Best Wedding Shoes Pic EVA!

Dawn Pohlen



As you may or may not know, I chose to go barefoot at our wedding! I was going through the shots and a few just jumped out at me right away. This one captured by our main photographer and it is one of my favorites. You see the lace, the lack of shoes and the tattoo. Even the yellow husband-made crinoline is showing!
I felt kind of rock and roll at our wedding with my veil, tattoos and big sunflowers. Rock and Roll bride... I like it!

Bunny Napkins

An ongoing project this week will be folding our blue napkins into bunnies in order to carry out the bunny theme onto the tables! We will be folding around 150. We started last night with an assembly line. I fold, Shawn pins them together and we put them in a bag to bring with us to the venue. I think they're really cute!

2 Weeks Until We're Married Bunnays!

14 Days Until We're Married!

Our Birdcage cardholder is done! This was Shawn's Grandma's birdcage from her canary, Tweety. It was destined for garbage last summer until I spoke up and took it, not knowing at the time what it would end up as. Now look at it. Shawn is entirely responsible for the cleaning, drying (with the air compressor!) and painting the whole thing.

He even cut out a cardboard circle for the bottom because he thought it would be more stable. All I did was literally hot glue a few things on it.

The moss bunnies are done, also! They started out with green gingham ribbons around their necks and pink flower eyes. They're HiLLjO+Shawn-licious now! Shawn's mommy painted the eyes and noses and I glued on the bow ties.

I got my Bride's bag in the mail!!! I ordered it from etsy shop Pinkvelvetpress. They made me a custom listing for my order and it was here on time! The bag is only around $12 and they have it in all different colors. You can even customize the color and style of the font! I was very happy with my bag!!!

Sock Bunnies : Completed!

Do I need to write a post to go along with these?

No. They are just that awesome. ƸӜƷ

Favorite Things : Etsy's Unfound Treasures

artfuldesignsbykarin.etsy.com

I love etsy! It's definitely no secret. But did you know there's special searches you can do on etsy? One search function I really enjoy is the one where it takes you to shops that haven't had a sale yet. One shop I found was artfuldesignsbykarin. She makes the most beautiful shell ring dishes! They would be perfect for a ring warming ceremony accessory.



They are so dainty and lovely! They would be a great substitute for a ring bearer pillow as well at a beachy wedding! Perfect for the summer coming up!

So if you're in need of a nautical ring holder for any reason go and see artfuldesignsbykarin.etsy.com!!!

My Solah Shringar : Bichuas

My Solah Shringar is going well!
I just got my hair cut and it is lovely!!! My hair lady is super-amazing and always does EXACTLY what I have in my head. Seriously, Nebraska, go see Kristin at John Edward's salon; she has been called innovative by Redken stylists at the hair shows I modeled for in the past!!! She even shampoo'd me with sulfate-free shampoo since I go no-poo/no-sulfate poo. AH-MAZING!

Haircut with Naath on display!

Shawn's momma Donna bought me my Bichuas toe ring! I was going to buy a toe ring/anklet set with a butterfly theme. Donna texted me last week "Do you wear toe rings?" I replied "Yes, I actually need to buy one for the wedding for my bare feet!" She sent me back a picture of this:

AMAZING! When Shawn and I were first dating before we became yellow and orange bunnays, were were green & blue puppies (remember the color book pages, Bun?!) So this is a perfect blend of old and new; plus it's freakin' pretty. I can't wait to wear it!!! What kind of anklet should I get? I kind of want a silver one to match. Any ideas on where to find it, too?!

So Much to Update!!!

This weekend was again a very busy one. We took a cue from last weekend and weren't quite so rough on ourselves. We also took some time out for a bunnytime date on Sunday night to see Bridesmaids! Shawn really is my BFF for taking me to that movie on a date! It was surprisingly funny, though!
Friday I received my lilafrances hanger that says "mrs finley" for my wedding dress. People, I cried. I opened it and just ran my hands over it. It was made just for this future mrs finley and no one else has it! It is for my wedding dress alone. It's one material possession that transcends a material meaning.

