Handmade Peacock Anniversary Card

 

I recently signed up to the Hunkydory Craft club - Hunkydory is a craft brand that is particularly known for ready made toppers and die cut images and sentiments. Their club gives you a discount when you buy, but the reason I signed up was because you could get a set of toppers for only the £2.99 cost of postage as a new member.

The set I got included flamingos, birds - and peacocks. I decided to use one of the peacock images to make an anniversary card for my husband for our second anniversary as we'd had peacocks at our wedding.

You can read more about the venue and our day in my post from 2016 on our wedding at the Larmer Tree Gardens.

To make the card, I chose a larger than usual A5 card blank and covered it with a piece of the cardstock that came with the Hunkydory set. It had a strip of a different pattern across part of the card which I positioned along the bottom of my card and added a border from the same set. The peacock and frame are all different elements from the Hunkydory set too.

Finally I added a glittery thick card word saying 'anniversary' which I think I bought from Tesco (though I could be wrong!).

I'm sharing this with:

Daring Cardmakers where the theme is weddings or anniversaries

TGIF challenges has the theme 'all that glitters'

Alphabet Challenge - G is for great outdoors, and the peacock represents our outdoor wedding

and at Tuesday Taggers it's 'things with wings'.

Review: The Beckford Arms, Fonthill Gifford - Take 2

I reviewed the Beckford Arms  last year and don't normally review the same place twice but I had a unique experience last time as I stayed there the night before and the night of my wedding. My husband and I went back for our first anniversary and had a much more normal experience so I thought I'd share.

We had booked a two night stay in the same lodge as last year, which is away from the main building - about a 5 minute drive or 15 minute walk. It was great having exactly the same accommodation though of course my husband didn't see much of it last time as he stayed elsewhere before our wedding at the Larmer Tree Gardens and we got back very late on our wedding night and had to leave early the next morning.

The décor in the lodge hadn't changed at all and it was lovely seeing it differently - last time it was full of people and I was remembering the make up lady was there, our dresses were hanging there, and I got ready and came downstairs.... this time it was just the two of us and we made ourselves right at home, sitting outside for a while in the sunshine - it didn't appear as if there was anyone in the other lodge when we arrived, though the next morning their car was parked right across the front of the lodge, totally spoiling the view, and not in the parking area around the side!

 

We'd booked dinner in the Beckford Arms that night and since it was such a sunny day (late June) they had tables on the terrace as well as in the garden and a barbecue in the top part of the garden. We didn't fancy the barbecue as there were so many other tempting things on the menu; I had a whole grilled fish with potatoes, broccoli and watercress, accompanied by a glass of rose wine, which was delicious. To follow, I had what I think was peanut butter cheesecake - unfortunately I didn't write down at the time what it was and have already forgotten!

You have the option of having breakfast items provided to cook in your lodge or eating in the main hotel; since we were staying two nights we decided to do both. On the first morning, our wedding anniversary, we didn't want to go out right away so I cooked the sausages and bacon (we left the mushrooms, tomato and black pudding), cut up the fresh loaf of bread and poured the orange juice for a lovely home cooked breakfast.

The next morning we had breakfast in the hotel and I ordered Nutella pancakes. The pancakes were light and fluffy but only had a thin coating of Nutella spread between them - I would have liked more chocolate!

We had a lovely stay and it was fun finding our message in the guest book from last year where I'd written we had stayed here for our wedding night and were already thinking of coming back for our first anniversary - and to be able to add a new message saying that we did!

Review: Houghton Lodge and Gardens, Stockbridge, Hampshire

On a sunny day Houghton Lodge and Gardens in Stockbridge, Hampshire, is a beautiful place for afternoon tea, a wedding reception or simply a stroll around the gardens. It has an orangery, a manor house, various sections of gardens, a river running through the bottom and – this is the best part – a field with alpacas.

 

 

My husband and I considered Houghton Lodge as a wedding venue as it was in the right area and we were quite taken by the idea of the above – a former work colleague of mine got married in the church in the village and had his reception at Houghton Lodge in a marquee by the river and the photos looked lovely.

 

 

 

However, when we came to look around the venue and ask questions, we were rather underwhelmed about actually having it for our wedding. The orangery by the entrance and the attached conservatory looked to me like a garden centre café – albeit a nice one. As we didn’t want to get married in church, the only option for enough guests at Houghton Lodge was to hold the ceremony itself in the orangery, a long rectangular room that forms an L-shape with the conservatory.

