Wedding Bells & Whistles

I've been planning my fiance, Tony, and I's wedding for a few months now and, I wanted to share a few things that have been helping me out.

First, get yourself a wedding planning book and/or app that will help you keep track of any and everything for the big day.  These tools are great for helping you keep track of your budget, including what you expect to spend vs. what you actually spend; your thoughts & ideas on things such as, decorations, foods, personal or written vows, etc; keep track of your appointsments, including dress & tux fittings, cake tastings & ordering dates, ect.  Literally anything you can think of for your wedding and pre and/or post wedding day events can be put into the helpers.

Wedding Planning Books and Keepsakes:
Your wedding planning book can also serve as a keepsake, especially for DIY weddings.  Simply, keep reciepts from everything purchased in a page protector or folder insert, take and print pictures of ideas for  possible flower boquets and/or arrangements, cake toppers, dress styles, wedding and/or reception decorations, the building or location of wedding and/or reception, and bridesmaids at dress try-outs and fittings.  Also, request single copies of Save-The-Dates and other invitations and/or favor tags to keep as a keepsake.  Another special way I have seen this done is to actually make your own wedding planning book out of a scrapbook.  Like I said, it can be a helpful tool and a keepsake of all the planning memories and fun you had along the way.


Wedding Website & App:
When I am "on-the'go", there is a website that I like to use to help me keep track of things too, weddingwire.com.  This site also comes with a free app that you can download to a tablet or smartphone and carry with you where ever you go.  Wedding Wire has all sorts of tips and tidbits.  I LOVE it!

Second, delegate tasks to close family members & friends who are willing to help.  DIY weddings can become stressful and over whelming at times when you try to do everything all alone.  Assign tasks such as mailing invitations, picking up place settings, decorations, and flower arrangements to a trusted individual after discussing specific details with them.  Also, have both the bride and groom's mother compile a list of family members and addresses for invitations.

Strapped for cash and paying for your wedding yourself?  Ask parents and/or close family members to help with wedding costs.  Ask each set of parents and/or grandparents to chip in $50, $100, $200 or any amount of money.  Also, ask siblings to help with the printing costs of invitations, small decorations, or the guest book and pen.  You may be surprised at how much people help with.

Next, enjoy shopping around.  Don't make your mind up in one day.  Take a day for you and the girls to hit up shops and other stores to compare prices.  Also, shop around on the internet.  Ebay.com, amazon.com, and orientaltrading.com almost always have great deals when buying in bulk, which is perfect for weddings.

When doing your own catering or having family members that are catering, join a SAM's Club.  You can buy more for less and get what you paid for.  This has been a HUGE help for me.  We also bought our napkins, plates, and utensils at Sam's.  It saved us A LOT of money.

Last, keep it simple!  You've heard the saying that "a little can go a long way", well in weddings less can still be simple and elegant all wrapped in one.  Use your surroundings as decoration and don't thing that inexpensive means cheap or cheap looking.  Dressing things up with simple touches will almost always look better than something gaudy.

Have fun and enjoy your wedding and all it has to offer because, hopefully, it only comes once and once it's over, you're going to wish it wasn't.

For Questions on how to join the above mentioned websites, or for additional information, please leave me a message or comment and I will post tutorials and extra help for anything needed.

I hope your wedding has all the bells and whistles!

Throw Me Something, Mister!

Mardi Gras is coming up soon and many of us are out buying masks for the occasion.  Instead of buying the same mask for your little one that every other child will be wearing, have them make one.  After the holiday is over you can put it away for for them or place in a Scrapbook for safe keeping with pictures for the occasion.

For this project you will need the following materials:
2 pieces of card stock paper; colors of Purple, Green, and/or Yellow (Gold)
Glue (stick glue, liquid school glue, or hot glue will be fine)
1 wooden dowel or pencil
Gems or Glitter glue

Have your child trace his or her hands onto the pieces of card stock and cut out. Draw and oval in the middle of the cut out palm around where their eye would go and help them cut it out.  Next, glue the two palms together as they have done in the photo above.   Allow the glue to dry and then place gems or glitter glue dots along the fingers and thumb.  You may also have them decorate with markers or other materials to make it even more of their own.  If you used glitter glue, allow it to dry before adding the pencil or dowel.

Suggestions:
To adhere the pencil or dowel use strong clear tape or hot glue.  I also suggest gems over glitter glue if you do not want a big mess.  Add ribbons to the top of the pencil using hot glue or a straight pin through the tip of the ribbons and eraser.  This makes it look even more authentic and CUTE!!

