What a year!

Hey everybody!

I know it's been a while, but since my last post a lot of things have happened: I found a new job, I moved, and I got married! My husband is now living with me in Germany and he went through several language classes with the Goethe institut. I am very proud of how much German he has learnt, even when he feels like he should have accomplished more. I think he is doing just fine and he will get better over time now that he is interacting with people. Although many of them switch to English as soon as they hear his accent. ;)

But let's step back a few months. Our wedding was fantastic and aaaabsolutely perfect! Everything turned out just the way we wanted them to. For it being the end of September we had wonderful summer temperatures.
We had two weddings, one was the civil ceremony with all the paperwork, the other one was on the castle I wrote about last year. The first ceremony was quite long and not very solemn, because all the official documents had to be read out in German and then again in English through the interpreter. That took a lot of time and there wasn't really much of a wedding atmosphere. But the party afterwards was great.
My dog team was there with all the dogs, my mom's friends were there as well as lots of neighbours. We had sparkling wine and orange juice outside the civil registry office and then rode back in our neighbour's horse carriage along the fields, waving to people who drove by in their cars. I wore a beautiful red gown with a golden vest. Both I got at David's Bridal in the US, just like my wedding gown. A friend of mine did my hair and make-up and she used the flowers I made as a very nice side accessory.


A woman who used to live in the village and owns a flower shop made my very nice bouquet. Of course I wanted to have my dog included in the wedding pictures, so I got him this very nice suit-neck-thingi to make him look more festive, too.


Back home we finished preparing everything for the polterabend and I had to finish the menu cards for the reception the next day. But eventually we got everything done in time with lots of help from the villagers. From what I've heard my new American family enjoyed themselves tasting all the wines and drinks at the village's hotel and made lots of friends. Everybody just loved the "crazy Americans" who were a lot of fun to be around with. My mom got congratulated for getting such a great new extention to the family.
For those who don't know what a polterabend is: it includes lots of people, lots of food, smashed plates that the couple has to clean up together, silly games, music, and people enjoying themselves.


The next day was just wonderful. Again great weather and I loved my wedding gown. The owner of one of the local hotels are friends with an oldtimer fan who rents out his cars. We got a very nice black car that he drove himself, we got a wonderful flower piece on top of it that matched my bouquet. We also got small bouguets for my bridesmaids and for the two mothers. The guys all got small flowers to attach to their suits. All of the flowers were red and cream, just like the rest of our colours. My bridesmaids were supposed to wear the same dress. I brought the one for my sister with me when I returned from the US, the other one had to be ordered. Unfortunately they messed the order up and delivered a junior size instead of an adult size. So my maid of honor got a dress in the same colour but in a different cut. It still looked fantastic!
The ceremony was also great. Our village's priest did great by making it a bilingual ceremony. She didn't really repeat her own words, but the message was close and very harmoneous. And of course everyone loved the castle and the rose garden with the grape vines hanging above us like a roof.


The view down onto the river was just beautiful. A guy I know from my teenage church group played the keyboard for us and he chose some very good songs to underline the ceremony.
After the ceremony we had our photographer take lots of pictures. We have so many pictures now that we love and we can't really decide which one's our favourite! The castle offered so many great locations to take pictures in.

After the castle we drove to our reception. All the menu cards were sitting there on the table and every guest got a little wooden treasure box filled with wedding almonds and M&Ms. We had packed those a week before and handed them to the reception people along with the menu cards. The cards matched again our colour theme and the invitations cards, they were just a little bigger and had more food related pictures on the cover. :D
The food was great. We had a buffet with lots of different entrés to choose from, we had 3 different main courses, and a huge ice cream pyramid as desert. Everybody's favourite was the crispy duck. Oh, and a wedding cake, of course, that was served along with the ice cream.


People are still talking about what a great wedding it was and that we put the bar up quite high for all the other weddings to come. My sister as well as my cousins, and my husband's cousins are not married, so they'll have a hard time matching our magical fairy tale wedding.

