one a day keeps the worries away

As I have mentioned before, my husband is away with the military.  Even before he left I got a countdown app on my phone and counted down the days until he left.

Once he left, I moved onto counting down until I get to fly to Texas and kiss and hug and love on my soldier!!

I mentioned my little countdown on Facebook.  Don't worry I'm not one of those who put the number of days to go EVERY day on my status!  Just from time to time, really.  Well, a friend commented on my post with an absolutely fabulous idea for a countdown and I wanted to share it with you.

sweet treat

I've seen these little treats all over 'blog land' lately and I knew I wanted to give them a try, I just didn't have an opportunity to do so.  My friend Bethany loves marshmallows (marshies, as she calls them!).  Her birthday was a few weeks ago and I knew that this would be the perfect birthday treat for her!  While I was at it, I made some Valentine ones also, for my co-workers.  These little treats  were SO simple to make and they all loved them.  This is a treat that would be perfect for children.

a thrifty sugar addicts dream

Photo by Lauren Mason, Piccadilly pictur

I have been married for little over two months, my older sister will be getting married in less than two weeks and my best friend is getting married in less than a year (on my on year anniversary, actually).  So, you will have to excuse me if I have wedding on the brain!  Not to mention I have a grand dream of becoming a wedding planner (see Simply Unique Weddings and Events).  The project I thought I would share is a candy buffet, which was in full swing at my wedding.  My sweet tooth was completely fulfilled and the budget was kept to...what a beautiful accomplishment!  First, I  decided on the candy I HAD to have.  I knew this would probably be the pricey part, so I braced myself.  My wedding colors were orange and brown and the candies I wanted so dearly were rock candy, circus peanuts, orange slices and tootsie rolls.  Now, I had more than that, those were just the ones that I couldn't budge on...my sweet tooth would not allow it.In the photos I found online I saw gorgeous apothecary jars (the ones that look like they used in old-time pharmacy stores) with a not as pretty price tag.  The jars were upwards of $30 a pop!  Uh, no thanks! Don't get me wrong, they were so pretty and shiny and it was hard to be so cruel to such pretty decor but, I stood my ground.  I knew I wanted glass containers so that the colors of the candy would show through, a light bulb went off (well, technically turned on...but anyways) glass vases!  My husband and I are quite the lovers of a good thrift store, we visit them often.  I began searching at every one I came to for the perfect vases and canisters.  I looked for vases with a wide opening, that didn't taper in very much so that my guest could dig into the delicious treats!  SCORE!  I actually found more jars than I had candy ideas so duh, I added more candies to the mix!  I even had my mom searching for glass containers.  All in all, we spent a total of about $40 on the jars for the candy buffet! What? That's right...40 big ones for ALL of them.  As you can tell in the picture, we added some pizazz with different size ribbons (held on with double sided Scotch tape) and labels printed on card stock.

Now, the canisters were cheap so that we could spend more on the candy...and boy did we ever.  We still shopped around and bought in bulk to save some money though, we spent about $200 on the candy.  I had about 120 guests at my wedding and there was candy left over (that was gone soon after).  I now use vases in my home as decoration and also have used them to decorate for my sisters bridal shower.  Her wedding has a beach theme so I put some sand in the vast with shells, sea grass and a starfish as decoration on the cake table.  You can see pictures of that project at www.wix.com/mrspeluyera/unique-wed, I think they turned out great, but I am a wee bit partial!