Mauzi and Ditto

 These little squirts bring a lot of joy to our lives.  Ditto is on the left and Mauzi is on the right.  When we had to put Kutcher down last fall, we were all heartbroken over losing our family dog.  Kutcher was truly a part of the family and we knew nothing would completely replace her but getting two new puppies definitely helped. :-)  Ditto is the mastermind behind all of their jail breaks and Mauzi is just a brute who pushes her way through.  They're a great little team! haha We come home to find that they've broken out of their pen while we've been gone and had a grand ole time in our absence and then they happily meet us at the door when we get home usually with spanish moss hanging out of their mouths that they've pulled out of the plants in their time of freedom! haha

One thing we have to decide is where to put them during the reception.  We know they'd have a great time greeting everyone and barking at them not to mention racing around the backyard, but I'm not sure that is exactly the best idea. haha  So they may be penned up in the garage, but they'll be thrilled to have visitors if you want to pet them! haha

This would be Mauzi with pillow stuffing hanging out of her mouth!  They chew on everything!

They love to dig in the dirt.  We always joke that they are part pig because they come in looking like they have little hooves. haha

Artichoke Pots

I had seen this artichoke pot at a florist in California.  They were like $30 a piece and I pulled a Tami and said, I could totally make that! :-)  So I bought all the items I needed to make them.  I've had all of it for a while but Tami is like my side kick when it comes to wedding stuff and any time that I'd think about doing it, I just couldn't seem to bring myself to start without Tami's moral support. haha So last night she came over and she chatted while I worked on the pot, but I felt so much better and motivated having her there! haha

I got some flower foam and wooden skewers for the base.

Then I took a wreath and wrapped ivy around it. 

I needed to cut off the wooden stick and my first instinct was to pick up the knife.  Not a good plan.  I would have been sawing for hours! haha

Wire cutter was a much better plan

Then I glued the wreath to the wooden skewer to get it to stand up on end.

Last, I added spanish moss and an artichoke on either side.  The final product will be a white washed flower pot and a ribbon around the pot.  Didn't get that far last night.

Tami Paige Photography

I am sooooo excited!  My cousin Tami is going to take my wedding pictures!!!!  She has always said that she would not do a family wedding.  Well I apparently wore her down because she has agreed to do my wedding. haha  The biggest challenge we were facing was that she is in the wedding, so naturally she needs to be in some of the photos.  That makes it a little difficult to take the pictures and be in them unless we did everything with a tri-pod and timer. haha  Well my cousin Carmen also does photography so we've enlisted her to help Tami during the bridal party pictures and during the ceremony.  I can't tell you how excited I am to have them both!  I love their styles and think it will be so fun to have family taking the photos.  I found these pictures online of other weddings that have been at Casa Romantica.  I chose some photos that I thought were neat.  You can check out Tami's website at http://www.tamipaigephotography.com/

Pillow Update

So instead of trying to buy pillows, I decided I'm going to make them.  I went to Hobby Lobby and found these fabrics and I'm going to make my own.  My cousin Heidi is a whiz on the sewing machine, so I'm going to have her give me a refresher course since I haven't sewn a pillow since Jr. High, but I'm pretty sure you can't hardly screw it up! haha So hopefully they will turn out or you'll see a later post with pictures of new pillows that I purchased! haha Wish me luck! :-)

Beverage Buckets

Along with the beverage dispensers, I also wanted to have colored bottled soda in beverage tubs.  I found some nice bronze beverage tubs at Target on clearance so I snatched them up and now I'm trying to decide which drinks to go with.  I love the Jones soda bottles because they're so fun and colorful.  You can actually have them put your picture on the label, but I doubt I'll go to that much trouble. I like the look of them even plain.  But they have green(green apple) and hot pink(fufu berry) that I think will be cute in a beverage tub iced down. 

This is kind of similar to the beverage bins I found at Target.

Just a Reminder

Just a reminder that Southwest posted their fares today for Labor Day weekend.  They are running web specials for $144 each way from Midway to Los Angeles which is $320 with taxes and fees.  That is probably the cheapest round trip you'll find, so you may want to take advantage of it because those fares sell out early.

Southwest is one of the few airlines that doesn't charge for checked luggage, so when booking keep in mind that other airlines will charge you $25 each way for a checked bag.  If you have more than one checked bag per person, the second back is like $35 and so on.  So Southwest not only has great fares but you don't pay a baggage fee which will save you $50 unless you're planning to take a carry on bag for the weekend.

I also checked the other airlines.  They are all running about $320 total as well but you'll have the baggage fee.  I checked Expedia and that's for Alaska Air and United.  I also check American as well.

Green Room

So I've decided I want to do new bedding when Brian and I get married.  I loved my bedding when I first got it but now the rainbow colored bedding has lost its luster in my mind.  I want to go with something a little more classic than so colorful.  OBVIOUSLY I love the color green, so I'm trying to convince Brian to paint our master grass green and then with my black furniture, I'd put all white bedding with black accents on it and white curtains.  He came over Saturday night and I showed him some pictures and he's not COMPLETELY opposed.  Might just take a bit more coaxing. haha  Here are some of the ones I like.

