Last weekend, I had set out on a mission to go to the local craft store and pick up a shadow box specifically for this project.  Naturally, I got detoured and ended up at the Home Goods section of TJ Maxx and came across the purrrrrr-fext shadow box.  Seriously, it was better than the one I had mentally picked out at the craft store.

And even better, it was only $12.99!

AND it was one of those really cool ones that has a fabric pin board on the inside of it, no Gorilla Gluing required, and even came with a set of straight pins to use.

Then out came the wedding box and all of its contents to come up with content for the wedding shadow box.  I set out intending to put a wide variety of wedding stuff into the box.  I’m talking programs, invitations, save the dates, and more.  But turns out my eyes are bigger than my belly shadow box.  I barely had enough room for the entire invitation suite.  So I rolled with it.

And the wedding shadow box turned into the wedding invitation shadow box (check out our DIY invitation suite in more details back here).

Once I laid out the invitations in the box, and tweaked positions just a little bit, I used the straight pins that were provided with the shadow box and pinned away.  Super simple.

There were a few extra pins, and since I can’t promise that the invitations will always be the content of the shadow box, I thought it would be best if I stowed the extras inconspicuously at the bottom of the pin board.  So when you close the box, you can’t see the pins.  And this way, they never get lost, misplaced or used for another project.

And voila…a completed wedding invitation shadow box that took a whopping ten minutes…max…to complete.

Here’s another view of the wedding invitation shadow box without a strange shadow of the dining room chandelier on it…shadow of a light fixture.

So for those of you keeping score, we now have two wedding related art projects for the little gallery we’re curating for our bedroom.  The first one was the first dance art with the first dance song lyrics written on the picture mat.  And now we have the invitation shadow box.  I’m thinking we still need a few more pieces of wedding related art for the gallery but you know I’ll keep you posted as we craft away at the gallery and hopefully hang it soon!

Pssst…Anyone else shadow boxing away lately?  Or making sentimental art for their home?

What are the odds?!  The original box (which I introduced to you during my Martha organizing love-fest back here in February) is on the left and the new box, purchased from the same store nine months later, is on the right.  Seriously…they’re identical minus the size.  The smaller box was a $6 clearance steal and the large box, not quite as cheap, was $12 and worth every penny!  The box held everything perfectly.  There wasn’t a spare square inch to spare but managed to hold everything that I wanted to fit inside.

Contents include the cake knife (on the bottom), extra save the date cards, extra invitation suites, some bunting from the reception decor, the birdie cake toppers, extra garters that my momma made, and all of our wedding and bridal shower cards.  Speaking of cards, I followed through with my card storage plan and punched holes in all of them and bound them with rings.  It makes it so easy to flip through the cards and read all the lovely love notes from all our friends and family.  Cue up the obligatory “awwwwwwww”.

I couldn’t believe the amount of cards that we had amassed.  Between my bridal shower cards, congrats on your engagement cards, and the mound of wedding cards, the box was pretty much full.  But I couldn’t bear to part with a single card.  They’re just so pretty!

I was amazed how well everything wedding related fit into the “wedding box” as it’s now affectionately known as.  It’s like this little wedding time capsule that we can take out and peruse through from time to time when we’re feeling wedding nostalgic like.  Or if we ever feel the need to get our wooden birdie fix.  As for the old, smaller wedding box, he got repurposed as thank you note/note card/envelope storage.  It suits him well.

And now both boxes are living happily in harmony on the large shelf above our desk.

Here’s the closeup of the in harmony boxes.  And I freshened up the shelf a little bit and brought out a few green vases.  They were antique store finds from a few years ago.  Actually, I think they date back to before we even bought the house.  They’ve been with us long time.

So there you have it.  A quick and simple organizing project that gets our hearts going all pitter patter like.  And not just because organizing projects get me all hot and bothered excited, but because it’s like having our own little love box sitting up on the shelf above our work space.  We just can’t help but smile when we think of its contents and the happiness of our big day.  Where’s the cheese police when you need them!?

Pssst…What simple organizing projects have you done lately?  Anyone else have the shopping/organizing gods smile down on them with the perfect solution to their organizing dilemma?  I still can’t believe I found EXACTLY what I was looking for…and accidentally!

It was a pretty easy project to do and it’s got me all amped up to do a few more wedding memorabilia art projects.  But let’s step through this one first, shall we?!  It all started with the frame.  I found the perfect frame at Target.  It’s one of those Threshold for Target  frames and was $16.99 before a 20% weekend sale discount plus my 5% Target card discount for a whopping $12.91.  Whoa big spendah!  It was the perfect frame for the project.  It holds a 5 x 7 picture, which I also had printed at Target for about $1.22, but has an oversize mat leaving plenty of room to transpose the song lyrics.

