In Loving Memory

Sorry for going MIA this past month. We lost my baby brother on July 16 in an unexpected motorcycle accident and I have not had much drive to work on crafts or wedding things. Which I am now kicking myself for, 5 days to go and so much to do! He was 22, would have been 23 on August 31, and a great guy all around. We held his funeral on July 20th and the funeral home was packed full to where people couldn't even come into the building. 

Since the passing of my brother came so close to the exchange of our vows and reception I decided to put together a small "In Loving Memory" table. We will have pictures of the family member's we lost as well as a candle and little saying typed out. 

I went to Frans Candles and looked through the verses and poems until I found something I liked. I have typed it up on put it into a frame. Heres what it says:

Today we pause to reflect upon


those who have shaped our character,


molded our spirits and touched our hearts.


May the lighting of this candle be a


reminder of the memories we have shared,


a representation of the everlasting


impact you have made upon our lives.

I took a mason jar, frame, and nice decorative bottle and spruced them up a little bit with some lace and twine to keep with the country/vintage feel of the wedding. 

For the frame I hot glued the twine around the frame in a indented part, I did five rows or until the indented part was filled completely. For the mason jar I choose a wide piece of lace and hot glued it to the jar then did a few rows of twine. For the candle holder/decorative bottle I hot glued a few rows of the twine at the top and stuck a candle in.

The flowers in the mason jar is dried baby's breath covered with glitter. It makes a huge mess but so pretty!

I hope you all like the idea and if your looking for ideas I hope you find a verse or poem that fits for your loved one from Frans Candles Memorial Verses.

Cayenne Lime Mushrooms

So I am trying to eat healthier during the day instead of snacking all day. I stay home with my son and am very picky about what he eats but lately I've been letting myself snack away. When he gets older how am I supposed to tell him no while I am doing it myself right? So for my "snack" today I decided on mushrooms but didn't want to eat them raw.

Here's what I came up with! Cayenne Lime Mushrooms

I squeezed half a lime into a frying pan and added a drop of olive oil. Tossed in the mushrooms and sprinkled minced garlic and cayenne and cooked until soft with a lid over it. I didn't measure anything out but the cayenne is strong so only use a little unless you like it hot.

It turned out amazing for me! Enjoy

Small Crochet Sunflower (Pattern included)

Our "real" wedding ceremony will be August 24 with a large reception. We live on an adorable farmette with a few acres of land, What better place to have our wedding right? So we are trying to keep the price as low as possible while making it the wedding of our dreams, the normal goal of every bride and groom.

I figured I can crochet roses so how hard can making my own sunflowers for the wedding be? Turns out not that hard at all! Thanks to my bridesmaid/best friend she has made this super easy by doing the normal size sunflowers and Im making the small ones.

I used Coats Crafts Sunflower Crochet Pattern to make the normal sized sunflowers for my centerpieces and bouquet for my wedding. I used Simply Soft yarn to make them and had to use fabric stiffener to keep the petals from curling up since the yarn is so thin.

I also needed some smaller sunflowers that looked just like the bigger ones. So I adjusted the Coats Crafts pattern to fit what I needed. There are a few differences from the pattern: its smaller, a different needle/yarn size, and instead of using the piece of cardboard for the centerpiece I used a bit of stuffing to make it "puffy."

Here's the pattern, let me know if you have any questions!

Center (brown)
Piece #1
SC 8 in Magic Ring
2 sc in each sc, 16 sc around.
Finish off

Piece #2

SC 8 in Magic Ring 

2sc in each sc, 16 sc around

SC piece #1 to Piece #2, 16 sc

Stuff the inside with a little bit of stuffing before SC all the way around

finish off

Petals (yellow)

SC in SC of center piece

ch 6

SC in second from chain, DC in next 3, sc in last slip stich in next sc in center piece

repeat step 2 & 3 around, should have 16 petals

Finish off

The end project will look like this, this is both the normal size and smaller one.

DIY "Redneck" Wineglasses

So our favors for the wedding is mason jar drinking glasses. So I wanted to pick up some "Redneck Wineglasses" the bridal party. However in the store they run about $20 for a set and we are trying to save anyway we can. So how hard can it be to make them  myself!

