My amazing hen do!

A few weeks ago, before I got sucked back into real life routines of work, plus French classes plus trying to sort our house back into shape after a wedding whirlwind hit, I promised a post on my hen do, PLUS some wedding snaps from our professional photographers.
Blogging has taken a back seat coz I've been so busy and also unwell (the usual back to school germs hitting!) but I've decided this weekend to get a few posts up about wedding/honeymoon etc.
Sooo - the hen do!
My bridesmaids planned everything completely themselves - my only input was that they surprise me and that no strippers were involved. And they did the BEST JOB!!
It was kept a surprise literally until the day of the hen do when I walked in the door of the first venue! And it was so so perfect. I couldn't have arranged it better if I had planned it myself. There was so many little details and fun ideas!

They also amazingly arranged for one of my long distance besties (who neither of them actually know) to come up from Essex for the weekend.
On the Saturday of the hen do I was to be at the secret venue by 3pm, and they only text my fiancé the address about an hour before incase he somehow managed to spill the beans!
Ready to go!

I got my dress from a place called British Retro and I loved it so much! I wore a pink petticoat underneath and it just felt so special and pretty! My Minnie veil was brought back from America by a friend for me.

This was just outside the venue, which I was delighted to discover was a place called Cushion and Cake, which is a crafty cafe where they run classes and parties, as well as serving delicious afternoon teas! Right up my street!

The afternoon tea was delicious, and we got to make lovely painted canvas bags so we all had something pretty to take home.

The bag I designed for using on honeymoon :)

Bottles of cocktails! (It was BYOB)

Even the shots were pretty!!

At one point in the afternoon I went to the toilet and came back to be faced with this... Haha!! Robert masks.

This was my initial reaction when I walked out -

Hehe! It was a great afternoon but I was still in the dark about what the rest of the afternoon and evening held!
About 6pm we caught taxis and headed to our next venue, which was Hummingbird in Glasgow. We had a 3 course meal with cocktails and wine, before heading upstairs to a private karaoke room! We did some silly games up here, it was such a laugh! I didn't want the night to end. I only have a couple of pics of the evening part on my ipad sorry...

Another little detail the girls thought of! We all had one of these on our glasses :)

It was seriously the most fantastic day, and I was (am!) so grateful to my girls for planning it so perfectly!!
In other news... Our wedding dvd arrived yesterday so tonight our plan is to watch that and have a wee glass of wine! I'm feeling a bit unwell (again) and feels like I have a throat infection working on me so may have to give the wine a miss but wedding DVD is DEFFO on the agenda. So excited to relive our day again!

Anyway, i'll stop rambling, thanks for reading :)

Back to school sewing...

Another of my goals for this year is to properly learn to sew, and eventually be able to make myself skirts and dresses. I've had my sewing machine a good few years now but the most exciting project it's seen was some pretty amateur Christmas stockings 3 Christmases ago. Aside from that it's only been used for quick repairs. I have a lot to learn so I figured I'd start with something small and easy to do!
If you put zip pouch sewing into google you have a whole host of tutorials to follow along with but I used this one from Design Mom.
I decided I wanted to add some decor on the front of my pouch so I just kinda cut some fabric and made that bit up as I went along. I sewed all the details on before sewing my parts together obviously.

I was most proud of how neat my zip looked, considering how fiddly it was trying to make sure the 3 layers or fabric were even. Especially on the side with the bow because it stopped it from lying flat.

The next tricky part was knowing what way to fold the zipper ends when you are sewing around the whole pouch. This probably won't even make sense unless you've done one yourself, but when it was all folded inside out it was so hard to imagine what way the zipper needed to be sewn in at the ends!

In the end I folded them the right way, although it's still not 100% perfect at that part. All in all I'm very pleased with my little creation, it looks so fancy with its lining and little bow! Not bad for a first attempt at sewing in over 3 years!

Perfect for going back to work next week although I am kinda trying to avoid thinking about that....

August Blog Challenge - day 3 - Favourite Quote.

Hello again. Chuffed to see I've made it this far, (3 days lol) but I guess the real challenge will be seeing what happens when I go back to work next week!
This day's post was pretty easy for me because I love love love quotes and have Pinterest boards dedicated to them. I guess the hardest part was actually narrowing it down to my favourite!

Which I'm actually kinda cheating and sharing a few. All of the quotes I've chosen speak to me in different ways, or are relevant to different aspects of my life so it was so hard to choose between them all!

So here goes (in no particular order)

Everyone loves a good quote about happiness, right?

