Final honeymoon pictures

Last of the pictures, I promise!

We did a lot of driving around the week we were in Hawaii, and it is definitely a gorgeous island, there is always plenty to see!

These two pictures are of the Kilauea Lighthouse with a gorgeous view of the ocean.




Wailua Falls, a very pretty and big waterfall (80 feet is pretty big in my book)!


Another picture of a chicken, taken in the Burger King parking lot.


The trees were in bloom! Beautiful purples and reds and oranges were everywhere!




A couple of the many one-lane bridges we had to cross to get to our resort, I believe there were six or seven in the five miles stretch we had to drive.




One of our wedding gifts was a sunset cruise up the Na Pali coastline. It turned out to be a gorgeous (I apparently like that word) day, but pretty windy. We ended up not getting to see the Na Pali Coast because the waves "were getting too exciting" according to the captain, but we did get to see some whales (I don't have whale pictures, but Nick got some) and the sky was clear to see the sunset (pictures also taken by Nick).










After the cruise, Nick and I both had a craving for steak so we looked in our handy guidebook and found The Bull Shed, which was listed as having the best prime rib on the island. Let me tell you, it was HUGE!

When I got it, Nick just sat there and laughed. I ended up not finishing and we took the rest back to our condo and cooked it up for lunch the next day.

I had been trying to get a picture of this tree ALL WEEK and when I finally did, there was power lines through the middle of it. Oh well. This tree was very pretty and caught my eye because it was covered with ivy and blue flowers and sat on the edge of a river.




We took these pictures on the last day, notice the sun? The clearest day of the whole trip was as we were driving to the airport to leave. Go figure.




We really did have an awesome time and we both want to go back. If you have a chance to visit Kauai, we recommend staying at the Hanalei Colony Resort, especially if you are honeymooning. It is a beautiful resort full of two bedroom condos and is nice and secluded, but still close to beaches and sites to explore. And definitely visit the local farmer's markets. The fresh fruits and vegetables are amazing!

Honeymoon part two

All right, on to part two.

The day after the luau we drove up the road a bit to the Limahuli Gardens. If you ever get a chance to go to Kauai, I definitely recommend seeing this site. For $15 you can tour the gardens by yourself with a booklet, it's about a 3/4 of a mile circle and it's gorgeous!

I had to take a picture of this mountain because it reminded me of the profile of a gorilla.


This picture starts the tour...


A lovely waterfall that is kind of obscured by an equally lovely flower.


Bird of Paradise


Chickens! The unofficial official bird of Kuaui! Seriously, they were EVERYWHERE!!


Another pretty little waterfall






Dried up waterfall


These trees reminded me of Dr. Seuss trees


Don't remember what this flower was called, but it was pretty...


Cabbage on a stick, haha. Don't remember the name of this tree, but the description was seriously "cabbage on a baseball bat."


View from the top of the garden trail


View of the beginning of the tour taken from the end of the tour

Happy one month anniversary to us!!

Well, almost a month. Tomorrow we will have been married for a whole month and I haven't posted!! Yikes! Well, all of you married ladies know how busy life can get and all of you unmarried ladies will learn!

So we’re going to start with honeymoon pictures and go backwards because I don’t have all of the other pictures yet. Nick and I went to Kauai, Hawaii for our honeymoon and it was ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL!! My first words when we got off of the plane were, “When can we move?”

We stayed at a very nice resort that was rather secluded, but that was the plan anyway. We were on our honeymoon and didn’t want to be around a lot of people.

On the map below, we were in Ha’ena, which was about five miles from the nearest “town”, Hanalei.


The view from out window, was a gorgeous shot of Hanalei Bay.

Look at all of the lovely clouds. It rained most of the week, but was a nice 75 degrees, so we didn't really care. We're from the Pacific Northwest and 75 degree rain is A LOT better than 45 degree rain.

Here is a couple more shots taken from our window, a palm tree with baby coconuts and one of the other buildings.




These flowers were everywhere at the resort!


These next three pictures were taken on the beach in front of our building. Our condo was the top window in this first picture.


A view across the bay...


Nick on the beach :-)


The second night we were there, we went to the luau at the resort. It was a nice family luau and all of the cute dancers were the daughters of the musicians.






Nick watching the show...


He even volunteered to get up and dance!!




The fire dancer...




Just kidding, here's the real fire dancer




We had a blast at the luau even with it pouring outside!! Stay tuned for more honeymoon later!!

The time has come!!

Now I have the poem from Alice in Wonderland stuck in my head.



I can't believe this day is finally here. The 15 months(!!!) of preparation all led up to this moment and I am so excited!!

Thank all of you for reading my blog and commenting. It's been a wonderful ride! I will see all of you after our honeymoon in Hawaii when I will begin recaps starting with the bachelorette party last weekend.

Congratulations to all of you other brides getting married this weekend too!!!

DIY win and fail...

Let's do the win first, because it's happier (sure why not, we'll go with that). My tossing bouquet was something that I wanted to be different than normal. Everyone has been to a wedding and wanted to catch the bouquet and maybe you have caught one (I did once). At our wedding, I am giving all of our single ladies a bouquet to catch. Each flower in the "bouquet" will be its own bouquet. Here's what I did...

Take 20 parts flowers...


And add equal parts of ribbons along with some scissors.


