I Made My Wedding Bouquet [Out Of Buttons!]

Before we had decided on a venue, picked a day (or even a season), I was convinced of one wedding detail. I didn't want real flowers. 

I've never been big into flowers, I don't know anything about them and I'm notoriously cheap. I couldn't bring myself to spend hundreds of dollars on something I wasn't in love with. 

I also had a sneaky suspicion that I might wreck the bouquet before the night was over, as I am not exactly graceful. Before I ever made it into the car before Prom I managed to completely destroy my wrist corsage. 

So, I hit up Etsy searching for alternatives to real flowers and was amazed at the possibilities. Silk flowers, paper flowers, broach bouquets, felt flowers, and button bouquets. I immediately became fascinated with the idea of button bouquets. To order the bouquets would have been too expensive, it was about $300 for what we would need. 

I talked it over with Jay and realized we could probably make our own. I watched a few YouTube videos to get the idea and then went off in search of buttons and floral wire. 

Making the flowers was incredibly easy (though time consuming) but was something I did while watching TV and quickly had more stems than I could use. 

Stems can be bound together to make a bouquet in a variety of ways. The simpliest would be to tie them together and wrap the end of the wires in ribbon. You can also use floral foam to create the circle shape (pushing the stems through the foam each time). 

We discovered the floral foam trick after we had jammed hundreds of stems through a kitchen sieve. The stems fit through the tiny holes in the sieve and then we wrapped the metal edges with ribbon. For comfort we then wrapped all the stems in pipe foam, cut to fit and then wrapped in ribbon. 

I haven't offered a step-by-step tutorial for a couple of reasons. If you need one there are many available on other sites, but we worked on it for months and there aren't many photos to pull from. We also figured out many of the steps by trial and error, so if this is something you want to try I would just figure out what works best with your vision. 

Buttons In Action (Photos Courtesy of our Photographer, Samantha)

After we finished the bouquets (one for me, one for my MoH, and small ones for gifts), Jay helped me fashion boutonnieres with the remaining buttons and ribbon. Then we used large sized safety pins for attaching them to the jackets. 

We couldn't figure out, the best way to make button wrist corsages, so we decided to order flower corsages for our moms and grandmas. 

Materials Needed

-Buttons (various sizes) 

-Floral Wire

-Wire Cutters

-Ribbon

-Hot Glue 

-Sieve or Floral Foam 

-Safety Pins

I always add a little disclaimer at the bottom of these wedding posts, because I think all weddings are magical. If you chose real flowers for your wedding I'm sure that were beautiful and the right choice for you! If you think these button bouquets are tacky, probably they aren't the right choice for your wedding. But, the great thing about weddings is, every one is tailored to the couple! 

Linking up for Wedding Wednesday!

Keep Smiling :) 

A Handmade Wedding: Part 2

Last week I shared a few of our Wedding DIY's and now I've got a few more, simple (I promise) projects you can totally manage! I am not crafty at all and I did it, you can too! 

Centrepieces

We opted to keep things simple, with mason jars and paper flowers.

Photos Courtesy Of Our Lovely Photographer

Jars: Mason jars, wrapped in wide yellow and thin grey ribbon (hot glued in place). We then glued initial tags, printed on coloured cardstock to the front and filled the jars with white tulle. We also used the jars to store pens in for the Guest Book. 

Pinterest inspiration found here.

Paper & Button Flowers: We made paper flowers (link to tutorial below), using sheet music purchased from a thrift store ($2) and secured to floral wire with hot glue. Button flowers were made by sliding buttons onto wire and twisting (too easy)! Flowers & buttons were of different sizes. 

Paper flower tutorial on Pinterest found here. 

Table Numbers

We spray painted $1 Ikea Tolsby Frames and put a photo of each of us at similar ages on either side. We opted just to do similar ages, rather than for the pictures to be of us at the age of the table number (ex. Us at 3 for Table 3). Guests could find their seating assignments in framed signs (8x10) near the entrance. 

Pinterest Inspiration found here. 

Cake Stand (Our Epic Fail) 

We were having mini cupcakes in place of a wedding cake and thought we could totally make our own stand. So off to the dollar store we went, and bought 3 square plastic plates of varying sizes. We had a hard time finding something to put between the stands but eventually found (ugly) candlestick holders at our local thrift shop. Jay glued it all together and we considered spray painting it, but it would have held about 12 cupcakes, and we planned to have over 100. So we would have needed way too many stands, plus it was uglier than spray paint could have helped. 

