Wedding Wednesday- Beginning your planning: Some tips!

When I started planning my wedding, I had no idea about how to go about the budget or how to keep everything organized. I originally thought I would keep a binder full of everything, but as time went on, I realized that I needed some way to have it all on a spread sheet of some kind so I could see the big picture all at once. I am not very familiar with Excel, so the thought of a spreadsheet was a little daunting.

I ended up using Google Docs and it worked out SO well. Google Docs is a section of google that allows you to work on and store documents online. It is very user friendly and the best part about it is that is saves automatically and you can access it from any computer that has the internet. This came in handy many times when I was not on my personal computer and wanted to quickly look at my budget or lists.

And let me tell you... there were LISTS. There were so many lists that I had lists about which list was which! And anytime I didn't have a list for something, in about 2 seconds flat, there was a list! Google Docs made it so easy to keep track of everything!

Here is a LIST of all my lists:

The budget was the most important piece of the planning. Here is how I organized mine. I had a spread sheet that looked like this:

I used the headers as a base and firstly added the things we wanted to do for the wedding and what their projected cost would be. After I entered what I THOUGHT things would cost and added up the total, I tweaked things here and there to work within the amount we were hoping to spend. The projected cost became the amount that we had to stay within when we were shopping and planning. If I went over somewhere, I made sure to cut somewhere else. In the end, it was a very intricate sheet that included every expense down to the last cent.

Here is what one of the categories looked like:

As well as keeping everything in Google Docs, I had a box and a binder in which I kept all my ideas and other paperwork. This included magazine clippings, receipts, contracts signed with the vendors and other little pieces of planning memorabilia that I wanted to save. By the time the planning was over, the box was overflowing!

I also made sure to keep all my email correspondence with anyone involved in the wedding and kept them in separate folders from all my regular personal emails. This is always a good idea in case there is a discrepancy between what you thought was agreed upon and what someone else thought! Evidence in writing is key to success!

In true wedding planning fashion, here is a LIST of my tips for organized planning:

1. Find a way to keep everything in one place where you can see it all at once. I highly recommend Google Docs, but if you are more Excel savvy than me, I'm sure that would work too!

2. Keep a paper trail of everything and keep it all in one place.

3. Create a budget that includes everything as early on as you know. Stick to your budget and much of the stress of the planning will go away! Especially the stress part of it when your fiance questions your spending- as long as you are organized you can always say, "it's in the budget!"

4. Cross things off your budget as you complete the payments and buy the items. It ends up being like a countdown to the wedding- the more things that are crossed off, the closer you are to the big day!

5. Have fun! Half the fun of it is the talking about it, looking at ideas, ordering, organizing and putting it all together!

Happy Planning!

The Oscars- are you sick of hearing about it yet?

I always love the Oscars. There is something about the red carpet that really gets me excited. In university my roommates and I had an Oscar party in which we bought red fabric and created our very own red carpet in the living room. Everyone attending had to wear one oscar-worthy piece and walk the red carpet.

On Sunday I watched, sans oscar-worthy attire. I watched with my mother in law and also texted with my mom and auntie for the entirety of the show. Which brings me to my favourite part: The critique. Although I did not see a single one of the nominated films this year, except Bridesmaids, I was still able to watch and create a running commentary of everything that happened throughout the show. A guilty pleasure of mine would have to be making fun of, judging and talking about celebrities!

Here are the highlights for me:

1. Dresses: My 2 faves were on Octavia Spencer (winner for best supporting actress in The Help) and Penelope Cruz (a presenter).

2. Meryl Streep, who I love, finally won Best Actress. She has been nominated 17 times- the most in history- and has only ever won once before this year. Her speech was so down-to-earth. Loved it, love her.

3. Christopher Plummer winning Best Supporting Actor at age 82- the oldest oscar winner in history. Captain Von Trapp still has it!

5. Angelina Jolie's Leg Stance- She is so weird. I am so Team Jenn. When she came on to present an award, she stood in a way that was meant (I think) to show off the slit in her dress, but it was so awkward and forced that she could hardly concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing. She was too busy extending her leg out of her dress!


Anyway, the funny part was when the winner of the award she was presenting, Jim Rash, Descendants writer, came on stage to get his award, he stood just like she did, sparking a few chuckles from the crowd and a full on belly-laugh from me!

I also just found out that Angelina's Leg now has her own Twitter page in which people are Tweeting things like "Hey look at me! I'm a leg!" HA!

6. Emma Stone and Ben Affleck- They presented an award together and Emma stole the show from Ben. She was great, very cute, charming, funny and seemed so comfortable on stage. Look out Angelina!

7. Last but not least, Billy Crystal. I was so glad he was back. Anne Hathaway and James Franco so didn't do it for me.

Any thoughts on the Oscars?

I scored bigtime

I am going to let you all in on a little secret: Thrift stores are a GOLD MINE for children's books. I scored over 80 books for my classroom at Value Village this weekend. These include recent popular fiction, books I will use for teaching, non-fiction, books to boost my book bins and all time favourites. I don't know who in their right mind would want to give up these books, but whoever they are, I thank them!

Are you jealous? :)

I have a confession to make...

