Henry Reigns

Wedding coasters

2011-07-11T18:33:00.000+01:00

Or programmes as I liked to call them. Turns out lots of people think they are coasters or seat markers on first sight. Including my own Mother who as a result didn't turn them over to see the special message we'd included for our parents and so wasn't a sobbing mess before the ceremony started like some of guests. I like to think this is down to my ingenious design but it may just be because they do look a lot like beer mats!

Prompted by yet more proof (via A Practical Wedding!!) that no-one thinks these are programmes I thought I'd better explain how they worked and how I made them.

Basically I wanted something cute and nifty that would fit in people's bags and I stumbled upon the idea of a map fold. So using these instructions for a turkish map fold I type up our two readings and the programme for the ceremony and folded them all up.

For the cover, I wanted to keep to the simple gill sans font I'd used for everything else so just had our name, location and date on it. For the back, I had spotted this dedication ages ago on 100 layer cake and loved it so I knew that's what would go there.

I stuck them all together and left wee piles of them under books for a day to g and that was that. Programmes done, I was really pleased with them - definitely one of my favourite wedding diys.

Blurb books*

2011-06-26T18:18:00.001+01:00

Since getting our wedding photographs from Emma I've created several blurb books with the disc of images. A wedding album for each set of parents, a book of just the photobooth pictures and finally last month I finished off our 160 page beast of a wedding album.

Our wedding albums

I'm glad I took so long to get this done as by the time I got round to ordering it from blurb they had started doing a proline version of their books with nice linen backed covers and higher quality paper.

The proline books are all printed in Seattle so I thought it would take ages to arrive but ours came within a week of me placing the order which is pretty speedy.

parcel arrived and sitting on my desk at work

So I ordered the largest landscape size (33x28 cm) in hardback with the oatmeal linen cover which is quite a large weave and a nice texture to it. This comes with a slip cover.

Slip cover and linen hardcover

I'm really pleased with the book and the quality of printing and I think the colours of Emma's photographs come out really well whether b&w or colour.

Example pages

The other good thing about this version of blurb is that you can do big double page spreads, which I love!

Example double page spread

and another one

I love having a wee photobooth one too and its amazing what you notice when you're looking at the pictures printed out rather than just on your screen.

Pages from the photobooth book

The cost of the big book was £92 but I found a discount code for 15% so it was £79 which I think is pretty good for 160 pages of photos.

*Sorry about the crap photo pictures (you can click to enlarge the fuzziness) and this is not a sponsored post I just love the blurb.

Weekend diy

2011-06-26T17:30:00.000+01:00

Spotted this on brightbazaar today:

[image from here]

And in under an hour have created this in our spare room using a map of Mull and the West Coast:

Sometimes when I say 'I could make that' it turns out I really can!

6 months...

2011-05-20T11:35:00.000+01:00

...goes surprisingly quickly. Its our 6 month anniversary today; we shall be quietly celebrating and hopefully putting the finishing touches to our blurb book over the weekend.

{photo by Emma Case}

Blogging

2011-04-20T13:39:00.003+01:00

Hey, remember when I blogged fairly regularly about my wedding?? Me too, I'm delighted to be back on the wagon again for a short to guest blog for the lovely Marty at Not The Marrying Kind today about putting our photobooth together. Go read it if you want some info on how I made giant photo props of my cat's head like so:

I do intend to post again at least to sum up the wedding experience and showcase my diy adventures but that would require digging stuff out of the various large plastic boxes hidden in our spare room and taking some pictures.

In the meantime, I do tumble as Marty says, I realise I should probably pinterest with all the hip kids but I've a fond spot for tumblr as it got me through wedding planning and dress designing.

Wedding Video

2011-02-24T23:26:00.002Z

So the final piece of wedding paraphernalia is our wedding video. Created using an ebay bargain super 8 camera bought for a tenner which was a gamble that paid off and a bloggie HD camera manned by either of our brothers.

This has been eating up my evenings and while not anyway as professional as some of the offerings on vimeo its just right for us and just enough wedding video to be watching.

Kiara + John Wedding from Kiara King on Vimeo.

Animate

2011-01-29T21:16:00.002Z

Because I love, love, love Harry Potter stylee photos:

Gif animator

Nesting

2011-01-10T22:29:00.003Z

Turns out not having a wedding to plan means you've got a lot of free time to get on with your

life or in my case switch your focus to interior blogs.

So now that the christmas decorations are all packed away, except for the (wedding) fairy lights which have hung on, I've been putting up some of our lovely wedding presents as so:

And grappling with a gallery wall:

There are still a few wee wedding jobs to do like finding out if our super8 experiment worked and editing it into a video, doing up our photo albums, organising the wedding bits and bobs, oh and dry cleaning my dress!!

Photees

2010-12-14T19:58:00.006Z

So our photographs are in and they are amazing, we look like the best possible versions of ourselves ever and I'm so delighted we were able to find Emma and its hands down the best money we spent on the wedding. As all the glitter fades from the day, its such a treat to be able to pour over photos of ourselves and our friends and families looking so joyful.

Check them out here and show Emma some love.

Source

Post wedding calm

2010-12-05T19:24:00.003Z

Two weeks into married life and we've still not quite unpacked everything but I have discovered the benefits of using fairylights to decorate the venue with means that we can use our wedding lights for our Christmas tree:

and pop our cake topper in a cat-unfriendly place so it survives.

Still not feeling that 'married', I think its going to be a slow grower on me. Especially as I'm not changing my name and my wedding ring fits so neatly under the engagement ring that its not that different.

So feeling very festive and glad to have moved onto christmas prep stuff and how much more time do I have in the evenings without a million wedding blog posts to read??

and the wedding gods smiled...

2010-11-25T20:27:00.002Z

We're back, all married and everything. It doesn't feel that different, yet.... but I couldn't stop telling everyone we met after the weekend that we had just got married: the waitress in the pub we had amazing fish 'n' chips in, the man in the art gallery we bought a print in, the lady in tescos, etc, etc.

We had a fantastic weekend - everything we hoped for, the sun shined all weekend (in Scotland, in November!!) and our friends and family were wonderful.

Our photographer was also a gem and there's a wee sneak peak here.

D-day minus 2

2010-11-18T20:49:00.002Z

I'm sitting in my room surrounded by boxes and boxes of crap (I mean essential wedding supplies!) and I'm wrecked. Cheeks flushed from my single bottle of beer with dinner. The music still isn't quite ready and I need to pack my bag for the weekend now so I can actually stop thinking and relax.

