fifteen

Here's the second in this week's series of gift guides.  As always, please feel free to add your additions or comments below...

Stubborn Sparrow's 2010 Gift Guide: For the Crafter

yarn of the month club
a tour of lotta's life
the gift of color
empowerment
a worthwhile investment
an engrossing television series
another lovely quilting book--or maybe just a pattern and some fabric
for the book-lover
for the beginning spinner
to play with

happy couple

If I'm going to spend days locked in the house, I'm at least going to get something done.  Here's the latest incarnation of our cake toppers.*  There are still some things I would do differently, if I had the project to do over again, but I've put some good work in, and I'm almost ready to call these kids done.  I'll varnish them with a clear coat, and they'll be dry by the time we tuck them into a suitcase at the end of next week.

There are going to be a lot of things going into suitcases over the next few days.  And maybe a few things shipped, too.  When we first talked about having a wedding two thousand miles away from the place where we live, I don't think we really considered some of the details involved.

We've got most of it figured out, I'm happy to say.  Not all of it, of course.  Where would be the fun in that?  We've still got another twenty-two days to kill, right?

If you've got time to kill, might I recommend a visit to A Practical Wedding?  A few posts in the past week or two have really gotten my brain going.  Like this one about dealing with in-laws (an area I've been particularly lucky in...) or this one about Waiting to Do It.  I'm choosy about my wedding blogs, and I do like the ones with lots of pretty pictures and cute diy projects, but I really think Meg over at APW has got it going on.

I hope you all have a happy weekend.  I've got a lot planned, including some mild bridal/bachelorette celebrating and the inevitable purchase of my final issue of Martha Stewart Weddings.*  Hopefully, you're up to something fun, too.  See you on Monday!

*If you squint, you can see my little blue shoes!
**Yes, I know.  It's a bit too late to be gleaning menu ideas or decorating tips, but this is the very last issue I'll ever be able to rationalize purchasing.  I just want to look at all the pictures.  After this, it's over.  I promise.  I can quit anytime I want to...

thanks

Along with all of the hope and anxiety--and joy!--of wedding planning, I've realized that one of the other major emotions I've been encountering frequently is gratitude.  For my partner-in-crime.  For the love and support of our parents.  For the unbridled excitement and massive encouragement we've received from our friends and family.  There is so much to be thankful for, and when other things have become a little too overwhelming, I like to just let that feeling of gratitude take over.

Of course, one can't--and shouldn't--feel this way so frequently and not express it to the world, which brings me to the theme of the day--thank you notes.  I must not be the only one dwelling on them this week.  Over at Once Wed, diy projects are back--speaking of things that I'm thankful for--and the first thing new columnist Amy Moss is taking on is--you guessed it--handmade thank you notes.  Her project is specifically for thank you notes for one's bridesmaids, but take a look and I think you'll agree that there's potential to do all kinds of things with the idea...

If carving rubber stamps and printing notecards sounds like too much work, 100 Layer Cake is hosting a thank you note giveaway this week.  Maybe you could just win some gorgeous stationery.  (If you do win, please let me know so that I can be incredibly jealous.  I love Wiley Valentine...)

For my part, I'm trying to stick to notes of my own--and my man's--doing.  He's already printed our "official" thank you notes--they're amazing, of course--but there are so many things to thank so many people for right now.  I'll admit, at times, I just cheat and go with some really nice letterpress printed notecards.  Like this.  Or these.  Or those.

Sometimes, though, that simply won't cut it.  Last weekend, I found myself in need of something that packed a bit more punch.  After some cutting and gluing and taping, I ended up with a few of these:

It might not look like much, but, boy howdy, were these challenging.  I swore.  A few times.

The little "clothesline" is baker's twine--currently one of my favorite materials.

I cut the tiny pennants out of card stock, attached them to the twine with glue and tape--don't ask--and pulled the twine through the holes I punched in each side of the card.  I am making it sound much less complicated than it actually was at the time, I assure you.

