Cardigan

(Just a side note for whoever may be wondering about my chair. It's coming along. Slowly. I'm still working on step 1. Pulling staples. I swear I'm making progress. But it's horribly tedious. I'll be back with details when something more interesting happens!)

My stepsister got married about a year and a half ago in a beautiful outdoor wedding. It was in June and in Texas, which could have been a disastrous combination. I was afraid we were going to be roasted. But no, the gods went a different way. We woke up that morning to thunderstorms. Now I'm from the northeast. We don't get thunderstorms up here like they do in Texas. Texas thunderstorms are a force to be reckoned with. And these were some hard core Texas thunderstorms. Flood warnings, tornado warnings, major lightening, the whole thing. My poor stepmother spent part of the morning in tears. My poor Dad cursed the day they decided to hold the wedding outside. In the end the storms moved out of the area, the sun came out by early afternoon, and the wedding was really pretty.

Fast forward a couple of years. Fred and I decide to get married and pick a date in October. We plan for a Fall wedding in New England. Every single location we consider is outdoors. (My poor father.) Our park has a rain location on the premises that I really like, so that takes care of that. But what if it's cold? Average high temperature for the month of October is 65 degrees. I figure I'll need a wrap, a shrug, a cardi, something.




{party perfect}


{Once Wed}

Admittedly, I've not done a lot of searching. These are just inspiration pics I've collected along my way. That last one is my favorite, though. And now look what I found at J. Crew!


{J.Crew}

I thought I would attempt to knit something, but we might have a winner here! Love the ruffle around the neckline. Oh, if you go back and check out the inspiration pictures more closely you'll see that the bride is indeed wearing those cowboy boots. A girl after my own heart :)


{Once Wed}

More Paper Flowers

All with how-tos.


{Martha Stewart}


{Cut Out + Keep}


{Paper Source}


{Something Old, Something New}


Pom Pom Flowers!! {domestifluff}


{craftstylish}

Flowers

Till recently I had my wedding flowers all figured out. We planned to order flowers, probably from Potomac Floral, and arrange them ourselves in the glass jars our family has been collecting for us. Seasonal flowers, fall colors, unstructured, natural, simple, fun - this was supposed to be a done deal!


{Inspiration from all over! I didn't manage to keep track of where these came from, except that pics 6, 7 and 9 are from Snippet and Ink. If I owe you credit, please contact me and I'll make it right! And note to self: document.}

But today I came across Elisebeth's paper flowers on via Once Wed. And oh my. Simple, elegant, woodsy, and natural. How's a girl to make up her mind?


{elisebeth}

Find the tutorial here.


{Dozi}

I still really like our original flower plans, but there are some benefits to the paper alternative. They'd save us some money, and we could have them done and arranged well in advance of our wedding weekend. Decisions decisions . . .

"Rustic Revival"

The other day I blamed my yellow and blue plaid chair on a "country-quaint" decorating phase that I have supposedly since outgrown. Well. Turns out I may not have left it so far behind. Enter Sproost, a website that allows you to explore your personal style, complete with quiz. And my quiz results?

44% Rustic Revival
33% Cottage Chic
23% Modern Elegance

"You can take kid out of the country but you can't take the country out of the kid... or is your theme "you can take the kid out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the kid?"

Either way you play it, you are one of the unique individuals who loves a mix of modern and country. The clean lines of the modern softened by rustic/vintage elements is the perfect mix in your mind. And can we blame you? You've taken the best aspects of two popular designs and mixed them in a manner that appeals to young and old alike. A subtle background of white or light colors provides a nice canvas for all the wonderful flea market, eBay, or garage sale finds as well as the classic modern pieces that you love."

Bah.

Chair.2

Yesterday I pulled staples till my hands hurt. I think the dude who reupholstered it thought he was prepping the chair for battle. It wasn't done to come undone. Naturally I figured that out as I attempted to undo it!



The good news is that the same dude who stapled it from here till kingdom come also did an awesome job of replacing all the inner parts. I'll reuse everything from batting to ticking to stuffing, even the piping is in great shape. Once I get all the staples out (please, God, help me get all the staples out) I feel like it's going to be relatively easy to put this thing back together. Someone with more experience may be laughing at me right now, but just let me hold onto that happy thought for a bit longer. At least until the rest of the staples are gone :)

Chair.1

Ladies and gentlemen, I've decided to tackle a re-upholstery project this week and share my journey with you! I'm pretty sure I've lost my marbles on this one, so feel free to take a minute to wish me luck. But I'm all set with my sad sack of an armchair, a whole lot of fabric that I bought years ago to slipcover a couch we've since gotten rid of, and 5 days with not a lot going on. It seems there's no time like the present, so here goes!



This chair was my grandparents. I inherited it sometime in the early 90s, right smack in the middle of my "country-quaint" decorating phase. You know, the dried flowers, the kitsch, the large plaid upholstery fabric. Yes, I have to claim responsibility for that blue and yellow stuff. I like to think I've come a long way since then.



On top of the poor fabric choice, there may now be a wee bit of cat damage. Here you see Baxter, eating the stuffing through a hole they've worn in the top. Punk. At least I have more than one good reason to recover this thing. So follow along here, and check out the full run of pics over on my flickr. Now I'm going to go start this mess before Fred can come home and talk me out of it!

Shop Update

Oh, I forgot to mention! I added 6 elephants to the shop, and there are a couple more to come in the next few days!

what you pay for

Yep, I dropped off the face of the earth. First there were two weeks of triples (musician-speak for having three jobs in one day, often three very different jobs with completely different repertoire, and typically in three very opposite directions). Then I got sick at the end of that run (big surprise there). Now I'm back on my feet, and it's February break! I'm bound and determined this week to have some projecting time, and to share that with you. So we'll see how that plays out!


{via Rachel, via Heather Garland}

In the meantime, a cartoon for you. This depicts an issue I've been trying to come to terms with, although I've not made much headway. So here it is in a nutshell. I'm a working musician. The term "bride" in my house is synonymous with "client," and not infrequently, "client who wants us to do something musically inadvisable, if not impossible, for an unfortunately small sum of money." I'll save the gory details, but we've gotten some amazing requests. (Ok, one good one. Are you familiar with Bernstein's Overture to Candide? Yes, it's an awesome piece of music. But it does actually require a full orchestra, it's quite difficult, it really functions best with a conductor, and no, our brass quintet can't play it at your wedding.) At this point that's all in a day's work, and no big deal. Except that I've recently been described as a "bride." And I think my brain naturally added the "-zilla" tag to the end of the word. Since when did "bride" become a pejorative! Ugh. Me, a bride? I still need to work on that one.