February 2014 - Yearning to Create

Marriage Advice Wedding Photo

I have a plaque on my wall that’s full of advice to married couples, and I love it! I refer to it often. So when my daughter got married, I wanted to give her something similar. Then I had the brilliant idea to put the marriage advice on a wedding photo!!!

My niece JL took the perfect picture for this project. The bride and groom had just come out of the temple doors to greet all the guests who were waiting outside. They had that indescribable just-married-and-so-happy-and-in-love glow, because just moments before they had been married for time and all eternity in the Holy Temple. I remember what complete joy I felt on my wedding day, and it was so so wonderful to know my little girl was feeling that way too.

I took JL’s photo and played around on Picmonkey with it. I did some stuff to the picture – like contrast or something (yeah, helpful I know!!!). I wanted the picture to be clearly visible, but it was the words that I wanted to really stand out. Once I had the picture the way I wanted it, I started adding the text, alternating fonts, sizes and colours, until I was pleased with how it looked. Then I simply ordered the photo and put it in a frame.

Pretty cool how I was able to frame the picture yet still keep the frame in it’s protective cardboard corners eh? I still had to wrap it and give it to them, then they had to transport it, so just ignore the corners!!!

Here’s the complete picture and words so you can clearly see the marriage advice . . .

I love it!!!

Some of the advice, like “Find time to be alone together”, might not seem too relevant now, but in the future, when there are children around and life is crazy busy, we all need to remember that one!!!

And “Hold hands whenever you can” is placed by their clasped hands – how cute is that?

If you look closely, you will notice that the photo is not matted. I actually had to put it on top of the matte rather than under the matte, otherwise some of the picture and words wouldn’t show. I had to print it at a size that they don’t usually make frames for just to get the whole picture. But it all worked out just fine in the end.

Now I want one for myself!!!

Chicken, Rice and Broccoli Casserole

I made up a recipe – shocking, I know!!! My family loves it – and I can prove it: Kat, my seven-year-old picky eater, just looked over my shoulder to see what I was blogging about and said, “That stuff? Make it again!!!”

We often have leftover cooked chicken (ya know, from those barbecued chickens at the grocery store) and I was looking for a new way to use it up. I wanted some sort of rice recipe that I could toss everything in a pot and let the oven work its magic. So I started searching online for recipes, but all I could find were recipes where the rice was precooked – and I didn’t want that. So I kind of copied some ingredients from a few different recipes, and then got inventing.

Chicken, Rice and Broccoli Casserole

2 cups rice

2 cups water

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 cup milk

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

Combine all this in your casserole dish and mix it up well. You can adjust your rice/water amount as desired – just use equal portions of both.

For this version, I tossed in:

1 bundle of broccoli

1 onion

Cubed cooked chicken.

(I know I don’t need to mention that everything should be chopped up, and no precooking is required – except the chicken!)

Mix everything up together. Cook it covered at 350 for 45-60 minutes. Check the rice after about 45 minutes to see if it’s cooked. If your rice is done and the mixture is too runny, cook it for a bit longer without the lid. Sprinkle cheese on at the end if you desire and cook until it’s melted.

In my clean-out-the-fridge version, I threw in leftover cooked vegetables, raw cauliflower, and even leftover smoked pork picnic instead of chicken – that was good! Can’t wait til I have zucchini around to throw in, just to annoy my family!

I’ve made it a few times now and it’s always good. The first time I put it on the table, it got more than a few skeptical, curious, turned-up-noses looks from my youngest kids. So I was pleasantly surprised to hear Kat exclaim in a shocked voice, “This doesn’t taste bad at all!”

Lighted Picture Frame Centerpieces

My oldest daughter got married a few months ago and this is what we made for her centerpieces . . .

In our search to find the perfect centerpiece, we had a few parameters we had to meet:

– The tables were round so we didn’t want anything too big or tall – we wanted guests to be able to see everyone sitting at the table with them.

– We wanted something that would give off a little light, to add some warmth to the late October day.

– We wanted something flowery yet personal.

– We wanted something that we could do ourselves!!!

While searching for ideas on Pinterest {how did one plan a wedding before Pinterest? lol} we found the idea for our perfect centerpieces by Martha Stewart – just needed some tweaking to make it our own. Sorry, the link doesn’t work anymore, but the picture is still on my Pinterest Wedding board.

So how did we make them? Get wooden picture frames in multiples of three (Ikea, Dollar stores) in your choice of size and paint them. I painted three frames each a different colour so we could determine which we liked best. We ended up using a chocolate brown paint and the helpful groom did all the painting. Lightly sanding the edges finished it nicely.

The pictures are simply printed off the computer onto vellum paper (it’s translucent and we wanted the candle to glow through). Just have the glass and vellum in your frame, no backing cardboard – unless you aren’t using a candle.

To assemble them, we simply taped them together with a piece of duct tape. Use a colour of tape that won’t show through any cracks that might be there – we used black. We transported them flat and did the final assembly while setting up. We lay the third piece of tape half over one edge and then stood the frames up and pressed from the top and bottom to adhere it to the other frame.

Now – very important – we used battery operated tea light candles – no real flame (but I know you’re all smart enough to know that already). We used flowers to cover the tops of our frames, which is why we didn’t need to paint the inside of the frames. Martha may have done it differently, but this worked for us! I cut triangles of cardboard (out of cereal boxes) in the right size to nicely sit on top of the frames. I glued leaves to all the edges of the cardboard first so no Rice Krispie pictures would show through the flowers! To attach the flowers, I actually poked the two biggest ones through the cardboard and glued them in place. They provided an anchor for me to hot glue all the other flowers up against.

We set our tealight on a block of wood to make it a little higher inside the frames. We chose to make wood bases because we already had the wood. We just needed to cut it and router the edges and then paint, sand and distress the edges.

The bride painting bases, while watching a movie. Not sure why she has a jug of milk there! The family room was a mess of projects for a long time and that plastic was always nearby for painting jobs!

The little doily was the finishing touch! We also tried tying jute around the bottom, about a third of the way up, and it looked cute, but for the wedding, we liked it better without it.

On the head table we used 5×7 frames, and all the rest were 4×6. We used different photo combinations in each as well so no two centerpieces were the same.

The same picture – lit and unlit.Before the first reception – the centerpieces aren’t even glowing yet and we still have some florescent lights on. When all the lights were on the way we planned, the centerpieces looked lovely glowing on every table.The second reception – and again, the centerpieces aren’t glowing yet. But it was so pretty!!!

Another thing I like about these centerpieces is that they pack away so nicely when you open up one side and lay them flat.

They were perfect!!!