This is my favorite just with white and black bedding instead. 

This is the type of bedding I'd like to go with.

Pillows

My parents have some wicker furniture like this on their side patio which is where everyone will be entering the house for the reception.  I thought it would be cute to have some colored throw pillows for the furniture that match the wedding colors.

What I want is some pillows like these.  However finding them is not as easy as I had thought.  The website I found them on seems to be out of all of them and on top of that, they are just pillow covers, you still have to buy the inserts.  So I thought maybe I'd just make them but trying to find fabric posed to be an even more difficult task.  Guess I'll wait till it gets closer to Easter.  There's got to be some pink and green throw pillows somewhere. :-)

What do all these things have in common?

You would think with all these items we were going on some kind of strange camping trip, but surprisingly enough all of these items are for Whit's wedding. We spent the day running errands and picking up some of the final items for Whit's wedding. 

We started out at Kinkos getting Whit's programs printed.  She walked in without the jump drive or computer assuming that they could print them for her through mental telepathy! haha Wedding brain has sunk in completely. :-)  The place was a ghost town so we were assuming we'd just wait on them and then spend the next couple hours slicing and putting programs together.  The lady told us they'd be ready after 4pm and it was 11:30am when we got in there.  We kind of looked around dumbfounded how it would take 5.5 hours to print off 250 copies, but we shrugged it off and left.

We then went to Goodwill.  Were always amazed with this place how everytime we go we have to park around the car in the nearby neighborhood because the parking lot is packed.  I didn't know Goodwill was such a popular place to shop. :-)  Whit needed paperback books, so we quickly went to work demolishing their paperback book section collecting lots of trashy novels because they were the thickness we needed. haha  She's tearing off the covers and using them for centerpieces, hence the twine. :-)  We ended up with about 26 books anywhere from love stories, to spiritual books, to books about racecar drivers.  I'm sure the cashier thought we were either avid readers of ALL different kinds of literature or just book collectors. haha

We then met Grandma and Cara for lunch at Logan's which was fun to catch up with them and talk about disasterous weddings we've heard about and reflecting back on our parent's wedding and how someday our kids will probably scoff at our weddings just like we do about my mom's burnt orange bridesmaid dresses. haha

Then we headed to Meijer where we fought the superbowl planning crowds to get twine, fishing line(to hang puff balls), cable ties(to hang cafe lights), and gold spray paint.  Thankfully no one was shopping in the hardware section so we got in and out pretty fast! haha

Pool Decor

Since we decided not to cover the pool, I figured the next best thing was to decorate the pool! :-) My cousin Megan and I were talking about it during one of our quarterly dinners a while back and I was saying that I wanted to float candles on the pool.  She then told me that she's always wanted to try out something she had seen where you took the glass "fish bowls" and put tealights in them and floated them.  She said the glass isn't heavy enough to sink so they just float on the water.  So I'm giving her credit so I can steal her idea. haha  I also found these water lillies on a craft website I've been using and thought they'd be cute as well. 

Dollar Tree thankfully had the bowls for really cheap and also sells these monster tealights with two in a pack, so I'm hoping that they'll stay lit a while.  Megan also gave me a good tip that if you freeze the tealights ahead of time, they don't burn as fast.  Did I say that she's available for hire for weddings? haha



This is the look I'm going for.

Hairstyles

A week or two ago Tami and I got together and we tried out some hairstyles with my hair for the wedding.  She thought it would only take like 20 minutes to curl my whole head.  Have you seen my hair??  I'm like a chia pet!  haha So the 20 minutes turned into like an hour and a half and I was a cluster of curls.  If Grandma Huber were still alive, she would have been so happy to see these curls because I definitely was resembling Shirley Temple. :-)  I would post pictures of the up do that we tried but every picture Tami took gave me three chins.  I mean I know I need to lose weight but the pictures were a little exaggerated! haha  So here are some ideas of what I'd like to do if possible.



Bright Green Ties

So my original plan was to have the guys wear bright green and pink striped ties.  I liked the idea of them wearing the collegiate stripe which is the real wide striped ties.  I quickly found out that bright green and hot pink ties in a collegiate stripe are impossible to find.  Apparently there are no colleges out there with bright green and hot pink as their school colors! haha  So then I thought maybe I'd go with lighter shades, but I couldn't get used to the idea of it not really going together.  My third plan was to have the guys just wear plain bright green ties.  However when we were in Chicago to get my ring and we were killing time at Macy's, I was looking at ties and picked one up and showed it to Brian.  He was like that is the ugliest tie I've ever seen!  I hate that color!  Why would you have me wear that?  I was like GREAT, those are the wedding colors and then I think he mumbled something like oh no no no no no no. haha  So I decided to make it easier on all of us, I would just not have the guys wear ties! haha

Option #1 Collegiate Stripe

Option #2 Green and pink stripe

Option #3 Plain Green Stripe

Solution: NO TIES! :-)