I don't always wash my fruit before I eat it.

There, I said it.

I'm going to try to get better at doing that.

Wedding Wednesday- The bridal accessories: Hair combs, Earrings and Fur, oh my!

I didn't go over board with my accessories as I was going for a clean, elegant look and I wanted my dress to be the focal point. However, I did look at hundreds of pictures of earrings, jewellery, hair combs, veils and fur stoles before making my decision.

The Hair Comb
I knew I was going to have my hair up and originally thought I would like a veil that somehow clipped onto the back of my updo. After trying on a couple of veils with my dress, it just didn't look right to have two different kinds of lace on my back. I decided to wear just a hair comb instead. I LOOKED and looked and looked and looked and googled and googled and googled some more and read wedding blogs and read the discussion boards on Wedding Bee (another post on that coming later!) and then when I was tired of looking at hair combs, I looked at MORE hair combs. I think I looked at EVERY. SINGLE. hair comb there is ON. THE. WEB.

Looking in stores, I found the hair combs to be very expensive- like $300+ expensive. My budget for all my accessories and jewellery was about $200. On most of the wedding websites I found, the hair combs were too cheap looking, so THANK GOD for Etsy. If you have not been on this site, cancel all your plans for tonight, you now have a date with Etsy. It is the BEST place on the web to fuel your creative energy. Anyway, I found my hair comb on Etsy from a shop called Luxe Deluxe for $75. You can find it here.

When I ordered it, I still wasn't convinced that it was the right one as I didn't know if I liked the large jewel amongst the smaller ones. I also wasn't sure about the size of it as I had nothing similar to compare it to. I wanted something quite big, that people would notice and the main reason why I decided on this one was that it was over 3 inches long and most of the other ones were only about 2 inches. Anyway, when it arrived I ripped the package open and hastily shoved it into my messy bun to try and envision what it would look like and I was quite pleased with my choice!

The Earrings
I also looked all over the web and in many stores for my earrings. My mom and I took a trip to San Francisco during the wedding planning and I thought for sure I would be able to find earrings there. We looked at every pair in Bloomingdales, Macys, and Nordstrom and here are some that were the runners up:

But in the end, I had to resort to Etsy again. The chandelier earrings just weren't doing it for me! I ended up ordering simple tear drop crystal earrings from an Etsy shop called Earrings Nation for $30. You can find it here.

When they came in the mail, I ripped into the package and tried them on and I really felt bridal! They were perfect. Here is a shot from the day where you can see both the hair comb and earrings sparkling in their full glory!

The Fur
Because I was having a winter wedding, I knew I needed some kind of wrap or cover-up to keep me a little bit warm and I decided almost right away on a fur stole. I looked at many fur stoles on ebay including both real and fake fur ones. Of all the advice I got from family, the consensus was that I should have real fur, but it wasn't as easy as we thought. My aunt spent some time scouring thrift stores but didn't find anything suitable. In exasperation one day she said: "Can't Tom just go out and skin you a few ermines??!" HA! We all had a good laugh about that.

We decided that we would have to sew a fur stole and the next predicament was finding faux fur that was nice enough. Any of the fur we saw at Fabricland was very short and not very soft. It was pretty tacky looking. We ended up finding some at a specialty fabric store in Vancouver.

I searched the web (AGAIN!) and found directions for sewing your own fur stole here. It was fairly easy, although I shouldn't be the one to talk, as my mom did it all for me. When she opened the bag that was keeping the fur, a cloud of faux fur exploded into her living room and the fur continued to shed profusely throughout the fur-sewing process. It was so bad that my stepdad yelled "get that piece of s--t out of here!!"

She finally researched "working with faux fur" on the web and found out that you should put it through the dryer as many times as it takes for it to stop shedding. She had to clean her lint dispenser about 6 times, but in the end it was a lot better to work with. She cut it and then hand sewed the lining in (a piece of my wedding dress fabric). We pinned it with a vintage brooch from her jewellery collection which had belonged to my great grandmother. It ended up being a gorgeous addition to my wedding day ensemble and really kept me warm too!

All accessories were done on the cheap! With a little research and time, you can find anything on the web! Happy accessory hunting! Remember, Etsy is your best friend!

Still a work in progress

We haven't tiled the backsplash yet, but here are some pics from the infamous kitchen reno.

Music to my ears

After telling my students we were starting a new science unit and they would be researching a Canadian animal, they were all excited to say the least.

As I dismissed them out the door for recess on Friday I heard one of my boys say to another with genuine glee in their voice: "Can you WAIT to study this?! I can't!!!"

It snowed

Which means I don't plan on leaving the house this weekend... I am going to:

- work on my quilt
- bake banana bread
- clean!
- work on our wedding thank yous
- play on my blog
- host my sister and her charming bf for dinner
- bake bran muffins, and
- watch bad TV

Happy Weekend!

