vermont wedding weekend

We spent our weekend in beautiful Vermont, a bit outside of Burlington, celebrating the wedding of our friends Scott & Abby. We had a blast with all our friends from back home and friends from Denver too. Scott & Abby live in Denver but are both from New England so it was fun to see the Denver and the Boston crew altogether.

We also got a quick visit in with my parents who were en route to a different wedding. All around great weekend and psyched to share some photos. They had a pig roast at their wedding (check the photo below with the pig painting!). How awesome is that?! Abby was also the happiest, sweetest, most glowing bride. They got married at this phenomenal, rustic, mountain property that was so peaceful and beautiful. Enjoy!

P.S. Not all photos are mine so thanks to anyone who shared theirs publicly. #yancopyle to see more!

a visit to highlands, nc

As I mentioned yesterday, we went to the most beautiful wedding in this adorable town way out in the mountains of North Carolina. Everything was so charming about it. The walkable downtown, the shops, the quaintness of it all. I loved how peaceful it was and there was something so different about the mountains there compared to Colorado. The greenery was so beautiful. I wanted to share some photos from our trip there, if you’d like to see. We both wish we had more time to explore, but even the limited time we had we were able to capture the feel for such a sweet town. Enjoy!

Above: when you ask for a map at your hotel in the middle of nowhere in the mountains they give you a hand drawn map. Not what I was expecting. More beautiful fire places, some shots from around town.

Above: the shops were phenomenal. I loved these hot air balloons, the giant mason jar hanging lamps, the charming touches of the shops and that cool wine bottle rack made from pipes!

Above: how unique is that lamp?! There was a cafe smack in the middle of an old pharmacy and I loved the look of the Ace Hardware!

Above: an entire store with homemade, farm fresh jams, preserves, relishes and more. The display in the window was adorable; all jars we sitting in popcorn kernels. This faux kitchen area was a dream. The iphone photo doesn’t do it justice. The clean lines and the perfectly lined jars were amazing. Lastly, loved this vintage window used as a divider. The store had used it to separate the shopping area from the check out line. The vases on top were perfect!

mountaintop wedding weekend

I’m warning you now that this is a post with a ton of photos; but it’s totally worth looking at all of them. We went to a beautiful wedding over the weekend in Highlands, NC. The most gorgeous little mountain town. I have so many photos that I’m going to post wedding ones separate from ones of the town.

My dear friend Maria married her best friend over the weekend on the most perfect day. You might remember Maria and Jack from day one of our road trip when we mentioned how they hosted us in this post. Well, those two sweet love birds tied the knot and we were more than thrilled to be a part of it. Their wedding was straight out of a magazine and I know it was everything they had dreamed it would be.

Above: they had a cigar and scotch bar! A foam machine went off late night. I won’t lie many of us grown adults excitedly acted like it was snowing. How cute is the golf cart?! I mean come on, cans tied to it. Classic. They served sweet mint tea as guest arrived and their program was printed on a cute paper bag that include a pair of sunglasses in it for each guest. Happened to stumble upon the shuttle mid-day before the wedding. Are you dying over their wedding branding? So awesome. They had these simple, yet statement, vases hanging at the end of each row during the ceremony.

Above: the checkered dance floor was amazing! Bride and groom exited the ceremony wearing the same sunglasses all the guests had received. It looked like a castle! Such a beautiful bride. So classic, calm, smiling and beautiful. I sobbed during this entire wedding in case you’re wondering. But that’s no different from any other wedding I go to…

Above: lots of beautiful details. Location signs, amazing lighting, menu with branding. Large vintage initials, a barrel turned cooler and a view of the tent.

Above: Instead of table numbers they used locations of different places from their lives together! Mint julep in the sweetest steel cups. If I had to choose my favorite decor of the whole wedding it would be the table settings. Each table had a variety of vases and they were all different. Also, those mini jars above the forks were rhubarb jam!

Above: the next morning they hosted a brunch for all the guests before everyone departed. It over looked the golf course and was a beautiful, sunny morning. I loved the bloody Mary bar including stacked mason jars. I also loved the simplicity of the centerpieces again; all a variety of vases/containers. The accents were beautiful and I would love to sit in front of that fire-place with a warm cup of tea and a book.

