My Little Munchkin - The first Part

I finally figured that I'd get back into the blogging world again ... and yes I'm starting with an essay, sorry in advance....

For those of you who didn't know .. I found out that I was pregnant the day after Anzac Day last year. I was amazed at how fast it happened as I was expecting to wait at least a year before the pill got out of my system as I had been on it for years, and it certainly shocked me when those two little lines showed up on the stick. 

Needs ideas.....

Hello to those out there. I'm sorry its been a while between posts.

My First Sale!

I finally put my creativeness that I cultivated during the wedding planning to good use. I don't know if any of you remember but I created my own bubble bottles for the ceremony. While I was cleaning up the other day, I came across the leftovers and went hmm I wonder if I can make these for other people. 

One of our wonderful wedding photos

Easter Baskets ...

I made a heap of baskets for edible presents for the last Christmas for our friends and they went down such a treat with them, that I thought I'd have a go at Easter Baskets this year and this is what I came up with....

The completed Easter Basket with home made Cadbury Creme Egg Brownies, Chocolate Bubble Eggs, Homemade Ginger and Apple Cordial. Store brought bakers delight hot cross buns and tiny cadbury milk eggs

Union Jack Madness!

I have decided that I am completely in love with the union jack furniture, and I'm wondering if you share the same opinion, as I'm thinking of upholstering some of my chairs and small tables with the union jack fabric. 

Tell me what you think:

Photo credit to Armchairs

My new project!

Well hello there, long time no post, sorry about that.

I've been pretty busy with my new project which is giving old chairs a new lease on life and hopefully making them look awesome and selling them on eBay  to friends or through here. So this is what I've been up to lately. 

I'm back .. well sort of ...

Wow, it has been a massive whirl wind with the wedding, honeymoon, christmas and getting back to work. 

2012 has been a rather extremely busy year with hubby being away, the wedding and all that went with it and its rather hard trying to find things to keep busy so you don't get the anti climax of post wedding blues. 

A sneak peak ... a couple of our amazing photos

Seeing as we are on our honeymoon and we are pretty much gone for five weeks, I thought that i better give you all a sneak peak of our photos ...

So happy with what we have got so far and can't wait to see the rest of them ...

Who thought i'd end up actually being photogenic ...

Enjoy ...

Only a few days left ...

Today is friday which means we are having our final dance lesson later on today. I'm getting my spray tan in a few hours and should really be sleeping in but was woken by FH's alarm clock at 7am, yuck! We are also picking up the NZ relatives today and bringing them home to see our humble abode before taking them out for dinner at our local pub and then back to the city to their hotels. 

I found some cute little blue ballet flats which are great for dancing in from Big W, so tried them out at our dance lesson on Friday with my hoop and it worked a treat. Don't have to worry about having sore feet from heels now. Very simple and cute!

Blue dancing shoes - Big W for $15 (my photo)

My Hens Party .. the actual event

I had my hen's party on Saturday, the weekend just been and man it was great fun. I got up reasonably early and got myself down to Toni and Guy in Cronulla where Annabelle recreated my possible hairstyle with hair extensions and it was really quick as well. I was very impressed as usually it takes ages for my hair to get put up.

Wedding Count down - Less than two weeks!

Wow we are now just under two weeks left to go till the wedding, or 11 days and are surprisingly stress free which is fantastic. We had our hens and bucks on the weekend and had a great time. Now its just pretty much tidying up the loose ends and finishing work. FH went on annual leave on Friday and I'm so jealous. I've got four shifts left at work and finish on Sunday, a week before the wedding exactly.

The count down (my photo)

Hen's Party ... Pre event

Tomorrow is my hen's party and I'm so excited! I couldn't wait for work to finish today as I've now got two days off. One to party and the other to recover and then back to work for a week before I go on annual leave. It's starting to get serious now ... :)

The Reception ... Confirmation time!

Yesterday we headed into Circular Quay to attend our check list confirmation meeting. I had a 10 or so page check list which I had to complete by Thursday last week for Dockside - the venue management. By the end of it, it was a 14 page document full of all the info that was going to make our reception run smoothly. As soon as I emailed it, and got the confirmation from Sasha, our wedding executive that it was good to go and that she was looking forward to meeting us, I immediately relaxed and felt some weight come off my shoulders. It was a full on document I can tell you.

