Get Excited For Crafting...

It's been forever since I've posted on here and I have no one but myself to blame.  Of course I'm not doing that, so I'm going to say that it's all Chowder's fault.  Mostly because she can't defend herself.


I've decided to do some fancy crafting for my wedding and today's post is going to be about kissing balls.  If you haven't heard of these things I'll explain:  basically they're weird balls with stuff on them.  Why they're called kissing balls I'll never know, but the mental image that term brings to mind cracks me up.  The ones I decided to make have ruffles all over them and are amaaaazing.


All you need to have handy is fabric, scissors, a hot glue gun, a styrofoam ball, and netflix on your wii.  That last part is optional, but I'm not sure how I could have finished this without Season 5 of Weeds to keep me company.

You're a life saver, Ms. Botwin.

Anyway, as a heads up my camera isn't the best so bear with me on these shots.  First just grab some fabric (I used felt, but that's just me... I adore felt for some crazy reason).  Cut them into a bunch of circles.

See?  They don't even have to be perfect!

Then you fold a circle in half... 

and place a dot of hot glue in the center...

and then you fold it in half again.  The fun never stops.

Now make a TON of them.

Start by gluing them onto the styrofoam ball and keep going until it's covered.

I chose to put a cream colored ribbon onto the top, but you could do any combo you'd like.  Remember that my camera is crappy so these look MUCH better in real life.  I actually love them.  A lot. :)

Because We All Know How Much Matty Likes Fire...

I’m not going to lie… today was a great day. Matty finally came home from traveling for work and we got to spend time together for the first time in way to long. We got to talking about our wedding and how, since it’s in early-mid September, the night may start to turn a little chilly. It’s kind of a difficult decision because on one hand the outside setting in my small town is absolutely beautiful:

but this is also in Missouri, so the weather can change faster than you can say, “Hey look at that cloud! Do you think it’ll rain? Ah crap!” My Grandma called me the other day to ask about what I would do if it got cold. I paused and said, “Never thought about it. Wasn’t to concerned. Should I be?” “Well, if you want your Grandpa to stay very long it’s going to need to be pretty warm.” This kind of threw a wrench in my plans. Though the church grounds are beautiful, the hall… well… isn’t.

This picture is from my friend’s wedding and I think they did a fantastic job of decorating (it was in December in case you couldn’t tell). It’s so adorable and I had initially wanted a winter wedding because of all the fun things you could do. Then I realized that it might ice/snow and all my efforts would be for nothing. That ended my snowy wedding fantasy SUPER quick. It’s kind of hard to see here, but this is a closer shot of the floor:

He’s dancing. Not falling and/or having a seizure. Look past him to the beauty that is the floor of our community center. No rhyme. No reason. Just random. As a side note: there is a pretty amazing bowling ally in this building, but I think they may frown on people just randomly bowling. So I’m brought back to my problem. Do I settle for the hall and try to decorate it as best I can (not optimal) or do I man up and try to figure out how to have the outside shindig I’ve wanted this whole time? Anyone who knows me has already figured out what I’ll do. I’m going to somehow finagle a way to have this joyous celebration under the stars like I wanted. Enter my genius idea!

FIRE!!!  We could have a firepit out there.  That sounds safe, right?  Not really, but I'm okay with that.  I mean... look how much fun these guys are having:

It looks like they're having so much fun they can barely STAND it.  I think as long as we can contain the fire.  And possibly keep Matty away from it we may have something like the picture above.  Not like the LAST time we let Matty work a bonfire...