the food

My mom was the superhero with the food. Above is the menu from the party Saturday night, and it was all incredible. Matt laughs at me because whenever I cook (even if it's just for the two of us), I always cook enough for about three times as many people as I am actually serving. I get this directly from my mother, who will stay up half the night worrying after a big family dinner if one of the dishes actually gets finished..."someone might still have been hungry!"... Despite our tendency to overcook, we were still mighty nervous about preparing enough food for 100 people. But with the help of many kind friends, it all turned out amazingly well. We had a huge gas grill for the ribs and bbq, and my mom made enough of her famous dinner rolls for everyone to enjoy both nights--with plenty to spare, of course. (I think she made about 8 batches and froze them all in the weeks before the wedding.)

I ordered bamboo plates and flatware, and we used Mason jars for all the drinks--jelly jars for wine, half-pints for beer, tea, and lemonade. We made a bourbon raspberry lemonade that was a big hit, and I've been drinking it all summer since the wedding. (very easy: 1 part bourbon, 2 parts ginger ale, and 2 parts raspberry lemonade)

We decided against a wedding cake, and instead asked close family and friends to contribute a dessert. The dessert table ended up looking like a county fair bake-off (the picture above is before about half the desserts arrived). We had pies: strawberry-rhubarb, blueberry, apple, and sweet potato. We had cakes: coconut, lemon bundt, chocolate pound, and honey bun. We had a huge banana pudding, and my mom made her trifle. There was blackberry cobbler and chocolate ganache tarts. And I'm probably forgetting something. It was amazing. And I think everyone appreciated the opportunity to contribute, and it made it so special. Not to mention freaking delicious.

the flowers

The flowers were so much fun! Our house was like one huge bower. We had flowers coming out of our ears. My mom and my aunt did the flowers themselves, and it all turned out so beautifully. Since we were having a pretty informal wedding at our house, I wanted a cottage-y feeling, and we used lots of hydrangea, peonies, viburnum, and roses.

My mom ordered the flowers from a wholesaler and my aunt did all the arrangements, four hydrangea wreaths, my bouquet, six attendant bouquets (I didn't technically have attendants, but I wanted my sister, two best friends, the mamas, and the grandmama to have a small bouquet), and six boutonnieres. In retrospect, it's hard to see how she did it all. Who needs a team of florists when you have one superhuman and supertalented aunt?

Here's Aunt Ann working on my bouquet, which had pale blue hydrangeas, white lisianthus, grape hyacinths, viburnum, freesia, and Sweet Juliet roses. Sweet Juliet is a David Austin rose that we first encountered on a trip to England. It has a soft, sweet, almost lemony scent and we all have such good memories of discovering it in some picturesque English garden (though now I can't remember where we were...Sudeley Castle maybe?)

It's funny, I don't have that many pictures of me holding the bouquet, because pretty quickly after the ceremony I traded in the bouquet for a glass of champagne. Ann also put together the flowers for my hair, it's a lisianthus and (I think) some freesia.

The mamas had violet sweet peas, roses, queen anne's lace, and viburnum.

Matt's boutonniere had a green button mum, a tiny grape hyacinth, a sprig of Queen Anne's Lace, and those berries that I can't remember the name of. We used a hosta leaf out of the backyard.

I know some people don't care for mophead hydrangeas, but they just speak of summer to me. We had a huge hydrangea in the front yard of the house I grew up in, and I've always loved them. This arrangement also had the Juliet roses and Bells of Ireland, which is such a cool flower.

We had four hydrangea wreaths, which we put on the front and back doors of the house and the two fence gates. After the wedding, we just chucked them up in the attic and they dried amazingly well. I'm going to pull them down again and make a dried wreath for my front door this fall. We also hung up my bouquet (upside down in the attic) and it dried very well too. Retained much of its color and shape. I don't know what to do with it now, though. Mama laughingly suggested we display it under a bell jar in our living room, like Miss Havisham.

We also worked very hard to get the garden looking nice. It was wonderful to be able to rationalize some plant purchases, since we were having the wedding at the house. The garden is definitely a work in progress, and I am really enjoying it. This fall I'll be planting some Coral Charm peonies, which are the ones that are so spectacular in the pictures at the top of this post.

