My Last Day as a "Miss"!

This is as close as the countdown is going to get...tomorrow, these two...

 

Are getting MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

That's right, the next time you hear from me, I'm going to be a Mrs.!

 

We had our rehearsal and dinner last night at Darryl's dad's house as a backyard BBQ.  It was delicious and such a great time.  It was also the perfect, laid back, relaxed, family and friend atmosphere we had hoped for.  We were finally able to give our wedding party and parents their gifts, which I have been dying to give them for months now!  I'll share them with you soon  :)

 

I've got a lot to get done today, packing and a little bit of running around so I'd better get an early start!  My sister, my niece and myself will be having a sleep over at my mum's house tonight in order to get an early start in the morning and so Darryl and I don't see each other until the big moment.  Oh gosh, I'm welling up just thinking of it!

 

ps.  I'm linking up to Aka Design's Link Party today!

 

 

The GodFather

And Godmother.

Last Friday Darryl and I became Godparents to my niece Lily.  It was a really nice Baptism, it was private with just my family and my brother-in-law's family.  For a while I had pondered what to gift a baby for their Baptism.  There are a lot of trinkety things in gift stores, but I didn't really want something that would just sit on a shelf. 

I had a lot of fun looking at things on etsy like this cute bracelet and this personalized silver spoon and finally decided to buy a personalized hanger (like you often see for bridal party gifts) from Dawn's Craft Store.  I have browsed etsy shops for years, but this was my first time purchasing something, and it was a really great experience.  I guess it depends on the seller, but Dawn was super easy and nice to work with and got my hanger sent out to me so quickly, so I was relieved because I'm always a little bit nervous buying things online - you just never know who you're dealing with!  Then I ended up buying several other things from etsy this summer which I will share with you next week!

Anyhoo, here's the hanger...

 

And then my mum got her a gold chain so I thought I would get something to go on the chain.  I wanted to get a cross, and it was tricky to buy!  I didn't want anything that looked baby-ish so that she could grow into it and we searched so many stores!  Finally we found one that we both just loved...

 



 

After the ceremony we went out for dinner at Milestones to celebrate and exchange gifts.  She was such a good girl the whole day, it was perfect.

And lily gifted us an adorable picture that I will have to add to this post next week as I've reached my uploading amount for the month...grrr!

T-2 days!!

Tonight is our wedding rehearsal - yikes!  It's all so real now!!  I'm looking forward to sharing all of the little projects I've been up to!

Are you a Godparent...any neat gift ideas you've given or received...where do you shop for them?

A Champagne Year

 Just a quick pop in today to say hello and happy birthday to me!  Apparently this is my "champagne" year, or golden year I've heard too.  I'm turning 29 on the 29th.  I don't know what that means for me exactly, but I just love my birthday (is everyone like that?  I can't imagine it being any other day of the year, it's THE perfect day for me!) so I'm super excited  :)

 

                                        

This morning I'll be tying up the final wedding loose ends, this evening my friends are taking me out for some dessert and then my family will come over for a visit.  It's been such a busy last few weeks that I'm looking forward to a quiet birthday celebration, enjoying the day in a relaxing way...there's plenty of hype coming up in THREE DAYS!!!

I'm going to soak up my last year as a twenty-something year old...I'm not sure how yet, but I will!! 

Maybe I should start a bucket list??  Do you have one?  What kind of things are on it?

Mason Jar Picture Frames

Last week I put the many mason jars I got at a garage sale back in May to work.  The majority are being used for centerpieces, but I had a few small ones from 1934 and 1952 that I wanted to use.

I first saw the idea over at August and Everything After and loved how they looked and decided to make some myself. 

Here's all you'll need if you want to make some of your own...

I printed out some of our engagement pictures, cut them down to size, plopped them in the mason jar and filled it with olive oil, et voila!

We'll use these to decorate the gift/card table.  Simple and sweet and something we can keep afterwards.

 

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend - anything exciting!? - we were crazy busy attending my niece's baptism, a Jack and Jill and then a wedding shower! 

 

T - 4 days till our wedding!  Yikes!

 



Linking up to:

We're Into the Single Digits!

That's right, only 8 days until Darryl and I tie the knot now!  This last week is going to be crazy busy so I may not get a chance to pop in, but after the wedding I'll be able to share all the little details I've wanted to keep a surprise for my family and friends.

This weekend is jam packed.  Right now we're heading off to try out some teeth whitening (I got a really great Groupon that I couldn't pass up) and after that we are off to become Godparents to my wonderful niece Lily!  I feel so honoured and privileged to be that person in her life. 

