Digging in the Dirt!

 Yesterday 8 loads of dirt were spread out on the lot, a nice clean slate!

 In the afternoon Manzie and Drake set the "pins" marking the exact location and placement of the house and garage so the footers can be dug.

 That's a "pin", a quick check with my tape measure assured me that yes, the pins were in the correct locations! You can't be too sure :)

Today Mr. Holloway's crew dug the footers, compacting the dirt and laying rebar as they go along.

There are six porch piers which will be wrapped in reclaimed brick to match the walkway!

Little square holes get dug for each pier to sit on.

Breaking ground on the Hawkins residence

               Here we go! Breaking ground at 1776 Camellia St. on January 7th, 2013.

 

The house will be in the quaint, walkable neighborhood of Amelia Park, Florida.

                Saving the trees and natural vegetation is a big part of the neighborhood plan.

 The crew waiting for an empty dump truck to arrive, MTS does most of the site clearing in Amelia Park. Each lot is "walked" prior to construction and all the trees are carefully considered for preservation.
Look for weekly photo updates of our progress!

Decorating the tree with paper

I love old books and old paper, I get held up in the stationary section of Barnes and Noble and people have even been known to give me their old moldy books, boxes of the them!

So that has led me to start doing a little decoupaging! This years tree has 2 types of decoupage ornaments, one is super easy to make and the other does take some time.

The easy one first! Decoupaged shipping tags! I bought a case ( OK, too many) shipping tags from an online supplier, they are called manila shipping tags and come in all sorts of sizes.

Trial and error, do not use ModPodge for the glueing of the paper, the tags will only curl up and there is no way to iron them back flat, I tried :)

 Christmas carols!

Instead, use your spray adhesive, super fast! First cut the paper to size and shape of your tag, after the glue has dried, hole punch the top and go around the edges with gold leaf pen if you like!

I found the number stamps in a kit at Micheals similar to these, I couldn't find the number stamps on the website, just letters., so maybe the numbers were a lucky in store find. I got the whole set for $9.95, instead of buying the expensive clear mounting blocks, I cut up some scrap wood (that I happened to find in the garage) and glued them on using my Hammerhead glue.

The oval ornaments are a little pricier, given that you have to buy the paper oval form and the Gold Leaf kit. All of which I got a Micheals.

I started by leafing the outer edges and sprayed with clear poly. Then I decoupaged the sheet music to the ornament. I did these last year and was still using ModPodge for all my decoupaging projects.

Hope your holiday season is filled with family, fun and crafts!

Stephanies "cabinet"

Cleaning out the iphone pictures and I found this one take last year at my friend Stephanies house, she has this fabulous desk and we had fun creating a little "cabinet" with all sorts of shells, bones, boxes and baskets.

A Fall Wedding!

This fall wedding was beautiful, lots of high impact details, easy DIY projects and personalized focal points. I thought it would be nice to share some of the tips and ideas that we used to make the wedding a hit!

The bride and groom are a relaxed, beach going couple, and so wanted to focus on a natural, almost rustic design theme for the ceremony location and the reception. As a young couple starting out, they also had a goal of not using credit cards or incurring any dept for the wedding! Wow!
It is important to pay close attention to all the details and have them coordinate with each other. For instance, we had the catering staff wear French bistro style aprons, sewn by the mother of the bride, in fabric to match the color theme. We used inexpensive green and white seersucker, which tied in with the JCrew seersucker dresses worn by the bridesmaids, the green monogram and the green in the invitations!

One of my favorite design elements were the "tree votives"! The father of the bride graciously made 100 votives by cutting down tree branches and drilling out the hole to fit our glass votives! The only expense- tea lite candles and glass votives!

We used galvanized pots for all the center pieces, to tie in with the theme, I made a "memory board" using a chalk board with a galvanized frame. I have to tell you that it was a lucky find for $3.99 at the second hand store! So, for the board, we used the brides photos, event tickets, post cards and mementos. We hung the frame at the guest registry table.