So circular quay wasn't looking so spectacular yesterday as it was turning into a bit of a cold and grey evening with a slight chilly breeze, but the set of buildings where our reception was going to be held, was looking great as always, biased much. Hell yes, haha.

About to walk along the front of the restaurants (my photo)

The Ceremony - Order of Stationary

I've been umming and ahhing as to whether to do an Order of Ceremony. It is a great way of introducing your bridal party to your guests and letting them know what's happening on the day. I was also thinking about including a map of how to get out of the botanic gardens and along to waterfront our reception venue.

So I've been adding inspiration images to this post when I find them:

Credit to Martha Stewart Weddings

The Wishing Tree and DIY Tree tags ..

We decided to have a wishing tree after having a meeting with our MC as he recommended it to be a good fun entertainment section of the reception. The guests would write short wishes/messages on the tags and hang them on the wishing tree and the MC would grab them during the night and read them out.

Photo Credit to Squidoo

Wedding Count Down ... 1 month to go!

Wow, we have offically reached the one month mark, or four weeks or 29 days which ever you prefer. I didn't actually realise that it would come to this point so fast. I keep having minor little nervous freak outs when I look at our checklists or need to complete something, in the form of nerves but that's only about actually having the day coming up, nothing about not wanting to get married. So I apologise in advance, this post is still a bit list and word heavy.

One month to go (my photo)

Reception Music ... Mission Completed!!

We sent our reception music in last week and that was a slight mission in itself again. Luckily our DJ company Maestro Entertainment  who are included in our package from The Dockside Group had a list of songs that have been used in weddings that they have used in the past. 

The song list was all tick boxes which was nice. I left a copy of it at home for FH to have a look at and he decided on the background music and left me to choose all the dancing music which was awesum as we now have a selection of 80s, 90s and today's type of music, bring on the Pitt bull!! So we are going to be doing some grooving if we have some time. With the RSVP's, I added a section where they could suggest some of their favourite dancing songs and we got some good ones! The one I had the most laughs with was LMAFO - I'm sexy and I know it ... so that wil bring the movers and shakers to the floor. We selected about 20-30 songs for each section and James, from Maestro Entertainment adds the rest of the songs in that he thinks will work. We don't get to hear what he has come up with until the night, but the reviews through dockside are rave reviews, so I know that we are in good hands. 

Wedding Accessories ... The Garter and Clutch Bag....

First of all I apologise for the lack of posts, I lost the motivation to blog there for a week or so, thanks to night shifts. They really suck the life out of you. I'm so not a four night shift in a row girl, and its the first time I've done four nights in a row in a long time. Usually I split my nights and do two and then two a week later, but was last to the night request roster this time and lucked out. So here is my long needed post. I finally bit the bullet as its getting close to being under five weeks and decided to order my garter and buy a clutch bag. 

My MOH and I went to see The Sapphires at Hurstville Cinemas and while I was there we had a look in the handbag stores and found a nice silver clutch from Direct Shoe Warehouse. She suggested that I get a silver one so I could use it again and it really won't be seen much on the actual day, just to hold my survival kit of perfume, band aids, mints, panadol, phone, etc.  So here's my little clutch. It cost $59.95 and you can purchase them at any Westfield. It's got just enough bling on it in the form of little diamantes along the top metal bit and is rather pretty.

Silver Clutch Bag from Direct Shoe Warehouse (my photo)

Ceremony Music ... Our Songs!

We have finally decided on all the songs for our ceremony which is a definite load off our minds, well my mind any ways. FH as usual, went yep, those ones are good or nah not keen on that one after my hours of researching and coming up with a small list. Natasha, our celebrant also sent us a list of songs which have been used at the weddings that she has officiated at which was very helpful as well. 

So onto good old U tube we went, and listened to some songs before I had to go to work and came up with this lot for our ceremony ... 

Pre Ceremony Music:

Ed Sheeran - Lego House

The Melbourne Wedding...

We travelled down to Melbourne on Friday and had a extreme weather shock! We were prepared for the cold but not that cold, haha, it was freezing. We checked into the Novotel in St Kilda and the sun was setting as we were heading in, casting beautiful colours over the city and the beach.

View from Bolte Bridge (my photo)

Suit Update ... A slight change..