I should also mention what our first dance song was.  It was Eric Church’s “I Love Your Love The Most”.  I know, it is VERY unconventional for a first dance song.  And it includes words such as hell, Redman, four-wheel drive, eight-point buck, Nascar, and more.  Redneck say what?!  But we love the song.  Even more, we love the man behind the song.  Early on in our dating years we went to a Miranda Lambert/Eric Church concert and fell HARD for Eric Church.  I may have threatened to leave Colby for Eric Church if A) he wasn’t married and B) he showed a remote amount of interest in me among his hundreds of thousands of followers.  Lucky for Colby, Mr. Church doesn’t even know I exist.  But I still think he’s pretty much amazing.  The concert led to our Eric Church obsession which led to us “dedicating” the “I love your love the most” song to each other which meant it pretty much became “our song”.  We’ve been known to break out into a slow clap dance in our living room to the song from time to time.  Colby’s pretty much the cutest.

Okay, so back to crafting.  I noticed that part of the mat was covered by the frame so I made sure to give myself some margins.  Using a pencil and a straight edge, I lightly drew lines on the picture mat as guides so the frame wouldn’t cover up any of the lyrics.

Then, armed with my Netbook with the song lyrics brought up, I began to write.  I didn’t really need to have the lyrics up on the computer screen.  I pretty much know every word to that song.  But it’s one of those anthem singer at a hockey game situations.  They always need the lyrics up on the humungo-tron to follow along even though they know every word.  It’s just their security blanket.

So with my security blanket I began to write away, using a piece of paper as a straight edge to help me keep the lines straight and evenly spaced.

I thought about trying to figure out a way to type up the lyrics and print them and glue them onto the mat, or somehow transpose the print onto it, but I wanted to keep the project simple and opted just to hand write it out.  As one of my best friends says, “keep it simple, stay the course”.  He’s so smart!  And it helped that I have decently neat handwriting.

It’s a short song with simple lyrics, so it took two rounds of copying the lyrics over to the picture mat to fill it out.  It’s not perfect by any means but it has what Colby and I like to call “character”.  Sometimes we mix it up and call it old world style.  But it’s the imperfections in projects that usually make us love them more.

There ended up being a little extra space at the bottom of the mat, so to fill it up I just added a line for the song artist, Eric Church, and called it good.

Then I added the picture, assembled the frame, and called it good.  I love it.  Really really REALLY love it!  And Colby does too, although he would never admit it due to recent run-ins with the cheese police.  If he gets busted by the cheese police one more time, I’m pretty sure he loses his man card for life.

We haven’t yet hung our newly created art as I’m working on a mini art gallery situation and haven’t finished all the pieces yet.  But the first dance art is destined for the naked walls of our bedroom.  So stay tuned for a few more art projects, an Etsy find and a finished and hung bedroom art gallery.  Fingers crossed it all comes together by the end of the week!

Pssst…Not only did I art it up this weekend but I spent some SERIOUS time going through photos, making photo albums, and general memory making projects.  I’m oh so close to whipping up an “Our Wedding” post with TONS of photos and stories for you all.  It’s way over due!

Psssssst…Now it’s your turn!  Dish…how did you guys spend your weekend?!  Any art projects going on out there?!

And yes, I am fully aware that I married that.  Just imagine, that’s what it’s like in our house every…single…day!  Welcome to my life.  Between doing the shopping cart with Goose to wearing the dog collar and prancing around the house pretending to be the dog (both which happened this evening…no joke), there’s never a dull moment in our home.  I heart that man and his shenanigans…even if he hits on “The TIT”.  That’s taxidermist in training…my nickname for Colby’s cousin and giver of the man hug:

I know it’s not house project related, but I couldn’t help myself.  I just had to share!  I’m still waiting on a few more sets of pictures from friends and family who stood in as our photographers, one of the ways we chose to save money on our big day.  But hopefully I’ll have a grand ol’ post all whipped up for you in the near future!

Pssst…Catch up with the original wedding sneak peak or check out all our wedding planning shenanigan-erie in the Wedding Wednesday series.

But I couldn’t bear the thought of the RSVP cards being cast to the drawer…out of sight…out of mind…all by their lonesome…in the dark.  I couldn’t sleep at night knowing our precious RSVP cards were in a sad and gloomy home.  Enter our guest book.

