Leigh Anne's Wedding

Quick post today. Most of y'all know that one of my best friends, Leigh Anne, got married recently. We had to dodge the rain all day but Leigh Anne didn't let it dampen her spirits. I managed to snap some pictures with my phone of the set up prior to the down pour. Between Leigh Anne, Kevin and myself, we managed to do most of the decor ourselves and at almost $0! Yes.... Kevin is a miracle woodworker. I told him he's lucky he wasn't my husband because I'd have him building all sorts of furniture for me!

This was at the bottom of the driveway to prevent any cars from parking. All of the signs were cut by Kevin and I stained and painted them.

The entrance to the backyard.

The bar area.

Ceremony site in the backyard.

Hay bales for seating

Honorary Candle for their fathers who could not be there. Kevin built the entire thing. I stained the frames and then the candle went on top.

I know it's hard to see but I etched the names of their fathers as well as a meaningful quote and the wedding date of this vase. The vase was then placed on top of the stand above and burned throughout the event.

Amazing alter that Kevin built! This now sits in the backyard of Kevin & Leigh Anne's house!

All of the centerpieces were slightly different. Again, Kevin cut all of the wood and the Mason Jars were donated.

Favor & Mad Lib for the couple at each place setting.

I printed the Mad Libs & the Thank You tags.

Leigh Anne's mom made the bird seed favors.

Sign at the tables. Kevin pieced the wood together and I painted the sign.

Custom benches Kevin made.

The Photo Booth area and props. I made all of the props for the Photo Booth.

(with the exception of the hats obviously...)

Me & my sister made this humongous wreath for about $15.

More of the bar area.

Gift table for cards and presents.

I bought the box from goodwill for $4.99.

I sanded it down, cleaned it out and stained it.

I used my Silhouette Cameo machine to cut the letters for "CARDS" and looped some thread through.

I sewed a burlap pillow to place on the inside.

Thumbprint Tree table as the Guest Book.

The cake stand. The cake was beautiful and delicious but I didn't get a picture of it because I was upstairs getting ready when it arrived.

Upstairs where us girls were dressing, we had a serious spread of goodies to keep us occupied through hair & makeup, including mimosas.

I wasn't able to get any pictures of the event since I was in the wedding but you can check out the photographers blog here for some much better pictures of the couple and their day.

It was a great day!

Leigh Anne & Kevin Dillistin - Gina McLean Photography

Trip to Knoxville.

A few weeks back Deuce and I went up to Knoxville with my dad and sister to meet the rest of our family for my cousin Jessica's wedding. Any time my family gets together we have a blast. No matter what we're doing we have a lot of fun together. We arrived in Knoxville around 5:30 on Friday afternoon and immediately made our way out back to relax by the pool & the fire.

As is customary for my aunt & uncle's house, there are always people over. Whether it's family or friends, there are always visitors there. So we start up the fire, usually put the race or some sporting event on the TV (unless Grandma is in charge of the remote and then we watch Andy Griffith), drink a  few brews and play games in the yard. Deuce immediately decided to play football with Jordan.

Deuce loves him some Jordan! Then Pop got in on the action.

Then Deuce found Courtney. Courtney's boyfriend Chad is the neighbor and they might as well be family. She has a daughter that is 18 months old and I don't know if she just oozed of mommy vibes but Deuce loved him some Courtney too. Poor girl. She had 2 nights in a row out without her child and mine was glued to her lap the entire time. He's a ladies man.

We called to check on daddy and make sure he was alright at home without us.

Then wedding day arrived. The wedding was at a cute log cabin chapel in Gatlinburg and with it being the opening weekend for Dollywood and some car show in town, it took us 2 hours to get from Knoxville to the wedding. This made for a long journey. We split up into 2 cars and about an hour and a half down the road we had to stop for a bathroom break. We stopped at this country store in the middle of nowhere and went in all dressed up. We definitely looked like true city folks while the store was full of mud covered, overall wearing farmers. So in true country folk style, we picked up a couple of beverages to complete our long journey to Gatlinburg. Shhhhh......

