DIY: Easy Classy Wedding Invites

Wedding invitations. These small packets of paper are a great way to send a good impression to your guests regarding your most awaited wedding. However, it can also be a very expensive one. As a practical bride preparing for the more important expenses that come with being married, you would probably want to cut the cost on these. You can cut cost through the number of invitations and you can also cut the cost for each set of invites.

Cutting Cost on the Number of Copies

Usually, you only give one (1) invite per family. You can also do the same for every group of your friends. You can allocate one for your whole college barkada, and one for your high school friends. Same goes with your office mates and other groups of friends you may have. Still, it is your prerogative to send one specially for your boss or school adviser. But I think it is fine if they are also included in the groups.

Cutting Cost of Each Copy

I always say, a little imagination and a little effort can go a long way. So, I designed our invites through Microsoft PowerPoint. If you have more technical background (yes, you who does graphic arts for a living), you might find better means to create the template and design of your invites.

Designing your Invitation:

There are a few things needs to be in your wedding invitation. Here is a quick guide:

1. Basic details.This is a given. You need to include the name of the two of you, the venues, and the date and time. In our case, we also have the name of our parents
2. The Entourage. Not sure if this is what's normal in other countries but in the Philippines, people receiving the invites would like to know who are included in your entourage. We placed them on the back of page 1.
3. RSVP, Attire, Gift request/Registry. All of these are on the third page. We placed how many seats we reserved for them. I'm still hoping they would follow the numbers. Haha!
4. The Map. The last page is the map to guide your guest as to where the venues are. I also included a few numbers they can call in case they get lost or confused with the directions.

Make all these as creative as you want. There is really a lot of possibilities. Put them the way we did, interchange the position of some info or put everything simple in one big enough page. It's really up to you. Make if playful or formal, the important thing is to make them reflect your theme and your personality as a couple. 

The photos below is our wedding invitation. It costs about 46 pesos each. I had the pages printed for forty pesos but if you have a good enough printer at home, you might be able to save more. :)

The two page back to back print out

I wanted to add a little bit of my baking background so we decided to use doilies as the envelope. We also used a midnight blue ribbon to "tie" it to the color theme.

Choosing the size of the doily is quire tricky. The 10" is a little bit too small while the 12" is overlapping for our 5" print outs. We went with the 12" as the overlap is quite a beautiful touch.

 

Center the invite in the doily and fold both sides.

 

I cut out the excess.

 

As I go, I noticed it was easier to cut the excess once the ribbon is tied. So, that's what  I did on the next ones.

 

Be careful when tying the ribbon. The doily is only made of paper and could easily break.

 

And here is the finished ones. :)

 

Some more photos. teehee :)

 

   I really loved how they turned out. They fit perfectly with our vintage/classic theme. :)

Hope you liked this tutorial

Keep Your Sleeves Up

Have you ever struggled keeping your sleeves up? Well, with the weather we are in, it is time to bring out all the nice and cozy long sleeved shirts and sweaters. But we all know that work will still be the same no matter the weather, so we tend to roll up those sleeves for us to be able to work faster and more efficiently. 

The challenge is keeping those sleeves up. As we wear it through the day, fabric gets loose and stretched and would sometime roll back down. The solution - just a handy dandy rubber band! Here's how to wear it.

In the morning, your sleeves are still quite tight. Not a lot of pulling and tugging yet.

By noon, it starts to fall back down...

It is time to bring out your rubber bands. :) Just one for each arm. This could be a thin hair scrunchy or any other thin elastic that you have. It shouldn't be too small because it may cut the blood flow in your arm and be quite uncomfortable. For average girl arm, you can use regular rubber band from your office supplies.

Just put it over your sleeves and place is in one of the folds rolling them up creates.

And, your sleeves are safe for work! :)

Loom Band Hack No. 2

How To Make a Willis Bracelet Faster

Those who are familiar with the Willis Bracelet would know how tedious it can be to do one bracelet. It is a process of putting the bands in the pegs, adding more bands, taking it off every time you add some more bands, and putting it back. (For those who are not familiar, there are several tutorials in Youtube.com). So, I thought there should be an easier way.

