Pinterest Challenge: DIY Circus Marquee Letters

For our wedding, Mr. Bear and I decided on a vintage circus/carnival feel. I set to gathering inspiration on Pinterest, and stumbled across this tutorial on Ruffled:

We used much of the same materials: 2 sheets of foam board, 2 sheets of poster board, metallic spray paint(ours was gold), red spray paint, hot glue, and string lights.

Here's how ours came out:

The font I chose was Big Top. The extra flourishes made it a bit more challenging to cut out, but since the letters have walls, you can't really tell where any of the rough spots are.

We used round string lights from Target($13 per string of 25), and spray painted the inside of the walls metallic gold to really reflect the warm light of the bulbs.And here's how it looked on the big day:

They are now gracing the walls of our home, which is becoming more and more circus/carnivale-y awesome by the moment! Hurrah!

Today, on a Very Special Bird Hearts Bear

"Getting weddinged" is a term I've heard used to describe having a wedding after you've already been legally married, which is what we're doing. Today is the big day and already a million things are going wrong, so I am trying to adopt a fairly laid-back attitude to it, though I think it's coming off more as indifference born of frustration. However, the closer we get to Wedding Time the more I find myself able to let go of things I was stressing about 24 hours ago.
My friends have been beyond amazing, crafting for hours on end. My family have been beyond amazing, running all the errands and taking care of anything I couldn't take care of myself(or shouldn't, for my sanity). This wedding is going to be amazing and awesome and fun, there will be soooooo many pictures, and they will all be incredible. It's okay that I didn't have time to make my Twister quilt. It's okay that my cakes are drastically different than what I set out to create. It's okay there are no cupcakes. It's okay we couldn't get a pretty rental car. I wrote my vows, I have a ceremony planned, and there will be confetti cannons, silly photobooth pictures, sparklers, volcanoes, and hula hoops. People will dance and drink and laugh and cry, and so will we.

Mr. Bear, I love you.

I"M GETTING MARRIED TOMORROW!!!!

So here's a brief roundup of our DIY activities over the past month(though mostly in the past week):

Our adorable cake topper(she's standing on a suitcase, 'cause he's so tall!) that I custom-painted.

Red/aqua heels, pink crinoline, and dotted tights. And darker hair for us both.

My fascinator. Two curled goosefeather pads from Etsy taken apart and reassembled, and a brooch.

My "I-Spy" list of things for people to take pictures of with digital cameras, phones, or the provided disposables.

My coffee-filter rose, brooch, and ostrich plume bouquet. Also, lights.

 

Wedding-themed mad libs!!!

Our marquee letters. In true Bird Hearts Bear fashion, I designed and Mr. Bear built, with the help of some of our fabulous friends.

This is what will print out at our photobooth. Mr. Bear actually wrote the photobooth program for the laptop himself, because he is genius. I designed the layout. We are an awesome team.

Today I blow off some steam by attending The Farm Chick's antique show with one of my bridesmaids, after which a couple more of my fabulous friends will be by to finish sewing the lace overlay for my dress(which is utterly GORGEOUS!!!) and I will finish assembling my bouquet. Everything is falling into place!!!

Comparison is the Thief of Joy

It seems to be a common theme, currently. We all feel we just aren't "x" enough. Right now, I'm feeling not smart/thin/crafty/energetic enough, and my chronic fatigue/vitamin D deficiency/hypothyroidism tripple-whammy certainly isn't doing me any favors.

Also not doing me any favors? Pinterest. Just heaps and heaps of pictures of people who are better at being the person I want to be than I am. Don't get me wrong, I love Pinterest. It's an amazing resource for inspiration. But everyone's online lives are so perfect, so incredible, so edited. In that vein, here are some of my failures:

The seedlings we started in the basement in early April? They're still there. Some have been transplanted into 4" pots, but their now threatening to burst out of those, too. The raised bed garden construction has been halted due to lack of funds, which is a direct result of my upcoming wedding.

Speaking of that, who had to turn nearly complete control of said wedding over to her mother to avoid a nervous breakdown/burnout? This blogger. My mother has taken the theme and run with it, and I am super super grateful, but a little bummed at not handmaking every detail of my big day. And I still have a whole heap of projects on my own plate, which are in no danger of getting finished anytime soon. I already resorted to purchasing my wedding dress, reception dress, and petticoat, instead of sewing them myself as I always said I'd have done. And I might, horror of horrors, have to purchase the cake.

Despite actually trying to lose the 60 extra pounds I've been carrying around these past few years, I've only managed to take off 10 and keep it off. I go to the gym, I eat well, it's just not working. And being obese plus having chronic fatigue syndrome? People pretty much just assume you're a lazy glutton, never mind that I'm getting up at 5:30am to go to the gym and then study, and eat a vegetarian, whole-food diet. My body just refuses to work the way it's supposed to. It takes all I have to just get dressed in the morning, forget make up or doing anything with my hair, which pretty much leaves me feeling like a shlub.

