My Very First Bridal Shower

Two very special women, Denise and Margie (who are like my second mothers) threw a bridal shower for me a few weeks ago. And it was so gorgeous!

They went with the our wedding pattern of black and white damask, with accents of yellow. I loved everything!

They had the cutest touches throughout the whole shower, including these amazing mimosas with YELLOW sugar! Isn’t that cute!?

Denise also made delicious quiche for lunch. It was tasty (I didn’t get a photo of it though)!

I about died over the sweetness of this beautiful tea set! 

The cupcakes that I requested for the shower.

On the left we have "Tiny Bubbles” which is champagne cake with champagne buttercream frosting. Dee-lish! And on the right we have “Char’s Lemon Love” which is lemon cake frosted with vanilla buttercream with fresh lemon zest sprinkled on top. So good! My friend Holly has started her own cupcake business – Hollywood’s Cupcakes – and they are amazing! She even added a special touch and baked them in damask cupcake liners for me. :)

Thought I’d throw a picture of myself with my spray tan, just for kicks. ;) 

Kevin and I were gifted some amazing items. I’d love to list them all for you but I’m afraid this is already getting a tad long. To sum it up, we got a lot of great kitchen stuff – which we’re so grateful for!

As you can tell, I really liked this gift that my bestie Alison got me. I believe this picture was taken as I was in the process of saying “I’ve wanted this cookbook for FOREVER!” 

And here are some photos of a lot of my favorite people who came far and wide to attend my shower. Love. Them. All!

MIL, Grandma Hank (she was able to leave her nursing home for a few hours to join in on the celebration which meant so much to me because she won’t be able to attend our wedding :( ), Grandma Ruth and Mom

Alison and me (do you see Margie in the background!? ha!) 

 Mama and me

Maygan and me

 Mom, me, Kevin’s grandmother Helen and my MIL Debbie

 Breanna and me. She flew from quite a distance to be there that day. It made my day. :)

My aunt Cindy, me and my cousin Carley 

And I can’t forget about these girls: Alana, Emily (who we found out that weekend is expecting!!!!) and Maygan. Love them! 

It was a beautiful shower and I’m so thankful for all who came and the time and effort that Margie and Denise put into it all. Thank you!

XOXO,

Keeping It Real

To be perfectly honest: life is crazy right now. Along with the wedding there are some changes coming up (that I can’t really go into detail about right now) that have added a lot to our already over-flowing plate. Because of this, I haven’t found any time to stay organized and I feel so frazzled.

A lot of times bloggers like to portray their best light when journaling their lives. Since I also use this blog as my journal, I wanted to document this time in our lives when things aren’t going exactly perfect and what it looks like.

This morning the wooden frame on our bed broke. So this was our room, completely torn apart for most of the day while Kevin fixed the frame. At least the carpet underneath our bed got a good vacuuming! ;)

Our office has been severely neglected. Wedding stuff has taken over, along with everything else that hasn’t yet found a home.

Our poor spare bedroom – aka my closet – is a disaster, isn’t it?! I try to pretend that this room doesn’t exist when it looks like this.

And the never-ending piles of laundry. *sigh* 

I spent most of today cleaning the house (the office included) and tackling some of the laundry. The bed is fixed and clean sheets are on it. The spare bedroom will have to wait until tomorrow.

I’ve always been someone that has to have things be organized, clean, neat, tidy, run like a well-oiled machine (you get the point) to function. And that’s just not happening right now. But, I’m thankful that God has blessed me with an amazing fiancé who will cook and clean the kitchen, and also help fold the laundry. I’m always thankful that God is teaching me the values of patience and priorities. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure I’d have lost my ever-loving mind by this point. Ha!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I also wanted to say thank you to all those who have served, and continue to serve to protect our great country.

God bless,

You're Invited...

To take a peek at our invites! :)

Invitation

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RSVP Card


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Additional Information Card


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I took out some of the information for privacy sake. I really want to show you our wedding website, but I think I'll do that once we're married. But just so you know, I was able to find a wedding website design that matched perfectly with our invitations.

Since the invites only came in black and white, I had the inner envelopes lined in red. I also sealed them with red wax and the initial "P." We got a lot of compliments on that little touch.


Not the best picture. They looked better in person, but you get the gist of it.


Kevin liked the wax seal because he said it reminded him of the red wax that's on the Maker's Mark bottle. Ha! Men...

I got two of these baskets at my bridal shower (that I'm still trying to get to post!) and they have come in so handy for keeping all the invitation stuff together!

We've already received some RSVP's so that makes me happy. :)

If you're not married, let me just tell you that when you get engaged and get ready to send out your invites, round up some helpers because it's quite a process. Kevin was sweet enough to help fold things, but I think in our case the wax seal was what took the longest. I may or may not have finally stopped about halfway through to watch a YouTube video on how to use the wax and seal. But that's beside the point. ;)

Hope you all enjoy your three-day weekend!

