It's Fall!

That crisp is in the air again, it's my favorite time of the year! But before we can address any fall-type things, let's do a quick recap. The last time I posted I was working with UC Green to raise funds for their fall planting. Many thanks to everyone who helped us reach our goal, we raised more than our $4K target and UC Green will have plenty of funds for their fall planting. I was also starting my brand new job at Philadelphia Parks & Recreation where I've now been working for almost 6 months! It's a wonderful learning experience and I love the work and my coworkers. What more could a girl ask for?

In the intervening months a lot of other things happened . . .

. . . M and I got married!!!! . . .





(wedding pictures are by Tiffany Atlas, Atlas Wedding Photography)



. . . We went on a wonderful honeymoon to Maine . . .



. . . I spent the 4th of July at my friend Alex's family place on a lake near Ithaca, NY . . .



. . . Alex, Katie and I joined my mom and Emmy for another Berryfest weekend . . .



. . . plus two new cousins were born (baby knitting project posts to come), M and I joined his family for a lake vacation in Maryland, and we went to my annual family reunion at the Delaware River.

A very full summer indeed. I'm finding it difficult to balance my full time job and my outside-of-work life, so the blog and my reading of other blogs has completely fallen by the wayside. But I hope to pick it up again, especially since this cool weather makes it easier to spend time sitting at my desk at the computer (which was unbearable during the summer months in our un-air-conditioned home). My posts will certainly be less frequent than in the past, but I promise to check back periodically and I hope to start reading all of your blogs again soon!

I'm glad to be back!

Little Details

I now have a small collection of decorations for the wedding that I commissioned from artists on Etsy. I had a great time working with the artists so I thought I'd share so you can check out their shops too!



I got these adorable little butterflies from The Gilded Bee: I've been eye-ing her stuff for a while now and finally messaged her to make a huge custom order of butterflies in approximately the colors of the wedding (the color choices were a bit brighter than I'm going for, but they are perfect in every other way).



When I ordered them I had a specific purpose in mind, but things have changed a bit since then so now I just have them for extra decoration. I'm not sure how I will use them, but it will be guaranteed to be cute. Seriously cute.



I also ordered these incredible stamps from SugarSkull7's Handcrafted Stamps & Fine Art. She has a fabulous collection of adorable stamps that I chose from, in addition to commissioning this one:



I also got these Ball jar and hive stamps:





The hive reminds me of the illustrations in Winnie the Pooh books! I got three colors of ink so I plan to mix and match all over the place. These are going on the back of the table assignments, which will just be hanging from a line by the guest book. Kind of like this.

Just over two months to go!

Buzzing along

We sent the invites and are now receiving RSVPs in mass quantities (fourteen of them came back in the mail today!). My wonderful friend Nicole from Blue Bicicletta designed the invites for us and I couldn't be more happy with them.



Just look at those adorable bees!

Cake update

I didn't realize that picking out and designing the cake would be so much fun! We're going with a honeybee theme for the wedding; golden yellow, cream and black with highlights of magenta and moss green. Check out the "inspiration boards" I made on Style Me Pretty. So with that in mind, here are a few sketches from the bakers we visited this week.



The cake will be four or five (!!) tiers, with ivory icing, golden yellow bands on the bottom of each tier, and a matching yellow honey-comb design alternating sides on each tier.



And the topper! My friend Duffy, our beekeeper at The Woodlands, offered to have the bees build us two little heart-shaped pieces of comb! He's done it before, apparently you just put a mold into the hive in your desired shape and the bees will build in it. I think it's probably the most adorable idea ever.

Tons of tiny icing flowers

We're going cake tasting today! I was told to bring photos for inspiration and color palette. Maybe something like this?



With lemony cake, sugary icing, and tons of itsy bitsy flowers?

I made this on Style Me Pretty. There are lots more, if you're interested.

Pretty Things

I've been having fun making "inspiration boards" for my wedding over at Style Me Pretty. It's a great way to focus my ideas about what I want the colors and style to be. Plus, I get to look at pretty pictures of pretty things. Isn't that what planning a wedding is all about? (Besides the whole marrying your best friend part).



Lately I've been thinking a lot about fabric pennants, strings of large clear bulbs, mason jars, old fashioned lace . . .



. . . delicate frosting flowers, tiers of rich cake, various shades of yellow and cream . . .



. . . bright goldenrod and magenta hues, bird-cage veils, butterflies and bees, honey . . .



. . . and saturated light.

Bride Burger, Groom Burger

We've picked a place and a date: Bartram's Garden, Memorial Day weekend, 2011. Whew! I will spare you most of the details of the wedding planning, because this is not a wedding blog, and we still have 15 months until the Big Day. But I will share this link with you, where I will be posting all of the fun details and making inspiration boards and whatnot.

The photo below is from the Entwined Studio photography blog, and it shows the view of the Philadelphia skyline from Bartram's Garden.

P.S. We met with some caterers this week, and my parents prepared for it by watching a family favorite, Father of the Bride (something like this happened in our house recently).