Gilding the Lillies (and daisies, and roses...)

I am working of getting ready for a friend's wedding. Since the rule of life is "you can spend money or you can spend time"--I am spending time. This friend, Miss A, is beautiful, creative and fun, and she is marrying a great guy. I am excited to create a wedding that is as beautiful and fun as they are!

Last week I made her bouquet. It turned out adequate. Lots of daisies and white roses and lilies (her flower choices). Beautiful, but...lacking. So pulling inspiration from and old copy of you-know-who (Martha Stewart, darn it all!)--who in keeping with her usual ratio of one good idea every 40 pages (truly, in her books and her magazines, that is the usual!), I carefully applied glue to the edges of a few of the flowers and dusted them with superfine ("diamond dust")glitter. They look awesome! And they perked the bouquet up, and made it sparkly and bright (along with some well placed gems in the centers of a few flowers) just like Miss A!

I have also glittered the cut out letters for the hanging banner with their names on it, paper tussy-mussys for the bridesmaids bouquets, more flowers for the corsages and boutonnieres. Lots of glitter!

The down side is:

To quote my brother in law: "Glitter is the herpes of the craft world. Once you have it, you can never get rid of it!". And I have glitter everywhere.

Winter Wonderland

Today, I dropped off the car at the mechanics for an oil change (which reminded me of my favorite sign at a quick lube place: "How long has it REALLY been?") and I walked home. It is so beautiful today--the sky is a bright clear blue, all the sunlight is gold and it reflects and sparkles on the snow diamonds and all the shadows are blue/purple/gray. The time and temp sign at the bank says it's 21 degrees, which explains why it is so sparkly--it has to be fairly warm (relatively speaking!) to snow, but when it gets really cold it crystallizes all the surface snow so it is bright reflective prisms. It is very beautiful--although the wind was a bit brisk.

That last storm (the one where I could hear the flakes) was an ice storm that dropped ice pellets for hours and made a thick crust over everything. Walking across it is an adventure! SmallDaughter LOVES it--but she can easily walk on the crust--not so for me--every few steps I break through up to my shins!

Also, it froze the barn door shut, so I have to wait for the sun to warm things up a little before I can go feed the chickens!