Sydney Flower Market - amazing!

This morning, at 3.15am no less, I headed down the F3 to the Sydney Flower Market, WOW what an eye opener, I have never been before, and it was just amazing.

Flowers of every description and colour, I was a bit overwhelmed with the options at first, but luckily had Emma with me (part-time florist who is putting the flowers together for me), and she had a plan of attack, I had several photos of flower arrangements, and colours I liked, so we targetted the bouquets & cake topper first. Once we had found everything for them, we took the flowers back to the car (in the pouring rain!!)

Then we were back to pick flowers for decorations, we're having 2 urns on either side of the stairs for the ceremony, so those arrangements need a little bit of height, then we have a range of around 30 wine bottles, and 20 jars that we will scatter flowers throughout.

One thing I saw that I just had to have was white kale.

White Kale

We decided to change some of the decorations to include the kale, they're so stunning, even nicer than this pic, they were my favourite find today.

And we picked up some of my favourite, Cymbidium Orchids, they have been my inspiration all along re colour scheme etc, and I'm so happy I was able to get some to have in the bouquet.

Cymbidium Orchids

Other flowers we selected were

White Fresias

White Daphne

Cream roses

Blushing Bride

We also got a few bunches of natives and grasses, and some lovely green wheat, to use in the bottles/jars,

I would have loved to have hydrangeas & peonies, however neither were available.

All the flowers are with Emma, she'll keep them in her special fridge, then put the arrangements together on Friday, deliver them to the hall on Saturday morning, then bring the 2 bouquets and button holes to our house on Saturday afternoon before we head off.

I think I could easily become addicted to the Sydney Flower Market, the bargain prices we paid for just beautiful flowers was amazing.  The cost, including Emma's labour, will come in at about 1/3rd of what we were quoted from 3 local florists!  Huge saving.

Well it's almost midnight, and having got up this morning at 2.30am I'm a tad knackered.  Happy to report I have just finished the last of the 100m of bunting!!!!!  I shall post on that tomorrow hopefully. We also met with the photographer today at the hall, and drove to the photo location options, very happy with the plan of attack!

DIY Decorations - Bunting - part 1

It's been a little while coming (see earlier posts!) but on the weekend I finally made a start on my massive DIY Bunting task!

We have worked out that we will need approx 150m of bunting to do all the decorating we want:

• 2 x 2 strands looping from sides of hall up to a chain hanging high from ceiling at each end of hall, width of hall is 10m, so allowing 15m per stand to include the 'loop' - 15m x 4 = 60m
• 1 x strand looping behind/above bar - 10m should cover it
• 1 x strand looping above cake tressle table - 5m
• 1 x strand looping above soup station - 5m
• 1 x strand looping above kids area - 10m 
• 1 x strand looping above entrance - 5m
• 1 mega strand looping around verandah, below the fairy lights - 40m
• leaves 15m just in case it looks to bare!!

The triangles/flags I'm using are 20cm wide, however once sewn together and turned right side out they're about 17cm wide, so going to have 5 flags per metre with gaps of 2.5cm between each flag. 

So 5 flags per metre x 150m = 750 flags (oops DIY project out of control a tad!!)

So far I've cut out around 100 flags, and sewn up around 60, so you could say I'm a way off being finished!!

Luckily I'm really enjoying it, finding it relaxing (thank god!).

These are my creations so far, in various stages of completion!

The calico was my first try, luckily it worked, so I moved onto some of the fancier material, these are ready for binding

These are now all sewn up into flags, to be bound together

This mornings inside out flags, waiting to be turned right way out then bound, a bit of red to break up the green/cream

I have sourced material from a number of places:

• Op Shops - sheets, shirts
• Garage Sales - sheets, shirts, curtains
• Big W/Target/Kmart - discount baskets of fitted sheets, flat sheets
• Spotlight - sticking to the budget options

We have a long weekend coming up in a few days, looking forward to getting through a couple of hundred metres worth of flags!!  Wish me luck!

DIY Decorations

With our big day just 10 weeks away today (eek), my to-do list is getting done, altho I still have a few DIY projects to get done.

I blogged earlier about the DIY Bunting I'll attempt, I invested in a new sewing machine (on sale at Spotlight, usually $249, got it for $149!), and next weekend I have blocked out Sunday to get bunting!

