DIY: Bottlecap magnets

I am sure you all have been impatiently waiting for a DIY project! Me too.

Now that we are 253 days from the wedding, it makes sense that I can start crafting!!!

DIY Project 1: Save the date magnets

First, sending out save the dates and doing it fairly soon is important to us since most of our invited guests will be from out of town. Sending it out enables everyone to know exactly when and where the wedding will be so people can save money and/or personal days to take off from work. Also, everyone will get the address for our wedding website for traveling and hotel information and the address for this blog so more people can follow along.

Now let’s start crafting! It is very popular to have a magnet incorporated into your “Save the Date” and I jumped on that bandwagon with no shame. Magnets are fun! Slap it on your fridge and you have a constant reminder of the fun times that lay ahead. I didn’t want the actual save the date to be a magnet. I wanted the magnet to be something cute on its own so that people might reuse it. My mom and aunt make super cute bottle cap jewelry and I thought, well let’s turn bottlecaps into magnets!

Materials needed:

Bottle caps, I used flattened ones from a seller from Etsy, fizzypops, so that they will better fit into the envelope.

Bottle cap epoxy stickers from fizzypops (trust my family, they are much easier to work with than glaze)

1in circle punch

Glue dots, the mini permanent dots, the super thin permanent dots, and also removable regular size dots, one each for 1 magnet. I bought mine from amazon.com.

Magnets

A helper, such as your beautiful and generous mother and fiance

• Create image that fits into a 1in circle. I know you can use Adobe to make beautiful images but I am much more comfortable with power point so here’s my cheat method of making images. I used fonts from dafont.com and I arranged the text boxes like I wanted and made it very big and then grouped all the text boxes together. I then saved the image as a picture by left clicking and selecting “Save as picture”. Next, open powerpoint again. Resize the “slide” to be a standard 8.5 x 11 in sheet of paper. That way you will be working with the image and know exactly how it will print on a regular sheet of paper. (I changed the dpi of the image using Irfanview before the next step to make sure the image looked sharp.)  Insert the image and then copy and paste the image onto the slide over and over leaving enough space between the images so you can punch non-overlapping circles. I spaced the image too close together even though I was thinking about it, so be careful not to do this! Then, click “Save as” under “File” and save it NOT as a powerpoint file, but as a pdf file. Saving it as pdf file ensures that the size of your sheet and images remains the same when you print.
• Print on 80lb cardstock. We used a glossy paper and had it professionally printed on a laser printer at my mom’s work. But, I am sure your home printer and nice cardstock from amazon.com would work fine. We are using our home printer for the actual save the dates.
• Make your mom punch out all your images. My mom was really patient with me as the first tinge of bridezilla came out. I wanted the images centered in the bottle cap, so I kept telling her to re-punch ones that weren’t centered. Wes and my mom said it was all in my head and that not every single one had to be perfect but I think it is pretty obvious. 

See? Would you want to be the person who got a non-centered magnet? I think not… 

Quizzes by Quibblo.com | SnapApp Quiz Apps

Wes and I have a friendly competition going on, so this poll is most interesting to us. J

• Stick the CENTERED punched out image onto one of the epoxy caps with the image facing down. Press firmly all around to remove any air pockets between the cap and the paper. The epoxy caps are sticky already so just place and press.
• Put an ultra-thin glue dot into the bottle cap.
• Put your punched out image with the epoxy cap into the bottle cap.
• Put a mini glue dot onto back of the bottle cap. I liked that these little things were stuck between two sheets. I peeled off one sheet, push the glue dot on the bottle cap and then peeled off the second sheet. So easy.


Excuse my icky nails.


• Take one of your magnets and push it on! A word on magnets: I hate magnets that are too weak to stick to anything. It was really important to me that the magnet would actually stick to our guests’ fridges. So, I bought neodymium magnets. I used these ones from magnets for less. Lots of fun to play with, very small and great holding power!

• Use the removable glue dot to attach the magnet to your Save the Date so it won’t slide around in the envelope.
• Seeing that our save the dates are going to be a bit bulky because of the magnet, we ordered durable 70lb envelopes from actionevenlope.com. We will also get the save the dates hand stamped at the post office so your magnets will arrive intact.

Three hours of my life tops and you get such a fun little thing!

Photos from a booth on the Jersey Shore

Now we need the actual Save the Date… but first the very long process of designing those suckers.



So far, I love my photographer!

I know in my last post that I left things off in a "we'll see" way. However, since writing that post, it has been confirmed that I definately love my photographer. For the following reasons:

1) After signing our contract, she sent over a hard copy.... just look:

How freakin' cute is that? This stationary is an example of how wonderful her products are, including her photo albums. She has such amazing style.

