Wedding

I decided to post just a handful of photographs from the day, which ended up being a fairly difficult job as there were so many wonderful ones to choose from. My photographer, the massively talented Lauren French, did such an amazing job - she captured exactly the look and mood that I wanted. (Although I have played around with them a little for this post - I am currently obsessed with the 1960's effect on Picnik, and the Poladroid application!)

My cousin and his wife were vegan, so rather than giving them the option of salad in bread with no butter, my mum and I whipped up some tasty vegan treats - scones, falafels, and the wonderful chocolate cake above. They had vegan cheese and mayonnaise in their sandwiches, and soya milk for the tea - I heard from my Aunt that they actually took the leftovers home in freezer bags!

The flowers were all from the Boarhunt Flower Mill, and are completely fake. Real flowers were out of our budget, but to suit the country-vintage-retro-afternoon-tea style day, some sorts of blooms had to be present. I was amazed at the quality and choice, and now also have flowers that will never wilt dotted around our little flat! We simply bound them together with stem tape, and then wrapped ribbons over the top. The dress was £200 from eBay (never worn - the seller found a nicer one) and the bag was £5 from New Look. Bargains!

My lovely, wonderful, amazing Dad.

My beautiful Mum, who helped with absolutely everything - if it weren't for her, nothing would have looked even half as nice as it did.

Continuing with the theme of DIY, my Mum and I (well, mostly my Mum actually - she's wonderful with flower arranging) tied ribbons around the tops of jam jars, pasta jars and the Boy's old juice jars, and filled them with more flowers. This was massively time consuming, but well worth it as the effect was just perfect. Favours were little retro-style paper candy bags filled with boiled sweets and chews. Nom nom nom!

The cake was probably one of the biggest triumphs - three different size layers of 'Celebration Cake' from Asda, stacked on top of each other and decorated with more flowers. My Mum found some little sugar hearts in the bakery section, so we spent a good hour 'gluing' some around the edges of the layers with icing. The whole thing can't have cost more than about £30, which in my eyes, is a whopping bargain!

The day was everything I could have wanted, and although there were some hiccups (I couldn't get the ring on the Husbands finger, and we arrived at the reception before everyone else!), they only made the day seem more 'us'. How does it feel to be married? Absolutely no different!

Thank-You Very Much

Rather than spend money on commercial cards, we decided to make our thank you notelets that were in keeping with our wedding and honeymoon. The end result will hopefully have some sort of further embellishments, but for now, this is what we've come up with. Not bad for a home jobby and a first try!

The Haul

Thanks to our lovely, generous guests, not only could we afford to go and stay in a fabulous b&b in Brighton but we also had enough money to do some serious shopping. Our flat, although we've lived in it for over six months now, is still looking a little bare, so the first thing we bought was a ton of artwork, wrapping paper to put in frames and postcards.

One of the things I was most excited about was being able to have a right good rummage through all the flea markets - we don't have anything like that in Portsmouth; the closest we've got is charity shops and old furniture shops that sell sofas with holes in and scratched filing cabinets. As you can imagine, I was in my element in shops that were crammed with shelves jostling with 1970's tableclothes, 50's china and old tin boxes. So much so, that we ended up buying so much that once we got home, the Husband had to put a new shelf up in the lounge to hold it all!

Flea markets well and truly rummaged, the next places I stumbled across that made my pulse really race were two fabric shops nestling in the North Laines. One was called Ditto Fabrics, and offered such patterns and prints that I've only ever dreamed of finding. Retro print hearts! The eiffel tower! A metre of seventies style floral cotton for just £3.99! I was a happy Mrs indeed. The other one was an utter fabric chaos - a veritable maze of materials (none were really to my taste, I'm a bit picky when it comes to fabric quality...) and a cabinet bursting with buttons - I could have happily spent a good hour just picking out buttons, but I had the Husband to think of, so I gathered a good handful and we set off again.

While we were wandering around, we decided we had to buy presents for people, so we came up with wonderful jams for the parents (and a Beano mug for my Dad and a bag of yummy fudge for my Mum), and a lovely wooden, eco-friendly, sustainably-made scooter for the Boy. I have a real thing for wooden toys - they satisfy the traditionalist and the love of eco-friendly in me, as well as being more hard wearing and durable than plastic. The Boy has a LOT of plastic toys, as the lovely wooden ones come at rather a high price, but if money were no object... well, there'd be no garish plastic in his toy box! When we presented it to him after arriving home, he ran towards it excitedly, stood on it and...... waited. Obviously he thought that simply standing on it would make it glide across the room! Fun times ahead with that scooter indeed....

Honeymooning

When trying to decide on what to put on our wedding list, we hit upon the not-so-new idea of actually just asking for donations for our honeymoon rather than presents for the house (after all, who really needs three toasters and a bread maker?). Our wonderful guests gave generously, and we went from having no honeymoon at all, to two nights in Brighton. Hurrah!


We picked our little b&b from a list on the internet, purely on the basis of it's name - Snooze - since I am pretty renowned for curling up like a cat at any available opportunity for a little nap. When we clicked through to the gallery, we knew instantly it was exactly our sort of place - retro furnishings combined with a laid back attitude. We booked it immediately and jumped in the car the next morning, stopping only to shower The Boy with kisses and deposit him with his wonderful Nanny and Gampy.

We whiled away our two days shopping in the endless flea markets and around the lanes, eating in the best cafes and restaurants, wandering along the beach and generally having a lovely relaxing time. Points to note were finding the most amazing fabrics and buttons, having possibly the best meal of my life (excluding the ones my Mum cooks, obviously) at Jamies Italian (yes, THE Jamie, of Oliver fame) and eating the most amazing cooked breakfast in the retro-designed dining room at our b&b. Nom, nom, nom.

Coming Next: My amazing haul of flea market finds, fabric buys, things-for-the-walls and homewares galore.

Married

We had the beautiful weather, we had the wonderful guests, we had the retro suit and the vintage-style dress. The day passed in a blur of friends, family, laughter and happy tears, and it was everything we could have hoped for. Next stop.... honeymoon in Brighton!

Craft Space

Although we moved into our little flat over six months ago, we've still got plenty of decorating and sprucing and organizing and beautifying to do. When we first arrived, my crafty area was a designated corner of the lounge, but when The Boy went from wobbling across the lounge to scaling chairs and sofas, I decided that it might be time for a little change.


And so, the Nearly-Husband kindly put up some shelves in our extra-large hallway, and I turned this into my little creative space. For a while, things were shoved in boxes, and slowly, piles of stuff began to appear on my desk (which will hopefully be replaced with some sort of retro table very soon!) Earlier this week, I decided that the piles of stuff were simply out of control, and something had to be done.

The floral bag on the chair (a Cath Kidston freebie, courtesy of Easy Living magazine!) was actually full of wool, which is why the pink basket looks much fuller in the 'after' picture. A place for everything, and everything in it's place!

It was a fairly quick project, as most of the pictures had been put up, the notice board had been made (that's another post entirely!), and the storage boxes were simply waiting to be filled. It was just a case of putting things in their final homes. And so, without further ado, I present.... my Creative Space. In an ideal world, it's an entire spare room, and the shelves run the length of the walls. But for now, it's a corner in an oversize hall - they do say the best things come in small packages...