For my Baby Girl or . . . You're Not Home For the Holidays

Dear BS and PJ, or PJ&B, whichever way you guys abbreviate yourselves, Merry Christmas!  We SO enjoyed being with you last year, but now that you're married and live a zillion miles away and can't make it here to visit this year, we're taking here to you, via electronic miracles that didn't exist fifty years ago.  (Somehow I find it ironic that old fashioned Christmas cheer is being spread by new fangeled technology!).  Whatever the case, WE LOVE YOU GUYS, miss you and wish you the most joyous of Christmases!

  

Last used at your wedding.  

Don't worry, the new stockings are in the works.  :)

I added led candles in jars and around this group this morning.  LOVE the led's!

This is the little red maple that had to be sacrificed to build a fence to keep the horses out of the orchard.

LOVE what the girls did here!

Foyer Tree

Dining Room Tree -  love the look with the blue stuff

I couldn't bear to put away Mama New's quilt after Thanksgiving so its been blinged up some for Christmas.

 

 Charlie Brown Satsuma Trees

Cloe's the best decoration of all in light of the recent break in's around here.  And last of all . . . .

The Girls miss you and Send their Love.

Your parents do too!

Bag Lady

We interrupt this series of belated wedding posts to announce that this blogger has become a bag lady.

Ok, that just didn't sound right.  So let me start again.  Tonight I learned to make gift bags.  Seriously.  And it wasn't even hard, though my fingers are telling me next time to use something else to crease heavy kraft paper.

A friend called needing an order filled earlier today.  While thrilled at the big order I wasn't thrilled about the non Christmassy look of my cute little cellophane bee gift bags.  Rather than do the thirty mile round trip to the local WM, I took matters into my own hands, quite literally, and used what I had at home to make what I wanted.  I must say, I'm quite happy with them.

For the record, I watched several youtube tutorials before attempting to do this.  "How to make a gift bag" search will produce lots of links.  And I did a trial run out of a Christmas sale paper before  attempting the real thing, something that taught valuable do's and don'ts.   If you have any notion of doing the same, go for the short videos first, and please understand that you don't need any special tools or gadgets to do this like some videos show.  Like sewing, if you cut well and measure and mark things correctly, it goes together easily.  The main thing is to not be afraid to give it a shot.

So enjoy, Merry Christmas, and if you get a handmade bag from me you better reuse it!!

Butterflies - Theme I

Our Bride and Groom had three things they wanted to incorporate into their wedding.  The first was butterflies.  I'm not privy to how that got started, but I do know a necklace was involved early on.  Beyond that . . . well, it's ok not to know.  That being said, one of the visions for this wedding was for them to be surrounded by butterflies as they said their vows. 

 

For the record, the smaller butterflies were cut from card stock by Toni at  tonis-scraps.blogspot.com on her Pazzles.  The larger ones were cut by hand from a damaged Strong's Concordance and inked by hand.  Fitting for Bible majors don't you think?

Many thanks to Bonnie at bonniebphotography.wordpress.com for sharing her awesome photos with us!

images copyright Bonnie B Photography

Long Time, No See

I have obviously been remiss on my blogging intentions.  What happened?  Well, lets see -beekeeping,  my mother visited for 6 weeks, our garden kept us canning for weeks on end, our bride to be came home and, oh yes, a WEDDING!!  Then there was after wedding shock, candle sales going viral, extracting honey, sick for a month, fall farmers market . . . in short, life happened. 

That being said . . . rather than bore myself (and you too eh?) with more words about my semi-insane life, please enjoy some handmade photos from my absence.

 Ranunculus stems from a well known national chain store whose initials are WM. We enjoyed them "as is" in a hollow stump "vase" a long time . . cutting them was hard till they started looking like this . . .

 A few of many  boutonnieres for the groomsmen, fathers, preacher  . .  and the lily for the groom.

Burlap and ranunculus corsages for all the moms.  In case the above photos seem vaguely familiar, my friend Sonja (veryverdant.com)  was involved in planning and execution of many details of the wedding and shared them earlier this year. We had a blast making all the flowers.   Many, MANY thanks to Bonnie Horton who did the wedding photography for sharing her awesome photos shown below. Check her out at http://bonniebphotography.wordpress.com.

images copyright Bonnie B Photography