young love and a tutu

Photo credit: Seung Chon

This weekend we celebrated the nuptials of our friends Becca and Brian who were wed on a riverbank on a perfect Sunday afternoon. These two are some of the most stylish and hip people I know, and no detail was left unnoticed as they planned their wedding. Obviously I'm going to highlight a few of my favorite details here, but I truly hope these two submit their photos to a wedding or design blog of some sort. This is the kind of event that people like me drool over to satiate our inexplicable obsession with weddings.

I was absolutely enamored with the antique dresser they used as an altar. The tiered drawers displayed recycled soda bottles and flower arrangements. And on top you can see the tree that they planted as a symbol of their unity. Just lovely!

All the flowers were beautiful, but I was especially drawn to the use of a cotton plant in both his boutonniere and her bridal bouquet.

Photo credit: Seung Chon

And of course, what idyllic wedding would be complete without an angelic flower girl with blond ringlets? Becca's niece served this role with the greatest of ease, totally rocking a grey glittered tutu that Becca commissioned me to make this spring.

Photo credit: Seung Chon

I was a bit nervous at first, having no pattern or previous experience making anything that would be worn for such a special event. But after googling a few tutu-making tutorials it became very obvious that it is a much simpler process than it seems. In fact there is only about 2 minutes worth of sewing, and the rest is entirely cutting and knotting! Seriously, anyone can make a tutu, and if you have a little girl who loves to dress up I highly suggest this simple and totally gratifying project!

Sadly, I was in dire need of a tutu model upon its completion, so I enlisted the help of the cutest person I've got around these days:

But I think Becca's flower girl took it to the next level of adorable:

Congratulations to the newly weds on their young marriage and beautiful wedding. Good times were had by all!

fueling the behavior (or, a little backpack for a little kid)

Little kids seem to have a penchant for taking things out of containers, and then (if you're lucky) putting them back in. In the past I've watched in awe and wonder as a toddler eagerly dumped out the contents of a purse, methodically ripped tissue out of tissue from a box or overturned a food-filled bowl in glee. I'm sure some very smart child psychologist has well-documented research detailing why kids can't help but untidy the tidied, but rather than analyze the behavior I'm just going to encourage it.

I was inspired when my friend Becca gave me a few yards of an upholstery weight linen she bought at Ikea. The vivid colors and big flowers are perfect for a little girl's bag, and so I went about the business of crafting a draw-string backpack. I actually took a pattern for an adult-sized bag from my trusty old copy of Simple Sewing and proceeded to adjust the size of the bag, the pocket and the straps for the more "pint-sized" among us. For the straps I used some pillowcases I had lying about. That means that the cost of this project was approximately $0 (right in my price range).

Ultimately I made 2 of these backpacks (meaning that now two little girls have their very own bags to fill and dump out at their leisure). One was shipped off to Becca's 2-year-old niece in Chicago (kind of like a thank-you gesture for the sweet fabric). And the second little backpack was a birthday present for our niece Emma upon her first birthday! Yes that's right, we partied hard for the second weekend in a row. It was great to get together with family to celebrate all the life and excitement Emma has brought to the family in the last year. She's a little ball of energy!

And as an aside, we are all holding our breaths in anticipation since my sister has started to show early signs of labor. It is entirely likely that Cali will make her big debut some time this week! Babies everywhere!

kids say the darndest things

My new favorite site: Preschool Gems

Reading through these random quotes from 3, 4, and 5 year-olds brings back fond memories of my students in South Korea. It's been 3 years of withdraw from daily encounters with bubbly, bumbling, tattling, hilarious little people. I could use a regular infusion of kid humor, and Preschool Gems does the trick for now. Good gracious, kids are fun!

Hug-a-ria!

Today is Silly Lilly's 5th birthday! Five very energetic, expressive, creative, affectionate and talkative years. I hear that Lilly loves to help her mom around the house, especially in the kitchen. So when I found this free kid's apron tutorial, I decided to gift her with the ultimate in kitchen fashion. And of course no fledgling chef would be fully prepared without her very own oven mitt.

Lilly is infamous for inventing what is known as the "hug-a-ria". Simply put, a hug-a-ria is a surprising, and intense (I dare say epic) hug that she could hit you with at any moment. We all live in anticipation for hug-a-ria's, and secretly hope it is a trend that takes humankind by storm- the first of many contributions this crazy kid will make to our crazy world.