Light Bright!

Sunday when we got back into town, Joe and I stopped at Target and headed straight for their Christmas sale. If we were going to get any sort of lights for the reception, now would be the time. And we did. We cleared out their white christmas lights and went home with 11 boxes, 2200 light bulbs, and who knows how many feet. I think it's safe to assume have plenty of lights. Plus, you can't beat getting $120 worth of lights for $60! Next Christmas our house will probably look like this...

Wishing everyone a safe and Happy New Year! I am SO EXCITED for 2011!!!

Happy Birthday Joe!

The Birthday Boy!

Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday dear Joe, Happy Birthday to You! My soon-to-be husband is turning the big 2-5 today and I'm so excited for him! I've been leaving him little surprises - note on his car, a "Happy Birthday" sign and wrapped presents for when he comes home after work, finished his cake, probably send him a few more texts today:) I love celebrating birthdays so hopefully he doesn't mind my enthusiasm! I made dinner reservations for us at an Italian restaurant nearby and I can't wait to see the look on his face when he opens his gifts.



Joe and his two sisters, Jenna & Kate



Since he doesn't read this blog, at least that's what he tells me, I'll let you in on what I got him. He loves trying new beers and particularly beers that aren't mainstream like Mich Light or the ones you see during commercials. Plus, he's been wanting to make his own beer for a while now. His coworker is really into it and ever since we started making the wine for the wedding, his desire to make it has gone from "that would be fun" to "I really, really want to do this!" 

Seeing that I would never pick out the right kits/accessories he needs/wants and after searching around for a bit, I found a Mr. Beer Kit at Sears that I figured he could try out. It's nothing fancy but after reading some of the reviews, it looks like the perfect "first time brewer" kit. I also got him a book, "The Complete Joy of Home Brewing", that looks like a must have when it comes to starting this new hobby. Unfortunately the book won't come in the mail until tomorrow but he'll just have two days to open gifts instead of one. 

Now I would like to make a toast, here's to turning 25! May this year bring you happiness and lots of laughter, many memories and special moments. I love you Joe, to another 25+ wonderful years:)

Christmas 2010

Bentleyville

In the words of my late great grandfather, "Well, it's over!" Christmas has come and gone but thankfully I now have time to actually sit and be still. Joe and I were all over the place visiting both of our families so by the end of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I was more than ready to crawl into bed and rest my exhausted body. This was actually the first year I was able to be with Joe's family for the holidays too since last year we had a big snow storm that kept us from seeing each other. The Sheleruds' & Wallis' are amazing and I am one lucky girl to be a part of their family! Now we're gearing up for New Year's and hopefully the snow/ice storm that's on its way changes direction!

Sadie got me a travel book for Vancouver, Victoria, Vancouver Island and a few other places in Canada that we can use for our Honeymoon! I've already been reading about different places and travel trips and it's making me that much more excited for our trip! And one of the best parts is that whales are frequently seen in the area:) Ha...I love whales.

But anyway, Christmas was amazing being surrounded by our families. We are truly blessed to have every individual in our lives and I am so excited for all that's to come in 2011! It's going to be a very, very good year!

I spoke to soon

Here I was yesterday complaining about how it was so hard to find letters and every time I did they didn't have the right letters we needed, yada yada yada. Literally 10 minutes after I posted that I found these letters!

I found them online at Kohl's and they were on sale too! I ordered a "J", "&" and a "S". They are made out of metal, brown in color, and stand about 6" high. I'm excited and Joe liked them too!! Unfortunately it means I may have one less wedding project to do but who are we kidding, I haven't done any yet anyways.

On a more Christmasy note, Joe and I are headed back home after work tonight! Last night we, I, started and finished wrapping our gifts while watching Christmas Vacation. I even put up a few Christmas decorations around the house. We are taking this year "off" with Christmas and are saving next year as our full blown Winter Wonderland Spectacular, tree & decorations galore, since it will be our first Christmas as husband and wife:) Yippee!!

Merry Christmas and blessings to you all!

Santa is coming!!!

Two more days until the holiday festivities start!! My attempt to wrap presents last night did not go so well. But tonight will be the night... and it kind of has too:) I have no other options.

Now on the wedding front, I may have found a project to tackle. And my inspiration comes from this picture.

Finding letters is a harder task than you would think. And when I do find something I like they don't have any of the letters I need or they are terribly expensive. S's are very popular apparently. However, I did find this DIY site where they actually made these letters. See Here. I think I could handle this self project without any glitches (possibly) and even have some fun while doing it.

