wedding gifts

Wedding presents ended up being suuuuper fun to get :-)  The first couple we opened, I remember feeling so awkward about  - you know, rough economy, and our friends and fam spending their hard earned cash to buy us treats?  I got over it pretty quick - because it was a riot!

We had plates to eat from!  Glasses to drink from!  Cookie sheets!  Bath towels!  And we were even able to purchase a kitchen table with the money we were given.  (Which was a good thing because we didn't have any furniture!  We didn't have anything actually.) 

We also were given plenty of items that weren't on our registry - some fun serving pieces, and a brilliant green vase!  Yet, we also received a couple of straight up bizarre things...items that made us give each other quizzical looks of "what the hell???"  Did you experience that too?  Some of those things make me smile now.   Every time I use an item in our home that was a wedding gift, I actually think of the person that gave it to us...I remember who gave us what...I really do.  Our spatulas?  Yep, I remember who gave us that.  Our Santoku knife?  Yep, her too.  Our glass pitcher?  Uh huh! 

A friend of mine is getting married soon.  I was browsing their registry.  Not one item is under $150.  Not one.  (To be fair, this friend is from a pretty well to do family...and is marrying someone who is even more well to do....so it's not actually a shock that their registry is full of "good stuff.")  But...man...times are tough.  I wish I had an extra $150 dollars to spend on each of the 6 couples we know getting married this summer!  That would be sooo fantastic!  Except...I don't. 


I should mention that we put a couple of WISHES on our registry too - a couple things that cost more than $150...like pots and pan and knives...but the majority of our items were around $20.  Our wedding was a destination wedding - most of our guests had to fly in and stay in hotels.  So, really, our guests WERE our gift at the wedding!  Their presence was the best present.  

megan hamilton's cake toppers

You alllll know that I'm a HUGE Megan Hamilton fan.  HUGE.  I've given her customized dress sketches to my mom and to friends (and to myself!).  I was browsing her Etsy site this weekend, peeking into her new sketches and noticed she has a new product - cake topper/statuettes! I think these statuettes would be so sweet as decor on the gift table, or near the guest book.   (And really - if small enough...would be charming to have on a bookshelf at home!)  Love that cleaver Megan Hamilton. 

diy: pretty napkins

I was bound and determined to hand craft gifts for family members this year for Christmas.  I was doing so well and managed to plan out all of the gifts before Thanksgiving!  Then....I saw too many tempting treats to buy.  So.  My plan to save money backfired...and my plan to "save time" kinda backfired too - since I actually took the time to make some gifts.  However...I enjoyed the process...and these were actually quick and were finished in one day!  (Plus...I know my sisters went gaga over them and appreciated them!)

What you need:
1. plain napkins (or you can make your own!?)
2. fabric scraps
3. a cookie cutter if you want to use a shape (or any other template you might want to use)
4. fabric scissors (work soooo much better than random scissors....but whatever you got)
5.  pins to hold your fabric shapes in place
6. your sewing machine!!!

pin the shapes to the napkin corner

I experimented with lots of stitches on my machine

went slowly...very slowly.

but as slow as I went, I still made mistakes....I call that "charming"

Loved how they turned out.

wedding favors

Sometimes I wonder what a winter wedding would have been like...and how fantastically romantic it could be.  The warm glow of candles and sparkling twinkle lights are not just decoration, they are a part of the magical landscape this time of year.

I've been to a wedding at Christmas time, and I thought about that pretty little wedding the other day when we decorated our tree.  Ornaments were given to each guest...what perfect wedding favors!  I am a big fan of favors that have a post-wedding use.  (We gave outdoor birdseed ornaments at our wedding...a theoretically nice gift (to feed the birdies!) except they didn't travel well...and in the end were super messy.)  Holiday ornaments would be sweet as bridal shower favors too.