On Saturday I have a bridal shower to go to, then in the evening, a family gathering for my cousin whole flew back from England to be at our wedding (thanks Caleb!) and on Sunday, another wedding shower to go to!  I'm telling you, there's not a minute to breathe this weekend!

I hope you all enjoy yours!!  Any fun plans?  Anyone else heading to some showers?

The Fruits of our Labour

If you were to take a stroll through our backyard right now, you may think our house alone was the reason for your Hay Fever...

That is one heck of a weedy looking mess!

Buuuuuut, you guessed it, when you take a closer look you can see our fruit and veggie garden in full swing!  We've got some tomatos finally ripening up.  And the most exciting for me...

Watermelons!!!  We've got four nearly full grown ones, and let me tell you these four guys are survivors!  I don't know how many golf ball sized babies we had nurtured only to find them eaten the next morning.  I don't know how these four made it unscathed but I cannot WAIT to try them!!  I'll have to google when you can tell that a watermelon is ready to be picked.  Maybe when they start to get the lighter green stripes?  Right now these guys are about volleyball sized and at the rate that they grow, it shouldn't be long now.

And since the watermelons are garden hogs, you can even find some of them hanging out with the peppers that have finally started changing from green to red!

How exciting is it to grow your own food!  We really had no expectations of our garden growing anything because our yard is so over run with pesky squirrels that seem to eat anything we put out there, but maybe they just couldn't keep up??
 

Sadly though, I think the squirrels have more of a sweet tooth because try as it might, our poor little strawberry bush that I was so looking forward to devouring has only ever had one precious little berry turn pink.  And even that one was eaten by someone other than me.  All the rest seem to bud, turn yellow like the berry towards to top of the picture, and then are quickly gobbled up.  Sigh.

Do you grow your own fruits and veggies?  Have any favourites?  How do you keep the pesks away?



Some Extra Reading Material

Hello!  Just a quick pop in today, we're very busy and down to the crunch now - 12 days to go!!

Here's something completely un-house related, but something that's been all over Pinterest forever and I'd been itching to try...

Newspaper nails!  Have you seen these all over Pinterest?  So fun.  And super super easy.  All you need (other than regular nail polish stuff) is newspaper and alcohol!

You can find more in depth tutorials all over the internet, but if you're curious about what I did here's the basics:

1.  Paint nails and let dry completely

2.  Dip finger in alcohol for 20ish seconds

3.  Remove and immediately place newspaper strip onto nail, pressing firmly down in all directions for about 5-10 seconds (without shifting the newspaper or it will smudge), then peel it off

4.  Finish with a top coat (or else the print will just smudge off)

If you make a mistake, just rub your nail and the print will come right off and you can try again.

Fun!  A little extra reading material for the next time I'm waiting for 45 minutes in the doctor's office and forget my book.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, mine was full of little wedding projects that I'll be sharing soon. 

Have you tried these nails before?  Or do you have other fun nail techniques?

Have A Seat...

With less than three weeks to go, it's time to get down to all the nitty gritty details in our wedding planning.  One of these tricky things is the seating plans.  I've seen the abundant signs with cute poems all over pinterest and blogs where guests can seat themselves,

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and while I love the idea in theory, I've been to a wedding where this was the arrangement and it was like a crazy mad dash when the doors opened, and all of our friends except two made it to a table together and the other two ended up at a table with the pastor.  So for us we wanted to do a bit of planning. 

Here's the feel we're going for...

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We'll be using our old windows from our main floor renovation that look quite similar to these...my writing, however, not so much!

Last night I got to a little of the brainstorming suggested here...

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What a great idea for how to figure out your seating plan without having to erase things any time you need to make a change!

Card Box Inpiration

A while back we were strolling through Value Village and came across....a yellow AND grey suitcase....what are the chances!!  After some" Pinteresearch" I came across a lovely selection of inspiration.

As usual, I held onto the suitcase and all of the supplies I had collected for decorating it for, well, months.  But yesterday I finally got around to tackling it (and I look forward to sharing it with you in a few very short weeks, but I for now I have to leave some element of surprise for my guests who also read my blog!)

It's safe to say it looks something like a combo of all of these...

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I love that at the end of the night it can just be closed up and easily carried out.  So handy.

For now I am off to hunt down some centerpiece materials and then back to Value Village.  This weekend I will be soaking in my third (I've been spoiled!) and final shower and I am so looking forward to it!

What kinds of things are you looking for inspiration on?  Have you come across any unique card box ideas?  Plans for the weekend?

Mushy Mushies

I am very fortunate to have a cousin in my life who enjoys photography and just happens to be pretty good at it.  As a wedding shower gift to us, she asked if we would like some Engagement pictures taken, and I said heck yes!

Forgive me for the number of pictures you're about to see, there were over 100 to choose from!

