Fresias

I had Fresias as my wedding table flowers, for their colour, smell and simplicity. They are my favourite flowers.
I arranged the flowers myself in vintage enamel jugs, and old horlicks mixer jugs:

We had all the china, cake stands, decorations, leftover cake and tea to bring back to the house on the day after the wedding. Thankfully I had a team of people to help me so it was a relatively painless exercise, although this did mean that my house was full of boxes again.
There were no free surfaces for the flowers, so this became their temporary home:

Mr and Mrs

We are married!
We had a lovely day and I'm so looking forward to seeing the photos. 
We have a few days before we take off on our mini-moon (just a short break) before we decide what we're going to do for our honeymoon - we'll probably end up making a last minute booking somewhere.
When Mr Monda left the house today he yelled 'see you later wife!'

The birds above were a last minute purchase to decorate our wedding venue. They are made by the very clever Kirsty Elson who got these to me with just a few short days notice - excellent customer service indeed.

Biscuiteers

This week we received a really pretty tin of iced biscuits as a wedding gift from some of Mr. Monda former work colleagues.
I've seriously never seen such pretty biscuits before. They are wedding themed - just like the ones below:

We haven't tried any yet (we're both being very good with food at the minute to make sure we're not squashing ourselves into our wedding clobber!), so they are sitting in the cupbard quite whispering my name each time I venture into the kitchen.

Go and have a look at the Biscuiteers website - there are some lovely ideas for Birthdays, valentines, new baby celebrations and much more:

3 days to go!

So many

Cake stands! and this picture is just a fraction of what we have:

For the last couple of years I've been collecting bone china for our wedding. This last week we picked out all our favourite plate combinations, drilled them and made them into 3 tiered cake stands.

I won't be able to keep all these after the wedding - I just don't have the space for them, and can't imagine having an afternoon tea so big that I'll need all of them again, so they'll be going to new homes (via ebay!).

4 days to go!

ta da!

All the wire twisting and sore fingers seems more than worth it now, as my button bouquets are now finished and I'm so pleased with them. The shapes of them actually remind me of broccoli and cauliflower:

I have made three in total. The ones for my bridesmaids are slightly smaller than my own one. I thought they might end up being quite heavy but they're not actually.
My bouquet being slightly bigger and containing more buttons is a bit weighty. I won't being throwing it at the wedding though - aside from wanting it for a keepsake, I'd be likely to take someone out with it if I did throw it!

Only 5 days to go now. Still lots to do though...

buttonholes

I call them buttonholes but these are also known as boutonnierres. A bit of French always makes something sound a bit more chic and classsy doesn't it.
The delicate crochet flowers were made for me (with vintage thread) by my blog buddy and crochet master Emma Lamb, who has also made me lots of flowers for my dress.
I'm only half way through these boutonnieres so I'm off to crack on with the rest.
Yeah, get me being all chic and that. I'm just getting in some practice for the big day!

I'm just trotting along...

...with all the making for the wedding. I'm surrounded by buttons and felt. The bouquets are coming along and should be finished in a couple of days. Then I can move onto the buttonholes.

Listen to this:

I'm not totally loving the video, but I do love the song. It has a bit of an MGMT feel about it. I think.

Hugh's Fish Fight

I am sat here at the moment watching Hugh's Fish Fight on C4. If you didn't see it, take a look at the short video below.

If this makes you angry, then please sign the petition here
I'm not normally one for sharing crusades but this is utter madness, and I just feel we should do what we can to stop this happening.

on my messy desk

I have hundreds of buttons lined up, sorted and stacked waiting to be put onto wire stems for bouquets for me and my bridesmaids:

3 down, many many more to go...

standing at the bottom of the 2011 hill

Somehow I think by not writing a blog post to welcome the new year, I am infact delaying the realisation that it is actually 2011. It is though, and we're already speeding through the year at an alarming rate.
I still have lots of preparation and finishing to do for our wedding on the 29th. I know I should be feeling excited by this, but I actually feel quite daunted by the whole thing. It's like I'm standing at the bottom of a big hill that I need to climb. In fact, my life feels a bit like this at the moment too.
I think this is a case on early onset January blahs. Perhaps subconsciously I'm trying to get it out the way before the wedding comes?
I do wonder why this happens to me each January. I am of course looking forward to marrying my boy, and the possibilities that a new year brings - especially for me and my change in career path. I do feel like 2011 will be my year. A year where good things come to those who wait and work hard for them. Now, if I could just get rid of these blah feelings.

I don't really have resolutions, however after the wedding, one thing I do plan to do this year is put a lot more structure around my working life. Planning, and then making those plans come to fruition, whilst stretching myself creatively.

I'll make no apologies that my blog will be dominated by 'wedding this' and 'wedding that' for the next few weeks.
There is still so much to be done, however one thing I don't need to worry about is my wedding cake. I'm lucky that my friend will be making my wedding cakes for me. We've decided to go for a number of different cakes in different flavours, a little less traditional and more tasty than an iced fruit cake.
We would have loved to have macarons too, but they don't keep or travel well (and my friend lives quite far away), so we've decided on whoopie pies, which I've never tried, but they do look good.