For a smaller party or to display one type of dessert I think it would work, but for wedding cupcakes it just wasn't big enough. Sadly, no photos, but here are a couple of successful stands via Pinterest. 

Source // Source

Candy Table 

Candy tables are becoming increasingly popular on Pinterest. They're an easy way to give your guests a little late night treat- plus who doesn't like a little candy?!?!?! 

Jars: We decorated jars of various sizes, as per above instructions. 

Jar Labels & Sign: Designed by a friend and printed on patterned cardstock.

Candy Banner: printed off from here onto plain white cardstock (the grey border already matched our colour scheme, but any cardstock would work)! 

*It's obviously not clear in the black & white photos, but below you can see we bought yellow & blue candies to match our colours and layered them to add interest. 

Have you attempted any DIY's for a wedding or any other big party? How'd they go? 

Linking up for Wedding Wednesday! 

Keep Smiling :) 

A Handmade Wedding

Confession: I am not very crafty, I don't live in a Pinterest inspired home. I have few projects that I could call a success, and a list of half-finished projects that were far from successful. 

Yet for the wedding we decided to make almost all the decorations and details. Surprisingly, with the exception of one project (details to come) we were successful on all counts. 

Card Box 

We bought three different sized cardboard boxes with lids from the Dollar Store, wrapping paper and ribbon. The wrapping paper was actually adhesive so we could stick it to the box easily. Jay taped the box lids on and cut the card slot before he began wrapping.  We hot glued the corner pieces down and then added ribbon and glued the boxes together. Voila, a simple cardbox you can make in any colour, with added designs! 

Pinterest inspiration and instructions found here.

Guest Book 

We opted not to have a traditional guest book and instead had guests fill out Mad-Libs and advice cards that we are going to bind into a book. 

Courtesy of our Wedding Photographer

Mad-Libs & Advice Cards: We printed cards (links below) on patterned cardstock, bought on sale at Michael's (3 Packs/$11). 

Free Mad-Lib Printables here.

Flower Pens: We cut the excess plastic branches off fake flowers ($2 for a dozen at the Dollar Store), hot glued them to the end of the pens and then wrapped pens with floral tape. 

Pinterest instructions and inspiration found here. 

Jar: Details to come. 

Sign: We had a friend design all of our signs, printed them on coloured cardstock and placed them in a simple frame we had spray painted silver. 

Sign Inspiration found here. 

Bathroom Baskets

Sadly, no pictures of ours exist but we made baskets for each of the bathrooms with essentials to make our guests more comfortable. 

For baskets we used Ikea Garnityr Boxes, decorated with a ribbon and sign printed on yellow cardstock. 

We included travel sized moisturizers, mouthwash, advil, deodorant, etc. Bobby pins, hair elastics, clear nail polish, Q-Tips, Baby Wipes, combs, mints, kleenx, and more. There was a lot left at the end of the night, but much of it had been used (kleenx, baby wipes, deodorant, lip chap, bobby pins and mints were taken or used). A few guests commented on the boxes, so I'd consider this a worthwhile DIY. It can be as simple or elaborate as you can afford. A few mints and bobby pins could easily be enough! 

Pinterest Inspiration found here. 

Ok, that's all for this week. Next week, I'll share a few of our reception DIY's and our one epic fail! 

Did you, or would you, undertake any DIY's for your wedding? 

Linking up for Wedding Wednesday! I never thought I'd blog much about my our Wedding but it's kind of fun! 

Keep Smiling :) 

We're Yelling Timber!

Is it vacation yet? 

For the first time since September I felt like a rookie teacher last week as I realized I was in a little over my head with the kid's Christmas projects. We made Salt Dough ornaments (3 each), glitter snowflake ornaments (2 each) and a handprint tree canvas. Oh, and we decorated our own gift bags (front and back) to put all these treasures in.  Not one of these projects could be completed in a single day- like I said rookie teacher! Luckily I am blessed with an amazing group of kids and they worked so hard and have some amazing ornaments and trees to show for it. 

Instead of wanting to pull my hair out, I spent (most of) the week sharing in the holiday spirit. We listen to holiday music, had a few dance parties, finished another chapter book and spent some quality small group time working on our projects. I was exhausted, I even fell asleep at 7:30pm one night, but I love my job. 

Jay had a bit more relaxed week at work, things are starting to wind down before the holiday break which is nice. Due to some lovely winter weather, wrestling practice was cancelled which was kind of lame. 

