Our Day by Design

Rather than doing separate birth announcements when Holden was born, I decided to add his birth information and a photo to the thank you cards we sent for all of the lovely baby gifts we received. Knowing that I wouldn't have any time to actually make the cards myself, I decided to order photo cards from foto.com . I chose two different photos of Holden; one wearing his 'been inside for 9 months' suit and the other when I caught him smiling. Using photoshop, I edited and cropped the photos before adding a grey banner beneath each. I used the grey banner to add his birth information including his full name and the date & time of his birth and his weight. I ordered 60 cards, 30 of each, thinking that would be plenty but we only ended up with two left, which I've kept for his baby book. All of our family and friends were incredibly generous and gave us so many gifts when Holden arrived, some of which we still haven't used as some had thought ahead and bo...

I recently made two punch collages to give to my sister for her baby girls nursery. Since they already have the room ready from having my nephew I thought it would be lovely to have something new and girly to add to the walls. I first saw the idea on Ali Edwards blog (not sure how I ended up there in the first place) where she had made a version with a Martha Stewart classic butterfly  punch then a  heart  punch. Since I already have the Martha Stewart 3-in-1 classic butterfly punch I thought it would be a lovely thing to make for our future nursery. Since we hadn't yet found out what we are having, and butterflies are more suited to girls, I decided to make one for my sister first. I thought they would look better as pair or trio so when I was searching for patterned paper pads I liked, I also found an elephant punch , which will work for a girl or a boy. While searching on eBay I also came across a ladybug punch and a seahorse punch ,...

I wrote a guest post for Laura at Purple & Pearls , while she is on her fabulous honeymoon, about the last bit of DIY I did for our wedding, the Thank You Cards! You can read all about how I made them, the supplies I used, as well as the photo cards we put inside, over there ; hope you enjoy!

Time for some of the details from our day! Ive already written about all of the DIY items but here is how everything looked on the day! The ushers welcomed everyone to the church by giving them an order of service . I ended up making too many of them but it was better than not having enough. After the receiving line, the guests were able to look at the table plan to find which table they were sitting at, then there were table names on each table. Once the guests had found their tables, the placecards indicated their seat. The guests favours were placed beside the placecards. All of the kids also got Easter eggs we well as the box of mini eggs & a chocolate bunny that each guest received. We also had the menu's on the tables, which looked just like the order of services. The G & G letters were placed in front of the cake, then there was the little Lego bride and groom on our cake. We had sugar flowers on the top of the cake but since we had a glass cube vase separ...

Before I start the actual wedding day recaps, with all of the pro photos; I wanted to show you the thank you cards I made for all my bridesmaids. I meant to show you when I posted about their gifts , but I had forgotten to take a photo before I sent them. I took a quick couple of shots of Ashleigh's one when we were down visiting . I bought this clear stamp set from Etsy seller My Cute Stamps as soon as I saw it back in August last year. (Image from here ) I used the main bridesmaid stamp on the right along with the wording 'Thanks for being my Bridesmaid' on the sparkly paper we used for the rest of the DIY items, which I then stuck onto grey card and then onto the purple folded card. I then used the same purple ribbon we used on the invites and the same grey ribbon we used on the other stationery to add a bit of interest. I wrote all of their cards the day after the wedding then posted them from Heathrow before we jetted off to Sri Lanka. The boys and our parents did g...

Just before I start my recaps, one of the last things I wanted to tell you about was what I was up to the week before the wedding. I ended up being busy every single day and the week involved lots of shopping for last minute stuff; I think I was at Ocean Terminal, my local shopping centre, every day! Sunday 28th March: Honeymoon shopping in Edinburgh {sunglasses, sun hat, 2 dresses, 2 tops, a skirt, 3 books & a DS game}. Monday 29th March: Picked up our marriage schedule ; had lunch with bridesmaid Lucy; some shopping {pens for guestbook, plastic wallets for the stuff for each table, toothbrush, tissues & contact lens drops for honeymoon, glue pens, blotting tissues & underwear}; ordered a couple of umbrella's {post to follow about the terrible weather all week} and had a meeting at our venue. {While we were at the venue, we also booked to stay on the Sunday night too, rather than having to come home before we left for honeymoon on the Monday.} Tuesday 30th March: Spoke...

The last bit of DIY I did was to amend our guest book. We got the book from my mum and dad for Christmas. It came with a box to keep it in and they also ordered a metal tag with our names and wedding date to put on the front of it. We already knew that we wanted to make sure space would be left in the book for us to stick the Polaroid Pogo prints of all of our guests. I also didn't want to just leave the book plain inside as I felt that everyone just writes the same things and I thought it would be good to give them some pointers of what to write. I came up with 5 questions as follows {most of which I got from other bloggers ideas & the guestbook store books}: Name(s) How do you know the Bride & Groom? Where did you travel from? Any advice for the Newlyweds? Your Special Wishes for Us I got the 5 questions made into a clear stamp from The English Stamp Company as they could create anything you wanted and they could do it in the same text that I had used for all of the oth...

Another of our DIY items were the order of service's for the church ceremony. We made these before the menu's , which followed their design; the only difference was that the order of service had more text inside. The order of service was printed onto the sparkly paper and the 4 corners were punched with the Fiskars drops punch . We just used one sheet of paper, which we had bought pre-cut from PDA {it was such a time saver the buy the paper pre-cut, even though it was more expensive, as we just had to print & then fold}. We printed the sheet double sided to fit everything on so that we only had one sheet to attach to the tall purple card, which were the same as those used for the menu's. Inside we had a title page then wrote the full ceremony order, with the hymn titles & readings, on the second page. The third & fourth pages had the words to the 3 hymns, the sung blessing wording and the names of the full bridal party at the end. For the front we used the...