I love this travel quote so much. Print available from here

So true. I should make more time for reading.

This quote from The Fault in Our Stars makes me tingle. I can totally relate to it and I remember the moment I had the falling in love all at once feeling with Robert. I couldn't put it into words so nicely though!

This. I need to get this Into to my head. My house is so full of stuff I don't need or use yet I cling onto it like treasure. One of my goals this year is to simplify and declutter my house and my life.

This is true about so many aspects of life but I had this pinned onto a healthy body inspiration board. It will be worth it!

And lastly... I couldn't possibly do a quotes post without a Walt Disney quote!!

Hope you've enjoyed reading my quotes - I think that reading quotes someone else is inspired by tells you a lot about a person.
I'm off to read some of the other day 3 quotes now to fill up my Pinterest board some more...

August Blog Challenge day 2 - 20 Facts About Me

Hmmm this is a hard one to be honest because I don't think I have anything particularly interesting to share. It's gonna be a bit of a mundane post I would guess, but here goes.
Keeping with the theme of the photo I've chosen to include, il start with these...
1. I love love love anything Disney. Movies, the disney parks, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Ariel. The songs, the fireworks displays etc etc. Just love it all.
2. Following on from that one, I moved to Florida in 2006 to work for Mickey Mouse. I did a 2 month programme and then a year long programme working in Magic Kingdom, then EPCOT. Best. Time. Ever.
3. You will regularly find me just hanging around the house with some Minnie Mouse ears on. Nobody even bats an eyelid anymore haha.
Ok, so moving on from the disney theme...
4. I don't like any hot drinks. This amazes a lot of people when I'm offered a tea or coffee but I just don't like either.
5. I have a birthmark about the size of a 2p on my hip, and I've always quite liked it.
(See I told you these would be mundane)
6. I have a strange aversion to things you can't count. (Yes I'm a weirdo). For example, the thought of counting the grains of sand on the beach makes me feel a bit queasy.
7. As do speckles and speckled birds/cats.
8. I have broken one bone in my life, my ankle. While I was living in America! That was expensive!
9. Christmas dinner is my favourite meal of the year. Mmmm mmm mmmm!!
10. I'm a very anxious person who always assumes the worst in every possible situation. Eg, Robert is 10 minutes late - he must have had a horrific accident. A friend cancels a lunch date - they must hate me and think I'm a terrible friend. My boss wants me to pop to her office - i must be getting sacked. It gets tiring...
11. I love naps. Naps fix everything. I have to avoid them though because I already don't sleep great at night so naps can only happen on non school nights.
12. I worked abroad for 5 summers in my early twenties, on the Greek Islands of Crete and Zante.
13. I'm the least domesticated wife you could ever imagine. I'm trying to get better though.
14. I love music festivals (Glastonbury!!!) but I haven't been to any in a few years due to saving for a house and wedding.
15. One of my favourite things is getting in a bath full of bubbles and just soaking for hours, with a magazine or book and a can of diet coke.
16. I am full of great intentions (eg learning to make clothes, becoming an amazing photographer, keeping a regular blog) but really rubbish at following through on things.
17. I love lists - I literally couldn't function without my daily / weekly lists, both at work and at home.
18. I'm a bit obsessed with notebooks and other pretty stationery. Paperchase is always your best bet if you want to buy me a present.
19. I've wanted a bike for a few years now and I've just finally got a lovely pink vintage style bike with a cute little basket. I love it!
20. This post couldn't go without a mention for the love of my life. Robert, who I met almost 4 years ago and became my husband just a month ago, is my world. He makes me laugh every day, he keeps me sane when I'm feeling anxious, and gives me support in everything I do. He's amazing and I'm so proud to say he is my husband :)

So there you go, that's a little bit about me.

Are you doing the blog challenge? Leave me a note in the comments so I can pop by and learn 20 facts about you!

Trying out blogsy for photo uploads...

If you follow me on twitter or are friends on Facebook you may have witnessed my frustration and annoyance at the hassle I had trying to get all the photos on my wedding post.
First, they were all shocking quality. I discovered I needed to host them somewhere first. So I uploaded them all to photobucket, inserted all the HTML into the post and then updated. And they were all crazy sizes argh!!
My friend Nina commented on Facebook and suggested I try blogsy rather than blog press, so here I am, giving it a go. Just going to upload some random pictures from the last couple of days to see how it works out for me :)

Trying to get back into Slimming World mode.

My lovely wee baby Buttons!

Enjoying some wine we were given at the wedding. Not that that will help me get back in slimming world mode, but hey, only a few days of school holidays left.

