the end is the beginning
I’m drawing a blank with words at the moment. Our wedding will be this Saturday. That’s just 4 days away and counting.
It’s supposed to start raining here in Los Angeles and rain through the weekend. While our wedding is indoors I’m just realizing that maybe I should have thought about a jacket or at least a sweater.
So instead of going on about ridiculous details, I’ll share a few photos from my bachelorette ride. Thankfully there wasn’t too much debauchery. My dear friend Jannatha planned out a beautiful bike ride, picnic and wine tastings. It was perfect.
Oh and there was a cat. Adorable.
I’ll try and squeeze in another post before we’re off on our honeymoon (perhaps even a wedding sneak peak) but I promise even more exciting posts while I’m gone. I’ve enlisted some bloggers from here to all the way across the continent to brighten up Cute and Delicious for a few weeks.
Handmade wedding invitations
One of the biggest projects I undertook for our wedding was making the invitations. I had a crazy idea that this would somehow be simple, despite a multi-step binding process, even though I’d never actually bound a book before. I just knew I could do it. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
Every book started as a sheet of board precisely measured and cut.
Then each piece was placed and glued to an assortment of colored papers.
At this point I got some help from my friend’s Jannatha and Kyle.
For the inside pages, Shawn and I bought a few vintage book plates with images of animals, which we scanned and laid out in our book. We chose a lot of owls and birds. I wrote small stories about us and wove it into the information about the actual wedding.
We had them printed at a local print shop and then I sewed the insides into the books.
Mochi also helped.
Shawn helped me stamp return envelopes for our reply cards. We were able to use the same envelopes from our save the dates.
I made about 90 of these books. All told it was probably 60 hours of work, but then again I wasn’t exactly keeping track.
Are you ready to see inside?
While it was quite a long and arduous process, the responses that we received from guests made it all worth it. That being said, I would never do anything like it on that scale again. I wouldn’t have been able to complete them all in time without help from my friends, Shawn and my mom who helped me stamp and seal all the envelopes.
p.s. Of course I left out a few pages, so you all don’t show up at the wedding, since it hasn’t happened yet, but I’ll be sure to show them off in the end.
Camera strap cover
Amidst all my crazy projects at the moment, I managed to pull off one quick little DIY for myself. I put a cute cover on my new camera strap. For awhile now I’ve been carting around this camera without a strap at all, but thought it would actually be useful to have one. Luckily I got my hands on a spare, but it had a lot of text on it from the fancy camera
I didn’t follow any instructions (but here’s a good tutorial) I just measured the strap and added a little extra for seam allowance. It was quick and easy, taking less than 20 minutes. The most difficult part was slipping the cover over the original strap, since it has that fancy grip fabric on the bottom.
I should probably iron it so it looks a little more pro, but I’m quite happy with it. I like the contrast of the light fabric and the black camera and all the hidden details in the print.
vegan pizza day
I’m not sure if you were aware, but this past Saturday was vegan pizza day. Shawn celebrated with pizza for every meal, including a breakfast pizza.
For dinner, we attended the Vegan Drinks get together at Masa of Echo Park. They make an amazing deep dish pizza and use probably my favorite vegan cheese, Teese, from Chicago Soy Dairy.
The pizza takes about 40 minutes to make since it is piled so thick with toppings, so we started out with some garlic bread.
There she is in all her glory. Lots of tomato goodness and stuffed in the center with some tasty, melty mozzarella Teese. We added some spinach and mushrooms for good measure.
And then we rode off into the night.
Bridal tea party
This weekend my mom and her dear friends threw me a bridal tea. They brought together everyone’s china and tea sets and borrowed from friends as well, to make a spectacular spread. It was really inspiring for me to see all these traditional serving sets put to use. I loved it.
So I’ll keep the words to a minimum, and just share some of the lovely photos.
One of the most special parts was being able to use Shawn’s mom’s china.
We had a selection of scones and rugelach from C’est la V Bakeshop. So yummy.
My mom picked out some great invitations from Royal Steamline.
Tons of delicious finger sandwiches were made, including watercress, cucumber and seitan curry. My sister-in-law, Michelle, even helped (and here’s photo proof).
I also made some lemon cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes with raspberry filling.
My grandmother dyed a pink streak in her hair in my honor.
There were even personalized water bottles, with some cute owls.
Some super addictive banana bread also from C’est la V.
There are those sandwiches. I ate countless numbers of them. The watercress had a fantastic radish poppy seed spread in them.
And you can’t forget the tea. We had lots of tea. I was really excited to use the creamer.
It was really special, every detail was thought out from the food to the napkins. Major credit goes to Carolyn and my mom for pulling it off seamlessly.
