Jacobin Joe - Coincidence or Fate?

If you have been in my house, or any of my previous apartments, you know about Jacobin Joe. So when a good friend of ours got married at The Old Library Restaurant in Olean, NY - one of the coolest sites ever - I figured it would be a night full of dancing and friends, and low on eerie coincidence. I was wrong. Above the stairway going to the second floor, I found an old friend creepily staring down at me:

Creepy, but amazing, right?

Here is mine:

My friends wedding was awesome. But it made me realize that our wedding was missing two critical elements. One - Jacobin Joe was left off the invite list. Two - we should never have banned The Devil Went Down to Georgia from being requested and played. That song rocked.

Wedding Recap: Library Nods

A funny thing happens when you're trying to save money on a wedding. It forces you to think outside the box, get creative, and you find that opportunities arise to make things more personal. That's what happened when we looked for alternatives to floral arrangements for our ceremony decor.

As you may know, Mr. Casserole, my beloved guybrarian, has a longstanding ironic habit of destroying books for the sake of art. We have loads of dismembered old book parts lying around, so when I saw this as inspiration, I thought: "Dang, I can do that." I got some foam wreath forms from the craft store, my trusty glue gun, some scalloping shears, convinced Matt to part with some book pages . . . and made a pair of these for either side of the aisle.

I made a third wreath to hang on our old iron gate as the ceremony backdrop, this time using a pizza box cut into a wreath shape, and forming the paper into roses. (I actually used the rose technique used in cake decorating, but there are also many cool paper flower techniques, including origami, floating around the internets.) Brooklyn pizza saves the day once again! Check it:

Way cheaper than flowers, and you can hang the wreath in your house when you're done.

If you were there and looking closely, you also noticed that the old book pages made it into the boutonnieres (note the feathers, too - our bird theme):

And of course the once we had a library thing going, we couldn't resist using this old card catalog my dad found years ago as a guest book:

Nerdiness abounds, just like our love!

Wedding Recap: Paper or plastic?

Or silk? I'm hardly a world class seamstress, but I thought it would be nice (and do-able) to make my bridesmaids some cute little purses to use at the wedding. After all, there are only two of them, so I hardly had an excuse not to. After some failed attempts at designing the bags myself (they looked like silk potato sacks - real classy), I came across this free pattern!

Isn't it adorable?! And free! The best part is that the pattern only uses a fat quarter, so I had enough fabric left to complete the bags after my "potato sack debacle."

Since these were going to be a little dressier than the pic shown on the pattern, I decided to skip the button detail and used some random scraps and guinea hen feathers (the fun ones with the polka dots!) to make a little flower instead.

Images courtesy Sherry Lynne Photography

I love the way they turned out! And I totally learned my lesson about underestimating the power of a cute pattern. Especially when it's free!

...and then the etching cream took off my arm!

For the last couple of months I've been obsessed with glass etching. I decided upon this craft whilst trying to figure what exactly to make for my groomsmen. Although this was an easy craft (I mean, I did it, how hard could it really be,) the numerous steps involved made it very time consuming. The first step was to find an image:
Then, I converted the image to a simple black and white, preserving key aspects intact in order to keep the image recognizable:

Then, I transferred the image to contact paper, put it on the chosen glass surface, cut out the black spots with a box cutter, brushed on the etching cream, waited a couple of minutes, rinsed it off, and viola!:

Working on these glasses required all of my concentration, as well as the use of a head lamp.

In the end, I etched 23 different glasses. Here are some of the others.

Here are some old school Super Mario Brothers power ups.

Go Bills!

Final Fantasy Vii!

Cutting Instruments!

My next etching project has something to do with a previous blog post of ours ...

Wedding Recap: The Ultimate Party Trick

A few months back, Matt and I decided to cross-off #114 on our list of life-goals and learn the dance to Michael Jackson's Thriller!, a feat made possible by tutorials from thrilltheworld.com. This website was set-up by a Canadian dancer (the best kind of dancer, if you ask me) who aimed to break the world record for largest simultaneous Thriller! dance. She created a series of tutorial videos aimed at people with little to no dance experience. Now you too can be the coolest person at the next party you attend!

Although the tutorials cover the entire 6 minute version of Thriller!, our friends were already being such awesome sports that we really owed it to them to edit the song down to 3 minutes. Anyway, here is a video of the fruits of our labor from the wedding. Enjoy!

