Weddings!

I know it's been a while. Between buying a house, planning a wedding, having shoulder surgery and working, things can get just a tad bit hectic around here :P Excuses, excuses, I know.

I have a couple quick (although let's be honest...have any of my posts been quick? I'll try, really I will) updates for you :)

Numero uno. Wedding stuffs! We've picked a date and a location! Drum roll please! (How do you type out a drum roll? Hmm. I'll have to Google that :P) We've chosen the Columbia Station! I mean, really, how could we pass up a caboose as the bridal suite? But in all seriousness, we picked the Columbia Station for two reasons. One, Robert Ryan Catering. 'Nuff said. If you're in the western Phila suburbs area, you absolutely must check them out if you're in need of a caterer (on or off-site). Their food was TO DIE FOR. Not just your typical wedding food. Thank God. Because I gotta say, I'm not normally the biggest fan of wedding food. Not only was the food fantastic, but the presentation and plating was awesome, too! Very modern. The pics on their website actually depict how they plate their food. Not at all what I was expecting. I was pleasantly surprised :) I'm too lazy to c/p photos, so here's a link to the gallery online: http://www.weddingcaterer.com/gallery.htm
Now for reason #2. The people. This is a family-owned and run company right down to the head chef and the events director. The sales woman we worked with was not actually a family member of the owner, but she's been working there long enough to feel like family (but she was still really young, which was nice). She paid close attention to every detail and guided us through our wedding day as we toured the location. Imagine the scene from Wedding Planner when J Lo hooks 'em in with all her descriptions. That's how Frank and I were with Kristen. She made the entire day and planning for the special day just seem so effortless. And as someone who stresses an awful lot, I can very much appreciate that. So in the end, it wasn't a very difficult decision. Sure, I'll still dream about the beautiful landscaping and white gauzy tent from Meredith Manor. But when it came time to bite the bullet, our stomachs did the talking :P As for the date...May 20th, 2012 <3 Less than a year. Holy. Cow. I've got a lot to do! I'm making our invitations, the centerpieces, and the plan is to also make our favors. But we'll see about that. I'm just so excited to dive into the details now! Still a little stressful, but I'll have fun being creative with it.

OK, well, kind of a boring post. No pictures. A bajillion words. But I should have a few home projects coming up here soon. Then I'll let the pictures do the talking. Till next time!

It's getting real...

Holy cow, everyone. It's really feeling real now. Frank and I are getting married! :) We've officially visited 4 venues, after having done PLENTY of online research ahead of time to eliminate about 435,437,896,726 places from Phila to Lancaster (which for those of you who don't know the area, it's about an hour and a half drive from one to the other, and we were looking at everthing in between). We've narrowed it down to two. The Columbia Station in Phoenixville, PA (http://www.weddingcaterer.com/columbia_station.htm) . They are a catering business that transformed an old train station into an event venue. They even have an old caboose as their bridal suite! Sooo cute, and the woman that met with us was awesome! She went over every detail with us, from the moment we'd get there to the moment we'd leave. It sounded amazing. Here are a couple pics:


I didn't think we'd find a place we liked as much...that is, until we went to Meredith Manor in Pottstown, PA (http://www.chestercountywedding.com/photos.htm). They have everything I ever dreamed of...gorgeous outdoor ceremony site. Beautiful landscaping. AND!! A fantastic tented reception area! I love tents. :) Here are a couple pics of Meredith Manor:



More pics of each venue can be found on their websites.
I had secretly been hoping that we wouldn't like any other place so that making a decision would be easy. But now we like two! And it's going to be so hard to decide! Thankfully...Meredith Manor is having an open house next weekend, where we can taste food, see more of what it would look like on our actual wedding day (they were doing some renovations while we were there today). And Columbia Station does taste testings the first Wednesday of every month. So Frank and I plan to let our tastebuds do the choosing :) Because really...with great friends and family, the next most important thing is the food! We just missed April's tasting at the Columbia Station, so we'll have to wait till May. But hopefully then, we'll know where (and when!) our wedding will be! YAY!