 

What put me off was that we were told if we did this and hired the orangery for the ceremony, the conservatory would remain open to the public as the owners didn’t want to close the entire place for a wedding. That meant there would be complete strangers sitting literally just behind our guests watching our wedding which I thought was very strange! Admittedly this was nearly two years ago and perhaps things have changed so if you are considering getting married here then you should get in touch with the wedding coordinator and find out what they can offer.

 

 

The reason I mention this, though, despite it being two years ago is that I went back a couple of months ago for a friend’s birthday. She had chosen Houghton Lodge for afternoon tea, having never been here before and not realising I’d considered it as a wedding venue- I was looking forward to visiting and seeing the alpacas again.

 

As my husband and I arrived, I joked to him that we might find that there was a wedding happening while we had our afternoon tea – and there was! As we paid for entry to the gardens, the lady on the till told us there was a wedding party arriving in an hour and that part of the gardens would be shut but we could still access the rest of the grounds. It was actually a wedding reception so they wouldn’t be having a ceremony here and we had a table in the orangery set up for us to have afternoon tea, so I didn’t think we would be in the way.

 

I had a quick look around the top part of the gardens, which I think is the walled kitchen gardens, then went to sit inside and waited for my friends. There was a door from the orangery directly into the garden so I figured when they arrived we would go outside and enjoy the grounds.

 

I also tried out my macro lens after doing a macro photography lesson recently.

 

 

 

 

However, when the wedding party arrived this door was locked, meaning we had to stay in the orangery (watching the bride through the windows which must have been a little odd for her) and then if we wanted to go out, walk around the outside and down into the other gardens, which in my opinion aren’t anywhere near as pretty. In fact we headed towards the river and saw a marquee being set up for the reception and thought perhaps we shouldn’t walk through that part either, so went the other way and down to the alpacas instead. 

 

 

 

By the time some of my friends arrived the wedding party was already here, meaning they paid full price for entrance to the gardens on arrival only to find they couldn’t actually go into all of the gardens. It was also surprising that the cost of afternoon tea didn’t include entry into the gardens and we’d had to pay for that separately.

 

 

The afternoon tea itself was nice though nothing that special, and my friend had pre-ordered a vegan afternoon tea for one of our party which the caterers had completely forgotten about, and the only vegan item on the menu they could offer her was a vegetable soup.

 

 

We had a selection of sandwiches that were nice but fairly basic – ham, cucumber, cheese and smoked salmon followed by scones with cream and jam, and two or three types of cake – what I think was a lemon and pistachio savarin (a small ring-shaped cake) with icing, mini Victoria sponges and I think something else I can’t remember. I was a little underwhelmed, I suppose having had some amazing afternoon teas before, but it was nice enough (aside from the lack of promised vegan option).

 

 

 

 

 

You can spend quite a lot of time here exploring the gardens and walking by the riverside, and there are things to look out for around the gardens that would be fun for children (such as a dragon and a topiary peacock) but in my opinion it was a shame both for visitors that they can be charged admission then told parts of the garden are closed for a wedding, and also for the wedding party who have to put up with random members of the public walking around and watching them. Some people wouldn’t mind that as you can’t always expect exclusive hire of your wedding venue especially if you are in a hotel but given the size of the gardens I am surprised that they don’t just close them to the public, or at the very least warn people when they book afternoon tea that there is also a wedding booked. 

Paper 1st Wedding Anniversary Gift Ideas

Everyone has heard of golden wedding anniversaries and ruby wedding anniversaries, but if you’re not married yourself, you may not know that every year has a theme! The theme is supposed to represent the gifts that the husband and wife give each other, and there is a traditional list and a modern list - for some countries they differ slightly but this is what I’ve found online:

 

Anniversary   Traditional                    Modern            

1^st                     paper                              clock                                                               

2^nd                    cotton                             china

3^rd                     leather                            crystal or glass

4^th                     fruit or flowers               electrical appliances

5^th                     wood                               silverware

6^th                     sugar                              wood

7^th                     copper or wool               desk sets/ pen and pencil sets

8^th                     bronze or pottery            linens or lace

9^th                     pottery or willow            leather

10^th                   tin                                   diamond jewellery

11^th                   steel                                fashion jewellery, accessories