Are you in the market for wedding favors?  (Including all of the pretty things pictured above!)  I have a discount code to share with you!  Just use the code:

MB15 to get 15% off of your total purchase at WeddingFavors.org!

noel

It's only 3 months until Christmas.  Did I already bust out the news that I will be going BACK HOME for Christmas this year?  I must have...it's the biggest news besides Clara learning to crawl :-)

Except, I have a couple "help me's" to throw out into the blog-o-sphere about the gift giving portion of the holidays this year.  It's September...nearly October...and I have no gifts purchased.  This is the first time in practically my whole life that this has happened to me.  Usually I pick up treasures here and there allllll year long for my loves...but this year has been a lil hectic.  And...well...there really isn't any "letting up" in that schedule until I'm on that plane headed for the desert!

Not only is "time" a factor in my Christmas shopping...or lack thereof...but so is $$$.  Ugh.  I so wish I had serious cash to buy the RADDEST stuff for my family and friends.  But it's just not in the cards this year.  Last year we made applesauce - which was great fun and fairly economical (until it came to shipping it...that was just stupid...we clearly should have sent something else in the mail.)  But the applesauce was a hit with our New England family...and I hope to do something like that again....perhaps this year we will zest it up with something exciting like...umm...cranberries?

Any ideas for hand crafting gifts that are nice, appreciated and don't weigh as much as a bowling ball (I swore last year I wasn't going to ship anything ever again...but if I am smart about it I won't be a Grinch this year.)

Ideas I had:
- embroidering napkins (we only use cloth napkins around here anymore...love them!)
- picture frames with Clara's cute mug (obviously, only close family would appreciate something like that...umm...maybe even only Grandparents?)
- homemade toffee (nope, I never made this...but one of my co-workers swears he makes the best toffee in the world and he promised to show me how - hummm....is toffee expensive to make?)
- subscriptions to magazines (I think this could potentially be cool - what do you think??
- *frown* I am already out of ideas

Any tips, hints or suggestions??

weddings with impact

Perhaps you have been to a wedding that made a donation to a charity in lue of gifts.  I always loved that idea.  I got an email about a nifty organization that reaches out to public schools as the beneficiaries of such a donations....and being the daughter, and wife, of public school educators I thought this idea was outstanding and clearly had to share!

First, some background: Founded in 2000 by a public school teacher in the Bronx, DonorsChoose.org is an online charity connecting public school classrooms in need with donors who can help. To date, DonorsChoose.org has delivered over $85 million in materials to over 5 million students and was recently named one of Fast Company's “50 Most Innovative Companies in the World”.

Here’s how it works: teachers create classroom projects aimed at enhancing their students’ learning on DonorsChoose.org. Requests range from pencils for a poetry writing unit, to violins for a school recital, to microscope slides for a biology class. Upon vetting by our staff, projects are listed on the site for individuals to browse and support, with a donation of any size. Once a project is fully funded, we ship the materials directly to the classroom, and donors receive pictures of the students using the materials and thank you notes from the classroom.

To get involved, couples simply create a DonorsChoose.org Giving Page, which can be customized with text, a photograph, and the classroom projects they would like to support. Each Giving Page has a unique URL, which can be shared with friends and family, much like a traditional wedding registry. To see the many couples who have already helped more than 15,000 students through their celebrations, visit their Wedding Leaderboard.

bang! bang! flip!

Check out this super rad t-shirt company...Bang! Bang! Flip graphic t-shirts...edgy designs on luxuriously soft t-shirts.  They were awesome enough to send me one!  I am always a little timid when it comes to purchasing clothing online...too many run ins with horrible Gap purchases.  However, this tee was soft (yay!) and was actually true to fit (double yay!).

What's better than the actual comfort of the shirts?  The bad ass graphics to choose from.  They have a section called "be mine devine" that is full of funky love sentiment.  Great gifts for bridal parties...or those wild bachelorette ladies. 

Thanks for the shirt - I LOVE it!!

the wedding greenhouse

 
I was recently sent a few sample plants from a company, The Wedding Greenhouse, that specializes in plants as wedding favors.  That concept was something that Tommy and I toyed around with giving as gifts for our own wedding.  This is the post I did on that here.  I love the idea of giving plants as gifts for parties and weddings - it doubles as decor and as the guest gifts!

