Stinkerpants

Memory Boxes, Revisited

July 7, 2008 in Our Wedding • Celebrating Memories • DIY Projects • Reception

 This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

Generally speaking, when I make a decision I am pretty good at sticking to it.  The memory boxes, however, were rubbing me the wrong way for some reason.  I just didn’t like the way they looked.

The boxes will sit on the cocktail tables during the cocktail hour so that people can look through them and mingle.  Momma Puff and I decided quite awhile ago to add a pink gauzy table runner to the cocktail tables to avoid having to buy upscale linens for them.  This was a great idea, but when I looked at my memory boxes next to the table runners, I thought, “that looks horrible.”

SO.  I added another DIY project.  I went to Ross and looked for boxes.  When I found some that were sufficiently cheap ($6.99) and heinous, I bought three:

The beautiful flowers and fruits painted onto the boxes were slightly raised because the artists used goopy paint, so I had to do a teensy bit of sanding.  Then I removed all of the hardware using a tiny screwdriver and spray-painted them all black.  I decorated them with ribbon (using zots to keep the ribbon in place) and VOILA! three masterpieces, which I am very satisfied with:

As for what’s inside?  You guys asked me about that during my last post, but I just finished this last night.  In addition to photos, I added for me:  girl scout patches, micro machines (toy cars), legos, and some wooden block toys I had when I was little.  For Mr. Cream Puff, we have a baseball figurine (he used to collect baseball stuff when he was a kid), a matchbox car, legos, and transformers.  I attached a tag to each trinket using tiny ribbon.

Trinket Retrieval was way easier for Mr. CP than it was for me.  His toys were all in a very clean and well-lit basement.  I, on the other hand, had to risk my life to find my childhood treasures.

Here’s the story of how I defied death:

My parents built the house I grew up in in California. Part of their design included a crawl space that you didn’t actually have to crawl into–it was fully lit and totally not scary. We stored all of our extra stuff in there. When my parents moved to Oregon, though, they moved into a house that had–gasp!–an attic. Somehow they managed to get all of our extra stuff, including my childhood treasures, up some rickety pull-down stairs and into the dark, scary place known as the attic. In order to get trinkets for our memory boxes, I had to go into the scary attic, which has always terrified me.

As you can see, I survived (luckily!).

I would also like to note that although Mr. Cream Puff and Momma Puff thought this memory box id

Bar Menus and Signature Cocktails

May 21, 2008 in Our Wedding • DIY Projects • Drawings • Reception • Stationery

This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

From the beginning, I’ve thought about making signature cocktails for our wedding. This is a pretty trendy thing right now, but for good reason: it’s fun and it saves money, because you can serve hard alcohol, but you don’t have to have an entire open bar.

I was first inspired by bar menus I found various knot bios. They all seemed to be variants of the same thing: “Something Old” (gin and tonic), “Something New” (crantini), “Something Borrowed” (something from the couple’s past), “Something Blue” (Electric Lemonade). I knew I wanted to do something different, so Mr. Cream Puff and I had a brainstorming session. We toyed around with giving them a San Francisco theme (“San Francisco Bay Breeze”), but in the end decided to name all of the drinks after our pets, who aren’t included in the wedding in any other way. Here is my completed bar menu, which is being printed as we speak through Vista Print as oversized postcards:

I am super excited about these. My parents both think they are cheesy and cutesy, but I totally don’t care, and neither does Mr. Cream Puff. We think they’re cute. So what if we’re a little bit obsessed with our kids? We can’t help it: they are wonderful.

As for how we decided on our signature cocktails? The three cocktails are the Lemon Drop, the Vodka Martini and the Appletini. Originally I wanted very brightly colored signature cocktails, to go with our colorful wedding. Then we started thinking about the cost of brightly colored drinks (which usually have added liqueurs to create the color) and decided to go a different direction. All three of these cocktails have a vodka base and very few added ingredients. This minimizes the amount of alcohol we have to buy and simplifies what the bartender has to do. If you’re searching for cocktail recipes, check out Web Tender and Cocktail Times. These websites both allow you to search by type of alcohol.

So we had three cocktails and five pets. What to do? Well, we knew we’d be serving Fat Tire, and somehow connecting that to Yorkey’s 20lb cat was a no-brainer. All that was left was little Elvis Purrsley. We thought about adding an alcoholic drink named for Elvis Presley, but then I realized it would be cuter to give him a kids’ drink. Thus, the Roy Rogers (which is basically the boy version of the Shirley Temple).

For those of you who don’t have pets or agree with my parents on this one, here are a couple of different menus I’ve found in various places:

This one (this is my favorite design), from knottie h.lo:

Here’s one from knottie k-haus:

And this one, from knottie pixelvixen:

Dancing Queen (and King)!

