I would usually apologize for all the personal, wedding-y, gushy posts recently. But frankly, this blog has just become a place for me to write about whatever is on my mind. I learned quickly that writing about things I had no interest in, or about things I had no passion for, got old very quickly. So, with that in mind, I shifted my focus and started writing about me and what’s on my mind at that time whether it be personal, professional, wedding-y, and whatnot.

Back on track.

I’m getting married in 19 days. Whoaly moly I can’t believe it’s almost here.

This is something I have thought a lot about lately – but throughout the wedding-planning process, so many people have asked me, “How’s the wedding planning going?” “What’s next on the wedding planning list?” yada yada yada. And all that is fine and good, but no one has asked me, “How’s the preparation for marriage going?” “Have you guys done any premarital counseling?” “Are you ready for marriage?”

Yeah, the wedding planning is fun and all, but honestly, the thing that’s been most important to me  throughout this process is getting ready for our marriage. Yeah, the wedding is a huge celebration and amazing way to start our marriage. But the wedding is one day. Our marriage is a life time. Till death do us part. And that? Yeah, I’m ready for that.

Finances? We’ve talked about it.

Children? We’ve talked about them.

Communication? Check.

Putting Jesus at the center of our marriage? We’re ready.

So on and so forth. It’s been really important for us to talk about everything. There are no secrets. Nothing. We don’t know what marriage will bring us, what challenges we’ll face, and what we’ll need to work on, but we do know that Jesus, love, and a whole lot of laughter are at the center of it all. And in my humble opinion, if you’ve got those things covered, you can do anything.

I do have to say though, it all hit me this weekend when I moved out of my apartment. I’ve lived by myself in my little ol’ apartment in Carrboro, NC since I moved here in June of 2009. Seeing it all clean and empty (with HUGE thanks to my fiance for helping me… because I never could have done it on my own), it really sunk in that this is happening. That I’m becoming an adult. I mean, I’m already an adult, but when you’re married, I guess that makes you a real adult. But frankly, I’m okay with being an “adult” who is a kid at heart. You know, the kind of kid that eats Chipotle too often, drinks unhealthy amounts of Diet Coke, gets giggly and jumps on the bed when excited, could go to Chuck-E-Cheese every weekend and play Ski-Ball till she drops, and gets a huge kick out of feel-good Disney flicks. #NotAshamed.

John is okay with my shortcomings awesome qualities. I like love that about him.

And whoaly moly. We are becoming one in a short amount of time. And I’m going to live with a BOY. A stinky, messy, devastatingly handsome boy man. My best friend.

And I can’t wait.

It’s gonna be a stressful couple weeks… considering half of my stuff is at John’s, half of my stuff is in storage, and I have two suitcases and a car full of wedding craft stuff while I live with my dear friend Dani until the wedding. Dani and her hubs Keith are, like, WAY awesome for letting me shack up with them for a few weeks. So, yeah, I guess technically, I’m kinda homeless right now. Oh well. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. And it’s a pretty flippin’ sweet light.

I, of course, had to take some pictures to remember my apartment by.

Bye D4, it’s been real.

That’s our self-portrait in my empty apartment. John wanted nothing to do with my nostalgia. One of the many reasons I love that man.

All for now.

xoxo,

Molly

I used to be an English teacher. I am terrible at math.

READ: T-e-r-r-i-b-l-e.

I still have to count on my fingers.

I need help with a real life math problem. Sure, I could ask people I know, but hey, I figured it would be interesting and fun to see what my blog readers suggest / figure out!

See that table? This is an example of the tables we are using for our reception.

Okay, here are the stats:

• There are 11 pairs of two short farm tables together – each pair measures a total of 7′ long
• There are 15 pairs of two longer farm tables together – each pair measures a total of 10′ long
• We have 8 red tables that are 4′ long each
• I have 11 rolls of table runner burlap. EACH roll is 9″x30″ (aka: 10 yards long)

Here’s what I need to figure out:

If I have 110 total yards of burlap – in what increments do I need to pre-cut the burlap in to utilize the burlap in the most effective way (i.e. not have a random 3″ or 6″ at the end of each roll that I can’t use)

Now, consider that each table the burlap runner won’t just go from end-to-end… it will need to hang over A LITTLE bit… now this is where the math really comes in.

So, who can help me? I need 11 runners at the same length, 15 runners at the same length, and 8 runners at the same length. All with 110 yards of total burlap to work with.

Ready math wiz-kids? GO!

February 18th, 2012. That’s one month from today.

I’m ’bout to get mushy, y’all.

A month from today I will walk down the aisle and marry a man who challenges me to be a stronger, better, and more godly woman. He makes me laugh. He doesn’t make me cry (unless I am crying from laughing). He helps me grow in areas where I am weak. He hugs me and tells me it’s gonna be alright when I’m being crazy Molly. He tells me I’m funny when I’m telling ridiculous stories (even though he probably zoned out 20 minutes earlier). He laughs at my jokes. He lets me cry when I’m sad. And he even let me watch The Bachelor on Monday night while I wedding crafted and only made fun of me, like, twice. THAT is love.

