Hurricane Survival

As Hurricane Irene blazes her way up the east coast, and people are braving the weather to get to the grocery stores for food, water, flashlights and other survival supplies, I went to AC Moore. My fiance, James and I went out and picked up supplies for one of our DIY projects for the wedding.

One thing I have trouble with is staying focused on one project at a time. I was all over the place trying to get ideas for other things we could do or make, but James, like always, kept me on track and focused to only get what we need right now. After a successful trip and making safely back from the store, we set up our station.

The project for the night was to paint the handles for the fans we are making for the ceremony. It is going to be June, so providing a small hand fan will prevent our guests from getting too hot. We decided to paint half white, half navy and do all different colored backgrounds, so that when you look at our guests, it will be a sea of color =]

Well, it took a little long to paint the handles.. we only did the base white coat on all of them. TIP: use wax paper, the items you're painting won't stick, and thus chipping or damaging your hard work! Also be prepared to get a little dirty, craft paint comes off very easy, but will stain nail polish!!

Anyway, so we quit for the night on Saturday and did a little more on Sunday, but then James had to work, and about 20 minutes after he left, I lost power. I kept painting for an hour, but things got a little too dark and I couldn't see anything! I didn't end up getting power back until this morning (Monday) and I had to work, so now, I have a large stack of half painted, over sized popsicle sticks sitting in the kitchen, which I will hopefully finish sometime this week.

So all in all: 1) Stay focused and don't take on too much at a time. This can be very difficult when you're excited but getting too much or scattering your thoughts will only overwhelm you! 2) Don't get a manicure before painting anything =[ and 3) Mother Nature often ruins your timeline for your projects

Stay crafty my friends, even through a hurricane.

For Everything There is a Season

After years of ridicule and teasing because I was named after a season, I always wanted to get married in the Fall, with big sunflower bouquets. But when I started putting ideas together and really making decisions with my fiance of things we wanted (or not), I realized, that I love Fall weddings, but an early summer if really for us.

I LOVE flowers, and this was one of my deciding factors. I want to get married in a field of wildflowers, with the sun shining bright. Color was another important thing to me. I want our wedding to be bright, bubbly and beautiful. My fiance (being the more practical one) thought about the risk in weather, and the fact that he wants to be by the water, so a cooler season may make things too chilly. The two of us decided that the things which are important to us and we really want, would be better suited in the summer.

It was difficult to part with my longterm nuptial dream of a fabulous Fall wedding, but I found it reassuring to know that the things we want will be very accessible in the Summer. When you figure out things that you and your fiance want, and especially don't want, it is easier to decide by the season first, and then choose the month and date.So we've decided on June, a "not too hot, not too cold" month, full of sunshine, flowers and seabreezes. We haven't pinned down an actual date yet, but we have two in mind.

We are having a long engagement (2years) because we are young (23 and 21), but we also are recent college grads. James graduated college in 2010, and I just a few months ago, and we do have jobs (YAY!) but we need to get settled, save some money (we do have a wedding to pay for), and of course, plan our wedding! Some people are saying that we're going to push the wedding up and get married sooner because we won't want to wait that long, but we both agree that taking our time and making our wedding everything we want it to be (without going broke) will be best.

So June 2013 it is.. but if I do have two years, then why start making things and doing things now?? It is partly because I'm too impatient to wait to do things, but also the fact that we're going to be doing a lot of tasks on our own, so we need time to make them and not leave it all to the last three months before the wedding. Plus, we work, and I travel for my job a lot on the weekends. We, surprisingly, have a life, which often gets in the way of planning things, so starting early will only help us on our wedding journey!

In the beginning...

Hi, my name is Autumn, and I am... a blogger. Or at least I'm trying to be one.

I have always loved scrapbooking, crafting and DIY (do it yourself) projects. When I was in college, I started a small craft business titled "Autumn's Blossoms." I mostly made things for friends, family and my sorority sisters. I loved that each item came out differently, I loved the planning of each item, and figuring out how to implement my ideas (most of the time). I was even voted "Most Crafty" in my sorority (THANKS LADIES)!!!

As of now, I am a recent college graduate and a working girl, just trying to make a living. I don't have as much time as I would like to create things, so I figured DIY-ing my wedding would be the perfect way to get back into crafting especially because I am obsessed with weddings! The planning, the pictures, the romance, the flowers and the creativity to make it your own, but I never realized how much goes into one before I started planning my own wedding after I got engaged!

Recently, I've been having some trouble with my planning. It is so hard to decide on a style, a venue, even a season and especially make decisions that my fiance and I can agree on (mainly cause he wants it to be one big football field and serve buffalo wings). I can only talk about weddings so much with my friends, so why not do what everyone else does, and take my thoughts and publish them for the entire world to read on the internet.

Now that I'm making my way down the aisle, and have many stops to make before I say, "I do", what better way to figure things out and share my advice than making my own blog. I hope you enjoy my ideas, humor and ultimately my wedding! Buckle-up everyone, it's going to be a bumpy ride!