Our wood projects

Have officially STARTED!

Last week Groomsman Will invited us over to his place because he had tons of wood that he wanted to split (for us and himself) to use as fire wood and also (by my previous request) Wedding Crafts!!!

So I carefully pick all of the pieces I thought could help for some of the many wood-related projects I have in mind, they tried to teach me how to split wood the old way, as you can see:

  { Mr Poodle didn't know what was coming! muaaah ha ha ha! }

Don't worry! I could never hurt Mr Poodle (Well not on purpose, I'm good at poking him with my hairpieces but that’s it!)



Groomsman William had tons of pieces for me to pick! And on top of that Mr. Poodle’s Dad told us that he needs to get rid of a tree on his yard so we could use that too!!

I am so excited! I was worried about were we going to get all the wood I wanted because even though we live right next to the Forest, we would never cut a whole tree just because of wedding projects.

Anyway, next day with all of the wood on our garage. we got to work!



We cut all the pieces I’ll be using as carved labels for our Buffet of Sweets. I know it’s hard to picture those pieces of wood in a cute way with pizza and Ice Tea on the background but just wait until I finish! I promise they will definitely look prettier! There’s still some massive carving sanding and finishing to do!

After that Mr Poodle moved to the next task for the day. Table Numbers!! Last time we were on Mr P Grandparent's ranch we picked some really old pieces I thought could work, I draw the numbers and Mr Poodle Proceed to cut :)

After that he sanded the edges a little bit, I really wanted the rustic not so prefect look on the number and I loved the result, but I wont be showing you how it looks until we finish the support for our numbers :)

Cutting the numbers on such an old wood was not easy because some of them had cracks and just broke while cutting, so as you can see Mr. Poodle had to find something to release his frustration.



But don't worry He would never hurt him either :P



Here’s the proof that Curly did survive :)

Any of you are working won wood-related projects for your wedding? Were are you getting your wood?

Poodle’s Guest Book – Help!

The first time I saw this guestbook over at Classic Bride Blog, I fell in love with the Tree Guest Book with thumb prints idea! How cool would it be to have such a personal stamp from every one of our guest!

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Later while buzzing around on the boards, I saw that one of the hive members, Roddy Bride (one of my first “blog friends”), was actually planning on doing this, too! I could not wait to see her finished product! I was so excited when she finally shared her guestbook. :)  It’s so AWESOME!
They painted their tree on a canvas and the look is so pretty

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So inspired by the pictures above I decided to draw my our wedding tree version :)

I opened my sooo loved Illustrator program and got to work, I draw as many leafs as I could on our tree so each guest can have space to place their print, since we still don't know how many guest we will end up having I just draw 190 leafs and then I added some more so I lost count, I hope we don't have more than those guest LOL

I wanted to be very personalized that’s why I draw our names on the branches, I love the result!

I showed my progress of the drawing to MOH (She’s staying with us for a few weeks YAY!) and she laugh at me because she said it was kind of funny looking :P  - But that’s Ok, she always said I’m funny looking too… so I know she liked it!

So this is the finish version, but I need to replace the leafs by our guest thumbs prints.



I also personalized it with our wedding date :) I’m such a sucker for carved stuff!! – But don't worry I don't carve anything on lived trees, just on pieces of wood or computer drawings… hehe



But in order to get our tree to look all full of leafs, we need our guest to know where to place  their thumbs and to guide them, I thought about leaving a slight shade of green on the leafs so our guest can see exactly where to place their print, But I’m not sure if this is a good idea.

I'm searching for a cool BIG vintage frame to use with it and I’ll be printing a big canvas, so don’t worry about the size of the images I posted, I think the real one will be about 20” x 25” or maybe bigger.

I am planning on getting a sign with directions and surface so our guest can practice before they print their thumbs. but I'm still not sure what option will be the best. So here I come to you asking for help!

Option A: No leafs at all just the branches. So they can place their print the way they want.






Option B: Leafs with a 20% opacity, so the guest can see them as a little guide and place the “thumbs” on top of them, but not strong enough to be really noticeable.

What do you think is the best option?

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  Option A
  
  
  
  
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  Option B
  
  
  

and the search is officially over!