Its not been the funnest week organising all the last minute things but we've got there I think so fingers crossed the weekend goes amazingly well...

Wedding miracles

2010-11-16T23:19:00.004Z

So I spent 9 hours today trudging round Glasgow's finest shopping centres (braehead and silverburn), I'm wrecked - my feet hurt, I'm a little nauseous from tiredness and I ate way to much chicken for the good of my wedding dress. But I've just put together the welcome bags for our guests staying at Crear and got a warm feeling thinking about seeing everyone in three days and hoping they like all the thought we've put into things. Its a wedding miracle and nearly beats the warm glow I get thinking about my wedding "paper goods" and all their neatly rounded corners!!

As an aside, Henry does not like this stage of wedding planning. There is way too much going on and he got a little hyper running round the flat, crashing into doors and is anxiously waiting for one of us to go to bed so he can lie down as well so I'm off to get some sleep.

Wedding week

2010-11-14T16:11:00.003Z

And the countdown really begins!! Wedding week started off great with a full day's pampering and some drinks yesterday with my parents and a day of laziness today spent drinking tea and eating the remains of a lovely cake that my work got for me.

We've had loads of emails and phone calls from friends coming on Friday and the excitement is really building. It feels like this is the start of the loveliness when you start to realise how happy everyone is for us and what a great time we're all going to have :)

On the project front, most things are done so we should be able to pootle about this week and just finish off some last minute things thankfully rather than be frantically printing and stamping programs.

Table planning

2010-11-10T20:36:00.003Z

In the corner here you can see the remains of our table plan - small bits of cardboard with names on that we moved around the sheet of paper. No fancy table planning software for us but with only 45 adults to seat it wasn't exactly the biggest job.

We also did a mock up of the table decor the other weekend so in theory we know what needs to be done to them and should be able to do most of it on Friday so Saturday will just be adding the 'greenery' hopefully.

Boxes are being ticked left, right and centre here at wedding HQ!! (Henry is less helpful but so cute we'll forgive him messing up our plan.)

Wedding month

2010-11-08T09:20:00.003Z

November already - eeek!! Less than two weeks to go and most things are under control. I'm practising walking in my shoes every night now that I've decided to wear them again after a brief wobble and fling with 'bridal brogues'.

DIY project of the week has been the programs which are little treasures of "turkish map fold" loveliness but after folding 40 odd I'm bored, bored, bored. How do people manage 100s of these things.

Oh and also maybe giant felt letters and hearts for the photobooth, cause I don't know when to stop with the DIY.

The table plan is proving to be a pain to get finalised but we're nearly there, sort of...

Three days of work left which are going to be hectic but that's good as I'll be too busy playing with illustrator designing leaflets to worry about random wedding stuff.

The stuff of nightmares...

2010-10-26T22:24:00.003+01:00

So I had another wedding nightmare last night, this time horror of horrors we couldn't remember the time of the ceremony and were running late. I also hadn't printed the programs...

So this evening I pulled together the idea I'd had in my head for ages and did a mock up of the program and it looks pretty good if I do say so, simple but effective and easy enough to put together - bonus.

We just have to decide on final music choices and then we can print, print, print.

In other wedding news, I had the day off today to go to blochairn flower market to order the flowers for my bouquet and some greenery for general decoration. We ended up going here on a recommendation from someone I work with and they were lovely, very helpful and full of useful information.

I also had another dress fitting with the real fabric and it's lovely, still rather sack like but that's because nothing has been adjusted yet so the next fitting will be proper this is my dress one I think.

25 days to go!!!

You're welcome

2010-10-23T17:35:00.004+01:00

At last a diy project that has wored, looks good and is finished!! What could this be? The photobooth props, my veil, photobooth wall, programmes, thank you cards?

Hmmm, no its the welcome/good bye bags which although lovely are not essential to the wedding process. However, I got my wee heart set on incorporating a linocut somehow once we went with a different style for the invites and decided that the brown paper bags I bought would be the best way to do that.

So here's the linocut and ink ready to go:

That linocut is based on a picture of Crear and took hours to do and I have 3 practice attempts hidden in the bottom of my craft box but while time consuming and back breaking (from being hunched over the table) its not rocket science and was very satisfying to do.

A close up shot:

And the bags themselves:

They'll be filled with snacky stuff and we've still to decide whether they'll be best to give to everyone as a welcome bag or at the end of the night to soften the blow of having to go home at 12:30.

Tick tock

2010-10-17T21:03:00.003+01:00

My weekends are flying by but things are getting ticked off.

All the RSVPs are in and done.
So that means that all the menu and name cards are done and I think they look fab - thank god for kraft card it and that corner punch make everything look good.
My Dad has been a star and hemmed 30 metres of table runners.
The lino cut stamp has been resurrected and finished off so I've now just got to stamp and fill the welcome bags.
The fairy lights were tested (with the assistance of Henry who tried to eat them).
I found mini chalkboards in the pound shop for £1 obvs.
We have a genius idea of the photobooth (not this unfortunately) but something based on these which means its more doable than sourcing a giant vintage oil painting so is officially allowed!

I've a feeling all posts from now on in will be a list of things we've done rather than anything exciting or thoughtful but as the days tick down I am feeling a little sad that all the planning is coming to an end.

Balloons!!

2010-10-08T10:26:00.003+01:00

Look what arrived in the post today - brightening my Friday at work.

Just after I took this photo I tried to blow it up bigger and it exploded in my face!

Looking pretty

2010-10-07T22:22:00.003+01:00

So the make up plan. I'm not very good at make up, I can do mascara and that's about it. So this weekend I had a make up lesson at the MAC concession in House of Frasers and it was amazing!

The first great thing was that she listened to me and didn't put inches of foundation on.
She looked at the picture (right) I brought in and gave me that exact look.
I didn't get pushed into buying everything and was able to chose just the things I wanted to take.
At the end I still felt like me!!

What was even better was that I'd already paid £50 for the lesson and that got taken off the price of what I bought so it 'felt' like I got loads of great make up for pennies.

Now I just have to practice, practice, practice.

OMG

2010-10-05T18:41:00.003+01:00

Having a tough time with the to do list at the moment, I can't seem to make decisions about things and everything is taken much longer than I thought it would - sigh! And definitely won't be allowed to add non essential items like a kick ass photobooth backdrop to my list...

But in good wedding news I found a frame at the weekend for our lovely present to ourselves:

Its a drawing of our wee family by the lovely Nan Lawson and I adore it - we look so cute, especially Henners. We also got a digital version which I may try to work into the program if I get time.

