archived: fabric flowers rock!

I am blogging out of order, but I'm very excited about these... (i'll share our weekend later)

I've been searching for a good way to make fabric flowers for the wedding. I couldn't afford all the corsages we needed so I thought this would be a cute way to make the corsage's for G's grandmothers. I seriously have about 15 ways to make fabric flowers in my 'wedding' google notebook, but I hadn't found one that was simple enough and cute enough to persuade me to try them. UNTIL I got the In Stitches sewing book by Amy Butler from the library. After I fell in love with just about every project in there I found the greatest way to make a flower from just a little fabric and minimal sewing.

Tonight I dove in and LOVE THEM!!! Here they are hot glued to a piece of ribbon... easiest, cutest corsages EVER! plus they don't get thrown away - I think that makes them good for the environment!

archived: wedding invites

now that the invites are out i want to unveil them on the blog.

i LOVE them. i hate kinkos and USPS but i LOVE LOVE LOVE them.

Jon designed them for us and did an amazing job - its just what we (i) wanted.

THANK YOU!



they read...

Together with their families Nicole Patrice Miller & Grant Hannigan Simmons invite you to share in a celebration of love, laughter, and friendship as they are joined in marriage.

Then there are instructions to RSVP online...i heart mywedding.com and you must do it, even if i know you are/aren't coming, because i like to get the little email telling me someone RSVPed and leave a comment, k?

this is what they look like folded up...

archived: party invites

i LOVE getting mail and today was awesome because I got my second of two invites to parties for me AND our first wedding gift came. we are so spoiled!

lindsey! you've really outdone yourself this time!

these are the invites she made for my bridal shower and bachlorette party! i love them both. But the stitched one holds a special place since I just made my first stitched cards last weekend. i love that the rings are white gold! too cute!

the bridal shower instructs guests to bring their favorite recipe to share with me! yay! those of you out there who can't make my shower can send me your favorite recipes too *wink*wink* i'm so suzy homemaker-esque these days...

archived: happy father's day

We have three dads between the two of us...I made these cards to tell them how important they are to us. I used a technique Jenni posted about a while ago (can't find the actual post) and got the tie pattern from here. I also used a book binding technique discussed here to make little coupon books (i got the templates from martha here), which is kind of juvenile, but i thought they were too cute!

the candle card was for my mom's birthday.

archived: i heart embroidery (i REALLY heart it)!!

i've been inspired by people (like her) who embroider for a while now so this weekend i decided to give it a try.

i used this book (i also heart the library) to get some pointers and went to it. it was surprisingly easy and now everything i look at i think about what i can stitch on it! i really want to get to a point where i can draw my own designs, but for now i'm using graphite paper to transfer designs to fabric and then stitch over it. BEST craft ever! love them! don't you wonder what this 'mr & mrs' embroidery will turn out to be??

PS..here are a few new sites i'm excited about: robot jumping rope & top secret recipes oh...and i love ALL of the links from this post (my morning has been spent devouring them all...)

archived: i think i have a problem

i made more cupcake related things... i don't know where this little obsession came from. i guess i just can't get over how CUTE everything cupcake is.

these (bakerella again...) looked incredibly easy and straightforward so i decided to give them a try... they were kind of easy, but maybe not as much as i would have hoped... especially cuz i tried to do the chocolate dipping at 6am before work...

grant insisted that if i posted this picture i would caption it "slapping balls together"...i know i shouldn't laugh but seriously...its kind of funny, right??

it seemed like there was endless cake batter... so i multitasked...HI JANELLE

ok...this is where 6am came in...waiting for the chocolate to harden and not fall asleep...

ready to take a dip...

the first finished one... the tupperware kind of shows how small they are... about the size of a truffle.

they look cuter all clustered together...

although they didn't turn out quite as cute as i'd hoped, apparently they tasted good... this email entitled "holy frickin' mackeral" from steph says it all...

"So, I just had this AMAZING chocolate treat with blue frosting…and I wish I had like 20 more!!!! Nicole, you are missing your calling. You have to own your own business and spread this incredible talent of yours.

....discussion of other things....

"Did I mention how amazing those chocolate treats were? I’ll write all the testimonials when you launch the business. You are truly amazing (stealing a line from your husband to be). "


i made about 20 of these mini cupcake treats, but i think i will use the other 40 cake balls to make these cuz they look much easier and more forgiving of mistakes...