The Realm of Harry Potter Dorkitude

I mentioned that B and I had spent part of our Arts and Crafts Night working on our costumes for a Harry Potter-themed party we were attending in the near future. Well, the near future came and went last Friday night. The party was hosted by some good friends (and fellow blogger), one of whom decided to ring in her 26th year HP-style.

B and I are both long-time HP fans. Actually, the summer we started dating, I knew B really cared about me when he read the entire newly-released seventh book in one weekend. (I read it in one night... but it's not a competition...) Since then, we've seen every movie the day it came out, and have each re-read the books (and then dissected them together) multiple times. So, this HP party was right up our alley. And we were able to hold our own in a night of trivia games amongst other die-hard fans (even though Charades is not B's forte).

After much deliberation (B really wanted to go as Dobby), we chose to go as Gryffindor Quidditch players--Katie Bell and Oliver Wood, to be specific.


I designed a little sumpthin'-sumpthin' on Photoshop, and we printed two copies onto transfer paper:

Imagine this is rotated 90-degrees clockwise--long story short, my free Photoshop trial ran out and I'm waiting for my shipment of the real thing to get here before I can edit photos again.

Take note of the little "Quidditch League" emblem we included--they ended up on the sleeves like a jersey :-)

After two failed attempts on my part (1. forgetting to remove the backing from the iron-on, and basically ironing the design to a piece of paper, and 2. choosing to iron on a cutting board that we only thought was heat-resistant, and thereby fusing one T-shirt to a white plastic cutting board), we successfully created the following:

Quick, easy, and painless (well, except for the two fails mentioned above), and we had attire for our HP party. Not to mention that any party that allows me to attend in stretchy pants and tennis shoes is OK by me.

Cookies, and Centerpieces, and Banners, Oh My!

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

~ G. B. Shaw

(Is it bad that all the quotes I find on marriage are extremely cynical? That is, if they're not incredibly corny.)

With less than three months to go, we're officially neck deep in wedding projects (hence Arts and Crafts Night earlier this week). I've spent the last year and three months or so with DIY wedding projects flying around in my head. I even have a "Wedding" tab on my bookmarks toolbar with various inspirations, and spent countless hours pondering: do I like these favor boxes, these favor cookies, these favor cookies, these centerpieces, or these centerpieces? (You can see that I spent an awful lot of time on marthastewartweddings.com. I even started referring to her as my friend, Martha.)


Although I didn't end up replicating any of those models exactly (Martha doesn't seem as concerned about budget as those of us in the real wedding-planning world), I did use some of my friend Martha's ideas.


For example, from this banner, I'm creating these banners (they're a work in progress--see ribbon order details below!):

I have yet to add the ribbon, but it's coming--actually, more than 175 yds. of ribbon are currently in transit to our doorstep. Mom found some awesome bulk-ordering websites this week, and for less than $40 we scored all the ribbon we need for the entire wedding.

Instead of cutting or punching out each of the circles individually (like Martha suggests), I paid a visit to our neighborhood Paper Source (my latest obsession!) where they sell pre-cut circles and circular labels in coordinating colors. I was able to download a template from their website, then easily print the labels right on my home printer. Honestly, I usually avoid anything printed at home with a template--but these were so easy! I just wish I had found Paper Source earlier in the wedding planning stages...


And, from this centerpiece and this one, we created our reception centerpieces, replacing the lemons/limes with oranges:

The actual ribbon for these pieces are expected in the tremendous ribbon shipment later this week. Also, the drooping flowers are not in the plan--we were playing with these arrangements so much that these daisies were a few days old.


In order to cut costs, we've decided to order our own reception flowers from Sam's. Even though our florist is incredibly reasonably-priced and easy-to-work-with, flower arrangements just plain add up. So, we're going the DIY route on this one. Hopefully we won't regret it the day before the wedding when we're slicing bushels of oranges and defrosting packaged Gerbera daisies.


We had planned to go DIY in one other area of the big day--our favors. We decided awhile ago to give decorated sugar cookies to our guests at the reception. And, at the time, my mom, future-MIL and I had fond images of time spent happily baking the afternoon away. But now, with a to-do list a mile long, we're all about delegating. After some price shopping and time-managing, we decided to send this project out to the pros. We were referred to Shari at Smart Cookies Bakery, who was able to offer us a fantastic price for 260 heart-shaped, pink-glazed sugar cookies. And, the icing on the cake cookie was that she individually wraps each cookie, complete with ribbon in our colors. (This ribbon is separate from the 175 yd. shipment.)