DIY Wedding Detail: Wine Bottle Menus

I realize that I wrote a lot about our wedding right after it happened and then I stopped. I’ll say it was wedding overload. Peter and I just wanted to get through a few weeks without hearing the word wedding. It never happened. I have a theory that once weddings are on your brain, you develop a strange ability to pick up the word when you otherwise would’ve tuned it out. Ex., I’m writing this at a coffee shop and a country song just came on over the speakers. I picked out the phrase “wedding dress” and couldn’t make out a single other word. Has this happened to any of you? I just heard a guy across the room say something about picking up a tuxedo. It’s a sickness, really.

Anyway, what actually happen is that we distanced ourselves a bit from the wedding industry and then our friends Caroline and Nick got engaged. This exciting news breathed a new life into the topics of weddings for me and I’m finally ready to slowly start going through the details of our day. Now, wasn’t that an unnecessarily long way of saying that I’m going to tell you about wedding details? Yes, yes it was.

Our caterer insisted that we print menus and put them on our tables. It became quite clear that her ideal client would’ve adorned each place setting with hand calligraphied, letterpress menus. It was quite annoying. In looking for a way to keep our tablescape relatively simple and inexpensive, we decided to print our menus on empty wine bottles. Peter and I like wine quite a bit (it’s usually the only alcohol I ever drink), so it felt like the wine bottle menus served to make our wedding that much more personal. Plus, the green wine bottles were really pretty in the sunlight.

Once we managed to find an appropriate sized label, the project was easy. We bought the 4.25 x 5.5 inch white labels from Onlinelabels.com . We bought huge labels because we were serving a lot of food!! We ended up with a family style meal where everyone got a little bit of everything. Guests ate salad, several sides, bread, and three entrees. In hindsight it was a lot more food than we ever needed!

I really loved these. If you look closely, you can even see that we credited Caroline for making our wedding cake. We still have several sheets of these labels left, so maybe it’s something that Peter and I will do again for a larger dinner party or Thanksgiving. Have you seen any fun menu ideas? I’d love to see them for future dinner party brainstorming!

Oh, and now that I’ve warned you about wedding posts, expect to see them more frequently. I promise that I won’t write about them too often.

Photo credit Mary Sledd.

Welcoming a New Year

I know the blogosphere is already buzzing with chatter about everyone’s 2011 resolutions, so I thought I’d share a little DIY project that I did to prepare myself for the next 365 days. Before I begin, let me tell you that I stole 100% of this project from one of my best friends, Leanne. Leanne is not only a million times more organized than I am, she’s also a big influence to me when it comes to things like setting goals. So this year, when she gave me a planner just like the one that she always uses, I was completely up front about copying her.

First, let me say that I never knew her planner was quite so fabulous. It has the normal three year view and then it has a three year view that you can write dates in on. It’s great for long term planning.

The planner pad also offers a full month view before each month starts. Call me crazy, but this is something that I’ve always wanted. This way you can look at your full month without having to flip somewhere in the beginning and then find your spot again.

Then each week gives you a spot for your major goal that week, lists of activities, daily to-dos, and appointments. The top allows for all your general to-dos and funnels to the more specific details of your week. I’m kind of obsessed.

Leanne’s thing that she always says about planners is that if you love your planner then you’re more likely to want to take it with you. So, following Leanne’s example I went to Hobby Lobby and picked the prettiest, most luxurious paper that I could find. Of course it’s the same paper that she uses too. I really tried to pick something different, but what can I say? The woman has fabulous taste.

After tracing the paper (leaving a little extra to fold over the outer edges), I took the whole project outside and sprayed everything down with Tacky Spray. I can’t warn you enough against this stuff. Before you use it change your clothes, put something down like you’re painting, take off your wedding rings, and be really careful. I tried so hard not to get it everywhere and by the end of the project I had glue all over my hands and I left a huge discolored area outside where I was spraying it. I hope it will go away. If you do end up getting it all over your hands, baby oil and rubbing alcohol worked well for me.

But even after all that trouble, I have to say that t was worth it. My planner is beautiful. I have a pretty purple metallic paper clip holding my spot and my week is planned.

I’m hoping now that our wedding is over and we’ve had a bit of time to relax, Peter and I will be able to finish so many of the tasks that we’ve left sitting around for the past few months. We’ve got the bathroom to finish, loose ends from the wedding to tie up (including changing my name), and about a million books to read.

And since everyone else is doing it, I’ll give you a little peak into my resolutions without boring you with the minutia (Hey, they say the more measurable your goals are the more likely you are to achieve them, right?) I have a bit of fitness (stretching, exercising–bleh, eating better, and drinking more water), a bit of personal development (reading more, writing more, taking lots of classes), and a couple of miscalaenous goals, like starting a supper club. I have high hopes for 2011. So far, it seems like it is going to be a great year!

