A Productive Night

Now that we have the kitchen and the family room all set up, we can kind of ignore the rest of the house for a little bit, and start focusing back on the wedding.  We've been doing small little house projects, but it's hard to get things done during the week when we don't get home until 6, and then need to figure out dinner, so small wedding tasks are less tiring, and less involved than some of the things that need to be done to the house, not to mention the wedding is way more time sensitive.

So, this past weekend, my mom and I decided to start up with the centerpieces again.  Over the course of a few months, my FMIL and I went to 3 or 4 different Michaels stores to get these little glass vases.  Since I had stopped purchasing them in April and then had them packed for moving, we took them out of their box and packing paper to see them looking like this:

Cloudy and Dirty Vases / Personal Picture

Also, some were chipped and cracked, so I am happy that I ended up having two tables worth of extras. Not sure if this was from the move (likely) or just that I had purchased them that way. Honestly, I was so stressed about whether or not I would end up finding enough in my area that I didn't really inspect them before purchasing.  I guess I should have done that, since I ended up finding them relatively easily.  

After breaking them out though, we decided to give them a nice bath before actually working with them.

Clean sparkly vases, thanks to my mom! / Personal Picture

While I was drying all the vases, my mom got to work pulling all of the flower heads off of the stems that they came on.  Thankfully, this was very easy.  

De-flowering the stems, LOL! / Personal Picture

And it turns out that we had so many more than what we needed!  This next picture only shows half of the stash that I ended up with.  Good thing these things were so cheap, otherwise that would have ended up as a total waste of money instead of only a little waste of money.  

Half the flower stash / Personal Picture

After sorting all the flowers by color, we arranged the vases in groups of four, which is how they will be placed on each table.  We then chose the best looking flowers from each color, and placed one in each vase.

Since I was having such a hard time with getting the flowers to not float to the surface in the Jell-O, I decided to hot glue the flowers to the bottom inside of the vase, so we each got a glue gun (yes, we had three and recruited my sister to help) and glued them in place.

Flower glued to vase / Personal Picture

After letting them dry overnight in the empty china cabinet, we decided to try one with the Jell-O to see how it looked.

All the flowers glued / Personal Picture

The centerpieces take a regular box of Jell-O, and cut the amount of water in half in order to make it set better at room temperature.

1 box of Jell-O mixed with 1/2 cup of boiling water / Personal Picture

Mixing the Jell-O and hot water until smooth / Personal Picture

Adding 1/2 cup of cold water to the mixture / Personal Picture

Then, after the Jell-O was mixed together, I poured it over the flower that was glued to the bottom of the vase.

Slowly pouring the Jell-O over the flower / Personal Picture

The stirring created some bubbles at the top of the Jell-O, so I just used my finger to pop them, although I guess you could also use a toothpick or something other than your hands.

Popping the air bubbles at the surface / Personal Picture

I stuck the vase in the fridge overnight, and the next morning, it looked awesome!

Hardened Jell-O with the flower (and some condensation from being removed from the fridge) - Sorry about the barcode. This was a test vase used at the last minute, so it didn't get peeled off! / Personal Picture

I think this is actually going to work! Only 48 more to go, since this was a test vase (had a chip off one of the corners).

Are you using Jell-O for anything in your wedding? Yeah, I didn't think so.  :)