The Coolest Cups Ever!

For my son's minion party, I thought it would be kind of cool to have some personalized (but not too personalized) cups to give as part of the favors. I found these cups on TotallyPromotional.com and I think they're amazing. So the cups are a frosted colored plastic cup that change to blue when you add cold liquid to it (they were blue when I got them because it was so cold outside!). I chose to use one of their clipart choices. It said Happy Birthday. I put that in yellow to go along with our yellow and blue minion theme. I then bought some lids and straws to go with these cups (little hands make easy spills). Everyone thought they were great! And like I said, they were personalized because they said Happy Birthday. But they weren't too personalized because like a lot of wedding favors, putting your name on things leads to favors that people aren't going to keep. Another way to use these cups outside of promoting your business is to commemorate a trip. We received a cup just like this when we went on a Disney Cruise when we participated in fish extenders. You could use them to commemorate a wedding (for the kids) or a family reunion or pretty much anything where you're hosting more than 20 people because that's the minimum order. I ordered 50 and am going to save the extras as birthday gifts for my students next year.

Our Wedding Cake

I absolutely LOVED our wedding cake! I of course had to be involved in everything. I knew that I didn't want to have a circle or square cake. They're beautiful, but they're just so traditional so I asked for something different. The woman at Janet's Cakes in Bloomington, IL told me that they could do a hexagon. I was all for that! Then, we just had vanilla and chocolate as our cake flavors. I can honestly say that I've never had any other flavor of cake that I enjoyed. I don't like red velvet, coconut, strawberry (my least favorite), etc. The whole reason we chose Janet's cakes was because of their amazing frosting! It's the best I've ever tasted! The design on our cake was in one of the books that we were looking at, but I had the idea to do the different colors. Since our wedding colors were that beautiful aqua color and then silver, black, and white, this cake worked perfectly with our special day!


Pictures taken by Kelly Lyle Photography.

Get your bride the name hanger!

Have you seen the personalized hangers? You know what I'm talking about. The ones that are wooden and then your name or something is spelled out in the wire part! They are so interesting. You can find them EVERYWHERE on etsy. Shop around! I suggest looking at several peoples' work. Find the one that you think looks the cleanest and easiest to read before you buy. My sisters got me one for my wedding. I got my maid of honor one when it was her turn to get married. I also saw that one of my other friends had one when she got married. I could barely tell what it said, but when I did figure it out, it read 'Bride'. Those are fine, but I prefer the ones with the name. It seems so personal! The one I got for my maid of honor was even colored! Her wedding colors were black and pink so I got it made with a black hanger and pink wire. Here are some pictures of the hanger my sisters got for me: (It says Mrs. Lukow-my married name)



Pictures were taken by Kelly Lyle Photography.

This is the hanger I got my maid of honor (it says Mrs. Tipton):



The next time you're stumped on what to get the bride in your life and you want to get them something other than what's on their registry (which I suggest sticking to for the most part), get them this hanger!

My Wedding: Centerpieces

I've been married to my wonderful husband for 1 year 4 months today! I'm not really sure why I didn't think about posting things from my wedding before now, but I guess better late than never, right?

I personally think that flowers are beautiful, but we had a budget that we were working with that just didn't allow for huge flower centerpieces. What we ended up going with was basically a tall square vase. In the bottom, it had a waterproof LED light, clear beads, turquoise water, and a floating candle in the top.



These are the pictures that our photographer, Kelly Lyle, took. The candles weren't in them yet, but you get the idea.

This is a very easy concept to implement:
1. Buy the vase. We got ours from Michael's Craft Store. If you're on a super tight budget, they frequently have 40-50% off coupons. We bought one at a time over about a year and ended up getting them for a great price.
2. Put the waterproof LED light in the bottom. It's pretty easy to find some cheap ones online. You just have to do a bit of searching.
3. Add the clear beads. You just need to be very careful when doing this. You don't want to flip the LED light or worse, break it. The easiest way to do this is to put the vase at a slant and slide the beads in at an angle.
4. Put in some colored water. The easiest way to do this for me was to fill up an old milk jug with water. I worked out the perfect color and then for every milk jug worth of water, we used the same amount of food coloring for each one. To achieve the same color that I got, we put in 2 drops of blue and 1 drop of green. Then we just poured the water in over the beads. The leave room for the candle, we left a couple inches at the top. You could also put in some flowers (real or fake) for a completely different look.
5. Add the candle and light it right before everyone is set to arrive and you're done! They look great when it's a little dark in the room (which most reception rooms are).

I wish I had some pictures for you when the candle was lit, but I don't. Share what you did for centerpieces or what you would do differently! and I hope you have an amazing wedding day!

First Dance Picture

FYI: I am in desperate need of a manicure, but unfortunately, that didn't occur to me before I did this project. Also, my handwriting isn't that great, but I suppose writing it myself helped to add some personalization to it.

Step 1: Get everything together. (1 picture from your first dance at your wedding, 1 frame that's larger than the picture you have, a couple pieces of white cardstock, and a pen)
Step 2: Measure your cardstock so that it fits inside of the frame. (I only suggest having multiple pieces of cardstock in case you mess up on the first one like I did.) Measure and cut out a hole in the center of the cardstock that measures to the size of your picture. I used an 8x10 frame and a 4x6 picture. I decided to make my picture black and white and the frame silver. I thought it added a little something. However, I'm sure it would look nice if the picture was in color and you used a frame that was your wedding colors.
Step 3. Write the lyrics on your cardstock. I learned that it looks better if your write a little larger. My lyrics could probably be bigger. Oh well. You might notice that some of my words are darker than others. The truth? I messed up on one of my words and without thinking about it, went over it about 4 times before I realized it would stick out like a sore thumb. It was at the end so instead of starting over (for the third time I might add), I decided to do it randomly and I didn't hate it! You do whatever you think looks best.

Step 4. Tape the picture into place.

Step 5. Put the whole thing in your frame. And you're done! Voila!

Now you've made your first dance picture a little more interesting (Not that you really needed to). Plus, you'll never forget what song you danced to for your first dance (Although I'm sure you'd need to worry about your husband forgetting, not you).

Chocolate covered oreos for a bridal shower.

My sister found a picture of something like this online and made them for my wedding shower. They were delicious and cute! OREOS BIRTHDAY WAS MARCH 6TH, 1012 SO THEY ARE NOW 100 YEARS OLD!

For this project you will need:
Oreos
White chocolate (I used almond bark)
Dark Chocolate (you can use milk chocolate, but it melts so much faster and doesn't get as hard as dark chocolate)
pearl sprinkles (I found mine at Kroger)
white writing icing
black writing icing (while the writing icings are not necessary, they will come in handy when decorating the oreos)

Step 1. Coat all oreos in white chocolate.
Step 2. Dip the sides of half of the white chocolate covered oreos in dark chocolate.

Step 3. Use the black writing icing to add a bowtie and buttons. You are now done with these oreos. All that's left is to let them dry.
Step 4. Use the white writing icing to add details to the other half of white chocolate covered oreos.

I pretty much just did squiggles, but for people more talented than I am, I'm sure you can do whatever you want to decorate these.
Step 5. Add dots of white writing icing to make a necklace. Place pearl sprinkles on these dots. Now you're all done with the "bride" oreos.

As soon as your oreos are dry, you can package them and use them as favors at a shower or the wedding itself. For packaging, I bought my bags at dollar tree. They were too large so I cut them in half and then used ribbon to tie them off.