YES! today after five months of search I got this on the mail:

If you remember, months a go I shared my idea (actually my dream) of wearing purple cowgirl boots the day of my wedding, well on that post I got a lot of help from readers sharing places and brands I could search, but it was hard! mainly because of two reasons: price and look. I found some that were really close to what I wanted, but out of my budget. and the ones that were on my budget, were too busy on the design and color.

For months I searched, every single week for purple western boots on the vintage section over at Etsy and Ebay, and after all this time finally I found this vintage boots for only $20.00 :)

As soon as I got them I took my shoes off to try this beauties! they fit perfectly but I definitely have to wear them off because they are kind of hard. They do need a deep clean, but that’s it! I'm so excited!

After i got my boots I rush to our back yard to take pictures of my purple shoes, the ones I bought long long time a go.

I have thought about making some kind of flower to pin on the front of the shoes but I guess I have to see how it looks.

For now I'm so happy about my purple babies!

 

Has any of you found their wedding shoes on Ebay?

Confessions of a stalker bride

Yes! I am a stalker. Right after we got engaged, and decided our colors I started stalking photography websites.

I started searching for ideas and soon got hooked up with a few awesome photographers. A couple of clicks and I ran into this wedding:

  

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I was drooling! The COLORS, the dress (it does look a little bit like mine), the lights! (I so wish we had bid trees at Mr. Poodles GP’s place, because I absolutely love that last picture! So I added Next Exit Photography on my reader right away!

I felt in love with their pictures and the fact that they had shot more than one purple wedding:

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So yeah! I stalk their blog and website way before they become our photographers (I was a little obsessed because they have a lot of purple material on their weddings). So the day that we found out they will be shooting ours, I felt like we were being rewarded for all the struggle and hard times we had to face in order to have the wedding of our dreams. I’ve always dreamed with awesome photography for our Wedding Day and Yes! even though we are blessed with talented friends, they are actually in the wedding party that for they could not take pictures.

So after a few Emails we could not wait to meet them, and arrange our Engagement Session :) But well, none of that could happen (back then), because we were still waiting for our Visa to be approved.

Now, months had pass, we got our meeting and we will be having our engagement session next week! We could not be more excited! *happy dance* But who could not be excited after seeing some of this engagement pics?

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Has any of you stalk your vendors even before knowing they were going to be at your wedding?

The Poodle’s Save-the-date Postcards

Remember when I shared the positive side of having our wedding postponed until April? Well, one of the positive things was that we were going to have time to make Save the Dates!!!

I have to confess that ever since I discovered what STD meant, I’ve been obsessed with making and sending our own. Thanks to the fact that we do have time now to send them, I can show you all our labor of love:

We used one of the pictures Groomsman Scott shot before our Legal ceremony for the front of our postcards, but we were not sure what we wanted for the back.

Ever since I saw this picture:

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I’ve loved the idea of making the postcards a little more fun than just the normal plain back, so after a brainstorming session with Mr. Poodle, he came up with the perfect idea for our STDs! We were going to make little pieces of cardboard and attach them to the back with a sticker, so our guests could peel the sticker off, bend the cardboard, and made the postcard stand up. :)

At first I really wanted to have magnets on a little cute envelope like Martha’s image, but Mr. Poodle convinced me that this idea was more original and of course, a LOT more budget friendly.

So, I designed the back of our Save the dates with the space for us to attach the piece of cardboard and the instructions for our guests to know what was on the back of their postcards.



After we got the postcards in the mail, FMIL figured out that there was a little grammatical error in the instructions, but after almost crying over it, I got over it and figured that if four of our friends that read them before we sent them to print didn’t notice it, it was not going to be such a huge deal.

After getting over that little detail we went to Michaels and bought our supplies. We made a template of the piece we needed to cut to make the postcards stand, and got to work.



Our grey and purple template! :P since we decided to go with our Legal Ceremony’s colors for our Save the Date, I HAD to have something with purple on it!
 

We used sheets of double sided glue paper to attach the pieces of cardboard and to make the stickers. Here’s Mr. Poodle cutting the strips we needed. I love the way he’s my perfect crafty-project partner. :)

So, after a couple hours of hard work, we finishd and glued the 135 stands for the postcards! Yay!