RSVPs

2010-10-01T18:15:00.002+01:00

Today is the *deadline* for our rsvps and menu choices and we've had 80% of them back which I think is pretty good going and means we can start to finalise the table plan.

In other news I had my first fitting last night which was good, just the calico under structure of the dress but it was a little bit exciting and I got to see my fabric which is beautiful.

And I saw this photobooth today which makes me want to go and hunt down taxidermy and a giant oil painting.

OMG!!

2010-10-01T17:05:00.002+01:00

So the harry potter film comes out the day before our wedding which means this countdown pretty much works for us - eeek!!

We're debating whether its a good idea to go to the midnight showing on the Thursday before we have to get up early and drive up and decorate the room??

Head turns

2010-09-22T13:21:00.000+01:00

Latest in the line of things we don't need to do but that my head is turned by are signature cocktails in custom bottles or jars:

Source

We do need to buy more jam jars for the candles so I could squeeze in 50 of these for our welcome drinks, it might mean all those green stripey straws stand a chance of getting used.

Postal joy

2010-09-21T20:15:00.003+01:00

So the rsvps are rolling in, so far we've had 40% of our responses back and most of those have come via the trusty royal mail.

This is one of the funnest bits of wedding planning, seeing concrete evidence of people being excited about coming to Crear and spending the weekend with us.

We've still not decided what we're eating yet and J is considering asking if those at the head table can get one of each for the starters but we'll see - I don't think I need to be eating haggis and scallops on the day.

In other wedding news, we looked at suits this weekend bought foam for the photobooth props and coming up future MIL is visiting next weekend to share the joy of planning. I've got my first dress fitting next week and a make-up trial and I'm struggling to find a hairdresser in deepest darkest argyll.

Turning a corner

2010-09-17T10:02:00.003+01:00

While I have loved, loved, loved planning this wedding I have been pleased this week to finally reach a stage where I'm bookmarking more non-wedding things than wedding things. For example:

Ok, so its only two things but it does feel like I'm emerging from my wedding obsession and can start to think about other things even if its just house stuff.

On the wedding front its 64 days to go, yikes! This weekend we will be finishing off the wee fiddly jobs that I've half started like:

Sending off the wedding forms
Creating our photobooth props
Finishing my linocut stamp
Stamping the welcome bags
Ordering the rest of the jam jars
Finding some music to play during reception and dinner
Creating those ipod playlists

The invites...

2010-09-08T20:57:00.005+01:00

So here they are, the invites. Apologies for the terrible phone pictures but I can't be arsed getting the proper camera out.

We used the same penguin idea as for the save the dates, but with a pink version for 'travel and adventure' according to the penguin rules.

After my mishap with the printing, I figured out a way to use the 'slightly smaller than they should be' invites and that was to mount them on card and then that solved my problem of what to do about the rest of the info we needed to include.

So we ended up with little booklets using bookbinding tape to bind them together and a treasury label to show who they were for stuck in as a bookmark.

I'm quite pleased with them although I did forget to put our address anywhere in them which was an amateur mistake.

And to end our wedding power animals made an appearance!

Regrets

2010-09-07T20:04:00.004+01:00

I've had a few in this process but none more so that not buying all the random crap I need from hobbycraft, B&Q and mandors while I still had a car (ours got written off 2 weeks ago - not our fault and we're fine so its just an inconvenience.)

So things I now need to buy and then do stuff with are:

Chalkboard paint - photobooth signs and maybe other signs...
Felt and dowling - to make masks for the photobooth
150 jam jars - which will be delivered to my work so I'll have to smuggle them back gradually on the train
10 metres of fabric for tables - to make runners from
more fabric for other undecided decoration
Wire for my lighting project
70 metres of fairy lights

I can feel a few packhorse trip coming on.

Invites done

2010-09-02T15:23:00.002+01:00

These are finally in the postbox! I'll do a full report on how they actually look once people get them but they have been a labour of love and I'm wrecked from organising them. How do people cope when they've got 100s of invites to do, my 28 nearly killed me.

Now I/we just have to figure out what to do about the programmes for the day...

Christmas in August

2010-08-25T21:12:00.004+01:00

Today was like christmas at work, the results of all my hard internet shopping at the weekend.

First up were invitation supplies:
Photo corners
Bookbinding tape

From Wedding Stuff

Please excuse the crap phone pictures

And then the jam jars arrived, and they are truly jamtastic!!

From Wedding Stuff

Currently on trial for heat resistance:

From Wedding Stuff

Too green?

2010-08-23T22:12:00.005+01:00

Now I don't want to have too scottish a wedding but I also don't want to have too oirish a wedding which might be hard when I'm trying to tastefully use 'kelly' green fabric.

Apparently these bows might be too irish:

I bet Martha doesn't have to put up with this...

As an aside, these were pretty easy to make, apart from burning my fingers on the glue gun.

Productivity

2010-08-23T20:12:00.005+01:00

Productivity, how I've missed you, at last we've had a weekend where we got more than one thing done! Those things were:

Invites bumf design finalised
Invites bumf printed
Sample fabric bought
Fairy lights chosen
Jars bought
Cake dimensions figured out
Bookbinding tape bought
Potential hair thing bought
Photo corners for invites bought

I'm also clearer about the decor for the space and what its going to look like, so I can relax a little bit and stop changing my mind everytime a new wedding hits the blogosphere. Although I'd really really like a wedding tent please.

Inspiration overload

2010-08-19T22:45:00.003+01:00

OK, this is embarrassing but I have just counted them up and I have 67 pages of inspiration photos saved in the wfiles and with an average of 6 images to a page that is 402 images!!!

What have I been doing? Why do I keep collecting stuff, how can I possibly squeeze it all in? Well, I can't. I need to start weeding out the must haves from the craziness and deciding which things are actually doable.

Operation sensible wedding starts this weekend, we need to start buying some of this shit and committing to the "vision."

STEN!!! The verdict

2010-08-18T19:28:00.003+01:00

The aftermath of the sten saw us sleeping on couches having been unable to find a taxi anywhere in Edinburgh that would take us to my cousin's flat where she had lovingly made up a bed for us.

We got a glorious day of sunshine in Edinburgh for it and ended up staying in the speigeltent nearly all night drinking lots of beer at £4 a pint!! (yep, crazy festival prices).

Everyone wore their badges with pride...

And attempted to complete the cryptic quizzes I had put together based on this idea.

