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Beautiful Bride-to-be

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My very best friend in the whole world is getting married in 20 days. TWENTY DAYS people! I am beyond excited for her and her soon to be hubs and so happy to be a part of the wedding. Yesterday we threw her a bridal shower. By we, I mean the other bridesmaids, her mom and me. It went great. And, even though it is pretty close to her actual wedding, to me, it was just kicking off all of the wedding festivities for the month! As the type-A person I am“Matron” of Honor for the wedding, I really wanted Julia to have the BEST shower possible.

Our original plan was to have the shower at another one of the maid’s houses, but when the invite list went over 40, we decided we should look at some other options! We settled on having it at the Oregon Electric Station. It worked out perfectly, it was really affordable, the food was good, we had all you can drink champagne and we didn’t have to cook or clean up. All we needed to do was handle the cake, decorations and games. I mean really, how does that not sound perfect!?

The Cake:
Julia’s mom handled the cake. Beautiful is an understatement. It was more like an actual wedding cake than a bridal shower cake! A friend of Julia’s mom made and decorated the cake and it tasted just as good as it looked!

Decorations:
I took care of the decorations for the party. There was no real “theme” for the shower. We just stuck with the wedding color of dark purple. I tried to make sure the theme carried throughout everything.

I bought pre-printed invitations online that were perfect. Dark purple and simple. I made matching return address labels, used a purple pen to address and used the purple “LOVE” stamps for postage. 


Julia really liked the banner I had made for Ry’s b-day so I decided to make one similar for the shower. At first, I was going to have it say “Congratulations Julia”, but then I remembered how annoyed I got when people would say to me “It’s your day” or “It’s all about the bride”…because hello people…it takes the bride AND the groom to get married! So, instead, I made the banner to say “Julia & Spencer = LOVE”. We hung it over the entryway to the room we had the shower in.

Carrying on with the banner and purple, I bought Hershey’s kisses, both regular and dark chocolate (purple foil). Then, I picked up some labels at Micheal’s that are made for the bottom of kisses. I made the background dark purple and had white lettering with things like, “J”, “J+S”, “6.26.10”, “LOVE”. We had them scattered on all the tables for a sweet treat that also worked as a decoration .

 On the tables, we also had little bouquets. Each bouquet was actually put into different pieces of china from each of Julia & Spencer’s grandparents and Juila’s Aunt Sandy. This was Julia’s mom’s idea and it was such a nice touch! She made little coordinating tags with purple ribbon, decoration and writing to go with each piece so guests could see who each piece belonged to. It was a very special way to honor their grandparents and Aunt Sandy.

The favors for the guests were little “cake” slices. I found this kit at Michael’s and bought it on a whim…and I am so glad I did! I stuffed each piece with little goodies for the guests. I figured not everyone would like the same treat, so each little cake was stuffed with different things. I used mixed nuts, chocolate covered raisins, Hershey’s Bliss chocolate (the wrapper was purple) and sour patch kids. We arranged them on cake platters that we brought with us and since we were 1 platter short, the rest of the pieces decorated the rest of the table. Each “cake” was decorated with some sort of purple.

Other touches included dark purple silk flower petals and clear glass pebbles to decorate around the cake and favor table. The basket for the thank-you envelopes had purple fabric in it and the pens on each table all had at least some purple in them.

Games:
For the games, we decided to go simple. With 30-40 people, it needed to be easy and relatively fast. We had originally thought about doing a wedding trivia game, but the other MOH nixed that idea when she read the questions and realized NO ONE would get any other them right. She decided to do bridal bingo instead. That was pretty fun. Everyone was handed empty bingo cards and they had to fill the spaces in with items they thought Julia would receive as gifts. As Jules opened her presents, they marked off the ones they had written down. The first person to get a bingo, won! For the prize, we gave away a gift certificate for a pedicure. We also played the “timer game” which is really not a game at all. We brought a kitchen timer and set it for random intervals while Julia opened her gifts. If she was opening your gift when the timer went off, you won. We did it 3 times and had 3 flower baskets to choose from for those winners. Lastly, as people were coming in, we had them address their own thank-you note envelopes. Then, at the end we had a random drawing from the envelopes and the winner took home a fresh flower bouquet in a coffee mug.

Another thing we did that was not actually a game, but something to keep guests occupied/entertained was to have each person write a challenge, or encouraging word or advice for the bride and groom on a note card and seal it in an envelope. Then, on the outside of the envelope, they wrote a date. On that date (AND NOT BEFORE JULIA!!!), Julia & Spencer will open and read the note.

Food was good. Cake was great. Game was fun. Things ran smoothly. All in all, the shower was a success!

Mama’s Caving…

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Some of you probably know this, but when I first found out I was having a girl I bawled cried. Literally, chin quivering, giant tears down my cheeks crying. The poor ultra-sound tech really didn’t know how to react  when she saw my tears, assumed they were tears of joy, excitedly asked “Is that what you wanted!?” and all I could do was cry harder, louder and shake my head no.

Turns out, little girls aren’t so bad after all. In fact, I really enjoy having a little girl! Luckily, she’s not too girlie. That was my biggest fear. What would I do if all Ry wanted to do was go shopping? I don’t know how to braid hair! What if she didn’t like playing outside? Or dirt? What if she doesn’t like to camp or doesn’t hunt or…or…or!? (You get the idea) Over the last year or so, I have slowly come around to more “girlie” type stuff. When registering during my pregnancy I made sure not to register for anything overly pink. I made it a point to verbalize my deep seeded disdain for too much pink. These days, pink is fine. Actually, Ry wears pink just about every day! Heck, she wore a pink and orange tu-tu for her birthday party. A TU-TU! If that doesn’t show that I’m coming around to girlie, I don’t know what does! And, I will admit, she looks so dang cute in pig-tails…and I generally hate pigtails.