We truly had a blast and like I said were so thrilled to share this day with the newlyweds! And just for good measure this sums up the wedding:

Behaving pre-wedding.

Celebrating by singing/screaming that we’re so unbelievably distantly related. Keyword is distantly there folks. Mike’s (in the middle) mother is Al’s stepmother’s’ fourth cousin. Or something like that. Really we’re not related we just pretend.

Aaaaand it’s snowing, but not really it’s actually foaming.

Note: not all images are mine, though most are!

diy custom name art with photographs

Name art are all the rage right now and really I don’t mind it. I think they’re cute, artistic, abstract and can be really cool depending on the chosen art. You know what I’m talking about, right? The artwork you can buy that spells out a name in photographs of found letters in everyday life.

Well my sister and her husband wanted to use exactly that as their guest book at their wedding. I know, I’m still talking about their wedding nearly eight months later. But I love them and I loved their wedding and I loved being able to help plan it. They put me on the job and I’d have to say that I think their name came out pretty good.

I want to share with you guys how easy it is to create this on your own instead of paying top dollar to buy it. For months and months before hand I was sure to bring my camera with me on outings just in case I ran into “letters.” You find them in strange places! Once I had all the photos I created a word document. Yes, no special software or program, a simple word document. I edited each photograph first using iPhoto on my Mac, but another option is the free photo editing site PicMonkey. Once I cropped and edited the colors to make sure all the blacks, whites and grays were alike I think simply opened my word doc, set the page to the size we wanted the final print to be and dragged in each letter.

I put each letter into the doc and then sized each one to be the exact same and lined them up in order. Using the options in Word I created a border around all the letters. Then using a text box I added their names and wedding date.  If you place the text box over the border lines it’ll cover the line and make it disappear. Adjust the text box to whatever size you want.

Done! It was complete, very simple. We had it printed at Staples on one of their fancy printers in the size of our choice. I think it cost us around $15. So between that and the frame it was a whole lot cheaper than custom ordering the same thing.

We framed it up and they used it as their guest book at the wedding and had everyone sign it and write notes around it. This is totally where my mom would be all like “Wait, Lindsey you spelled it wrong.” And I would flip a lid and she’d be all, “Just kidding!” Yeah, she still does that and it still gets me every time.

I’m bummed that I don’t have a photo of the final result, with all the notes around it, but it looked really cool and it was a great alternative to a guest book. Something you can actually hang and read every time you walk by it hanging in your house.

Did you guys do anything other than a traditional guest book at your own wedding?

P.S. I didn’t do a great job of showing how I made this because I did it so long ago and didn’t take screenshots. However, if it’s something you’re interested in please feel free to reach out to me and I’m happy to work with you to help create a similar project!

august pinterest project: bachelorette party survival kit

Last weekend was my sisters bachelorette party and it was a great time! There were 10 girls total and I wanted to make some sort of cute kit with a few essential things. I searched around on Pinterest and found a few different ideas and then added my own touches.

I was planning to bring these plastic wine glasses so I thought I’d make the little kits in the wine glasses. I gathered my supplies and put them together.

After I fit everything in the glass I placed a clear bag over them and tied a bow at the bottom.

The water bottles didn’t fit in the glass so I just set it on the side when I displayed them. This was the setup in the hotel we put together. The empty baskets were for chips and salsa.

I also included a sign to include what each item in the kit was for.

They turned out really cute and were fun to have to kick off the weekend right. We had a great time, traveled by limo and spent a night at the casino. I ended up winning a nice chunk of change… not bad for my first time at blackjack!

showering the bride to be

Are you seeing a trend here this summer? Whenever more than 4 consecutive days go by with no post it’s most likely because I’m off work. I’m on vacation again this week. You’d think that would mean I’d catch up on lots of blogging but instead I just don’t!

I wanted to share a few photos from this past weekend. You already know my little sis is getting married. Well last weekend her bridesmaids and some of my aunts hosted a bridal shower for her. I am so beyond thrilled to be a part of this. It’s amazing planning and celebrating your own wedding and marriage. But sharing the joy while my sister plans hers has been just as amazing. She’s the best sister and I can’t wait to celebrate more and spoil her and Seth as they start their life together. Enjoy the photos!

We held the shower in this gorgeous, rustic, VERY HOT, barn!

Happy Bride-to-be!

