DIY Bottle Cap Cupcakes and Party Details

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I planned a small/intimate surprise birthday party for my husband turning 30.  And let me tell you he was SHOCKED when he walked in the front door.  I decided early on that I wanted the party to be beer themed, which clearly meant the cake needed to go with the theme.  I was very inspired by a bottle cap cake I found on a blog.

Unfortunately when it came time to making the cake I didn’t have enough time to make fondant.  So I went with option B.  Swiching from a cake to cupcakes. I mean cupcakes are in anyways so win!  Then I made made little bottle cap decorations for each of the cupcakes.  They are super easy to make.  AND how cute are these???

What you need:

Toothpicks
Glue
Beer Bottle Caps

Place a small dot of your duco cement in the center of the bottle cap. Let it dry for 30 seconds or so.

Place the toothpick at an angle into the glue dot.  Roll the toothpicks in the glue a little.  Then hold it in place. Unlike my husband try to put the toothpick at an angle and against the bottle cap edge.

Instead of holding the toothpick while it drys, which takes FOREVER there’s a better option! This took me a while to figure out, but in the end it was a life saver.  Put a second bottle cap on top of the bottle cap/toothpick like so …

Let dry for at least 15 minutes.  The longer the better and depending on the glue you use they will dry at slower or faster rate than mine did.  Then stick it into the cupcake and away you go.  I think it would have been nice to have a few more different types of beer bottle caps, but over all I am very pleased with how they turned out!  Check out the little display:

The color theme of the surprise party was yellow and chocolate brown.  The cupcake liners had yellow stripes on them.  You can find them here and they are pretty cheap and come in a lot of different colors.

Remember how much I wanted to use barbershop straws again? I got them for the surprise party!!  The other small decoration included brown and yellow balloons.

Oh and one more fun little detail for the party … custom napkins!  I had wanted to do custom napkins for our wedding, but it didn’t work out. I would never plan another party without custom napkins.  I love how they turned out!!

Surprise parties are so much fun and all the little tidbits and extra details all the difference in making the party look so cute.  :)

Happy DIY and party planning!

Don’t forget to leave your tidbit by commenting below :)

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Bride & Groom Sweatsuits

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One of my favorite things about my husband is he always says “babe we are a team”, which is his way of telling me we will get through whatever it is going on big or small together.  I think the team mentality is part of what makes our relationship so strong.  We referred to ourselves, long before we got engaged, as Team Bowen.

We would joke about wearing matching sweatsuits to brunch the morning after our wedding.  The plan was to get bride and groom embroidered on the sweatpants.  On the jackets we would have Team Bowen version 3.0.

Although it was always a joke, in the end we followed through with our plan and had sweatsuits made.  And let me just say I LOVE(D) THEM and so did our friends and family!!!

Photo Credit: My Dad :)

I bought my sweatsuit from Victoria’s Secret and then got his from Amazon.  VS is constantly running specials so I strongly suggest waiting for a sale like I did.

My husband was kind enough to run this very important wedding errand.  He took the sweatsuits to a local chain and worked with the associate to correctly place the wording.  He also successfully chose the purple colored string for my sweatsuit that was almost the same as our wedding color purple.  Serious props to my husband, because he made the perfect choices for the embroidery without my help!

I remembered to pull out the sweatsuits the day of the wedding and asked our photographer to capture a few professional shots.

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

If you are wondering about the 3.0 reference it comes from us both being tech geeks.  Think of the stages in our relationship like a software release. Dating version 1.0, engaged version 2.0 and married is our latest release.  I suggested to a friend who’s getting married this summer to do Established in YYYY instead of the “versions” for her sweatsuits.

It was nice to have something special to wear the day after our BIG day! I even wore the outfit on the plane ride to Italy for our honeymoon. :)

What do you plan on wearing the day after your wedding?

Happy Planning!

Don’t forget to leave your tidbit by commenting below :)

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Ways to Use Your Engagement Photos

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We got engaged in October and by the time we found our photographer, signed the contract and thought about scheduling our e-session it was FRRRREEZING outside.  After giving it some thought we decided to wait until April to do our engagement photos.

A larger number of people use their e-pics on their save the dates (STDs).  Since our save the dates went out priority to even booking the photographer we were going to have to find other ways to use the pictures.  When we received our ~120 engagement photos I started wondering what we were going to do with all these pictures.

We did the typical print a few and put them up around the house as well as place a few favorites on the wedding website.  But it just didn’t feel like enough and I started to think there just HAD to be more we could do with all these cutsie pictures.