12^th                   silk or linen                    pearls, coloured gems

13^th                   lace                                textiles, furs

14^th                   ivory                              gold jewellery

15^th                   crystal                            watches

16^th                   -                                     silver holloware

17^th                   -                                     furniture

18^th                   -                                     porcelain

19^th                   -                                     bronze

20^th                   china                              platinum

21^st                   -                                     brass, nickel

22^nd                   -                                     copper 

23^rd                   -                                     silver plate

24^th                   -                                     musical instruments

25^th                   silver                              silver

30^th                   pearl                               diamond

35^th                   coral                               jade

40^th                   ruby                               ruby

45^th                   sapphire                         sapphire

50^th                   gold                               gold

55^th                   emerald                         emerald

60^th                   diamond                        diamond

 

I’m a bit surprised at some of the themes on the modern list – in this digital age, I doubt many people want desk sets, and electrical appliances doesn’t seem particularly romantic! (Then again I suppose neither does the more traditional tin). Furs are a throwback from a former era unless it means fake fur, and I do think it’s slightly mercenary that women can expect diamonds after only ten years of marriage rather than 60 – in fact according to the modern list, there are three opportunities for women to receive diamonds!

 

I do think these lists are rather unrealistic because how many people can afford real diamonds? But still, I know a lot of people enjoy coming up with quirky gifts that fit each theme.

 

The first anniversary, paper, is quite good for people who may have overspent on their wedding or are still setting up home together – it’s also a fairly easy one if you haven’t gotten around to printing out wedding photos or doing a wedding photo album!

 

Here are some of my favourite suggestions for 1^st (paper) anniversary gifts – and read on to see what my husband and I got each other!

•  A card – you don’t need to give each other anniversary gifts on top of birthday and Christmas presents so why not agree from the outset you will just do cards?
• Photo album, photo book or printing out photos to frame – of your wedding or honeymoon, or moments from your first year together, or a photo story from when you met right up to when you got married
• A bunch of paper flowers – which you can fold yourself following an origami book, or buy ready made
• A book – something romantic, or a copy (even a first edition) of a book they really love
• The lyrics to the song you chose for your first dance, or your wedding vows, printed out and framed
• A calendar made up of photos of you both
• A personalised print like this or like this
• A framed map, where you’ve marked places you have been together and places you want to go
• A framed picture of your wedding venue – there are places online where you can commission a painting or line drawing, or you can frame a photo
• A framed paper-cut picture like this or this
• A scrapbook of photos and memories if you are the sort of person like me who keeps ticket stubs and mementos from places you have been together. You could also turn this into a memory board and frame to go on the wall.
• A personalised notebook
• Tickets to a show or gig or similar – the tickets are made of paper, or if you print an e-ticket that works too!
• Write them a poem if you are feeling creative – this is a nice cheap idea. Or if you’re a bit more flush, you could commission someone to write a poem about your beloved!
• Write them a love letter, or a series of love notes that you can surprise them with
• A flying lesson – this is not strictly a paper anniversary gift, but you can give your partner a paper plane folded from a print-out of the details of the lesson!

My husband got me a fantastic anniversary gift which I hadn't spotted despite it being from Not on the High Street.com, which I had combed myself looking for gift ideas! It's the perfect present for me and shows how well he knows me, because I like to scrapbook and do papercrafts, and to make lists and fill in notebooks.

 

It's a wedding anniversary album, with 50 pages. Each page has the same layout, with a space for a photo, and places to write down where you spent your anniversary, what you gave each other and a space to write either some notable things that have happened over the past year or your wishes for the year ahead. It's really lovely and I'm looking forward to filling it in!

I was debating between several ideas for my husband and decided to get him two things - and after having a look online decided to make rather than buy them. First I went with one of the ideas I'd seen on various websites, getting the lyrics to our first dance printed out. It would have looked better if I'd had it professionally done but I don't think this looks bad at all - I selected a font and made different lines different sizes depending on how many words per line.

 

 Then because I wanted to do something a bit more creative I did a papercut of our wedding venue. A paper cut is where you use a sharp craft knife to cut out around a picture - every section must be connected to the edge of the paper otherwise you'd find parts of the picture come away in the middle. So it can be a little challenging but it's good fun!