They were totally worth it, though, in the end.  I couldn't help opening and closing each one a few dozen times, just to watch it all work.  I hope the recipients end up having as much fun with them as I did.  I also hope they make it through the mail all right, but that's a whole other story...

messes

This is one of our last free weekends before we fly to Ohio, and I have plans to make several wedding project-related messes.  Here's a peek at the first of them:

I wrote about this adorable diy cake topper kit from goosegrease months and months ago.  Obviously, I haven't done much with it since then, but now it's time to get busy.  It turns out that some of my concerns about the project were valid.  Painting is hard.  And there's definitely pressure to get the details right.  Which is tough, since a few of those details are still up in the air.  Should the bride wear her glasses?  Which tie will the groom finally decide on?  What about the as-yet non-existent whimsical, wispy head piece thingie?, etc.

All the worries aside, though, this is kind of fun.  It reminds me of Mrs. Reiff teaching my fifth grade art class.  I could hear her voice in my head tonight as I cleaned the paint out of my brushes, telling us to handle our brushes gently, as though we were petting a cat.  (It sounds a little funny now, but I think we understood what she meant at the time...)

So.  I have more painting to do this weekend.  And some sewing.  And maybe some stapling and gluing as well.  I'll be back on Monday to let you know how it all goes...

Happy weekend!

a bow on top

I'm not wearing a veil at our wedding.  I've never really pictured myself wearing one.  (One of the advantages of not being a girl who's been imagining her wedding all her life is that there aren't things I've "always" planned on wearing or saying or doing--which, now that we're planning a real live wedding, has left the options wide open...)

So, no veil.  I think they look nice.  I just don't want one on my head.  I don't need the weird symbolism that seems to go along with the whole thing, and I'm not so hung up on tradition that not wearing a veil would seem wrong.  (If I'm getting you down with this whole "no" thing, you should wander over to Souris Mariage.  I really like what Mouse had to say last week about her fancy new headgear.)

All of this begs the question: What, if anything, am I going to stick on my cute little head?  For a few months there, I was campaigning for crown-wearing at our wedding.  Not a tiara, thank you very much.  A nice big crown.  Perhaps made of construction paper.  While my partner-in-crime was in full support of the idea, I've since decided that maybe I could do better.

And I'm pretty sure I need something fancy, if for no other reason than to distract people from noticing that I've done absolutely nothing at all with my hair.

I've gushed here before about the lovely little things over at LoBoheme's Etsy shop.  And with the clock ticking so loudly now at the back of my mind, I'm kind of inclined to just order one of the stunning things listed there.

Like maybe this:

Or possibly this:

photos by Marisa Holmes: marisaholmesblog.com

I'm still clinging to the idea, though, of making something myself.  There's still time, and I have some ideas, albeit vague ones.

Remember my slightly-toxic flowers?  I was thinking of making a few of those in white and somehow sticking them together, along with something shiny.

(And my selection of shiny things grew a bit more this past weekend when my mother-in-law-to-be stopped by with a few pieces of costume jewelry she'd offered to loan me.  Along with some other lovely little things, there were a pair of rhinestone-studded birds, which of course, must now find their way into whatever I end up with.)

I'm not really satisfied with my initial efforts, but here's what I have so far.

Mostly, I just love the little bird.  Besides that, I think I've got my work cut out for me.  Is it a headband I want?  An alligator clip?  I have no idea.  It would probably help if I could decide how I'm wearing my hair.  (My beloved stepmother has already vetoed pigtails.)

I do like the rosette pattern of the flower, but I think I'd rather have petals that are more defined.  When I tried cutting and then melting something more petal-shaped, I ended up with little tendrils of melted polyester, instead of anything remotely flowery.  I guess I'll have to work on that.

And my whole I-can't-sew hang up is seriously getting in the way with all this tulle and netting.  I am way outside my comfort zone, and I might have to start looking for someone to give me some advice.

I do feel like I might be headed in the right direction, though.  It might just take some more clumsy hacking to really get the hang of this.

I'll keep you posted.  Obviously.

finally

I've been talking about our invitations since forever.  It's been so long since I posted here about our adventures in perforating.  And as you might recall, we actually mailed the pretty little things a few weeks ago.  At this point, I think it's safe to say that, despite a few false starts with the USPS, everyone that was expecting an invite ought to have received it by now.  Maybe it's finally time, then, to show off a few of my favorite things about our fancy correspondence.

