~~<~~@ QOTD 7/8/10 @~~>~~

As FI and prepare to give our DIY projects a good push this weekend...

What are some tips you can share about your DIY projects that you wished someone told you about?

FI and I are making a home brew as our favors/escort cards. I wished someone told us about the sudden combustion of beer bottles! We've lost about 3 beers because of bottles suddenly exploding! We think it has to do with the priming sugar and perhaps those bottles being filled slightly too high?
Regardless, lesson learned and when we transport them to NYC next weekend we'll be painstakingly individually wrapping each bottle in saran wrap just in case one explodes on the ride back.
Losing 1 or 2 bottles to combustion is fine...it's the beer that leaks onto the labels of other bottles that's the bigger PITA.

DIY projects? Whats that?

I found out that I am not crafty and cant do anything!

i wish i realized how long some projects really took before starting....

for example, DH is 100% italian, so i know we were going to have some confetti/jordan almonds at the wedding. but i wanted a unique way to give them.

i found these jordan almond flower things that you can make. i saw the video tutorial and it looked sooo easy, so i bought them and planned to use them as placecards. it was one of the first big wedding purchases we bought cuz they werent that cheap.

so of course we needed to wait till close to the wedding to do it, since (1) its edible and (2) they are placecards. welllll....this project took foreverrr!!!!!

sure, it was relatively easy....but OMG...doing 170 of them, each with 5 almonds and a place card took foreverrrrrrr.

had i know that, i dont think i would have done it! it literally took us over the span of 3-4 days to complete (thankfully DH finished the project for us, so i cant even acurately give a time)

I had high hopes of doing a lot of DIY projects but quickly realized I have no time for them!! I did do a few...baskets, invites, table numbers. They all were a lot more tedious then I had anticipated, which is why I started outsourcing so many others! My last DIY project may be program fans...we shall see if I get motivated.

1. plan for things taking at least twice as long as you think they will - I wish i knew how long things actually took before i started diying them

2. don't expect your projects to turn out exactly as you picture them - they are never 100% perfect in your eyes

3. don't take on more diy projects than you can handle!

Cut the boxes for the cardbox and THEN wrap it.