A Little Wedding Wall Update

The wall dedicated to our wedding is looking a less sparse. 

When Jon hung our guest book and shadow box I knew that we needed to add a little bit more to it eventually. It looked a little better once we added the frames to right of it. I had been looking for the right accessories for a while now because I didn't want to just hang anything on there. 

Over my holiday break I found the gold resin letters at Hobby Lobby. I actually had spotted them all over Pinterest first but had never be able to find them at the store. I found them while I was browsing the discounted Christmas stuff and since they were on sale I bought them. I also found the little "love" sign there (also on sale!). 

I also purchased a floor vase ($8!) from target. I've actually had it for months but it finally seemed like the right time to display it. I wish the curly white filler was a little bit more substantial looking but I like the overall effect. 

Our First Anniversary

Jonathan and I recently celebrated our first wedding anniversary! This is us a year ago.

Don't we look happy? BEST. DAY. EVER.

We decided not to do anything fancy since we just got back from our trip (Jonathan still bought me a beautiful bouquet of roses). So to celebrate in a low key we decided to open our wedding wine box and watch our wedding video. Please ignore the mess that was our dining table.

What is a wedding wine box? Its a box that a bride and groom place a bottle of wine, two glasses and letters to each other. The letters are secret and we wrote about why we had decided to get married and the qualities we love in each other. At the wedding ceremony the box and its purpose. The idea is that a couple puts it together before the wedding and open it on a certain anniversary. However if they ever find that the marriage is in trouble they are supposed to open the box, pour the wine and separate to read the letters.

Last year we decided to open the box on our first anniversary and then on every fifth. So a couple of weeks ago we pulled out the top tier of our wedding cake from the depths of our fridge and sat down with our wedding wine box. We bought a fancy bottle of wine on our mini honeymoon in Napa and placed that into our box.

We opened the wine, grabbed some defrosted cake and sat on the couch to read our letters. I won't say what they contained (that's between Jon and I) but they were very sweet. I, of course, cried. Then we settled in to watch our wedding video.

Originally I was a little apprehensive about eating cake that's been sitting in a freezer for year so I called the baker who did our wedding cake. Luckily she gave us a whole new cake for free! Since I called at the last minute we had to wait until the following week to pick it up. We ate the defrosted one on our actual anniversary to keep with tradition and the new one the following Sunday. Cake two weekends in a row? Yes please!

It was a perfect way to remember our first year of marriage and six years together. Check out our first photo together (way back in 2007!). Just for fun.

The Star of the Blog...

As we were getting the blog started Jonathan mentioned that he is the "Star of the Blog." I laughed and said "No! The house is!" But once I got to thinking about it I realized he's right.

This blog is about all the things we do to our home but nothing would be possible without him. He is the fixer of leaky sinks, official painter, designated spider killer, heavy item lifter, idea feasibility checker and Home Depot shopping companion. He's pretty awesome and my favorite person EVER. Not only does he listen when I say "You know what we should do..." but he helps me make all my pinspiration dreams for the house come true.

I love the man and am so happy (deliriously) to be married to my best friend, love of my life, and handiest husband. So, in honor of my other half and our 6 month (!) wedding anniversary Saturday, I've added "The Newlyweds" page where you can look at some photos of us throughout the years including our wedding video and photos. One stop stalking! Kidding... but you know you're going to look.

Since this is very lovey dovey post and not really related to our on going home improvements, I'm sharing our in-a-perfect-world-where-time-and-money-are-no-object To Do List on a new "The House" tab. (Does that get us back on track? Probably not.) We'll be updating the photos as we go!

To celebrate 6 months of wedded bliss we're opening a nice bottle of wine we got on our honeymoon in Napa. We're fancy like that.

You Heart Us

Even though I like to get my craft on I didn't do a single crafty thing for our wedding. Jonathan and I assembed the invitiations but that was about as complicated as we got. However, I did have an idea to DIY our guest book. Thank you Pinterest!

The photo has kraft hearts and heart cut outs of a vintage dictionary assembled as 3D art. I actually wanted to order one from the seller but the only option was to go with the exsisting colors and paper. I figured I could make something similar that would match our wedding colors and would fit in to our home.

With leftover scrapbook paper from my bridal shower and some new metallic gold paper I used a heart punch out and cut out tons of little hearts. I saved all the gold ones and put all the purple ones out at our wedding. We asked all of our guests take to a heart and sign it. 

All the hearts sat in one of our closets for almost 6 months. I am a slacker bride. But doesn't every new wife need time to recover after the wedding? As our six month anniversary is approaching I FINALLY decided to put it all together. Intially I wanted to use some leftover MDF from our Man Cave bookshelf project but I couldn't fit all of the hearts on it. Jonathan said we could just leave some off. Yeeeeaaaahhhh, no. Michaels saved the day with their sale on shadow boxes! I picked one for $30 (it was 50% off!), laid out all the hearts and played around with the layout I wanted. 

Jonathan watched the Laker (ew) game while I worked. 

I slighty folded the hearts in half, glued them down...

And stuck the whole thing back in the frame. 

LOVE IT. I love that its something we can hang in our home (forever hopefully!). I didn't want a book that would  sit in a closet or under our coffee table unseen. All of our favorite people and their well wishes for our marriage are on display and its so sweet that we can literally see the love everyday.

P.S. Yes, its on the floor in the photo. We haven't decided where to hang it yet!