Oh, but as this is my crafting blog, I also have to mention that my wedding jewelry looked great on me as well as on the bridesmaids! ;)

Since then I haven't had much time to create. Work just kept me busy, along with helping and checking my husband's German homework for language class every evening. I didn't even have time to make my own Christmas gifts this year. Thank god to Amazon online shopping and gift shopping is so easy!
We spent Christmas in the US this year. All the family was there as well as our friends and their four big dogs. So you can imagine that it was quite an event! My husband got an iPad for Christmas, so since then he was quite wrapped up in exploring all the functions of his new toy. ;) After 2 days of me not being able to get him away from it I picked up knitting again and started a new scarf project. Originally, I wanted to make a hat as I got a hat for Christmas that I really liked and I wanted to make another one of that kind. But I was quite out of practice. That's why I started a scarf. I am still working on it. It turned out a little wider that I thought it would be, so it takes quite long to get some length to it. Hopefully now that we're back in Germany and I've been back at work for two weeks I will find the time to finish it bit by bit.

So much for now. I am not gone, just a little quiet. :)

~Sky

Fairy Butterfly Jewelry Set

This jewelry set is more or less an "accident". I had something completely different in mind when I started to make the beaded parts. But nevertheless I love the result. The tiny flowers and butterflies just matched perfectly.



The earcuff wasn't easy to make as it was my very first one. My ear was quite red by the time I managed to make it fit. But now that I have some sort of idea of what I am doing I am sure the next ones will be easier to make. ;)

Hair Accessories for the Bride

Here are some more new creations. I finished those yesterday, I just had to wait for some sunshine today to make some nice pictures for you.

All flowers are handmade. I bought a box of single leaves and sewed them together, adding some sparkle and Swarovski crystals as eye catcher. I then added feathers, beaded strings, and small beaded flowers to turn them into bridetastic hair accessories.

Now I just have to decide on which one I want to wear for the civil ceremony :D

Wedding Jewelry

You only notice how bad the TV programme is when you have to stay at home all day and entertain yourself.
Instead I decided to watch Sailor Moon on youtube (also bad and cheesy, but a childhood classic!) and work on the wedding jewelry for my bridesmaids and myself.


I really like the outcome and I am sure the jewelry will look great with the bridesmaids' dresses, but I am not so sure whether the jewelry necklace will match the dress. Maybe I also get a more sparkly necklace and then compare which I like better.

Our wedding colours are red and cream/ivory. So, the bridesmaids will wear very cute red dresses and my gown is in a lovely ivory with lots of sparkly beads. So the jewelry is supposed to match.

Anyway, here's what I made:



Bracelet: I chose different charms to symbolize the wedding: of course a pretty dress and shoes, and we need a mirror for our make-up, then we all ride in our carriage (car) to the castle to have a beautiful wedding. In the picture you see the bracelet for the bride. It has an additional blue bead which the bridesmaids' bracelets don't have.

Earrings: Also matching the theme they are made of red and ivory beads, Swarovski crystals and more sparkly stuff. The bridesmaids get a red version, I haven't decided whether I want to go also with the red version or whether I should wear ivory. Again I'll decide when I see it with the dress.



Necklaces: The bridesmaids get a simple but very beautiful version. Again you see the beads in our colours and they come with a cute "pot" pendant. They can open it and put something in it, maybe a tiny picture of someone they love, or a streak of hair, or whatever. :D
The bride's necklace has more beads and is a little more playful. But it is not as sparkly as the dress, therefore I might wear something else. But nevertheless, as we also have the civil ceremony that is independent from the one in the castle and therefore independent from our colour theme, I might make another jewelry set in the colour of my civil service dress (which is basically the bridesmaid's dress but instead of red I've ordered it in berry :D).


I hope you like these items just as much as I do! And I hope my bridesmaids will like them, too!

Invitations

Being sick has one great advantage: while you're in bed and totally bored you can be creative just to make time pass :D

And I haven't had much time in the past few weeks as my job kept me quite busy. So I sat down with all the papers and stickers and beads and ribbons piled around me and I managed to finish all the wedding invitations in the past 2 days. Aproximately, I needed an hour per card and I had to cut so many pieces that I cannot use scissors for the next to weeks. My thumb is close to developing some blisters, lol.

But I love the results and I'd love to keep them all to myself. :D

Hope you like them, too.

