Puppy Love

It was March 15th last year that Chad and I were driving home with a brand new puppy asleep in my lap. Our little golden retriever was very small for being 9 weeks old because she came from a litter of 14 puppies! We named her Mya right away (Chad's idea) and brought her home, fed her some yummy puppy food, cuddled with her on cold evenings and played with her lots and lots! 
Well, it's been a year now and she's not always so cuddly anymore. She's filled with energy and bounces around chasing toys, her shadow and sometimes her own tail. She loves the snow, which is great because we just had 4-5 inches this week. Last night I wanted to get some pictures of our March snow but Mya was being such a cute girl that I just took pictures of her instead. And for once, she looked at the camera and seemed to smile almost!!!

We love her!!!

Great Vista Print Deal!

Hi readers! I thought I would stop by today and share this awesome deal with you!
Have you ever used Vista Print before? You can get a lot of free stuff like magnets, tote bags, address labels and more! Here are the free labels that I got for our wedding thank-yous...

I've been wanted to order thank yous to match and today I found a super affordable way to do that! I got $50 worth of stuff from Vista Print for $10 by using a link from a friend! And I helped her get her deal for free by being one of 3 people to use her link. Now I have the chance to get my deal for free and you have the chance to get this great deal too! Just use my link here...Vista Print Deal !!!
Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you get some great stuff with your deal!

We're Going Shopping!

Not real shopping, the fake kind. Ya know...when you see pictures of outfits and surf the internet looking at clothes that would be great for this event or that outing. Well, I do have a honeymoon cruise coming up and I would like to find some new outfits that I could mix and match and look super cute on our trip. So, I've been perusing the internet in expectation for an upcoming shopping trip. Here are some great things that I've found so far!

Old Navy...love the jeans and the scarft!

Old Navy again...cute white shorts and a little fancy pattern!

I'm going to need warm clothes for night time and when we get off the ship for our excursions. So   I'm thinking jeans will work but how about some cute tops?!

I love that it's casual but has that cute rosette detail.

How about this at night with a long sleeve shirt and some cute jewelry?!

This dress would be super cute with this pink cardigan over the top too!

Sadly, I'm not the shop online kind of girl when it comes to clothes for myself. So I'll have to wait a month or two and sneak away on a shopping trip while the men are planting in the fields! Better work on saving up my pennies in the mean time so I can afford all this cuteness! I have my eye set on capris and scarves, so watch out mall!

Recipe Card Guest Book

About a week or so ago, my aunt asked me what I wanted to do for a guest book at the wedding shower. I told her that I would figure something out and off I went looking for unique DIY ideas. At Etsy I found this adorable recipe boxes that had alphabetized labels and recipe cards. I thought this was so cute and would provide a place for guests to write little pieces of advice and for us to write their gift and address as well. 
Little did I know, Iara from Studio Baers Garten was creating a recipe digital kit and a few days later she emailed it out to the creative team. I was so excited when I got it because it fit perfect! I printed out all the pieces that I wanted to use and then assembled them into this cute little recipe box. My aunt also sent out shower invites this week that asked guests to bring their favorite recipes so now it will serve double duty as a real recipe box too!

If you been thinking about doing a homemade recipe book or recipe box, this kit would be amazing for that!!! It's also super cute for food and baking pages with all the adorable elements and papers that are included. You can find the new Homemade Collection at Scrapbook Graphics. Hope you have a great weekend!

100 Days!!!

I can't even believe it! There are only 100 more days until our wedding! Which is 3 months, 1 week & 1 day OR...just 14 weeks!! YIKES! Okay enough exclamation marks, but really it's pretty exciting and just a little overwhelming. I have a large to do/to buy list for this weekend. It's supposed to be snowy/rainy and cold so I have to finish some projects. 
I have some wedding advice to dole out since I've been busy planning now for about 9 months. Don't pick your colors too early. Seriously. I thought I was being smart by nailing down all my ideas and plans early so that I could keep my eye out for good sales on stuff I needed. This was a really good idea in theory but after 9 months, I have to admit that I'm sick of pink and orange. I still like all my ideas and decorations but after really taking time to consider it, I would have done stuff completely different. I have heard however, that this is pretty common with most brides. They doubt their choices and wish they had done something different but hey! we're women right? Isn't that what we're good at? Changing our minds? So, just for fun I've gathered a bunch of pictures to show you what I would do if I could change everything now. 

