Andy's Idea Factory

Some people aren't planning honeymoons any more... and this year is probably the best example of that. So how can you make the break happen while keeping it in the budget? The easiest is asking for much of it in gifts, because those are inevitable, look into the many creative options you gave give your guests in lieu of placemats, glassware, and picture frames. If you've loaded a wedding website for your guests, include some of these ideas on the "gifts" page or in the literature you mail out, so they know in advance that you'd like to trade gifts in for honeymoon help! 1. Condo, cabin, or RV usage ~ ask for the gifted usage of a lake house, RV, RCI membership week, or employee family discount to help offset the costs of lodging during your stay. 2. Airfare points ~ many of these programs will expire unused airline points, so using them will actually benefit both parties. 3. Activities, dining, etc ~ put a few activities at your honeymoon destination that will e...

This was one topic I struggled with for sure... table cloths and color accents? Window decor with light catchers? Hanging lamps or additional lighting? Chair covers? Flowers on the table, tall or short? Placecard colors and font? OMG! It was overwhelming once we'd decided on our location because the options were limitless and we didn't have a wedding planner to help make those decisions. Personally, I'm more of a simple person, and our budget wasn't limitless (as most people's aren't) so I struggled between wanting to make it beautiful and frankly not giving a damn. :) So I met myself somewhere in between, and I think so should you... GENERAL DECOR First, go back to your colors. What are your bridesmaids wearing, what colors did you choose for flowers, or what are your favorite colors in general? Typically those snappy wedding experts say to stick with only 2-3 colors, unless you want it to look like a circus, and marry (excuse the pun) those colors with you...

Last week we started a Wedding Season 101 series of helpful hints for brides-to-be. We got married in 2006 and spent an entire year preparing. These tips are just my helpful hints that we discovered along the way for those of you who aren't enlisting the help of a wedding planner. This week I've got two more ideas for you for the wedding-day party favors. We'd been to over twenty weddings before we got married ourselves, five or six just in the 18 months between our engagement and the I-Dos, so we gathered a good deal of ideas to sort through before we came up with our own. We'd seen rice sachets, seed packets, music cds, and beer cozies, and wanted to give something that people would definitely use but would still remember our wedding by without necessarily being reminded of it with the cheesy text "Andy and Craig's wedding day" on it. We wound up compromising. 1. First was my mother's great idea from her knitting closet. She wanted to give the ...

Last week I started a series on Wedding Ideas but realized this weekend I needed to halt that for a week for the most important day of the year: MOTHER'S DAY! Mom is Number One, so how do we treat her so? Here are some ideas I've gathered over the years of DIY presents as well as those last-minute ideas you can do if it's Friday and you've forgotten to mail the mom's day gift! First, if you can get something out today, DO. One thing we forget is that you can't mail a card this week and expect it to get there in the usual amount of time. The USPS dubs this week as one of the busiest weeks of the year, second only to the entire month of December, so don't forget to allow for all those extra cards in the mail along with yours! Now down to the nitty gritty... DIY ideas first. 1. MOM'S RECIPES/COOK BOOK. The best idea I've heard this year was actually in honor of a mother who had passed away, but I think it's an even better idea for a gift. Take a...

As wedding season approaches and my wedding industry friends begin to hustle and bustle, I thought to share some of the Idea Factory lightbulbs from our own wedding in 2006. This will be a multi-part series of four topics: Prep, Gifts, Decor, and Honeymoon. Today's topic, PREP, is to help you get organized. Wedding planning is a long process with many facets, and doing it all on your own is daunting, so enlisting a good team and organizing your process is vital. We didn't enlist a wedding planner, but these tips can help you help your wedding planner too if you get one. Aside from the heavy duty first decisions like size, venue, band, and dress, you're going to have some smaller decisions that are just as important. There aren't many tricks to buckling down and making these decisions, so helping get the little ones sorted first will ease your mind. Here are three ideas to start... 1. Once you decide a location, you should send out your Save-The-Dates. We struggled ...

Re-Gift: something that you've gotten as a gift but either don't like, doesn't fit, or you won't ever use and you either put it in the Salvation Army pile or you (gasp!) throw it out. This touchy subject brings up several notions of "white elephant" and "gag" presents and Etiquette 101 from grandma. But you either regift or you don't, and if you do, here are some helpful tips to making sure you're not faux-pas-ing yourself into the BadGirl corner where you may never receive any gifts ever again! (Perish the thought!) I learned about regifting when I was a very small girl. As an only child, my gifts piled up after each holiday, and my "oh-so-thoughtful" mother started a wonderful ritual for me that I always assumed everyone did... after a big loot-earning holiday we'd assess my toy box. At about 2'x4'x2', there wasn't much room in this storage bench for all the toys. So before putting the new toys in there,...

A few weeks back I added two posts for making your own face products. Along that same home-factory-idea line is the typical bath salt. I laugh when I see them in the store for $15, when it's often only $1 of Epsom or Sea Salt and a few drops of essential oil, plus $10 of preservatives you DON'T want on your body! I making salt baths more regularly after a car accident several years ago that left my back in a pretty poor state of health. I was taking a pain-bath about 3-4x a week and it helped immensely. Now I take them for all sorts of reasons: relaxation, menstral cramps, headaches, chest colds, aching muscles, and psoriasis flare-ups. The salt is the base to this so let's start there! SALT First, all salts are sea salts either mined as rock or evaporated from the saline solution. Sea salt is sodium chloride, and is used in cooking and cosmetics. "Dead Sea Salt" is proven to have the highest content of body-healing minerals it it, from the Dead Sea. Table s...