I am hoping you get the idea based on the pictures alone. :)

Instead of working on the same four pegs over and again, use all of them! Set up the bands on over four pegs as you would on each run. This way, it would be faster and you can also double check if you have all the right colors at the same time.

Instead of attaching the long base ones (individual connected bands) on each peg every time you will do 8 bands, just pull it through the gaps in between. It is easier to slide all the bands through the length of the long base bands connected bands. Do the same for all the 4 base bands.

Continue to do so until you reached the end of the long base bands. Use c-clips to connect them together.

Photoblog: Khay's Desserts and Cafe

Here are some photos during our visit at Khay's Desserts and Cafe. I don't have a lot of words for this post -- just yummy food and drinks. :) Perfect with kikay friends and kids.

This is the Salty Albert (top left), Strawberry Shortcake (top right), and the Choco Loco (bottom center)

From another baker's perspective, all these cupcakes are nice and moist and the sweetness is just right. Love 'em! :)

Green Tea Frappe

Hazelnut Mocha

Iced Caramel Machiatto

I also liked the cute interior and the nice plates and tiny fork for the cupcakes. :)

Anti Gravity Yoga at Beyond Yoga Alabang

My high school best buddies and I just got together because of my upcoming wedding. Of course, they are my bridesmaids. Even though we rarely see each other, we are so glad to catch up and we really resent that we are too busy to see each other for quite a long time. 

Little did we know that we will be seeing each other a little too often because of one thing we all enjoy doing -- YOGA! And to make it more exciting, we tried the Anti-Gravity Yoga at Beyond Yoga in West Gate Alabang. 

It was such a great experience!

The very first session we had was quite too easy for us (haha! yabang!) but that's only because the instructor had to run through the whole fundamentals with us. We ended up wanting a little bit more physical activity. 

Day 2 was more of a challenge! More inversions! And all of those inversions really challenged the core. I believe I will be rocking some beautiful abs if I can continue to do this. haha!

We were so tired afterwards and we did not expect that. So, I guess we had a great work out. 

We Like:

• The changing rooms and shower are well maintained and clean.
• The instructors are so friendly
• The receptionist will answer all your queries.
• They allow you to stay a little longer after the session so you can either take pictures or practice some more the new moves and poses you just learned

More information can be found in their website.

Loom Band Hack No.1

DIY Loom Bands Organizer

As the Loom Bands Craze becomes ever so evident in our everyday life, you can easily find a tutorial or two on how certain types of bracelets, charms, and other patterns are made. It is quite amazing how a lot of stuff can be created out of rubber bands. 

So in this segment "Loom Band Hack", I will be sharing some stuff that you may or may not know that can be applied to making and organizing loom bands or anything related to it.

Let us start with organizing your loom band set. You often see a lot of organizers for sale. Those are nice but it only holds a small number of rubber bands in each slot. When you buy rubber bands, they usually come in 600 pcs packs. And although, you can keep the rest of it in the plastic container it came with, it would also be nice to have bigger containers for when you are making them at home or if you haven't bought the organizer.

It is basically a container divided into two parts so you can put two different colors of rubber bands in it.

What we will need for the organizer are the following:

1 round microwavable container

used folder

scissors

ruler

scratch  paper

Once everything is ready, we can now proceed with the following step by step process:

Procedure:

1. Cut a circle out of the scratch paper the same size as the bottom of the container. You want to trace the edges of the bottom of the container on the paper to do this.

2. Next, measure the height and width of the mouth of the container.





3. Draw a rectangle based on the measurements in number 2 on the scratch paper.



4. Find the bottom center.



5. Get your round scratch paper, fold in half and find the center as seen below.





6. Put a bit of tape or adhesive on one side of the round, folder paper and stick it on the rectangle drawing, making sure that the centers are aligned.





7. Draw a line connecting the ends of the half circle and the top corners of the rectangle and cut the rectangle out.





8. When you unfold the circle paper, it should look like this. And now you can have a patter for the divider.



9. Trace your pattern over the folder and cut it out.





10. You should come up with this. Fold the round part as seen below.



12. And now you have a divider! :)



Put it in the container and fill it up with different color bands.

Here is mine:







I hope you enjoyed this hack!