We also went out on Saturday seeking to purchase Shawn's wedding band once and for all. We went to the mall, tried on each and every men's ring in the whole mall until we found the one that Shawn liked best. It looks so amazing on him and next to mine as well.

We attempted to dye my crinoline yellow... not so good. It didn't take very much dye!!! My cardigan I dyed along with it to match turned out lovely, though. I'm going to attempt to overdye the crinoline bright yellow again tonight. There are more updates but I'm going to be writing about more throughout the day!

Stay tuned!

Flower Girl Baskets - DIY Tutorial #7

I finally got my rear in gear and finished an easy DIY.

For supplies:

2 flower girl baskets

Yellow Grosgrain Ribbon

Hot glue gun + sticks

Fake flora

Instructions:

If your flower girl baskets are shoddy quality (like mine unknowingly were!) secure any loose panels/handles with hot glue and apply light pressure.

Next, practice placing the ribbon on your basket so that it will lay flat all the way around. Place a dot of hotglue in the center of the front and attach your ribbon there. Add a glue spot to the middle of each side while you wrap your ribbon around it to make sure it's secure.

Next, make your bow stylistically. Meaning: don't make a real bow, just one that looks supernatural-perfect.

So first make a little loop and secure it with glue. Then cut a piece to cover the middle. Then position it so it is perfectly in the middle. Wrap the edges and secure them with hot glue.

You should have something like this:

Then just glue this guy onto the basket ribbon.

So cute!!! Not quite done, though. Add some fake flora (not too much!!!) and you're good to go. I'm storing mine in the bags they came in so that they stay nice and safe! Plus it recycles the bags!







Terra Cotta Bunnay - DIY UPDATE!

Shawn's momma Donna just MMS'd me these photos of our Inity Ceremony planter!!! OMG it's perfect!!! She also would like to put our names + date on the bottom! So cute!
What do you think between before and after?!


BEFORE



AFTER



LOOK AT THAT BUNNAY LIP!!!

I know it's silly but this is the planter of my dreams!!! It's one of those magical details that just makes this truly my dream wedding. I just love this. 

Crisis: underrated and averted

A while ago I was so happy with the flower girl dresses my mom found for me that I spaced off the rest of the logistics of it completely. We went to Kohl's to get Jr. Bridesmaid outfits and didn't have much luck. We ended up buying a top to "buy leggings for later" and you all know how that goes: if you don't buy the pieces to wear it, you'll never wear it.
Then I found out that one of the girls has already worn their top, anyway.
5 year olds probably should'nt wear an outfit they're supposed to wear IN a wedding before the wedding... crap happens.
So to make a long story short, we needed 5 yellow dresses like, NOW. We have 44 days until the wedding so we didn't have time to get leggings or salvage a stained top. We needed a substitution!
We found these:

For the 2 Older girls

For the 3 younger Girls

Both dresses are white and yellow stripe!!! So cute!
Each is under $40 as well and we can find them locally!
What do you think?

Invitation Photos...

This post is simply the full collection of photos of ALL the invitation styles with their additional pieces. Some blogs refer to this post as "invitation porn" but we don't use that language here at my house.

Full Collection with Album

Those stamps rock... see my fist?!

This one is ours. Forever.

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY!!! ENDS 4/30/11 at 11:59 CST!!!

HOJASU IMAGINATIONS

Hojasu Imaginations is a freelance company owned by Josh Gray whom specializes in professional video services. Professional video projects range from commercials, trailers, movies, TV shows, art features, news features, professional wedding videos, music videos and more!

Anyone who is in the Omaha, Nebraska area should seriously contact Josh for any videographing/video editing needs. Not only does he have the latest and greatest software, but he is a great guy and friend to our family! He will be videographing Shawn & I's wedding so you know I think he's good! Stop by his link here and give him a visit!

Welcome, Josh, to the Daisy to Sunflower sidebar!

Giveaway! April 2011

Hello lovelies!
I miss you all so much and I've been feeling so guilty lately about my dramatic drop-off in blog posts. I have been thinking about you all though: I have my very first giveaway for you all!!!

The prize is a giant tissue flower lantern kit from Oriental Trading. It makes six 16" diameter white tissue flowers that you can hang like lanterns. They'd be awesome for your bridal shower, birthday party or wedding.