With a snip, snip here and a little sweat there, the idea takes shape.


Each bouquet was tied with a ribbon and I let the strings hang because I thought it was adorable and fun. Here is how they turned out all together.

When the time comes to throw, I will hold them all together like one bouquet, but then they will separate and then every girl can catch one (hopefully, as long as there are only 20 or so girls to toss to).

So that's my DIY win, now for the fail. My card box did not turn out how I wanted it to, so I went to Michaels and bought one. I'm the bride, I'm allowed to do that if I want to.

In other news, I got my dress back from the seamstress today!! Yay!!! Now she is hanging in my room, teasing me that I get to wear her soon. Argh!!

I have one more day of work left! Whoopee!! And then I can devote my few remaining days to getting everything together and trying to remain calm. Good luck to me.

I am in the process of getting the bachelorette pictures together, so don't worry, that post is still on it's way (although might not come until after we get back from our honeymoon).

4 days!!!

Time to party!!

Getting ready for my bachelorette party!! I will post pictures when I've recovered (and by that I mean catch up on sleep). :-D

Thanking my parents

I spent MONTHS thinking of how to properly thank my parents for everything they have done. I just couldn't find the right token to show my appreciation until I was checking out my recommendations on Amazon. As soon as I saw these two, I knew exactly what I was giving my parents.

For my mom:

This is our favorite children's book. She bought me a copy a couple of years ago, so now she has her own copy to read her grandchildren someday (no, no surprises, it's going to be a couple of years).

For my dad:

When I was younger, I used to dance on Dad's feet all of the time. After seeing the cover of this book (and with the last couple pages being wedding related) I knew this would be perfect.

Showing your appreciation to your parents doesn't have to be grand and showy, even the smallest or seemingly silly thing can mean the most to them. :-)

8 days!!!

Weather update

One thing I forgot to add onto my last post, with the wedding being within Weather.com's 10-day forecast, I was able to check out what it will be doing on our day.

Unfortunately, right now this is it:

Sad Panda

We want to do our pictures at the lake because it is a beautiful location. We do have a back up plan, but would rather not use it. I know the weather can change in between now and then and I REALLY hope that it does.

Pray for now rain Friday and Saturday!!

Single digits!! *happy dance*

9 DAYS UNTIL OUR WEDDING!!!

So much is going on right now that I haven't really had time to blog! Sorry!

On Tuesday, my granny came over and we had a work party. We spent the evening putting tags on bracelets and ribbons on bubbles. I took pictures with my phone so you can kind of see what we were doing.

I had to print out 250 little tags and then punch holes in all of them to put the ribbon through.




Granny, my sister, and her fiance spent the evening threading the tags onto ribbon and then tying them around the bracelets. All 250!!




It took a while, but we got all of them done.




Then I got to working on the bubbles. I ended up getting all of the red ribbon done, which is only half, but now I only have half left. It's not so bad I guess.


I could have made it a lot easier on myself by just tying a not and clipping the ends short, but the bows were so cute! (Not that you can see them very well in the picture, but oh well. Take my word for it!)


This week I've been going through my closet and I finally decided to just pick an outfit for each day of the week until the wedding. Then I could take the rest of my clothes over to our new house. I was shocked when my clothes went from filling two rods to being about a foot thick on ONE rod!!

Might not be easy to see in the picture, but the small amount of clothes on the left are the ones I am wearing this week and next. I had a "moment" and had to sit down and just stare at it. Where has the time gone!!? I only have 9 days left and a fairly long to do list left!!

It is going down though, here it what is left:
-Print poem for memorial table (will take two minutes)
-Take engraved vase to Your Marketplace (again, two minutes, minus travel time)
-Make card box (I need to find plain, red wrapping paper & an appropriate cardboard box
-Pick out young-ish pictures for under glass (mine are done, now I just need Nick's)
-Put ribbons on bubbles (only orange is left)
-Ribbons on tossing flowers (I have both, now I just need to sit down and do it)
-Decorate centerpieces (I need to get red floral paper to put around the pot)
-Make CD for DJ
-Make CD of prelude & postlude music
-Print vows & 'Union' poem on invitation paper (need to get Nick's vows)
-Finalize rehearsal dinner details (mostly done)
-Gifts to parents
-Pass out schedule to all involved (only have a few left to pass out)
-Pay videographer
-Buy reception food (doing this on saturday, we're doing a nacho bar!)
-Honeymoon itineraries to parents
-Get pedestals from Beth and Matt (bridesmaids is doing this)
-Pack bags for honeymoon!
-Prepare bag to take to wedding (with emergency kit)
-Guys' final fittings & pick up tuxes (next thursday)
-Rings cleaned (day before)
-Assign someone to be in charge of ring bearer's dish, flower, girl basket, etc.
-Designate someone to transport card box to McClelland
-Go to credit union for honeymoon, tip, & emergency money
-Paint fingernails & toenails
-Pick up rentals & pay balance (day before
-Set up ceremony (morning of day before)
-Set up reception (afternoon of day before)
-Gifts to bridesmaids (at rehearsal)
-Have someone pick up my bouquet and the memorial flowers (morning of)

Whew! Still a long list, but we'll get it done.

This weekend we're buying the food for the reception (like I said in the to do list) and it's my bachelorette party!! Stay tuned for THAT post and pictures!!

9 days!!!!