I picked up two candle stick holders from the dollar store, used some mason jars from our favors, and picked up a thing of Loctite super glue. The mason jars are $9.99 for a case of 12 (about $.85 for one), $2 for both candle sticks, and about $3 for the super glue. So lets just call it $4 to make one!

The great thing about the loctite super glue is that it is clear and you wont see a yellow circle in between the two. And who doesn't love a mason jar as a drinking glass!

All you do is put a circle of glue on the bottom of the mason jar and a line around the top of the candle stick. Let sit for a minute before connecting the two. Place the candle stick onto the mason jar and leave sitting for 24 hours. Tada! Heres the finished product!

Book Club: "Rising Tide" by Lynn Steigleder *Spoiler*

I have recently started a book club in my area and was contacted by a local author prompting his book. I am all about supporting local authors and accepted a copy of his book. We scheduled the first meeting for this past friday and started reading "Rising Tide". Oh boy did we have a hard time reading this book.

"Rising Tide" is a fiction book based before the start of the new world. It is one of three books with Ryan "Adam" and Eve. It starts out at the end of the world and beginning the new world with Adam and Eve. The back of the book does not describe what the book is actually about at all and is very misleading.

The group agreed that we did not care for this book. We all felt that he did not do a great job of mixing religion and sci fi and that it felt more like a rough draft then an actual book. It had a great idea going just not perfectly executed and missed a lot of detail of the characters. We all agreed if he had given his idea to a different author with more detail that the book had a chance at being really good.

Now I am one for Love stories but not when it happens with in a minute of meeting someone. I was very disappointed by that aspect and even more so that they were married within a day of meeting each other. Even worse they killed of the only character that you actually start to like!

I don't want to ruin your choice to read it, something I don't like you might. However I would not suggest this book to any of my friends. Here is some reviews on Good Reads that you can take a look at! If you do decide to read this book I hope you enjoy it more then I did.

Our next book will be "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot. The first few chapters have started out great so hopefully I will have a better review for you!

Wedding Decorations: Down the Aisle

I am totally and absolutely addicted to Pinterst. There I said it. Too bad it doesn't fix anything!

That being said here is another idea I found on pinterst for my wedding. I found this great aisle decoration idea on weddingchicks blog and added my own flair to it to make make it unique!

The best part of this idea? I got to have a reason to drink 10 bottles of wine and no not all in one night, as tempting as that might be.

Our wedding colors are royal blue and yellow so I found Bartenura Moscato with a beautiful blue bottle. Made some burlap roses and some crocheted sunflowers and bought some sparkly preserved baby's breath from afloral.com. Here is what it looks like =]

Front

Back

Flowers

We will put it at the end of each row of chairs for the ceremony and then move it up to the the parking area for guests to walk through when they arrive. I think we will put them in the ground like the blog shows. Will have the pictures in august! Hope you guys like =]

DIY Workout Shirt

I am part of a meetup group that gets together and does different pintert pins. For the events we make a recipe we have pinned on pinterst and make a craft we have also pinned. Our upcoming event is to repurpose a old T-shirt. So it got my mind wondering and I decided to do something ahead of time. 

Here comes the new work shirt I have now made two of! I found this pin on pinterst but I can't seem to find the original source so I had to twist it up and figure it out on my own, heres what I have (ignore the nasty hair, just came from the gym!).

All you need is a pair of scissors, hot glue gun, ribbon, and a old T-shirt.

Front

Back

And it was very easy and quick, only took about a half hour. First find a T-shirt that is a little large on you. Then cut the sleeves, neck and bottom off as shown below.

Flip to the back of the shirt. The gray spot is the part you cut off the shirt to make the open back.

Instead of the huge bow on the link I posted above I cut 5 or 6 slices of thin ribbon I had on hand, or you can pick up thick ribbon. I hot glued the 5 or 6 ribbons together to make a think and sturdy piece that looks like this.

Then you can wrap around the arm pieces and hot glue in a few places until all the ribbon is wrapped.

Thats it! Try on your shirt and adjust the ribbon to wear you want it and your ready to work out. Makes a nice breezy and hip workout shirt.