The plants provided by The Wedding Greenhouse were well packaged in individual cardboard boxes (recyclable!) and were nicely wrapped in different color schemes, with coordinating ribbons.  Not only do they offer wedding colors, but they also have baby shower color options - super cute!  The colors they sent me were light blue, light pink, and white - perfect to decorate my house for Easter (but there are many color options to choose from.) 

These lil plants are low maintenance and is thriving in our apartment despite the cloudy weather outside our window... my kinda plants!

our homemade Christmas gifts

 

We gave our family homemade applesauce!

Tommy and I had a great adventure handcrafting these treats from the apples that we picked together.  We even learned how to CAN them so they would last several months!

I have to say, all of the activities surrounding this project were a blast.  Picking the apples off the trees in the orchard was such a lovely day...and then the afternoon Tommy and I spent chopping, peeling and mashing apples was a surprising good time!  We turned on Christmas tunes (despite it being October!) and we danced and sang around the kitchen getting in the Christmas spirit.  Canning turned out to be super easy - Tommy figured it out right away. 

In the end we had a dozen jars of what we called "Tom 'n Jes' Chunky Empire Applesauce" - a homemade yummy treat celebrating our new community's resources.  I found adorable mason jar toppers complete with felt apples from Mud and Twig on Etsy (cutest cutest cutest tags and toppers ever!!)  We were REALLY excited about giving them to our family members!! 

We even thought this would be a sweet wedding favor (of course in smaller jars!).  

mywedding/Christmas gift for my hubby

This is what I gave Tommy for Christmas - I made him a quilt. 

Originally, this was my wedding gift to him...as I had worked on it during the year of our engagement.  However, I wasn't able to assemble all of the fabric squares into a cohesive quilt before our wedding...so I tied a string around all of the pieces and gave it to him in a big bundle of fabric squares.  I then intended on sewing the patches together as an assembled quilt for our 1st year anniversary gift.  Yet with baby on the way and a full time work schedule, I'm pretty sure I won't have much spare time to do such things...so I decided to complete it as a Christmas gift. 

It's a crazy quilt...and I love it (crazy quilts are my favorite!).  I am so proud of it!!  I had never made a quilt before, I didn't know what I was doing...I just went for it.  I also didn't measure anything while making it - which was awesome until I had  sew the edges of the thing together...but that's another story.  I used fabric from our old clothes, scraps of fabric from his mother, and a hodge podge collection of fabric scraps I would pick up cheap cheap from fabric stores.  Lots of different textures...lots of different patterns...lots of different colors (though a fall color scheme prevailed...and I like that...it's the time of year when things like extra quilts get busted out of storage and such.)  All of the individual squares were hand sewn...as I didn't have a sewing machine.  When Tommy gave me a sewing machine for my birthday gift this project got a lot easier :-)

Obviously, Tommy saw me working on this a lot.  It wasn't a secret...but it WAS a surprise to him when he opened it on Christmas morning...FINISHED.  It kindof seemed like one of those things that may never get finished...as I had been working on it for a year and a half!    

I'd been telling my mother in law about this quilt since I lived with them last winter - FINALLY they got to see it!

 Tommy all wrapped up in our love quilt.

Here you can see the edges, and the fabrics I picked for the back of the quilt...a pretty striped print, and a printed fabric that has birds in branches which reminded me a lot of our wedding motif. 

I used an organic 100% cotton batting between the front and back layers...this makes the quilt warm and cozy.   Oh...and it fits a queen bed - which is AWESOME on these frigid northeastern winter nights.  Were you particularly excited about a gift you gave this year?? 
 

See - there is velvet, tweed, corduroy, cotton, eyelet, etc...I love the array of textures all together.

our new addition!!

my fave Christmas cookies - Czech cookies - mine turned out a litttttttle too crumbly, but taste just as delish!!

Don't believe I mentioned this when it happened...but...get this...I am the proud new owner of THIS Kitchen-Aid Standup Mixer!!  Ahhhhhh!!!!

I wrote about them here and here and here...and it was the thing I wanted the most from our wedding registry.  Yet, we actually didn't end up receiving it as wedding gift.  My parents gave it to me for my birthday/Christmas gift and I jumped up and down when I opened it a couple weeks ago!!