I drew a sketch of the roman temple at the Larmer Tree Gardens which is where we stood during the ceremony (our guests were seated on the grass in front) and added some words at the top with our names and wedding date. As each letter has to be attached to the edge of the paper somehow the easiest way to do this is make the letters look like flags flying on bunting, and attach each letter to the bunting and attach the bunting to the edge of the paper.

The Larmer Tree has several peacocks which wander around and one featured in several of our wedding photos so I wanted to include a peacock in this picture. I decided to add some different colour and texture by using a peacock sticker that had little gems on it, and added a couple of other gems to the temple outline. I bought frames for each pictures as well.

It's a bit different, very personal to us, and homemade with love.

Review: The Larmer Tree Gardens, Tollard Royal, Wiltshire

I celebrated my first wedding anniversary in June and as the day fell on a Sunday we decided to go back to our wedding venue, the Larmer Tree Gardens in Wiltshire. We attempted to recreate one of our wedding photos - albeit without the professional wedding photographer as you can tell!



We also enjoyed spending the day with my parents, sister and niece, who was still a bump inside her tummy on our wedding day. The weather was glorious on our anniversary - I was actually glad it hadn't been that hot on our wedding day!

It was great revisiting the different spots where we had had wedding photos taken, some of them with our guests but also a few secluded romantic ones by the dell.

 The Larmer Tree gardens have plenty of things to explore from pathways between hedges leading to statues, a pretty garden within a garden called the bride's quarter, an old stage dating from 1866, a dell (basically a pond with a beautiful view), a grotto an of course the roman temple where my husband I tied the knot. There's even a trail of fairy doors around the gardens for children to seek out.

The gardens were first open to the public as 'pleasure gardens' in the 1880s and 1890s then closed for most of the next century until 1991 - there's some fascinating information about the gardens' history on the website.

 
The main pavilion isn't normally open to the public; this is the new building behind the hedge from the main gardens where we had the wedding breakfast in one room and the band and dancing in the room next door, spilling out onto a terrace where people toasted marshmallows over a fire pit.

The peacocks rule the roost at the Larmer Tree and won't bother you mostly - they do sometimes try to steal food if you're not careful, but otherwise seem totally harmless. They are so used to people, they think nothing of strutting around and showing off their tail feathers and effectively posing for photos. Look up when you arrive and you will probably find one or two sitting on the roof of the visitor centre.

 

 There's a Café with seating both indoors and outdoors, that has a small selection of food, drinks and ice cream. My husband and I wanted to spend a bit of time at the Larmer Tree on our own before my family arrived and then were a little hungry as we hadn't had lunch, though we'd had a big breakfast and it was too hot to really want to eat. So we sat inside in the little Café (there were no tables left in the shade outside, and it really was too hot) and had a cheese scone (the hubby) and a piece of Victoria sponge (me). The cake was delicious - though you can bring your own picnics to eat on the grass in the gardens, the Café is lovely for a snack or, as we did later with my family, a drink and an ice cream.

 We bumped into our wedding planner (technically she is the head of events at the Larmer Tree, as they do all sorts of things there) who remembered it was our anniversary which was a nice touch, given how many couples they must see every year.

If you're in the Wiltshire/Dorset area I highly recommend the Larmer Tree gardens for an afternoon out - and if you are considering it as a wedding venue read my more detailed post about our wedding!

Morse Toad Personalised Chocolate Greeting Cards

Most people love to get some kind of chocolate for Christmas, whether it's a box of chocolates or a bag of chocolate coins. I've come across a great alternative for the chocolate-lover in your life that is really unusual, makes a great gift and can be easily sent by post. I've also got a 10% discount code for my readers.

Morse Toad’s messaging service allows you send chocolate cards by post - with a message spelled out in individual chocolate letters, chosen especially for the recipient. They gave me a discount code so I could order something to review; I decided to treat my husband to something as an early Christmas present.

 

The website has sections for Christmas, birthdays and other occasions; each one has suggested messages which are great if you are lacking time or inspiration - everything ranging from standard sentiments to "I love you more than wine" and "All I want for Christmas is diamonds". You can also write your own message, so I went for: "Our first Christmas as Mr & Mrs".

