Hitched

It’s official: my baby brother is all grown up and married. The wedding was wonderful. I had an amazing time, not only partying with family which is always a blast, but just to see my brother marry the girl he loves. And seeing someone who loves him that much, enough to pledge her love and life to him. At the church, I sat with my family, and there was not a dry eye in our row. What a powerful bond is made in that moment. God no longer views us as two separate individuals but as a husband and wife bound by a sacred covenant, that models and symbolizes the unshakeable, everlasting love He has for us. I love seeing them happy. I have found such joy from marrying the love of my life and I am just overjoyed when those I love experience it as well. And I am just thrilled to have a new sister, Kelly! She’s just awesome, and they’re great together. She's such a fun addition to our family, feels like we've known her forever. I'm so proud of Justin.

For as long as we both shall live

I have always been a crafty person. I don’t really consider myself “artistic”, but crafty, yes. My whole life I’ve taken on little projects. As a kid, my Christmas lists were not filled with toys, but with craft kits. I had an extensive “How to Draw ___” book collection. 

This has carried on to my adult years, and I have had another project in the works for a little while. I have been wanting to do something with our wedding vows ever since we got married. I love our wedding vows. Silly thing to say, I know, but I do. We sort of wrote our vows together, more in the way that we took a whole bunch of already written vows and took out the pieces that we connected with and wanted for our marriage. Things that we wanted to promise to each other in front of family and friends to remember for the rest of our lives.

I have always wanted to post them in our home. They mean so much to me. They symbolize us, as people, as husband and wife, as children of God. So finally, close to four years later, I finally did it! And I’m so happy with how it turned out:

 

 I mulled over the project for some time now, thought of different ways to display it, but I landed on something pretty simple, just off-white letters painted on stained wood, but I love it. It was fairly time consuming, but I love projects like this—projects that that are meticulous and detailed and take forever to complete. I am really good at focusing and I get lost in the projects and will do them for hours and lose track of time and realize I haven’t taken a break or eaten or gone to the bathroom in hours. I get in the zone and I don’t want to stop until I’m done.

I tried out two new things that I don’t have much experience doing but fell in love with: staining wood and transfer paper. Both easy but produce beautiful results. Here’s the process:

1. I bought a bunch of pine boards from Lowe's and nailed them together. There are materials that would be cheaper, but I now live in an apartment and don't have my sander here, so I had my limitations.

 

2. Stained the wood and let it dry. Staining is way cooler than painting. I'm in love. 

3. This step was the longest. I figured out what I wanted on the computer and then printed it all out, cut it down to size, taped it to white transfer paper, lined it up to make sure it would be straight, and got to work tracing the letters. 

4. Then I painted over it, and that's it! Meticulous and time consuming work, but I enjoyed doing it.

Simple, right? But I couldn’t be happier with the results. I love looking at it hanging above the fireplace (which was Andy's role in this, thank you!!!). I love the way it looks, of course, but most of all, I love what it represents and I love the man who said these words to me almost 4 years ago.