If you've been reading for awhile, you already know that my partner-in-crime printed the invitations during his letterpress class at Pratt.  Actually, he did the save-the-dates first.  Remember this?

The invites are printed in the same font and on the same paper as the save-the-dates, but I think my man would agree when I tell you that printing the invitations was a bit more complicated.  He spent a lot of time planning it all out, and--almost--all of the good ideas here are his, not mine.

(I know that when he sees this post, he'll think that my photos don't quite do justice to the fruits of his labor.  Let me point out to you--and to him--that it is very, very hard to take flattering photos of a piece of paper.  I really don't know how the pros do it...)

The layout is a tri-fold.  The first section is the invitation to our Ohio wedding, the second--which is almost a mirror image, of sorts--is the invitation to our Washington reception.

I think the third part might be the best.  It's a detachable RSVP postcard for our guests to send back to us.  And this isn't some stuffy old RSVP, that just indicates who is responding and how many there are in the party.  Oh, no.  We wanted people to have a chance to, well, say something.

Granted, there's some multiple choice involved, but after that, we've left plenty of room for people to tell us just about anything.  And while I loved seeing these invitations come into being and I really enjoyed sending them out, I'm pretty sure the best part so far has been the RSVPs coming back home again.  I've been getting a big thrill out of checking the mailbox every day.  It turns out that our friends and family are hilarious and/or incredibly thoughtful people and it shows in their responses.  We are so lucky.

There are plenty of beautiful wedding invites out there, but please don't think I'm being silly if I tell you that I wouldn't trade these for anything.

slacking

Oh, friends.  I am extra sleepy tonight and feeling lazy.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't have some fun in wedding blog world, though.  There's always something happening somewhere.

First of all, Souris Mariage is celebrating Food Week.  There are plenty of decisions to be made about wedding food, and Mouse's posts about everything from the margaritas to the main courses have me drooling.  Mini-chimichangas dipped in chipotle sour cream?  Oh, yes, please.

And if you haven't already, take a look at the "Pretty Fall Wedding" on Once Wed.  All the bird details are enough for me to fall in love.  Oh, and then there are the cakes.  And the cupcakes.

If you're in the market for more than just inspiring eyecandy, Sarah over at Truly Smitten has a sweet little DIY project to share.  I'm already thinking of taking a stab at it.  Maybe you should, too?

I hope that's enough to tide you over.  If the universe is willing, I'll be back in full force tomorrow...

rejected

Here is what we are not going to do:  We are not going to make table numbers for our reception tables using fabric and embroidery hoops.  I'm a little sad about this.  I had a whole plan that involved cutting fabric into number shapes and then doing lots of clumsy, tedious hand sewing.  And I did spend hours and hours trolling the thrift stores for a healthy collection of embroidery hoops.

The thing is, the groom was never really all that into the idea.  And the more I think about it, the less I really like it, either.  I like the crafty element, but the overall effect seems a little too cute.  Too tea party.  And while I'm still trying to figure out what this whole wedding thing is going to look like, there's one thing I'm sure of:  It ain't no tea party.

If we're going to go with fabric, I guess we could always do something like this.  Or this.

Or maybe none of those things.

We do need table numbers, though.  Martha said so.  Repeatedly.  Even if we don't assign seats, Martha says we should assign tables.  And who are we to argue with Martha?

I'm not sure how it's going to go.  This could be one of those last-minute things where we're slaving over the laser printer at two in the morning making ugly little signs that look like zine pages.  Hopefully not.

My man had some funny idea about cutting pages out of kids' books.  Who knows?  Maybe that will pan out...

But all the embroidery hoops?  I'll keep them, of course.  They could be useful if I ever decide to pick up another hobby.  Besides, I like how they look just hanging on the wall in groups.  If I'm too lazy to learn embroidery, I could just put different bits of fabric in each one.

(This is more fun stuff from Tula Pink for Moda.  It's called "Nest."  My future-sister-in-law gave me some for my birthday last year.  I love it.)

magpie

I have a confession to make.  I have to say it quietly, because I'm still having a little trouble dealing with the truth.  My seven year-old self never would have believed it, and my nineteen year-old self would have probably just curled her lip a tiny bit in disgust.  Even so, here it is:  I like pretty things.