I'm going to fail Anatomy and Physiology 2. There's just no way around it. I have a big test tomorrow, that I've studied hours for and will continue to study, but with everything that is going on, I just can't seem to retain any information. This is the first time in my life I have ever felt like this, and a huge disappointment in myself. If there's ever been one thing I've always been rock solid in, it's my academic performance. I'm so embarrassed I can't even look my professor in the eye.

So of course I feel bad about myself, because I think I should be able to keep on top of all of these things. I want to be the awesome urban homesteading wife who kicks ass at school and looks polished and pretty all the time and makes creative and delicious meals every day. I feel like I don't measure up to my idols over at Apron Stringz or Northwest Edible Life, even though they've both done posts about the disparity between what we aspire to and what we actually achieve. It's a lifelong struggle, I think, to disentangle our feelings of self-worth from what we perceive everyone else is doing better than us. I'm just trying to keep things in perspective.

If I fail my class, I'll have to pay back the government for it, and I'll pay out of pocket to take it again in the fall. It will suck, but it will not be the end of the world. Likewise I just have to let go of any self-imposed deadlines for losing the weight, and just keep at it, even if it means only losing a pound a month. Baby steps. And I have to stop looking at everything like it's a contest. It's okay if someone else has perfect hair everyday, or a much nicer garden, or makes their own bread all the time. That doesn't devalue my pot of mint, or my once-a-week awesome homemade meal, or managing to pull together something that looks like a thought-out ensemble once in a while.

Wedding Daze

Wow, we're less than a month away from the wedding. So little to do, so much time. Wait...scratch that, reverse it.

I've been getting exciting packages in the mail all. the. time. Like these awesome flasks I had made for my bridesmaids and myself by Whimsy and Ink on etsy.




So much fun! Awesome photos await us.

And my reception dress(because I'm planning on only getting married once so I may as well have fun with it) by Betsey Johnson.


I heart the ruffles. I'm going to feel like Kaylee in "Shindig".

I've been making some progress on my bouquet, as well. I actually purchased the watercolors I need to paint my coffee filter roses, and I started putting the brooches on floral wire. This is going to be a blingtastic bouquet!

 Seriously, though, it's going to weigh like ten pounds.

The lace for my wedding dress arrived, as well, so fitting the dress and adding the lace overlay is next on my list. Thankfully the weekend before the wedding is a four-day weekend for both Mr. Bear and myself, so that'll be our crunch weekend to get everything done that still needs to be. Mr. bear impressed the hell out of me the other day by writing his own photobooth program for the reception. So...that's done, then.

I've been trying not to get too overwhelmed with everything, and take some time to enjoy the gorgeous spring while it's here. In that vein, here are some shots of our gorgeous blooming front yard, where I managed to not kill all the bulbs.

I'm doing a test run on cake this weekend for Mother's Day. I shall post my triumph(or failure) for you all to see next week.

Taking the plunge

So...I've been toying with the idea of an etsy shop for a very long time, now. And, well, I finally did it. I made some cute reversible cowls out of old sweaters, had a lovely friend model them for me, and listed a whopping three whole items in my modest little shop. Take a gander:

Earlier this week, I sold a reversible striped/blue cotton cowl! Granted, it was to a friend of mine, but it's still a sale! I have some other things in the works for the shop, once I have a moment to catch my breath(the wedding is exactly one month from today! Eeek!), and I think it's the kind of thing I'll slowly build up over the following months. Still, it's kind of terrifying to put yourself out there like that...

Things are moving, beneath the earth.

We were afraid to start our seeds before our big trip, and the weather had been rather cold and snowy before we left, so we didn't get our seeds in the ground until April 2nd. That being said, our cheap grow light setup in the laundry room has proven to be an extremely good idea.

Yes, I know the grow light shouldn't be that far above the seedlings, but really we need two lights.
So far we've started cherry tomatoes, paste tomatoes, zucchini, mini pumpkins, sugar pie pumpkins, Rouge vif D'Etampes pumpkins, Moon and Stars watermelons, sunflowers, rainbow carrots, danvers carrots, cayenne peppers, Bolivian rainbow peppers, bell peppers, jalapenos, and broccoli.

We're also attempting to grow mushrooms, but they seem to have dried out...

In happier news, the bulbs I planted in the fall that I was sure hadn't made the winter have actually come up! I managed to forget exactly what it was I'd planted, so when they bloom it will be a wonderful surprise!

Silly Ponyo, you're supposed to smell the flowers after they bloom!