This and That

Well hello there!

I have tried to blog for the past three days and stupid LiveWriter will not upload my post about my bridal shower! I tried a million times last night and it was still giving me grief. So until I can figure that whole thing out, you get this. ;)

• My heart goes out to all those who've experienced devastation due to the horrible tornadoes. I can't even imagine what they must be going through.

• I officially started WW up again as of one week ago. So far so good. The first couple days I just could not get a handle on their new PointsPlus system. But I've gotten the hang of it since then. I don't really know how much I've lost in a week (because our scale is broken) but I'd place a pretty good bet that I've lost about three pounds. I can definitely tell with the way my clothes have been fitting, and my ring is loose. :)

• I've found a new obsession: Pinterest. I heard about it from Katie. It's been so great to "Pin" wedding ideas and such, and getting other ideas from other "Pinners." You have to be approved or invited to join Pinterest, so if you'd like an invite, let me know (leave your email in the comments section) and I'll invite you.

• Speaking of comments, has anyone else experienced issues with leaving comments on peoples' blogs? It seems like I have, but only comments where they are on the actual blog and it doesn't open up to the separate page for blog comments.

• Wedding planning is in FULL FORCE now. We're coming up on two months. Pretty much everything is taken care of, it's just now ordering stuff and putting ideas together and finalizing things. June and July are going to be busy months for us so we're really trying to plan ahead. Thankfully our families have been super helpful with everything.

• Yesterday, our I.T. Guy here at work had a seizure in our office! It was so scary. The ambulance had to take him away and everything. I guess he's epileptic (none of us ever knew), but doesn't really take care of it like he should. The seizure he had in our office yesterday was his second one of the day! Apparently he's had a seizure in almost every office he's visited. Not good...

• On Sunday I trimmed my own hair and bangs. *GASP!* I know. When I told Mom, her exact words were "You're brave." Ha! More like crazy considering the wedding is coming up. But no worries, it actually looks great. It needed a little trim and my bangs were crazy long. It feels so much better.

• Kevin's out of town tonight and tomorrow night so I get to catch up on all my shows that are no less than two months old. :)

• My friend who had the twins 10 weeks early, one of the twins got to go home last week! What a praise! I'm not sure if I can post pictures of them yet, so I'll ask when I see them all on Monday.

• Our invitations went out on Monday. Eeeeek! So far we've received a lot of compliments on them, which is a relief. I don't know why I care about what some people think sometimes. I shouldn't. Anyways, I'll show them to you tomorrow.

• Every time that time of the month rolls around I have the weirdest dreams! Sometimes I won't really remember what I dreamt exactly, but I do know that they were weird. I used to keep track of the dreams I had, but never kept up with it. Do any of you keep a journal of your dreams?

• We saw Bridesmaids last weekend and it was hilarious! Want to know what was also hilarious? That you could tell that there were some older women who went to the movie thinking they were going to watch some sweet, romantic, cute chick-flick. So when the raunchy parts appeared on that big screen - boy were they in for a surprise!

• We're going to see Hangover 2 this weekend. I'll let you know how it is (which it will probably be great)! And I'm pretty sure there won't be any older women there expecting a romantic comedy. Ha!

The end.

Spray Tanning

I am not a fan.

Sorry.

I had asked you all what your experience was with the whole spray tanning thing, and those who commented gave me a pretty good indication of what it was like. Thank you! :)

I got sprayed by a lady and it wasn’t the most comfortable thing I’ve ever done. I thought that once you got sprayed that that was it. But noooo…I had to be dried off with a blow dryer and then she had to pat areas to “buff” the spray tan tuff in. Is that how it usually is? It was weird. I was sticky and felt so dirty for approximately 12 hours after that until  I was able to take a shower the next morning and even then I couldn’t use soap! I felt quite orange-ish too for a few days after that (maybe she didn’t mix the right color for me?).

So needless to say, I won’t be getting another spray tan. I’m glad I tried it though! I’ll probably be sticking to laying out in our backyard (when it finally decides to get sunny) and I may possibly try out the L’Oreal Sublime Bronze Towelettes that Kelly posted about a while ago.

 

I don’t know what it is about not wanting to be pasty white, but I do know one thing: fat looks better brown! ;)

The end.

I feel old…

Because my SIL just graduated from the University of Reno! It seems like just yesterday that she got her driver’s license, then graduated from high school, then I was giving her advice about how to enjoy her college years as much as she could. Now she’s gone and finished school in four years, she’s studied abroad in Italy, she started her new job this week and is living all on her own! Therefore, I feel old. ;)

This past weekend everyone made the trip up to Reno to help Courtney celebrate her graduation. Friday night after work Kevin and I made our way up there and we made it to the hole-in-the-wall Sands Casino, which was to be our home away from home for a couple days. After we checked in we got into a major little argument, but soon got over it and tried to focus on the great reason we made the trip in the first place.

