Rachel writes a dissertation, takes weekend trips, and makes crafty things.
I’m a little late on posting our one-year anniversary post, but in the spirit of our week-long wedding festivities last year, here are our wedding ceremony highlights, in 15 beautiful photos by Jason Angelini.
My mom has decided that the world can know about her secret carrot cake recipe. This recipe is so good I asked her to use it to make our wedding cupcakes. She spent hours the day before our wedding making 8 or 9 batches of these, with the help of many friends. It was a lot of work. Thanks, Mom!
They were presented on the dessert table on a wooden holder that my dad made especially for the occasion. So many of the cupcake stands are cheesy and plastic. The one he made is solid and custom made for the number of cupcakes we served. He cut three circles of different sizes, drilled holes in the centers, and then attached them to a wooden dowel. We just covered it up with some lightweight fabric and used ribbon to keep the form of the three tiers. I love it.
I have tried to make this recipe in Paris, but I just can’t get the frosting right. I’m looking forward to having it when we visit the family at Christmastime.
Setting up the cupcakes on the dessert table
Carrot cake
1 c oil
2 c sugar
2 tsp. baking soda
3 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
2-3 tsp. vanilla
3 eggs
1 small can crushed pineapple
2 cups shredded carrots
1 c coconut
1 c pecans, small pieces
2 c. flour
Mom has a friend who also added dates to this recipe and it was great.
Bake 350 F for 45-60 minutes.
The Cake Topper from Pixi et Compagnie (Paris 6e)
Photo Copyright Jason Angelini Photography (my cropping)
Cream Cheese Frosting
Blend together the following:
1 stick butter or margarine
1 block cream cheese
1 box powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
My bouquet was made of red, orange, and pink roses, giant white orchids, and red hypercium.
I am currently featured as the guest blogger on Connor’s Blog, where I talk about doing your own wedding flowers! Check it out at Jason Angelini Photography and click on “Connor’s Blog.” It’s a very detailed description of what you need to pull of DIY wedding bouquets, boutonnières, and decor. Added to my description are the amazing photographic works of Jason Angelini, our talented wedding photographer. Enjoy, and of course feel free to ask any questions about this process, if you’re attempting something similar, for any occasion!
As always, you can look to the right under “Projects to Download” and click on “DIYBouquets” or “DIYBoutonnieres” for pdf versions of instructions.
Beautiful Faces (the flowers aren’t too bad either…)
Reception Tables
Wedding Bouquets, a few days after the event
A friend of mine, Mahmoud, who has a very good eye for recycling, spotted an 18-inch stack of old books and craft & fashion magazines that a used book shop was throwing away. Thanks to his muscle, I can now scan and share with you French fashion illustrations and craft patterns that date from the 1880s to 1960s. I hope you’ll find as much enjoyment in them as I have!
Today, I bring to you French wedding fashion from the January 1950 edition of the monthly Modes et Travaux. The drawings are charming, and the articles and projects are a fun entry into marriage customs of yesteryear. Seldom heard of today, the traditional trousseau was once a top priority for young women to prepare: who could think of getting married without a wooden chest full of embroidered linen sheets, napkins, and tablecloths? Today, these items fetch a pretty penny: at yesterday’s antique fair on the Place de la Bastille a single sheet was priced at over 100 euros. Since I have a “W” in my initials, chances are I’ll never find antique linens with my monogram (in France at least), but I wouldn’t have the money for it anyway. Perhaps I’ll try my hand at embroidery myself, using my vintage magazines as a guide.
Click images to enlarge.
In December, I made a Florida word-search, travel-themed crossword, and a wedding word-search for various favors during our wedding week. They were a hit, especially with the under-12 crowd. I also couldn’t resist my crossword addiction and made a bilingual one for an Easter brunch we hosted two weeks ago (already! Spring is flying by…)
They’re incredibly easy to make with new software programs, such as Crossword Forge, Crossword Puzzle Games, and this Wordsearch Maker. Crossword Forge is my favorite, because it is Mac-compatible and can also be exported in web format, so that you can post an interactive crossword on a website like this one I made for the Paris Times (works best in Firefox).
I regret not knowing about these programs when I was still teaching beginning and intermediate French courses. There are plenty of other uses, so what are you waiting for? Personalize bridal/baby shower games, make a crossword about a trip you took, or thrill a kid with a wordsearch all about her… What a procrastination tool!
Votives are an obvious choice for reception tables. They are small, so they don’t compete with centerpieces or cross-table conversation, and the burning time is usually at least four hours. An inexpensive addition to decor, votives add ambiance without major cost.
This is no news to most, so why post here about it? We did something a little different from the standard clear holders from Ikea or Michael’s: We spent months eating delicious French whole-milk yogurt - risking weight gain and a change in dress size - so that we could use the glass jars it comes in as candle holders. These jars are commonly used in France for various occasions, notably the December 8th festival of lights in Lyon. My favorite craft magazine, Marie Claire Idees, often features projects using the jars. My favorite was a vase of knotty branches with beaded jars hanging off of them (you’ll have to just picture that - I can’t find a photo of something similar). This site shows other design ideas for the jars.
