Category Archives: party

Lemon Cello: In Photos

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While you’r reading this post, I will be flying across the United States on my way to Indianapolis, Indiana for the 2011 Archery Trade Show. Indianapolis in January. Fun Stuff.

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So, I had this grand idea to make lemon cello to bottle and use them as gifts for Christmas this year. I succeeded…partially. I made lemon cello. And it’s good. Oh, so good. However, it didn’t quite make it into any gift baskets. Weird how that happens, huh?

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to lay out just how easy it is to make your own infused vodka! I was really intimidated by this whole project, not able to really find any clear directions on the web. I finally found this recipe on the Pioneer Woman’s food site: Tasty Kitchen.

Ingredients:

  • 15 to 20 whole, organic lemons {I used 20}. Washed very well.
  • 2 whole bottles of 750 ml Everclear Vodka

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For the Simple Syrup:

  • 3 Cups Water
  • 4 Cups Sugar
Wash and dry your lemons.

Peel your lemons. Make sure you don’t get any of the white pithy part in your peels because it will make everything bitter. {You are only using the lemon peels for the lemon cello, so make a nice batch of lemonade or something with the rest of lemons.}
Put the peels in your jar and cover with the vodka. Cover the jar. {Since I couldn’t find a glass “iced tea” jar anywhere, I bought this glass cookie jar and just covered it with plastic wrap. It worked fine for steeping, but wasn’t the easiest when it came to pouring. Next time, I will find a different jar to use.}
Let your jar sit in a cool, dark place to steep for 4 to 6 weeks.

After the lemon peels and vodka have steeped for a good amount of time, make a simple syrup. Let the syrup cool, then pour into the jar with your lemon peels and vodka. Cover again and let it steep for another 4 to 6 weeks. {Your lemon peels will start to lose their color…this is supposed to happen.}

After your second round of steeping, you’re ready for bottling. I was able to repurpose glass bottles that I saved my sister had saved. All I had to do was wash off the labels and sterilize the bottles. Because I didn’t have the pour spout in my jar, I transferred the lemon cello into a pitcher for easy pouring. Before I did that, I used a slotted spoon to fish out the lemon peels onto a paper towel then squeezed the life out of the paper towel over the pouring pitcher to get all the lemon oils and leftover vodka.

Store your bottled lemon cello in the freezer. My favorite way to enjoy it is over ice using Squirt as a mixer. Yumm, yumm.

And, you know what’s steeping right now about ready for bottling?

Mint infused vodka.

MMMMmmm…

I may be incriminating myself here…

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But seriously? I don’t care. The photos from Julia’s wedding are finally avaiable to view online! I guess technically, they have been for a week now, but I’ve been to busy to post about it. Anyway, turns out it took so long for them to post them because there were over 1,000 photos to go through and they posted almost 1,000 of them. Julia sent me a text message when they were available for viewing and promptly called me a camera whore. I wonder why…

Roman Studios did a great job. They were fun to work with. They stayed way later than they were contracted to, but when you have great people to photograph? Why not. I mean, if they would have left early, they wouldn’t have caught any of this…

Or this…
Or my favorite…
(This is Julia’s Dad…I grew up calling him Pops or Papa)

The one I’m glad they didn’t get…me attempting to head bang.

Summary: Best friends wedding + Live band + Open bar + No kid = a Lifetime of Memories

Growing Up Sucks…but in a good way. Really.

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Well, another 4th of July is on the books. As I was driving home at 10:00 PM, leaving the party early because Ry was ready to go home, I couldn’t help but think about how my 4th of July’s used to be. I’ve been going out to the Clark’s Independence Day bash for a while now…well, as long as Andy and I have been together, so this would be my ninth year (except for the 1 year I was down in Cali)…so 8 years in all.

Ever since Rylee was born, it’s just been…well, different. Gone are the days of watching the fireworks until 1 in the morning, then staying up until 3 AM playing board games with friends. Not only does Ry need to get to bed, but I don’t think I’d even be able to make it until 3! Our friends who used to come every year have moved away or moved on. It’s amazing how things change as we get older. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss how the 4th of July’s used to be. I miss all of our friends being together, staying up late, laughing, retelling the same of stories again and again (and again).

But, at the same time, I love the day I had with my family today. Playing with Rylee on the teeter-totter, seeing her face drip with watermelon juice, watching her and her “Buddy!” pick up rocks from the driveway and toss them into the dog dish full of water, watching them chase each other around or holding hands, spending time with the “extended family”, reapplying sunscreen, watching Ry “brush it off” after her ump-teenth crash-and-burn. And quite possibly, best of all?…rocking her to sleep (because I never get to do that anymore).

Also, I must add a side-note. I had one of the BEST proud mama-moments yet…a non-biased 3rd party person commented on how cute of a TOM BOY Rylee is! Sa-WEET! Score one for the mama! That’s right…I don’t have a froo-froo little girly-girl…just ask the lady at the party…now if I only knew who she was…

I have been known to be a stick-in-the-mud-LER about Ry’s bedtime schedule, but this year, I eased up a bit and she got to experience fireworks for the first time! That only actually lasted about 10 minutes before she was ready to go, but hey, baby steps. She did however, totally dig the sparklers…

It’s hard to believe this was two years ago…

Post summary: Different in a good way.

A Range of Emotions!

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Get Ready. You’ll Laugh. You’ll Cry. You’ll get a good sense of all the emotions I felt the day my best friend got married.

It was a beautiful day. I cannot wait to see all of the pictures. Rylee was great all through the ceremony (I was imagining her yelling “HI MOM!” the moment she saw me). At the reception Ry was cuttin’ a rug! cue video #1…(side note, the audio on this video SUCKS!)

Please tell me you notice the finger-pointing whilst dancing!

The photgrapher and DJ put together this really great presentation that they played toward the end of the reception. A-Mazing! I bawled throughout the entire thing! For the record I only teared up a few times the whole day: 1-When Julia sobbed the whole way down the aisle with her dad, then MY dad started tearing up! 2-During the Father-Daughter dance and 3-this video presentation! Cue video #2…(turn the volume UP on this one…)

Did I mention I cried when I watched it? And every single time I have watched it since. It was such a beautiful day and SO.MUCH.FUN. In fact, my calves and abs are STILL sore from all of the dancing.

Note to my B: Thank you oh-so much for allowing me to be such an integral part of your and Spencer’s special day. You were beautiful. Spencer was handsome. The day was perfect.  And I meant what I said in my toast…I am really looking forward to the next 25 years of friendship, our families growing together and adding many more pages to our already long list of memories! I love you Blonde Sister.

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!