Via

To enter:


*You must follow Daisy to Sunflower on Blogger.


*Leave a comment below what you'd love to use them for!


The contest winner will be chosen via Random.org and the contest will close April 30th at 11:59 PM CST.

Good luck!!!

DIY Wedding Dress Details

So I missed the 75 Days point... 'scuse myself!

Depending on how often or how much you read, you may know I am customizing the bizingo out of my wedding dress. Besides the tailoring of the front hem, the dress is finished. So here is the consolidated list and latest progress on the Dress DIY Styling front.

1. The crinoline was removed and prepped to be dyed. If you missed that hilarity, you can still read here.
2. The lace-up ribbon has been purchased.
3. The bunny doilies that are to be attached to the train are made!

They are the newest addition to the pile of  DIY stuff that I'll wear. So far in that pile is the Headpiece, the garter, the Something Old Hanky, and now the bunnies! I have to keep it on the shelf because Ruined DIY due to kitties=Bridezilla Hilljo. It's as if Mama Kitty and her kitts have wedding project-seeking radar used to find sleeping locations. No matter; it's on the shelf!

Weddzilla

Buttons for the Bride jar is done!!!

Mason Jar Centerpieces

My mother in law, Donna went with me on my first wedding-related DIY shopping trip back in August/September. We went to Hobby Lobby because I was so overwhelmed by where to start planning that I couldn't come up with anything! SO not like me (I'm lucky my mom and my future second mom are both crafty)!
We were focusing on table decorations first. I knew I didn't want flowers on the table necessarily, nor anything else that impedes conversation due to size.
Luckily Donna asked the Million Dollar Question: "What do you like?"
I answered simply, "Mason Jars."
"Let's do jar centerpieces then."
"Okay!"
They're short enough to talk over, easy to find and afford, and you can customize the bizingo out of them. How would we choose to customize them, though?
Donna said she had experience glass painting so we went to the book section and found a book on hand painted glasses.

We liked the look of one design on stemless wine glasses.

She thought we could swap out the flowers in the design with sunflowers to make it match. We also thought a candle would be nice inside to bounce off the glass later in the evening and double as lighting! She added a ribbon around the threads and it was perfect.

When we went to the venue to look around and eventually book it, the venue coordinator, Kari, shared with us that she had centerpiece accessories. They ended up being perfect for our jars. Kari has table mirrors and clear pebbles to use on the tables! For no charge! YEE!!!
Over the last 6 months Donna has bought everything to make the centerpieces and ended up painting a case of Mason jars+ and also painting tiny sunflowers on a truckload of blue pebbles.

They look so amazing.
I can't wait to see how amazing they all look together on the tables!

Colored Wedding Dress Crinolines + Part 1: DIY Colored Crinoline

via

My favorite thing to see on wedding blogs (besides chuppahs!) is a bride with a colored crinoline. Some brides are women who wanted a colored dress but for whatever reason ended up with a white one. The colored crinoline is a way to wear a pop of the color in a fun way.
I originally wanted a yellow / green dress. Yellow is just my color!

via

We all know I ended up with a (most beautiful) ivory dress so I immediately wanted to adopt this detail into my own style for the Day. Problem is... finding these is no easy task!
When searching you are faced with 3 options: Have a short dress, pay the price or buy a white one to dye! Having a short dress is by far the easiest option. There's no shortage of pettiskirts and square dancing petticoats the perfect length! Here's one superb website I found. 

Swank Underpinnings

Good old etsy has a few shops that cater to the colored-crinoline bride. The prices aren't too* bad but $0 is my budget, sooo...! One excellent shop is Swank Underpinnings. They range between $35 to $225 (custom orders!). They make them in all lengths, which is really not easy to find. Some of her custom stuff--swoon!
Loca Loves Pirate has some cutie pastel babies, too. They're even full length!

So what's a budget-spent bride to do?! It involved massive preparation research, scissors, and blind faith. A couple weekends ago when I was making our invitations, I asked my mom to enlist in helping me cut my crinoline out of my dress. With scissors. She surprisingly did not look at me like I was too crazy, but we both felt aprehensive about the whole thing. If I had thought about it much more, I wouldn't have done it.