Anyway, all of that is just to set you all up to tell you what I thought I would NEVER do, I did yesterday. And it was fun. I polished Rylee’s toenails!

So proud of her purple toes!

Pointing out the purple for everyone!

Mama toes and Monster toes. Matching.

I needed to do mine for Julia’s bridal shower, Ry was interested so I told her if she sat down on the floor I would do hers too. She loved it! She even sat nice and still and waited for them to dry. I just hope I haven’t created a monster…oh wait, she already is!

Friday Fashion Police – June 4, 2010

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything…for those of you who don’t know, Andy’s grandmother passed away last week. We have had a busy couple of weeks and I just haven’t had time to do any blogging…some things have been more important. I have also been suffering from a writer’s block.

This Friday Fashion Police post will actually take some imagination because I did not actually take a picture of Rylee in her outfit…mostly because I’m pretty sure it was Daddy who picked out her outfit and I didn’t want to ostracize him (openly).

So please imagine…

These Pants…
With this shirt (the grey one with pink, purple and white bows on it, not pink-hard to see, I know)…
And this jacket…

Oh Daddy…I know you know not to wear a brown belt with black shoes, but I think we also need to talk about your denim combos…

Rylee’s 2nd Birthday Celebration! (Warning: It’s a LONG one!)

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CAUTION:
EXTREME CUTENESS AHEAD!!

What a day! Ry’s actual birthday (photos to come) was on May 18th. A Tuesday is no good for a party and since I had to work the weekend before, we decided to have the party on Sunday May 23. This also happened to be Uncle’s 16th birthday, but he was gracious enough to share is special day for Ry’s party! I have been scheming and working on plans for this party for the last month or so. I was inspired by another blogger-mama‘s decorations she did for her little girl’s first birthday. I made all of the decorations myself and all I had to buy was a hole punch and ribbon. I also bought bright colored placemats for some accents.  We had a big taco bar with all the fixins’ that everyone seemed to enjoy. (I wish I would have got photos of the spread!) Daddy was in and out of the party but that’s another post for another time.

Since I can’t figure out how to go back through and type between the photos after I’ve inserted them into the blog post, I will go photo by photo here:

  1. I made this “Happy Birthday Rylee” banner using scrapbook paper and other scrapping supplies I already had. This banner ended up being the “theme” for the rest of the party. I am excited that I can use this banner for years to come too!
  2. Close up of “Happy” Right before the H, there is a little photo of Ry from the day she was born.
  3. Close up of “Birthday”
  4. Close up of “Rylee!”
  5. I made these too. Each photo circle represents one of Ry’s birthdays; birth, 1 year, 2 year. I plan on adding to these each year. I used the same scrapbook paper as I did with the banner. The little streamers are made from the paper scraps from the banner.
  6. A view of the house from the kitchen. You can see there are some triangle banners hung in the entry way and over the dining room window. I made these triangle banners from the paper scraps too.
  7. Auntie Keri helped me make homemade cupcakes for the party. We had chocolate and yellow to choose from. The tops were decorated with orange frosting and pink lettering that read “Happy Birthday Rylee”. The photo of Rylee in the upper right hand corner is one that Bliss did, this also helped add to the theme of the party that carried throughout. In the upper left hand corner were the party favors that we handed out to everyone that came. They were cards  that Bliss did that had a photos from Ry’s photo shoot. They made the perfect 2-year photos.
  8. Close up of the “Happy Birthday Rylee” cupcakes.
  9. “& JP” I made sure to include Uncle on the cupcakes too!
  10. Another view of the cupcakes and photo. This time including the tu-tu suprise!
  11. Ry was not enthused about the tu-tu at first! This is her throwing a little fit…it was too cute not to include a photo of this!
  12. She calmed down and did a puzzle with Uncle. I love the piggies! She even kept them in the WHOLE day! Her eyes look so big in this picture.
  13. I call this one “I couldn’t have picked a better Auntie!” HA! (See what I did there…it was a play on words)
  14. Time to blow out the candles!
  15. Opening up her gifts! And a good shot of the pig tails.
  16. Heading outside for her last present…big SURPRISE to come!
  17. I think this is a cute photo of us walking.
  18. A beautiful photo of Ry! One of my favorites of the day.
  19. It wouldn’t be a complete birthday party without bubbles!
  20. Trying out her new SLIDE! Ry loved it! And, for every readers future reference: a tu-tu is a great way to gain speed on a slide! I’m pretty sure that Rylee caught air at more than one point!
  21. Checking out one of the new swings! (SIDE NOTE: A special thanks to all the grandparents and great grandparents and all the other family that helped make this play structure possible (both with $ and the help to put it together)! We could NOT have done it without you!)
  22. Giving Kian hugs good-bye…so-so sweet! I can’t wait to have the kids play together this Summer!
  23. Mama had to have a little fun with the tu-tu too!

And…I just realized I included 23 photos! Holy Moly! As you can see, Rylee had a great time. Thanks to everyone who joined us for her celebration! She is so lucky to have so much family so close…We love all of you!