 Red, white and blue! Yes! These are the colors we're using to decorate the rehearsal dinner and I so wish I would have used these for our fourth of July wedding. Navy dresses with red roses would be so pretty. Here are some more inspiration boards for these colors.

Oh, and these shoes!!!

Have you planned a wedding before? What would you do differently? Any advice for this bride to be? 
I hope you have a great Thursday! Thanks for stopping by and for letting me gush about only having 100 more days before I get married!

Spring is Here!

We've actually had a few nice days so far! It's been around 50 or 60 degrees and one day it was even 70, but now it's just going to hang out at 50, be gray and windy, and possibly rain. Well, that's spring for sure and I'm glad it's finally here!
This time last year, we had just brought home a new puppy and were loving all of our play time with her. Well, that puppy is now a big rambunctious "puppy" who loves to see us come home and drive into the driveway. She loves catching her own tail, throwing toys in the air, chasing her shadow and bringing anything she finds interesting up into the yard to show us. We love her so much and couldn't be happier to have our little golden friend there everyday to greet us with a wet nose and wagging tail. 
This layout is a picture of Mya last April or May when she was still little. I used Erica's paper to digital challenge over at 2Peas for the design and layout of the page. All credits can be found here.

Bachelorette Fun

Saturday night was the big Bachelorette Bash! We went to Little Big Town & Sugarland in Sioux City, IA. We ran into a couple snags such as finding a place to eat supper. There was a Chili's right next to the event center so that's where we were going to go...well, duh! So were 200 other people! We ended up at Burger King :P haha! The concert was amazing and so much fun! The bars afterwards were so-so because we didn't know what was good and then the good place was just totally packed. Here are a bunch of my favorite pics! 

Wedding Week - Friday!

Hello Friday! I'm so excited that it's Friday...because that means that tomorrow is Saturday and the girls and I will be heading to see these amazing groups in concert for the big bachelorette weekend!!!

However, today is still Friday so I'm here to show you the rest of the wedding planning. Alright, I think it was yesterday that I mentioned that we'll have cookie favors at each seat. Well, this is the sticker that I designed to seal the cookie packages. I just bought Avery circle labels and designed this in PSE, then printed them all out.

Another detail that I thought was fun and DIY are these napkins. I didn't want to pay for 300 personalized napkins because it would have been super expensive and let's "face" it (haha) all people do is wipe their face with these! My wonderful maid of honor (hi Brenda!) stamped them for me one night and I think they turned out super cute! Oh, the napkins are from Oriental Trading Company. They are super great if you need to buy lots of plates, napkins, silver ware and plastic table linens...which we did.

For the ceremony, I made these awesome tissue paper poms for the aisle. They were very budget friendly and I love how they turned out! I will warn you that they are very time consuming though. I made 8, 4 for each side of the aisle and because I'm not sure how long the ribbon needs to be I left extra at the bottom that we'll just cut off when we hang them. And and I would be willing to sell them after the wedding to anyone in Nebraska (the ribbon can be changed).

Some other stuff for the ceremony are the ring bearer pillows, the flower girl basket, guest book and pen. I bought plain and simple items that I'm dressing up with some pink ribbon. Eventually I'm going to wrap pink ribbon and rhinestones around the unity candle. This is one of those things that I don't think is necessary but a few of our friends said it was nice to kind of be able to talk a little bit by yourselves during this time, so I guess we're doing it.

I also showed you yesterday what I want the ceiling to look like in the reception hall. I thought I would show you our potential layouts of the building as well. I want the dance floor to be close to the bar but I know that some people won't dance if it is too front and center so I'm not sure where we will put it. These are the layouts so far though...

Because our wedding is during Fourth of July weekend, we decided to include a little bit of fireworks! When we leave the church we're going to have every one have sparklers. I know this would look better if it were dark out but we're not doing a send off at the reception because we want to party all night! haha! Hopefully it looks okay in the daytime too. I'm thinking of tying 2 sparklers together with ribbon and then either attaching a little tag or just having little signs on the buckets that say "Let the Sparks Fly".

I really like the idea of including sparklers so I thought that this would make a really cute center piece for our red, white and blue rehearsal dinner. I'm going to put together a little sample tonight so that his mom can decide if she likes it. 

My other project for tonight is to make signs for the roads leading to the wedding and for outside the building. We have a lot of old wood so I'm going to make these hand painted rustic signs. These are not mine but I will show pictures sometime once I'm done.

