Displaying Your Wedding Bouquet

As many of you know, the husband and I recently celebrated our one year anniversary. For one year, my wedding bouquet has been hanging upside down from the ceiling of my mother's dining room. Ha! 

I kept my bouquet because I already knew I wanted to use it again for our anniversary pictures. (Read about it here!) 

As I mentioned in my wedding series, my grandmother assembled my bouquet as well as all of the flower arrangements for my wedding. (Read about that here!) That said, my bouquet was very special to me and something I really wanted to keep. 

However, after a year, it was obviously falling apart every time it was touched. Naturally, I scoured Pinterest for an idea, only to turn up nothing. Time to get creative!

I used a shadow box and a some scissors to disassemble the bouquet. As I cut the flowers one by one, I laid them face down on the shadow box glass, arranging until I was satisfied. After getting all the flowers perfect, I placed the ribbon from my original bouquet on top of the flowers letting it play peek-a-boo in the background.

My wedding bouquet is now displayed in our master bedroom. I'm pretty sure Granny would approve too!

What did you do with your wedding bouquet?

Miranda

Monday: C.R.A.F.T., Craft-O-Maniac, Making the World Cuter, Keeping It Simple Crafts, Rain on a Tin Roof, The Dedicated House, Alderberry Hill, Mad in Crafts, I Should Be Mopping the Floor, The Gunny Sack, Home Stories A to Z, Home Coming

Tuesday: Kammy's Korner, Sugar Bee Crafts, Adventures of a DIY Mom, Chef in Training, Not Just a Housewife, Him and Her, A Stroll Thru Life, Mad Cap Frenzy, A Bowl Full of Lemons, Coastal Charm

Wednesday: We Like to Learn as We Go, Polkadots on Parade, No Minimalist Here, From My Front Porch to Yours, Yellow Bliss Road, No Minimalist Here, Sew Much Ado, Seven Alive, Simply Designing

Thursday: 52 Mantels, Live Laugh Rowe, A Glimpse Inside, Stone Gable, The Girl Creative, Bloom Designs, Blissful and Domestic, Crafts a la Mode, From My Front Porch to Yours, 52 Mantels, The Shabby Creek Cottage, Live Laugh Rowe, Bloom Designs, Stone Gable, The Girl Creative

Friday: The Dedicated House, Blissful and Domestic, Craft Dictator, DIY Vintage Chic, Shaken Together, 504 Main, Craftionary, The Grant Life, Thirty Handmade Days, Redoux Interiors, Simply Sweet Home, Just Us Four, Romantic Home, The Jenny Evolution

Anniversary Pictures + Giveaway

We have our anniversary pictures back and I must say I'm so pleased with all of them. Audrey Floyd Photography did such an amazing job, it was difficult to pick just a handful for this post. 

These pictures were all taken at the Coweta County Fairgrounds where we were married. I made a cake topper similar to the one from our wedding to go on our leftover cake. I also grabbed my bouquet and the picture of us running (literally) down the aisle. Other than that, we just cheesed it out!

Are you as in love with these pictures as I am? Not to mention, I finally have a decent family picture to put on the first page of my Project Life 2013 album. Ha!

Of course, maybe you could care less about the above pictures and just want me to get right to this awesome giveaway, I've been touting.

Audrey is so graciously offering one free mini-session (which is what we did). What do you get? One hour session with a DVD of 40-50 edited photos valued at $100 - our highest value giveaway to date!

The giveaway will end at midnight on Oct. 8th so get your entries in. You can also enter for a chance to win every day. So, what are you waiting for?! ENTER ENTER ENTER!

**Please note: This giveaway is only open to residents in the Atlanta and south Atlanta area.**

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Our First Anniversary

Our one year anniversary is here! We've definitely had a whirlwind year. We bought a car, our first home and added our youngest fur baby, Bella, to the family. What's ahead? I'm not sure. All I know is whatever it may be R.J. will be by my side. 

How are we celebrating? We're having a super fun photo session at the fairgrounds where we got married. After that, we are off to the beach for a relaxing week-long getaway for the two of us. Hallelujah! 

While I won't be as present this coming week, I'd like to leave you all with this - a look back at our big day. I thought about writing a post about what I would've done differently now, but I couldn't come up with a single thing.

The Wedding: Budget and Advice

The Wedding: Bridal Attire

The Wedding: Our Reception Part One

The Wedding: Our Reception Part Two

The Wedding: Our Ceremony

The Wedding: First Look

Enjoy your week!

Miranda

Milestones, Date Saving and Prayers

Stop the presses! 

This blog has just passed a monumental milestone - at least, it's monumental to me. My last post on how to put together a wedding scrapbook pushed our blog view number to just over 10,000 views! There are people out there who actually want to read what I write. My inner journalist is jumping up and down for joy. With that said, THANK YOU! I couldn't be more pleased.