We've finally finished our Christmas shopping, and have wrapped as much as we can before heading home. So basically we've wrapped the presents for each other since it's frowned upon to pre-wrap presents before going through security. Oh, the joys of holiday travelling. 

This weekend we finally got to sleep in, both mornings! It was beyond amazing. We were both pretty wiped out, so a low-key weekend was just what we needed.

This weekend I baked nine dozen two-bite brownies and made five pans of chocolate bark. We took some of the treats to Jay's friends holiday party last night and he is taking some with him to work tomorrow. The party was a good time, it had been a while since we had all gotten together so there was lots of catching up to be done. 

Did I mention that the nine dozen brownies were baked as the song Timber by Ke$ha & Pitbull blared in the background? It's kind of like my anthem now.  During the summer one of the kids used to call me Kimber and at some point my co-workers and the other kids caught on and now they all call me Kimber more than Kim/Kimberley/Miss. Kim or any other name I've ever gone by. When I pick them up at school they run over for a hug, yelling "Kimber" and this reminded my co-worker of the song Timber which I then looked up and have proceeded to memorize. See for yourself, I find it's best enjoyed on repeat at the highest volume possible! 

Anyway, that's about it for us on this snowy Sunday evening. Enjoy what is hopefully your last full week of work for a while! 

Keep Smiling (and yelling Timber!) :)

Sunday Stories 08.12.13

We have had the most productive, yet relaxing, weekend. I am so blissfully happy, Monday is going to be a rather unfortunate jolt back to reality. 

Work last week took all I had, it was just one of those weeks that you were ready to see end. Thankfully, my kiddos ended the week on a glorious high-note, they were so happy, behaved and fun to be with! We made salt-dough ornaments that they are going to give as gifts to their parents, and they were excited but such great listeners and helpers! Then my co-worker and I ended the day with some Christmas music which put everyone in a good mood! 

Jay had another busy week at work, but also had some time off for another wrestling tournament. Five of the six kids he coached placed at their city finals meet. He was pretty stoked, and rightly so. He will keep coaching into the new year (different grade levels). It's been cool having working with young people in common- we were able to share ideas on things like group control and ways to keep them motivated. 

We've finished up all the Christmas shopping, now it's just the matter of wrapping and packing everything up! Our little Christmas tree is up in the corner, looking as cute as ever, though we walked by a tree lot today and they sure smell better! 

Friday night I drank cat bottle wine in a mason jar, descriptively flavoured "Yellow." It was pretty damn delicious- last week I drank the red bottled "Pomegranate" cat wine, equally as good and both were under $10! Oh and since we had no clean bowls we did what any responsible grown up does, we ate ice cream in mugs. 

We slept in late yesterday, like until almost 11am which is incredibly late for us- and yet we (ok, honestly Jay), managed to do three loads of laundry, dishes, sweep, iron and make delicious cheese bread. Oh, and all of this happened before we sat down for supper. He was so productive, he is pretty darn special and not just because he bakes delicious bread. It is amazingly good though- cheesy garlic herb bread. 

I worked on getting the presents organized, cleaning up some of my crap from the kitchen table and writing Christmas cards, so I wasn't totally lazy! Oh, and I made two batches of peanut butter cups and squares to share with Jay's friends at work. But yes, Jay completely outshone me in the productivity department. 

Today we slept in again, until we were awoken by our malfunctioning smoke detector. Seriously never get the crazy wired in versions, and if you do- don't link it to all the other units in such an unhelpful manner. The thing malfunctions at least once a month, but our landlord said he'd get us a new one ASAP so that's good at least! 

We went for a walk, caught up on TV we missed and started watching the recently-ish cancelled Don't Trust The B**** in Apartment 23 with my shawty, Dawson, aka James Van Der Beek. He plays an exaggerated version of himself and it's hilarious. 

Anyway, that's our life this week- let us know what's up in your worlds! 

Keep Smiling :) 

*It's almost January!! HAHA

Homemade Ice Cream Cake

So I had a big birthday last week and I wanted to celebrate with ice cream cake. I also had been waiting for an opportunity to make homemade ice cream cake so it was the perfect time. That being said, since I was making the cake for myself I didn't make it quite as pretty as I would if I was giving it to someone else. 

Basically you can make any variation and size of this cake depending on your needs. My inspiration came from here and here though I modified both recipes to make my cake. 

I made mine in a standard loaf pan, but you could make it in a square, rectangle or circle pan (if you were feeling ambitious)! To keep the parchment paper in the loaf pan I secured it with an elastic. 