It really was a bower. This is my bedroom the day before the wedding, and this is only a portion of the flowers we had to work with. It was a lot of work, but we had a ton of fun.

the dresses

Why have one wedding dress, when you can have two? I was lucky because since we held our ceremony and party over two days, I got to have two dresses. The challenge was finding two dresses I really liked, while staying within a very strict budget. After a couple frustrating months of searching, my mom came up with the genius idea of altering her wedding dress, so that I could wear it for the ceremony.

Here's Mom in her dress, in 1972. (How groovy are her bridesmaid dresses?!)

I grew up on tales told about this dress. My grandmother and mother sewed it, from veil to hand-embroidered hem. Before they started sewing, they went to Garfinckels, the big department store in downtown Washington, D.C. and Mom tried on dresses in their bridal salon. She found a dress she liked, and Mom and Grandma then found a pattern with a similar silhouette that they could use as a starting point. I can just see my Mom and Grandma, turning the Garfinckels dress inside out in the fitting room, examining every detail of the construction and planning how they would recreate it.

They bought the fabrics at G Street Remnant shop in D.C.: silk organza, silk peau de soie, and re-embroidered Alencon lace. (We found some similar lace online, which goes for a mere $150/yd today!)

Grandma had a next-door neighbor who had worked in costume shops in Hollywood and had helped sew the dresses for Gone with the Wind, among other movies. She helped Mom and Grandma figure out how to transform the lace into a triangular yoke and then embroider the lace along the hem, so that the lace would trail up and over the silk band about 12" above the hem.

The dress had organza leg-of-mutton sleeves, with deep lace cuffs and a long row of tiny fabric-covered buttons on each cuff.

It's a beautiful dress, and I was very nervous about altering it. It almost seemed like sacrilege. But Mama gave me full encouragement to change it in whatever way I liked, so we started thinking about how we could update it for me. The sleeves had to go, as did the high collar. Unlike my mom, who was married in a church in January, I was planning an outdoor wedding in June!

We briefly contemplated doing the alterations ourselves, but we were nervous with so little time before the wedding. Luckily, we found the most amazing seamstress in Cary, NC named Olga Samarskaya. Olga has a thick Russian accent, a brusque, no-nonsense demeanor, and the warmest heart you will ever find. She was a Godsend.

I brought Olga a set of rough sketches, and we decided on a v-neck that followed the line of the yoke. Olga took her scissors to the sleeves during the first fitting (eeeek), and had wonderful ideas about how to alter the dress so it would hug my figure just so.

Olga also talked me into a deep v-neck in the back as well. Because, as Olga said, "you want to be a little sexy on your wedding day, dear."

I felt absolutely beautiful. It meant so much to wear the gown that my Mom and Grandma had put so much love into. Grandma passed away 12 years ago, but it felt like she was there with us on my wedding day.

And then for our party on Saturday, I wore a simple J. Crew dress. It is called the Aubrey, and they don't seem to sell it anymore, but it is made from a lovely embossed cotton fabric. So cool and comfortable for an outdoor party.

I can't end this post without a few words about Matt's outfits. (I kept calling them his "outfits," which he didn't like very much. I think it implied a certain orchestration of the wardrobe that he didn't want to own up to. This coming from a man who has a very sharp sartorial eye despite anything he might say to the contrary.)

He wore slacks and a vest both days. He was very dapper. On Saturday he wore his royal blue Crocs. Because Crocs rock, no matter how many people pooh-pooh them.

invitations

I had a lot of fun with the invitations. Instead of the traditional interior envelope, I used a sewn sleeve made from a natural linen to hold all the insertions. I printed the design on the front of the sleeve with my trusty gocco, and we made them just the right size so that the "Matt & Julie" at the top of the invitation peeked out of the sleeve.

Here's the invitation. I wanted to use a bunch of small icons that represented me and Matt, and we ended up presenting them in pairs--showing the yin and the yang of our personalities. So we have the Bigfoot and Lady doll--the Bigfoot because Matt has an eternal dream of capturing the elusive monster, and a doll because, well, I like dolls. We used silhouettes of our dogs, followed by a banjo and whisk. Night and day because Matt is a night owl and I most definitely am not. A luchador mask and a sewing machine. The text reads "Matthew Tucker and Julie Sizemore (who despite certain personality contrasts, each think the other just about perfect) have decided to say 'I do.' And so, along with their parents, invite you to a party at their house to celebrate."