They make for pretty palettes don't they. I especially like the whoopie pies palette.

The day I ruined the Christmas cake

Today marked the day that I officially ruined the Christmas cake.
On this day, I have to admit that I am a disgrace to my profession as a designer.
Perhaps the Christmas cake was doomed from the start, because it did get a little too 'dark' on the outside during cooking. Some careful trimming of the cake was conducted (it was necessary actually) before the marzipan was applied. Marzipan must surely be hiding a multitude of burnt cakes up and down the land this Christmas.
I was quite happy with the cake at marzipan stage. I was even quite happy with it when the icing was applied. The downfall and ruin of the cake came in the decoration. Once I started I couldn't stop you see. I had cake glitter and sprinkles at my disposal. The result is this shameful specimen:

I'm really not sure anyone would want to eat it - the green glitter really does look like mould.
Delia advised of simple white icing and spring of holly leaves with berries. Wouldn't that have looked nice. Maybe I'll just hand everyone a pair of dark glasses with their slice of cake.

Cake aside, I'm sure we'll have a very Merry Christmas, and to anyone ready this tale of Christmas cake woe, I wish you a very Merry Christmas too.

Christmas lights

I love this:

A snowy adventure

For the last few weeks I've been hearing news reports about the heavy snow in the UK. In Berkshire we had seen only a sprinkling of snow, like the kind of icing sugar sprinkling that you put on your mince pies - i.e. nothing worthy of a mention.
It was Mr Monda's birthday on Friday, so we headed up to Stratford upon Avon to the Royal Shakespeare Company to see Matlida - the musical apadptation of the Roald Dahl book. The musical score was written by Tim Minchin so we had high hopes.

 It wasn't snowing when we left home - I checked the weather reports and we looked like we'd be good to drive to Stratford. We'd been travelling for about 2 minutes when out of nowhere, thick heavy snow started coming down. I've never seen anything like it, within about 60 seconds everything was white and we couldn't see the road in front of us, it was surreal. It lasted about 10 mins, and then stopped so we pressed on with the drive.

We had dinner at the new rooftop restaurant at the RSC - excellent food and good value for money too. Then we walked over the the courtyard theatre to see Matlida, which was just brilliant. I have no doubt it will be going to the London Theatres after it's initial run in Stratford.

We were staying in a little B&B just outside Stratford, and the plan was to spend Saturday pottering about the shops and having a bit of lunch before slowly making our way home.

The only bit of Saturday that managed to happen was the 'slowly making out way home' part. I'd been checking the weather reports constantly to ensure we didn't get stranded. We were prepared for it if we did though, we'd packed some food, sleeping bags, snow boots and a snow shovel just in case.
The reports were for heavy snow from lunchtime, so we decided we ought to make an early start and get home before the snow came. We managed to get as far as the M40 motorway before the snow started coming down, at about 9.45am. The roads were still passable though, so we pressed on, but the further south we came the heavier the snow got.
It wasn't ideal or even sensible to be in the car on snowy roads with heavy snow coming down, but really thought we'd be ok.
We managed to get about half way home before we came to a complete standstill. There had been an accident up ahead, we were on an incline, lorries had jack-knifed blocking the carriageway and cars were desperately trying to find some grip - many of them slipping and sliding backwards.
The scene was quite bizarre - a snow covered motorway, where people were jumping out of their cars to help push other drivers to get them started.
We spent just over 6.5 hours in the car, doing a journey that should have taken 1.5 hrs. It was stop start all the way, driving in second gear at about 20mph and trying to stay in the furrows of the car in front of us.

I managed to get a couple of pics on my phone. This is the M40 Motorway - 3 lanes had become one barely visible lane:

This is on one of the local roads in Berkshire. It looks like it could be Canada or somewhere in Scandinavia:

 Things I have learnt from my little snow adventure:

• Weather predictions are just that - predictions. 
• Driving in snow isn't fun. I won't be doing it again unless I absolutely have to. 
• Snow hitting the windscreen at -3 degrees freezes and forms ice blocks on the windscreen wipers - rendering them almost useless.
• All the cars that were stranded or needed pushing were BMW's. I've since found out that they are real wheel drive. Perhaps they should have tried driving backwards :o)
• It might be worth investing in some snow socks for the car
• To keep a snow shovel in the car, along with a coat, hat, gloves, blanket, torch, sleeping bag, food and something you can have a wee in if needed. There were plenty of men lining the sides of the snowy motorway having a wee, but I guess like me, the ladies were just crossing their legs!

this is just the best thing ever

I love catching up on blog reading, it really opens my eyes to all the happy and wonderful things out there, like this:

 

Hurrah for Gemma Correll!

the usual suspects

or perhaps the unusual suspects!
This little bunch of bow tie kitties can now be found in my etsy shop

1. Henry, 2. Alexander, 3. Martha, 4. bow tie kitty, 5. Christophe and Lisa, 6. Jeremy, 7. Christophe, 8. Randolf, 9. Lisa

I'll have some more new items going into the shop throughout this week also - busy busy busy!