Crafty Christmas: Book Covers

So! It's December and I'm sure everyone has been busy decorating for Christmas, right? I'm sure there are even those crazy people that started in November. Yes, you. ;) I've been doing a lot of little, easy, DIY projects around the house and this is one of them.

I have a bunch of old books around the house that I use for decor, because they are so cute and I just love the look. But, they don't really go with holiday decorations. So I came up with this little idea. Remember in school when you had to cover your text books so they wouldn't get so torn up during the year? It's basically that, but cuter. Have fun!

What you need:

Some books. Scissors. Tape (if needed). Holiday wrapping paper, or any wrapping paper that goes with your theme. I even used some holiday paper grocery bags.

For each book, lay out some paper, put your book on top and measure how much paper you will need to cover it. Leave 1-2 inches excess paper off all edges. Then cut out your book cover piece.

Now that you have your cover piece, you'll need to fold over the top and botton edges of the cover just to match up the top-to-bottom length of your book, as shown below.

Then position your book so it's fairly centered on your paper. Fold the overlap of the front cover side of the book and make a crease. Then insert the book edge into the "pouch" created by the overlap paper. See image below. Repeat for the back cover. Use tape to secure any pieces of paper that just won't stay tucked.

Repeat for as many books as you see fitting! I covered all my books that weren't really Christmas colors :)

The brown paper is from a Trader Joes bag, btw.

Hope you enjoyed this little DIY!

Cell Phone Love

I always love when bloggers post random photos they take on their cell phones. so I though I'd share some from the past month or so; a little winter love going on around here :)

Oh my sweet Sadie, that face is to die for!

I baked these little heart shaped pocket pies...they are SO adorable! And they were yummy too!

A Christmas wreath I made the other day...which I need to fix because some of the balls fell off and broke :(

New Starbucks cups! Even better? A discounted cup!

Oh I also baked the most awesome applie pie ever. I used this recipe: Vanilla Bean Roasted Apple Pie. I've never made a pie so pretty! Actually I have only made a couple pies..soooo uh, not hard to top that :) (PS, I love my new pie dish from Williams Sonoma..its adorable & will hopefully last forever!)

I reused these letters from our wedding decor for some home decor. The red deer is from a very sweet friend, and just happens to match just perfect with all the Christmas decor!

Uh yeah..so I bake a lot...and I eat a lot, and like to take pictures of food :) These were my attempt at making The Best Lemon Cupcakes of All Time. And, they were.

Chris and I have been really into beer the past few months, a lot of craft beer and seasonal beer. Yummy.

We got a record player for a wedding gift (yay!) and I purchased a new Christmas album from my fav, Dustin Kensrue :) So good!

His & hers mugs we purchased on our honeymoon (from Anthro!). Love.

Wedding Wednesday: Some Details

I'm going to start blocking out Wednesdays for wedding posts, some DIYs from our wedding and such. I think it'll be a weekly feature for me, as I have had some friends ask me to help them with designing their weddings! Yippeeeee!

Our wedding was featured yesterday on Love & Lavendar, which is a super adorable wedding blog I wish I had been reading months ago! There's some great photos of some of the things I made for our wedding.

I wanted to share how easy it is to make your own chalkboard signs! For the table top signs, I bought some various sized pictures frames at places like Goodwill. I bought chalkboard spraypaint and simply sprayed a few coats on the glass part of the frame, and also bought a bronze colored spray paint and painted the actual frames (if needed). Super easy, and there's no real tricks to it..it's so simple. For the the large sign (which we used for our seating chart), I bought a cheap posterboard frame (with a coupon!) from Michaels. I ordered some chalkboard markers (like they use at Starbucks) in our wedding colors. I enlisted the help of my sister and her boyfriend to do the writing for the signs :)

Our other wedding signage were directional signs that were made from scrap wood that a friend gave to us. I gave the boys the job of putting them together. I think they actually stained them a darker color! Another friend of ours painted the wording on the signs.

Nature

I have a draft of another wedding post sitting around, buuuut instead I wanted to share a few pictures of a little hike we did last weekend. We hiked up to the place where we got engaged, it was so pretty. I picked a bunch of those flowery things to add some pretty color inside my house :)

Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving, I truly am thankful for so much!

Ceremony Favorites

We also had a short and sweet ceremony. Since it was so short we didn't really do much decorating at all. Not that anyone would need to, look out beautiful the scenery is!

I guess the flower girl (she's actually my cousin!) got a little scared and started running down the aisle. Those are white feathers in her basket - she didn't really throw them I don't think, hah!

This picture of my parents is sooo sweet.

I'd suggest you watch the video I made of the wedding to see more ceremony pics + music.

The bridal party walked down to Love and Some Verses by Iron and Wine, I walked down to Ingrid Michaelson's verson of Can't Helpt Falling In Love, and we walked out to New Soul by Yael Naim. I loooove all our wedding music, we put so much work into not only those songs but our entire playlist for the whole thing. I'll share more about that later too :)

Wedding Party Favs

And here are some of my favorites of our wedding party. We had a super small group for our wedding party, I'm not really a fan of having half of my guests in my wedding party ;) Small and sweet is our style.

It also cracks me up how less photogenic guys are compared to girls!

Us: Favorites

Here are some of my favorite wedding photos of Chris + Me (but really, honestly..wish I could post them all, there so many good ones. But I'm afraid you all would abandon me)