Vintage Cutlery

When I turned 21, my parents presented me with a perfectly adequate cutlery set. I can’t remember how many pieces it has, but believe me when I say that there were more types of spoons in there than I have fingers on my hand.

That being the case, I feel horribly ungrateful about the fact that now that I hvae ordered my new super cool dinner set (currently on sale at Peters of Kensington!) that I would really like some vintage cutlery to go with it. Or at least vintage styled cutlery.

While we were on honeymoon in Paris I found what I thought was the perfect set. Sitting at the breakfast table I stared at the markings on it, determined to remember it long enough to go back to our room and write it down so I could find it again.

Except I didn’t.

So I have resorted to searching for “baroque cutlery” on the interweb, and astonishingly there are some beautiful pieces out there. I have no idea how I’ve lived in ignorance for this long!

When I first chose all the accessories for my table (candle sticks, salt and pepper shakers, napkin rings) I decided to go with silver, because (or so I reasoned) all cutlery is silver, and if I have cold accessories, it’ll never be possible for everything to match.

But I was wrong!
Check out this lovely set from
overstock.com

Crown Royal Gold Cutlery Set

I think this set is my favourite

Mason Luxe Baroque Cutlery

from overstock.com

I’m also loving this mismatched look from Anthropologie

Anthropologie “Rediscovered Flatware”

But I’m worried it’ll be too much with mismatched dinner sets. And it’s quite pricey at $36/single person set. But if you’re after some vintage cutlery that’s also quirky, it’s a great idea!

Along the same lines is this set

Personalised Vintage Silverware

from Napastyle. They have a collection of mismatched vintage cutlery that they can send you in 20, 40 or 80 piece sets. And they can monogram it. I’m loving this idea!

And finally, there’s these

Baroque Cutlery

From Smarty Had a Party. They’re beautiful! But disposable (or should that read “and disposable” for when one doesn’t want to have to do the dishes after a dinner party?)

And just as a side note, does anyone know when and why they started calling it “flatware” rather than “cutlery”? I’m not quite sure I understand the reasoning!

Part of me wishes that I’d DIYed all the reception stuff (I’m still loving barn weddings. And outdoor receptions, with tables and chairs randomly placed in forested green areas.) Then I would have had an excuse to buy at least some of this vintage cutlery…

Wash on Monday

I seem to be in a constant battle with the house regarding general tidiness. (I suspect, at heart, I was designed to be surrounded by thousands of servants). I started ‘spring cleaning’ the house more than two years ago in an attempt to get it in some sort of order after we moved and only half heartedly unpacked.

Well, two years on all the rooms (bar my study) have been unpacked and sorted, and now it just remains to go back and tidy and put away in all the rooms before I begin the attempt to keep the house clean (which sounds like just as much work, to be honest).

As a result, I’ve decided to adapt the good old saying:
Wash on Monday
Iron on Tuesday
Mend on Wednesday
Shop on Thursday
Clean on Friday
Bake on Saturday
Rest on Sunday

Unfortunately, if we used Monday as washing day no one would have clean work/school clothes to start the week. So instead, I think my saying will go:

Wash on Sunday
Garden on Monday
Rest on Tuesday
Mend on Wednesday
Shop on Thursday
Clean on Friday
Bake on Saturday

Do you think I’ll have any luck doing it this way?
And how would you have to organise the poem to fit your life?

Living Life on the Edge

There seems to be a lot of emphasis on online wedding planning/blogging/DIY sites to make your wedding (and sometimes your life!) be unique and different – and often cuttting edge.

The upside to this is that your likely to have a memorable wedding that you truly love. The downside, is that things are often difficult to source.

Often things that started out as being different and quirky (such as cake pops or photobooths) become a trend, and everyone jumps on board. And that’s ok, I’m not saying that you should only do things to be different, and by that point it’s easy to find suppliers. But when you’re the first person to think of it? Well then it’s darn hard.

I know I had to scrap a few of my earlier ideas (and oddly enough, which I’m glad I didn’t end up with) because it was just Too Hard. Finding large amounts of buttons at an affordable price? Almost impossible. Mason jars in Australia? Non-existent. Becoming a millionaire? Didn’t happen.

So what do you do when planning on the edge makes your plans impossible? I wish I had an answer for that. For me, I ended up changing things. For others, they’ve ended up going into the wedding planning business themselves and becoming suppliers of whatever it was they wanted. Others pay a fortune to make it happen.