We laughed all night, lost one coat and only spilled one pint all over myself. But best of all it gave us a little sneak preview into what its going to be like at the wedding to have all our lovely friends and family in one place - it was a good sneak and left us with a warm feeling inside.

Yea for the sten!!!

Craft fail

2010-08-16T21:35:00.003+01:00

So I bought some baby's breath a week ago ready to try and see what these garlands from once wed would look like for potential table decorations.

But I left the flowers in a vase for a week so when I finally got round to attempting these my baby's breath was a little brown and dry and not as full as the raw materials they used. Which is probably how I ended up with this:

Definitely a craft fail, it looks like a very rubbish 1980s corsage. Also seeing it against the white make me realise it just blends into the table which isn't good so that's a no then. I still like the baby's breath but do need to use it when fresh methinks.

STEN!!!

2010-08-12T22:46:00.004+01:00

We're having a joint stag/hen do this Saturday which makes it a sten or a hag but I'm going for sten, I even made my own logo which will be appearing on the goodies I'm crafting this evening for Saturday night.

Yes, there may not be strippers or plastic penises (fingers crossed) but there will be badges and maybe even a quiz of sorts based on this brilliant design:

Source

Something which I have shamelessly adapted for sten purposes. I shall reveal all after the weekend...

Invite joy

2010-08-12T22:40:00.003+01:00

I maybe wouldn't say joy exactly but I have figured out a way to use the invites that arrived in a different format so I don't need to get them printed for a third time and as it involves craft paper again (yes the "paper suite" barometer has swung back to brown kraft from modern white) this means I can use that box of paper that I ordered but initially rejected because it wasn't quite the right shade of brown.

The "fuck it" train has well and truly drawn into the station.

In other news, I continue to see lovely ideas and pictures on a daily basis (which I save here) and I sometimes feel guilty when I don't blog about them here but to be honest I'm drawn to such an odd mix of things that I can only be arsed putting them on here when they stand a strong chance of happening and being used in the wedding rather than just an example of my rustic chic phase.

Invite woes

2010-07-30T10:45:00.002+01:00

Sob! I could cry right now as the invites arrived and I've messed them up again... But I won't because I'm the only person who knows they've been messed up and no-one else is going to give a shit if the colour is slightly off or even notice in the first place.

I'm off to have a cup of tea and do some real work and hopefully the little voice inside my head will stop going 'fuck, fuck, fuck'.

Can you have too much tartan?

2010-07-28T21:19:00.004+01:00

Normally my answer is yes and for that reason I'm not actually having a "Scottish" wedding. I am getting married in Scotland and may even be giving guests a wee tunnock's teacake to take home but I'm not doing the heather favours, piper and tartan ribbon tied to anything that stands still thing (although I did cave and get a ceilidh band so I'm not as hard-ass as I think...).

But I nearly caved to the tartan monster when I saw this from the wonderful Vivienne:

It's a tartan trompe d'oeil wallpaper and would't it make an amazing photobooth wall, in a smilebooth style? It is £188 but comes mural sized at 270 x 270 cm and according to this site the design is copied from a wedding gown!!!

Fortunately I'm not supposed to be thinking about a photobooth wall as our photographer is sorting that out, so I need to step away from creating more work for myself.

Etsy loveliness

2010-07-28T10:51:00.003+01:00

Thank goodness for etsy, as this arrival got the wedding smile back on my face today, I present our cake topper:

From Wedding Stuff

Made by the wonderful melabo, it is truly amazing I love it and it will be a lovely little reminder of our day when it sits in our house afterwards.

The blehs

2010-07-27T21:02:00.004+01:00

I can't be arsed with the wedding just now, doesn't mean I have stopped thinking about it unfortunately. Things that are annoying me:

The moo cards arrived and my top bit was the wrong colour - all my own fault for rushing but it means I've had to order and do them all over again!
I'm not a graphic designer.
As a result my attempts at paperie goods is a little bit shabby and doesn't look like anything on here. Instead it looks like this:

I also now want to have mason jar light installations instead of fairy lights which I know is never gonna happen but they look so pretty:

Source

I can't decide whether to have table runners or not - I know its fate of the world stuff.
I've spent too much time "researching" wedding nonsense that my first ever allotment veg - broccoli flowered before I could eat it!!!
What else can I bitch about? Oh yeah, I shredded last night for the first time since January and now I can't climb stairs.
And now I also want a wedding video, WTF where did that come from? Oh yes here, I may also want a polka dot fabric dress as well, sigh...

I think this week I just have the planning blehs and want to be married already, especially after the loveliness of this post.

Corners

2010-07-21T20:31:00.002+01:00

The joys of a corner punch! They make everything look amazing, I got mine today in the art store in Glasgow and it has made my home made print outs for the "paper suite" look so much more amazing, whoop whoop!!

The best £5 I've spent in the whole wedding saga.

Moo-tastic

2010-07-15T13:23:00.003+01:00

The wonderful people at moo are having a 48 hours 30% off sale until 11:59 tonight. I found out about this yesterday so spent last night in a frenzy finalising the design of our invites and also thank you cards and now they are done, whoop whoop! Turns out I can only do things and make decisions when I've got a proper deadline to work to, so thank you moo for giving me a kick up the arse to get these done and crossed off.

I just have to play about with all the other paper bits now in my spare time...

Go big or go home??

2010-07-13T13:11:00.000+01:00

I'm talking about the fairy lights. They along with some giant balloons (yep I know this is a bit

2009 but no-one else will and I don't care.)

I'm torn between the big old fashioned style globe or festoon lights like this:

Source

Or the normal fairy lights:

Source

I love the globe ones but I think they might be too bright in our space and it would be a bit like being on a playing field, also they are double the price. So at the moment I'm hemming and hawing over which to go for. Remember the space looks like this:

which definitely isn't a barn.

Wedding power animals

2010-07-12T13:32:00.000+01:00

Rather like choosing your daemon, a wedding power animal can come in many forms but instead of being a manifestation of your soul they are generally used as a way to tie your paper goods or whole wedding together.

Examples, I've liked include the stag and doe:

Source

Pigeons:

Source

But my favourite way has to be the fab cake toppers that melabo produces. We've got one on the way of a stag and a pig and it looks adorable. I've put together this logo that might be appearing on some of the paper goods.

KISS

2010-07-11T22:26:00.004+01:00

As in Keep It Simple Stupid and stop stressing about fonts. After much font searching and heartache I have decided to go for a simple font that I had on my computer all along, sob! This should look effective with the paper we're using and make my life easier. I am a little sad that I can't make any of the delightful fonts I found work but there you go.