We bought a little puncher on sale at Michaels for 99 cents that was the exact size I wanted for the stickers.


So, we printed them on a normal paper, and then glued them to one of the sides of the double sided glue sheet of paper. (I managed to fit 140 stickers on there. That felt like a huge success!)



After that, I punched the stickers by following the lines I already drew in my file. While I did that, Mr. Poodle finished assembling the final product.



Teamwork was the key!



and TA DA! our STD were ready to be Addressed and sent away!



Here our final product :)



An example of our postcards standing up



We felt so proud of our teamwork! So, now we are ready to face the invitation process with smiles on our faces, and hopefully more hands than just the two of ours. :)

So, the two main things we learned from this project were:

• Check spelling and grammar, double check spelling and grammar, triple check spelling and grammar, and just in case, we should have had more than just four people checking our spelling and grammar!
• Doing 130 of the exact same thing is not fun after making the first 50. So, to work better, we needed to rotate tasks, take lots of breaks, watch something while we were working, and have yummy snacks close to us.

Did you work on your STDs with your fiance? What did you do to make the teamwork really work?

Miss Poodle's Fabric Flower Tutorial

Remember my beach wedding dress? Well, on that post different readers asked me to show how I made the flowers I used to make it prettier.

So, because I want to share that with all of you, here it is my little tutorial:

You will need:

• The fabric of your choice
• Needle and yarn
• Cissors
• Beads or buttons for the center
  

Digging for gold

This past Thanksgiving was my very first dia de accion de gracias ever, and it was awesome! Not just because of the amount of food we ate (Yes! I am a big food lover) but because we celebrated this holiday at our wedding venue, aka Mr Poodle’s grandparents’ ranch. :)


We got to hang out with the family and cook loads of food, and we also got to take care of some logistics for the wedding.

The first thing on our list was to pick out our ceremony location. From the moment we decided the kind of chapel we wanted, we discussed different locations, keeping in mind how our guest will be getting there, because there’s a little creek between the main building and the fields we first picked for the ceremony. Thankfully, Mr Poodle’s dad came to the rescue with a perfect plan so we can use whatever place we want to. He rocks!

So, after driving the golf cart all over the ranch, we finally picked…

Earlier that day, Mr Poodle, Curly and I drove to the exact spot and tried (with a lot of imagination) to create a picture in our minds of how our ceremony site will look.

I know it is kind of hard to imagine now, because it’s basically a piece of land with nothing on it!
It felt so good to cross one of the things we had on our to-do list off! And we were ready to move on to the next one: our reception site!

The best place to get a visual of all of the potential sites was from above!

We talked about all the possible reception areas and what we could use, depending on the weather.
So, after choosing a plan A and a plan B reception site, we headed to a place I’ve been eyeing for long time.

As I shared before, the ranch was really different before the Big ’94 Fire. It was way greener and it had a beautiful wood barn; now it’s more desert-y and the wood barn was replaced with a metal one. All of the cars and big metal machines that were burned in that fire were piled on the road to the fields, and even though it is definitely not a playground area, it could be a really cool area for a session of pics.

We also thought about using the old houses, the caboose, or the wagon for some cool pics, so we definitely have to talk to our photographers to see what could have more potential.

We felt really good about all the planning we did that day, so it was time for us to go and have pure childish fun and to relax!

We jumped on the trampoline like we were 7-year-old kids again. It was SO MUCH FUN and the perfect way to release all of our wedding planning tension.

I got the chance to play around with FMIL B while we set up the camera…

… to take family pictures while the turkey was being cooked!

It was definitely a very cool first Thanksgiving!

It was pretty hard to get a visual of the reception and ceremony site, especially because we will be the first ones to do something like that on Mr. Poodle’s grandparents’ ranch. Years ago Mr. Poodle’s aunt and uncle had a second wedding celebration there, since they got married far away from most of their family. But, the celebration was outside of the barn that burned down. The place is so different now, so our imaginations  had to do most of the work.

I know there are a lot of brides that do not have the opportunity to see their venues “dressed up” for celebrations. What are you doing to get a better picture of how you want your venue to look for your wedding? I thought about Photoshopping a montage with pictures, but maybe you all have other ideas