One Month

Yup, Its been that long since I posted. Oops.

I don't really feel the need to post unless I have something post worthy...or Casey guilts me into updating. Nice one, Casey.

So I guess I'll update now. At the moment, we're still putting guest lists together. Did you know getting honest to goodness guestlists out of parents is like pulling teeth. It is. No one told me this. It looks like the number should be **around** 250. It seemed like a good compromise number as Tay's Dad would like everyone he knows (half the state the North Carolina) to come and I would still prefer to elope :) . So...250 it is.

Tay's rents have been looking into booking stuff. With under eight months to go I've been told now is the time to do such things. What suprised/delighted me was their interest in renting tents! Tents! I never dreamed of being able to have tents! Imagine the celing room to hang all sorts of lovely lights and lanterns. That would be fun, no? They are also planning to rent a combination of regular round tables and cocktail tables. I didn't know you could rent cocktail tables, in fact, I didn't really know what a cocktail table was until this wedding started happening. They are simply tall little tables that 4-5 people can stand at. Badda boom. Tables for hip young people to look cool at. (You're welcome young hip people).

My dress is now on its way to being made. Yay! And I'm still slowly making progress on my little knitted bolero. I now offically have three "bridesmaids", as my former room mate Becka has joined the dark side (my side). We'll be choosing a dress pattern for her one of these days.

There you go. I updated. (You're welcome, Casey)

Hanging Things

Hey Friends,

As always, I'm looking around for inspiration, one big inspiration has been glass jars. How cool would this look hanging from some of the big trees?

I've come up with an inspirational phrase to keep the wedding ideas on track....Vintage Folk. Yeah? I think it works. We're earthy, funky, folksy, old timey. The wedding will incorporate glass, wood, light, and paper. So far so good.

-ck

More Inspiration Comming Your Way

Meet Onawa, one of my oldest friends, awesome christian role model, mother to the cutest red haired little 21 month old girl, and talented graphic designer. Its the latter title that concerns this post today. Onawa has thoughtfully offered to design the wedding invites. I'm excited for several reasons: She has great taste, so anything she can whip up will be a treat for the eyes; she's my friend, and I love including meaningful people in the wedding chaos; also...she's so creative. You would know if you visited her house. Anyway, I sent her this little inspiration nugget today:

It's perfect for what Tay and (mostly) I have in mind. Nature, a bird or two, simple colors, but still a little funky. Classy funky if you will. The pillows are all we're really concerned with here, not that stripes are bad. We'll see what her creative little mind comes up with!

Ghost-Faced Knitter

I said I'd update you on the knitted bolero front, so here I am.

I'm about 12-13 inches in. The left sleeve will finish out at 15 inches, then I'll finish seaming it until that point. I'll knit a few more inches for the shoulder and back. I figure I'll leave the left sleeve on the needle while i do the right sleeve and then join the two by simply knitting them together. We'll see if that actually works. Learning! Yay!

The lace work has gotten much easier now and I'm learning a lot about the meat of knitting. Its like dissecting frogs in high school science. I've torn so much out and dropped and picked up so many times now, I can now make up patterns and figure out patterns by looking at pictures. I never could do that until now. Courtney one, Knitting.....57. But I'm catching up. Here are a few picture samples of my work so far.

Amy Butler provides some color inspiration

Thanks Amy Butler! The wedding colors are now offically:





Gray, Cream, Blue and Green.