Now, when I say "pretty," I don't mean wildflowers or rainbows.  I like those things, too, but this is more along the lines of pearl necklaces.  Diamond earrings.  I'm talking Tiffany & Co.  Or Louis freaking Cartier.

I don't know what happened.  I certainly wasn't born this way.  (You can ask my folks; I think they'd vouch for me...)  It's really just been in the past few years that I've started to be distracted by glittery things.  Maybe it's all those wedding magazines I've leafed through.  Maybe I've just spent too much time on muddy construction sites or in dusty warehouses to not spend my weekends being drawn to things that are, um, kind of girly.

Please don't misunderstand.  I'm certainly not buying all this ridiculous stuff.  The pretty little rock on my left hand is more than I'd ever dreamed of wearing.  (I'm not exaggerating...)  It's just that I can't help noticing the glammy things in the magazines or in the shops.

My fascination of the week is Violet Magpie.  The designer, Jen Carrigan, sells her work in a few places in Seattle, including Velouria, which is too close to our house for me to not go visiting at least once a week.  You'll see it in the photos, but there's just an incredibly decadent mix of vintage rhinestones, pert little feathers, and big silky flowers.

And is it so wrong of me to adore those things?  Or to love something like this:

If you like what you see,  you should check out LoBoheme's Etsy shop.  In fact, maybe you should just go to Etsy and search "rhinestone."  It will keep you occupied for hours.

Being the diy girl that I am, I thought it would be fun and easy to just wander through a few thrift stores, pick up some vintage costume jewelry, and get to work on some fancy headgear of my own.  The truth is, though, that finding those little brooches and clip-on earrings that used to be everywhere is actually kind of hard to do.  I don't know why.  Maybe all those awesome jewelry designers are just getting to the Goodwill before I do.  It's been a few weeks, though, and I still haven't come up with anything, so I'm thinking I'll have to work with what I have.

Which is a whole lot of this.  Just before Christmas last year, I bought a bag of miscellaneous chandelier crystals.  I thought I was going to make some kind of jewelry for holiday gifts, but then, I never got around to it.

Now, though, I think it might be time.  I don't know that I can manage hairpieces, really.  But maybe a necklace.  Or a bracelet.  You can do a lot with a few sparkly pieces of glass.  And along with the crystal drops, I've also got a few feet of beaded chain that was probably draped between the arms of an old chandelier.

For starters, it all needs to be cleaned.  That part sounds a little daunting.  After that, though, I think this project could be doable.  I've never really done any jewelry-making, but when has anything like that stopped me?  I'll let you know what I come up with...

weekend reading

The good news is that there's a new fabric store in my neighborhood.  The bad news?  Um, there's a new fabric store in my neighborhood.  I've only recently overcome the tendency to be magnetically drawn to the yarn shop every time I leave my house.  Now there's a beautiful new trap to fall into.  Never mind the fact that I can't sew at all.  Fabric is just really hard for me to resist.

I managed alright today, though.  I didn't buy any fabric at all.  Instead, I bought a book.  I just couldn't resist it, and if you ever come across a copy, I think you'll understand why.  The title is Carefree Clothes for Girls.  It's by Junko Okawa, and it's actually a Japanese craft book that's been reissued in English.  The photography is ridiculously gorgeous, and the patterns are great, too, in a timeless kind of way.  Of course, there is the little matter of my inability to sew.  And the fact that, even if I could, I don't really have any little girls to sew for anyway.  But still...

Another book that's really tempted me is Material Obsession, a book about quilting by Sarah Fielke and Kathy Doughty, two crafty ladies that co-own a quilt shop in Sydney, Australia.  I've never tried quilting, but if that's what it takes to get one of the fun, functional quilts featured in this book, I'm willing to give it a try.  If you're curious, you can also check out the shop website at www.materialobsession.com.

And for those of us who probably shouldn't be left alone with a sewing machine, there's Lena Corwin's Printing by Hand.  There's a little bit of everything in here: stamping, stenciling, even screenprinting.  The instructions are straight-forward, the projects are clever, and there are lots of photos.  My copy from the library is two days overdue, so I think I'm going to have to postpone some of these projects for later.  Maybe when I'm not, you know, planning a wedding.