We also included a simple little card for the folks we wanted to invite to our ceremony, which was held the evening before the party.

I goofed up a bit on the RSVP cards; I forgot to give people a place to write down their names. So we ended up getting some mystery RSVPs, and had to try to figure out who they were from by deciphering the postmark and through process of elimination. It was quite a puzzle. Though it didn't end up mattering in the end since we didn't do a seating chart for dinner. I decided a seating chart was way more trouble than it was worth, so we let folks just sit wherever they darn well wanted to. It worked out just fine.

Aside from the linen sleeve, which I printed with my gocco, I did these all on my home inkjet printer using paper from Paper Source. We also got a return address stamp made (from Paperwink), which made addressing the envelopes much easier.

married!

Matt and I were married on June 4, 2010. It was wonderful. And married life is oh so good.

Truth be told, I was something of a reluctant wedding planner. I tried my best to convince Matt that eloping to Costa Rica and spending two weeks lying on the beach and exploring rain forests would be a much better use of our money than a wedding. The idea of planning a party for 100 guests and then having all of those 100 guests look at me (all 100 of them! at the same time!) while I stuttered over my vows or tripped over my dress made my heart falter. But Matt gently said, "Well, why don't we just have a big party in our backyard?" And of course he was right. At the beginning of the wedding planning, it was so hard to understand that our wedding didn't have to be like everyone else's. We could make it just right for us, a day that would be comfortable, special and meaningful. A day that would celebrate the life we've built together, and the wonderful people who have supported us and loved us for so long.

We had the wedding in our back yard, and we did pretty much everything ourselves, from the food to the flowers to the photography. We have extraordinarily talented family and friends, let me tell you. What surprised me the most about the whole wedding process was how much everyone wanted to help. Our loved ones were incredibly generous with their time and talents and it was so humbling, and so special.

We said our vows on Friday evening, surrounded by closest friends and family. Then we had our big party on Saturday--complete with bluegrass band and barbeque.

Weddings are funny things these days. So much money, so much emotional energy, so much spectacle. So much pressure! Honestly, it was hard for me to make sense of it all at first. But as the wedding started to come together, we realized that we could just relax, defy convention as needed, and plan a wedding that fit our personalities and our lifestyle. And then it got a whole lot more fun.

I have lots of details to share with you. More to come!

change of address cards

I knew I wanted to make change of address cards to mail out to friends and family. In what I thought was a flash of brilliance, I decided to carve a linoleum block with a little illustration of the house. I have very little experience with carving linoleum (I carved a turtle once), but I was optimistic. One injured finger and a good bit of cursing later, I have some cards that are somewhat presentable. I was too cheap to go out and buy proper block printing ink, so I used my plain old painting acrylics. It looks a little...gunky. But it adds to the rustic charm of the stamp, right?

Unrelated, but momentous: I made collards tonight. I couldn't just buy one ham hock, they came four to a package. So now we're going to have to make a big pot of beans to go with our mess of greens. The house smells like my grandma's, it's very nice.

for napping

If that's not the picture of a spoiled dog, I don't know what is. But how can we help it with those sweet brown eyes which stare so intently until you pet her head and rub her belly. Sweet girl. The doggies needed living room beds. While we love the hardwood floors in our new house, it means the dogs had few places to stretch out for a nap.

I wanted to do this on the cheap, so I bought two 5-lb boxes of polyfill and used fabric from my stash. They're a little poofy, but I know from experience (having already made one bed for Scout) that they will squish down in time to the perfect state of poofiness.

Scout is sliding off her bed a little bit, granted. She's just such a big girl. She's still breaking in the bed. She'll get it squished down before too long. I would like to share that I think Scout is the most patient and sweet soul I have ever met. You can tell it from looking at those eyes, I'm sure.

Of course, some days almost anywhere will do for a nap. Because napping is very important.

Home

We're settled into our new home. I loooove this house.

I love the windows, original to 1923. Some of them don't open so well anymore, and all of them have that rippled effect of old glass, as if the window were ever so slowly melting down into the windowsill.

I love the wide front porch.

I love settin' on the front porch with Matt, watching the town drive by.

