Beautiful Backyard Wedding

I haven't posted much this summer because instead of home improvement projects I've been enjoying a summer of weekend trips, days at the pool and water ice dessert runs.

Mixed in with all that relaxing we also took part in one of the most beautiful weddings I've ever been to.  Set in the backyard of the bride and groom's Zabroso Restaurant (convenient right?) on a gorgeous day my sister and new brother-in-law welcomed 50 friends and family to witness their vows and celebrated with a wood fired pizza dinner.

Guests were welcomed to the ceremony with a casual timeline of the evening.

Fans were given to keep guests cool in the August sun and doubled as a heart-felt thank you.

 The bride and groom walked down the isle together.

They said their vows against a gorgeous, natural backdrop of ferns and a babbling creek.

The bride surprised her groom, of Puerto Rican, decent with her vows said solely in Spanish.  Not a dry eye!

 

 She even made her headpiece!

Cocktail hour consisted of drinks (obviously), cheeses, crackers and fruit.  Do those chalkboard labels look familiar?

The wedding had a casual, elegant, rustic feel.  Vintage crates from my great-grandparent's apple orchard, covered in burlap added some heigh variation and all the serving pieces were borrowed from my mom's awesome collection.

Plywood and chalkboard paint created a casual menu.

Tables were set up in two family style tables.  Table runners were cut to size using landscaping burlap.

Flower arrangements were mason jars, wrapped in burlap, tied with a ribbon and filled with grocery store flowers.  Lemons, limes and corks were sprinkled throughout to add to the full look.

When you hear "wedding food" you probably conjure up images of rubbery chicken or tough prime rib.  Not here.  These two are cuisine experts and the food was amazing.  It looked beautiful and tasted even better.  They had a coal fired oven set up to bake fresh and perfect pizza served with lots of colorful salads.  Who doesn't love pizza?

A salsa band played into the night and most people, literally kicked off their shoes and salsa'ed into the night!

Living Room Drapes

Done!  96" West Elm Scribble Curtains in midnight blue, hemmed to 92" to hang floor to ceiling.  I swapped the wimpy rod for an 1.25" diameter rod.  The triple window has 2 panels flanking each side to get the scale visually correct.

Before = too short, drab and not enough fabric for the scale of the window:

After = much better.

I still can't figure out the piano placement.  It looks like we could just shift it down towards the door but is actually a few inches wider than the door.  We can't shift it the other way toward the wall because then that side of the room is too heavy with furniture.  We can't move the couch because it faces the only wall we could put a TV on and still have it hidden.  What to do, what to do.

 Also I think I forgot to fill you in on finishing the door headers.  Remember how we couldn't find the 12 more feet we needed to finish off the headers and left it looking like this? You can't tell from the picture but the header stuck out further than the crown so we needed more crown to sit on top of the header so it stood out away from the wall, to look one one connected piece.  

Well after lots of searching someone from Home Depot recommended a lumber yard about a half hour away that took all the leftover molding from Home Depot.  Score.  Sure enough they had it!

Now the doorway has the depth we were after:

So the doorway went from looking like this...

To this!

Stick a fork in this living room.  It. is. done.  

For now.

Crimes against humanity...

(...well not really.  They're totally champagne problems).  A crime has been occurring in my house for 5+ years.  Call the sheriff.

My mom has been losing sleep over this.  Literally.  

84" drapes.  She finally could stand it no longer and showed up on my doorstep pleading with me to stop the horror.

She let me off on parole with strict instructions to install these 96" West Elm Scribble drapes in midnight blue.

I went with West Elm Woodland drapes in our dining room and was happy with how they turned out so I'll get these hemmed to 92" and install a beefier rod (that's what she said), closer to the ceiling.

These should add some pattern, interest and freshness to the living room.  Off to the seamstress to have these suckers hemmed!

Superhero Birthday Party

Our1st born is 5.  FIVE.  Amazing.  Like most five-year olds he's very into superheroes so the theme for his birthday party was easy and fun (and since his birthday always lands on one of the hottest days of the years it was a superhero pool party).  I won't pretend I came up with all these ideas myself (isn't that what Pinterest is for??).  

 

The decorations were really fun to put together.  I had some regular old balloons on hand and some left over white sticker paper.  A quick google image search and I found superhero labels and printed and applied them to the balloons.  I waited for a 40% off coupon to Michaels and bought a disposable helium tank.

Using some black poster board, a blue disposable plastic table cloth and some construction paper I freehand drew a city scape to be a backdrop for some photo op's.

Superhero toys the boys already had on hand made for some free decoration.

I found a newspaper template online and made up a superhero story about Matthew and printed as an engineer print at Staples.  I glued it to some leftover MDF from our living room project.  $3 project and it now lives in Matthew's bedroom.

I topped regular box cake cupcakes with Superman and Batman rings I found at amazon.

I don't cook.  Like at all.  I'm terrible at it, it stresses me out so I let Wegmans do it for me.  I didn't want to be running around during the party fussing with food so we kept it easy with watermelon (super strength!), veggies (x-ray vision!) and sandwich trays (hero sandwiches!). Everything was served cold and could be grabbed quickly by 5 year olds who didn't want to leave the pool to eat lunch.

We set up an activity table using DIY superhero masks from Oriental Trading and superhero markers I found on clearance at Michael's.

Even the juice boxes got a superhero touch.  I cut out capes freehand from leftover card stock I had on hand.  Another free project.

The favors were the DIY superhero capes I told you about.  They doubled as decoration when lining the fence with them.  I'm not going to lie they were pretty time consuming but so far they're washing well and the boys love them so it was worth it.

All in all the party was a success and fun was had by all!