Happy weekending, everyone!  I'll see you on Monday...

almost

Usually, when I'm writing about fun stuff that comes through the shop, I like to show you pictures of what I found, and then more pictures of what I ended up doing with it.  Today, though, all I can show you is the "before."  This time, there isn't any "after."  Just when I was trying to decide what awesome new thing I could make with all these bits and pieces of metal, a really nice lady came along and bought them all.

So now all I can do is daydream.  They could have been centerpieces or candelabras.  

Or bouquets.

Or pictures frames.

But no.  I hesitated a moment too long, and now they're gone.  It's probably just as well.  I didn't really need another dozen projects anyway.  Still, it's tempting to think of what might have been...

giving

Wedding favors are a funny business.  It seems like the cool kids are all over the map on the subject.  Some people are doing really neat, crafty things.  Other people are making donations to favorite non-profits in honor of their guests.  And still other people are just skipping the whole thing altogether.

At first, it seemed we might end up in the third category.  We thought it was silly to spend money on dumb little pieces of monogrammed junk that our friends and family would just throw away after the wedding.  I've seen my fair share of "Jack+Jill 2003" ashtrays and coffee mugs at the Goodwill, and I really don't want to unload something like that on our loved ones.

As time went on, though, I started seeing really sweet, thoughtful wedding favors out there in the world, and I decided to get in on the action.   For a little awhile, I was trying to talk my partner-in-crime into these little things.  (This was back when I wanted to have a bird-themed wedding, an idea that never really gained much traction, unfortunately...)

We've been scheming a bit since then, and it turns out we are going to have favors at our wedding.  Not the birdseed hearts.  Something better, I assure you.

I'm not going to say what they are.  You know that I can't.  I have decided, though, to show you all what we're hoping to give to our littlest wedding guests in June.

I've been collecting crayons for awhile now, from garage sales and thrift stores.  A few years ago, I saw a magazine article about melting down broken and stubby little left-over crayons into fun, exciting new ones.  I don't know where that article is now.  Last night, I mostly just did things that sort of made sense.

First, I peeled a bunch of crayons.  If that doesn't sound time-consuming, then I'm not saying it right.  It was okay, though.  Sort of Zen.

Then I sorted the crayons into colors.  Of course, there are a dozen different shades of each color, which makes everything more fun, I think.

I chopped the crayons into small pieces--about  an eighth or a quarter of an inch and put the pieces into a silicon muffin pan that I found at the Goodwill last weekend for ninety-nine cents.

And then things got a little interesting.  A few different sources on on the Internet suggested putting the pan in the oven for twenty or thirty minutes at 150 degrees.  Instead, it ended up taking about four times as long, and I cranked the oven up to 180 or 185.

When everything looked all melted and soupy, I took the pan out and let it cool overnight.  In the morning, I had six little heart-shaped crayons.

It was a good time and pretty darn easy.  I'm going to do it all again, too, a few more times before this summer.  In the meantime, don't tell the little ones, okay?  You know how much I love a surprise.

on fire

I was wandering around on 100 Layer Cake the other day, and a post from this week's guest blogger there caught my eye.  First, it had my attention because it was written by Lanie, the owner of NYC's new bridal boutique Lovely.  Lovely is carrying the work of my favorite dress designer, Elizabeth Dye.  So there's that.

The other thing that got me, though, was that Lanie's post is a how-to for DIY fabric flowers, something I've been thinking about dabbling with for awhile now.  The best part is that her step-by-step involves polyester fabric and open flames.  My pyromaniac inner child couldn't say no.

I'm not going to re-hash the how-to.  You can read Lanie's original post for that.  Mostly, I just wanted to tell you that I think deliberately melting plastic in a poorly-ventilated apartment might not be a great idea.  Oh, and I wanted to show off what I managed in spite of the fact that my brain cells were probably expiring, one by one.

I made a flower in turquoise first.

 I backed it with a little circle of felt and added some glass beads to the center, just for fun.

And after I finished the blue one, I really, really wanted a yellow one, too.  I don't know why.  It was probably the fumes.

