Nice Little Saturday

It's one of those low-key, few-plans, lazy-living kind of weekends over here. Last night we went to Callanwolde for one of their Jazz on the Lawn evenings. It was so relaxing! The music was James Bond-themed, performed by my brother's old jazz piano teacher and his group, the Ted Howe Trio. We went with my parents, who brought an amazing picnic dinner and chairs, and we supplied the blanket and wine. Easy! We ran into Lisa and Bo while we were there, too. All the cool kids know where it's at for a casual in-town Friday night :)

Today, much less is planned. I dropped my brother and his girlfriend at the airport earlier (so jealous, they are headed to Mexico!), got my nails done and soon am going to get my hair did. Later, a trip up to Roswell to see my parents. Yep, a nice little Saturday over here, folks -- I am loving it!

A few weekends ago, I had a similar day, and decided to spend it being crafty. I had a few supplies on hand as well as my trusty glue gun, so I poured some wine (another key supply for any craft) and got to work on making a new wreath for our door.

I am such a fan of door decor. You all may remember the Christmas wreath I made many years ago that we still hang out each year. I always get a little sad when it's the mid-summer months and I don't have a spring/summer wreath to take the place of the patriotic star I usually put out for Memorial Day and the Fourth. I also am in need of a good "house divided" Georgia Tech-Auburn creation. That may be my next project.

For this one, I grabbed up a wreath from the leftovers of our garage sale in early June, stripped off the former decor and gave it a good hose down.

What I love about this wreath is that it is decorated entirely using leftover goodies from our wedding. The white letters were used on a door wreath made by one of my bridesmaids for our couples shower. I also had YARDS of green ribbon on hand from the Williams Sonoma registry gifts we received. I was saving it for just such an occasion!

The "L" base is made from cardboard from a few leftover wedding gift boxes. I used tape to keep the fabric in place on the back, which let me move things around if the wrapping didn't look quite right.

Once I had the main letters in place, I glued on fake flowers on that were formerly centerpieces at another shower. Green, navy blue and pink -- our wedding colors!

I am pretty happy with what I made for free in about an hour. It's been fun coming home to see our joint monogram on our front door, and it also brings back to mind that great day in April and all of the celebrations with friends before that day, too.

Event DIY: Pennant Banner

Early on in the stages of wedding planning, we put a lot of thought into how we wanted to share the news about our big day with friends and family in advance. Save the Dates are the first way to showcase your wedding style and theme with the guests, and help ensure that as many of them as possible can attend. I didn't want to blow through a ton of money on these things, though, since honestly, most of our guests are close friends and family that knew from Day 1 when our wedding would be! I did, however, want to give everyone something to look forward to before the formal invites went out :)

We found inspiration for our Save the Date through Martha Stewart (love her) and this cute banner idea. While I didn't follow the template they provided, you certainly could. I just happen to like our custom version better :P

Once that we had something in mind, we headed off to Jo-Ann's for the supplies. We picked out card stock that had an elegant, but neutral, design and purchased enough sheets to make two triangle-shaped pennants per page. We also picked up ribbon in our primary wedding colors, navy blue and kelly green, with enough to reach through the full length of all the pennants and leave some to hold on each end. Then, we headed over to The School Box, one of my mom's favorite teacher spots. They have great prices on huge letters and numbers that you can easily glue down onto paper, bulletin boards or banners.

Here's how I put everything together: After my mom traced and cut the pennant shapes for me at school with a paper cutter, I punched out the letters and laid them out on the pennants to see where they should be positioned.

Note the wine glass. Arts and crafts requires some libation in my house :)

Once I had them all laid out, I started glueing the shapes down. I used a damp cloth to wipe off any excess glue.

Once the letters were all in place, I put them in between some heavy books to dry flat. Then I used a hole punch to cut out the holes before stringing through the double strand of ribbon. I twisted the ribbon a bit as it went through so that you could see both colors.

Yay, done! We brought the banner to our engagement photo shoot and sent our inspiration photos to our photographer in advance so that we could work it into our afternoon with them.

This banner would be an easy craft for a birthday party, engagement celebration or any DIY event. I love that you can customize it with any colors, letter styles or ribbons for any style event. We are planning on repurposing the banner at our wedding as part of our décor, too, making things for the big day that much easier.

Have you made any similar pennant banners? What was your inspiration?