At first it was pretty awkward pretending to be all lovey dovey - well not pretending - but I guess doing it while someone is watching.  But eventually we eased in and got some lovely pictures.

Had to get a close up of the ring of course!

This one makes me laugh a little bit...it's such a typical engagement pose, but we were running out of ideas! 

I'm so happy with how this one turned out, I love the combination of the rustic wood, the vibrant flowers and the sparkly ring.  Scrabble art is all over blogland and pinterest, and I didn't want a generic "Love" or "Forever" where the ring was the O.  So after some thought about how to personalize it a little, I realized our last names both had an O in them, and whatengagement picture could be more perfect than a picture of two people (represented by our names) being joined by marriage (represented by my ring)!? 

I like this picture because it captured something completely unintentional by both us and my cousin taking the pictures.  She only noticed days later while she was editing that it said "loving husband" on the bench plaque...what a coincidence!

Gotta have some smoochie pictures

Wow, I'm just realizing as I edit this post how partial I am to black & white/sepia shots.

My cousin will also be doing our wedding photography and I'm already excited to see how they turn out. 

As part of the gift she gave us two large frames and a smaller album so now I have to narrow it down even further and decide which ones to print and enlarge!  Hopefully now that I've ripped the bandaid on hanging wall art it shouldn't be as tough.  Maybe it will even inspire us to do something with our bedroom which has not been touched in terms of painting/decorating since the day we moved in  :S



Centerpieces

I hope all the Canadians out there are enjoying this long weekend!

With our wedding less than 4 weeks away on September 1st, I've got all the details on the brain.  One thing I've been struggling with for a while now is what to do for the centerpieces. The problem is that I have too much inspiration - oh pinterest, you've confused me!  I'm having so much trouble trying to narrow it down now.  So let's take a look at some of the images I'm liking.

These silver flower pots are a-dor-able...

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I took a stroll around Value Village to see what they might have on hand and saw 12 silver cups...

And some other little containers...

While I was wandering around I came across a section of yellow glass - since our colours are grey and yellow I thought they could be neat.  Unfortunately they didn't have enough, but I'll keep my an eye open at other stores too...

I also love the look of vintage book centerpieces...

                                  

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 I really like the ambiance these doily lanterns give off, and they could be a fun DIY...

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I also think these lemon centerpieces are so sweet, the perfect colour and would probably make the room smell pretty nice!  But Darryl finds the sliced open lemons creepy.  It's one of his quirks.  He says it reminds him of the center of a sunflower, which we can all agree is uber creepy, right?  So I didn't push the lemon idea (although I have to say, the first thing that comes to mind when I look at them is a bicycle wheel and he loves bikes, soooo... lol) So I guess no lemons for us, but we can still look...

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So pretty, right?

Whichever way we end up going, I would prefer for them to have a bit of a hand-made touch and also to be a bit unique as opposed to the traditional flowers in a vase centerpiece.

UPDATE since I drafted this: I think I've narrowed it down to one of these options... guesses??

Have you seen any unique centerpieces at a wedding or online somewhere?

Boas, Burlesque and Belly Laughs...Oh My!

Last weekend was my Bachelorette party and I had such a great time.  Our day started at 3pm with a Burlesque dance lesson.  I love to try to pretend to be a dancer, I love to take classes of all sorts and to try to learn coreography.  I watch So You Think You Can Dance and imagine that if I had tried harder as a kid I could have been some amazing dancer by now hahaha.  I'll keep dreaming... 

So as you can imagine I was thrilled to try the Burlesque class.  Our instructor was voluptuous, wearing hot pink eyelash extensions, a huge boa and cone-shaped Madonna boobs.  It was great.  She taught us some moves and then the steps to a little routine to "Hey Big Spender" and then we had to have a Burlesque-off in two groups.  All the girls picked up boas at the dollar-store but as part of my gift I received a much larger, heavier boa which was super fun.

This was before we got started, we're just getting suited up with our boas

This move cracked me up - right when she sings "Hey Big Spender" we had to boa-whip the floor hahah

After the class...what a great time!

Afterwards, we headed to my future sister-in-law's house for a potluck and some beverages.

Just before leaving we grabbed a shot of the bridesmaids (the one on the far left lives in BC and won't be here until the wedding, so the girls made sure she'd be there in spirit, printing off her head and attaching a stick and a boa so that we could bring her out with us!)

 

Next we went to YukYuks which was such a great time, we laughed so hard!  My cheeks were hurting by the time we left.

Then of course we had to end the night with some dancing (boa included)

The next morning I was definitely not smiling like this, but it was such a fun fun fun time that it was well worth it!

I hope you all enjoy your weekend...anything fun planned!?