this set of invitations was like magic to create- probably the first and only time i seemed to "get  it right" the first time and had to make very few changes (in fact i don't think i made any to the save-the-date). it was also really cool to find the invitation matched exactly what the wedding was - modern, simple, classy, fun, and relaxed. the bride happens to love polka dots just as much as i do :) being that we traveled 6 hours with a 16 month year old to get to this wedding i feel like our little family conquered columbus. it was worth all the effort though. i cried (no, not just a tear- CRIED) while they cut their cake - who does that? not really a traditional mushy part of the day i think. but listen, i couldn't help myself! all i saw was my one very deserving, honorable friend standing with his beautiful bride as happy as he could be and i kept thinking about us freshman year of college and how far we've come...(sigh)...what a beautiful, fun, and special night!

this past weekend kicked off our wedding season and it was so much fun. we had the privilege of spending the entire day with the bride and groom because we were the unofficial friend videographers (wait, no, we ARE officially friends though). basically we had all the perks of being in the bridal party without having to stand up front and it was SO FUN! I also had the honor of designing their lovely wedding invitations. ^ seen above. the colors here are NOT what they look like in real life and i honestly have no idea how to ... pause while i come up with an idea ...

here enters a picture of our fridge - the current resting place of all of our save-the-dates (oh hey THATs the bride and groom), invitations (sneak peek for next week's post on the left there), adorable doctor picture frame magnets (emily is a JDC kid! for sure), and apparently robert downey jr... this is way more accurate depiction of the invitation colors. they chose to print them on linen paper and that just made the black ink stand out SO GOOD - i believe the words "letter press" were hinted at when someone described these babies. thats a compliment in my book. (disclosure: they are not letter press) 
a word on the bride and groom:
 they are so fun to be around and we are LUCKY to call them friends. we don't get to see them often but when we do its always enjoyable - both of them bring so much life and confidence into a room. we happened to be at a memorial day barbecue after the big day, one which they would have normally attended if they weren't on their honeymoon, and i distinctly missed their presence. i can tell their marriage will be deeply blessed and a blessing to others - you just know these things, you know?

i'll call this design "the aristocat" style since it resembles the disney movie character to the left. for the record, i'm more than ok with that. 

i've recently become interested in the "30 before 30" list. mostly because i stumbled across this one blog that had it and i was all "I NEED TO DO THIS". needless to say, i'll probably never actually write a 30 before 30 list...maybe by saying that just now i've made it a little more likely i will JUST to prove myself wrong...hmmm. 
anyway- if i had one it would currently have TWO items crossed off. the first being to make my child a homemade halloween costume and the second being completed just yesterday...cue pictures!

these pictures may confuse you. my goal wasn't to have the cutest baby in the world who likes to pretend play with a pull-string puppy toy. if i had enough foresight i could have been crossing that off my nonexistent list too. however, my true dream was to make clothes for my baby. CHECK! 
a friend of mine and i went half-sies on a PA fabric 50% off coupon and this adorable shirt was the by product of that shopping trip. we both LOVED the fabric - she made a headband and i made emily a shirt. i honestly can't believe it turned out this cute. i'm considering having her not wear it today (which is rainy and miserable) so i can save it for a day where can properly show it off properly.... or maybe i'll just have her wear it everyday for the next week.. or till she grows out of it? ..forever?!

i'm not the type to be patient enough to take pictures during my process so heres my brief description: i took a shirt that emily already owns and used it as a pattern to trace onto paper. then i cut that into the different sections + made a few adjustments and used that as my template. sewed it all up (which took a couple of hours) and it surprisingly fit like a glove! perhaps if and when i do this again i'll take step by step pictures and ruin the magic for you. 

and since i know you've never seen enough heres a link to my instagram page where you can see just the shirt by itself and other up to date happenings in our world. (sorry you'll have to request an invite - only those not afraid of commitment allowed)

we chose to baptize emily when she was about 6 months old. The decision did not come lightly. although its a tradition in both mine and Ricky's family to baptize babies, we didn't want that to be our reasoning. many people feel strongly about the issue actually. whole denominations of the church were formed based on this issue (kind of). we happen to be attending a church that would have discouraged us to baptize emily and in fact doesn't even offer it. they do baby dedications which are just a special but we decided not to do that. we had my father (a pastor) baptize her in new jersey at what we consider to be our home church.
to get to the point- we decided to baptize emily because we believe that she is apart of our family. we baptized her to include her in our faith. in the new testament you read accounts of one man coming to know jesus and then having his whole household baptized with him. his whole household was blessed through him. we chose that same blessing for emily- to include her now, because she is part of our household. when she is old enough to come to Christ on her own we hope she will choose to remain with us instead of joining us. as her parents, we believe we have the authority to do this and to bless her in this way. baptism is not salvation. she will choose that on her own. she may even choose to be baptized again someday (which is fine by me since there are examples of 2 baptisms int he bible). 
anyway, we are a peace with this and in case you made it this far in reading ill tell you a little bit about her part-tay. it was in my parents backyard and a beautiful day. we didn't want it to be a big thing- just family and a few decorations. it was perfect. here are some pics for you all. 

i forgot to get any pictures of the TONS of food that was provided by our family. (ricky's family has a tendency to bring a million desserts which is clearly NOT a problem.) emily wore a outfit given to her by my best friend from college and looked super cute. above is our family picture and below is the invitation i sent out...