We had some bizarre drama with that mixer and our registry.  Someone had purchased it for us - believe me - I know this.  My sisters WERE going to get it for us, because it was the thing I wanted the most and I was so jazzed about having one!!  Yet, then it wasn't available on our registry anymore because someone had purchased it for us...I was ELATED...but my sisters were bummed that they hadn't purchased it sooner.  Anyway....then we never received it...and a couple months after the wedding, it had been returned to our wedding registry.  Apparently, someone bought it for us, and then returned it to the store after the wedding.  Slightly strange right?

Well, I was bummed...which makes me sound sortof selfish I'm sure.  Oh well...about some things I guess I am.  Can't help it.  But now who cares - I have one!!  AND it's just as dreamy as I thought it would be. 
I made Christmas cookies this weekend and it was a BREEZE in this thing. 

The hardest part was picking out a color.  We went with chrome.  What color do you have???

$$$ saving tips for wedding guests

Tommy and I were concerned about the cash our guests would have to drop in order to attend our wedding.  We brainstormed big time to try and off-set some of these costs for them.  Here is list of 5 money saving tips for wedding guests! 

1. Hotel Discounts - Call hotels in the area of your wedding and set up a block of rooms for your guests - oftentimes hotels will offer a discount for wedding parties.  The hotel that we contacted gave a HUGE discount to our guests - this was most helpful as our wedding was during a holiday weekend when hotels up their prices! 

2. Welcome Dinner - these dinners do not have to be lavish, we had a BBQ!  We wanted to include as many guests as we could smuggle into the venue as we had soooo many out of town guests.  Serving a simple, yet festive welcome dinner the night before the wedding can be a FUN way to bring new people together.   Don't be nervous about low budget cuisine...you will be wining and dining your guests AGAIN at your wedding! 

3. Alcohol - a full open bar is not a requirement for weddings...it's really not.  They are always awesome, and I always love them, but I certainly never expect them.  One way to provide adult beverages to your guests without spending an arm and leg is to provide either a wine only bar, or a wine/beer bar, or even a signature drink (like martinis, sangria or mojitos!)   We had an open wine/beer bar where guests to could literally purchase anything their taste buds desired, but if they wanted our selections of wine (we provided 4) or our local brew (we bought 1 keg) the drinks were on us!  This was perfect...we felt like our friends could party on our tab, and it was thousands cheaper than having a full open bar.  Everyone wins!

4. Registry - our registry was used by so many of our guests.  We were careful to include the bulk of our wish list in the $20 - $40 range.  This gave people the option to buy us the items we really wanted and needed and were in a price range that most people would feel comfortable with.

5.  Car rentals - as our wedding was a destination wedding, the majority of our guests traveled from out of state (and out of the country!) to celebrate with us.  This meant that our friends and family would need to rent cars and coordinate rides.  We put our friends into contact with each other so they could share rides and split the cost of car rentals.  This was golden!!

Do you have any $$$ saving tips for guests??

my bridesmaid gifts

Flower Pot - by Tina Tarnoff

The second I laid my eyes on Tina Tarnoff's hand-cut piece, The Flower Pot, I instantly knew that that was the image I wanted to represent our wedding.  Originally, I had grandiose ideas of incorporating the image into the program, or the menu card, or something...but in the end, it was just perfect as is.


Not only was I drawn to the whimsical rendition of two love birds nesting in a sweet rose bush together, but I knew that this was SUCH a ME gift to give as art is a huge passion of mine.  It felt incredibly proper to give something that was "so me" - even though it may not have been a typical wedding gift.   The image that I was so drawn to didn't scream wedding, or mountains, or forest - which was ideal.  Not everyone is into forest, mountain or wedding images to hang in their homes.

Plus, they are handmade....by a truly lovely artist.   We hung ours up on the living room.  It will always be a part of our home.

i'm a jammie girl

My friend, Amanda, sent me a pair of the cutest pajamas this week from a website called jammiegirl (have you heard of it?!)!  My darling jammies came wrapped up in a matching (darling) little drawstring sack.