I now just need to find a supply of A4 kraft paper so I can start the printing and assembling.

Busy day

2010-07-06T22:56:00.003+01:00

We're off to see our venue again tomorrow and work out how many fairy lights we need and where to put everyone that is staying there.

We're also going to call in on the Registrar to discuss our ceremony, in particular our readings which we've decided I think...

Its going to be a pretty horrid day with lots of drizzle and rain but we may even get for a walk along the beach.

And when we get home, I can play with the printer that we're picking up as well for our invites and everything else.

I heart kraft paper

2010-07-02T16:34:00.003+01:00

So I have changed my mind again about the paper stuff....

Looking at my last post about fonts and invite inspiration I'm puzzled but not that surprised to see that none of the pictures resemble the ones below. I'm putting it down to inspiration overload but I have now decided kraft paper and typewriter font plus some homemade stamps are definitely the way to go.

Source

In other news my paper bags arrived today and I only ordered them from here on Wednesday. So that's another thing to play with this weekend.

Let the DIY commence!

2010-07-01T17:42:00.001+01:00

So after a frenzy of internet shopping yesterday, this is the first thing to arrive - my linocut kit.

As part of the general rethink on the paper goodies, I've decided to go for kraft paper with a typewriter or handwritten font (still can't decide on that) and stamp detailing. This in theory will also work for the welcome bags/favour bags which we'll do if I've time....

Poster. Done.

2010-06-21T19:41:00.003+01:00

I'd decided ages ago to do a framed poster for our guestbook, like this one. So of course I've been collecting potential posters here and was planning to sit down one afternoon and draw up a short list, blah, blah, blah. I know how to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Anyways, I don't have to do that any more as we bought our poster on Saturday, in person at Bungo in the lanes. That's right, not off the internet but in person! Here's what it looks like:

Its from a duo called hole in my pocket who sell their stuff on folksy and etsy. I love it.

Fonts fonts fonts

2010-06-11T11:33:00.003+01:00

I began the process of doing our paper goods this weekend, the RSVP, menus, program, etc etc. I already know how I'm doing the invite so that's pretty much sorted. All the other stuff will be different but I want it to link to the invites by using Gill Sans for the small text and have a clear style by using a good font for the header text.

God is it hard to chose a font, I've looked at dozens this weekend with my eyes crossing as I scroll down the endless pages of words trying to decide.

The font I've eventually chosen is reading frequency which was a bargainous $5 on myfonts. I'm still drawn to memoriam especially after seeing what an amazing job Lauren did with her

programs using that font.

This is one of the hardest bits of wedding planning as I'm very indecisive and keep changing my

mind, flitting between whimsical hand-drawn stuff like this by Haley at Bread of Many:

Which I found a perfect font for called Somewhat that even has all the extra flourishes and borders you might need.

And then there's my love for Betsy Dunlap and this style of invite, I love the use of fabric:

And finally there's the cleaner modern look, like Lauren's stuff:

So far my attempts are leaning towards the cleaner look with a bit of scratchy pretend calligraphy style font:

Anyone else struggle to filter down all your ideas?

Bevoirs: Gin and Ginger

2010-06-07T13:26:00.000+01:00

We can now add 'signature cocktails' to the list of things that I scoffed at in the beginning but have now somehow absorbed into our plans.

So yeah, we weren't going to do a signature drink and certainly wasn't going to match it to our colour scheme or "theeeme"

But we are having everyone up before the ceremony for a drink and we want to give them something more exciting than beer.... Enter, gin and ginger my new favourite drink, which is yum yum yum.

Great recipe here from Design Sponge.

Source

Stripping things back

2010-06-07T11:00:00.003+01:00

We're now at the point of making the "to do" lists and decisions about what we'll actually put into the venue. When it came to sit down and make these decisions I realised that my huge inspiration list of potential projects and ideas was just making it harder. So there's been a lot of stripping back in terms of colours and decoration ideas to make things more simple and work with the simplicity of the venue.

We now have a new colour palette, completely different from the old navy and pink one:

Source

Happily this new inspiration board led me to a blog with a post called "Notes Toward a Slow Wedding" which just chimes perfectly with how I want to approach this next stage of actually doing stuff. I'm letting go of the million wee 'nice-to-haves' and I'm going to do a few things well and enjoy the day.

Planning update

2010-06-06T20:01:00.002+01:00

We've had a planning extravaganza afternoon today, aided by trial cocktails and a huge roll of children's drawing paper from ikea.

We made decisions on:

Table decor
Venue decor (complete colour change which J insists was entirely expected by him)
Lighting

We made lists about:

Music plans
Posters
Ceremony details
Alter decor
Paper goods

And even a scale drawing of the venue! Thank god I'm marrying someone with a uni technical drawing module under his belt. All this was accomplished without any fights, I think the alcohol might need to take credit for that.

See wedding planning can be fun!

And the weird dreams begin...

2010-06-02T23:16:00.005+01:00

5 months to go and the stress dreams have started. It was the pre-ceremony reception but nothing had been put out or set up and no-one else was ready yet except me. So I was doing the dishes in my wedding dress and ended up getting orange bolognese sauce all over me and being very pissed off with everyone else.

Not a good start to my day but it got better as we got our space measurements through so I can start ordering stuff and my dress situation is also on its way to being sorted.

Yay for our photographer

2010-05-31T16:54:00.003+01:00

A big whoop whoop for our photographer Emma Case who's featured in this month's Photo Pro magazine in an article by Kat from Rock 'n Roll Bride. You can see the article here.

Booking Emma was the first thing we did once we had a date for the venue. I had been so pleased to find a photographer in the UK who did all the things I love and she's such a lovely

person too that I can't wait for November.

I can't choose a favourite picture but this is the first wedding one I saw of hers and I love it.

Source

The shoes

2010-05-28T19:23:00.002+01:00

My shoes arrived while I was on holiday and I picked them up today and it was worth listening to my gut. I'm too pooped from travelling back to do the photo thing but they are lovely, now I just have to practice walking in them!

Listening to your gut

2010-05-18T21:28:00.002+01:00

Another great make you think post in the wedding blog world from A Los Angeles Love about sticking to your vision for your wedding and trusting your gut.

That and this amazing post from Kat featuring an awesome pair of the Vivienne Westwood Melissa heart shoes that I've been thinking about getting for two weeks made me take the plunge.

