mother's day

Visited my mom on Mother's Day and brought her a big hydrangea for her garden. I gave her one last year and it has totally thrived for her, whereas the one in my yard is barely hanging on. There are still things I can learn from her. ^_^

Her garden is getting all dressed up for my sister's wedding, so we all showed up with ideas for the decorations and tried out tablecloths, runners, flower arrangements, etc.

My mom has made a number of little basket vases so we cut some roses from the yard and trimmed some greenery from another bush to give ourselves an idea of how the table bouquets could look. My sister was happy.

 

As you can see, there are also some origami cranes in the arrangement. They are symbols of good fortune so many Japanese American weddings feature cranes in the decor. I've been folding so many for Japan Relief (Intuit is now paying $1 each to Japan's recovery through the month of May!) and now I'm also trying to fold 1,000 cranes for the wedding. Soon my right thumbnail may have a little indention from scoring the paper folds ~ I hope not!

The wedding is a relatively cozy affair but there's still so much to do! I've laid out a basic design for the wedding program, which will probably be a simply bound little booklet with a washi paper cover and some embossed flowers inside. I don't know how to letterpress yet, so this will have to be printed on the regular ole printer ~ too bad ~ but it can still be cute.

I'm also responsible for the guest sign-in frame or book. The couple liked the quick sketch I made of them when they announced their engagement, so it may feature a more polished and colorful version. It's a little casual in look, but since it's a garden wedding it seems OK...

My mother has been really amazing ~ she made all the basket vases plus 100 clay wine cups for the guests to use and take home as favors. They're all glazed in white and have a little stamp on them that she carved to look like a heart, but if you look closely you see it is also a P and T for the couple's initials. Very sweet! My mom is awesome.

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As a mother myself, I received a beautiful orchid, a T-shirt with Naruto and Sasuke characters hand-drawn on the sleeve, two little clay bunnies with a clay bush for them to hop around, a rainbow colored ribbon and a song played on the guitar for me that was invented on the spot and had lines like, "Mom! Is the best in the whole wide world!!" and wasn't too hard to listen to. :)

❀♡♥✿❀♡♥✿