We talk about everything together. No matter what. And we don’t judge each other for our differences. And I hope, that at the end of the day, I do all the same things for him that he does for me. Seriously. I know it’s cliche / trite / whatnot, but he is my best friend and I know that God brought us together.

In fact, I have absolutely no doubt that God brought us together.

2011 was such an amazing year – personally, professionally, life-ly. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2012.

Oh, I also can’t wait to be in the same room as all of the people in my life that I love. AHHH. So blessed.

Okay, enough mushiness. Sorry.

Wait, no. Not sorry.

xoxo,

Molly

I am so excited for this weekend I almost can’t stand it. 

So many of my favorite people in the entire world are coming to town for me. FOR ME. WHAT? That’s crazy. Tomorrow is my bridal shower and bachelorette party. I am so excited. SO. Excited. But the only feeling I have more of right now than excitement is gratefulness.

I am so flipping grateful.

Yeah, I’m ’bout to get mushy again.

First: my unbelievably amazing sister and awesome friend Kristin are throwing my bridal shower. Seriously, now, I don’t know details or what all has gone in to the planning, but knowing my sister, she has probably been baking / cooking / baking / icing / etc. all week long. You know, on top of being a mom of a 18 month old and wife. I am so thankful for my sister. Seriously. I don’t tell her often enough how much I love her or how much she means to me – I need to get better at that. I can’t wait to see everything that she has whipped up for tomorrow. And I KNOW there’s gonna be a delicious cake involved. There always is.

And then there’s Kristin. Kristin is a newer friend of mine but is equally awesome. She happens to be Dave’s wife… and Dave happens to be John’s BFF. Dave and Kristin also live a mile from John, so I’m pretty pumped that I’ll be living near them soon. Oh, and they also have a 20 month old. Kristin is opening up her home to me and my crazy friends for my bridal shower. She is awesome. Seriously.

Then there’s Janeberry, and Kelly, and Amy, and Katie, and Ashley, and my amazing bridesmaids who have planned my “bachelorette” party despite the fact that I told them that if any part of my bachelorette party involved sashes, things that light up, or anything that resembled a “part of the male body” – that they would be going sans-bride. That stuff may be totally fine for some people, but I am so not down with that for myself. I just care about spending time with the awesome women in my life who mean the world to me. Just saying.

Now, it’s no secret that I love performing and love to be in front of people. However, I have always had a hard time allowing other people to do stuff for me. I don’t handle it well. For some reason I start to feel undeserving and as though I owe people something. I ALWAYS prefer to be the hostess than the hostee. I love doing things for other people, throwing other people parties, and loving on people. It’s my thing. So knowing that all these people that I care so much about have done all this stuff FOR ME is seriously humbling and makes me… UBER grateful.

God has blessed me in so many ways this year – and I continue to be in awe of how much He continues to bless me through these amazing relationships I have with these women.

Okay, enough of the mushy stuff. I can’t wait for this weekend.

And, because if you’ve made it this far, you deserve some more crafting pictures. Just some sneak peaks of all the crafting that has been happening this week. Oh, and my dear dear dear friend Dani also deserves a huge shout out for crafting with me earlier in the week. She is GOOD with a glue gun!

I wanna know, what are YOU grateful for today? What are YOU excited about right now? Comment below with what’s really getting you going.

39 days. I’m getting married in 39 days. I am so excited / nervous / excited / pumped / excited / nervous / excited all at the same time. For serial.

The more we prepare and talk about making a life-long commitment to each other, the more ready I am and the more I just can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with my best friend. We’re on the same page. We’re in the right frame of mind. We talk about everything – good and bad – what scares us, what excites us, what to pray about, how important God is to us and how important He will be to us in our marriage. It’s awesome. AHH.

Ugh. Okay, enough of the mushy stuff. Blech. I’m grossing myself out. WHO AM I?

So, in the meantime, until the mushy stuff and reality and real life all set in, we’re, ah hem, I’m prepping for a celebration! I would say we are, however, admittedly, John doesn’t really care about hot glue, or fabric flowers, or twine, or details. He cares about Jesus, marrying me, country music, cowboy boots, and BBQ. Which I’m totally okay with. PLUS, he loves me despite the fact that I have probably burned 129,102,489 layers of skin off my hands from hot glue… while watching The Bachelor. BONUS! That’s dedication. (BTW: I like Kacie B., y’all. Ben probably will dump her soon. That’s usually how those things go).

There I go again with the mushy stuff.

*Slaps own face*

Back on track, Buckley.

I love pictures. I love frames. I hate boring pictures in boring frames.

I decided to spruce up some frames for wedding decorations to then later use in our house. Kill two birds with one stone = WINNING.

I have had this tall 8×10 photo frame thing for a long time and it was starting to look gross. Dusty, the borders were coming off, etc. I didn’t take a before picture because I’m lame and didn’t think it would turn out well. So, I ripped the ugly borders off, replaced the pictures with some amazing e-pics courtesy of our amazing photog, Katelyn James, hot glued some lace around the edges, made a few fabric flowers, and BAM! fancy frames for fancy people. I also took a cheap-o Target sale rack black frame and added some pizazz to it. WOOP!