I found five fun ways to take advantage our engagement pictures!

All of the engagement photos were taken by Korie Lynn Photography

1.  Guest Book

Part of our photography package included a guest book.  The hubby and I chose our favorite pictures and then our photographer designed and printed the book for us.  If it isn’t included in your photo package it’s a super easy DIY project.  Photobooks can be created on Shutterfly, MyPublisher, SnapFish, Blur and the list of places goes on and on.

Check out our book:

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

2.  Framed Collage

We had a frame with pictures we weren’t loving anymore.  We printed our top 9 photos and voila …

3.  Table numbers!

I had serious issues trying to decide what to do about table numbers.  I thought about naming each table a Washington Monument, wine bottles, luminaria with numbers and gosh probably a dozen other things.

In the end we picked our favorite engagement pictures added numbers with Photoshop … printed the pictures and purchased some plastic picture frames.  It was a super easy DIY and pretty cheap too if you ask me.

Looks pretty … right?!

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

4.  Thank you cards

These were a HUGE hit with our friends and family.  We chose two different pictures and used Photoshop to add “Thank you” to the images.  I ordered them from Shutterfly, however like the guest book there are a ton of places you can order customized photo thank you cards.

5.  Custom Stamps for the wedding invitation

I wish I could take all the credit for this idea, but my mom really pushed me to follow through on this idea.  I had toyed with buying custom stamps for the invitations, however I wasn’t sure if it was worth the extra money.  In the end I decided it would be fun and I ordered the custom stamps from Zazzle.com.  The stamps come in three different sizes so you have your choice of how big you want the stamp to be.

Tip: Make sure to take the invitation to the post office prior to buying the custom stamps so you know what postage rate you will need to purchase.

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

So there are my engagement picture tidbits.  How have you (or your friends) used engagement pictures?

Happy Planning and DIY!

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DIY Escort Cards with photo-sharing

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While wedding planning I found a blog on Weddingbee about photo-sharing.  The idea is guests upload their personal photos from the evening and it’s shared with everyone who attended the wedding.  Since I am absolutely obsessed with pictures, I figured this was a must have for our wedding.

I initially planned on creating the business card (using VistaPrints) as the blog describes and placing one on each person’s table with the menu card.   Then I could use the extras as reminders in the thank you cards.  However they came back with a TYPO (total fail on my part) so they went into the trash.  In the end I decided to make the escort card and photo-sharing card one in the same.

Check them out:

DIY Wedding Escort Cards, Table Tents | Life's Tidbits

DIY Wedding Escort Cards with Photo Sharing | Life's Tidbits

I purchased Avery Small Tent Cards, 2 x 3.5 Inches and downloaded the free template on Avery.com.  Although figuring out how to feed the paper through the printer so everything was facing the right way proved to be difficult the end result was exactly what I wanted!

I used the filigree images from our wedding invitations (also DIY) and the calligraphy font (which we downloaded for free) initially for the envelopes.  Reusing details from our other paper wedding products made the escort cards match the other paper items.

Cost: Avery Small Tent Cards ~$18 (plus cost of ink for printer) … pretty cheap if you ask me!

A couple of tips:

  • SPELL CHECK, spell check and have someone else spell check it too!
  • use regular paper white paper and print in gray scale for test pages.
  • mark which way the paper should be fed for each section very clearly.
  • set your printer to “high” quality instead of standard.  although this uses up more ink the difference, in my opinion, it totally worth it.
  • buy a bigger pack of escort cards then you think you will need.  inevitably you will have to reprint a couple for whatever reason:)

Here’s how the cards looked all set up and ready to go:

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

Happy DIY!

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Happy New Year!

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Happy New Year to you and yours!!!

I was reminiscing with the husband tonight about last year and there were a number of favorite days that quickly came to mind.  By far the best of 2011 included getting married and honeymooning in Italy. :) Here is one of my favorite pictures from our honeymoon:

This was taken in Positano, Italy on the very first night of our honeymoon. I mean the view from our hotel room was AAAHH-Mazing! Right??

In Positano we had the best bruschetta and gnocchi I have ever had in my entire life.  Sorrento had some pretty fabulous gnocchi as well (close second … almost a tie actually). :)

YUMMY.

All the honeymoon and wedding talk made me realize it is time to share some wedding related tidbits with ya’ll.  DIY Escort/Photo Sharing Cards and Unique Bridal Shower gifts posts are coming up this week!

Happy New Year!

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