Steps

1. Put on your dress.
2. Have a helper pull up the top layer(s) so that you can only see the crinoline layer.
3. Make a guide snip at waist-height where you'll be cutting accross the crinoline.
4. Take off the dress.
5. Lay out the dress on the bed and pull all the layers up over the top of the dress, making sure the only layer exposed is the crinoline layer.
6. Just like with cutoff shorts, find your guide snip. Now read: DO NOT CUT THROUGH BOTH LAYERS. ONE LAYER AT A TIME ONLY.
7. Just like with cut off shorts, cut in a straight line across the front.
8. Flip the dress over. You'll see why you don't cut through both layers.
9. The back of a wedding dress is almost always where it zips, laces, yada yadas... and there will be a panel back there you don't want to cut that separates the dress closure from your bare skin. So taking care to cut AROUND that part, Cut straight across the back, around the panel and back straight across to finish.
10. Pull out your crinoline, hang your dress back up and committ yourself. Not to your fiance(e)... To an asylum. You're officially NUTS for doing this DIY.

The second part of the DIY is dying and the third is adding an elastic waistband so you can wear it under your dress. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3!
In the meantime, there is a whole SECTION of Offbeat Bride that features just weddings with colored-crinoline brides. Enjoy!

Beautiful Wedding Shoes

I wish to share with you why these shoes are the most beautiful wedding shoes (to me) ever. When Shawn & I picked out our shoes, we were going for barefoot. I'm not wearing mine until after the wedding, but the reception will be at a restaurant and you hafta wear shoes there!!! Sandals was the next best thing to barefoot. Especially hippie sandals.
We saw Shawn's sandals at a store called Euphoria in Lincoln, NE when we went to Lincoln on our first ring shopping trip... I'll have to write about that also. Shawn has EcoDragon sandals which are made of sustainably harvested hemp fiber. They last FOREVAR and you can recycle them at the end of their use.
He liked them but it wasn't until the week after when he divulged to me "I want to wear those sandals at our wedding. But they're so expensive." I told him, "Shawn. If you want those sandals for your wedding, you're getting them! I can have a hundreds-of-dollars wedding dress, you can have those damn sandals! ... I'll buy them myself!!!"
So we planned a trip back to Lincoln to try on dresses at the BEST SALON EVAR called Ellyne's and we also went back to Euphoria and bought those sandals! I was more excited about that than my dress experience in Lincoln. Let's not write about that, by the way...

We found my sandals when we went to Kansas City, MO to ask Shawn's friend Sprague (who is tattoo/graffitti artist Manic!) to be in our wedding. We were in West Port near downtown and the Plaza when we went into a little store called Beautiful Day. It looked happy from the outside so we had to  go in. I found my shoes and got that gut feeling of "That's IT!" until I looked in my wallet. I only had like half the money for my shoes. I told Shawn and Sprague heard, too, so we all pitched in. We all 3 bought my wedding shoes. So the way they were acquired is beautiful.
Last Wednesday I took them out to look at them with Shawn's sandals to swoon over how perfect they are together and I examined mine particularly well. On the bag they come in, it says "UTOPIAN Rope Sandals. Handmade by Tom." I wanted to know who Tom was to tell him how wonderful the shoes are and that I love them so much they're going to be my wedding shoes. I looked up UTOPIAN rope sandles on 'teh googles' and found out from Wiki that these shoes are beautiful how they're made, too.
Tom and his community, East Wind, make these sandles along with nut butters and tahini. All the income is pooled for the community to cover medical expenses and each member is given food, clothing, shelter, education and personal money. They believe in equality, social democracy and nonviolence. Each member contributes man hours and lives together, voting on every decision made by the community. So East Wind in Tecumseh, MO is responsible for the creation of my wedding shoes.

Can you say Beautiful?

Invitations!

Invitations are done! Woo hoo! I went down to my parent's house on Saturday and assembled them all! It was quite the job but here's the final product...

They're all different because they're so handmade! 