Speaking of registry table, in lew of a guest book, we made a registry "tree"! Plenty of web sites will sell this type of thing, of course we had to make our own! With a large oak branch, I hot glued acorns to the limbs, set it with Plaster of Paris in a galvanized pot and finished with moss. The bride cut out leaf shaped cards for messages to be tied to the "tree" with twine.

Our most dramatic detail had to be the giant chandelier hung above the wedding party table. A very old driftwood plank (found on the brides family property) made the perfect rustic chandelier! Add heavy rope for hanging, pillar candles and voila, lots of high drama at very little cost.

Note the cake stand- a slice of a tree! I had to make sure it would accommodate the cake, that meant finding someone to cut a piece of trunk at least 24" in diameter. This being the South and chain saws in just about every garage, Mr. Dale (the father of the bride) was able get what we needed! I did scrub it and top with a coat of high gloss white paint - no dirt on the cake table thank-you!

OK, one more detail! Since we had lots of driftwood available, painting it a high gloss white and stuffing the fire box with it seemed like the thing to do. The white against the black fireplace really added some pop. Of course, it was for display only!

Here we are waiting for the guests to arrive. From left to right is yours truly, my niece Jessica, my SIL (sister-in-law) Wendy and sister Caroline. We have a lot of fun working together and thought we looked pretty smart in our coordinating "uniforms"!

Even if "rustic and natural" is not your wedding style, I hope these ideas will spark your imagination! Also, consider what resources do you have? What people in your "network" have the skills ( sewing, painting, baking, organizing) and time to donate?

Not only will you save money by creating your our own wedding details, those details will have personal meaning and the people who helped you will have the memory of a special contribution- and that can be priceless!

Look for my next post where I will show pictures and share ideas from the wedding ceremony!

Workin at the Etsy shop

At long last, the time has come for me to reenter the work force, our oldest is heading into middle school (no home schooling for him this year!) and our youngest is off to Kindergarten! My timing is a little off, what with the "Depression" and everything.

So I decided to work over at My Green Gazebo until school starts, I have plenty of stock since I no longer have my booth at the antique mart. Turns out Etsy is pretty addicting! Super easy to navigate and I have already gotten some comments, although no sales yet.

Here are some pictures! Enjoy!

Shell encrusted urn

Shadow box with faux bird eggs

Shell mirror and glove form

Close-up of shell chandelier

A Country Wedding

Wow, the weeks leading up to my sister in laws wedding were crazy! We had just under 3 weeks to plan and just under $1000.00 to spend. I think we pulled it off nicely, if I don't say so myself!

We did not have much money for a cake, so in order to give it a little more presence, we glued fresh magnolia leaves to a box, it turned out to be the perfect base, elevating the cake and adding color! This picture shows the groom, Yohan - my sister in law, Wendy and her parents (my in laws) Mr. and Mrs. Chapman.


The wedding party! We all had to shop seperately for our dresses, looks like everyone got it right, with the exception of yours truely - yikes what is that color green?

The bride and groom after the ceremony.

After 3 nights in a row of hard freezes (this is florida you know!), we were thankful for sunny weather and low 70's the day of. In the backround you can see three tables, the plates and silverware, then the food table, and last the champagne bar!

We took to the woods and chopped down young pines to form the "open air tents", we bought loads of creamy white sheer fabric from Wal-Mart- hemmed the sides and bottoms, and used it to swag and drape. I think we got alot of bang for the buck with that idea!

I raided the second hand stores for short bev. glasses, hot-glued short sticks all around and added ribbon at the last minute, oh, we also pulled up lots of ferns from the yard to use as filler in the centerpieces.

Kermit Mums for the brides maid bouquets, magnolias from the yard (again!), I wound up using Duct Tape to hold it all together, all wrapped up in a white ribbon.

My nieces are very resorseful, through their jobs (in the four star resort industry and golf clubs) they were able to borrow linens, silverware, glasses, chairs and skirting.

I sewed French style aprons for the servers, ribbons for the flower girls hair and basket, and the ring bearers pillow using this green patterned fabric from Hobby Lobby- which by the way, perfectly matched the invitations, totally by chance!

Next on the list, a professional photographer!

A special thanks to my sister Caroline, and Ronda for helping in the "galley", without them we could not have done it!