May 21, 2008 in Our Wedding • Ramblings While Planning • Reception

This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

Mr. Cream Puff and I suck at dancing. Actually, I don’t know that for a fact, as Mr. Cream Puff has pretty much refused to dance with me at the weddings and Bar Mitzvahs we have attended together. No more, I say! So we’ve decided to start dancing lessons (I swear, I did not force Mr. Cream Puff into this–he wanted to do it).

Last week we had our very first lesson at Two Left Feet in Danville, California. It was…hard. Actually, let me clarify: it was hard for Mr. Cream Puff, because the man’s part is the hardest. All I have to do is follow (and I am very good at it, haha!). Right now we are learning East Coast Swing, but we’ll be learning a lot of other dances as our lessons progress.

I am really excited about the music for our reception. The music was the one thing I had my mind totally made up on from the very beginning, and it was the one thing I really wanted to splurge on. We booked Martini Straight Up, both because I really wanted a party band and because they played at my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah and were AMAZING (I hadn’t met Mr. Cream Puff then, or he surely would have danced at THAT Bar Mitzvah!). They even had my DAD dancing, which like, never happens. Every time I hear a song that will be played at our wedding (“To Be Real” by Cheryl Lynn is a big one for me–I love cheesy dance music), I get REALLY excited and suddenly can’t wait.

The band is learning two new songs for us–the first is our first dance: “My First, My Last, My Everything,” by Barry White (this is “our” song, and Mr. Cream Puff used it for the proposal slideshow, too), and “I Loved Her First,” by Heartland, which is the song my dad wants to do dance to for our father/daughter dance. I’ve never heard the song in its entirety–just the itunes snippet makes me cry hysterically. I am hoping I’ll be able to make it through the song on our actual wedding day without going into the Ugly Cry!

What has gotten you really excited about your wedding? Anything else I should be thinking about to pump myself up, excitement-wise?

Photobooth!

May 18, 2008 in Our Wedding • Ramblings While Planning • Reception

This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

I must be evolving. Over the weekend, I managed to delegate three things. I delegated two of them to my wonderful mother. First, I asked her to deal with the tent-for-the-ceremony-musicians issue (which she has already taken care of!). Second, I asked her to ask her rabbi (as I do not have a relationship with one where I live) to help me figure out some inter-faith wording for our ketubah. I then asked Mr. Cream Puff to get us a basket of disguises for the photobooth. I cannot believe it did not even OCCUR to me to ask Mr. Cream Puff to deal with the photobooth rental. He totally would have done it, and it didn’t even occur to me. I’m a weirdo.

Anyway, the photobooth situation is completely taken care of, deposit down and everything. Apparently they were very busy for a couple of weeks, and that was why I couldn’t get through to them. We are going withParty Booths–their booths look great and they were the only option I could find for under $1000. We decided to have it for our entire reception, which will be 5 hours…so we’ll be paying $1045 for the whole thing. It’s still a ton of money, but I think it will be worth it.

Photo courtesy of Party Booths

It seems like everyone is doing a photobooth these days…mostly because they are super awesome. I don’t remember where I first heard about people having photobooths, but I quickly forgot about it because of the price tag. A few months later, however, I saw the results of Mrs. Hibiscus’ Photobooth and immediately wanted one again, especially after I saw her props. We have a ton of disguses left over from the proposal, and it would be a fun way to look back on the proposal. We also have plans to take a few of our professional posed shots with disguises on. :)Overall, I would say that I am feeling MUCH better about all of the stress last week. Thanks so much for your supportive comments. You guys are the best!

Card Boxes

April 8, 2008 in Our Wedding • DIY Projects • Ramblings While Planning • Reception

This post was originally featured on Weddingbee.  To see all of the comments, you'll have to check them out over there!

I am so confused. I swear, I have never heard of or seen a card box at an actual wedding. This is one of those projects that I think may have been invented by the DIY Gods to pressure people to come up with something as cute as the birdcage-as-a-card-box project. Do I really need to do this? Do people actually use these? Where does it go? Do people actually have gift tables at weddings? I don’t think I have ever seen one! Before I started questioning whether or not I needed a card box, I made one. I thought to myself, “I need a card box, and this here cardboard box thing at Paper Source will do me just fine.” So I bought it.

Cutting a hole in the top of that sucker was not easy, especially when your hands are weak and hurt all the time. But I managed it, because I thought (at the time) that I needed a card box. I then covered it in pretty lokta turquoise paper and tied it with a pretty purple bow:

And then I looked at it. And it looked back at me, rather innocently (doesn’t it look innocent? I think it looks pretty innocent. That’s an innocent bow if I ever saw one).

I looked at it and thought, “do I actually need this?”

Honestly, I am kind of underwhelmed by this project. It’s nothing special (I feel kind of guilty saying that about such an innocent card box, but it’s true). At the same time, I realize that I don’t need to be totally thrilled about every project I do. But then I look at it and can’t help but think, “do I even NEED this?!” So here’s my question for you guys: Do I actually need a card box? Where do I even put it?