Lacy doily bunting

I wish I had made this discovery before our wedding, but it wasn’t until my birthday party in July that I had a total brainwave on how to make pretty bunting easily on a budget. I’d toyed with making bunting before, but fabric bunting can be quite faffy if you need lots of it, so I gave up on the idea.

This method is quick and easy and will make you around 100m of bunting for the grand total of £4.50 (I guarantee you will not find such a good deal buying the stuff!)

You will need:

• 100 doilies (I got mine for £1 from a pound store)
• A ball of string
• Scissors
• Glue

Making the bunting

Fold each doily (see below) to make 8 triangles. Cut these out.

Now, fold the top end over a piece of string and glue down…

Space your triangles a few cm apart and keep folding and gluing. Each doily will make around 1m of bunting. You could experiment with other papers etc, but this is by far and away the quickest and cheapest effect I’ve found to get an effective and pretty look.

If you need tonnes of the stuff, this is quite an easy one to delegate out to friends who want to help out as it really is very simple and should end up with a fairly uniform effect.. or, if you want to make it social, why not have a bunting making party over a few glasses of wine!

More delightful craftiness- A bit of Doily love!

I am sorely tempted to have a go at this wonderful idea from ‘more design please’. Its a variation on old school balloon papier mache but with a delicate twist- using doilies!

From http://www.moredesignplease.com

Instant cheap shades- with a cute vintage look! you could do them in different sizes and maybe even colours. I LOVE the possibilities here and if I’d have seen this before my wedding it would have been high on the ‘must try’ list.

I discovered recently that doilies can also be used to make very effective and pretty bunting. Here seen on greentreegoods, but having made some (slightly more traditional looking) myself recently- watch this space for a step by step bunting ‘how to’.

Doily-bunting from greentreegoods.blogspot.com

A word on gifts

Not on the list- and totally wonderful! An engraved chopping board from some neighbours

The subject of wedding gifts and lists can be a slightly tricky one. Even within british culture, opinions on gift etiquette vary. Lately I’ve noticed a few ‘wedding list’  and ‘wedding gift’ questions floating round on twitter, so I thought I’d share some thoughts and experience.

Deciding on a list can be hard because on the one hand, you are just delighted that people are making the effort to come in the first place (for some, it can be a huge cost already if they have to travel to come to the wedding) and so you don’t want people to feel obliged. On the other hand, if you dont make a list of things that you want/need (especially if like us you are genuinely setting up home) then you could end up with multiple salad bowls, mismatched linen, and non of the things you really need- not to mention the flowery coasters your great aunt thinks are ‘so sweet’ that will stay in a drawer for eternity.

There are plenty of gift list options for the modern couple- some, such as thebottomdrawer.co.uk offer an online service that allows you to pick gifts from multiple suppliers, and includes the option of honeymoon gifts or non-traditional gifts like getting your garden a make-over.

In the end though, since we didn’t even have pans or plates or duvet covers to start our home with, we opted for a simple list from John Lewis, which  meant the joy of seeing stuff in person and scanning what we wanted (such fun!). It also meant that the less internet savvy of our guests would also be able to pop into a store rather than have to order online.

I have to say, we were bowled over with how generous our friends and family were- we ended up adding to the list, and even then everything was bought, giving us an amazing start to our home.

My top tips for wedding lists would be:

• Think about what you genuinely need- get a list format that suits you. Do you want some things (eg suitcases) before the wedding? Make sure your list supplier can do that.
• Think about your guests- have a range of items at varying prices. Remember some people have spent lots just getting to your wedding and cant afford much more, whereas some people (especially family members) may want to get you something really special.
• Try to keep things as simple as possible for both you and the guests.
• Also- with that number of gifts, there are bound to be some things that break/ don’t work. Make sure you can take things back if needed.
• Say Thank you! (I’ll be blogging on this topic soon)

And finally, even with a list some people will probably want to get you something different. Here’s one of the ‘sweetest; gifts that we recieved- mostly because it was completely unlooked for and showed a lot of thought:

From my work colleagues: sweet art! Our initials in M&Ms with a collage from our service sheet around the edge. Very touched by the thought that went into this!

Toilet seat tactics

Up or down?

One of the first things you may have to face when you move in together is this age old war: Up or down?

Man vs Woman- the battle of the genders is perhaps no more apparent than in the decision of where to leave the toilet seat. Between couples and on internet forums it seems toilet etiquette can be a heated subject.

However, as my sister pointed out to me the other day, people generally miss the point with this battle. Her logic is this:

• In a two-person household, if you have just been to the loo, statistically its most likely that the next person to use it will be your other half.
• Therefore, if you want toilet seat harmony in your household, the answer is neither ‘up’ nor ‘down’ but rather- leave it the opposite way to the way you just used it.
• If both people think of the other person first, and leave it like this, your other half will always feel happy that you thought of them, and you will always find the seat the way you like it. Win-win!
• If its not the right way round when you get there, you can just assume that they haven’t used the loo and it was you that left it that way- so no grump at them.

Revolutionary! Seriously though, I think this small example speaks volumes for the way we should be approaching marriage: It is not a battle. Being ‘right’ or ‘winning’ is not the goal. Rather, we should* be looking out for each other and serving each other sacrificially- that’s how you both ‘win’ (One ‘winner’ in a marriage is never a good sign). I have blogged about this before when I talked about lessons learnt in marriage prep and what it means to ‘love cherish and submit’, but its weird how my sisters comments on toilets just consolidated even more in my mind the principles I’d been thinking about.

In short, loos may seem trivial, but maybe there’s a profound lesson to be learnt in toilet seat tactics.   *Easier said than done- but never the less what we’re aiming for!

For some silly toilet seat fun to keep you smiling (up or down)- this crazy cow is available from Amazon.com