Saturday we got up at the butt-crack of dawn and made it to Court’s graduation by 8am (yes…I said 8am). Here’s Courtney getting ready to walk the stage – somewhere up there.

 

And a few more pictures of her and her family.

Kevin and his little sis

Courtney and her dad, Barry (my future FIL)

 Debbie (MIL), Court and Barry

 Courtney and her big brothers (I love this picture of the three of them)

After her graduation we headed to their aunt and uncle’s house (which is beautiful, btw) and had a BBQ. And of course more pictures were taken…

 This picture is pretty much priceless!

Before Court’s graduation Kevin had been going back and forth about what to get her. Then I came up with the brilliant idea that we should get her a Kindle! Pretty sure she LOVED it…

Afterwards, we went back to the hotel and napped then met up with Court and others for a night on the town.

 Me, ready to get my drink on!

Just a nice photo to document the night. :)

Sunday we were able to sleep in (PTL!) and met up for breakfast, then we were on our way. Or so we thought…

No my friends, your eyes do not deceive you. What you are viewing right now is a snow storm in the MIDDLE. OF. MAY! We were *this close* to getting stuck in it. Thank you Sweet Baby Jesus that I just had new tires put on my truck and we had the chains in the trunk. Otherwise, we would’ve been stuck overnight.

We made it home safe and sound and had a great trip. We’re so proud of you Frug!

Worries, Jitters, Nerves...Whathaveyou

I have some posts that are just sitting waiting to be posted, but I need to explain my worries first.

It's finally hit me this week that I'm. Getting. Married in 79 days! And that people will be looking at me on my wedding day. Being anxious about this doesn't even begin to describe how I feel. Along with this anxiousness I've been worrying to no end about the following:

1) That people are going to give us grief for not inviting children (already experienced a bit of this from a family member...grrr!).

2) That no one will RSVP.

3) That people won't have fun at our wedding.

4) That the decorations will look cheap (I know they won't but it's just a fear of mine).

5) That I won't feel pretty on my wedding day.

6) That someone will get too drunk at our wedding (no one in particular, but we'll be having an open bar for beer and wine).

7) I'm not going to be able to lose the last of this weight before my fitting on June 25th (I've started WW again as of today).

8) That I'll have a headache the day of the wedding (my headaches ruin everything for me).

9) That I'll be a nervous wreck and not take the time to enjoy our special day.

10) And I can't think of a 10th worry, but that's probably a good thing.

I'm a worrier by nature. It's what I do. It's part of who I am (unfortunately). It seems that this week it's all just hitting me! I'm hoping I can get all this worrying and anxiousness out of the way now, so that on my wedding day I can just enjoy everything and everyone. I've been waiting for this day for so long that I don't want anything or anyone to ruin it and I want to be able to enjoy it fully. I have to remember that our wedding is all about Kevin and me, and the only thing I need to think about is marrying my man.

I'm also thinking that I might want to ask my doc to up my dosage of anti-anxiety meds though, beforehand. ;) Ha!

Worry Wart,

Birds and Meatloaf

I’m back! :)

I’m going to do a little re-cap going backwards. Only because the things that have happened most recently are more fresh in my mind and it will take me some time to remember things from last week (considering I can hardly remember what I wore yesterday).

I took today off work. Because I wanted to. Ha! I just needed a day alone to myself. So what did I do?

Well, for one, I found a cockatiel in our backyard.

And I wanted to keep it. But Kevin said no. :( It was the sweetest thing! It would nuzzle into my neck and was so nice and calm and would fall asleep when I put it on my shoulder. Awww…

I’m not a huge bird person, but this little guy just stole my heart. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to handle the mess that comes along with caring for a bird, and we have a lot of wedding expenses to take care of over the next couple months, and a bird just doesn’t fit into that budget.

So I took it to this bird store around the corner from our house called Feathered Follies and they groomed it and took it right in. So for now it’s in a good, safe place, away from ferocious dogs likes Kahlua. ;) Ha!

Today I also managed to finally watch the royal wedding, I took a nap then made Pioneer Woman’s meatloaf. It was GEE-DOUBLE-OH-DEE GOOD! As you know, I don’t cook dinner very well, but this turned out great. Kevin loved it!

And that’s pretty much what today consisted of. In the week to come I’ll be covering my future SIL’s college graduation, wedding invitation problems topics, my beautiful bridal shower and most likely some randomness thrown in.

It’s good to be back, people!

Hugs.