I like the color of the yellow better, but I'm not sure lighter fabrics work well for this project.  If you squint a little, you can see the little burn marks along the edges of the yellow petals.  They don't show up nearly as much on the blue one.

These are fun to make, and they go fast.  I'm going to have to give some thought, though, as to whether or not I'd feel safe making thirty or forty of them.  Along with the burning plastic concern, there's also the matter of the cat, who has no understanding of personal space.  Or of the dangers of an open flame.

If you'd like to see more of Lanie and her work, you can see photos from her recent wedding featured on Style Me Pretty.

Happy weekend, everyone!  I'll be back on Monday with more action and excitement to share.

revisiting

In my very first post here on the Sparrow--which seems like so long ago--I showed you this little ring pillow-substitute that I'd tossed together.  I thought the thing was cute, and it went over quite well at the Salvage Bride workshop, but I knew almost before it was even done that it wasn't the right ring-holding-thing for our wedding.

I want to say that I've been puzzling over the matter ever since, but the truth is, I've had other, more pressing things to puzzle over.  I'd kind of forgotten about the whole thing until a few days ago, when I had a teeny-tiny eureka moment.  I remembered that a few winters ago, I made about a dozen felted wool bowls, a few of which are still kicking around our place.

No, they're not super-fancy, but I like them.  And my man likes them.  And they're kind of--us.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the foresight when I was knitting and felting these in late 2008 to make them nice and shallow, in order to properly display a pair of small-but-important rings.  So, I picked the best of the bowls and decided to make a little cushion to tuck inside it.

Over the weekend, we found some fabric to play with--actually, my partner-in-crime found it, but I'm going to take partial credit.  The pattern is called "Key Tree Yellow Plume" and it's by Tula Pink for Moda.  It looks a little bit like this:

I think it's cute, and if you like it, too, you can find it in this Etsy shop, among other places.

I've already been very up front with you all about my miserable sewing skills, but one of the few things in my repertoire is, in fact, tiny pillows.  I sat in the kitchen and sewed while my man cooked dinner.  It took about twenty minutes, and while it's not perfect, I think it will do just fine.  I still haven't gotten the rest of the thing figured out, but I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track.

I'm going to take a moment now to say that if you're a knitter and you've never made a felted bowl, then it's time to get down to business.  It will be one of the easiest--and most fulfilling--little things you ever make.  Go to ravelry.com and get yourself an account, if you haven't got one.  You'll find plenty of patterns there for felted bowls, boxes, and everything else.

(And if you aren't a knitter, and you live in the Seattle Metro area, I will gladly exchange one half-hour "intro to knitting" for a small cup of coffee and a cupcake with pink or yellow frosting.  The ball is officially in your court.)

With all that said, I'm still not absolutely sold on the whole "rings in a felted bowl" thing.  I kind of want one of these:

(from Pomp & Plumage)

And I'm having a hard time not just ponying up for one of these:

(from Paloma's Nest)

Really, though, I know that we don't need either of those.  The details of our wedding don't need to look like something in a magazine.  They should look like who we are and what we do.  There are some finishing touches that still need to be figured out, but all in all, I'm pretty happy with what we've got...

making space

You know all that crafty goodness I've got planned for this weekend?  There was a necessary first step that I had to take this afternoon.  Crafting usually requires a flat surface to work on, and much to my man's chagrin, I've managed to cover almost every flat surface in our apartment with at least a light dusting of, um, stuff.  So today, the big project on my list was turning this...

...into this:

If I've made it look quick and easy, well, don't be fooled, my friends.  This was an all-out offensive, and there were a few casualties.  Now, though, I've got plenty of room to make a big, crafty mess and hopefully, when I post again on Monday, I'll have something fun to share.

Happy weekend, everyone!

tough choices

One hundred and one days.  We have one hundred and one days to get it all done.  It sounds like plenty of time.  Weeks and weeks.  Months, even.  What could we possibly need to do that we can't get finished in one hundred and one days?

Um.  A lot of things.  When we started all this, my head was full of projects and ideas and plans.  Every time I opened a magazine or scrolled through a blog, I'd think of something else I wanted to try.  And if I'm making it sound like I was the only one in the house getting carried away by crazy plots, let me remind you that catering our own wedding was not entirely my idea.

