Cooking Classes in Mexico

While in Cancun the resort hosted a Mexican cooking class and Ryan and I, being the foodies we are, jumped on the chance to attend. A funny thing happened when we got there though...

Out of the entire group of people who came for the class only two were female and guess who got picked to make the dishes for the men? You got it, the women, I'm sensing a little sexism here. Anyhoo it was totally worth it because I got to make this amazing dish called ceviche and Ryan took pictures of the whole thing.

Ceviche is a salsa like dish consisting of shrimp, lime juice, onion, tomato, cilantro, salt and peper. We first cooked the shrimp in the lime juice! I'd never heard of this trick before but it's one that will certainly be repeated at home. I thought I did a bang up job and based on the amounts that Ryan ate I think he thought so too. big kiss, bekuh

Everybody likes Favors

My second and last sneak peak into the wedding decor is, drum roll please....the wedding favors! Ryan and I have tried to stick with a very organic, natural feel in everything for the wedding and the favors were no exception. To enhance this feeling for our guests we decided to use wildflower seeds as the favor de jour.

Using vintage floral fabrics I sewed each bag to be filled with wildflower seeds. I also used my collection of wood veneer gift tags and stamped them with a queen anne's lace rubber stamp. Then I wrote "Thanks," along each stem and strung the tags with twine. Each bag was filled with two tablespoons of wildflower seeds and tied together. These were a labor of love that I can't wait to share! big kiss, bekuh

Embroidered Love

With the wedding drawing closer I'll probably only share a few more posts with wedding details, but this project served double duty as I also plan to use it in decorating the house. It's kind of cheesy but I wanted to try my hand at embroidering on a non-traditional material and decided why not do something love related. 

I had purchased a sizable lot of vintage handkerchiefs on ebay and some of them were damaged so instead of throwing out the ones with beautiful designs I decided to repurpose them. 

I came up with the idea of embroidering our initials with a heart because Ryan and I have this dorky joke about our initials R&R having three very easily recognized meanings; rest and relaxation, rest room, and rail road. We've affectionately dubbed ourselves Rest-Road as a result. big kiss, bekuh

Farm Basket Wedding invites

The time has come to share our wedding invitations. We've sent out the pile and we're gathering the rsvps and I feel like it's only fair to share some pictures of the invitation making adventure. We went with a farm theme because of our venue locale and I think it's really influenced the rest of the wedding decor and feeling.

When Lauren, Lauren and Christine came over to help get everything put together I snapped a couple of shots of the set up. I had each piece of the suite in seperate envelopes so it was easy to grab and go.

This is a close up of the invite and the more information card. I found the illustrations online, copyright free, and then colorized them using my Photoshop skills. Next I found a pretty font and got to work organizing and designing. I love the finished product!

Obviously the thank you notes haven't been sent yet but they're in progress for after the big day. The last two photos are pictures of how the invites looked when they were mailed out. We tied the whole package together using baker's twine and created a little "farm basket." I wish I had more pictures to share with the direction card but everything is in the tomato, carrot and cabbage design. big kiss, bekuh

DIY Bridesmaid Gift

Last weekend was amazing, not only was it the end of my first week as an engaged person, corny i know, but I also had a chance to see all of the bridesmaids for Ryan and my wedding! Well almost all of them, one I had to wait to see until tuesday night, the MOH. I wanted to create a little something special to ask them to be a part of our wedding and took a leaf from a DIY I shared on Secondhand Sundays awhile ago. You may remember the Spool of a Letter post.

I hand wrote a note on a piece of calico fabric and wrapped it around a spool for each girl, then nestled it in a snug little box and tied each with a bow. They all said yes, so I guess they liked the results! I'm so EXCITED!