Valentine's Day Wreath

This wreath may look familiar. It is the same one that I made for Christmas but easily re-purposed! All I did was take off the snowflakes and add cute styrofoam hearts and decorations. Perfect example of all the things you can do with these wreaths. I bought some orange polydeco mesh on clearance after the Holidays and plan to do a UT one in the fall!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I got a new car!!!

It is a little bitter-sweet but I am so excited to say the least! I've loved my Explorer and had it since I was 16! Most of your probably know that I love to drive and pretty much lived out of the back of my car!

But now that I have a new, beautiful, clean car and plan to keep it that way! No more hauling junk around! Here she is...

My Nissan Murano!

The dash with so many buttons! I have yet to discover what they all are for!

This cute little box is just the first step to keeping my car nice and neat! I love driving it so far. I'm thinking road trip soon?!?

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

All signs this week have been pointing to chocolate this week for some reason. Seth and I started talking about chocolate covered strawberries one night and I couldn't stop thinking of them. So I figured we'd have a little Valentine's Day treat a few weeks early. Now I know it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to make chocolate covered strawberries but thought I would feature it anyway. All you need is strawberries and chocolate (I used candy melt).

First wash and dry your strawberries. Heat your chocolate in a bowl for 2 minutes, then stirring and repeating until melted. While holding the stem, dip each side in the chocolate, forming a sweetheart shape near the top. Set to dry on wax paper.

Now if that doesn't make your mouth water I don't know what will! This was on of my favorites, a tuxedo strawberry. You can also drizzle it with alternating colors. I did this using a piping bag but you can also use a ziplock bag with the tip cut out!

YUMMM! I made about 20 strawberries for $6. Around Valentine's Day you could pay up to $40 for a dozen. Plus it's something fun to do together, or maybe even fondue! Enjoy!

Make your own wedding centerpiece

I apologize in advance for the length of this post. If you are looking for super quick instructions on how to do your wedding flowers, you won't find it here. But it is informative if you really want to go through with this.

I had quotes upwards of $3000 for all our flowers. That was a LOT more than I was willing to spend. So I hired Jan Giordano to do all the bouquets and ceremony flowers and decided to the reception flowers myself! Or more like with the help of my wonderful bridesmaids and Mother-in-law! The flowers made me most nervous throughout planning. This couldn't be done weeks ahead like almost every other DIY project. It had to be done in the most stressful 48 hours leading up the wedding! I definitely had my doubts.

Enter Geny's Wholesale, my life saver. Located in Nashville, this place is amazing! You can order flowers, take flower classes, or use a consultant for help. I went into this without a clue but they were so helpful. I had planned for a combination of (19) small and (7) large arrangements. I bought the small vases at Dollar Tree and the larger ones at TJ Maxx, which required lots of trips.

In order to figure out how many flowers I needed, I attempted a test run with flowers from the grocery! Here I am going to focus on my larger centerpieces. My smaller ones were much simpler and don't require much instruction. I originally planned on using roses, hydrangeas, hypercium (green berries), white stock and greenery filler. I didn't quite stick to this in the end. I'll explain later. Other than the flowers, here's what you need:

• large vase, any height with 5-7 inch diameter
• floral tape, waterproof works best
• flower shears
  
• fresh floral foam, a good sized piece but must fit on the plate
  
• a clear plastic plate, I used 7.5"

Wet your floral foam. Place onto the plastic plate. Tape the floral foam tightly to the plate by wrapping the tape all the way around. Set on the vase.

Begin adding the greenery filler all over. You will add more later but you want to get a base on it so it won't cover up the flowers you add later. Be sure to stick the stem as far towards the center/bottom as possible so it stays.

Here I am testing the look. This is where I decided not to use hydrangeas. The cost had something to do with it, too. Beware: while hydrangeas are beautiful, they wilt quickly and require lots of water. They do not sit very well in the floral foam and can be tricky if you don't have experience working with them. Everything else turned out to work pretty good. I ended up adding some green buttons, carnations instead of hydrangeas, and gypsophila (baby's breathe), and bells of ireland (inside the vases).

I found it was best to seperate the different flowers in different levels. Start at the top. Our venue had high ceiling so I used the Stock (5 stems) to create height. Then I added the roses (5) at a 45 degree angle. Then the carnations (8) parallel with the table. I used more greenery, the gyp and buttons to fill in any wholes. I filled the vases with water and (2) Bells of Ireland and put the plate on top.

All in all, I spent almost $350 on the reception flowers, about $12.50 on each centerpiece. It may seem like a lot to some of you, but my quote was $45 for each centerpiece. So I ended up saving a lot. Our prep the day before took about an hour. On the day of the wedding, my MIL and I worked on these from 6am-9am. Not recommended but well worth it!

Here's a closeup!

Here is what they looked like complete and on the table. Love them even more that I did them myself! So proud! These also work great for wedding and baby showers, really any type of party!

Happy Birthday to me!!

What a wonderful birthday already! I want to do this to the yummy red velvet cake from my sweet Aunt Lea! I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends and family! Off to dinner with my amazing husband! Birhdays are the best!