Now, though, we're headed into the final phase, where all the planning turns into doing.  All those super-fun projects are either going to start happening or not.  And, let's be honest now, some of them will not.  Making those choices is going to be tough.  Once, I've embraced an idea, I have a very hard time giving it up.  And in spite of his tendency towards conflict-aversion, my partner-in-crime does have a little bit of a stubborn streak.  (Please don't tell him; I don't think he knows...)

I'm not talking about any really huge sacrifices here.  I think--in spite of what a few of our friends and family members might believe--we've actually been pretty conservative about what we've taken on.  We ditched the whole "let's build tables out of salvaged barn wood" idea.  And I'm not going to sew the napkins and tablecloths myself--which is good, because I can't actually sew worth a dang.  

I'm still planning on making the pinata, though.  And making banners to hang in the trees.  There are still the centerpieces to figure out, and the kids' table, and the bouquet.  Oh, and yes, the food.

Fortunately, I've just stumbled on a new tool to help me make tough decisions about which DIY projects to tackle and which to subcontract out to the lovely folks on Etsy.  Rachel at Heart of Light is guest blogging at 100 Layer Cake right now, and yesterday she shared her DIY Reality Check Flowchart. 

If you're stressing about whether or not to take on the ten-millionth project on your wedding checklist, try running your options through Rachel's flowchart.  The straight-forward simplicity of it will blow your mind.  I'm thinking about taping it on my wall and using it to determine every detail in my life.  I'll have to let you know how that turns out...

Right now, though, there are the wedding decisions to make, and they're going to start coming on quick. Today, there are one hundred and one days to go.  And tomorrow, it will be a hundred...

quitting

Another busy day today, getting things ready for the workshop this weekend.  The event is right around the corner, and as the minutes tick by, I'm finding that I need to adjust my expectations of myself.  There are things I'd planned to do that won't get done, last-minute projects that will be scratched off the list, and absolutely "perfect" ideas that will just have to be "good," instead.

I'd like to think that this is all really good practice for the Big Day coming up in June.  It's important to remember to take deep breaths and to treat yourself well.  At some point, you need to just sit back and be satisfied and enjoy the results of your hard work.

Of course, it's one thing to be able to recognize all that, and it's another thing entirely to put it into practice.  I'm actually pretty lousy at calling it quits.  I have a very hard time saying, "Enough is enough."  I always want to chase the dream up until the very last second.

There is one situation, though, in which I can almost always be relied on to quit.  When I am not immediately good at something--something that I've never tried before--my first instinct is to stop trying. I don't like losing.  I don't like making mistakes.  I don't know if it's just my nature to be this way, or if it's some indirect result of how I was raised.  Regardless, I've found enough things that I'm at least moderately good at to be able to get away with avoiding the things that I don't take to right away.

All of which brings me to the drama of the day.  The pom poms.  If you read the wedding blogs, or flip through the magazines, you know that tissue paper pom poms have been all the rage for quite some time now.  I thought it would be fun to have a few for the workshop space on Saturday, and when I saw that Martha had a how-to on her website, I knew that I was set.

Now, Martha has never steered me wrong.  I've always maintained that if you are willing to follow her instructions without question, you will not fail.  Baking a tart, getting grass stains out of cotton, decorating the table for Thanksgiving.  There's nothing Martha can't help you do.

If all that is true, though, then how did I end up with something that looks like this?

Such a sad little muppet of a pom pom.  To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement.  I was overwrought.  I was bereft.  It had seemed like such an easy thing to do.  How could I have made such a mess of it?

Of course, the answer is that I needed a little more practice.  After a few hours of being vaguely mad, and some of that deep breathing I was preaching about earlier, I gave it another go.  I really had to make myself do it.  Mostly, I was dreading another tissue paper travesty.

Instead, though, I got a pom pom.  And then another one.  And another one.

The weird part is that I skipped some of Martha's directions.  That whole trimming the ends to look like flower petals?  I ditched it entirely.

And it worked.  These things aren't works of art, but I like them anyway.  They're bright and fun, and they're a nice reminder that I shouldn't take myself--or my little projects--too seriously.