I had two major meltdowns during the invitation process. When Shawn's Mom and I went to get them printed, I told them please do not cut them because I bought a paper cutter and I wanted to get to use it up! Plus I don't expect anyone but myself to cut each page and that's what I planned to do in order to make sure they're centered. Well the place cut the paper and ended up wasting 6 sheets of handmade specialty paper, which totaled 24 invitations that couldn't be made. I mean, they looked bad. I called and they credited Donna so we got our printing for free essentially.

Second Meltdown was the main design I had worked out didn't work out! I ordered a paper punch in the shape of a butterfly to stamp out where our names are now and write them on the blue behind it. The punch doesn't let you slide any kind of length of paper past it so you can only make confetti with it or put butterflies on the bottom of your paper or upside down anywhere else. Bah!

So this is what we could do and this is how they turned out! I think I love them!

Decoration Inventory

Head Table Butterflies from Michael's

I have spent a lot of time and money buying decorations for the wedding. I started with the things I knew we would need and as details became more specific, I began to purchase more and more!
I have never spent this much before in my life on any one thing and that's kind of scary! I'm sure I'll never spend this much on anything(event-wise) again! I think the decoration total has far surpassed the gown total. Our basement apartment is full of blue spools of ribbon, boxes full of paper lanterns, rehearsal dinner supplies and TONS of fake flora and fauna that is spewing everywhere.
The first things we bought was a thick roll of ivory tulle, brown glitter butterfly clips for the head table and our thank you notes(yay, us!).
Next I bought my Flowerpeople's hair accessores supplies and also my garter supplies, which contributes to the first two rolls of blue ribbon I found myself beginning to collect. That was also my first(not to be remotely the last) elastic rodeo. It went well!
 

Then I found the butterfly decorations of my dreams! I work for a novelty company but not the one these came from! I couldn't find these anywhere and they're absolutely perfect. They each have a twist-tie backing so they can go everywhere and anywhere in our venue! They're going to be "flying" around all over! I also got these wooden ladybugs (and they are from where I work!) for the Flowerpeople's hair accessories and I also will scatter these around like the butterflies so they look like they're crawling around comfortably enjoying the wedding, too!
I found another company (sorry, work!) that I purchased ALL of my sunflowers from. I could not find a better price on silk sunflower stems so I ordered extra just incase! Now I have a box full of sunflower goodness that it's hard to keep the cats out of! The box is a great craft-project-bags holder, too!
On my 234th time back to Michael's I found the big Flowerpeople's Gerber daisy stems to make flower wands for them to carry for $1 each. Score!
I also acquired another roll of blue ribbon (Jumbo size!) and all my invitation supplies: my paper cutter, my tracing paper pads, sunflower sticker seals, brown pens, an adhesive Butterfly border from Martha that matched our wedding album(!!!!) and some brown pigment pens for incidental writing on the invites.
I did have to buy my paper punch for the invites separately on Amazon, though!
Last week I needed more yellow ribbon before starting my Flowerpeople's hair accessories so being in the ribbon aisle at MICHAELS AGAIN, I purchased another jumbo roll of the blue ribbon so I think our ribbon purchases are over. 150 yards of bows ought to do it?
I just did several orders to my place of work so they're currently getting make-up sales for my wedding supplies. I'm getting our flutes, our lanterns, the aisle-runner(a DIY project coming soon!), the ladybugs, the gifts for our Flowerpeople, our serving set, more rolls of tulle, Dec-Ons sugar ladybugs(for the cake because the wooden ones aren't for food), our photobooth cameras and our wedding bubbles. I ordered our rehearsal dinner supplies from them months ago because some of it was discontinued and I just needed it. It helped spacing out the purchases to make them manageable in $20, $50 and $100 chunks.

Oriental Trading Lanterns

 
Now given the scope of the decoration purchases, you may understand how much we have purchased. You may also get an idea of how much that may be. Let me just say, that if we were paying regular rent to an apartment, maybe a third of this would have been purchased. So it is safe to say that thanks to Shawn's Grandpa who is letting us stay in the basement at the rate of $All the food, cooking & dishes + Shawn's Handiwork. So a big thanks for the possibility of decorations to Grandpa! His willingness to help us and sense of family has made our wedding beautiful.