Quick note about Japan and favors

As many of you might have heard, tomorrow is a day of blog silence as a tribute to the devastation in Japan:

Isn't that nifty and a really easy thing to do to show support for Japan?! I thought so too, so even though I am most likely going to get my wedding gown tonight we will all have to wait until Saturday for the announcement, which I am more than happy to wait for, aren't you?

Just one side note today that came to me via Ruffled, and is my new favorite thing that I am super psyched about!

Homemade vanilla extract!!!

It's super easy (not super cheap, but most likely not more expensive than most other favor ideas), I mean ridiculously easy... I mean insultingly easy. Here's the recipe, in telegram style:

Put vanilla beans in vodka or rum. Stop.
Wait 2 months.
Stop.

Yeah, for serious, that's it, and I'm super psyched that I found out about it now, because I have plenty of time to get the beans and let the extract mature.

This, to me, is down-home, wholesome, and rustic, and I love anything vanilla. As an added bonus I've decided to do vanilla beans tucked in the napkins at each place setting instead of herbs as a tie in:

This was my original idea, now just replace the herbs with vanilla beans (I had no idea where else to put herbs and was afraid they looked out of place anyway).

Also, on a side note, this is of little consequence because I've never posted about it before, but at one point I loved the idea of putting coffee beans in the candle glasses:

(This one's from project wedding)

I absolutely love it, I love the color of coffee beans and the smell of fresh coffee beans is to die for, but then I couldn't think of any other way to tie in coffee beans, any way at all. In retrospect, I suppose I could do chocolate-covered espresso beans or something, but I still think incorporating vanilla in different ways is going to be easier than coffee beans, mostly because vanilla beans are long sticks that can get poked into things here and there, coffee beans can't go into a bouquet or a hair accessory.

As a note to anyone who doesn't like vanilla smell, the uncut beans are not too too strong, as long as they stay uncut, also the ballroom is really large, I don't think we have to worry about the smell getting too overwhelming in that space, no more so than with coffee smell... I love both, so everyone else can kind of get over it... :D

Anyway, that's all for me until the weekend. Just some things to think about and please please please pop over to that link from Ruffled to make some homemade vanilla extract for yourself, because I think that it will be so worth it, especially if you are not making 50-100 favors, just for yourself it's very cost effective... seeing as real vanilla extract is ridiculously expensive anyway!

Happy Saint Patty's Day!!!