Can I go back?



To here? I feel like I've been scrambling for time ever since we started our drive home on Sunday. When we pulled up to the house the plows had come through over the weekend and we had to once again park on the road and get the snow blower going before we could pull in. Then it snowed again all day yesterday making for a lovely long ride home and I pulled in just in time to shovel our walkway before our friends game over to watch the not so good Vikings game. Umph.

I'm hoping tonight when Joe and I wrap our Christmas gifts for our families, I'll finally have the "It's Christmas!" feeling. My favorite holiday kind of got away from me this year and we didn't have time to get a tree or put up holiday decorations. However, I am determined to spread holiday cheer even if it's starting five days before Christmas!

On the wedding front, scanning pictures did not go very well yesterday. The scanner I was going to use scanned the pictures very dark so I need to work on a plan B. Also, I'm waiting until after the holidays to buckle down on some projects. Major things to do are: get suits for the guys, find a musician, get any rental supplies we may need and invites!

Ahhhh.....

I'd like to introduce to you my view from this past weekend. Isn't it glorious!? 

Joe and I spent Thursday - Sunday up north to get away for a little R & R. We ate tons of food, went for a snowshoe hike, spent a day at Lutsen, and hours in the outdoor hot tub. Thankfully I am still in one piece and have no broken bones from our ski day! Joe was a pro on the slopes and he enjoyed his black diamond runs while I watched from the bottom:)

Our rule for the weekend: relax and NO WEDDING TALK! It was so nice to get away from our busy lives and enjoy one another's company and lose track of time which we successfully did.

Now back to Monday.

Since I'm officially done with school until January, today I'm going to start scanning in pictures from mine and Joe's childhood for our slide show! I love looking back at old pictures and seeing where we've been to where we are now. Joe has some great pictures of his comb over he he:) He was such a cutie! This should be a fun wedding project!!

If we do the sand thing...

Yesterday I shared the idea of using sand instead of a unity candle to represent mine and Joe's coming together as one. When you think about it, it's kind of a cheesy, lovey dovey tradition, but I'm a sucker for being cheesy so I love it! Anywho, I came across this picture and started to think... 

I read this blog, Young House Love, and it's about a young couple sharing their home improvement projects, DIY ideas, and whatever else their working on around the house. But they had this post around Thanksgiving called Thanks Glassing that pretty much is a DIY version of this picture! Of course they didn't sandblast the jar like the one pictured but instead used Armour Etch to paint on their word of choice. We could put J + S or the wedding date or whatever else we wanted it to say so that way it wouldn't be a plain old glass jar filled with sand. Kinda cool.

Tonight I'm taking my LAST FINAL of the semester and I am so ready to be done! Joe and I are taking the next two days off of work and spending a long weekend up at Bluefin Bay to celebrate our end to writing papers and taking exams...at least for a few weeks. If we get snowed in, oh well. I'll be sleeping in, relaxing with my new book, and enjoying the views of Lake Superior. Oh it sounds glorious:) Is it 5:30 yet so I can go home?!

One down, one to go!

I am so close to freedom I can, well taste it! Last night I had my big Anatomy final and I found out this morning I got a 92%!!! This whopping 92% will more than likely confirm my final grade as an "A". I usually don't share my little successes but I'm making this an exception since I've been studying my rear end off for this thing:) Now, one more final Wednesday night and I'm free! Free at last:)

This past weekend Joe and I got out of town before the snowstorm that left 17 inches came through. Sunday was interesting coming home though. We were back home for our 7th (or maybe 8th? - can't seem to remember:) wedding which is thankfully our last wedding of 2010. This was our first wedding, however, with tacos as the big wedding feast. Yum.

It was also the first time I had seen (besides in pictures) the bride and groom mix sand to symbolize their coming together as one instead of the traditional unity candle. They also had rocks in the bottom of their jar which represented the foundation of their love, their lives together and of course, yours truly, Jesus. I have always wanted to use a candle but I'm afraid it might blow out in the wind since we're having the ceremony outside. So the sand idea is growing on me.....

so many things to do...

