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I love mason jars- I love drinking from them, canning, storing stuff in them, and decorating with them. I have vivid memories of canning homemade salsa, chili sauce, and pickles as a child, and recently I've made/canned applesauce, apple butter, and blackberry/strawberry jam. While planning my wedding I obsessed over several wedding blogs. One was a backyard wedding where I found inspiration for mason jar lanterns. My brother and I made 10 and hung them from Shepard's hooks around the dance floor. The centerpieces ended up being a large circle of 6 jars, alternating ivory votives in jelly jars and bouquets in pint jars. They were gorgeous (thanks Jess, Hillary, & Ed!). I bought a lot of jars, and I have all of them left over, which means lots of canning in my future :). Here are a couple reception pictures from after the party: 
We considered a lot of options when it came to dancing: a bigger tent and a real dance floor underneath ($$$$$), a snap-together hardwood floor to put on the concrete patio, dancing on concrete, on the grass, digging a pond and putting colored lights and a clear dance floor over top (we seriously had one company suggest this)... and ended up talking to the builder who suggested a roll of laminate flooring over concrete. We were able to buy a remnant of a neutral, smooth floor, which cost at least several hundred dollars less than any other option. It was super easy and fast and now my aunt/uncle are covered for the next decade of patio dance parties. I absolutely loved what they did with the lights over the floor: I hit up BigLots a day or two after Christmas and found pearl lights marked down to $5 and bought 8 boxes. They were a little more elegant than standard white Christmas lights, and were just beautiful.
I'll leave you with some blurry boogieing!
Newest project in the works: wedding site
I also bought 3 fabrics for table runners:
I'll make them about 14 inches wide, but I'm undecided about the length. I think we'll rent ground-length white table clothes for 5ft round tables and lay these on top- maybe they should be 84 inches? Any ideas?
For the reception, I decided mojitos would be a little labor-intensive, so I think I'd like to have punch bowls or pitchers of white sangria! I have a test batch in the fridge right now. Never made sangria before... so we'll see how this turns out.
Recipe I used: 8 strawberries, 1 granny smith apple, 1 nectarine, 1 lemon, 1 lime, 3 tbs sugar, 1 bottle chardonnay, 3 shots peach schnapps. And we'll top if off with soda water when we're ready to drink.
I have no idea how it'll taste... but it's pretty!
Well, I can't believe it's been a week since my last post. Time is just flying. One wedding "to do" that's been crossed off for a while was finding bridesmaids dresses. I wanted to find something affordable, flattering, summery, and something that could be worn again after the wedding. I look at the j. crew sale page pretty often, and love so many of their dresses. A note about j. crew sale items: there are patterns to their sales and promotions, usually a cycle between free shipping and 20% your total order. So I saw this dress, loved it, but it was $170. A few weeks later, this color was on sale for $99, fast forward a few more weeks, $69. I was worried that some sizes might sell out, so when there was free shipping I ordered dresses for everyone. When the dresses finally arrived, one of them was actually a yellow blazer instead of a yellow dress, so I went into the store to return it. By this time, the promotion had cycled to an additional 20% off, so while I was returning the blazer, I asked about a price adjustment, and they did it! All the dresses ended up costing about $55 a piece. 
I'm also making progress on my plate collection. I had a great run to the Ohio Thrift on Cleveland Avenue and found about 10 dinner plates and 4 salad plates for $.20-$.60 apiece! I'm about to run to a few other locations- Ohio Thift is the only thift store I've found that have individually color-coded plates. FYI- the last Wednesday of every month everything in the store is 50% off!