My lovely new polka dot coat!! Such a bargain too.

****** The Verdict ******
I LOVE LOVE LOVE Blogsy! It took me 5 minutes to compose the above post, it popped all the pictures in and I think it's saved them straight to picasa so I didn't have to manually host them somewhere else first and copy over. It automatically sized them all to the same width, whether it was a landscape or portrait photo. I'm a convert.

Thanks Nina x

August Blog Challenge! Intro and Day 1

So... since I'm trying to get back into blogging as a regular habit I decided that alongside my wedding posts that i'll be putting up, i'm going to try and complete this August blogging challenge that my friend Nina posted about. Like Nina i'm obviously starting late so i'm going to try post every day from tomorrow, or maybe i'll even post a few times until i'm caught up. We'll see how it goes I guess! 

The challenge comes with a great list of prompts so every day I have something specific to blog about - which will hopefully help me get into the habit without the danger of running out of stuff to talk about :) 

So, the list of prompts is as follows - 

Here is the list of blog posts...

1. Introduction and a recent photo!
2. 20 facts about you!
3. Your favourite quote.
4. Where would you like to be in 10 years?
5. A special memory.
6. Tell about your best friend.
7. 10 songs on your playlist right now.
8. What's in your handbag?
9. List 15 things that make you happy (not including the obv. family etc).
10. What are 3 items you've checked off your bucket list already.
11. You're 5 favourite movies.
12. A guilty pleasure.
13. Share pictures of where you live and list a couple of cool things about it.
14. Why do you blog?
15. What destinations are top of your dream travel list?
16. If you won the lottery.
17. Timeline of your day. (In photos, words or both).
18. What do you collect?
19. What are your ten favourite foods?
20. What is the best thing that has happened this year?
21. What are your 10 favourite blogs?
22. Share an old photo of yourself.
23. What are you looking forward to?
24. Sum yourself up in ten words!
25. Capture one moment in your day and share it.
26. What are 5 of your favourite posts from your archives.
27. Have you had to overcome something difficult?
28. Who or what is your biggest source of inspiration?
29. 5 things you can't live without.
30. Your earliest memory.
31. What was the best thing about this month?

So to kick this thing off , a little intro to me and my blog...

As you've probably guessed from my blog title my name is Jilly (Jillian). I'm a newlywed teacher who lives in Scotland, wife to Robert and mummy to our little bunny Buttons, who is 8 months old. I've had this blog for a few years now but as you'll see in my archives my posting habits are a bit sporadic and I tend to go through little spurts of posting lots then nothing for months. I've always wanted to have a blog that documents my life for me to look back on, so i'm really hoping that maybe this time i'll actually stick to it. 

At the moment I teach nursery aged children, which is great fun because I get to do lots of crafty and fun activities! The kids also seem to like me coz I like a lot of the things they like, eg Minnie Mouse and Disney Princesses. As well as being a big kid I love all things crafty, and have a go at a lot of different things, eg scrapbooking, knitting, crochet and embroidery, as well as painting and a wee bit of sewing. I bought a sewing machine and hope to learn to make some clothes of my own in the (near?) future. 

Aside from my crafty endeavors I love spending time with my family and friends, eating cakes, drinking cocktails and pretending to be an awesome homemaker. I'm getting there with that one! I also love long lies, nail polish, dresses, taking photos, reading blogs and going out for dinner. I hope that my blog will cover a little bit of all of the above :) 

As prescribed by the blog challenge, i'm sharing a recent photo of me which is me on my honeymoon a couple of weeks ago.

thanks for reading peeps, leave a comment if you're joining in the blog challenge too so I can pop by and read your posts! 

Much love xox 

I'm married!!! (Photo heavy!)

ahhhhhhh i'm married!!!!!!





Well, that makes me feel properly old but who cares... OMG I'm married!! Hehe!! We've actually been married exactly one month today and gosh that month has flown in! Much like the months leading up to the wedding in fact!


Thinks got exceptionally crazy and busy when we bought a new house and also brought home our baby bunny, but you may also know that I'm a professional procrastinator. Meaning that so many of the jobs I had to do for the wedding were left until as late as I could leave them, meaning things were HECTIC for about 2/3 months before hand. I was basically organising or diy'ing everything I possibly could do myself, including invites, decor, all the little details of the day. No package weddings round here, no siree!! So there was SO much to do in the final months/ weeks / days.


I haven't actually got very many photos of the actual day to share right now, only a few from my phone or from other peoples photos but tbh it's too much to put all in one post anyway, so i'll share it over a few posts and then post some of our best pictures when we get digital copies from our photographer.


