Wishing Well Hack

Well, once I had finished the flower girl and ringbearer projects, I thought all I had to do left was throw Kristen a bridal shower and I'd be off the hook until the wedding. I was wrong.

Kristen had purchased a wishing well on Amazon for real cheap. And when it came in the mail and she put it together... well, it looked worse than real cheap. It looked awful.

Not being the "crafty" sister (I keep telling her that she just needs to practice, just like anything else you want to be good at), she asked for my help to make it better.

Of course, I couldn't say no. But once I finally got a look at the thing I didn't even know where to start. Take a look for yourselves:

Pretty tacky, no?

Anyway, at least Kristen told me about the project before I left California, so I packed up an armory of craft supplies and brought them out to Utah so I could hopefully help the sad, cardboard box.

Well, after some sawing, spray painting, hot gluing, cutting and a half jar of Mod Podge later, we came up with this (thank you thank you thank you Chelsie for all you awesome help!):

I tiled the roof and covered all the seams. Even just doing that made it look a million times better. Then we made it look prettier and gave it some movement.

I hope Kristen and Keith got a ton of moolah in it. They're trying to buy a house.

Doing this project, I have absolutely fallen in love with Mod Podge. I mean, I liked it well enough before. It was fun and is multi-purpose. But I found it's true purpose in this project. I am now a die hard fan.

In fact, my next big project (that has nothing to do with weddings!) that I'm really excited about, uses it, too. Stay tuned...

Wedding Pictures!

I know you've all been dying to see these.

So, I mentioned before that I wasn't able to take any pictures with my camera, so my dad was kind enough to email me all of his. Thanks Papa! (Larry, Mama, you are also welcome to send any my way. *Wink wink* )

So, my dad sent me 21 pictures. Only 6 of them had Kristen. A whopping 15 of them featured Akiko and/or Savannah (my niece, the other flower girl). Only 1 had Keith in it. Someone's biased. *coughPapacough*

Anyway, I'm not going to show you all of them. Just the best ones.

Kristen with her flower girls, Savannah and Akiko.

Our darling little flower girls.

Don't you just want to eat her up?

Grandma Sachiko with her beautiful little granddaughters.

My older brother, Mike, and his wonderful family, Chelsie and Liam.

A really nice picture of my family.

My oldest brother, Danny, with his sweet family, Terra, Savannah, and Ian.

We told Asher he wasn't allowed to pick the flowers at Red Butte. He didn't listen. Little rebel.

There should be a witty caption here for whatever Moses is thinking.

Me with my two favorite girls in the whole world: the two Akikos.

Noah getting cozy with Anna. Even though they're both Akiko's cousins, they're on opposite sides of the family, so it's okay.

Oh! Look! There's the groom! I knew he was hiding out here somewhere.

So, those are the informal pictures taken by my dad, who barely knows how to work his camera. I think he misses his old film one sometimes.

The following links will take you to the professional photos:
   The engagement photos can be viewed HERE.
   Kristen's bridal photos can be viewed HERE.
   Wedding photos can be viewed HERE. <-- This link will be activated when Stacy gets the photos up.

Standing and Almost Walking

So, a few weeks ago, when we were in Utah, Asher surprised Grandpa Fred and me by suddenly standing up from a crouch. For the last several weeks since then, he's been doing a lot of practicing standing and he's getting really good at it.

Akiko and Moses still get super excited whenever he does. I'll be doing my thing at any time during the day when one or both of the older kids will suddenly burst in and delightfully exclaim, "Asher's standing!! Asher's standing!!" Then just as suddenly, run back out of the room.

Asher has been getting a lot of positive feedback from his new trick that he automatically starts clapping for himself as soon as he gets his balance.

As we all know, Asher has never been one to stay in any place for very long, so I knew it was only a short matter of time before he'd attempt walking. So it was on a beautiful afternoon this last week (Wednesday, for the record), I was out visiting my friend, we were talking about the very subject when Asher stood up between us and took a couple steps toward me before he lost his balance.

He was so excited by the reaction that he got from me that he has been practicing his stepping a lot. Of course, Akiko and Moses are even more enthusiastic about his bigger and better new trick, that the exclamation has turned into, "Mommy!! Asher took one/two/three step(s) and then he fell down!! (insert giggle)"

Here is a short video of Joseph and me helping him practice:

So, while I wouldn't say that Asher is walking, it's definitely a milestone. Actual walking will come very soon.

And now, for your enjoyment, here are a bunch of cute pictures of Asher that we've taken in the last little bit:

Asher wakes up with the best bed-head.

No, that's not chocolate. It's mud. He escaped from the house and found the mud. =P

Hey! What are you lookin' at?

More bed-head! Seriously, I didn't do a thing to it. This is how it was when he woke up.

Mmmm! Graham crackers.

Easter outfits! I couldn't help but get the boys matching suits.

Moses found great-grandpa Con's Bonneville and decided to take it for a spin. Asher is uncertain of his brother's driving skills. Especially since his feet don't reach the pedals. Maybe that's a good thing.

Asher's favorite spot at Uncle Paul's bbq. I so need to get me some of these chairs.