But, since the end of the wedding I have discovered it’s not just wedding things that seem to be hard to source! I came across these super-cute Christmas decorations the other day:

And I loved them. I instantly decided to change my decoration approach for Christmas. Again. (I do this every year, even though every year I vow that I won’t). But they were too expensive to buy enough of, so I decided to DIY them.

I found a supplier of mdf shapes on ebay at a GREAT price, and all that was left to do was to source red polka dot paper. How hard could that be?

Apparently very hard. If I live in the UK it’s no worries – Handy Hippo has plenty of card at a fairly decent price – but shipping to Australia is over $50. Ouch.

If I wanted a different colour, I’d be fine. I can find pink and white polka dot paper, green and white, blue and white, black and white! But red and white, no way.

I’m still trying to find a way around this problem, and I’ll be sure to let you know if and when I do. But in the meantime, I wanted to let you know that if you’re finding it hard living life on the edge? Well then, I hear you.

And Thanks Go To

Today I just wanted to do a brief post thanking some of the suppliers that helped make my wedding so great.
Obviously these are only helpful if you happen to live in Melbourne, but hopefully one or two people manage to stumble across this post.

To start with:

The cake!

As many of you may know I had early on found the perfect cake. All that remained was to find someone to make it (for a reasonable price). And I did in Regnier Cakes. Melina is located in Chelsea Heights and is helpful, friendly, and super-talented. The cake tasted amazing, and looked PERFECT! I haven’t got all my photos back yet, so I can’t post a picture of my cake, but trust me when I tell you that my cake looked just like this one:

The band!

We decided early on that we wanted a live band, and since jazz went so nicely with our theme, we went looking for a jazz band.
I can’t remember how we stumbled across Shamdoogie but we did, and oh my was I glad. We asked Kimba (the lead singer) to MC as well, and we got compliments all night long on their music and MCing. They helped make the night truly memorable, so a big thanks.

The photographers!

Choosing photographers is hard. What style, how much, when, where – it’s like a series of never ending tests.
Thankfully we found Amarcord Photography. A husband and wife team, they provide two photographers for the price you normally pay for one, and do an amazing mix of candid and posed photographs. Super professional and friendly, they happily (nay, enthusiastically!) trekked what felt like halfway across Melbourne for our photographs and I cannot thank them enough.

The Paris photographer!

You’ve all heard me rave about Juliane Berry before, so I won’t go into too much detail except to say thanks for making having our photos taken in Paris feel exactly as amazing as I thought it would. It’s hard to live up to those kinds of expectations, but she did it. I can’t wait to see how it all turned out!

The florist!

My incredibly, amazingly, wonderful Sister-In-Law (I can say that now) did our flowers for us. And our set-up. And our clean-up. And anything else you can think of. She’s just started up her own business, and as soon as her website is up and running I’ll be updating here for anyone located along the Mornington Peninsula or East Melbourne who is looking for a florist. The fact that the flowers (and reception) looked so amazing is largely down to her.

–Edit—
My super awesome Sister-In-Law has given me her business details here is her facebook page for Edith and May (loving the name!) and her email address is edithandmay at gmail dot com.

I also have one photograph of my bouquet – hopefully when the rest of the pro photos come in I’ll be able to post some better ones, but for now:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Make up!

My cousin Belinda Nason, who is just also just starting her own business, did my makeup and did a fantastic job. She patiently worked with me while I changed my mind (and acquired the fiance’s approval) half a dozen times. The makeup lasted all night (with only one top up of lipstick needed). Thanks doesn’t go quite far enough.

Hair!

I have never had curls last quite so long as they did when Alli the Hair Lady did my hair. She’s a mobile hair stylist who got everything done with maximum efficiency and minimum fuss (and a minimum of cost, too!). Everyone’s hair looked incredible, and I cannot recommend her enough to anyone in Melbourne looking for a hair stylist.

And shortly I’ll post photographs to prove all of the above to you!

D-Day

D-Day (or should that be “W-Day”) has been and gone! And now that we’re back from our honeymoon, I’m able to get up and blogging again!

Hopefully soon I will have some photos to share with you all, but in the meantime I thought I’d post some links to pictures that I found after my wedding, and which made me wish I’d done a couple of things differently for mine. (It’s not too late to change my mind and have my wedding again is it? On a semi-related note, I think I’ve decided I want to create a job called “Wedding Design” and do that for a living. Watch this space, it may yet happen!)

Firstly, some amazing photographs from the talented Juliane Berry (who took photos for us when we were in Paris – AMAZING, by the way!).