2) She addressed all my concerns in our contract with no hassle. Example: She agreed to drive beyond our contractually agreed limit for our engagement photos to Clarkston, MI for no extra charge. Where I grew up! She usually shoots in Birmingham, MI and it is a very cute city, but it has no meaning for Wes or I. Clarkston is where my family is from...my dad grew up in the same house I did. It has a pretty and quaint downtown area and it served as a nice backdrop for, hopefully, some really wonderful pictures. The point wasn't to have Clarkston as the main feature of our photos, but being somewhere we considered to be one of our homes made us feel more comfortable.

3) You can probably tell by the tense I am writing in, but we have had our engagement photos taken and it was a lot of fun to work with Kristen! We don't have the photos yet... sad face. I keep checking her blog every day to see when she is going to put up some sneak peeks. I was saying before in my last "photography" post that I felt that if I gave Kristen something cool to work with that she would respond to that. Well, she did. Of course, she did all the typical Kristenesque shots. (Grabbing Wes's arm while I smile at the camera and Wes looks off into the distance while contemplating our future...so dramatic.) But, she also took pics of us on the swings, holding pumpkins from the local market, holding a cupcake from the local cupcake shop AND using some props that we brought along. Such as:

Part of what makes us a fun couple (in my opinion) is that we have completely different viewpoints on 99% of everything. Yes, that makes us fun. Well, at least interesting. Yet, ultimately we both want the same things... family, adventure and world peace. How we are able to reconcile our differences to be even better people has helped make this almost 4 year relationship more rewarding than I thought possible. So, we used these silly flags and a few other things to represent those sentiments.

I can't wait to show you some of the engagement photos!

*all images are personal photos

How to book your photographer like a crazy bride

By far, the most important expense on our wedding day for us is photography. The cake will be eaten, the invitations hopefully admired for least 1 minute (please!) but then tossed aside… my dress carefully stuffed away only to be pulled out when I am feeling nostalgic. But, the photos will remain. I promise to pinch every penny for everything else, but I have to absolutely have photos that knock my socks off.

This past summer, I was working on the major components of the wedding. I met with my first-pick wedding photographer with my mom and to-be mom. I knew going into the meeting that she was outside of our photography budget. But, I love love love her photos. I figured I would try and see if she would come down a little and she did based on that were adding a few extra goodies to our package. The moms also very much liked her photos. Her photos are crisp while still being romantic. I probably would have booked her right away, but a few things gave me pause. 1. She was very friendly! However, she wasn’t overly zealous and all warm and fuzzy – more business-like. Which is good but not what I was expecting. 2: I felt like many of the weddings she photographed all looked a little bit alike. I think it is because her customers have beautiful weddings but they lack personalization… in my opinion. So, my big question is: Can I get her to shoot my wedding with a bit more creativity?

It seemed like I had to definitely meet with another photographer in order to make a decision. I had an appointment booked with another photographer for July 3. However, the goal was to meet with three photographers, so I could feel like I was making an educated decision before spending tons of money. I found a few more photographers whose photos were also fabulous, but one by one they all got back to me saying that they were booked already! WHAT! We were still 1 year away…..how can they be booked!?!! Sad face. All those stupid wedding checklists in books, magazines and online say to book your photograph 9 months to go. Lies. All lies.

Naturally, I freaked out. All I could think was WHAT IF MY FIRST-PICK PHOTOGRAPHER GETS BOOKED BEFORE I MAKE A FREAKIN’ DECISION?! One part of me was telling me that I needed to wait until July 3^rd to meet with another photographer to ease my concerns about creativity before making a rash decision. But the other part (the crazy part) was telling me to but a deposit on that photographer NOW. What to do!?

Sigh. I gave into my craziness and emailed the 1^st-pick photographer to book her before I had met with the other photographer. Whatever. I know that I am ridiculous, but I also knew that I would be happy with her photos and she is (sort of) close to our budget.

The good news is that because we had to work out a contract I still had time to meet with the July 3^rd photographer.  (I did feel slightly guilty for meeting with another photographer even though I had told photographer #1 I would book her.) Wes and I went to the second meeting and it gave us a lot of think about, but we still felt that we had made the best decision going with photographer #1.

So without further ado… Kristen Taylor of Birmingham, MI will be shooting our wedding!

All photos from Kristen Taylor Photography Blog

Swoon.

I feel that if I make our wedding fun and unique, then Kristen will respond to that. Now, I have to make all of you promise to smile and not be talking on your cell phone in all my photos!

What do you think should be the most important thing to spend money on? Would you book somebody without meeting with anyone else?