A thing about me that most of you don't know is that I prefer to lounge in proper lounge attire.  When I come home from work, and I know I'll be "in" for the rest of the night, I throw the closest comfy clothes I can find.  I study comfy.  I cook comfy.  Eat dinner comfy.  Blog comfy.  And well, you get the idea.

lil chickens!

But NOW I can be comfy and so totally adorable at the same time.  In my light blue pajamas that have hot pink sea horses and yellow sea stars with pink piping.  No really.  I feel cute as a button....and Tommy tells me I LOOK as cute as a button (so it must be true...right!?)  AND I feel comfy....so there really isn't anything better.

i'm crushin' on these chairs

I'm giving my sisters jammiegirls this year for Christmas - because these are clearly the best thing in my comfy cozy little world.  Go check out how stinkin' cute their classic pajamas are!! (they even have a set of jammies with little brides on them!!) 

cupcakes!

 rollerskates!

our pretty lil guest favors

*photo by Auntie Pol

We worked with the Etsy business Nature Favors to hand-make our lovely little guest favors.  We thought that bird shaped birdseed ornaments would be such a sweet gift to give - considering our outdoor venue and the fact that there were birds on our invitations and such.

We purchased little green organza bags for them to go in.  (Here's a tip, if you are in need of little organza bags, I'd recommend Gifts International.  They were around 7 CENTS per piece! 

I was smitten with these sweet sweet ornaments.  They looked so pretty on the tables!

the best chocolate covered almonds in the world

Well.  I just found my own little heaven.  The Superior Nut Company. OHMYGOD.

I'm sortof in love with the idea of using little sweets and treats as favors at weddings.  You know, at the end of the night, hours after the dinner was served, and there is no cake left to be found....after dancing your heart out and drinking wine, all you really want is something delish.  A little organza bag of nuts or chocolate would be perfection.  Superior Nut sent me some samples of their products....and now I'm sold.

I've never eaten such divine dark chocolate covered almonds in my life.  In. My. Life.  I ate them immediately.  Didn't even have time to take a picture....seriously.  A bag....gone.   Not just that...but mouthwatering giant cashews (I ate that whole bag too.  By myself.), and mixed nut selections that would put the Plantar's Peanut man to shame.

In browsing their site, I noticed they have this rad "DEAL BAR" at the top of the page...where they have special deals for a day.  Today, I noticed that their special is 50% off favor bags with the purchase of a 5lb. bag of Jordan almonds.  Hello rockin' wedding guest gifts!!

I also got a bag of these:  Tiramisu Cordials (tiramisu flavored center surrounded with rich dark chocolate and Amaretto Cordial)  Did you die a little bit reading that?  Yea.  These are incredible.  They might be gone already too. 

In hindsight, a lil kick of chocolate covered protein at the end of the night would have been a great addition to our fiesta.  Huge yum factor.  Did you serve treats at your wedding?

14 days and a registry re-do

*a smooch from our surprise engagement party last August!*

FOURTEEN DAYS!!!!  Holy smokes.  So excited....every moment, every breath has a sparkle of specialness to it.  Do you know what I mean?

As we are packing up our home, and getting boxes ready for donations (and for my sisters to inherit) I snuck a peek at our wedding registry.  I was curious to see what items people had purchased for us.  I have no idea why I felt guilty doing this.  Anyway....

To my surprise, there were about 25 items that were no longer available for our guests to purchase!  Our pots & pans, bed sheets, and other goodies were either "out of stock" or no longer being sold!  I had a mini freak out.  Ha!  So we had to go through it and modify our wish list.  (make sure you keep up with the registry  - a lot of items are replaced seasonally!) 