I love the giant oak tree in the backyard. It's huge. I don't really feel we could own such a tree, but hopefully if we show him the proper respect, he won't decide to drop one of his limbs on our roof. He seems a kindly old tree, so I'm sure he'll be careful.

And of course sweet puppies and an amazing, wonderful fiancé are in this house, which is the best part. Yep, we made a promise and he gave me a beautiful ring. It's been a very good summer.

I've got pictures to share of our transformed sunroom and homemade doggie beds, so I'll be back very soon. The dogs want their dinner...

rick rack!

I made a set of 8 napkins for Twin last week. She loves red, so this is definitely an ode to red. Every napkin is a different print, but all have the same red rick rack around the edges. I got the inspiration and the directions from Joelle Hoverson's lovely book Patchwork and Quilted Gifts. I love that book. I want to make the brown and blue quilt out of that book so dang much. I will get to it one day.

These are actually a housewarming gift for Twin. Change is afoot. I am not so good with change, which is why the blog has been so quiet lately. But the change is good--oh so good!--except for the fact that I won't be living with my sister anymore. We've lived together almost our entire lives, with only a year here and there when we were apart. I really don't have the words to describe what a blessing it has been in my life. But that's the great thing with my sister. I don't have to have the words to say it because she knows. I know. We know.

I want to put this in teeny tiny type because I can still scarcely believe it, but Matt and I are buying a house! The most perfect, beautiful, charming bungalow. We move in two weeks, so it will continue pretty quiet here on the blog for a little while, but then I expect it will turn into a This Old House kind of blog as we learn the joys and challenges of owning a nearly 100-year old home. I am so freaking excited I don't know what to do with myself. Pack! That's what I'll do. Lots of packing!

harvesting tomatoes and hope

I'm growing tomatoes! Two different kinds. This is very exciting.

The even more exciting part is that my tomatoes are growing in a Harvesting Hope container garden. Harvesting Hope is an awesome service project my mom started with help from some of her Obama campaigning buddies. Obama asked them to serve and let me tell you, she has stepped up.

They've made about 100 of these container gardens (made from donated used restaurant buckets, organic soil, seedlings from a local sustainable farmer, and a lot of hard work) and are giving them to people in the community who might not otherwise have the means to grow and eat fresh veggies.

My meager contribution to the project has been designing a logo and starting a blog for the project. So Mom shipped me a container of my very own to set up on my front stoop. The blog has some great info (such as how they built the buckets) as well as some lovely photos of the garden recipients.

And these buckets work amazingly well. My tomato is growing like mad. The system is ingenious. It has a water reservoir in the bottom that you fill through a tube and funnel at the top. Being a closed system, it maintains a consistent moisture level and none of the nutrients drain off when watering. My mom and brother did a ton of research and experimentation as they designed the containers, and the result is just amazing. So smart.

I am incredibly proud of my Mom and brother. They have worked so hard, given so much of their time and energy for this cause. I am in awe.

And here is my very first harvest. Three little grape tomatoes. Sweet.

great-grandma's quilts

As we cleaned out my grandma's house a couple weeks ago, we found eight antique quilts that we assume my great-grandmother made. Many of them have become threadbare and stained, but I love them all.I found one in the linen closet, Dad brought down a box of them from the attic, and then we found three more in the basement. It was raining antique quilts, made by the hand of my great-grandmother! I was so freaking excited.These are definitely patchwork quilts--you can tell they were made with whatever fabrics she had on hand. A couple are quite complex, while others are simple patterns.I agonized about how to wash them, because after who knows how many years sitting in the attic, they certainly needed to be washed. I read online that the best way to clean vintage quilts is to vacuum them, which sounded a bit ridiculous, though I guess it would be a gentle way to air them out. I finally decided just to wash and dry them on delicate, and they don't appear to be too much the worse for the experience. They certainly smell a lot better.My next task is to mend them. I don't want to "ruin" their vintage authenticity, but I also want them to be attractive and useful for me and the rest of the family. Many of them have holes that need to be patched and I also plan to add new binding to the ones where the original binding has frayed almost to the point of nonexistence. Anyone know how to gently remove giant, decades-old stains from quilts? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as I am at a bit of a loss. Thanks! There are more pictures over on flickr if you're interested in vintage quilts.