Sunday, January 31, 2010

Awesome giveway!!

Looking for a Valentine's Day present for your SO? Head over to With this ring, I thee blog and enter the "Spreading the Valentine Love" giveaway. You have 13 chances to win!

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These cards are so cute and an awesome way to show your love. Giveaway ends February 5th at 8pm PST so hurry over!

I'd have to say that I wouldn't be looking forward to the "Anything" card because I know that Nick would use it to make me drive his manual transmission car to the beach. I know I need to learn (I've gotten that lecture many times), but I'd prefer to learn in my own neighborhood.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

45 Day Update

I posted this list at the beginning of this month, now let’s see what I’ve done (updates are in bold):
-Write Pampered Chef shower thank yous
-Nick needs to finalize and reserve the guys’ tuxes
-Assemble, address, and mail invitations
-Finalize what decorations and how many flowers we'll need
-Finish buying decorations
-Contact the seamstress that one of my friends recommended - My first fitting is in two weeks!
-Get my other shower guest list to my aunt
-Finishing etching our toasting glasses & sand vase
-Order ring dish from Paloma's Nest on Etsy
-Order orange tablecloths and table runners (since we couldn't rent them)
-Contact our reception venue to see about setting up the day before the wedding
-Plan our rehearsal dinner
-Decide for sure which crinoline I am using and send it out to be dyed (if it can be) - Chose the crinoline I can’t dye. Oh well, can’t win them all.
-Get our engagement announcement into the local newspaper
-Start looking for a place to live - We found a cute little house and get the keys tomorrow!!
-Check on insurances
-Make a mock up of one of our centerpieces
-Figure out what we’re using for a card box – I originally wanted to make one, but that may not happen
-We can get our marriage license anytime now, but will probably wait until the end of February
-Get our music selections to the person that will be doing the sound for the ceremony

Still a lot to do, but we're getting there!

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Our house!

Nick and I have a house!! Well, we have found one to rent anyway. It is so cute and has two bedroom, a fenced backyard (for my dog), and a garage! We sign the papers tomorrow and then get the keys on Thursday. I can't believe how fast we got it too! I found it in the newspaper on Monday, Nick and I went and saw it on Thursday, and they called yesterday and told us it was ours! Yay!! Thank you Lord for letting this happen so quickly.

I'll post pictures as soon as I can. :-)

49 days!!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

I have to tell you the joke Dad & I played!!!

Dad and I went to Mr. Formal to pick out his tux and get him fitted.

Oh, here's some background: Dad does NOT where pants (only shorts) and even worse is anything resembling dress clothing. He has been in a tux about four times in his life and had to be forced every time. He wears shorts everyday, even in snow, and his only nice pants are jeans which get worn at funerals and weddings ONLY.

Okay, so back to the story, we went to Mr. Formal (his 5th time wearing a tux) and when we were getting ready to leave, we thought it would be funny if we told Mom that we ordered him tuxedo shorts. The gal who helped us was AWESOME and printed us a fake receipt with tuxedo shorts on it!!

The look on my mom's face was PRICELESS when she saw that receipt. It was hilarious!! We had to pull out the real receipt pretty quick or she would have went into hysterics, but it was great!!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

I LOVE Etsy!!

More specifically, Paloma's Nest and the lovely ring dishes they make!!

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I was about 90% sure about using a dish instead of a pillow, but seeing mine with our date on it? Now I am 190% sure!!

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Seriously, if any of you are considering using a ring dish, I highly recommend Paloma's Nest on Etsy. Amazing!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

And They're Off!!!

No, I didn’t go to a race track (although that does sound like fun). I finally finished our wedding invitations and mailed them off! They are officially out of my hands and into the ones of our trusty (I hope) post office.

We did the WHOLE invitation process by hand and what an experience that was! Not one that I think I’d want to do again, but at least I’ve done it once. Let me walk you through it, shall I?