I'll start off with sharing some of the wedding prep - Our house basically turned into a wedding factory!


Invites in the process of being made...this was the first major job that started off the DIY madness...





I spent many hours tying bows (whilst drinking wine obviously)





The finished article ( with personal details blocked out)








I also made all our little place cards for the tables -




After the invites, the next biggest job was doing the flowers. I refused to spend up to £1000 on flowers for just one day - they're only going to die a few days later. I decided early on that I would be doing my table flowers and bridesmaid bouquets. I went to Country Baskets to get all my flowers, lace, ribbons etc. 

This was my first batch, I later went back for more. I probably spent about £200 all in on flowers, not including my (real) bouquet and the buttonholes for the men. Bargain compared to real and everyone commented how lovely they looked.




For months in advance I had family and friends collecting jars for me and I ended up with this...



It was at this point that my house began to resemble a wedding factory - there was no getting away from all the stuff lying around!






This was the way my flowers were to be arranged on the tables - the jars were carefully arranged into 3 groups of sizes before decorating. Each size group had a different style of decor so each cluster could be sure to have a range of sizes and styles. It looked random and unplanned on the day but believe me there was lots of careful planning hehe!



These were my bridesmaid bouquets - so easy to make and worked out around £7 each. The girls could then obviously keep them as well seeing as they are foam flowers!




I realised just now as I'm looking at that "wedding factory" above that there's loads of wee bits and bobs that I haven't got photos of but luckily my photographer captured most of the finer details on the day so hopefully I'll be able to share more eventually :)

So anyway, this is my DIY table plan -



This was my system for arranging the tables. We started out with small tables but long tables were sooo much easier and I actually liked it much better that way in the end. Felt more sociable on the day :)



Ignore all the other rubbish in the photo here - these were my table names. They were spray painted gold records with name cards attached. I loved these and Robert chose all his favourite love related Beatles songs so he had some input too :)



These were my signs I made for our cake table, Instant camera table and guest book table. I don't think anyone used our hash tag :(



This was our welcome board with menu and timetable of events. I loved this although I was a bit annoyed at how fluorescent the colours were because I had tried to get pastel chalk pens and couldn't seem to find any anywhere. Ignore my toes please ;)



I planned and organised a cake table for our evening venue (we had our day over split venue for very annoying reasons I won't go into right now! It actually worked out great though so no major problems). I ordered loads of bits and bobs online and it all looked great on the night :)

My mum brought his mallow cake home from Spain!



All my jars and sweets that I'd bought. I was SO adamant I was having one of those swirly lollies on the night but when it came to it I completely forgot and I didn't actually eat anything from the buffet! These later had luggage tags and ribbons attached to label them all.



I made white chocolate rocky road -



And posh top hats. Please ignore the old but of lettuce on the back of my fridge haha!




My aunt made these lovely biscuits for us -





There was also cupcakes but I don't have any in advance pics from those, just on the day ones which i'll post soon :)

I got really cute stripey bags for people to help themselves -



I made my bridesmaids these lovely gift bags too -




The contents of these were -

Bracelets (the pink one) -



Little mirrors -



Personalised lipbalms (obviously this is a sample coz we're not melanie and pablo hehe)

Nail polish

Bridesmaid chocolates - these had a personal message on the back from Robert and I too.

And a little bottle of bubbly which I have no picture of, but i'm sure you know what a little bottle of bubbly looks like!

I had planned a full on photo booth but due to our change in evening venue I didn't think we would have the space. I ended up deciding about 2 weeks in advance of the wedding that I would just set up a wee table of photo props with my instax camera and loads of spare films. It ended up being one of the highlights of the evening and I'm so glad I did it! Here was me and buttons getting in the spirit in advance hehe

I think that's about all I've got in the way of wedding prep, and some of you may have seen all this before if you've been following my wedding planning thread on the Dibb.

I have another couple of posts to do before the day itself (hen do up next!!) but to reward you for making it this far here's a little peek at my dress. Coz let's face it, unless you're planning a wedding yourself the only bit that people are desperate to see is the dress!

So here you go :) my amazing dress, shoes and multiple underskirts!

This was my favourite picture taken at my final fitting, despite my mum's arm being in the way.

Selfie on the car on the way - I was sooo nervous!

Shoes!!

Those underskirts!!! 

And I'll finish off with a silly selfie of me and my amazing new husband <3 nbsp="">

Thank you for reading,

Jilly xox