For our jars, we chose simplicity: a single painted band in one of three colors (light pink, deep red, and gold). It’s important to buy paint that is meant for glass, which I purchased in the craft section of the Bazar de l’Hotel de Ville (refered to by its initials, “bay ahshe vay”). Other paints easily chip off: I’ve been known to use nail polish on jars when a crafty urge struck me late at night… When using glass paint, two coats are the minimum (in my book), to hide the brush strokes and really show off the paint color.
For some jars that I’ve kept around the house (too labor-intensive to repeat 80 times for the wedding), I added a design to the band: using a cut-out piece of a paper doily, I stenciled the doily pattern onto the jar with a contrasting paint. It gave it more of a Moroccan tea glass look.
Yes, it’s been over a month, but I thought I’d share a few how-to’s for our reception. I’ll start with the fun stuff today: favors!
Ever since I received some for my birthday one year, I have loved the look of marble magnets. These shiny, candy-like little jewels offer endless possibilities for a party theme, be it certain colors, tiny pictures, or other little graphic bits. Not Martha has several examples of the beautiful ones she made, as well as an excellent tutorial.
I wanted to use vintage maps and did a disappointing trial run. I envisioned bright, little magnified street layouts or colorful country borders and ended up with monochrome mush. It was time-consuming cutting out all of the little circles and the magnet sheets I cut to size and glued onto the glass were not even strong enough to hold a sheet of paper on the fridge. I was ready to give up and, well, pretty much did.
Thankfully, my artistically-inclined and very patient sister, Monica, took over the project. Since the maps I was using were on too big a scale, she bought a small (about 8″x8″) calendar of vintage maps that were reduced enough to show many little details in a small 1-cm round. She also saved tons of money by using quality color photocopies of the images instead of purchasing several calendars…and she can still use the calendar.
She further improved on my trial by using a small circular punch tool (available at scrapbooking and craft stores) to quickly create the rounds to be glued to the glass marbles.
She made about 300 in one night of videochatting with me from Minnesota. They looked great on my screen and I couldn’t wait to see them.
Left to be decided was the container in which they would be presented at the wedding reception. I absolutely loved the idea of Altoids-sized tins (the magnets stick perfectly to the bottom and a personalized label would give it a finished look), but thought I may want to include some sort of edible treat in there as well. Monica purchased some ribbon and a bunch of take-out boxes (the ones at Michael’s are expensive - next time, we’ll just ask to buy some from our favorite take-out Chinese restaurant).
I ordered custom fortune cookies, but the company I used was closed between Christmas and New Year’s and therefore could not process my order. Not thrilled with the communication of this information (there wasn’t anything written on their website!)…but luckily we had brought to Florida bags and bags of French papillote chocolates. They are a holiday candy from Roanne, France (where I lived in 1996-1997) that have little sayings inside. OK, so they’re like a fortune cookie: only more unusual, so more exciting for our guests, right? …and you just can’t go wrong with chocolate.
We used our “R [palm tree] S” embosser plate from WG press to emboss one of the top flaps of the box. We placed the magnets onto a cut piece of magnetic sheet (that stuff was useful after all!), 2 on each side, so that they would be presented nicely and face-up, not sticking to each other and rolling around in the bottom.
We tied ribbon around the boxes and voila! An unusual but useful travel-themed favor that was very much “us.”
My first lace project was a shawl I made for our wedding. Because the average weather for late December in Sarasota is in the 60s, I thought it would be smart to make a cover-up to match my dress. In the end, we were sweating, so I didn’t actually need to wear it. It came in handy at the rehearsal dinner, however, as my talented, artistic cousin, Kristen, wore it all evening (she’s wearing it while drawing in the photo at left)
I knit this lace out of 100% silk yarn purchased from Purl in Soho (NY). For a truely airy lace, I should have used a thinner yarn, but I just fell in love with the silk yarn that perfectly matched my antique-looking ivory dress.
The pattern is below. It is repeated nine times across, with an edge of 2 stitches, always knit, and adding a border of 4 rows on each end. In between each charted row, knit a row all the way across.
0 / - - - \ 0
- - 0 ^ 0 - -
- 0 / - \ 0 -
/ 0 - - - 0 \
- / 0 - 0 \ -
We didn’t hire a florist for our wedding; we ordered roses, orchids, hypercium, and ginger flowers in bulk and made our own centerpieces, bouquets, and boutonnières. It’s surprisingly easy, with a few tricks and the right supplies. I’ve just put together two pdf files with step-by-step instructions for DIY flowers. Of course there are plenty of sites that explain these steps as well, but I thought I’d show our simplified amateur version. The instructions are filed under “projects” in the column on the right.
On the right column of this site, you will see a new box containing various links of interest. In the bottom section, under “projects,” you may click on any of the links listed there to download corresponding files. These could be useful as samples or to print off and use yourself. If you need any help with your custom project, just holler.