~Sky

Busy months

I haven't been writing anything on this blog in the past few months because so many things had to be done in my life that needed my attention. My boyfriend proposed to me on December 31st when we took my dog for a walk in the snow. It was great! We walked to the church ruins outside my village and were kissing in the snow when he suddenly went down on his knees and proposed. :)

So, since then we had to pick a dress, find a wedding location, find a reception location, etc. The wedding location was easy: we're getting married on a castle. This is going to be so exciting. Having a German-American wedding just called for something special for all our guests. We'll get married in the rose garden with a beautiful view down onto the river valley. After the wedding the owner of the castle will give the guests an introduction into the history of the castle before everyone can wander around and look at the exhibition pieces.


The harder decision was the reception location. The castle has a newly opened restaurant where a reception would be possible. But at one of the wedding fairs I went to I heard about a party service that also has a beautiful room for receptions. They also did a get-to-know-us test dinner at the end of January and their food is sooooooooooooooooooooo delicious. After we heard that we couldn't have much variation to the dinner at the castle we decided on the party service. That way we can make sure that there will be food everyone likes.

The hardest part was the paperwork, though. Thanks to German burreaucracy we needed lots of papers and have the English certificates translated by a notarized translator. But now we are only one signature away from being done with the papers... well, almost. We're going to have 2 weddings, actually, as one is necessary, the other one is for the "style". We're getting married on the 23rd of September in front of the justice of the piece. That will be a formal but not that extraordinary wedding. We will need to have an interpreter being present to translate all the formalities to the groom and witnesses, so it doesn't have that great atmosphere. Therefore we asked the priest of my village who used to live in New York for a while if she would be willing to marry us at the castle. We're so happy that she agreed to do so, as she will be able to do a very nice, special, bilingual ceremony on the 24th.

I have also found a dress while I visited my fiancé over Easter and my engagement ring is supposed to arrive hopefully today or tomorrow.

Now that you're updated on what's going on, let me move over to the stuff I am going to make myself. First of all, the invitations. We're going to have the text printed, but the cards the print is going to be in I will make myself. I have 3 drafts for styles, but because I couldn't decide on one we decided to have different ones. The colours and material will be the same, but they will all be individual.
Oh, we chose creme/ivory and red as our wedding colours. That makes finding bridesmaids dresses and decoration easy. :D And it is a very nice colour combination for flowers, too!

What people in Germany also do is: they tie bows to the radio antenna of their cars and drive in a caravan to the reception location and honk their horns when they drive through the towns. :D
So I made the bows for the antennas in our wedding colours, too. I need to take one and do a test drive with it and see it it falls off and I need some wire to fix it on the antenna, or if they work the way they are now.

My maid of honor just got married herself and instead of flowers she made these awesome flower bouquets out of buttons. I love this idea, so I am thinking about making something like that for the justice of the peace ceremony. Many people get real flowers for that as well as for the Christian ceremony, but I think I only need a real flower bouquet for the castle wedding. So having something buttonish as alternative would be awesome.

Oh, and I was also thinking about making jewelry sets for my bridesmaids as gifts for being in my wedding. I will be busy the next couple of weeks with making all the stuff, but I will post it on here as soon as I have something to show.

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a good start into 2011. I definitely had a wonderful time. My boyfriend took me for a walk through the snow on the 31st. When we reached the ruins outside our village he proposed to me, so we're now officially engaged. :D

Christmas was a quite busy time, but there was still time to work on some jewelry and accessories. I found some awesome beads and made some stuff to wear for myself as well as a few gifts for friends over in America.

One of the pieces I am very proud of is this snowflake watch. I couldn't believe how cheap the watch part was, so I ordered it along with these adorable snowflakes. And of course I had to make some matching earrings to go with it.




And because I loved the watch so much I also made a bracelet and a second set of earrings. Both of them will go to a dear friend in America as gift.


I also found a couple of Christmas charms on DaWanda and started making bracelets with them. I still have an unfinished one and a few lose charms in my box, but I wanted to show you the two I've finished. I sorted the charms after colours and matched the beads to these colours. I think they turned out pretty neat.



This key chain is another Christmas gift, going to the fiancé of the girl that's getting the snowflake bracelet.

This one is my fiancé's favourite item. It's also a Christmas gift, going to his roommate, because he told me that she envied the first tophat I made. I love the little skull cameo. I'm sure you'll see more items where I used it, during this year.



That's it for me from today. I hope you like my Christmas creations.

Have a great 2011!