What about you guys? Have any resolutions that you’re itching to tell me about?

Decorative Garland

The most time consuming DIY project that I did for the wedding was making our garland. The funny thing is that I don’t know if anyone else noticed it, but I’m really glad that I took the time to make it. Here it is in my absolute favorite wedding photo. (Look to the left of us, above where everyone is sitting.)

Do you see it hanging above the ceremony area? It looks so simple but I can’t tell you how many hours this thing took to make. It was definitely a labor of love. For weeks I looked like this.

Friends would come over and we’d have garland tutorials and drink wine.

Before the wedding we hung it along our walls so it wouldn’t tangle. Then, when we needed to bring it over for the wedding Peter shoved the whole thing in a bag and our poor friends spent hours untangling it. (Thanks again, Leanne and John!)

I still think it was worth it. I can see us using it as party decor someday. To me it just adds a certain extra festiveness to all our photos! Did you have any wedding DIY projects that took forever but turned out great?

The tutorial is here, if you’d like to make one of your own.

Building an Affordable Pot Rack

After receiving a lot of beautiful but space consuming wedding gifts and tetris-ing dishes into the cabinets one too many times, Peter and I decided that a pot rack could be the solution to our disorganized kitchen. I started with a few google searches to suss out our pot rack options. Immediately, I realized that people were willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a bar that attaches to the wall. I also realized that Peter and I were not those people, so we headed down to Lowe’s and picked up a black steel pipe, some hardware, and a few black rubber chair ends. After another trip to IKEA for hooks, we were set.

Basically, all we did was find the studs, drill some holes, screw in the hardware, and insert the pipe, but here are a few details to help you out if you decide to do this on your own.

Here’s the pipe we chose:

I wrapped the ends with duct tape and then slid a black rubber chair tip over each one.  This hid the ugly ends of the pipe and ensures that the pipe will never get shoved over in a way that would force it to fall out.

Peter was very proud of us. Isn’t the face he’s making hilarious?

The hardware that we used looked a little bit like this. We used three to support the weight of the whole project

You’ll also see me coloring the pipe with a Sharpie. When we took the sticker off the pipe, it got a little scratched up, but it wasn’t bad enough for us to want to spray paint the whole thing. To our pleasant surprise a couple dots of Sharpie worked perfectly.

After we were satisfied with the base, we hung the IKEA pot hooks (we bought the largest size) on the rod and added our new pots and pans. We’re excited that they’ll stay out of the cabinets and that we won’t have to worry about them getting scratching in the midst of a chaotic cabinet.

{Recognize the hutch? You can read about the process of us refinishing it here.}

This project was ridiculously simple, but it did require some trial and error. Even though we were finding studs, Peter was terrified that the weight of the pots would pull the hardware out of the wall. We started out using SUPER long screws. Because they were longer than the drill bits, Peter  we ended up cursing at the walls and stripping the screws.

Now we have the rest of the kitchen to reorganize and the days before Thanksgiving are quickly vanishing! Does anyone have any tips? Are their any organizational products that you can’t live without? Please, let us know!

Hutch: Before and After

Over a year ago, Peter and I bought a hutch at Salvation Army and refinished it, but for some reason, we never blogged about it and it’s been floating around in my head ever since. This happened so long ago that I actually had to dig my old computer out of a closet to get the pictures to write this post, but we figured if we were going to write about it, then we ought to do it justice. Right? Right! Maybe this will refresh your memory.

Okay, so around the time that Peter and I found the hutch, our kitchen/dining area was looking a little pathetic. Since we’re taking a trip down memory lane, I’ll show you our bare and messy mess. (Yes, messy mess is a technical term–in case you were wondering.)

Pretty bleak, huh? If you’re too depressed to go, I understand, but for those of you who can muscle through, look at the huge blank wall and giant stack of stuff on the desk against it. Peter and I saw the hutch and decided that we needed to hide some of our clutter.

The best part about this project is that we were so ridiculously clueless about refinishing furniture. (Not that we’re oh-so-knowledgeable now, but I do feel like we have learned a thing or two.) The buffet had a really glossy coat over it so we knew that we needed to sand it down, but considering that we were just painting over it, we did get a little over zealous with the sanding.

We thought that in order to paint something properly, we would have to strip the old paint entirely. Please don’t laugh at us. We really were clueless. After sanding, we primed the hutch with Kilz and painted the whole thing brown. I tried to clean the hardware. I think this mixture was vinegar, salt, and flour, but even after soaking in this ick, the hardware still looked gross so we spray painted it silver.

The insides of the drawers were also gross.

So we lined them with a shelf liner that we found at Target.

Finally, we replaced some of the drawer tracks, so that the drawers would function.

Here’s the after.