Grandfather Mountain, NC

So my wife and I visited Grandfather Mountain today. The views along the Blue Ridge Parkway and up the mountain were gorgeous as always.

The leaves are well past their prime and are mostly gone; though there are still a few patches of red here and there.


This is a 360 view of the craft center we stopped at on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It used to be a manor house for a wealthy textile manufacturer.


This is a 360 view of the top of Grandfather Mountain, on the far side of the Mile-High Swinging Bridge (called that because it is 1 mile above sea level)



This is the view from the top of Grandfather Mountain.

Our alternative guest book

We wanted to do something fun for our guest book. I found so many great ideas on the internet. My favorite one was fingerprint guest book. Here are some great options that I found: 

These ones are from the "Bleu de Toi" shop on Etsy.com

This one is also from Etsy shop - Silhouette weddings

We liked the idea a lot and all these designs were great. However, we wanted to make it very personal. My husband and I met in Boston and had been planning our wedding there and we wanted to have this "Boston theme" to be incorporated in our guest book; so, I contacted my ex-roommate (she is an art and design major and definitely was the right person to go to) to help me with this project that I had in mind.

After brainstorming we came up with this:

We did Boston skyline (with main landmarks of the city); as our wedding was in Boston harbor we also included the actual Boat that we had our wedding on; and of course fireworks were suppose to be actual fingerprint signatures that our guests would leave for us :) I absolutely love how this turned out.

Here is what we have now:

If you like this idea, you can write me and I would love to put you in contact with the person who helped me  with this project. 

Wedding bouquet

Vision: For my bouquet I wanted something very soft and delicate. I was mostly looking into light pink and white colors with pop of yellow, green and fusia.

That is what my wonderful florist end up making:

Peonies & Roses my bridal bouquet

And my bridesmaids bouquets: 

Hot pink roses and callas for  my bridesmaids 

In the Sky

These pictures were taken from the plane when I flew to Russia. It is amazing how small everything looks from up above :)

Somewhere above the Udmurt Republic

And I have one more picture with seagulls that I took at Miami beach :)

Seagrove

This past weekend I got lucky to join three wonderful ladies to go pottery shopping in Seagrove, NC. I've never done anything like that before and was very excited. My husband and I recently took pottery classes at NC State (Introduction to the wheel); I must say it is much harder than it looks :)

Back to the trip: we left early in the morning and it was pouring...by the time we got to Seagrove area the rain has stopped and the sky has cleared and we got nice sunny fall day.  We went to see a bunch of very nice shops, saw a lot of great things as well as purchased some :)

I learned about very interesting techniques (Alligator skin; horse hair; crystal; etc.) Knowing how these artists make their pots really makes you appreciate it! I took so many great pictures, here are some of them:

Label:
Nature Pot
This Vase was made by a bug

We saw a lot of puppies; all were very cute and friendly:

Here are some more pictures from the trip:

Purple Shamrock