Now then, back to what I'm really posting about today: Lauryn's wedding! A few weeks ago, I told you about Lauryn and her upcoming nuptials! If you missed it, you can read about it here. Her save-the-dates are officially in the hands of guests which means I can share them with you now.

I made a couple different designs for Lauryn. My two favorites (the one she picked and the other one below) ended up getting posted for sale in my Etsy shop. 

As I'm sure you noticed from the very first picture, we decided to use kraft paper instead of white cardstock. Her wedding will be on the beach so we wanted the STD to have an earthy, sandy feel. The kraft paper gave us that.

What are we up to now? The actual wedding invitations! We've narrowed down a theme for them (which I will share with you all after they go out) and that we will need an invitation suite. Having never done a wedding invitation suite, I'll be diving headfirst and feeling my way around, but I've already got some different ideas I think our bride will love!

As for my Etsy shop, I've been steadily churning out printing orders. In January, PaperLark reached a new profit high (YAY!) and is on track to surpass that milestone for February (BIGGER YAY!). I should've started offering custom printing ages ago! I have to have my application for Newnan Market Day in by Feb. 22 with my fee. I'm hoping and praying I'll be able to scrape by with my Etsy money to make that happen. PRAYERS APPRECIATED!

Until next time!
Miranda

The Wedding: Our Wedding Scrapbook

Greetings readers!

I have a long awaited treat for you today - my wedding scrapbook! Finally, right? I'm really happy with how it turned out and I think it will definitely be a wonderful keepsake for the years to come.

Before I dive in and share it with you, I'd like to explain how I did it. I ordered nine pounds of pictures! I had collected over 1,000 photos of our wedding and wanted each one of them printed. If something happened to the digital originals, I wanted a tangible copy. After all, it was a very special day that I'd like to share with my children someday. I didn't want to risk them accidentally getting lost in a computer crash or the like.

So...how do you sort 1,000+ pictures and condense them into an organized scrapbook? Ha! That was a major task in-and-of itself. I separated my pictures into the following categories:

• First Look
• The Ceremony
• Family Pictures
• The Reception: Food and Drink
• The Reception: Wedding Cake and Cutting
• The Reception: Decor
• The Reception: The Getaway
• The Reception: People
• The Reception: Dances

Now then, I certainly did not stuff all 1,000+ pictures in my wedding scrapbook. After organizing my pictures into their respective categories, I weeded out my favorite and best pictures I wanted in my album. With the leftover pictures that didn't make the cut, I placed them in the picture envelopes from Shutterfly that they came in, labeled them and placed them in a photo box for storage.

My photo box

When I made the wedding Smash Book, I went back to my photo box and dug out the pictures I wanted to use for it.

I do have some tips for anyone wanting to tackle a similar project of their own:

• The color scheme has already been chosen for you: your wedding colors!
• Clip your coupons, head to your local craft store and splurge on a paper pack that has your wedding colors in it to save time hunting down coordinating papers. I used the Mosaic Memories Paper Pad by Recollections because it had not only my colors, but a country theme as well. 
• Organize your scrapbook chronologically. By doing so, it will walk those looking at the scrapbook through your BIG day as it happened. 
• Also, work on your scrapbook chronologically. Start with your intro page, first look, then ceremony, etc. Why? Because you may have more pictures from one category than the next. You may have three pages of first look and only one of ceremony. Odd numbers can throw off your flow so plan accordingly.
• If you aren't a big scrapbooker OR have a TON of pictures, consider intermingling photo sleeves like these into your scrapbook. You'll see them sprinkled in my scrapbook. 
• Lastly, invest in a scrapbook storage box in addition to the photo box. My mother-in-law gifted this one to me for Christmas and I love it. At the bottom of this post, I'll share with you what all my storage box contains because more than just your scrapbook will fit!

Without further adieu, I'd like to present you with my completed scrapbook. You will see it from the first page to the last page. I hope it inspires you!

Almost ALL of the journaling in my scrapbook is from my previous wedding series on this blog!

Woosh! That was a lot of pictures to upload. Seriously, my eyes are hurting right now. However, I've got to show you the goodies in my scrapbook storage box. 

 

What's inside:

- Scrapbook (duh...)

- Wedding cards collected from my showers, the actual wedding and from the mail

-Activity book from the wedding

-Newspaper announcement

-My sash from my bachelorette party 

- Day-of schedule

- Wedding color swatches

- Smash Book journal

And yes, I labeled my storage box with a labeler. Don't judge me! So, there you have it! A completed wedding scrapbook safely stored with all keepsake memorabilia. 

If it seems overwhelming, just take it one step at a time and do it at your own pace. I'm so glad I took the time and effort to create this keepsake for my family. It'll be worth it. Promise!

Until next time!

Miranda