And also...I just got these in the mail the other day. Aren't they so cute!? And so appropriate?! :P LOVE them! You can find them on Etsy here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/buttonempire

New Bedding Vote

Hey everyone! So as you may have read in one of my previous posts, Frank and I just bought and house and are moving in about a month. In doing so, we'll actually have a guest room! The plan is to use our current bedroom furniture in the guest room and get new stuff for us. Full size bed just isn't cutting it anymore :P

So far, we really like the look of white furniture. The bed is where Frank has really taken a stand. I wanted a four poster. Frank doesn't want any foot board at all. He says that he kicks it too often. Sooo no four poster for me :( But! No worries :) We went on Ikea.com to check out what they have to offer. Gotta love Ikea. Stylish yet affordable, which is precisely what we're looking for. After narrowing a few down on my own, and Frank nixing the rest, it was a pretty easy decision. This is what we decided on (on paper at least...we still want to check it out in person to be sure).

So now comes the decision of which bedding to choose! And my goodness there are SOOO many choices. I've been searching high and low and finally have it down to 2. The bedding we have now is black and white, and I really wanted to switch it up and go with something brighter. These are the two choices so far:

I think we're leaning towards the Michael Kors set, but I would still love to hear what you guys think! Do you have a vote?

2 posts in one day?!

It's a miracle! :P

I've been making jewelry here and there for years. It all started in high school when I took my first jewelry and metals class. Lucky for me, in my town, there's an adult night school that focuses a lot on hobbies and the arts. So of course I jumped on the chance to take another jewelry class and get myself reacquainted. That was about 3 years ago now, and I've been trying to make more jewelry lately. I've made a few as gifts for people. This particular necklace was one I made for my mom and my fiance's mother for Mother's Day last year (yeah...I know I'm just a tad behind on posts hehe). I liked the design so much that I made a few more for gifts for my sisters.

Anyway, the design is simple, and that's part of the reason why I like it. Here are two pics of the final product. Sorry...didn't take any while I was making them. And also sorry for my lack of photography skills.

To make this necklace, I used my handy dandy bead board that looks like this:

Bead boards are great. They're super cheap and actually are very helpful. I had a general idea of what I wanted from the start. I just had to work out the number of beads for each type of bead I used, which is where the bead board came in perfect hand. I usually make more symmetrical pieces, but I love the one flower accent on this one. I believe I just used some jewelry cord I found at my local craft store. I wanted to use a thicker cord, so beading with a needle was out of the picture (for me at least...if someone knows how to do that with a thick cord, please share! :)). My aunt told me a neat little trick she uses when stringing pearls. Use super glue or nail polish on the end of your cord or string to keep it stiff (making a needle-like end point) and to keep it from fraying. Best trick ever! Thanks, Aunt Ann! :P Once you get your design on the bead board, string it up and add your findings. For this necklace, I used store-bought findings again just from the local craft store.

OK, well, that's all I got. I'll try to do a better job of recording more pictures throughout the process going forward. As of now, I'm just sifting through pictures of jewelry, crafts, drawings, paintings, etc. to see what's blog-worthy.

Until next time!

I'm a slacker

OK, so I'm the worst blogger ever. My last post was...ohhh...9 months ago. My how time flies! But that isn't to say I haven't been busy crafting away. I have created more this year than I ever have before. I'm pretty proud of that :P

Anyway, this isn't much of a blog post for now, but it is a promise to update more regularly. I think my plans have changed a bit since my first post. I want to just show what I've made this year and how to make it. It won't be as focused on DIY versions of more expensive things, although those will get thrown in there for sure.

Exciting times these are. My boyfriend proposed to me on my birthday in February. :) SO uber excited. And now! We're buying a house! Settlement is April 29th, and we're planning to move April 30th - think we're psyched to move? :P

So with those two things in mind, I'll be quite busy DIY-ing things, updating things, maybe some renovations here and there. Only thing slightly holding me back a bit is that I need to have surgery on both my shoulders this summer. So for at least 10 wks this spring/summer, I'll have one arm or the other in a sling. Not exactly the best way to paint, craft, reno, etc. Which is why I'll probably focus on things I've done in the past for a couple months. Then once I'm healthy, I'll post about more current projects. Like the one that's currently topping my list: kitchen table and hutch. You can see in the picture below the set we're inheriting from the previous house owners. I actually love the set, but the table is in some serious need of resurfacing. Horribly scratched up :( But that just gives me motivation to do what we want with it! I want to kind of mix it up in there. Country meets modern. Here's the plan: paint the table and hutch white. The chairs and the back of the hutch will be painted a Robin's Egg Blue to match my mixer :P Yes, my paint choices are influenced by my appliances hehe. Lucky me...we have countertop-height stools in the same style as the table chairs. So they will also be painted blue. Once that's done, I'll move onto the kitchen cabinets. I'm hoping for white in there too. Eventually get a sleek black granite countertop (eventually is the key word there - who knew buying a house and planning a wedding were so expensive! :P). Knobs/pulls will be either a silver/pewter or robin's egg blue again. Haven't decided that. Kitchen walls...I'm thinking a nice, warm grey.