Ingredients
Ice Cream Sandwiches *I used Neapolitan 
Whipped Cream (Thawed)
Pudding
Oreo Cookie Crumbs 
Ice Cream (Slightly Thawed)
Frosting 

Materials
Loaf Pan 
Parchment Paper
Tinfoil (for covering it in the freezer)


Step 1: Line pan with parchment paper, secure with elastic band. 

Step 2: Place ice cream sandwiches in bottom of pan, cut to fit if necessary. 

Step 3: Mix cookie crumbs, pudding and whipped cream to create filling for the cake, spread over first layer of ice cream sandwiches. 

Step 4: Spoon and flatten slightly melted ice cream to create second layer of filling. Cover and place in freezer to firm up layers. (Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of this step). 

Step 5: Remove cake from freezer and add another layer of ice cream sandwiches. 

*You can repeat steps 3 and 4 if desired, my pan was full so I placed it back in the freezer to ensure everything was firm.  

Step 6: Remove from pan by lifting the parchment paper. Frost with whipped cream (I mixed frosting and whipped cream for a thicker consistency) and sprinkle cookie crumbs on top. Freeze. 

Step 7: Cut, serve and enjoy! 

Keep Smiling :) 

Projects

I've undertaken a few DIY projects and baking experiments over the past couple of years and hope to complete a few more in the coming weeks and months. 

Like the rest of the internet world I take much of my inspiration from Pinterest, you can follow my Pinterest Boards here. 

Below are a few of my DIY/cooking/baking posts, and you can view all of the pins I've tried here.

Living Simply:  Jan.16.13. Pasta & Cupcakes
Trust.Your.Gut: May.3.13 Muffins & Bread
Yummy Chocolate Bark: Feb.12.13 Chocolate Bark
I Made Some Food: Feb.22.12 Guacamole, Pita Chips, Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake 
A Little Valentines DIY: Feb.15.13 Heart Crayons

Froot Loop Squares

A few months ago I read somewhere that you can make Rice Krispie Squares using just about any cereal imaginable. Last weekend I finally had an excuse to make them when my sister, J-Dar came to visit. 

Her favourite cereal is Froot Loops and we had some left over in the cupboard along with leftover marshmallows from camping so it seemed like a perfect time! 

It is as easy as you'd imagine, just adapting the standard Rice Krispie Square recipe. I didn't measure any of the ingredients, just went with what felt right and they turned out delicious!

Ingredients 

*Measurements are approximate, you need enough marshmallows to coat the cereal when in doubt add more marshmallows or less cereal! 

6 Cups Dry Cereal (Your Choice!)

3 Tablespoons Butter or Margarine

1 Bag Marshmallows. 

Vanilla Extract 

Frosting (Your Choice)

Chocolate chips, sprinkles or other decorative treats. 

Materials

Large Saucepan

Wooden Spoon or Spatula

Wax or Parchment Paper 

Glass Baking Dish

Melt the butter (I used less than the recipe called for and they turned out fine), and add marshmallows. The slower you add marshmallows the quicker they melt! Once the marshmallows are melted add cereal, stirring until coated with the melted marshmallow goodness! Once combined scoop or pour the mixture into a lined dish, pressing firmly. Using a buttered spatula definitely helps with this part! 

If you want to add sprinkles or loose candy to the top, add those before placing the tray in the fridge so they can stick into the marshmallow.

Refrigerate a few hours until squares are firmed up. Then enjoy or ice with frosting of your choice! Store in an airtight container and they should last a week or more! 

I frosted the Froot Loop Squares with french vanilla frosting. They are delicious, but rich so frosting might be better on a less sugary cereal choice! Next time I think I'll use Chocolate Cheerios!

Keep Smiling :)

Trust.Your.Gut.

By golly, I think I've finally done it. I've learned to trust my gut rather than spend hours agonizing and worrying over the most mundane things. It's been three (wow!) years since my Y-Net family first really emphasized the need for me to do this but I suddenly feel as though I've finally started to actually do this. Obviously it's not perfect and I still spend more time than is normal over analyzing things, but I feel like I'm making progress. I say this not to boast about my awesomeness, but because I feel like so much of my life lately has been improved by this turn of events and a blog about life lately wouldn't be complete without this revelation. 

This week has been... let's go with interesting. I had a lot going out at placement, a couple of meetings, a dinner date with my babysitting family and I slept horribly most of the week so I was grumpalicious for sure. Nothing was particularily bad and since I've become more positive and less anxious (see above lol!) I am having a harder time having a horrible day/week. 