Our DIY wedding guest book was a big ol’ sketch book turned guest book.  So it had more than enough space to house both our guest messages and RSVP cards.  And they go so well together.  It’s a regular old peanut butter and jelly situation.  But since we printed our invitation suite on watercolor paper, the cards were a little on the thick side for the book.  Since adding 80 plus cards to the book would increase the poof factor of the book, I started the RSVP album project by ripping out all the excess pages from the guest book.

The guest book is a bound book but it was still pretty easy to remove excess pages.  Sets of about five to ten sheets of paper are sewn into the spine at a time.  I simply gathered small sets of pages and carefully ripped them out, trying not to rip the string binding the whole thing together.  After removing about half the pages of the book, it was looking much skinnier.

And because I couldn’t bear the thought of gluing the RSVP cards directly to the pages…you know…just in case I wanted to store them in a different way someday…I decided to use photo corners, which I picked up from AC Moore for about $3 (after using a 50% off coupon of course).

They were so easy to use.  Much easier than I had anticipated.  I just popped the photo corners on an RSVP card:

Moisten the backs of the photo corners using one of those sponge bottles, which was a lifesaver during operation invitation assembly:

And pressed the RSVP card adorned with the photo corners into the book, with two RSVPs on each side of a page.

I tried to be a little willy nilly with the placement of RSVP cards so everything wouldn’t line up perfectly, and that photo corners and RSVP cards would stagger, hopefully bring the potential poof factor down.  But even after removing pages and staggering cards, there was still some poof going on.

It gets worse when the book just lays flat on a table.

But everything fits and the book sits proudly on a shelf above our desks in the parlor.  See it there between the magazine holders and the aqua boxes?  It’s there I swear!

Here’s a closeup:

The RSVP cards are much happier these days sitting in a book up on the shelf.  I know…they whispered it too me.  And Colby and I can take the book down anytime we please and flip through the pages are read all the odd…I mean…sweet comments.  And there are some DOOZIES in that book!  You know who you are!

Pssst…So what’s going on in your neck of the woods?  Any organizational projects going on?  Anyone else flip through their wedding RSVP cards and guest book?  Does that ever get old?!

What in the world am I to do with 20 table numbers?  My first instinct was just to chuck ‘em, but that just ain’t my style.  I tend to hold on to things FOR-EV-ER (she said as she channeled the Sandlot).  Then I had one of those epiphany moments when the light bulb clicks on above your pretty little head and you basque in its glow…re-purpose them as art, wedding date art.  So I pulled the table numbers that made up our wedding date, August 10, 2012.  Thankfully, we didn’t get married on the 30th or some other obscurely dated day.

Eight…ten…twelve…which strangely reminded me of the Brian McKnight song Back At One.  You know, “one…you’re like a dream come true…two…just wanna be with you…three…girl it’s plain to see that you’re the only one for me…”  I’m almost ashamed that I still know the lyrics to that song.  Then it prompted me to make up my own lyrics to the song, “eight…yeah I like to skate…ten…let’s go home again…twelve…oh I like to delve…” definitely not the song writer in the house.  That’s Colby’s job.  He came up with quite the ditty about Goose and squirrels today.  So now that I’ve put a damper on the Brian McKnight sing-a-long…back to the art installation.  Colby and I are both believers of working with what we have, which sometimes comes out of laziness.  So when we couldn’t find our picture hanging kit, and didn’t want to go to the hardware store, we improvised.

That’s the back of the table numbers.  Instead of nailing in a picture hanging bracket on the backs of the numbers, Colby stapled in a piece of twine.  Here’s a closeup:

The twine system also helps in that you don’t have to be 100% accurate with the location of the nails you put in the wall.  It gives you just a little bit of leeway.  So as for the location of the wedding date art, we opted for the void-of-all-things-art master bedroom.  Specifically above the window behind our bed.

But just after snapping that pic, eight, zero and two all came crashing down onto the bed.  It was like synchronized number crashing.  So Colby fixed it.

Look for the blue moon folks!  Colby used a glue gun!  And then we moved the art to the other window in the room so table numbers wouldn’t come crashing down on our heads while we slept at night.

We started by first hanging the middle number, going with the old eyeball approach.  No measuring, no strategically calculating the optimal nail hole location, just plain ole wing it.  But starting with the middle number made spacing easier.  Notice how Colby is giving me the evil eye?!  Wrong kind of eyeball it approach.

It may have been deserved since I made him pose for an “adjusting the number” picture.

To attach the numbers to the wall we simply drilled in a trio of screws.  Nails would have worked just fine but Colby capitalizes on any opportunity to whip out his power tools.

And there you have it, our wedding date as art, using re-purposed wedding reception table numbers.

And they proudly hang above the window in our master bedroom.