Decorations

My name is Karen and I am the mother of the Bride. This is my first blog on her site. Courtney is home on Christmas break from school and today we, along with her step sister Olivia, had quite a wedding shopping adventure. A very productive adventure actually. You have to understand where we live first of all. Helena, Montana is not a mecca for shopping. On the contrary. You can rarely find anything you want if it is something you are actually looking for. But today, we stumbled upon a few things which really helped put us down the road to the wedding decor look of nature and birds that Courtney was after. We are all about being thrifty and getting a good deal. We first went to Jo Ann Fabrics and we did manage to find two of the three patterns needed to make the bridesmaid dresses. Unfortunately, no good fabric finds, but we do have ten months. Next, after a well needed lunch break, we went into a scrap booking store with the hopes of finding some bird die cuts. No such luck there, but there is the Internet after all. (When you live in Montana, you learn to love the Internet for shopping.) Next, we ventured to the Mall, if you can call it that. Helena, Montana's mall is pretty lame, but there is a nice bridal gown store there and Courtney, Olivia, and I had a ball having Courtney try on bridal gowns. She has mostly decided on a gown that will be custom made in Bali, but it never hurts to try on other gowns to see what you might like better. Besides, every girl getting married should try on wedding gowns. It is part of the experience of getting married. Anyway, she looked truly lovely in most of the gowns she tried on. Very fun! Next, we went to Pier One and that's where we found our treasures for the day. Gotta love after Christmas sales!! I found a really cute bird under a bell jar, which Courtney fell in love with and decided that would make a great cake topper. I have to say, it will look terrific on the top of a small wedding cake.

While asking if it was on sale, the sales lady found a collection of wrought iron bird candelabras. They were all on crazy sale and we bought every one of them. I couldn't believe the deal we got on them. Since we don't really know how many tables we will actually have set up, we just bought all they had. Even still, we saved a huge bundle doing so. It will definitely be the basis for the rest of the wedding decor. It pays to ask the sales people what they have in a certain thing. We would have never found these otherwise. Anyway, we came home with a car load and quite pleased with ourselves for finding a bargain.


This little guy to the left is a wire bird which holds a tea candle. We found him in Pier One as well. Courtney thought they would look nice hanging in some of the trees at the wedding ceremony site. We bought three to hang along with paper lanterns. I think they'll do nicely!

New Year, New Post

Happy New Year, Ladies and Gents. Tis the year we get get hitched! It's hard to believe these are our last few months as singles. Now that school is out for a few weeks, I finally have time to blog a little. Here are some updates:
For starters, Casey has picked out her dress pattern. Its a nifty vintage vogue pattern that will look swell on her.
Mum and I are going fabric shopping this Saturday. Since Olivia will be in the vintage slipper satin we purchased in Butte, I'd love to have Casey in a nice deep green color. While shopping for Christmas presents a few days ago, Mom spied some curtains in Pier One that are perfect! Its a little unusual, sure, but what else is new? Its a very nice deep green silk shunting I think, and there is tons of fabric if we buy two panels. We'll find out this weekend if it'll work. Cross your fingers!


Also, I've been on a knitting kick lately...a serious knitting kick. Bordering on sickness, really. I visited a new knitting shop here in town, the Knit and Nosh. A super cute and helpful shop where I found some beautiful ivory yarn to knit this little tasty nugget:

Its a wedding bolero, and one that I have already started knitting. I've been searching the web for weeks for a little fuzzy bolero that a: isn't grandma-ish and b: isn't huge with no luck. Once I spied this pattern, however, I figured "why not make my own?" I'm a pretty capable knitter and I love learning new things, so here goes!

I'm not following her pattern exactly (it can be found here), instead I'm making it three quarter cut sleeve and cutting out the dopey droopy thing she's got going on (I mean I'm a hippy, but COME ON). I've also made the lace a little differently, so that it isn't so open, and has more stockinette in it. I am using the general pattern and measurements. I'll be sure to post a picture when I'm done. Its slow going, especially since this is my first attempt at knitting lace, but I do love a challenge! I already have several inches (although if I hadn't had to tear so much out and start over, I might be done with a sleeve by now!). I think it would look great with my wedding dress, and even if it doesn't, I have so much else I can wear it with anyway. Yay!

More to come.

ck

A Taste of Things to Come

Tay has just updated our myspace page with some new music we've been playing with-just demos mind you. Music is going to play a big part of the wedding, so you might wanna prepare yourselves now and check it out.