PLANNING OUR WEDDING: Stationery (final selection)

After much deliberation I finally decided to go with Daisy Design Shop's Mason Jar Stationery on Etsy run by the lovely Samantha:

I went for the file only option which she offers at excellent value, which is a great idea as it then doesn't matter at all that we are on the other side of the world to each other. I just loved her designs and I knew she was for me.

Samantha, I really must say has been an absolute God send, so accommodating, fantastic with advice, always happy to communicate and discuss and amend designs and saw it as a process. She genuinely does care about your custom design being perfect for you - and I am so grateful to her for that - it really is a special level of service which she provides and I wouldn't hesitate in recommending her to all.

Next challenge was were to get it all printed. I did look at a local printers, but for the quantity I wanted it just wasn't good value for money unfortunately. So I decided to look at VistaPrint who I knew were a massive international online printers and I knew their printing would be good value for money, but I was genuinely pleasantly surprised by their quality of customer service and their print quality too. Again, I would recommend them highly. The one tip  I have with using them, is to use their website to search out what you want but make sure you call them to order as you will get a much better deal, free items and they are up for bartering so do go for it!

   I would also say it is worth looking at their own invite designs as I was again surprised by how nice they were.

I did give Samantha a pretty extensive brief to work with and she really did create exactly what I was dreaming of and so much more:

I created this in word and then just saved it as a PDF using cute PDF creator before sending it to her. I included as much detail as possible along with images which I liked and colours.

Here is a photo of our save the date magnets and backing cards. I finished off the design by using one of the scrabble photos from our engagement shoot with Turner & Moss  . The one down side of getting them printed myself is that I had to individually, with the Stanley knife pictured, cut slots in each backing card to secure the magnet in, this did take forever but was worth it in the end.

Here is the final day invite stationery.

I changed to an American based wedding website in the end as I far preferred their templates called WeddingWindow; another lovely company with lovely and helpful customer service which again I would recommend.

Happy Planning!

PLANNING OUR WEDDING: Pinterest Planning

I tell you since starting to plan seriously I have found Pinterest to be by far the most useful and inspiring and free tool online! So so many ideas, so many different styles and tips and articles and photos and videos. I highly recommend signing up to anyone. I have just counted and I have 15 wedding related boards on there! - This may seem excessive but as I got into planning I realised how important it was to categorise:

You can find all my boards here

MASTER BEDROOM: Bed Linen

I lost all the photos from all my bed linen research in my blog photo debacle and actually looking over the posts it was before I had selected the final solution I went for and a lot of the ideas I had then are now no longer available anyway;  so I figured it was probably better to delete both posts in question and summarise on a new post. :)

Right, so after much shopping around initially I got a nice set from Tescos in a check in the colours which I was going for in the room, photographed below....

But this was a bit too much pattern in one place and was a cheap poly-cotton mix so I knew wouldn't have the longevity I wanted for our main set, they are fine for occasional guests and nice and soft too so I have kept them in my linen collection. I then, for a period of time, had 6 months COSTCO membership and came across something rather surprising. They do hotel style plain and very high thread-count bedlinen and very very affordable prices (around £30 a set). I bought this now around a year ago and it is honestly the most beautiful and good quality bed linen which I have ever had the pleasure of using, so so soft and beautifully plain so will not date either, just had a nice simple stripe running through which gives that hotel finish but completely white. Photographed below.....

COSTCO don't seem to do the exact same set right now but they have similar sets currently in, detailed below, though they have gone up in price, in my experience they are most definitely worth the investment:

Kirkland Signature 600 Thread Count Duvet Cover Set - Double Ivory (£67.99)

Back Garden: Progress round the pond

This is how the area round the pond was when we first moved in:

This has been a major project this yr. We had filled the pond with water before we got our water meter fitted (well worth considering). This was a Coy Carp pond to the previous owners, we want it to be a nature pond, and we have lots of plans for how to make it our perfect water feature, but as with everything else these plans take a while to come to fruition, not helped by the huge quantity of rain which we have had this year.