We finally made it to the chapel with only a few minutes to spare before the ceremony started. Luckily someone noticed that Grandma was headed into the chapel with her bedroom shoes on.

Lawd.Have.Mercy.

Jordan had to take her back to the car so she could put her dress shoes on. We were all laughing so hard we were crying. Including Grandma.

My cousin Robin and her son Weslee. The setting of the chapel was beautiful!

The bride & groom: Jessica & Jason.

While Jessica & Jason were outside taking pictures together, we seized the opportunity to take some family pictures in the chapel. Pop kept Deuce at Aunt Rita's house in Knoxville and I'm very thankful for that. The 4 hours in the car for the 15 minute ceremony probably would have been a little too much for him.

Jordan, Aunt Rita, Uncle Jeff, Ricky

Aunt Rhonda, Ryan & Brandon

(Ryan & Brandon are getting married in September!!)

Aunt Rhonda, Ryan, Laura, Lindsay, Me, Aunt Rita, Ashley & Hailey

Me & Wawa outside the chapel.

Pop brought Deuce to the reception which was back in Knoxville and he was so proud of himself. He had fed Deuce lunch, gotten him to nap, gotten him dressed for the reception and found his way through Knoxville to the banquet hall. He did a darn good job!

And can I just say, my child would not leave the dance floor the entire night.

Like at all.

He threw a tantrum when it was time to go.

The embarrassing kind of tantrum.

I guess I kind of do the same thing when I have to stop dancing too.

Save the Dates & Silhouette Envelopes

So y'all know one of my best friends, Leigh Anne, is getting married in May right? Well I have volunteered to craft as much as I can for the wedding to keep costs as low as possible. We have all sorts of ideas and things that we are planning to build, print, paint, glue and whatever else prior to the big day on May 5th. Because so much of the wedding is going to be DIY and homemade, we have had to be very diligent with our timeline. I will try to post as many of our projects to the blog as possible.

I will be making all of the invitations for the event and I started with the Save the Dates. LA and Kevin are getting married outdoors and having a poolside reception with a county chic theme. I designed the invitations and printed them on white card stock on a high quality color laser printer. Then I cut out each invitation and used my corner punch to round the corners. I punched a hole in the tag and looped a piece of twine through. Then I steeped two tea bags over luke warm water for about 30 minutes and soaked all of the invites for roughly an hour. I put as many in the bowl as I could fit which resulted in an uneven stained look, which I loved. Then I laid each invitation on a cookie sheet in a single layer and baked them at 350 for about 3-5 minutes. Keep a close eye on them so they don't curl up too much or catch on fire. After baking them {they should be pretty much dried out} I stacked them under some heavy books to flatten them out over night. Then I used my distress ink all around the edges.

For the envelopes, I downloaded an envelope shape from the Silhouette store and used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out each invite. I adjusted the shape in the software using the grid, so that it was slightly larger than the invite.

The Cameo is amazing because it cuts teeny tiny slits along the folds of the envelope so that you know where to fold it after you cut it out. I used a roll of brown craft paper form Wal-Mart to make the envelopes so I had to cut the paper down to size to fit through the Cameo machine. This probably took me the longest amount of time. If I had used scrapbook paper or something that was 12x12 or smaller it wouldn't have taken me as long. It would have been much more expensive though. So I cut out all of the envelopes (actually my amazing Cameo did) and then I folded them, stuffed them and used a glue stick to seal. SUPER EASY!

Here is the final result and cost breakdown.

Brown Craft Paper: $4.95 (I only used about half the roll)

Paper, punches, ink, glue sticks, tea, twine: All out of my craft closet.

Custom Made Save the Dates for $4.95???? FO' REAL!!

{I took these pics with my cell while making these and wrangling a toddler so they are not the best quality. And I couldn't get step by step pics of the process. Will try to do better!}