Wedding Post: Wedding Invitations by Hullabaloo Studios

When Tim and I first found out we won the Green Wedding Giveaway, the first person I called was Marcy at Hullabaloo Studios. Hearing from friends about how long wedding invitations can take to be created and printed, I knew this was the first to-do item on my list.

Since day one, Marcy has been so patient and accommodating with my ideas and requests. I hadn't even chosen a color palette or theme but Marcy helped guide my choice and created something I never would have even imagined! I am thrilled with the garden feel of the invitation and never would have been able to come up with something like this on my own.

When the final product came in the mail and was ready to be sent out, I was impressed with the detail that Marcy paid special attention to. Each invitation was like a small gift to be shared and I was hesitant to bring them to the post office and have the mail machines manhandle my delicate little works of art. So I ordered special stamps and then asked the mailman to cancel them so they didn't get crushed. 

The design she created will run throughout all of the wedding related paper items (programs, menu, place card settings.) One touch to the invitations that I was surprised to learn about was that the paper used has flower seeds embedded into it. After the wedding date passes, guests are encouraged to plant all of the parts of the invitation (well, not the ribbon) and watch a tiny flower garden sprout.

I would highly recommend Marcy for any of your invitation or printing needs!

Question of the Day: Do you like getting traditional snail mail? Or should everything be electronic?

Disclaimer: I was not paid or even asked to review this service, but did receive the invitation package complimentary as part of the Green Wedding Giveaway Grand Prize.

How To Build A Raised Garden Bed For Under $100

In the midst of wedding planning and a few crazed bridezilla-eque moments, I managed to take some time to get my hands into the dirt. Or, the cow manure compost pile.

One day a few weeks ago, I took a couple hours to volunteer with Growing Places Garden Project (GPGP)  and installed a raised bed community garden at a senior housing site in Gardner. Growing Places Garden Project works locally and installs manageable-sized raised beds for families that qualify for their program. The beds are installed by volunteers and then each family works with a GPGP mentor throughout the growing season.

After engaging in this experience, I decided it was time to install one of my own. I have now gone over two years without my own garden plot and it was time to get back to growing some of my own food. I love the concept of the community garden (heck, I started one in Leominster in 2006) but for me I need something closer to home. Well, nothing's closer than the back yard.

So I scoured the internet for designs and ideas for building this little plot, and here's what I came up with. Here's what you'll need to build your own.

• 3 untreated pine 2"x8'x6", one cut into equal 4" lengths (have the hardware store rep do it)
• 8 - L-shaped mounting brackets (come in packs of 4, each with 4 screw holes)
• an electric screwdriver 
• some cardboard boxes

Once I assembled the frame on the driveway, I hauled it up to the south side of our house. The south side usually receives the best and most direct sunlight. From here, I started breaking down boxes that some of the bridal shower gifts came in and put them to really good use. Weed barrier.

Even Crate & Barrel recommended it!

Once the frame and cardboard were right where we wanted them, we started filling it in with soil. Now, there are many opinions on the types of soil one should use in a garden. But since this was a project ascribing to the square foot gardening theory, I decided to go with their recipe: 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 vermiculite.

• 10 bags of mixed compost (a mixture of cow manure, lobster and mushroom)
• 1 bag of peat moss
• 1 bag of vermiculite

After some muscled stirring of the mixture, I had a fluffy layer of rich dark soil that looked like potting soil. Seemed right to me!

During this process, I also felt compelled to install my newly acquired rain barrel. See it there on the left? Once the soil had been adequately mixed, I roped off 1' squares using roofing tacks and twine according to the square foot gardening method. 

Once thoroughly watered, I dug my plants into my 32 mini plots.

I love tomatoes, so I have about 13 different varieties of tomatoes in 16 of the 32 plots. The others have herbs, peppers, cucumbers, peas, and edible flowers. I also tucked in some mixed greens seeds and hope to have continuous crops of lettuce throughout the summer.