This is my last full week of school.
A week from this Wednesday I'll be done with the semester.
Finals are here!
Christmas is right around the corner and I'll be gone every weekend doing fun things until New Year's Eve. With that in mind...
I'm going to be "taking a break" from posting ideas, stories to share, etc until I'm done with school.
Hope you don't mind.
I need two eyes on the books:)

But I will tell you one more story that happened over the weekend that I'm sure neither Joe or I will ever forget:)

We've had an issue with mice this fall/winter. It hasn't been fun trying to hunt these little rodents down and they're getting smart. Smart as in moving our glue traps or eating the peanut butter off the traps - pretty much laughing at our attempts to say "sayonara little mice!" And the worst part about it is that we don't know how these little buggers are getting in!! After we got our second one we thought we were done with them but then a third one made its grand entrance about three weeks ago.

Well on Friday night before we left to meet up with our friends for some bowling, I noticed there was mouse poop in our kitchen sink and on the counters! First off, GROSS and second, how in the heck did they get up there?! I quickly washed it out and planned on cleaning it up first thing when we got back home. A few hours later we got back and I went straight for the cleaning supplies to wipe up the little mess. Joe grabbed a snap trap from downstairs to get it ready again and we went to work.

While we were threading a chunk of sausage (pest control guy from my work suggested raw bacon but we only had sausage:) we heard the toaster move, like it was popping up some toast. We both looked over, saw nothing, and then we heard it again. THAT LITTLE MOUSE WAS IN OUR TOASTER!!! It was sticking its head out probably looking for a quick getaway. I couldn't believe it! I literally started running in circles around our kitchen trying to think of what to do. We grabbed a garbage bag and gently moved the toaster toward the bag. Slowly, and with precision, Joe threw the bag over the toaster and slid it all, mouse and toaster, into the bag.

At first I wasn't sure if we got it in there. Even though we didn't see it run some other direction, it wasn't making any noise in the bag. We finished setting the trap (I had my eyes on the bag) and put it downstairs in case we have any more. Joe opened up the bag for me so I could see with my own two eyes that we got him and sure enough you could see it moving around in the toaster. And to think I just used the toaster a few days ago. sigh. While I was walking it out to the garbage, I told him to tell his friends not to come into my house anymore and threw it in the trash.

The next morning after our huge snowfall we were able to see some mouse tracks along the side of our house. The house is old, so where the foundation meets the driveway are a couple spaces that I could fit my glove into. I stuffed every space I could find with steel wool to see if that will help keep them from coming in. Next spring/summer calls for some pretty heavy mouse-proofing of our house. Oh the joys of life. 

Ok..another change in plans

When I first started diving into planning details for our big day I really liked the idea of using galvanized buckets filled with flowers from the farmer's market. See Here. I was going to use these to line the aisle and then take them to use as centerpieces for ten of our tables and finally found some at a local store in town and purchased three of them. The more I thought about it, the more I started second guessing my decision (which I tend to do that a lot = bad when wedding planning is all about making decisions.) My concern is that if we put flowers in these, when guests are sitting at the table trying to have conversation with their table buddies they won't be able to see over the buckets.

I've been trying to come up with something different for ten of our tables and when Joe and I went into an antique store I saw one of these....

What could be more appropriate at a barn wedding than old barn lanterns! Here's my idea: have one lantern on the table with maybe a quart size mason jar filled with a flowers and some small votive candles surrounding them - Oh and two blue bottles of our wine. I love the simplicity and look of them.

I emailed my grandma yesterday and she said my grandpa had three of them with the glass missing and are rusty and dirty. Perfect:) Hopefully we can find a few more that people have them lying around that we could borrow! So that's my new idea.

On another note, two years ago tonight Joe asked me to be his girlfriend. Who knew it would lead to all this wedding planning but I consider it the best thing that has ever happened to me! I am so lucky to have Joe in my life and to share it with someone who makes me so incredibly happy:)

Happy Two Years Joe!!

My version of a DIY cake stand....

I'm so excited about this idea that I'm sure (seeing by the pictures I have to share today) has been done a lot but hey...that's okay. We're just recycling ideas here people! My mom has picked up about five or six of these jars to fill with cookies and sweets and also mini cheesecakes to replace the usual cake after our pig roast for dessert. For the cheesecakes I wanted to find white square cake stands to set in between all the jars but have had some trouble even finding a fun cake stand, let alone a white cake stand. Nonetheless, my wide array of wedding blogs that I look at every day must have known what I wanted because I found my new inspiration.



Ta-da!



Well this is part of the idea. I love the wood blocks used to make the stands sit at different heights and I see these white sqaure plates

around a lot too. So...bada bing bada boom I'm going to put these white plates on top of the wood blocks - I'm thinking Birch.