Please excuse the bottle of Oxi-Clean in the left corner. That’s my washer. Whoops. Probably should have moved the frame away from my laundry area before taking the photo on my iPhone. Oh well. Sue me.

Voila!

What do you think? Have you done any crafty projects lately? Share them with me. 

How often have you burned yourself with hot glue? Are you as clumsy with hot glue as I am?

xoxo

Molly

Okay, so since I like to write about anything that’s going on in my life, and since I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the wedding lately, I figured I’d blog the latest awesomeness that we finally finished last week.

I preface this with a few things:

1. I am not a professional designer
2. I’m no wedding expert
3. I am not the craftiest person in the world
4. I am no invitation expert
5. We saved money on invitations fo’sho’
6. These took FOR.EV.ER.

But, I did learn a lot along the way. AND, I am really happy with the way they turned out.

Here’s the skinny on how they went and what I used and how much they cost.

Materials Used:

• 1 ream of 120lb white OfficeMax brand card stock – $15
• 1 package of white Avery print and tear envelopes – $18
• 1 package of white Avery print and tear postcards – $18
• White size A-9 envelopes – $20
• 10″ square paper doilies – $24 (eBay)
• 100 yards of navy blue twine – $5 (Save-On-Crafts.com)
• 100 yards of sangria purple twine – $5 (Save-On-Crafts.com)
• Custom photo stamps – Stamps.com ($115 with a coupon code)
• Custom return address stamp – $40 (Sweet Papery)
• Quatrefoil stamp – $5 – etsy
• Last minute George Washington $.20 cent stamps (more on this later) – $30

Total cost (INCLUDING POSTAGE): $290

Now, for 150 invitations, I’d say that’s not bad.

Obviously the photo stamps and custom return address stamps were splurge items, but I justified the custom stamp because we can keep that for a long time… and, well, I really wanted the photo stamps. Creative googling gave me the coupon code so I saved money on them. WOOT!

For the invitations themselves:

1. I designed all three printed elements in Adobe Photoshop.

• I took inspiration from The Wedding Chicks Mason Jar printables but I didn’t want them to be exactly like the other wedding invitations out there.
• We really wanted the invitations to feel like us – both of us. The mason jars really go with our country theme (cowboy boots, FTW) and everyone that knows me knows I love quatrefoils. So we wanted all of those things to be incorporated.
• I searched and found free fonts on DaFont.com that I loved and used those
• The script font is LaPointe’s Road
• The regular font is Promised Freedom

2. I cut the edge of all the business cards, RSVP info cards (we went green and are doing web / email RSVPs), and invitations with Fiskars Paper Edgers – since I printed all of these invitations on a home printer on the 8.5×11″ card stock (which was a HUGE pain in itself and is not something to be taken lightly) this was really the best way to cut away unwanted white space away from the edges after cutting the 8.5×11″ card stock sheet in half.

If you are going to go this route, I HIGHLY recommend having something mindless to watch on TV whilst printing and cutting. Seriously. I’m not kidding.

3. After all the pieces were done being printed and cut I got the paper doilies out and laid the pieces in order on the doilie

4. To make the paper doilie envelope, I just centered the invitations on the diagonal doilie and folded the sides tightly over and then folded the bottom tightly up towards the center. After those parts were tight, I folded the top down over the middle to cover the side and bottom corners. (I hope all that made sense)

John was a really good doilie folder. He will hate that I am posting this picture. Teehee

5. To finish securing the envelope, we cut the two-color twine into 2/3 yard and tied it around in a bow.

Look at my dad and Bonnie go with the twine cutting!

Ta da!

6. Then after stamping, addressing (my sister is AWESOME for helping hand write addresses), and stamping again the regular envelopes, we put the finished product in and VOILA! DONE!

Here are the envelopes:

I love our stamp!

Yeah, I sealed the envelope with a quatrefoil. Sue me.

Also, you will notice the nice George Washington stamp. No, we did not plan that. We stopped at the post office before mailing them to make sure we had enough postage only to learn that the twine, yes the twine, adds $.20 cents an envelope because that means they can’t put them through the machine. GAH. Any ribbons, anything that makes the envelope bumpy jacks the price up. SO, it’s a good thing I checked or else we would have been in deep bull-poo. Yeah, I said bull-poo.

Anywho.

These things were DEFINITELY a labor or love but in the end we are really happy with how they turned out. Considering invitations, especially 150+ invitations can cost hundreds even THOUSANDS of dollars, we saved money and they had a personal touch. If you decide to do your own, just be prepared that saving money doesn’t always save headache.

What do you think? Yay? Nay?

Did you do your own invitations? Would YOU do your own invitations?

YAY! Now, to collect RSVPs.

I am in West Virginia for my best friend’s wedding. We went to a garden this morning and got to pick all the flowers we wanted for the wedding! It was awesome. Becca told me about this one flower called “fennel” – it is actually the main ingredient in black licorice! She told me to taste it. I did. It tastes like black licorice. It was awesome.

I just thought I’d share this with you all. Enjoy!

All for now.