They may move or migrate as the room evolves but they’re working out just fine where they are.  We’re thinking of adding a few more wedding mementos in the bedroom on that wall space to the right of the window.  Maybe a portrait or two and a shadow box.  And I dig a monogram.  So we’ll see how that shapes up.  No pun intended.

I’m just grateful that we moved the numbers from above our headboard window.  Especially since my side of the bed is the side home to crashing numbers.  That would be just my luck to wake up with a shiner thanks to a figure crashing eight.

Now, Colby has no excuse to ever forget our anniversary.  No excuse since it is literally written on the wall!

Pssst…What bedroom art have you been installing lately?  Or any other creative ways to bring wedding memories into your home?  Do share!  And can I get a wha’ wha’ for any other nineties gals out there!  Who secretly sing themselves to sleep courtesy of B. McKnight!

Not long ago, we picked up the old window sashes at a local flea market (which you can read all about here…we also scored some old yellow chaise chairs for the yard which I’m DYING to fix and paint)

The project was relatively simple and easy to recreate.  We wanted to keep that flaky paint look without the paint actually flaking.  To achieve this, Colby sat down one sunny afternoon and brushed on a couple coats of poly urethane to seal up (what we assume is) lead paint.

Next is where I’m going to reveal my dirty little secret…as to how I painted all those names oh so perfectly onto the window panes.  And I use the liberal “I” here.  I had help…alot of help thanks to Colby’s cousin’s (the best man’s) wife, Jen.  She’s a rockstar and my wedding savior!  But back to my secret revealing, good thing I’m not a magician or I would be black listed or something.  The window panes were about the size of an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper.  To make things easier on myself, I printed all the names in a script font, taped them to the back of the panes, and traced away using a pseudo fine craft brush and some white paint.

Well hello there perfect cursive writing.  So nice to see you.

Except did yo notice how the first two names are a little shoddy?  Colby tried to help.  And cursive painting just isn’t his jam.  But give him a table saw and a nail gun and he’ll build you anything you can fathom!  But anyway, Colby was stressing about the remaining wedding projects and decided to start working on the seating chart.  Needless to say, it wasn’t a “boy project”, more like a “girl project” and Jen and I quickly swooped in to save the window sash day.  Boys just weren’t made to write in cursive…or trace..or be patient enough to trace.  But I absolutely love the result of the window sash seating chart.  I find it charming and adorable.

And I’m still getting compliments on how adorable it, and the rest of the reception decor, was.  Operation “Nix The Cookie Cutter Wedding Factory Wedding” was a success!

Pssst…Alright ladies, it’s time for you all to weigh in.  How did you all do your wedding seating chart?  Any strange or unique or charming seating charts out there?

I just wanted to stop in and tell you that A) we’re alive and B) we went through with it (no fleeing the alter for either of us) and we’re officially married!  Woohoo!  We’ll be back later either this week or next week (or maybe both or maybe not for awhile depending on when we get our hands on all those wedding pics) with some more detail oriented pics and posts from our wedding festivities.  But in a nut shell…we started off by hosting about 60-70 people in our backyard for a little welcome bbq in lieu of a rehearsal.  It was ambitious…but it was a blast!  Here’s a shot of Colby and I at the bbq courtesy of “The Brit” towards the end of the night.

Can you tell we’re happy?!  No?  Well…we’re ridiculously, stupidly happy there! But not quite as happy as the next day.  I can now officially understand why people call it the happiest day of your life.  My face is still hurting from all the smiling.

We’re still beaming as we coyly call each other husband and wife, or Mr. Campbell and Mrs. Campbell.  I grin like a 13 year old girl every time Colby calls me Mrs. Campbell.  It doesn’t get old!

We’re still in recovery mode as my tired fingers type away.  We’re exhausted from all the hoopla.  We’re taking one more day off from work tomorrow (Monday) to recoup and I’m pretty certain our butts aren’t coming off the couch.  Except maybe to go couch shopping with some of our wedding money.  The current love seat situation going on in our living room isn’t overly conducive to lounging and napping.  And with that I leave you with one last photo…one of our reception venue.

Gorgeous, no?!  We’ll be back tomorrow with our typical house project bid-ness.  But this time as husband and wife!  And I’m forewarning you all…until the newlywed-ness wears off, there’s going to be alot of cheesy, sappiness, weirdness going on.  Please don’t call the cheese police on us?!

Pssst….so I owe all you fabulous commenters out there an apology for not getting back to you sooner.  I’m on it right now!  Please keep commenting!  I promise now that the wedding is over to better about responding!