How do you keep a 10 month old happy when you get stuck in a snow storm over Donner Pass? Feed him circus peanuts. Thanks Akiko.

Asher's first spaghetti night!! Coincidentally, this was just a couple hours after the circus peanut incident.

Getting ready for his first haircut. Sob! I loved that crazy hair.

Done!!

My sister got hitched last night!!

It was a beautiful wedding up at Red Butte Gardens. If you've never been there, you should go. It's lovely. I hadn't been there in years, so it's totally different than what I remember, but it's a great place to take your kids for a nice fragrant stroll. There's even a kid's garden that's really cool.

Anyway, we're really happy for Kristen and Keith. They're such a cute couple. Kristen was beautiful. But then, when is she not. My sister's a babe!

It was a lot of fun, but it was also a lot of work on my part. I'm bushed. I'm really glad I was able to help out though. I would do anything for my sister.

Sadly, I was so busy, not a single picture was taken by me from my camera and Joseph was too busy with the boys (particularly Asher) to be of any help in that department. So, what I'm going to do is have Kristen send me pictures and post them later.

I have such a backlog on this blog, so I hope now that with the extra time that I may or may not have that I'll be able to catch up some.

Sadly, also, I was not able to visit with any of my friends in SLC (unless they were part of the festivities). I think a visit to SLC, with no agenda, is in the future.

The Final Countdown

Ok, so this afternoon I finally finished all my big wedding projects. Yay! And they look... well, I'll let you judge for yourselves, but I'm pretty proud of them.

First, here's the whole ensemble that I've been working on. I've already showed you the flower girl dresses. I also did the baskets and the ring bearer pillow. The headbands I threw in because I happened upon some DIY headbands when I was at the craft store and figured it would be a cute and simple way for our flower girls to do their hair.

Here's a closeup of the girls' accessories:

I was on the lookout for baskets for a while, but everything I was finding was either the wrong shape or size or super expensive. Who knew baskets would cost so much? I was thinking that maybe I ought to enroll in a basket weaving class when I found the perfect ones in the Target dollar section. Ok, they actually cost $2.50 each, but still... It was way better than spending 4x that much on something I was going to cover in satin anyway. Thank heavens Target had started putting their Easter stuff out right after Valentine's Day.

Wrapping those basket was a bit challenging. Waaaaay different than wrapping a Christmas present. Satin is less forgiving than paper. Hands down! But they still turned out and that's all that matters.

The headbands were fun and easy and I actually need to credit my friend Aly for inspiring me on these. Thanks! (You should check out her awesome craft blog, ladies!) I wanted to make Aly's rosettes for everything, but I couldn't get mine to work, so I made up something that ended up resembling a carnation. Oh well.

And for the record, there were two of everything I had to do for the flower girls. Thank heavens only two!

Then there's the ringbearer's pillow:

This one I did in one afternoon. I mean, I'd do a tutorial or something, but I didn't take pictures and, honestly, when are you ever going to need to make one on a whim? It was fun and I kind of winged it as I went along, but I'm really pleased with the end product. I had tons of ideas for what I could do with it, but discarded them all because, let's face it, I was running low on time and felt like simplicity would look best anyway.

So, now my wedding projects are out of the way. The wedding is next week and we leave for Utah tomorrow. I'm still gonna be super busy though. There's a bridal shower I still have to throw and I've got to pack and drive (alone, with three young children).

By the way, I never did show how the invitations so perfectly turned out (but that's because I didn't get to see the fabulous finished product till I got mine in the mail).

Aren't Kristen and Keith so cute together it makes you wanna hug a pillow pet?

Anyway, I'm very excited for my BFF, my baby sister, to get married. Keith is everything she had been looking for and I know they'll be happy together.

I also look forward to relaxing after the wedding is over. Boy, being a Grand Dame of Honor is tiring!

Leave of Absence

Disclaimer update (4/22/2011):  So, the other day, the embedding was working for the videos. Apparently, embedding hasn't even been released, so if you were able to watch the embedded clips, you got lucky. So, I have now included a link to open a new tab or window so you can view the videos on Socialcam.

Flower Girl Dress Preview

Kristen's wedding is sneaking up on us. I need to kick it into high gear and get things done! I swear, it seems like whenever we get one thing crossed off the list, two more things get added onto it.

I've got good news though! The flower girl dresses are coming along nicely. I've got one of them done, so I'd like to show it off.

Here's the before:

I could not believe how difficult it was to find a modest flower girl dress, at a reasonable price, in the color that we wanted. So, we ended up with a dress that we liked, at a reasonable price, but it was all white, which is not what we wanted. However, the style was something I could totally work with and alter a bit without ruining the dress.

So, I found some silver-gray organza and did this:

 

I stitched a layer of organza in under the tulle layers and simply added a couple flower to the sash. It turned out better than I expected, thankfully.

I've still got a ton of work to do for the wedding, but I'm really pleased with how the dresses turned out. Well... how this dress turned out. I've got to do the other one now. I'm also going to make a white satin headband with an organza flower for their hair. It'll look so simple and nice, I think.