Big news- I got engaged this weekend!
In the Pakistani culture, we often like to celebrate the momentous event with family and close friends at home. This involves plenty of pictures, sweets, and gifts. One of my favorite parts of all of it, of course, is getting to decorate the house and DIY anything and everything I can. I wanted to document the huge DIY project a family friend and I took upon ourselves to complete here. Almost all of it was very simple- between interviews and trying to coordinate a million other details, I didn't have time to create anything that would be too complicated or time consuming (as much as I wanted to!). I stuck to a few basics (glittery stuff, flowers, candles) with a gold and red theme. I've divided it up into multiple posts focusing on the major decorations we DIY'ed.
I think it turned out pretty darn well!
This was the main sitting area for my fiance and me, so we wanted it to be the focal point of all the decor. The decoration piece I loved the most was the flower petals garland hanging above.
Flowers had to be somewhere in the mix. While the idea of creating garlands with fresh flower petals seemed beautiful, it would have gotten really pricey really quickly. Additionally, we would have to get the flowers last minute so they would stay fresh and it all seemed like too much of a hassle. Instead, I bought a bunch of red silk flowers (carnations, roses, pretty much anything red with big enough petals) with a few gold glittery ones. I cut up all of the flowers so I had a bunch of loose petals that I then sewed together through the sewing machine with a red thread. So simple. I ended up sewing over 150 ft. of this stuff!
The first place I hung the petals was over the mantle. The gold fabric underneath was from a craft store that provided a good contrast against the red petals. Using masking tape, we taped each individual garland at the top and then placed red fabric on top of the mantle to cover up the masking tape.
Next was creating an overhead piece with the petals. I used masking tape to tape the garland at the central area, and used pushpins on the other end. This part was definitely my favorite. To then cover up the masking tape, we create three flower puffs out of gold tulle and pinned them up.
Lastly, to my surprise, we still had leftover petals. I hung the remainder up in the kitchen above the kitchen table (the kitchen table light fixture happened to have the perfect coordinating colors!), and added some to a bare wall in the family room sitting area.
I'll be adding more about how I used tulle and other small DIYs from the event later this week!
