I confess – I still love reading wedding blogs and perusing wedding-related websites.  It’s been almost a year since my wedding, but I still haven’t let go of admiring all of the whimsical ideas that vendors, designers, and brides-to-be have.  It’s so fun!

iDIY recently posted some really cute printable invitations…free for anyone to download! Though mostly intended for weddings, they can easily be customized for bridal showers, birthday party invitations, or whatver else you want.  I wish this was available when I was doing my planning!  Oh well…I guess I can still use them for birth announcements 🙂

This gift bow tutorial from How About Orange came in handy this Christmas to create some pretty and unique bows for many a holiday gift. 

Experimenting with different types of magazines and catalogs (it wouldn’t be as fun or as eco-friendly with regular paper, IMO), I found that the prettiest bows are made using…

The variety of colors in the catalog and the stiffness of the paper stock itself is perfect for this project, which you can do even while watching TV.  Save them up to use to wrap gifts all throughout the year, and never buy another pre-fabricated plastic-y bow in the store ever again!

Maybe I’m not following instructions.  Maybe I’m using the wrong kind of tissue paper.  Or maybe I’m just not a crafty person.

Whatever the case, I attempted to create some DIY pom poms like the ones I’ve seen on Martha Stewart’s and others’ websites.  Since they required little in the way of materials, skill, or time, I thought this was the perfect project for me.

In order to be sustainable, I reused some anthropologie tissue paper I had saved.  The result was something that looked rather…sad. 

The Inspired Bride has a post on some quirky printable moustaches for all your nefarious holiday (and post-holiday) shennanigans! See the full post, complete with PDFs and instructions, here.

I’m having family over for Christmas lunch and plan to make everyone take silly moustache photos then, heehee.

I love the clean, elegant look of kusudama balls, and decided to forgo flowers for our wedding ceremony aisle decor and use these instead. 

Initially, I was totally psyched and ordered several sheets of blue and silver mulberry paper, excited to get started on this project.  Can you believe it took me about 6 months to make 12 balls?  Let’s see…5 petals per flower times 6 flowers per ball times twelve balls…okay, makes sense.  I’m pretty flaky when it comes to crafting, but even with every spare minute dedicated to cutting the paper to size, folding, and gluing, it  felt like a neverending task.  Even with the help of one of my bridesmaids, it was still pretty daunting. 

After the wedding, I managed to find and keep 3 of them, which are now hanging from a lamp in our office.  I have no idea what happened to the rest. 

I’ve seen several DIY magazine holder tutorials online.  Since I had some time last night, I decided to create a holder for my Martha Stewart Food magazines, which are smaller than the average size periodical.