paper & clocks: how we celebrated our first wedding anniversary

Mr. Q and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary yesterday.  The first Monday after the 4th of July holiday is always a really tough one for him at work, so I wanted our house to be really cheerful when he came home - and to remind him of our wedding!  I am an equal-opportunity flower buyer; I picked up some purple chrysanthemums at Fresh Market and put them in an assortment of milk glass pieces from our wedding and glass jars decorated with washi tape (inspired by A Creative Mint) and pinwheels from our wedding (book page pinwheels by aubabi78 on Etsy).  I was feeling crafty and it was time to turn some of those ideas I've been saving on Pinterest into reality!

The traditional gift for the first wedding anniversary is paper; common gifts include artwork, books, memory albums, gift certificates, maps to special destinations, and concert or movie tickets.  The modern gift is a clock, watch, or sundial.  We chose to treat ourselves to... none of the above.

BIKES!

They have gears like clocks?  I also presented Mr. Q with a gift I shamelessly copied from the Internet...

I had seen Jennifer's date jar idea on Pinterest a while back and thought it would be perfect for those days when we want to have some sort of adventure but are tired of doing dinner and a movie or window shopping at the antique mall.  Instead of dying my craft sticks I used star stickers to denote dates that require money and planning (college basketball game, play at a local theater), money but no planning (wine tasting at a local vineyard, dinner and a movie), planning but no money (free Saturday at the art museum, hiking trip), and staying at home (homemade pizza, Firefly marathon!).  I came up with 45 dates in all for no other reason than that's all that would fit in my jar.

Another Pinterest idea (inspired by Brooklyn Limestone's Raven dishes) was to make cake plates with verses from our first dance songs and lines from our ceremony readings.  I used the Sharpie method from A Beautiful Mess and plates from the dollar store.  Mr. Q really loves them because they are one of a kind and in my handwriting.

In case any planning brides out there are wondering about the sanity of keeping a layer of wedding cake in the freezer for a year- our cake was edible.  It was wrapped in two layers of plastic wrap and in a box and we put it in the refrigerator to thaw last week.  The chocolate cake part was pretty good; the vanilla buttercream frosting had turned to something more like pure sugar.  We had saved a bottle of wedding champagne and had a toast with the flutes I won from Weddingbee (planning brides, the best advice I can get you is to enter those blog giveaways like it's your job!).  It was a simple and sweet first wedding anniversary celebration put together with love.

Linking up to the Summer Pinterest Challenge at Centsational Girl, Young House Love, Bower Power and Ten June!