But when I went onto asos to get them, they didn't have the ones I wanted anymore and I was pissed off that I hadn't listened to my gut 2 weeks ago. Fortunately ebay came to the rescue and I should soon have these beautes in my hands:

I heart flickr

2010-05-16T17:26:00.000+01:00

I've been having venue withdrawal symptoms now that we're starting to think more seriously about how to decorate the space. Although we're planning to head back up in June for a proper recce and take some measurements of the space I wanted to try and remember what the main space looked like and we were rubbish and forgot to take any pictures when we were up.

So I turned to flickr and found some great pictures of the space from a photographer called clickybox who has lots of picture of this wedding up. Which include some good pictures of the layout:

Source

This one is really good for the view of the iron bars which we're planning to hang our fairy lights and paper balls from so its great to see and will keep me going till June.

Orlaesque

2010-05-16T16:41:00.003+01:00

On the non-wedding front, I got some of this lovely oil cloth fabric, which is kind of orla kiely like to cover our kitchen table with:

Admittedly it was while out looking for wedding fabric but it does show that I'm not completely obsessed.

Wedding chat

2010-05-16T16:02:00.005+01:00

We spent lunchtime eating lots of lovely things and getting a behind the scenes look at how food is styled and photographed courtesy of this venture 'lazy sunday' which Carole our caterer is involved in.

There were a few other couples there who were also getting married at Crear and it was so nice to have some wedding chat with people who are on the same page as you, swap ideas for the space and hear about what other people are doing with it. We also got a good tip about making the table an 'E' shape if the horseshoe won't fit the way we want.

Other things we've discussed or done this weekend are buttonholes/boutonnieres, flowers (this needs a post to itself), buying paper balls, pricing ribbon, searching for fabric, the to do list, alter decoration or what to create an alter from as we're not doing a church service, thinking about a return visit, where to find big fairy lights, blah blah blah.

I feel a bit like I just flit from one thing to another doing power google searches, looking at lots of nice pictures but not actually making any decisions From next week its 6 months to go so I need to get stuff nailed down and more importantly order. I may even be nearing inspiration cut-off point so I can focus my mind but not quite yet.

Menu update

2010-05-16T15:58:00.002+01:00

Here's the official version rather than my half remembered attempts...

Canapes

Loch Fyne smoked salmon on brown bread

Mull cheddar and red onion marmalade on oatcakes

Carole's chicken liver pate and pomegranate croustades

Starters

Sound of Jura scallops served on warm apple and lemon thyme puree

Haggis and whisky pots with oatcakes

Cheery chestnut soup (vegetarian)

Mains

Tarbert peat smoked haddock baked with prawns and cream with Arran mustard mash

Sika venison casserole with Arran mustard mash

Islay goat's cheese tartlets

Desserts

Apple and beetroot crumble

Raspberry and bramble cranachan

'Sod it' chocolate torte with creme fraiche and berries

The good stuff

2010-05-13T18:56:00.007+01:00

I'd been strangely ambivalent about our wedding meal, once a hog roast was off the table because of the weather risk there wasn't anything else that I was dying to have except maybe a pizza wedding like this one. But we had lots of yummy suggestions from our lovely food lady which we couldn't decide on until last night when we had our first meeting which went swimmingly. The plan for our eats is as follows:

Nibbles while we're having welcome drinks before the ceremony
- Oatcakes with salmon or cheese and chutney or pate

Starter
- Seared Sound of Jura scallops with pea puree and Puddledub bacon
- Haggis with whisky sauce

Main
- Kintyre Sika venison casserole with Arran mustard mash
- Baked peat smoked haddock with prawns and dill mash.

Pudding
- ‘Sod it’ ridiculously chocolatey chocolate mousse cake with creme fraiche

- Raspberry and blackberry cranachan with honeyed oatmeal and Jura malt
- Hot apple and beetroot crumble

And for when we've all drunk our fill rolls with roast pork loin. Yum!

Source

It was a surprisingly easy process and now I can't wait to eat it all. I just hope people don't baulk at eating venison but if so they'll be missing out as its going to be yummy.

Wedding Crazy

2010-05-11T10:39:00.000+01:00

I was so close to buying these wonderful biscuit cutters this evening:

(Spotted via London Bride)

Now, they are a bargainous £4 and do feature Ireland and Britain so would be perfect if I wanted to do cute biscuit/shortbread favours or goodie bags at the end of the night but thankfully reality kicked in.

I don't bake, ever. I don't want to be baking the week before my wedding and while I have some excelling baking friends I don't want to ask them to bake things for me. Also will anyone else be as charmed by a a probably stale british isle biscuit as I am? Then again favours are rarely useful, charming or amazing.

So I might just have to get them for the flat in case the domestic goddess breaks out once I'm a wifey...

Centrepieces...

2010-05-10T21:54:00.008+01:00

What to do, what to do? If I had an endless budget I'd probably throw money at it and just get loads of flowers or the bell jars I wanted see here for the bell jars that weren't. But I don't so instead we're having lots of candles and only a few centrepieces for "pops" of colour.

We decided ages ago that Hendrick's gin bottles are pretty cool and lovely so have been drinking a lot of gin since to save up the bottles to potentially use on our tables and between us and my

parents and god parents we've got about 10 bottles now.

So we had lots of these:

But weren't too sure what to do with them, if anything. Then a few weeks ago we went into H&M and found these bow-ties which have tiny wee bumble bees on them in the right colours. I'd actually seen and loved these around Christmas time but had no reason to buy them. Once I saw they were half price I wanted to find a reason to buy them.

What do you think? They make the bottle look a bit more jaunty but I'm not sure they work. However, they'll be used somewhere so I'm not too worried yet about buying 16 of them. I was always planning on combining them with a peony (fresh, dried, fake or paper is yet to be decided) but here's a shot of a pretty decent fake one I spotted in B&Q at the weekend, which all combined together, makes this:

And just for fun, here's a pic of Henry modeling the bow-tie:

- sorry all the pictures are so crap, I was too lazy to get the proper camera out.

Update, J just came in and made a much better cluster arrangement that looks pretty good.

Mini-moon. Done.

2010-04-29T19:59:00.002+01:00

Its booked! We'll be spending three nights here:

Its got an open fire and you can walk down to the loch. Perfection.

Names

2010-04-29T10:47:00.000+01:00

Brilliant post from Meg on name changing, make sure you read the comments (300+). Lots of big ideas stuff which I've not really had much angst over or thought in depth about what I'll do. I think I'm going to keep my name as it is. 1 - I love it, its an awkward spelling first name but is a double alliteration with the ki, ki, that makes me sound like I should be something more exciting than an archivist. 2 - Its my gut feeling that that's right for me and I'm not getting any pressure to do anything differently so its my choice to make. 3 - If I change my mind its no big deal to change it later.

