Distorted.

Brainwashed.

Selfish.

Idiotic.

Petty.

Superficial.

: parents of children on Toddlers and Tiaras. (or any untelevised beauty pageant)

Really, America? When did you, as mothers, decide it was ok to dye your three-year-old’s hair, clip in a pair of false teeth,  and tell her she “has to be perfect”? Often the camera pans to the audience, showing a sparse attendance of around 20 people. That’s why you’re waxing your 4-year-old’s eyebrows, telling her to do her “sexy walk”, fake-tanning your 2-year-old, juicing her up on Red Bulls, bribing her with a puppy, and spending $3,000 for one weekend?

“It’s built her confidence so much!” they all gush. “She really shines on the stage and LOVES to do pageants!!!”

HELLO! THEY are BABIES! Not shy college students with introverted tendencies! Tender, impressionable, innocent BABIES.

Your mission is to nurture, protect, teach. If you want to build her confidence, enroll her in a dance class. Want to improve social skills? How about the Girl Scouts? However, putting your baby in fake everything while announcing who won “Most Beautiful Face” sounds like preparation for a hard life of self-doubt, not confidence. Who are you really doing the pageants for, moms? Let’s be honest here.

//end rant.

Or one of these:

In a way, I took those faces as compliments. They don’t get me! I’m so hip and mysterious and mystical with my wedding planning!  Yeaaaahhhhhh. 

I wanted it to be different. Not typical, autumn, or orange. I even had a folder with photos of what I did NOT want at all: The Untouchables Folder. There was a strict No Mums or Pumpkins policy. See image below.

The key to making our wedding unique was in the little details. Knowing that, I decided to do every wedding DIY on the planet. The year before the wedding, I thought I’d be able to do 6,375 DIY projects single-handedly while working two jobs. In the last month before the wedding, I came to reality. Sadly.  I had to cut out a lot of cool ideas, but ended up with some core DIY projects that I really loved.

1. Wedding Shoes

(photo by Jarnett Photography)

These were, without doubt, the most popular element of our wedding. Apparently people thought I made the entire shoe? No, sadly I’m not a closet cobbler. All I did was put maps on the shoes. I got a pair of white flats and used Mod Podge to glue on strips of atlas pages. I hot-glued satin ribbon bows to the tops. It took a few hours to do each shoe, and probably about ten days for them to completely dry. It was worth it! They were so comfortable and meaningful. One shoe had maps from Texas, where Josiah grew up. The other one had maps from Virginia – where I grew up.

2. Heritage Table

(photos by Jarnett Photography)

Josiah and I both have parents with long marriages. Both of my grandparents have been married for over 50 years, also. To me, this is the epitome of celebrity status in today’s world. I wanted to put a spotlight on all these lengthy marriages and honor them. I designed cards with their names, anniversary, number of years of marriage, and advice from the husband and wife. On the table, we displayed the cards in front of their wedding photo. It was so hilarious asking my grandparents for their advice – they all had PLENTY to say (that I couldn’t fit on the cards!) I’ll treasure these words forever.

3. Atlas Piñata

(photos by Jarnett Photography)

This was so fun to make. I bought a basketball piñata from Hobby Lobby and ripped off all the orange and black tissue paper. Then Josiah and I cut out a TON of hearts from atlases. I used Mod Podge to glue them on in layers, inspired by this. If I was doing it again, though, I’d just use one little dot of hot glue. The Mod Podge made the piñata too durable, and it took some really really hard swings and some hard core bashing on the ground to finally get it to break! Pounding a little piñata with a metal baseball bat into the concrete while wearing your wedding dress? I call that great stress relief.

In conclusion, I’ll share more later – this post is getting entirely too long! Go away! Read some books. Be inspired!

I’d been thinking and planning since before Josiah and I got engaged, and it got out of hand really quickly. I changed wedding themes about 3 times. Long before Pinterest, I had my own form of it saved in files on my desktop labeled ‘Wedding Plans’. I had separate folders for cakes, dresses, favors, decor, invitations, color schemes, food, etc. I’d see a photo on a wedding blog, drag it to a folder, and type in the name why I loved the idea.

I designed invitation after invitation. To me, it was the calling card to our wedding – the first impression. I spent hours brainstorming how to make our invitation suite different. In the end, after a year in design, I came up with this invitation and information card:

I settled on the idea of a map theme because geography has played a big part in both of our lives. I was born in Pennsylvania, moved to Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, and back to Virginia. His Dad is from Indiana. His Mom’s side is from Mexico. He was born in Texas, then moved to Virginia. We met in Lynchburg. He deployed to Iraq while we were dating. Throughout our relationship, we’ve dealt with distance. I wrote him letters while he was in Georgia at Fort Benning with the Army. We talked on Skype from Virginia to Iraq for 7 months.