Jay found out for certain that he does not need glasses, which is good news. Life has been pretty regular lately. I asked him if there was anything he wanted me to share and he said, "It's been a pretty lame-ass week." So there you have it. 

I've been eager to share some pictures from our AMAZING Sunday last weekend pretty much since it happened so I'm going to wrap this up with those and hopefully kickstart another great weekend! 

We went on our first hike of the year on one of the most beautiful days yet (20degrees and sunny!) Sadly half of the trail was washed out. Jay was not impressed. 

The best part was when we saw a deer (left hand side of the picture, near the trees)!!! She wasn't afraid of us so we were able to watch her for a few minutes, she strolled into the woods when we passed by but popped out again after we left! 

Then we came home and FINALLY used our bread maker that some lovely friends of ours gave us when we were home at Christmas! We made Herb French Bread and it is delicious. Jay also made some fantastic apple sauce and I made granola muffins (they are yummy than the picture makes them appear!). 

Then (and sadly we have no photos to document this) we went to the park to kick around the soccer ball for the first time, two boys no older than ten approach us and ask if they can play. So we spent an hour playing 2 on 2 soccer with some neighbourhood kids. They kicked our butts, but that was a given since we'd already hiked and baked our day away! We were exhausted by the end, but so were the kids so at least they had to work for their victory! 

Just a random photo of me from this week looking a little fancy. 

Lastly, my Ant Inquiry centre in process. So far we've set up three ant farms and I've got a couple of charts to post of the kids knowledge and questions. I have become the go-to bug girl which is such a surprising role for me considering they ick me out in every other context. I pick up ants, I let worms crawl all over my hands and I crawl around in the dirt looking at beetles. I'll try and keep posting photos as my display grows, it is only week two after all! 

If you have any recommendations for hiking spots in Ottawa, or favourite bread maker recipes please pass them on!!! Hope your weekend is filled with relaxation, fun and laughs! 

Keep Smiling :) 

Kimberley 

   p.s. Go SENS Go!  

Yummy Chocolate Bark DIY

So, I've mentioned just a few times that I love Valentine's Day. This year I took a very DIY approach to sharing my love. This is one of three DIY's that I made for some of those near and dear to me. 

I've been pinning recipes for chocolate bark on Pinterest for months, always intending to make them and never following through. Valentine's Day seemed like the perfect opportunity to give it a whirl. 

It was super simple, melting chocolate and cooling it in the fridge. 

I used about a cup and a half of chocolate chips melted in the microwave (medium power, about four minutes), I trust you to use your judgement. 

I pulled it out to stir every minute or so to make sure it wasn't burning. 

Here is where I epically failed in the photo documentation, I'll try and paint you a mental picture instead. 

Once your chocolate is melted pour it onto a wax paper lined tray, use a spoon or spatula to smooth it out and place in the fridge to harden. This took about half an hour, so try and be patient! 

Then melt the chocolate you want to use for your second layer of deliciousness. For this I used chocolate baking wafers, I grabbed a handful and melted them. These I would watch more closely as the first time I melted them in the microwave the white chocolate burnt in the middle. It was gross. 

If you want to add sprinkles, candy, pretzel pieces or any other delicious goodies get them ready while your chocolate is melting. Once the chocolate wafers are melted and your bottom layer of chocolate has set pour the melted chocolate on top. 

If you are adding sprinkles or candy, now is the time. Sprinkle it on quickly before the top layer of chocolate begins to harden (or the bottom layer begins to melt).

Then throw it back in the fridge to set. In an hour or so pull it out and break or cut your bark into serving size pieces. 

Package to give as gifts and keep the less pretty pieces in a jar for you to snack on! 

Tips and Tricks

• As you probably guessed, baking wafers work better for this than chocolate chips. The bars of baking chocolate they sell at the grocery store probably also works great. 
• Be prepared for the chocolate to set quickly, so have the sprinkles ready to shake as soon as you pour the chocolate on. 
• Unless you are a domestic goddess (which clearly I am not), don't expect perfection as pouring chocolate is kind of a random skill to have. 
• A flat baking sheet lined with waxed paper works better than a glass baking dish as you have a flatter surface to pour the chocolate on.
• I didn't find the cinnamon hearts stuck very well to the chocolate, cutting candy pieces up or using candy with more texture might work better. 
• You can skip the second layer of chocolate and add your sprinkles, pretzels, nuts or other goodies to the first layer of melted chocolate if you prefer!

I'd love to hear any tips, suggestions or ideas you have for making chocolate bark! 

Keep Smiling :)