Here are the options in the UK according to the deed poll office, although under Scots law I wouldn't have to formally fill out a form to change my name just not use a new name to defraud anyone.

Mini-moon

2010-04-28T22:07:00.003+01:00

I just sent away 2 enquiry emails about perfect little white cottages for our honeymoon. They both have real log fires, are beside a loch and within taxi driving distance of the perfect November pub - The George, Inverary for amazing food and lots of pints.

We knew quite early on that we weren't 2 weeks on a beach people when it comes to honeymoon, my skin couldn't take it for one thing. Italy would've been our preferred choice but as we're getting married in November its not the best time to be going to Italy. So rather than risk sitting in an empty, cold piazza looking for somewhere that's open to feed us we're going to stick to Scotland and hopefully get somewhere full of loveliness like this:

(Image from Walt Hubis)

We plan to pack the car up with yummy marks and spencer's food, any leftover wedding wine and enjoy the loveliness of a real fire (that has become the deal breaker for potential cottages) as it pours with rain outside.

Potential readings

2010-04-20T19:54:00.001+01:00

I've been collecting readings for a while, I've got a few favourites but want it to be a joint decision so plan to pull them all together and have a big read-off closer to the time.

Here are a few contenders:

"You have known each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of commitment. At some point, you decided to marry. From that moment of yes, to this moment of yes, indeed, you have been making commitments in an informal way. All of those conversations that were held in a car, or over a meal, or during long walks – all those conversations that began with, “When we’re married”, and continued with “I will” and “you will” and “we will” – all those late night talks that included “someday” and “somehow” and “maybe” – and all those promises that are unspoken matters of the heart. All these common things, and more, are the real process of a wedding.

The symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to one another, “You know all those things that we’ve promised, and hoped, and dreamed – well, I meant it all, every word.”

Look at one another and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another – acquaintance, friend, companion, lover, dancing partner, even teacher, for you have learned much from one another these past few years. Shortly you shall say a few words that will take you across a threshold of life, and things between you will never quite be the same.

For after today you shall say to the world –
This is my husband. This is my wife"
Robert Fulgham - Union

"Oh, the comfort,
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person,
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together,
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away."
Dinah Craik

"There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky."
UA Fanthorpe - Atlas

Odd wedding related questions

2010-04-18T22:12:00.001+01:00

Why just because we are getting married do people think we'll start doing things that are not us? Questions people ask when I think they should really know us better:

Are you have a church wedding? No, I've not been to church since I left school and would consider myself to be an atheist. Just cause they have the prettiest buildings is not a reason to discover God in time for my ceremony.

When are we having a baby? Why is this a wedding related question still? We are not getting married so that we can have a child in wedlock , we will have a child when we're ready with or without a ring (although with only 6 months to go, its going to be the latter now.)

Do I want small crystals to decorate my tables with?* No, is it the 1980s? I think they are tacksville (only my opinion mind) and have never had a party involving crystal decoration, nor do I collect small crystal bears so they're really not me.

Is J wearing a kilt? No, he's not Scottish and even if he was he's not a kilt person and have never worn one in his life. He has not been waiting to get married to break out the tartan.

*To be fair, no one has asked me this. I just keep seeing them in all the magazines I can't stop buying, along with minature top hats, WTF?

Rant over.

Seating charts

2010-04-11T19:13:00.000+01:00

Piece of piss. Probably only until we show it to other people though and to be fair we've only got 48 people to arrange.

We accomplished our seating chart with post-it notes and a table. I did not feel the need to spend £20 on seating chart software, maybe if I was seating 250 I might have caved and gone for it but I hope not.

I did find the perfect table layout inspiration picture, also loving the fairy lights in this one.

Source

Free monograms

2010-04-08T10:30:00.000+01:00

The wedding chicks have got some brilliant customisable monograms up on their site here. I'm not really a monogram type person but I had great fun picking colours out and seeing what the designs look like. Here are some of my efforts:

Thanks to Dog N' Bird for the tip.

Guest book plans

2010-04-07T21:28:00.001+01:00

I change my mind a lot about things and like to go through all the options but one of the things I've been set on from the start (and a wee bit before) was doing a poster guest book. I think it'd be lovely to have it framed and in view rather than put away which is what would happen to a book. My inspiration came from wemetinabar who used this great poster and some poster mat to create this work of genius:

Source

The only difficulty now is choosing a poster, I really like the one above and SparklePower has lots of great colour combinations, like this great pink one that would suit our colours.

Source

I also like the idea of doing one with the coordinates of Crear like this example from Ilovedesign2010

Source

And I still love this one, even though we're not American and J isn't a fan.

Source

I adore the words of this one from bubbo.

Source

Anyone else having a different guest book?

How to get your wedding buzz back

2010-04-04T18:41:00.000+01:00

Talk to someone else about it. (NB this will obviously only work if its someone nice who isn't going to piss on your ideas).

J and I had been weirdly feeling a bit down about our plans and how to sort things out after we got answers to our niggly questions from the venue. Weirdly because none of the answers were bad we just needed to make some decisions and weren't sure which way to go with stuff. Anyway, we'd talked it to death between ourselves and weren't getting anywhere until Friday when my Mum came over and injected some wedding enthusiasm back into our discussions.

Fortunately she liked our ideas, gave us some advice about what to do about food and the timetable and chatting to a third person gets you all excited again about how much fun its going to be to hang out with everyone. So yay for mothers!

Pre-ceremony drinks - good or bad?

2010-04-02T18:41:00.000+01:00

We have decided to do a pre-ceremony welcome drinks hour thingy. There's lots of good advice about it on the indiebride forum here but our main reasons for are:

Most of our friends are going to be arriving the day before and we want to be able to spend the maximum amount of time with them so want to get folks up to the venue instead of having them sitting in their hotel waiting to come up.
Our ceremony is going to be at 3pm. As we're getting married in Scotland in November this means that the sun will be setting at about 4pm. If we want any photos in daylight we'll need to do them beforehand.
If we are already seeing each other beforehand then why not our guests?

It seems like a fairly common idea at least in the wedding blog world, anyone else doing this?

Being ruthless

2010-03-15T23:11:00.000Z

From the start we've been pretty clear on how things will work for the wedding*. When it comes to having a small guest list this might seem ruthless but I think its more about having a clear idea of the day and who you want to share it with.

