Colorblock Clay Placecard Holder

Easter is right around the corner. And although we don't actually calebrate, the whole family will be gathered in our home this year, and i am currently planning the table setting and decoration. This DIY requires some time and patience, as you will have to wait for the clay and paint to dry. But it's fun, and i love the result.

Happy Easter

Our Easter Anniversary

MisterT had those easter treats hidden for me

We started the day with breakfast in bed.

Then we went for a walk and took a photo with a funny turquoise-white striped "1", our new anniversary tradition. I already decided that the next number will have polka dots.

I made a love birds "love lock" to hang onto our favorite bridge. Of course i did not make the actual padlock, but i embellished it with Sparkle Mod Podge and hand-painted fabric with our initials and wedding date. This probably won't last a lifetime, but perhaps we will turn it into another tradition to hang a new lock each year.

Back home we ate ( too much) chocolate cake and spent the rest of the evening on the couch with a few episodes of "Chuck" and the best homemade Chili ever.

The paper gift: A mini coupon booklet in addition to a card. I like giving coupons and had these cute templates pinned from the blog Carrots And Brokkoli.

And a few more impressions from a beautiful but windy and terribly chilly day:

One of my favorite houses. It's turquoise.

Happy...

... 1st Anniversary to me and MisterT!

And Happy Easter to everyone else!

This has been such a hard year career-wise and as a consequence financially. This was in fact the worst year we ever experienced as a couple. Some people say the first year of a marriage is the hardest, some say the seventh year is cursed.
Both sayings are probably true and in our case the first year of marriage happened to overlap the seventh year of our relationship. With both being left behind now, i am confident that things will be better real soon. We still struggle tremendously, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and guess what happened this week?

MisterT won two flight tickets to France!! Well, technically i won ( um, again...) because the contest submission form was filled out on my laptop. But no need to nit-pick.
So now we can enjoy two city trips as soon as our monetary situation gets better. I told my parents to sign up too, because obviously not a lot of people are participating in that monthly contest and chances are good they will be selected in one of the next drawings. Too funny!

We're off to celebrate and I'll leave you with a few wedding impressions. I can't share the pro pics yet, so these are some non-professional snapshots ( quite obviously).

Obtaining the marriage license:

A fun gift. Somehow we got into collecting rubber ducks during the years.

Taking informal formals:

A fabulous self-portrait as the first photo on the first day of our marriage ( note to myself: backlit shots don't make much sense):

Waking up to the sound of the waves and a gorgeous ocean view.

 Married!

P.S. I have prewritten this post because i don't want to sit in front of the computer on our actual anniversary. So let's pretend today is already Sunday.

DIY: Easter Wreath

Who is in the mood for spring already? I am, and so i just went through my spring and easter decoration and found this door wreath that i made some years ago.

As a child i loved searching the hidden nest, but as non-religious adult i don't really care about easter and you won't find much decoration in our apartment. Just a few eggs, bunnies and cute little chicks here and there.
The worst thing about easter in my opinion? Those poor front yard trees decorated with terrible cheap-cheaper-the cheapest plastic eggs. Yuck!   Sorry, no offense to anyone ;-)
Other than that i usually like easter decoration and its sunny and cheerful colors.

So, i don't have a tutorial for my wreath but it was super easy to make. I cut a bamboo stem into four pieces and used my hot glue gun to construct a frame. Then i decorated the frame with all kinds of useless stuff and ribbons that i had kept from random gifts and attached everything with hot glue. Done.