This was enough to make me wish I had ignored the fiance, and gone with the bunting anyway.

Could that boutonniere be any more darling?

And the table, check out the table!!

And secondly, shots from a Mad Men inspired wedding (say no more, I love Mad Men!) posted on Wedding Chicks

This shot made me wish I’d stuck with my attempts to have a birdcage veil.

And this one here made me wish I’d gone with yellow as my colour. How fresh and cheery does it look?

I think for my own sanity, I should stop posting now, but hopefully you’ve enjoyed looking at them just as much as I have!

Aeroplane Confetti

Just when I thought that I couldn’t find anything cuter than rose petals to use as confetti, I stumble across this post at Martha Stewart Weddings:

I think I need a second wedding, to incorporate all the cute travel ideas I keep stumbling across!

Printable Stickers and Rose Petal Cones

I apologise for the delay in updating here, but as the wedding rapidly approaches (and my PhD confirmation loomed) I found that I’ve had less time than I thought.

But, hopefully, all that has changed and I thought I’d share with you one of my latest (awesome!) finds: printable stickers!

They’re available from Just Something I Made and are AMAZING!

I decided to finally start putting together the rose petal cones that I mentioned earlier, and I’ve printed some of the wedding postage stamps to put on them.

Voila!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, as an added bonus they would work wonderfully with the many travel themed inspiration I’ve posted in the past!

Vintage Dinner Set Patterns

I’ve spent the last few years alternating between wishing I could find the ultimately perfect dinner set pattern OR that I could be one of those people brave enough to pull off the quirky mismatched dinner sets.

After spending the last few nights scouring the internet for dinner sets that are IT I have concluded that while some come close:

Elizabeth Platinum by Royal Crown Derby

from Royal Crown Derby

Republic Dinnerware by Lenox

from Lenox
Really, there’s nothing that makes me go “that’s it!” and so I’ve decided to just BE one of those quirky mismatched people.

To this end, I shall be putting this (rather boring) dinner set on my ‘wish list’

Queens Plain by Wedgwood

And then I’ll be keeping an eye out for plates, cups, bowls, etc that have a scalloped edge, and so instantly match!

Just to give you an idea, here’s a few I’ve found courtesy of Replacements an online registry of discontinued patterns.

Just for fun, I’ve tried to keep them to just Wedgwood patterns (because trying to search all scallop edged dinner sets gave me something 40,000 results to wade through).

Chinese Teal by Wedgwood

from Chinese Teal at Replacements

Richmond by Wedgwood

from Richmond at Replacements

Empress Ruby by Wedgwood

from Empress Ruby at Replacements

Ashbury by Wedgwood

from Ashbury at Replacements

Floral Scallop by Wedgwood

from Floral (Scallop) at Replacements

Crown Platinum by Wedgwood

from Crown Platinum at Replacements

Eccles Bead Celadon by Wedgwood

from Eccles Bead Celadon at Replacements

Phyllis Purple by Wedgwood

from Phyllis Purple at Replacements

Morning of the Wedding Gifts

My fiance has decided that the idea of giving each other gifts on the morning of the wedding is weird (“Isn’t marrying you enough?”). While I don’t entirely agree, our budget could do with the break.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped me from a) looking at things he could buy me and b) trying to convince him that he would like to buy me these things anyway.

I’ve been leaning towards one of these spinning “I Love You” pendants.

Except in gold, of course, because (wedding jewellery aside) that’s really all I wear.
(I’ve wanted one since I was a teenager, and apparently it’s lame to buy one for yourself).

Only then I stumbled across this cute love letter pendant at Dolly Dagger

and I think I might have changed my mind. Of course, he could always buy me both….

Burnt Orange Bridesmaid Dresses

One of my friends is engaged, and is frantically trying to locate burnt orange bridesmaid dresses. Turns out it’s harder than you think, so I thought I’d see if I could help her out.

So here’s some dresses that are close in colour for her (and you) to check out!

Available from Alfred Angelo

Available from Weddington Way
and Dessy

Available from Dessy

Available from Cynthia.Styling

Available from Dessy and Weddington Way

Available form Dessy

Available from Dessy

Available from Dessy

The wedding is due to take place in Autumn, and I think that those colours are going to look so incredible in some outdoor photos:

 

Autumn Leaves and Autumn Season

Image from OWIPS

Can you just imagine it? I’m a little bit jealous – is it too late to change the date for my wedding?