We're having a small wedding because its the only kind of wedding we want. We're happy with everyone that's been invited and know that we really want them there on the day. I feel like its been quite easy for us to achieve this because we were so clear from the start about who we wanted there but also because our parents have been so great about leaving the decision to us.

If you are struggling with keeping it small, there's a post over at eastsidebride today about how to keep your guest list under 50. A lot of the advice and the comments was stuff that we thought about and that drove our choices, the main one being do we want to hang out with them all night? For us the answer is an enthusiastic yes to everyone on the list!

*This is mostly thanks to a good year of chatting about it pre-engagement - it did not happen magically.

Bell Jar fail

2010-03-11T19:43:00.001Z

I flit daily between ideas for the venue decor, from rustic to bright to simple, blah blah blah. I'm actually a little overwhelmed by choice but one thing I did really like was the idea of using bell jars on the tables, sort of like this:

source: style me pretty

Then when I saw in last month's Living ETC that Sainsbury's were going to be selling them for £8 I thought this might be a potential.

Well that was until I tracked them down last night (in the garden section of sainsbury's which does make sense but I kept looking in home wares for them.) And they are too small, sigh! And we'd need about 10 so they're not actually that cheap especially if I had to build little plinths for them or group them with something else.

So back to the drawing board. I might go back and get just one for the house though...

Weekends are for wedding planning

2010-03-09T21:59:00.001Z

We spent a lot of this weekend sorting out wedding stuff and chatting about the day generally.

We now have:

Some proper figures in our budget making it less of a guestimate and a bit more fixed.
A list of extra questions for the venue.
A plan to buy some of these beauties to decorate the space - if they'll post them to Scotland.
I'm no further along in my quest to track down the bell cloches from Sainsbury's despite the very helpful customer services people, no one at my local shop has a clue what I'm talking about.
Some very organised friends who have booked their rooms already which is very exciting.
Decided to look into buying an ipod amp to use for the whole weekend so that we can use it for music during the ceremony and the Friday and Sunday too. I'm sure decorating will be a lot more fun on Friday if we've got some good tunes to do it to.

Wedding websites

2010-03-07T22:38:00.035Z

The wedding website is one of those things that isn't exactly essential but you might start to think it is. It isn't and it definitely wasn't something I wanted to spend any money on. But I did think it might be useful for folks and I personally like making sites so I thought it would be a fun job and actually enjoyed sitting in front of my laptop for hours tweaking fonts and colours.

I originally planned to use blogger until I heard about wix from veiled vows and bowie bride. It was also free, amazingly easy to use and because its has FLASH it means you can get snazzy, adding music and other whizzy bits to the site without having to cry.

Here are some screenshots of site:

You can easily set up a way for guests to contact you and leave song requests if you're doing an ipod disco type thing.

You can use your own domain name if you upgrade to a premium account but as we weren't spending any cash on it, I just kept the wix url and we put it on our save the dates.

One thing to note, make sure your font is readable. I originally had navy on a grey background which some of the slightly older guests found impossible to read so I ended up having to redo it all with a white background.

Save the dates

2010-03-03T22:26:00.002Z

The save the dates were the first project on the list once we got a date booked for the venue and registrar. I'd had an idea to based them on one of my favourite posters in the flat for a while. Either the keep calm and carry on or the classic Penguin book cover:

They weren't strictly necessary, we're having a pretty small wedding so we could have just called and told them the date. But once I started playing around in publisher I realised how easy they'd be to put together and that they'd be perfect as postcard size which meant we could use Moo postcards to do them.

In the end I went for the penguin based design, I've collected the old orange penguins since I was at school and one of the first presents J ever bought me were some penguin books.

I took the ideas for where to put bits of information from a letterpress version for a full wedding invite I'd seen on a cup of jo but the link has since been removed so I can't point to it anymore. With this in mind I found and edited images of the penguin and the top logo and did it all in publisher. Uploading them to moo is really easy and they were delivered within the week all for less that £25!!

I'm delighted with how they turned out, so here they are:

I can only hope that the rest of the diy projects are this easy...

Wedding blog love

2010-03-01T16:05:00.000Z

I heart wedding blogs and I'm so glad I started reading them before we got engaged, that I didn't wait until I was "allowed". It has made a huge difference in our approach to planning a wedding so have some sane words of wisdom, beautiful inspiration to look at and doable ideas. And it also helped to decide what we wanted before everyone else chipped in with their suggestions.

So here are some of my blogging recommendations, there are dozens more that I'll put on my side bar.

Henry

2010-02-21T17:04:00.000Z

Henry is our ginger maine coon.

We've had him for nearly two years. This is the picture that made us fall in love with him and we also thought he had a little bit of an air of Henry VIII about him being all chubby and ginger.

He's now a lot bigger but still pretty cute.

The 28 list

2010-02-01T14:25:00.001Z

Last year, after my birthday I thought it would be a good idea to write a list of 28 things I wanted to do while I was 28. Turns out 28 things to do is quite a lot, I came up with 22 and have done 5. Those five were:

Knock out the fireplace - We have a fireplace in our living room that has been tiled over with hideous yellow tiles and a cheapo non original white fake georgian plaster mantelpiece around it. I hate them both and really want to open it up and have a real fire. DONE!
Find a perfume that's "me" - I don't wear perfume on a daily basis, mainly because any that I like turn out to be too strong for everyday wear. But it would be nice to have a scent that was "me". DONE - Rain by Marc Jacobs.
Make and finish something with my own hands. DONE - book wreath.
Get engaged. DONE!!
Get my hair dyed. DONE - its now florence and the machine ginger coloured.

Things from the original list that might get moved onto the big wedding list in my head:

Visit Paris again.
Use my lomo.
Learn something crafty - quilting or screenprinting. So I can make this quilt and/or our invites.
Rent a VW campervan.
Learn how to wear make-up.
Find a tattoo design I like and get it done.
Get new glasses. DONE - from this site and I get a pair for free.

Henry reigns

2010-01-27T14:20:00.000Z

This is Henry.

Me and my boyfriend currently live under the tyrannous reign of this large ginger cat.

He refuses to sit near you and be cuddled and he wakes us up at 3am for food. But, we he turns his furry little tummy up for a rub its all worth it.

Why blog?

2010-01-04T16:06:00.000Z

I've been reading blogs for while, years in fact and I love them. I have a blog for work stuff and archivist stuff but I've never had a me blog before. So why now? I'm blaming the wedding. I've got a million things I want to do for our wedding, cool ideas I've seen on other blogs and I want to put my two pence worth in. There'll probably be the occasional gratuitous cat posts and some housey stuff as well.