Outdoor inspiration

I have a vision of course. I am a designer so of course I have a vision. It also means I'm constantly looking for pictures that can explain my vision to people around me who are involved in this. Today I found the outdoor inspiration pictures.

This comes from the blog Bohemian Hellhole (a really nice blog if I may say so) and is about the person behind The Custards and her style. And it's spot on, with the colours and the atmosphere.

I won't be able to create that lushness because it is a yard after all, but the flowers will be there. As will the mismatch furniture and colour. I will do my best to make it look as inviting as I can and this picture above will be a great help to explain what I want to accomplish.

Blankets

We have no idea what the weather will be like in mid-August. Statistics tells us that it should be sunny and warm, but we could have rather bland weather too. The risk of rain is always present but August is usually the best time of the year for planning an outdoor event in southern Scandinavia.

I'm planning for chill at night anyway. Even if it's a warm and pleasant evening and night it's rarely as warm as in July when we can have tropical nights. Inside the barn there will be no need to for something to keep warm, but I'm planning for a lounge area just outside of the barn and some blankets might just be a good idea. These blankets can also be used for the ceremony to sit on.

I'm going to buy cheap fleece blankets from IKEA, and some quilt cover sets, cut the quilt covers so I get two sheets of fabric, sew one fleece blanket together with one sheet and give it a final edge finish with zigzag shears. Quite simple and perfectly in-theme. That's always something to look in to, quilt covers (or sheets). Really cheap ones are often cheaper than buying the same amount of the same kind of fabric per yard, and if you just need fabrics for simple things such as this, it's a good idea to check quilt covers first before looking at other fabrics.

A very important part of a party: food

After eating ourselves through the potential food I can honestly say that we're serving bulk food. The bean gumbo in itself would be enough, but we're also having vegetarian burritos, corn dogs and corn cobs. On top of that it's rocky road. You don't need much to get full. It's good though. Food should not only taste well, but no one should leave a table still hungry.

From the start we had decided on beer, but it's so much trouble with beer. You need so much and somewhere to cool it and it turned out both expensive and difficult to store cold during a party. Wine is easier that way. We're having one simple red and one white, both in bag-in-boxes. Right after the ceremony we're having a jug drink with white sweet sparkling, cranberry juice and Cointreau. It's a lovely raspberry red drink with a cosmopolitan feeling to it, albeit more laid back.

There will be drinks for those who don't drink alcohol. After the ceremony I thought a fitting substitute would be sprite, cranberry juice and some lemon. As for dinner drinks, I'm not sure. We really should have Coca Cola considering the theme, but I suspect Darling won't approve. We'll see. Water must be available at all times of course. You shouldn't have to drink alcohol or soft drinks to quell thirst.

Sunshine!

I think I may have found the dress that will make the foundation of my design.

I'm not going to buy this one though it's a lovely dress. It's too short, and the skirt isn't wide enough IMO. But I love the cut and I can see myself adding pockets to it. A girl has got to have pockets! I'm not going to keep the sleeves and the neckline needs to be lower, but not too low though. Not too long, too short, no décolletage, easy to move around in.

The colour is lovely. That navy is getting more and more difficult to justify. I could have the bottom part of the dress in navy, but the problem is that it might look like I'm wearing an apron. Or possibly too Star Trek-ish. I'm NOT doing geek things here. I'm such a sci fi nerd but star Trek just don't belong in this.

Dress from Beautvintage.com.

Web page

Do you need one? Maybe not, but I think it's practical. By having a web page you don't need to include e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g in the snail mail invitation. I prefer to keep that one short, to the point and lightweight.

Now, since I'm the DIY queen I of course DIY'ed the web page. I have a site address already so I just created a sub page address and set to work. It's not as fancy as it sounds. I used a template and tweaked in Dreamweaver. You don't need Dreamweaver to make your own web page, but you will have to be familiar with using code and how css style sheets work. It's not as complicated as it looks. Changes can be made if you open the documents in wordpad and you can have a look at what happens when you change things by opening it in a browser window. Any information you need on how to do this is available on the net so just Google away. End of mini crash course.

Back to our web page. I think it's fun doing this so I had a go at it during 5 days. Code is the fast part of it all compared to coming up with ideas and finding the right pictures. It was during this process that I started to come up with the invitation design.

I have this free program on the computer called Poladroid which creates Polaroid-like pictures in printable dpi that I used for images on the web page. I have also came across magnets looking like Polaroid frames, and an idea dawned on me. How about printing the invitation on magnetic paper and giving it a Polaroid frame? I think I'll have experiment some.

Click on the image to go to the web page.

The numbers stand for my 40^th birthday, Darling's 35^th birthday and 5 is the number of years we've been a couple. It all becomes 80. We're actually not telling people straight out that we're getting married but it's not that difficult to figure out. The reason for not spelling it out is that we don't want people to rush out and buy us presents we don't need or start worrying about fancy clothes. This is a very basic event but people get all sorts of silly ideas if you tell them it's a wedding.

Theme

I strongly advice anyone doing a party of any kind to have a theme. Nothing super elaborate but to the point. It's a great help when deciding on food, colours, décor and anything else party related you can think of. It's not meant to be like a theatre or a masquerade and you can make it very subtle. Having a Star Wars theme don't have to mean you've got storm troopers and Darth Vader invited, but you can choose subtle details. The nerds will know and the rest will just have a great time.

Of course we have a theme. This party will be in the Swedish equivalent to the hilly American south and because I'm the DIY queen who is keeping a lock on the wallet, the obvious choice was to steal ideas from the American poor south. The hillbillies. But since it's me I won't be able to not style things (once a designer - always a designer), so it will, whether I like it or not, lean heavily towards vintage. Those two are actually closer than people think. Vintage is the romantic notion of life on the countryside, so it's just a bit more arranged than real life. And the car wrecks are stowed away.