Gained another sister!

This Labor Day weekend I gained a new sister! My brother-in-law Darren married his lovely Pina.
Andy was the best man and Emma the flower girl. The ceremony was beautiful!
Love my new sister-in-law! I have known her for a short while, but feels as though I've known her forever. She's an awesome woman and just right for Darren. I've been told she's a lot like me in the sense that she has a laid back, easy going personality. And she's Italian! :) Although much more Italian than me! (very jealous of her ability to speak Italian!) SO glad she is now officially apart of the family!

Emma's plastic smile :-]

There's a good smile!

Emma rode to church in the limo with the girls.  She quickly grew fond of the Jr. Bridesmaid Chiada

I felt so special when they asked me to be involved in the ceremony by reading from 1 Cor. 13. (followed by her Uncle who read it in Italian) 

Darren reciting his vows.

Sweet moment when Darren spoke of and gave Pina a ring his mom gave him to give to his future wife. 

You may now kiss the bride!

This is Pina's Mom and Dad. We've been able to meet and spend time with her family on many occasions. They are just so wonderful and warm.

Family picture #1

Pina went from having no nieces or nephews to having 7!

 We all got to ride to the reception in style! 

Made a deal with them - if they give me a nice shot, I would take silly pics of them. 

  

 more requests of silliness...

Family picture #2

Andy's cousin's baby, Emm. She is soooo adorable   

Emma and her buddy!

Justin took this one. His idea... pretty good! 

Family picture #3 (my fav!)

 Had some dirt on my heels after posing for the previous pics. He was cleaning them for me. 

Entering the reception.

 NFL theme song played right before the new Mr. & Mrs. Muller entered.

 First dance "I Finally Found Someone"

They were so cute dancing together.

Flower girl and Best Man

 Cousins

Siblings with spouses 

Emma's other buddy Giada (Maid of Honor's daughter) 

 The cake was just the beginning of the dessert...

The boys enjoying the dessert ROOM! Here you see chocolate fountains

 Waiting for waffles and ice cream

 The cotton candy was quite popular amongst the young.... 

...and the not as young....

Caught Em getting another zeppole!  (I don't blame her, the best I've ever had!)

Emma with her strawberry and nutella crepe after she watched it be made.

Uncle D helping Emma light her sparkler. 

Emma got herself a little boo-boo after touch the wrong part of the sparkler :( 

Tired girls. (Emma still icing her finger)

Exhausted boy.

These are some of the photographer's pictures that were on a screen playing at the reception. 

Their photographer was AMAZING!

Tutor Hat

How to get (almost) perfect letters painted onto fabric.

(My first tutorial! Tutor hat - get it? :)

I needed a birthday gift for my soon-to-be-sis-in-law, and wanted it to be somewhat themed for this season of her life (it being wedding week for her). So, I decided on a Honeymoon Bag - a beach bag filled with beach stuff (they are headed to Aruba).  I wanted something I could personalize, so I found this great beach bag that was yellow and white with this neat roping and grommets up the side. I searched around on pinterest for an easy way to help me "print" on fabric without really printing on fabric with a printer, but I found nothing.  SO, I came up with this technique! (can also be done with images too!)

What you need:

paper

printer (optional)

pencil

paint

paint brush (small)

painter's tape (any tape will do, just had to keep going with the P's ;)
pretzels (optional)

STEP 1  Print out whatever it is you wish to paint in the size you wish to paint it. (if you're not too confident with a paint brush, chose a bolder font.)

*Now I don't have a printer in my apt, so I instead typed up what I wanted in Word and then traced it off the computer screen (carefully) I don't recommend doing it this way, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

STEP 2   Tape your design down to your fabric.  With your pencil, sharpened to a sharp point, carefully start poking holes in the paper. As you poke each hole, stick the pencil point into the fabric and spin the pencil a bit - enough to make a dot. You can poke lots of holes, but then later on that's more marks you have to be sure to cover. I just poked as many as I would need, in key points for each letter. Just imagine you were making a dot-to-dot for yourself. (which is actually what you're doing!)

I peel the page back from time to time to make sure I'm making the dots okay.

Here you can see the papers I used..

See my dots?

STEP 3 Connect the dots! (and sing "connect the dots, la la lala :)

Use your paint and small brush to connect the dots.  I found it VERY helpful to have the paper I used for the dots in front of me to reference when I got confused with which dot went which dot.

Almost half-way there.  Fabric I used (being canvas) not so easy to get perfect lines since it's not a smooth fabric.

Almost done... (by this point I have almost finished watching/listening to "Nightmare in Jamestown" - the 2nd documentary I watched on Netflix while doing this project. :)

DONE! Phewf!

STEP 4: Reward yourself with the pretzels! What? You ate them already!? 

It's FOR SURE not perfect, but I kinda like the "imperfect" look. It's now ready to get stuffed with beach supplies!

This technique has it's flaws - one being if you wanted to paint in white/pastels on a certain fabric, the pencil marks would be tough to hide.  But I suppose you could use colored pencils.

Some may find the painting part tedious, I found it relaxing.

Hope someone finds this post helpful!

Caleb quote...

While eating lunch at Costco, looking through coupons, Caleb sees a Cheez-it coupon and asks to buy them. To which Daddy answered "your gonna turn into a cheez-it!"
Caleb's quote: "I want to! Then I can eat myself!
7.5 years old