This pond does have potential though and had been well fitted, which was a blessing. so when we did initially fill it up we knew it would stay that way. And it did for 6 months/ 1 year with nothing more down, but I have this year been sorting out the patio area in general and quite a vast improvement has taken place.

I started in May by added these vegetable wicker planters - which have been fantastic all year:

The were from Robert Dyas and cost around £16 each - they really are just perfect for this space.

Then I started painting the fence, which carried on through out the year and progressed gradually round the pond:

Also put up trellising at the back of the pond and bought some Passion Flowers from Morrisons, which were on offer for under £2! Hopefully they will now survive the winter and come back strong as the weather warms up next year. I can see that at least one of the two I planted seems to be surviving so far.

It's well worth keep your eye out for supermarket plant offers, you can get all sorts of treasures so cheap and I do feel like I'm kind of rescuing plants I buy from supermarkets, as they sadly aren't usually looked after very well.

I then re-did the wheelbarrow, this was originally left at the bottom of the garden rusty and filled with burnt out rubbish, I took it and planted it up and painted it and it is so so lovely and makes such a nice feature on the patio, and planted it up with some plug plant fuchsias which I had bought earlier in the year, they are still thriving even now in December!

I also reorganised the planters and then found a set of two beer barrel planters on Robert Dyas along with a solid wood patio set and 6 seats for under £200. This just transformed the space:

The finished effect of all these changes:

 The parasol and stand were found in a charity shop for around £15-£20 years ago and are gorgeously solid and go perfectly with the rest of the colour scheme

 I decided to put up a bird feeder by the pond and they love it there, next thing to do is put up a nesting box round that area too....

 This bug box was a house-warming gift from my friend Mary and hopefully will attract the right kind of bugs to keep my vegetables safe from pests and pollinated in years to come

I'm just so pleased with the over all result. Well worth all the hard work.

Front Garden: Planting up some bargain plants

These were all bought from the Market on Bletchley Highstreet for 50p a pot! I never stop loving a good bargain!

 Upcycled Chimney pots, Planters from my lovely friend Katie who moved to China and gave me a bunch of stuff off her balcony, planted up with bulb (which hopefully will look stunning in spring) and winter flowering pansies which my Mum gave me & lovely Hydrangea from my mother-in-law-to-be Jacky (Birthday gift).

 Herbs planted in the ground, another lovely potted plant from Jacky and hedgehog house in its new location, I hope we get some visitors!

 Heather in the ground....

 Other flowers in the ground....

 Close-ups...

I love heather, it's so pretty but so hardy too and always reminds me of my Scottish Granddad who had his own heather bed in his garden which he always loved to show everybody.

Potted left overs to use as gifts, potted in some very pretty Charity shop pots.

BEDROOM: Lamp upgrade

From this:

To this:

Nightmare accidental deletion from stupidly set up phone! - Warning!

FYI - I use a Samsung Galaxy S2 and had to take the phone back to factory settings and delete everything in order to solve a battery life problem I was having. I, as part of this went into my gallery, on my phone and deleted all photos stored there so I could start a fresh. Little did I know that this would delete, and irreversibly!, all my Google picasa online albums, because it syncs with my Google account! This is where all my blog photos for both my blogs were stored and sourced from! And basically means that I am now going to have to individually re-upload all photos for both my blogs :(

This will take forever, but at least I have all these photos stored on my PC, but I will work through this when I can, best I can to try and reinstate each photo in turn. Please bare with me and please heed my warning, do not make the same mistake as me.

I have now gone through my Google account settings on my phone and un-ticked the box which states "sync with Google picasa" - in the phone it does not (STUPIDLY) separate your photos taken on your phone from the ones on your picasa online photo album - something that really should be addressed (@Samsung). Anyway, what's done is done, rant over on both blogs :) I just wanted to give an explanation as to why all my blog photos have disappeared.

xx