  Here you'll see some herbs: dill, sage, lavender, basil.

The total cost of the whole project (minus the plants) was about $100. If you had some of these materials lying around it could be much cheaper. It took me about 5-6 hours from start to finish, including more than one trip to the hardware store and nursery. But that's my own fault.

Lessons learned:

• I'm relatively new to the concept of raised bed and square foot gardening, so this project is about trial and error. Suggestions welcome.
• Splurge a little bit on the soil components. The soil is where the plants draw up their nutrients from, so it's best to have rich, nutritious soil. Hopefully I made the right soil choices!
• The rain barrel is going to be a huge asset. We had heavy rain showers earlier this week and the barrel has enough in it for about two weeks of watering!
• I have been keeping an eye on the amount of sun the particular area we placed the bed in gets. In hindsight I probably should have moved it closer to our front yard as there is less afternoon shade.

Future steps:

• Tomatoes need stakes, and fast!
• I'll be putting up frames for the vining cucumbers and peas so they can grow vertically.
• I've thought about putting up piping and netting to keep unwanted critters away. 

Question of the Day: Are you a gardener? Have any good tips? 

Wedding Post: A Beautiful Bridal Shower and an Unlikely Shower Gift

Last weekend, my family and friends hosted a bridal shower for me at Fruitlands Museum. It was a warm, sunny day and we had the pleasure of enjoying each other's company and the wonderful view.

The "planning committee" orchestrated every detail with thought and care, right down to the local mini-cupcakes from Honeybee Bakery in Princeton and DIY honey pots as favors.

By far the funniest gift that someone bought (off the registry!) was a rain barrel! I've wanted one of these forever and since I plan to have a little garden this year (blog post to follow!) I felt it was necessary.

Yup. Just me and my rain barrel.

Question of the Day: What sort of funny/weird/unique bridal gifts have you seen at showers?

Rodents Have to Eat, Too

Just thought I'd show you some photos I took from my kitchen window recently. We filled the bird feeders and mistakenly put the containers on the wrong hooks. Well, this little guy found he could reach the delicious one with ease.

Question of the Day: What would your captions be for these three photos?

Wedding Post: Engagement Photo Shoot

A few weekends ago Tim and I met up with Shane of Shane's Wedding Photography for our engagement shoot. We were excited to have the opportunity to work with the photographer and get comfortable with his style before the big day.

Can I just say (and I can vouch for Tim, too) that Shane is a cool guy. First off, his photography is beautiful. He maintains the utmost professionalism while still being fun, casual and keeping it low stress. I was impressed that in another life, he was a professional skateboarder and his father was a stuntman. What a background!

We started our little session down in York on Wiggly Bridge, the smallest pedestrian suspension bridge  in the world. It is really quite adorable and in a way brings in a wisp of memory of my days in San Francisco.

Shane's Wedding Photography

It may be the world's smallest suspension bridge, but it was above the water and the wind was blowing and so my hair was a-flying. I managed through it but decided on an up-do at our next stop.

We headed to Stageneck Inn for some quintessential Maine ocean shots. We started getting silly here. The light was perfect for photos that day and we couldn't have been happier.

Shane's Wedding Photography

Shane's Wedding Photography

Shane's Wedding Photography

 The day wouldn't have been complete without some on-site shots at Clay Hill Farm.

Shane's Wedding Photography

Shane's Wedding Photography

Shane's Wedding Photography

We are extremely grateful for Shane and the fantastic work he did, and we're thrilled to be working with him for our wedding! Thanks Shane!

Disclaimer: I was not paid or even asked to review this service, but did receive the engagement session complimentary as part of the Green Wedding Giveaway Grand Prize.