Hayley and her adorable flower girl, Angelina.

The gorgeous cake made by Hayley’s friend and bridesmaid Cate.

All the bridesmaids after the shower.

The entire shower planning crew!

Happy couple!! We called on Seth for clean up duty…naturally!

It was a fabulous day. Hope you loved it Hayley! xo

wedding shower kitchen themed “cake”

 I apologize in advance for the horrific quality of these cell phone pictures. I forgot my camera when I went to Kaitlin’s for craft night…

You know those diaper cakes that are really popular? Well you can really take anything and make it into a “cake” as long as you have a decent base. My friend Kaitlin and I created a kitchen themed cake for a recent wedding shower we attended. We used all items from the wedding registry and then picked up a cake stand to carry it on.

We used dish towels, a table runner, measuring cups, measuring spoons, serving spoons and spatulas. Kaitlin had this piece of styrofoam that had a circle cut out of the middle. We used that and just rounded the corners of it to make the entire thing a circle (it was a square).

We then wrapped it with one of the dish towels and pinned it with sewing pins in the back to hold it in place. We rolled up the long table runner, put a rubber band around it and wedged it into the styrofoam hole.

We then just made it up as we went along. We rolled the rest of the dish towels and rested them on the styrofoam to make the second “layer” in the cake. At this point we had three layers, the bottom covered in a dish towel, the middle with rolled dish towels and the top which was the table runner.

After we had the layers together we sporadically placed the other items. We added a few ribbons, some seashells and starfish and a giant diamond ring at the top.

It was adorable. And I will say we were totally proud of ourselves because we had no clue how this thing was going to end up.

Definitely adds a fun twist to a gift!

june happenings

June was the start of five insanely busy months to come for us. We’re slowly trekking through everything, all things are exciting, but we’re still totally in awe of how literally every weekend we have something scheduled!

Here’s a peek back at what we’ve been up to in June.

My friend Alison (from childhood) got married and I was thrilled to be a part of her wedding:

I love all the different expressions from the girls in the above photo!

My friend Heather (from College) is getting married, so we showered her with gifts and had a fabulous mini college reunion:

Showing off the towel/kitchen cake my friend Kaitlin and I made!

My Dad biked the 150 mile, 2 day MS bike ride from Boston to Provincetown, Cape Cod to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis research:

He did indeed wear purple, it’s Mom’s favorite color!

Mom and Dad hugging it out, after Mom missed him come through the finish line…bathroom run!

So, while it was a busy month, it certainly was not the busiest one out of the next five! It was a great one, we had so much fun and are ready for the craziness of the rest of the summer!

diy wedding planning binder

In case you didn’t already know, my sister is getting married!

And I’m through the roof excited. And I want every single, solitary detail to be exactly perfect on their special day. And I want to buy her everything on her registry. And I want to spoil her consistently with wedding related things for the next six months. And, and, and.

She’s my only sister and most definitely the best one ever. Right after she got engaged I went out and bought her a nice big wedding planning binder to keep all the details organized.

Well, turns out the binder was missing a ton of pages in it. And I bought it at Borders, which has since gone out of business. I was super bummed. In efforts to not buy a whole new one I decided to work with what was left in the binder and google around for other things I needed.

What I learned, was that I could have made an entire binder from printables on the web. I picked up some three-hole-punched page dividers and folders and got to work. I used my label maker to label all the divider tabs.

I went through the binder and pulled out any unnecessary pages/sections or any that didn’t apply to my sister’s wedding. I then made a list of the pages that I needed, that were missing from the original binder. After doing lots of google searches I found tons of checklists, planning worksheets and other binder worthy information.

The sites I found with the best printables and information on were:

The Knot

Real Simple Weddings

Martha Stewart Weddings

So, although I started with a faulty binder and already had some of the pages needed, I found that I could have just as easily picked up a cute binder and page dividers, and printed off all the organizing and planning pages that I needed from the web.

Much more budget friendly option to keep you organized when planning a wedding. I like adding the folders in the binder too, to contain small things like fabric swatches and business cards.

In the end I was really satisfied with the binder and I was glad I was able to go through it and make it better. I made it prettier too, with the colored page dividers!

This year we have eight weddings! We’re really excited for them all, because we’ve only had about two in the past three years. Happy wedding planning/going to you all!