Prices start at £9.50 for short messages (eg "super mum", including a heart and a star) up to £17.50 for longer ones; you can write your own messages for around the £15 mark. That price includes the packaging and a photo which you can upload and have placed inside the lid of the box. I chose a picture of my husband and I on our wedding day in front of the building in which we got married.

Mine cost £18 and for that I got 33 chocolates - the chocolate is handmade in the UK and tastes really good.

I've got a 10% discount code especially for readers to be used at Morse Toad, which expires on Christmas Day: enter the following at checkout: HappyToadmas

I think these make lovely little Christmas gifts, don't you?

Thanks to Morse Toad for the discount code. All opinions are my own

DIY Wedding: Photo Booth Props and Guest Book

 

 

Having a photo booth at your wedding has become quite popular, and I can vouch for the fact that they are great fun!

I got the idea from a friend's wedding as I thought a photo booth would be a fun thing for guest to do in the evening other than drink and dance. I'm not talking about when you get your passport photos done - these photo booths are creative, fun and personalised. You can choose your background and a style for the photos to be printed in, and they usually provide a whole host of props, hats and wigs and so on. Our guests had great fun piling into the booth in pairs and small groups throughout the evening!

Some photo booth hire companies give you two copies of each photo - one for the guest and one to go in your wedding guest book. But I knew that sometimes groups of friends would go in who all wanted a photo so I searched until I found a company that would give you unlimited copies of photos so everyone could have one.

I was also advised to make sure the photo booth had a good quality camera and printer - some apparently are only webcam quality and not very good! I decided to use a company called Funky Photo Booth who were local to my wedding in Wiltshire and was very pleased with their service - they even did a cowprint border for the photo prints!

 

Funky Photo Booth provided a selection of props ranging from giant sunglasses to silly hats, but I wanted something a bit more classy and also a few cow theme props, so I bought a couple of cow masks to add into the mix!

I also bought a set of cardboard chalk board style signs for a couple of pounds on Ebay. I stuck each one onto the lolly stick provided and wrote different slogans on them in chalk, which made for some amusing pictures.

As for the guest book itself, I bought a 12x12 black scrapbook from Hobbycraft which was perfect. There was plenty of space to stick the photos in the book and for people to write messages next to them, using the silver pens I also bought from Hobbycraft.

I used my Silhouette die cutting machine to cut out our names to stick on the front of the scrapbook, for an attractive personalised touch.

Looking through the guest book after the wedding was hilarious and reading the messages was lovely. It's so much more fun and memorable than a book where guests just write a message, and even though it wasn't cheap to hire the booth, it provided great entertainment in the evening for the guests as well.

 

 

DIY Wedding: Giant Decopatch Decorative Letters

 

Are you familiar with Decoupage? It’s simply the art of decorating objects with paper cut-outs. In card making, it usually means layering the same picture with slightly less of the image each time, so you get certain details raised off the card more than others – here’s one example and here’s another.

 

In crafts however, there’s a new take on decoupage called decopatch. It’s described as being like papier mache. Hobbycraft sells decoupatch papers which are very thin, almost tissue-like printed papers, that you cut or tear up and stick onto wooden or cardboard objects, which they also sell. They have words, letters and animals – all sorts of things including photo frames and pretty little trays which you could decorate to match someone’s bedroom or living room décor.

 

Some time ago in the sale I bought my initial and that of my now-husband and an ampersand sign. I realised a few months back that these were still untouched in my craft cupboard and I thought they would look really nice at our wedding. You can buy large decorative letters of your initials or Mr & Mrs, or even hire 6ft-high illuminated letters – which look great but the latter cost a couple of hundred of pounds to hire and we’ve decided to spend our money on other things.

 

We decided not to decorate the room where we are having the band (and a few other things – we spent our ‘frivolous’ money on something else!) with flowers, as it will be late and dark when everyone is in that room. But there are a couple of mantelpieces where I realised these letters would look really good.

 

 

 

I bought some cowprint decopatch paper at the same time as the letters which is particularly appropriate for the wedding as we had a bit of a cow theme (as my last name is now Cowe!). I didn’t realise though that you are supposed to use a special glue to stick on the paper, which dries clear and gives a sort of varnish effect. I used Pritt-Stick which worked fine but gives the letters a matt rather than gloss effect. It took a bit of time but was quite simple as I just cut strips of the paper and stuck it over the letters – some of the curves were a bit harder to do but overall I was quite pleased with it.