Step One: Gather supplies
Here is what we used:

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-Invitation backing: red/white two-sided card stock (super cute red hearts on the white side)
-Printed: ivory shimmery paper
-Ivory envelopes
-Envelope labels: full page labels (these worked awesome, I’ll talk about them further down)
-Three different paper cutters (one would have worked, but I tried two others first)
-Tape stick (found on the scrapbooking aisle of Wal-Mart)

Step Two: Print invitation, RSVP, & direction wording on shimmery paper

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Once I had all of the wording the way I wanted it, I took all of the shimmery paper and my flash drive with the files on it to my mom’s work and printed everything on their giant printer. It was awesome and you wouldn’t know it wasn’t done professionally!

Step Three: Cut paper

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One piece of red paper made the backing of one whole invitation. I cut the paper in half and then cut one half in half again (confused yet?) so make three pieces.

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The shimmery paper was easier because I had printed lines showing where to cut. All I had to do was cut on the lines and trim the edges a little bit. Piece of cake!

Step Four: Assemble pieces

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Pretty straight forward, use tape stick on the back of the shimmery paper and then stick it to the red side of the backing. I did the same with the RSVPs (leaving the white/heart side blank so guests could write us a note) and then the direction cards were double sided.

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Step Five: Place invitation in envelope and seal

Voila! You have assembled your invitation! Now you just need to paste the label on the front of the envelope and…hmm, I mentioned full page labels didn’t I? I found the template for our wrap-around labels online (love the Internet), but couldn’t figure out how to get them on the envelope without messy glue. So I went to my local Office Max and found full page mailing labels. Great! They were super easy to print the labels onto and then I just cut them down to size!

Step Six: Place label and stamp on front of envelope.

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Yes, I am sending an invitation to Mickey and Minnie Mouse, I couldn’t resist. :-D

I made sure to assemble one invitation beforehand and took it to the post office. I wanted to know exactly how much postage I would need before I started this whole endeavour. What luck! Our invitations were only going to need one $.44 stamp. I couldn’t help but buy the king and queen of hearts! They are so gosh darn cute!!

Step Seven: Place in hands of post office.

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On another note, WE'RE GETTING MARRIED IN TWO MONTHS!!! I am so excited, I really wish it would come faster, but good things come to those who wait right?

Monday, January 11, 2010

Gotta Love a Guy in a Suit

Or tux as the case may be. I FINALLY got Nick into the local tux rental shop to pick out tuxes and get them reserved for the wedding. It was really fun to watch and my does he look handsome in a tux!

These lovely pictures were taken with my phone so bear with me.

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I don't have any pictures of Nick in the tux he picked out, but here are pictures I found online at Mr. Formal (where we are renting them from). Nick will be wearing Andrew Fezza "Cannes" in white and the other guys will be in black. Then they will all be wearing white shirts and red vests and pocket squares.

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So sexy!! (I mean Nick, not the guy in these pictures)

Heigh-ho heigh-ho...

It's off to working on invitations I go. *whistle whistle whistle*

I've been hard working on the invitations for about a week now and they are almost done! I can't wait to show them to you, but that won't happen until they have been sent off. I'm so excited!!

61 days to go!!!!

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Happy New Year!!

Okay, I'm a few days late, but it has been a BUSY few days!

Nick and I had our first bridal shower on Sunday, a wonderful Pampered Chef shower, and it was a lot of fun! We had a cooking contest against one of the great couples from my church and they won. Now I just need to write out my thank you cards!

I was looking at my to do list yesterday and here is what I'd like to get done this month:

-Write Pampered Chef shower thank yous
-Nick needs to finalize and reserve the guys’ tuxes
-Assemble, address, and mail invitations
-Finalize what decorations and how many flowers we'll need
-Contact the seamstress that one of my friends recommended
-Get my other shower guest list to my aunt
-Finishing etching our toasting glasses & sand vase
-Order ring dish from Paloma's Nest on Etsy
-Order orange tablecloths and table runners (since we couldn't rent them)
-Contact our reception venue to see about setting up the day before the wedding
-Plan our rehearsal dinner
-Decide for sure which crinoline I am using and send it out to be dyed (if it can be)
-Get our engagement announcement into the local newspaper
-Start looking for a place to live
-Check on insurances

Whew! What a list!! This is going to be a busy month and I'm glad that some of those will be really quick.