Anyway...those are my ideas. What do you guys think? More to come soon! And I mean it this time!

First Post!

OK, so a little about me and about this blog. I'm a systems engineer, and while I love my job, it doesn't satisfy my creative side. I've always enjoyed the arts. All of them. I took as many art classes as possible throughout grade school. I was in chorus and in school plays. You name it. I was into sports...played volleyball and softball competitively and several others just for fun.

But I was also very into school work and doing something with my life. When I applied to colleges, I had every intention of going to med school afterward. I decided on Penn State, and after my very first semester, I knew med school was out. I realized how much I hated Chemistry, so I switched my major to Math assuming I was going to teach instead. Well, turns out, teaching wasn't written in the books for me either. When I graduated, I started at a small non-profit doing merchandise analysis. Slowly realized that while non-profit made me feel great about what I was doing, it wasn't going to move me out of my mom's basement anytime soon. :( Soooo. When the opportunity for an engineer position presented itself with a salary twice as much as my non-profit job, I jumped on it.

So now, it's been almost 3 years, and I'm still enjoying NOT being in my mom's basement :P Mom, if you're reading this, believe me, I was very thankful for that basement - love you! Once again, I do enjoy my job, but I needed some kind of creative outlet in my life. About two years ago, I took my first non-high school jewelry class. Wasn't anything super advanced, but it got me back into it. I'm still not advanced in any way, but I enjoy making jewelry (beading, some metal work - I'll post pictures soon).

Then this year, I decided to take a drawing and watercolor class. I loved it! Those were two things I had never taken individual classes on. But here's the thing...I have creative ADD. Seriously. I buy all the stuff to paint or draw or cake decorate, but if someone's not there making me do something (yes, I had homework in my adult art classes :P), I don't do it. Don't get me wrong, I like doing this stuff, I just have creative ADD. I have half-finished projects all over my apartment, which definitely doesn't have room for half-finished projects!

So anyway...my friend Sarah (you can catch her over at http://sarahandmarksbigday.blogspot.com/) got me looking at her blog, which then prompted me to look at all the blogs linked on her page, and it just went on from there. For the past couple months, I've been obsessed with crafting! Mostly because I'm a cheapo. Seriously. It can get pathetic at times. I'll stand there in a store and debate with myself for 15 minutes over whether I should buy a sweater or not. But that's not to say I don't have expensive taste. Unfortunately, I do. I love Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Anthropologie, and all those stores that have cute home decor and furniture and such. However, I refuse to pay some of the ridiculous prices they have on some things. Therefore, I'm on a mission to make my own version of said ridiculously-priced items.

I take ideas from these types of stores and from other bloggers, too. There are plenty of great tutorials available online. So one by one, I will create my inexpensive versions of things I like and post the results.

I also plan to post pictures of jewelry I've made recently. Some of these come from books I've purchased, and some are inspired by their more expensive counterparts. Some are actually designed by me! :P

So anyway, this post is getting insanely long. But I just wanted you to get a feel for who I am, what I'm doing and why I'm doing what I'm doing. I hope to have accomplished that.

Oh! And something else I forgot! The name of my blog. You might be wondering, "Why the heck does someone name their blog 'My Name is Jellybean'?" Well, there's a story behind that. Isn't there always? My dad was in the Air Force when I was young. I was born in Omaha, NE. My whole family (mom and dad's side) live on Cape Cod, MA. So naturally, the news of my birth came by telephone. Now, for those that don't know, my full name is Emily Geraldine Marks. I know, terrible middle name. Trust me, I paid for it as a kid :P But it was my great-grandmother's name, so I (try to) carry it proudly. Anyway, back to the story. When my dad called my nana and told her the news and my full name, she said, "WHAT?! You named her Jellybean?!"

And thus concludes my first post :) Pictures and posts to follow!