I hope you enjoy this project and I hope to see your pictures on my Facebook page.  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jesstastic-Creations/153125974709984?ref=ts&fref=ts

"If your creations aren't Jesstastic, they aren't Fantastic!"

Photo Editing-Picnik Closing

Okay so awhile back (April 5, 2011) I did a blog post on Free online photo editing titled, "Who needs Photoshop!?!". In the post I talked about a photo editing site named "Picnik.com". Tomorrow is the last day to use picnik.com. Below is a picture of the closing note from Picnik.com.

 So I did some research to find new sites to use that are free for photo editing. I came across a few; however, picnik was so nice that they posted their own recommended sites to use (as you can see from the picture below).

I went ahead and tried a few of the sites.  I found that the easiest one to use was the PicMonkey.com site.  If you feel like trying the others out they are aviary.com and the Creative Kit in Google+.  I hope these help all of you looking for free Photo Editing software.  If you need help, have any questions or comments, I would love to hear them so that I may be of assistance.

Save Summer Memories

Summer is coming up and, if you are anything like me, you love to take lots of pictures of EVERYTHING.  I always scrapbook my pictures, so I have been looking for layouts, templates, styles of pages that I could get ideas from.  I also love to use youtube.com to get ideas from others who post how they make their pages.

While on my search for help and ideas, I found a neat video that may help with saving those Summer Memories.  This video shows a lot of different paper and tools that lots of us may not have.  I don't ever do exactly what is shown I just use the idea.  So if you have different paper or scrap paper use that, don't go out and buy anything new.



I hoped this video helped anyone doing a Summer Scrapbook or Scrapbook page. If you have any questions or comments, leave them below and I will be more than happy to help.

Hippity, Hoppity, Easter's on its way

Easter is coming up soon. So many people spend LOTS of money on baskets, eggs, candy, and other Easter items when we can use many items from around the house. Many of us spend too much money on prepacked baskets or fancy empty baskets. Instead of buying prepacked baskets, stuff your own baskets. I go to Dollar Tree, one of my favorite stores, and get the packs of two or more small baskets for everyone. I don't know about you, but I don't like to give the kids too much candy for Easter, so I came up with a few suggestions.

Boil Eggs - Do this with the kids. I find that kids LOVE to help in the kitchen. I know my nieces do; I can't keep them out of the kitchen. After the eggs have boiled get Snap Colors to let the kids decorate the eggs. They will have a blast and you don't have to do it. I would make them wear clothes that you don't mind getting stained in case they do get it on their clothes, and put down newspaper on the surface they are using to decorate on.  You could also do this instead of stuffing candy into plastic eggs.  Save money while doing activities with the kids.

Make egg shaped cakes (or cupcakes) - I like to make the egg shaped cakes.  They are inspired by cake pops.  Cook a cake according to package and let it cool.  Once cooled cut off the harder browned areas of it; a very thin layer of the brown.  You don't want to take too much of it off.  Use the rest of the cake and crumble it up in a large bowl.  Add a just enough icing to make the cake crumbs stick together and shape into an egg shape.  Let them cool.  While the "eggs" are cooling melt a portion of a chocolate block (I use 1/3 bar of  chocolate or white chocolate Almond Bark).  When  the chocolate is melted and the eggs have cooled and are keeping their egg shape, dip them in chocolate on wooden sewers or baking sticks.  Make sure to coat the whole egg.  After each egg has been dipped in chocolate, place in the refrigerator to allow the chocolate to harden (I put mine in the freezer for just a few seconds to allow them to harden quicker but not to freeze).  Next you can leave your egg as is or (do what I would do) take white icing and dye it or different colors and drizzle on top of them to decorate them and refrigerate again to harden.  You can also use the white chocolate, dye it and decorate the eggs with it.  Either way they have to harden after decoration is complete.  Also, you may leave your eggs on the sticks and have egg pops to put in the children's baskets or you can take them off of the sticks, wrap them in a clear cling wrapping and place them in their Easter baskets.

If you decide that you just want something small for a basket you can make your own baskets or bags. 
This would be cute with a few of your cake eggs in it as a small Easter basket or you can allow your children to make these for friends or family members.

To find more fun ideas, like the ones above, visit the website that I found the Easter bunny treat bags on.  Gramma's Easter Crafts and Fun has lots of fun ideas for Easter that you can do and do with your little ones.  I hope you all enjoyed this post.  Have a Happy Easter!