Wedding Post: Tux Fitting at Event Central in Portsmouth

(This is a guest post by Tim)

It’s prom season.  If you are a 16 year-old girl, there may not be a more exciting time in your life.  I however, am not, and really couldn’t care less about hot pink and highlighter yellow dresses with straps and lace. I am a 30 year-old guy who just wanted to get fitted for my tux with my groomsmen and then go golfing.  I was rather concerned when I clicked on one of their two links when looking up the phone number to make our appointment at Madeleine’s Event Central. The first website was www.madprom.com.  Clicking on the link, I was somewhat worried at first glance that my DeLorean had gone up to 88 miles an hour without my knowing and that I had mysteriously gone back in time and now needed a prom date before finally realizing and remembering that my name is Tim and not Marty (that was a Back to the Future joke for all of you under the age of 25). 

Eventually remembering how old I was, and that I needed a tux because I’m getting married on July 8^th, and not going to the Prom, I clicked on the other link http://www.madeleineseventcentral.com. This was much more my style (and age) and what I had expected. After calling my groomsmen and Madeleine’s, our appointment was made for last Saturday, April 21^st.   This just happens to be the busiest Prom dress buying weekend of the entire year and I will say that there was some lingering fear of being overrun by hundreds or thousands of overexcited teenage females, desperate to buy the last Tropicana orange colored dress in stock.  Luckily, Jay of Madeleine’s Tuxedo in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, quickly alleviated all of my fears and made our experience as quick and painless as possible.  Even with all the pre-prom excitement going on around us.  

In all seriousness, Jay was extremely professional and helpful and answered any questions we had; whether it was about the type of tuxedo we should choose, euro tie or bow tie, or about the black and white shoes that I picked out (which are the sweetest tux shoes ever, just so you know), Jay was more than happy to help and put us on the right path so I didn’t make us look like a bunch of meatheads (thankfully, for Jessica’s sake as the camouflage tux was tempting). Madeleine’s also practices green dry cleaning and tries to schedule group drop offs and pick-ups whenever they can, which makes them even cooler if that was even possible.  

All in all, we had an excellent experience at Madeleine’s and would highly recommend them  for wedding tuxes (or any 16 or 17 year-old girl looking to get a prom dress!)

Question of the Day: Are you a wedding suit or wedding tux person? 

Wedding Post: Cake Tasting at Hippie Chick Bakery

Mind you, before we entered the Green Wedding Giveaway contest, Tim and I had not been engaged for very long, so we hadn’t had the chance to do anything wedding-related including cake tasting, engagement photos, dress shopping or, for that matter, wedding shoe shopping.

Cake tasting was definitely on our must-do list, and we were thrilled when we found out that we’d be working with Amy from Hippie Chick Bakery. Amy’s values of a business owner aligned with what we were hoping for as customers. Everything is prepared from scratch and her ingredients are local and organic when possible. In addition, Amy says, “We try to accomplish this through charitable giving and being a green business – using green energy when possible and using carbon offsets when we can’t, composting waste, sourcing local ingredients, to recycling, and much more!” She is also well-known for her egg-free, vegan and gluten-free masterpieces. As a Registered Dietitian who knows first-hand from client experiences, this is a wonderful and special service to offer those with special dietary needs.

One of the most valuable things that Tim and I are grateful for in this journey is that much of the legwork has been done for us: that is, finding vendors who have the same set of values that we do when it comes to having a green wedding. This was the part of wedding planning that I was looking forward to the least, but now we don’t have to!

Onto the cake tasting. I’ll admit it; I’d take ice cream over cake any day. But, the cakes and frosting fillings that we tried jetsetted cake to the top of my “Favorite Dessert List” very quickly.

After much deliberation, we finally decided on the following cake flavors to try:

• vanilla
• marble
• fudgy chocolate
• red velvet
• lemon poppyseed

And the fillings:

• vanilla
• milk chocolate
• chocolate mint
• raspberry
• mocha

We gobbled up each sugary morsel, hemming and hawing about which was our favorite. In the end, we decided on two flavors on alternating layers of the cake.

Question of the Day: Any guesses as to which two flavors we chose? Of the options listed above, which would YOU have chosen?