Staying fit in Finland: Part 3

This will be my last and final post in this mini-series! This one is about a super strange bridal tradition that I learned about in Finland. Some background material first:

Sauna is a big deal here in Finland. Everyone uses the sauna. Some Finnish people crave the sauna when they go too long without *cough* Miriam* *cough*. Sauna is thought to be a tool to release bodily toxins and treat sickness and pain. Sauna is introduced to kids from age one and parents always teach their kids how to prepare, wash and maintain a nice sauna. It is both a family and social experience. Often times, families will eat dinner, go to the sauna, and then watch the news together every evening. It is very rude to call a house in Finland between the hours of 6-10pm because that is SAUNA TIME.

Sauna Time

Suffice it to say, I had to try the sauna. Verdict: the sauna is awesome. You get super clean, then sit in the wonderful hot box and put water over rocks that are heated by a wood burning stove while sipping a beer. It smells like campfire and is so warm which is nice in a place where it is winter most of the time. Then you get out, rinse, put on a robe and go outside to cool down. Some people even jump into the lake. Then you get back into the sauna and do it all over again!

You come out of the sauna SO relaxed. A whole body massage doesn’t even compare. So, you get now that sauna is a big deal here in Finland. Obviously, sauna would be incorporated into big events here in Finland including holidays and WEDDINGS! These traditions are very old and a bit out-dated, but people have adopted some of the traditions in modern ways for their own wedding days.

Brides in Finland are supposed to use the sauna on the eve before their wedding as a way to banish evil spirits and ghosts of former boyfriends. (HA! I think a few of us could benefit from this!) You decorate the sauna with white towels and candles to represent purity. The bride sits in the middle while her friends whip her with birch branches. You heard me right, whip her with birch branches.

It is very common to create a tool from birch branches to (gently) beat yourself with while in the sauna. It serves as a tactile stimulus that the Finns are big on (remember the whole hot to cold to hot idea?). Also, it releases oils onto your skins that are cleansing.

The bride’s friends then wash her with salt, honey and milk to purify the bride and make her innocent again. Miriam told me that sometimes they even crack and egg over her head! It has something to do with fertility... Next, beer is passed around to take a sip from to honor the bride.

The bride’s friends then sing and chant to cast away those evil boyfriend spirits. A bride at this time is supposed to sit on a throne of juniper (while in the sauna) to remind her that marriage isn’t always easy and can be painful at times.

To finish it all up, the bride tosses the bundle of birch branches over her shoulder and makes a wish.

BAM! The bride can then consider herself cleansed and pure.

Not sure that I will do this, but it would be nice to spend some quality time with the wonderful women in my life before the wedding. Got any ideas? Anyone up for a bachelorette party?

Staying fit in Finland: Part 2

Okay, I exercised maybe twice a week in Finland, but I did supplement by hiking! To continue in my “Staying fit in Finland” series where I sneak in photos of Finland into my blog, I would like to show you two of my adventures!

Early during my time in Finland, I went blueberry picking out in the woods surrounding Jyvaskyla with my friend Miriam and one of Miriam’s lovely friends. Miriam gave me a bike to use while I was in Finland. We biked about 5 kilometers outside of the city. Then, we hiked up a hill and wandered off the beaten path.

It took some time to find berries because they were picked over. These crazy ant hills were everywhere, though.

Eventually, we did find some. They grow like carpet over the forest floor.

We were very focused on blueberry picking (as you can tell by my purple hand) so we may have gotten lost a little, but Miriam found our way out.

Hooray, I made it!

For my last weekend in Finland, I asked Mika and Miriam to go hiking with me in a National Park. My camera battery was dead, so the following are all Miriam’s pictures.

A purple mushroom!

We hiked for 1 hour then made a fire to cook some Finnish sausage…yeah, you're jealous.

Mika chopping wood.

Pondering great things.

The ladies made fire...

Mmm sausage.

We hiked out to a little bit of land that extended out into one of Finland’s many lakes.

When then hiked back and admired these geologic features called kettle holes – large holes that glaciers cut out of the earth.

Lichen. It made the ground look like gray snow.

Another lichen?

Kettle hole!

Besides that, I also walked to work and back every day and didn’t eat fast food at all. Okay, maybe once because I had to try to the Finnish version of McDonalds. All in all, I think I was active enough! I am thankful that I get to start Jazzercise back up again soon because another week without it and I might be singing a different tune.

I know that other people very dear to me are also trying to stay fit and/or shed some excess pounds for many different reasons, but partially because our wedding is coming up. So, I would like to take a moment to say GO MOM, GO ANA, GO BM NICOLE and… GO WES!

Correction: Wes just informed me that he is getting fit for the honeymoon, not the wedding. My bad. :)