{happy weekend!}

Happy Friday everyone!  Before I sign off for the weekend, I just have to say a huge “thank you!” to Jen from the haystack needle for sharing her wedding details with us this week!  I’m afraid I’ll have to keep this short + sweet since things are just a teensy bit hectic this week, but I’m looking forward to being back (and all moved!) on Monday.  In the meantime…

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…a few links for your weekend reading pleasure:

Have a great weekend everyone!

{image credits: pony tail}

Jen + Dan — Wedding Scrapbook + Polaroid Album

Happy Friday!  Jen here from the haystack needle.  It's been such a treat to guest blog on OSBP!  As my final post, I thought I'd share two things I love to do when I have an afternoon or evening to just sit and play with paper: make albums and work on my wedding scrapbook (it's still not done after more than a year, but it's getting there!).

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polaroid album 

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First, this is a Polaroid album that I pulled together for two of our friends, Kevin and Ali, who got married in the Cayman Islands.  I brought my Polaroid camera down to the wedding, and I've finally found a way to pull together the Polaroids in a special book for them.  I used this Kolo album, bits of paper and cards that captured that island spirit, and Japanese tape.  Oh, and my typewriter came in handy to type little captions.

Japanese tape

polaroid album

And here's a peek at my wedding scrapbook. I took a scrapbook that was the right size (wrong cover) and used some Mod Podge, a photocopy of a map of Maine, ribbon and patterned paper to create the cover you see here.

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Two months before we got married, we hosted a spaghetti feed, which basically translates to the largest slow cooker you've ever seen (Hamilton Beach commercial slow cooker circa 1963 — no joke!) filled with homemade sauce, bowls of spaghetti, and the entire family gathered at Dan's family's camp.  It was a great way to bring together Dan's family (which is super big) for a casual (second) wedding celebration, since we went with hosting a small wedding.  The spaghetti feed was so much fun!  For the invites, I used alphabet stamps and Yellow Owl Workshop's landscape stamp set, which reminds me of camp.

Thanks so much, Nole, for letting me share all these paper bits of our wedding!  I had so much fun being a part of OSBP this week.  Have a great weekend everyone!  –Jen

All the photography here (and throughout the week) by Charlotte Jenks Lewis.  Thanks, Charlotte!

Jen + Dan — Lobster Bake Rehearsal Dinner Invitations

Hello, hello!  This is Jen with the haystack needle again.  Thanks for following along this week as I guest post for Nole, who’s moving into her new home.  Today is all about the invitations for our wedding rehearsal dinner:

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We hosted a small wedding with a simple ceremony (no wedding party and our friend Erin married us.)  So the day before the wedding (after a big morning of decorating the barn with the help of friends), we invited everyone to Dan’s family’s camp for a classic lobster bake.  Dan and I get lobster every time we’re up in Maine, but we got really lucky that day.  His dad picked up a crate of lobsters straight from a fisherman’s boat.  Fantastic.

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Most of our friends and my family had never been up to camp, so it was a treat to have everyone together in such a special place for us.  My mom contributed a couple favorite dishes that represent my background: German potato salad and Persian spinach patties.  Dan picked up sparklers which were a perfect way to close the night with our whoopie pies.

lobster bake

scrapbook

For the invites, I used letterpress flats with lobsters (of course!) by Linda & Harriett.  L&H designer Liz Libré and I share a love for Maine.  When I met Liz at the National Stationery Show years ago, we discovered she and her huz went to college in the Maine town where Dan grew up!  How fun, right?!  I wish I had figured out how to run the flats through my printer rather than writing them out by hand (since my handwriting would not be mistaken for calligraphy, let’s be honest.)  But live and learn.  In my scrapbook, the background paper is part of a lobster placemat by Carrot & Stick Press.

All photographs by the lovely Charlotte Jenks Lewis.

Jen + Dan – Save the Dates

Hello again OSBP readers, this is Jen from the haystack needle!  Today I wanted to share a peek of our Save the Dates (which are now attached to the pages of my soon-to-finished wedding scrapbook):

save the dates

Our Save the Dates were truly a labor of love.  I wanted to create fabric pouches for our announcements.  My amazing friend Chris offered to silkscreen our pouches, and designed a loon that she screen-printed on the fabric.  The loon feels so Maine to us, because Dan and I often see loons when we’re up at his family’s camp on a lake.  They make the most amazing sounds, too.

save the dates

At the time, I didn’t even know how to thread a sewing machine.  Thankfully, a dear friend of mine mentored me through my first sewing adventure.  My cheap Singer machine broke, because I wanted to use a canvas fabric that was too heavy-duty for it to handle.  So we cranked out the pouches (sewn with a zigzag stitch) on her awesome vintage Elna sewing machine.  And miraculously, I got them out in time.  I used turquoise papers from Martha’s craft line for the announcement.  And I had a custom stamp made from Three Designing Women.

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We also used the loon design on the welcome bags. My friend Chris silkscreened a larger version of the loon onto canvas bags. It makes me happy whenever I see our friends using our wedding totes.

All photographs by Charlotte Jenks Lewis.

Tomorrow, I’ll be sharing a peek at what we decided to do with guests the night before our wedding…

Jen + Dan’s Wedding, Part 2 – Details and Our Invitations

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Hello again! Jen here from the haystack needle.  Yesterday I left you on a Maine farm with many ways to craft together a wedding with rubber stamps.  Still following?  Here are some more details from our wedding (no stamps involved.)

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I outsourced the paper cocktail napkins and drink stirrers to For Your Party.  I love how they turned out. And I picked one of my favorites in the paper world, Delphine Studio, for the napkin design.

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My father-in-law is my hero.  We needed a bunch of signage to point to where to park, where to go for the ceremony, and even where to find the loo.  He made us wooden signs that looked adorable.  All I did was paint them.

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We turned the back room of the barn that served as our wedding venue into a lounge where everyone could eat cupcakes and blueberry cobbler and check out old photos of Dan and me (and our families.)  My friends decorated the cupcakes with fresh blossoms and set a few birch paper flowers around the table.

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Our wedding invitations!  I decided to splurge on letterpress, because I love it so.  I saved on costs by opting for a postcard rsvp card and handling the map and envelopes myself.  Stacy of Pancake & Franks designed our wedding invites.  She was so much fun to work with and Stacy really understood my vision.  I made the maps by simply photocopying our Maine atlas, glued the map squares to cardstock, and then I punched a hole to mark where the event was taking place.  I couldn’t swing the cost of a calligrapher, but I really wish I had ordered a custom return address stamp, which would have saved time and looked prettier on the envelopes.

All photographs by the ever-talented Charlotte Jenks Lewis.

Tomorrow, I’ll be sharing our save-the-dates!