Poppy and Petunia, plus Snow White

I am feeling on a roll this week! :) I have two new paintings in the shop, the first of which is "Poppy and Petunia." I had been wanting to do a spring-y painting with a bunny :)

Visiting the wonderful Theresa's blog yesterday, I saw her beautiful new Snow White painting (she is doing a series of princesses for an exciting project), and it inspired me to do a Snow White as well! I haven't painted any classic fairytale characters in quite a long time, so I really enjoyed it.

It is so nice to get back into the swing of things. I had so much fun planning the wedding and making decorations, but I must admit it is nice not to have to worry about it anymore and just work on what I

 feel like :)

I hope that all of you are having a lovely week! 

The Castle On The Hill

First of all, I wanted to thank everyone so much for your sweet comments about our wedding :) Each one made us smile. I was so happy to share our photos with you! I am so lucky to have made such wonderful blog friends: you all contributed some bit of inspiration for the wedding in one way or another :)

Here is my latest painting, "The Castle On The Hill." I was feeling ambitious and did a 16"x20"!! That is huge for me! :) It is available here in the shop.

We were lucky enough to go to Disneyland for a few days for a wonderful honeymoon, and one of my favorite parts of the trip was going on the Storybook Land ride. For those of you not familiar with it, it is a little boat ride through a tiny-scale village, complete with houses, windmills and castles. I'm pretty sure we were the only ones above 5 years old on it, but I had a blast ;)

When we got home I couldn't stop thinking about the magic of that tiny village and this little pink castle. So of course I had to paint it! I hope you all like it :)



Happy Spring to you all, and I hope you have a wonderful beginning to your week!

The Wedding!!

Well hello everyone! I am finally back, and I am a very happily married lady!! I am so excited to share these photos with you. It was truly a perfect, fairy-tale day. I would not have changed a single thing. These photos are by our amazing photographer Melissa Millage, with a few of my sister's and mom's mixed in :)

Above is one of the centerpieces. We made these peonies out of crepe paper (many of the decorations were a combined effort of me, my mom, her best friend Tonya, and oftentimes Daniel :) They were so much fun to make but definitely time-consuming! We found the little baskets in the dollar bin at Target, and spray-painted them antique white. Then we filled the baskets with moss. I love the way they turned out.

My shoes



Getting ready!

A special little tree made by my mom, and the card birdcage.

I painted a little portrait of me and Daniel, which we used on the invitations. We also made the guest book completely by hand, starting with two vintage book covers.

Getting my hair and makeup done by my talented friend Ann.

My beautiful sister and maid-of-honor, Michelle

The handsome groom!

 One of the table settings. We made the favors by hand as well--we adhered vintage book pages, copies of vintage postcards, fabric and lace onto matboard, and topped them each off with a butterfly handpainted on muslin. My mom sewed dryer sheets filled with wildflower seeds into little hearts and those were sewed on as well.

Our mini cake and delicious mini cupcakes, made by my amazing friend Geri. She made three different flavors of cupcakes: vanilla, hot chocolate topped with homemade marshmallows, and red velvet with cream cheese icing.



My mom and I made the cupcake stands ourselves out of thrift store glass candleholders and plates (thank you to Geri for the great idea!)

I painted a little Lauren and Daniel on kokeshi dolls for the cake topper :)



My crepe paper flower bouquet. My mom gave me the amazing antique bouquet holder as an engagement gift.

The flowers were perfectly in bloom that day!

My mom made the beautiful little ring box.

My sister Michelle Startzman very kindly made our gorgeous rings by hand! She is an amazingly talented metalworker.

Michelle and Daniel's best man James, ready to go out!

My beautiful mom walked me down the aisle.

And I married the man of my dreams!

It was truly a perfect day, and we really had a blast. I can't stop smiling every time I look at the photos and relive those beautiful moments.