wonderful! The whole kitchen just welcomes cooking and baking and hanging out.

We bought our countertops from Colonial Marble and Granite in King of Prussia, PA. We got a great deal on them, we paid around $2k for ~55 sq. feet of granite countertop, and they threw in ~30 square feet of free  backsplash tile (plus they gave us a little extra...on the side), and a new sink and faucet! We'd definitely recommend them, plus we were given some nice advice on where to go if we travel to Greece, which I've decided is where we'll be going after we tie the knot :-P

I just hung our dining room curtains this evening, FINALLY, so here's a little artsy picture of the dining room I took with my Hipstamatic app. It gives the pictures a vintage analog feel.

...and we can't forget about Lexi, I picked up this little picture at Marshall's, since Lexi seems like a person most day.

Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their Sunday and come on Jets :)