in the near future, ricky and i will be embarking on the wedding-tri-fecta-weekends-extravaganza (still working on that name...) which basically means we have 3 weddings in a row at the end of this month and its really exciting. not only does that mean i get to "boogie down" but it also means i'll finally get to share the wedding invitations i've had to privilege of designing. so in honor of all this fun i'd like share some of the things i've made for all the bridal showers i've been attending. 

above was my take on the fancy wedding dress hanger thing i saw floating around pinterest. her colors were teal and black and obvi. that was her last name. i also have this thing for never giving store bought cards because 1. i can make it fo-free and 2. isn't homemade so much nicer? and 3. i TOTALLY match it to whatever the gift was (exhibit a ^ ).
Materials:
i think the wooden hangers i found in a set of 6 or so at TJ Maxx and the wire is from Michaels. The lace and teal riboon was found at PA fabric outlet which has an AMAZING wall (basically floor to ceiling) of riboon/lace/beautiful stringy things. 
the little gem was found probably on the floor... (just kidding- pretty sure it was upcycled from a previous bridal shower card)
i wrote the wedding date with silver craft paint and used my husband's plier tools to do the twisting. (tip: i drew out the name on paper and "traced" it with the wire)

my latest present was for my long-time friend, kaila. i've had this idea pinned for this girl since before they were even engaged! (slight exaggeration) Its a pretty ring holder! get it? those are my rings, btw... 

so hello to our month of weddings. they are such a wonderful thing.

i made this diaper cake for a good friend of mine. i was pretty sure her nursery theme was something to do with woodland creatures at the time but now that i look back on it i'm not really getting that vibe from this cake as much as i remembered. i thought that the spirally diapers were reminiscent of logs of wood? ANYWAY, the shower was thrown by friends and they requested i make an encouragement tree to go with it. so i planted it right on top. i added a cute mini banner some paint chip birds and the letter D for diapers JK...D is also for their last name. She chose to cloth diaper so this was just a tiny little cake of newborn size to get her through the first couple of weeks. the tiny books you see came in a box set that, at the time, were my daughters #1 go to for slobbering. i'm a big believer in giving something you know that you use and love too. 

Also- protip: if you're going to make a diaper cake i suggest this spiral way of doing it. 1. it saves you A TON of time and 2. its considerate of the mom-to-be too, since she doesn't have to unwrap every single diaper. just cut the ribbon and WAH-LA! deconstructed diaper cake!

i love being invited to showers. it gives me a chance to go hunting for a new project i've never tried before. i pretty much always make something new and personalized for the guest-of-honor and probably a handmade card to go with it. have i mentioned that i'm in love with the process and product of wrapping a gift too? unfortunately, i usually am too last minute to put as much time on that as i'd like to. anyway, when i went hunting for my latest inspiration i found this idea. it was for a organization system/file/box to hold all of the future baby's paper stuff. i was all "hey ricky why don't we have one of those!" and he was all "uhh we do. its called a filing cabinet"...."oh". still, i thought this was a great idea and something unique to give amongst the cute baby onesies and typical registry items at a shower. PLUS the women labeled it "the best baby shower gift ever!" i mean who could top that?  

so here is my file i made ^
i got the file box itself from target mainly for the blank canvas effect and the pretty chevron design on the inside. (chevron- so hot right now) the future mom's nursery theme is all about the birdies so i went with it. i drew with a white paint pen that conviently came in a pack of 2 from michaels. seriously, those pens don't last long. i drew multiple frames around the box with the idea that she would stick pictures of her adorable children in there too. 

so its like "a thing" to make a chalkboard about your baby on their first birthday...exhibit a, and exhibit b-a zillion. it's a super cute idea and i'm glad i stumbled upon it before my daughter's first birthday so i could totally plagiarize/customize/use-it-tize? it for her. 
i designed the whole lay-out for emily's on the computer first and was mighty tempted to add some sort chalk texture to it, print it, frame it and call it a day. BUT, i didn't. i did print it out as a reference to look at as i painstakingly copied every detail with chalk onto a board sprayed with chalkboard paint. of course i had to make mine "not big and obnoxious" so as to make myself feel like i wasn't being all showy. mine was about 11 x 14 and this made the process time consuming, tedious, difficult, and frustrating. have you ever tried to write tini-tiny fancy font words with a blunt piece of chalk? lets just say i used LOADS of wet q-tips as my erasers. i think by the time i was done (many hours later) i had gone through an entire box of them. also, the table looked like there was chalk shrapnel exploded all over it from my on-going quest for a sharp point. i said to myself "if i ever do this again it SHALL be bigger!" but i did LOVE the frame i got for it and it turned out great so alls fair right?  

well, as it turns out- i did get to do it again! three more times actually. two of my friends requested one for their baby's and i volunteered to make one for my niece. it was really fun to design them according to the theme for their party AND every one of them was significantly bigger than my first attempt which made things A LOT easier and more enjoyable. 
for the first two i, again, designed them on the computer first and then took to the board with a fully laid out plan. however, for my niece i just winged it! i didn't really have a choice since i did it the night before the party (but i think it turned out just as good). 

if you'd like to tackle your own here are the materials i used:
- matte board, poster board, or foam board for the base
- chalkboard paint in a spray can 
(i'd do a couple of light layers- so what you spraying it on doesn't warp too much)
- chalk... duh. you could also add some colored chalk. that would be fun
- q-tips and a small bowl of water for your life-saving erasers
-computer/printer*
*i used illustrator for design mine on a computer first but a sketch would work fine also