When FH came home he got onto sorting out his suit pretty quick which I was very impressed with. We went into Spurling Suit Hire in Miranda and was very impressed with the man running the show. 

Image credit to Bridal Wave

The Kingscliff Wedding ...

We travelled up to Kingscliff on Friday for one of my workmates and friend's wedding on the Saturday. We went to dinner that night, just FH and I, at Season. Drink. Dine, at Peppers on Salt Beach and the food was fantastic. We had oysters and pork belly for an entrée and steak and lamb for the main. Absolutely fantastic. FH was right when he said that the restaurant had been given 19/20 on a food review site. It was great!. There was also domesticated black rabbits around the place which had been released and they had gone wild ... the type of black pet shop rabbit .. so cute! Wish I had my phone so I could of taken a photo of them. 

On Saturday, the weather was beautiful and our friends were so lucky that it was a stunning hot day down on the beach. Not so hot that we were sweating our make up off but just enough that you didn't feel cold standing on the beach watching the beautiful couple become husband and wife.

The beautiful beach ceremony set up on Kingscliff Beach (my photo)

Wedding Count Down ... 2 months to go!!

Wow, the last month has seemed to have flown and I think most of that is because FH is now home and I can get on with wedding related things that I needed to have his opinion on. So we now have two months, or eight and half weeks or 60 days, counting down much, haha.

Wedding Count down (my photo)

Wedding Food .... DIY Menu

After our tasting on Sunday, I've went into mass production of Menus. I looked on the internet and through some magazines for some inspiration on how to design them. I've decided that we will have one placed on each plate and that it would be double sided with the reception menu on one side with the selections for each course and then the beverage list on the back. The meals will be served alternatively so the guests can swap around the table.

Here are my inspirations for wedding menus:

Credit to Style Me Pretty

Wedding Jandal Box - Ready for display!

I have been slowly putting the finishing touches to the boxes which my creations are going to be displayed in and this post is about the jandals which I have supplied for those guests with sore feet.

My inspirations:

Credit to Elements of Entertaining

An extremely crazy couple of days ...

On Sunday we had a bit of a roller coaster of a day and I'm sorry to admit that it's taken this long to get around to blog about it. So I apologise for this massive post. FH was running in the Sydney City to Surf so we were up around 6am to my body's utter dislike. Too many early mornings in the last few days and its starting to rebel against me with a head cold.

City to Surf start - Image credit to The Vine

The Meeting ... MC and Wedding planner

Last night we had a meeting with our MC and Wedding Planner and it went really well. I think our MC was a bit surprised at the beginning as I'd forgotten to tell him that Jenny, our wedding planner was going to be there. They both arrived a little bit late due to our place being in a Nav Man blip, which is annoying as we always get phone calls going where do you live ... I'm at the end of so and so's road. Or we end up calling them going "are you lost". So both of them got a smidgen lost, but it worked out well as we were able to create our draft run sheet with Jenny before Salvatore, the MC arrived. 

Wedding planning meeting - Photo credit to Paper Doll Romance

Wedding Rings .... Mr and Mrs

We headed up to Michael Hill Jeweller yesterday as I got a phone call on Wednesday saying that my wedding band had arrived and that I had a gift voucher accompanying it. I was like what? Apparently I had been quoted the wrong price and paid the wrong price, so had a refund waiting for me which was awesome! A very nice surprise. I knew that FH was coming home so I wanted to wait till he was able to come up with me and we could choose his at the same time to save a trip to the jeweller.

The ring boxes (my photo)

Completely off topic .. but one of the most happiest days of my life

Yeah this post is completely off topic but yesterday was one of the most happiest days of my life. My FH came back from overseas where he had been working for six months. I was standing at the airport shaking with excitement and nerves and also cause it was dam cold and his gate B which is just in front of some big doors which kept letting in massive blasts of cold air as it was freezing at 7am yesterday morning in Sydney.

The big red balloon tied to my car keys so I wouldn't forget it (my photo)

Wedding parasol display boxes .. inspiration and the real thing

Photos like the one below have inspired me to have parasols at my wedding. I don't know whether it is going to be hot or rainy, as its in October and a week within the date either side last year was hot and the other side raining. So I'm covering my bases. I've blogged about how I've purchased parasols last year for it but haven't got around to showing you display images of what inspired me and what I've decided to do.

So here's my inspirations

Credit to What a wedding blog