We did pick out tuxes last night but the store was so busy with prom that I didn't snap any pictures. Sorry! I think that is pretty much every project that I've done or that I'm working on for the wedding. The only thing left to show you is the current state of parts of our hose that have been over taken by wedding stuff! It used to be in the guest bedroom but I'm gradually trying to clean that room. I'll leave you with a couple pictures of our mess! Have a great weekend!

Wedding Week - Thursday!

Hello! It's Thursday and I'm back to share more wonderful wedding stuff with you. The actual wedding is very important I know, but the fiance and I are probably most excited about the reception and having a good time with all of our family and friends. So, let's take a look at the decor and other aspects of the party!
This is the building where our reception will take place. It is a fair building and is quite large, but that's good because we're going to put almost 400 people in it!

Isn't that room just huge!?! Well, we've been brainstorming on ways to decorate and fill up the space. There will have to be lots of tables  to accommodate all of our guests so that will help but the ceiling is just way to high. We've been looking into draping it with tulle and twinkle lights. There was recently a wedding held there and I love what they did with the ceiling so I'll share a picture of their and then a couple more that we're considering.

Our centerpieces will be exactly like this but with round vases instead of square. I also have a picture of a mock up I did of the table. Each table will have maybe 6 of the pink tea lights and each seat will have a little cookie favor with a pink sticker on it. 

                  

At the cake table we will have pictures of all of our parents and grandparents on their wedding day. It will look something like this...

Oh yes, and the most important part of the cake table...the cake! This is Chad's favorite part of the whole wedding planning. We met with our baker a few weeks ago and she said that any extra cake we needed would be a circle cake, not sheet cake because it feeds more and is easier to transport. Well if it was already going to be a round cake, just add it to the real cake and make it taller! We ended up deciding on a 5 tier white on white cake with a design like this. The bottom, middle and top with have the dots and the 2 middle layers will have the swirls. The very middle layer will be chocolate, for me. 

Our cake topper was again chosen by Chad. He wanted Precious Moments and we both really liked this one. It will look really cute in our house after the wedding too.

The head table, cake table and guest book/gift table will all be draped with twinkle lights under the table skirt. I really want the whole room to glow! The reception will really be decorated in a lot more white than pink and orange and I'm okay with that. (I'm actually getting really tired of pink and oragne...ssshh!) But tonight we will be spending even more time with our two favorite colors because we are going to pick out tuxes and vests! I'll take a few pictures and be back to share tomorrow! 

Wedding Week - Wednesday!

Hello! Welcome to the official Wednesday post! Ok, so where were we? I've picked my colors, my dress, the bridesmaids dresses, the flowers...I guess I should probably think of some way to let people know, "hey! we're getting married..and you're invited!" Right? 
I loved so many invite ideas online. Wedding Paper Divas and Storkie were two of my favorites. However, when you're inviting 400 people to your wedding, the invites can get a little expensive. Enter iDIY and their wonderful templates! I found an amazing swirl template and then changed the words, edited the colors and the size and printed it out on white cardstock. It was then mounted to a piece of orange cardstock on top of a pink piece of cardstock. And this is our invitation! (blacked out personal/location info)

 Around here, people like to include maps, hotel info and registry info on a separate card within the invite envelope. I KNOW, I know, you're all going to yell at me and tell me it's not okay to put registry info with the invite but everyone here does it so it's really not a big deal. Just like it's not a big deal here to have cash bars either! How many of you are walking away right now and never coming back? oooppss! I will say that we are paying for drinks through dinner and probably partially through the dance, so I think that will be sufficient. Anyways, back to those info cards. Here are ours with my cute little map that I made. I followed  a tutorial on how to use Google maps and Word, I can find it if anyone wants me to.

Our programs are still a work in progress. We've only met with our Pastor once and the next time we will nail down all the details about the ceremony. We also are not sure whether the best man will be able to make it yet. In the mean time here is the front page and the first inside page.

The programs will be like a fan with rounded corners and tied with orange ribbon.
I've also started designing our thank yous. I got a bunch of free return address labels from Vista Print and since we had so much pink already, I went with blue. Then I found an image that worked with the address labels and edited it in Photo Shop again to make it work for a thank you card.

And thank you for stopping by tonight! Oh, I almost forgot to show you the rehearsal invites. We're still not 100% sure which one we'll be using. My future MIL and I have been working on these since they are throwing the rehearsal dinner. It's going to be 4th of July themed since it is the 4th of July weekend. (I'm kind of wishing we would have went with navy and red for our wedding colors).

Tomorrow I'm going to show you my centerpieces, reception decor ideas and church decor! All DIY, I hope you'll come back and join me!