Psssssst…And A HUGE thank you shout out to all our friends and family for sharing in our big day!  We love you all and can’t thank you enough for all the love and support!  We just wish we could have spent more time with each of you!

We found a Brit….and he brought us gifts:

That’s a tote bag on the left and a picnic blanket on the right.  The Brit is one of Colby’s best friends from back in the day when they both lived in New Hampshire.  But sadly back to Britain he went and then Colby trekked off to Maine.  They haven’t seen each other in seven years, although they Skype regularly, so it was quite the little reunion.  And I like him already…and not just for his accent…or that he brought us gifts.

I adore that tea set.  I may have squealed just a little bit when I opened it.  I’ve been drooling over all the “Keep Calm & Carry On” merchandise for quite some time, and now I have some!  The best part is that they came from across the pond with the Brit when he flew in today.  Fun Fact…the Keep Calm and Carry On poster was originally produced by the UK government during the Second World War to boost the morale of the British public.  In 2000 it was re-issued and used for decor purposes.

The big task of the day was to bake all the whoopie pies for the wedding favors:

About eight hours and 140 whoopie pies later we were done.  And that’s 140 big suckers not those sad little bite sized ones.  These guys got some meat frosting to them.  And a HUGE shoutout goes out to my whoopie pie baking team (Jen, Sarah, Julie, and of course all the kids).  I couldn’t have done it without you.

I also made some centerpieces for the cocktail table centerpieces.

I swear my legs are permanently blue from spray painting the wine bottles and my fingers are raw from wrapping jute around the soda bottles.

And there may have been a little line dancing preparation going on.

I’m not gonna lie…there may be a line dancing portion of the wedding reception program.  Bring your cowboy boots folks!  I’ll have them and you should too!

Pssst…Tomorrow is the big rehearsal and rehearsal dinner bbq day.  We can’t wait for all our friends and family to arrive and spend some quality time.  It should be fun and I can’t wait to share all the pics with you all!

Need I say more?  I wrapped the linen around the book to take away that black sketch book feel using the hot glue gun.

For the inside of the book, I kind of went all hog wild.  And by hog wild I mean hog wild stamping hog wild.  It’s not my favorite, I could have done better, but it’s interesting enough and definitely not traditional.

To stamp the pages, I used the same stamp kit from Martha for the favor tags and also a new stamp kit for the borders that I picked up for about $10 and a navy ink pad for $1.

To adorn the guest book and make it more personalized, we decorated a plain, wooden medallion by staining and gluing it to the book.

After staining, I used some leftover yellow paint to add our names and the wedding date.

And voila…finished guest book.

I know, boring blog post.  Can you tell I’m not really into the guest book?  Maybe that’s why I procrastinated so long and waited until the absolute last minute to finish it.  But what I am excited about…the guest book pens.  I know…it’s strange and odd…I may just be that special kid.  But I totally went all out “adorn the pens” on ‘em, using some jute and flower stickers (from the Martha Stewart sticker line).

First, I wrapped the basic desk pens with jute, hot gluing the jute in place periodically.

Then I hot glued the floral stickers to the ends of the pens and placed them in a Ball jar for added rusticity.

After crafting away at the guest book and the pens, it was time to put it all together.  We used the little side table that we had picked up at the flea market a few weeks ago, added some bunting, and placed the guest book and the pens on top.

The guest book and the table are to be placed outside where our ceremony is taking place, and then moved into the reception hall post ceremony.

I love the combo of the guest book with the pens.  I think they go together quite nicely without feeling to matchy matchy.  Nobody likes matchy matchy.

And then throw in the bunting and it’s the trifecta of wedding decor harmony.  It’s like the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon wedding decor.  The linen on the guest book is the same linen in the bunting, the guest gook ink colors are the same color as the ink on the bunting, the bunting is assembled with jute which is also wrapped around the pens, the pens have navy flowers and the guest book has navy ink.  It all goes.

When it comes down to W-Day…not to be confused with D-Day…that would be bad…I think the programs will end up on the same table as the guest book.  So the whole setup will look a little something more like this.

Here’s a closeup of the program basket complete with programs.

Recognize the basket?!  It’s part of gift number one from Marcus.  I knew I would use it someday soon!  I love that basket!

So now our frazzled selves are down to three days until the big ol’ wedding.  Have I mentioned that we’re feeling a little frazzled?!

Pssst…So tomorrow is a big day here…whoopie pie baking day.  We’ll be baking about 130 whoopie pies…large whoopie pies.  So if for some reason we get bogged down by whoopie pie madness, you may not hear from us tomorrow.  But I’ll make it up to you, I swear.