I wanted our invitations to portray the travel/geography feel, so I was determined to make them a wow factor, indicative of our wedding-to-come. Over the course of a month, Josiah and I lined 150 light blue envelopes with maps from real atlases. Each envelope had a unique map lining. I designed the invitations and info cards in Photoshop and printed them at Piedmont Printing and Graphics in Danville. We used red and white Divine Twine to tie the invitation bundles together. I used a rubber stamp with an ampersand to mark the front of the tag in grey, then wrote the recipients’ first names on the other side.  My talented brother drew a map to include so people could find the ceremony and reception. I scanned it into Photoshop, typed in road names and landmarks, reprinted it, then painted in color with watercolors. I rescanned it and had it printed at FedEx. In the left photo below is what the bundle ended up looking like. You can see the light blue envelope with map liner, then the bundle tied together with twine, including the invitation, map in green, and info card. The name tag with the ‘&’ is tied on top into the bow.

photo by Jarnett Photography

We used  Glue Dots to hold the envelope flap down, then secured with an adorable little white lace heart sticker by Martha Stewart. I hand-addressed each one, and used Merchant Marine stamps with ships (another favorite component of mine!) I hunted all over Lynchburg and Danville for these stamps – since apparently everyone else loved them as much as I did. To all the postmasters that tried to get me to take those ‘LOVE’ hydrangea or wedding bell stamps when I insisted I needed “the ship ones”  for my wedding, thank you for trying. I’m sorry I was so confusing and odd.

Once I had the first one all put together, I was SO HAPPY with how it turned out! Josiah will tell you – as we left the print shop, I kept squealing intermittently over the next few days with, “WOW! I lovethemIlovethem I LOVE THEM!!” and “YAY! They turned out perfectly! They’re perfect!” or “OH MY GOSH. Josiah! Aren’t these great! I love them. Do you love them? I think they’re so cool. Look at this picture I took of them! Do you love them?” Bless his heart – he survived all that.

It was by far my favorite project from the wedding. My baby.

photo by Jarnett Photography

This year was different.

It was the first Christmas since 1988 that all Shipton family members weren’t together on the 25th. Through the years we’ve lived in countless houses in about 7 different cities and states, but we always were together for Christmas. Two big  events happened in 2011, though. Bryson (my brother) married Lindsay (from Florida). Also, I married Josiah. Since Bryson lives in Florida and Lindsay is a nurse, she had to work on Christmas day and they planned to visit us on the 28th. I could tell Mom was sad about us not being together for the first time — I was too. However, we were able to make the day special with our same traditions and just did Bryson and Lindsay’s part a few days later. The holiday was still so much fun and I’m more sad that it’s over! Here are some iPhone and camera photos to document.

To start off, Josiah’s parents came over for dinner on Thursday night to visit our apartment for the first time. I was super nervous and cleaned like a maniac! I “speed-decorated” and hung about 10 pictures on the wall in ten minutes. It went well though and I only set the fire alarm off once (trying to light an oil lamp). His parents knew that I’d been getting more interested in power tools for crafting so they gave me a jigsaw and a bunch of drill bits!!! I’m so excited to get started on some home projects.

Josiah and I had our Christmas on Friday morning. We gave each other gifts, and he did SO well! (Thank you, Pinterest! ) He gave me this adorable necklace! Shown below are some other gifts from him – Eiffel Tower bookends, these lovely Minnetonka Moccasins, art from here, and The Hunger Games series (which I DEVOURED) <—pun

Josiah also hit it out of the park with the Bamboo Graphics Tablet he got me. I’ve been wanting one forever – and he remembered. Without Pinterest!!!! He also got me Water for Elephants – because I refuse to watch the movie until I read it. In the bottom right corner is one of the gifts I got him. I custom matted and framed a poster from Boondock Saints – probably his favorite movie! 

After Josiah and I opened our gifts, we drove to Danville and stayed there until Christmas. We spent the rest of Friday shopping and chilling at the house. Then on Saturday, we drove to Salisbury, NC to visit my mom and dad’s parents. On Christmas we got up and went to church, came home and ate ham (yum), and opened gifts. Carrying on with the power tool theme, Mom and Dad got us a toolbox and pliers set which I absolutely LOVE! . After the gifts, we all played around with our new things then went to the movies to see War Horse. Good but sad. /

On the 28th, Bryson and Lindsay arrived. It was so fun having everyone there! I set up my camera and Macbook for a photo booth-style family portrait session (as seen below). We had a BLAST taking goofy photos and laughing at my Dad (he may or may not have made an appearance in full-body footed fleece pajamas…) Brittany and Brelynn spent the weekend away at winter camp, so Mom and Dad, Bryson and Lindsay, and Josiah and I got to go on a triple date together! We ate dinner, then visited Home Depot (as seen below, left). Dad tested a Dremel and Mom looked on, extremely interested as you can tell. We then went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie and I loved it! Speaking of Sherlock Holmes, the photo on the right is another gift I made for Josiah – he’s really into mustaches lately.

So now the holidays are over and everyone is back in their own cities and at work again. I miss them all so much already! But this Christmas was a blast – my family is the best! 

More of these lovelies to come soon! Oh, and I might have had a little wedding of my own about a month ago…

I’ve taken a vacation from blogging this month and have spent time working on wedding projects.

Also, my little garden is losing most of the flowers but a few tiny watermelons have sprouted. I have to resist the urge to pick one and see if it tastes like a real watermelon from the store! I’ll let them grow a bit more. My favorite plant is this lovely blush-colored flower that I found out there today. So pretty!