Night of the Living Wed from Sarah Stock on Vimeo.

Mwa-hahahahaaaa!

We did it!

We're officially Mr. and Mrs. "Casserole" now!  Here's a recap of our first dance:

Sarah and Matt's First Dance from Sarah Coryea Stock on Vimeo.

Fellow Brooklynites, we can't recommend highly enough taking dance lessons with Renata Shvarts at the Basic Ballroom dance studio.  She is responsible for the choreography, and with 10 lessons, we hope we were able to do it justice.

Special challenges arise when you can't practice in your dress.  I was worried that my bustle would take Matt out at the knees.  Also, the straps made it surprisingly difficult to lift my arms.  I had to really muscle through so as not to elbow Matt in the face in the approach to the lift.  (Although, a bloody nose would have really been a nice touch for the Thriller dance - more on that later.)  My shoulders were actually bruised the next day from pushing against the straps!  All in all, we were so happy with the end result, and I will be forever grateful to Matt for being such a good sport!

In related news, Matt has vowed never to dance again.  I think that is a crime against humanity.  That boy was born to dance!

5 days!

Oh, how I hope this is true ...

2 weeks!

Sorry for our relative absence lately -- we've been preoccupied with our upcoming wedding! Plenty of recaps afterwards, though, we promise!

A little something to hold you over: Matt showed me this video the other day, and it's pretty funny if you stop watching at about 1:03 ...

Shower Power

A few weeks ago, my mom and aunts, with the help of my bridesmaids, threw me the loveliest bridal shower EVER featuring springy pastels, sugar flowers, china teacups, and doilies galore.  Sugar and spice and everything nice.   It made me think of when my father used to get dragged to high school cheerleading competitions, after which he described "being smothered by a pink cloud of estrogen."  I think the shower was one of those pink-cloud moments.  Awesome!

The star of the show - not me, shockingly - was the cupcake display!

Mom and Aunt Betty, fairly new to cake decorating, had carefully followed the instructions on how to make these exquisite gumpaste orchids.  After they struggled for a bit, legend has it that Dad then sat down and casually made one with great ease.  There was some rolling of eyes, but they eventually made a whole batch to adorn the cupcakes - FANCY!

Fancy, indeed.

Andria, in her first official duty as Maid of Honor, demonstrates that the gumpaste, while edible, is best left a feast for the eyes. 

A while ago, Mom got the idea to use doilies as a decor theme.  She wanted to use spring colors, but since colored doilies are a rare and expensive thing, she had the great idea to spray paint them!  Look at the pretty pastel bunting and place mats - it really helped brighten up the place since outside it was a gray and rainy spring day. 

Quote of the day by Andria: "I took a picture of the tables before everyone sits down and RUINS them!"  So wrong, yet so true - that is totally how I am going to feel about the table settings our wedding!  

I wish I had a picture, but my mom, in her typical Macgyver-like fashion, placed cardstock behind the doilies while spray painting them, thus creating pretty patterned paper which she used for the invitations.  

Here is part of the brunch spread, complete with the beautiful antique teacup collection that was my grandmother's - graciously lent to the occasion by my mom and aunts:

There were also egg stratas of every known variety and yummy breads made by Mom and bridesmaid Renee.

After brunch, there was opening of gifts ...  

"ooh!", " ahh!", "a mug!",  "a toaster!"

Note Andria's lawyer-ly legal pad to record the gift-givers 

(It's funny because she is a law student)

((You know its funny when it requires an explanation))

And then Mom, a former public speaking champ back in high school, read out loud the cards that each shower guest had filled out with a memory, recipe, or advice.  Some were sweet; some were funny.

My cooking skills, or lack thereof, were of course an easy target, but luckily nothing too scandalous.  Mom is going to put the little cards into a scrapbook for me.

Matt stopped by at the end, took some ribbing, and helped hand out the favors - froofy pink bookmarks that read "Support your local library!"  Haha!  

Oh Matt, even my sweet mother picks on you!

Some parting shots ...

My lovely bridesmaids - BFF Andria and College Roomie Renee

"4gether" high school cheer friends - Amanda*, Jamie*, and Carly

*99% of these photos are stolen from Amanda and Jamie

Wish I had more pics of the families (will post if I find some!) - thanks to everyone for coming and making the day so nice!