100th Day of School and Valentine's Day

We had a crazy day on Tuesday with the 100th Day of School and Valentine's Day falling on the same date. It was a fun-filled day packed with art, math, reading and creating! Here are some of the highlights:

1. Students in every class in the school did 100s day projects in which they had to bring in a collection of 100 things, arranged as creatively as they could. My kiddies did a wonderful job. Here is a sample from some of the school favourites:

2. We spent the morning doing an art activity in my class. Kids had to try to mix 100 different colours.

3. Students in primary rotated through 3 stations and did activities with the number 100 at each one. At my station, they had to arrange the numbers 1-0-0 in a creative way and make a picture out of them! I LOVED the outcome.

My favourite would have to be the second from left on the top: 

A girl drinking water from a straw. How creative can you get??!?!

4. After lunch, the Valentine's fun began! We exchanged Valentine cards and then I had the kids do a graph. First, they had to sort their Valentines into 4 categories. 

Afterwards, they had to create a bar graph. It was a great way to connect fun with learning!

Happy (belated) 100th/Valentine's Day!

Wedding Wednesday- The Dress

I am starting a new "segment" on my blog titled "Wedding Wednesday" where I will profile different aspects of my wedding planning and give DIY tips for brides who are trying to plan an elegant soiree on a budget! I found many blogs with this type of advice very helpful when I was planning my wedding. I hope you enjoy it!



The perfect wedding dress is every girl's dream and I am lucky to say that with a little creativity, a little stress, and some thinking and planning, I was able to have perfection for less!

I started looking and thinking about THE DRESS practically the minute that I got engaged! That week many friends brought me over wedding magazines as little engagement presents and it was in one of those magazines that I saw THE DRESS in an ad. 

I knew I didn't want strapless and I wanted lace and I wanted something that had some weight to it as I was getting married in a church and in the winter. The form fitting beachy style was never my taste- full skirt all the way! So this ad jumped out at me right away. Lace- check. Non-strapless- check. Full taffeta skirt- check. I researched some bridal stores in Calgary and found the dress (Designer- Watters, Style- Escalante) at a small boutique downtown. The very next weekend my mom and I were off to find the dress. 

It was the first store we went to and the first dress I tried on and just like on all the wedding dress shows, I said "YES" to the dress almost before even looking in the mirror. It fit so well and it was just beautiful. There wasn't one thing on it that I didn't like... except the price tag: $3300 not including tax and alterations. Yikes! I knew there was NO way I would be able to buy the dress. 

We were in Calgary dress shopping for the weekend and decided we'd better try on a few more dresses just for the fun of it, but my mind was racing trying to think of a way I would be able to get MY dress. I tried on a few more at 2 other stores, but nothing compared to the Watters Escalante. I found some websites on the internet that were advertising knock-off prices- about $350 for THE dress recreated in China and shipped to you. It was tempting, but the reviews were mixed, so I decided against it. 

My mom kept saying that she was sure we could find a good seamstress to sew the dress, but I wasn't convinced. We looked up and found a small bridal fabric store called Olga's Fabric Lane and went there after an afternoon of discussing and pining after THE dress. Low and behold, 2 very helpful ladies rushed to our sides when we walked in the door and looked at the grainy black and white photo of the dress we had printed off the internet. We had this picture of the back and the front: 

One of the women was the owner of the store and the other was the cashier, and a Russian woman who worked as a seamstress from home in her spare time. Gala, the seamstress, told us with confidence that she could sew the dress without a problem and she had pictures of other dresses she had sewn. The other woman spent a lot of time with us and helped us through the dozens of bridal silks and laces they sold at the store. 

We settled on the fabric, signed our lives over to Gala and the deal was done. She took me into the store's staff room and took my measurements, kept the fabric and the internet pics of the dress and told us we were to contact her in about 3 months. 

We drove away from the store excited, but I was very nervous about it as we really had no idea what to expect. 3 months later we showed up at Gala's house for the first fitting. It looked like the dress, but to my eye, NOT CLOSE ENOUGH! I thought she had sewn seams down the front of the skirt and I was really upset that they were so visible, but trying not to show it. Gala promised that it would look differently when the dress was properly pressed, so I trusted her. 

Can you see the seams down the front?? Eeek!

After another 5 months of agonizing over the dress it was time for us to finally bring it home. When I tried on the final product, it was JUST stunning, JUST like the original dress except BETTER. The lace we chose sparkled in the light and was the focal point of the whole thing. 

The skirt hung beautifully with a long train that bustled seamlessly into the layers of fabric at the back.  Gala changed the location of the zipper from the original dress to the side under my arm, instead of going straight up the back through the middle of the lace, thus making the whole back one large piece of sparkling, intricate lace. 

We couldn't thank Gala for her sewing masterpiece enough! She really knew what she was doing!

The final cost of my dress was $1500: $500 for the fabric and materials and $1000 for Gala. If you think you can't afford your dream designer dress, think again. Find a seamstress in your area and see what she can do for you. You might be pleasantly surprised! 

PS- We all know I am pretty much obsessed with Kate Middleton... BUT just to clarify. I had my dress BEFORE I saw hers. The night before the Royal Wedding I had a dream that she had the same dress as me and everyone thought I had copied her. Well, hers was pretty darn close! I shrieked when I saw her dress and after the wedding SO many people commented that my dress was like hers. I have to correct everyone and tell them that no, hers was like mine!!!!