I have 5 metres of calico to practice with, and if it goes ok I will dye some of them different shades of green, and pick up some patterned material to use also.

My next DIY project will be Martha Stewart's Tissue Paper Pom Poms, the tutorial on Martha's website looks very easy (have I just mozzed myself??)

Martha Stewart Tissue Paper Pom Poms (photo source)

So I have just ordered about 300 sheets of tissue paper on Ebay, in 4 shades of green, and 2 shades of white.  Hopefully they will arrive this week, and I can knock them off next weekend also.

After next Sunday (23rd May) I will hopefully have photos of metres & metres of bunting, and a pile of pom-poms, wish me luck!!!!!!  :-)

Temporarily Aborted Bunting DIY

I was all set for a DIY project over the long Easter Weekend, with bunting well in my sights, to use as decorations in the hall.

The aim - bunting decos for our wedding (photo source)

At Christmas my Mum gave me her old sewing machine (a Pinnock, late 1970's vintage, she was a dressmaker while home with us kids), as she had replaced hers, and as they were moving home from Qld to Vic, they stopped with us mid trip home, and lightened their load by giving me the sewing machine.

Pinnock Sewing Machine, similar to the one I've been given

I haven't sewn (apart from hand sewing hems, buttons) for quite a while (probably not since school, closing in on 20 years ago!), so I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I was up for it!

On Saturday I headed to Spotlight, after much perusing of some gorgeous fabric I thought I'd be sensible and just buy some calico to start with to make sure I could still sew, and not ruin expensive fabric.  I could also dye the calico different greens if it worked out, and use that swapped in with different pattern fabric.

Armed with 5 metres of Calico, on Monday I set up the machine, and kit of threads, scissors, unpickers, etc on the dining table.  I got the machine all threaded up no problem, switched it on, and the light works yay, I put the first strip of test calico in place ready to go, press down on the pedal and the motor starts whirring, but no action.

Uhoh, I try again, no luck, I wind in and out the tension thingo on the end, no luck.  So I call Mum, and wouldn't you know it, she actually replaced the machine with a new one 10 years ago, and this one hasn't been used since!  Excellent!

So now I have to either put it in for a service, and given it's age it could be pricey, or look at buying a new/used machine.

Extremely frustrating as I had set the day aside for my DIY project, and really fallen for the idea of using bunting as decorations for the hall.

So my DIY project is on hold, until I can get this old girl working or replace her with a newbie!  Frustration factor of 10+++!

To Bunt Or Not To Bunt

To Bunt Or Not To Bunt that is one of the questions I'm asking myself.

Our venue is quite large and so far I'm thinking of decorating it with white chinese lanterns, 3 different round sizes, along with fairy lights.

I'm meeting with a lady this weekend who is going to help with the decorations, I'm buying/renting/supplying everything, she'll put it all together for me.

Because it's a surprise wedding I can't rope in friends & family, and because we don't get access until the Friday afternoon, which happens to be when all of my family are arriving from Vic, and I'll be shuttling between home & Newcastle Airport, I was struggling to work out how I was going to manage to decorate everything.

Over the past 3 weeks, my hairdresser, our accountant and a lady at Curves have all suggested I call the same lady to come help, so I did, and we're meeting up this weekend.

One of the things I've been tossing up is bunting, I've been touring around the web quite a bit getting inspiration for decorations, and quite a few photos of bunting, and I'm loving them.

(photo source)

(photo source)

I'm still trying to work out if I have the time and skill to give it a go, but having asked the question at Simple Savings, the girls have filled me with confidence, even pointing me in the direction of a tutorial.

My Mum gave me her old sewing machine at Christmas when she upgraded, and while I haven't sewn a stitch (apart from hand sewing socks, buttons & hems), in over 15 years, I don't think it'd be too much of a struggle to pick it up again!

This weekend I'm heading out wedding dress shopping, well at least to meet with a dressmaker hopefully, and will stop at some Op Shops on the way to see if any sheets or clothes made out of green & white material that would look nice in bunting form.

Not sure if it's a fool's folly to add another thing to the to-do list!  But we'll see anyway!