I get so nostalgic about our registry stuff, knowing that with some luck we might just be blessed with some of those things.  It will be awesome to have our own home, just the two of us, with new "grown up" stuff.  I've long gotten over the awkwardness of "wedding presents."  I remember when the whole "engagement" thing began, I was nervous about making a "list" of things we wanted.  Except, now I realize that wedding presents are really really freaking radical!

pearls for my girls

Vegas kicked ass.  Pure AMMAAAAAZINGNESS!  I don't even think I can appropriately recap it - mostly because what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas (except for what makes it to Facebook?)  This weekend took some crafty planning to pull off! (props to Kami!)  It brought together girls from the different corners of my life. It it is so so cool to have all my lovely friends in one place... laughing and drinking and dancing together...and becoming friends too. Literally, one of the BEST weekends of my life! They made me feel like a star!

I might post a couple pictures from the weekend...except... not today because I don't have any of the pictures yet.

I wanted to give my friends little "thank you" momentos for my wild and crazy Bachelorette weekend extravaganza.  I found a couple box sets of different colored pearl earrings.  Wrapped 'em in tissue paper.  Put them in pretty silver boxes...and voila...pretty pearls for my party girls!  A classy way to remember our weekend of  raising hell in Sin City.

 

my bridal shower: gifts

Me taking a picture of my pile-o-presents...do you see that smile on my face...hehehe.

Some of these thoughtful gifts made me flat out cry. Many times I felt my eyes welling up just reading the thoughtful cards (I am SUCH a friggen' sap.) All of the gifts were lovely...and I will remember their acquisition forever. They are my new special things. Things that could last us our lifetime. Things that we can appreciate on a daily basis. Beautiful dining table decor, fabulously useful kitchen items, a print of San Francisco (our honeymoon spot!), and dance lessons (yep...Tommy and I will actually know how to dance at our wedding!)

Umm...the candy bra from my cousins isn't exactly a new treasure...but it was kinda funny....and made me laugh and get a grip on my emotions.

I assured my sisters that favors were not required at bridal showers! But, they loved these little bud vases. So, they bought a bunch, filled them with pretty blooms and scattered them everywhere. Every guest got to take one home. I got a yellow one. Aren't they sweet?


As a "thank you" to my sisters and cousin, I got them each a rad EarthLust stainless steel water-bottle. I picked these pretty lil things up at HipGreenDeals awhile back (and it just so happens that my sisters used a pink and yellow color scheme for the party...hollah...perfecto.) Personally, I don't know if it's appropriate or necessary to give thank you gifts to the people who throw you a bridal shower. But after all the work my sisters put into it, I really wanted to give them something in appreciation - and these are practical, usable and really pretty (ummm...I bought for myself one too.)

*ENTER TO WIN A PHOTOGRAPHY SESSION FROM cameron+kelly studios HERE!*

our fair trade wedding registry

What if your WEDDING REGISTRY was full of hand crafted treasures? Made by talented artisans, for honest wages, in ethical business transactions, that aim to protect and stabilize struggling communities throughout the world? Ummm. Sign me up please.

Seven Hopes United specializes in marketing fairly-traded handmade gifts, jewelry, home decor and personal accessories from producers around the globe....supports a trading partnership aimed at obtaining sustainable development for excluded and disadvantaged producers by operating according to fair trade criteria, and investing a portion of our proceeds back into their communities. Read more about this company here.

**Enter the code: MTNBRIDE

to save 15% on your ENTIRE ORDER!!**

I love these. Like. Love them.

This is the kind of organization I can get behind. This is what I want to fill my home with...this is how I want to spend my money when I purchase gifts. And so Tommy and I registered with them...for some beautiful things!

More amazing factoids about Seven Hopes United, 10% of every guest's purchase is donated back to the communities in need to continue community development initiatives throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Central and South America.

AND. If you don't get the items that you registered for, they give you a 10% discount to purchase any remaining items up to 6 months after your wedding. I love supporting companies that make a difference. Don't you?

Somehow, I'm not exactly sure how, but somehow, we didn't end up registering for oven mits before...and how freaking pretty is this lil handmade hand protector?

Made from wild olive wood...I think the batik inlay is rather sweet (they have a huge variety of serving spoons and wooden serving bowls!)I love napkins...I have given handmade napkins as wedding gifts in the past...I just think they are so utilitarian and beautiful....not to mention eco friendly!

*note: Tommy and I get married in 75 days. Wow.