Let me take your picture!

Yesterday after work, I headed to Caribou Coffee to meet with Erin our photographer. It was so good to see her again since I haven't seen her since our Engagement pictures last July. We planned a rough draft schedule for the afternoon - when we'll do family photos, bridal party photos, etc. I am so excited that she is excited for our wedding. It's so nice having someone you know and admire their work photographing one of the best days of your life! Thank You Jesus for talented friends:)

For those of you wondering about the bean bag toss game, I haven't forgotten about it! I just haven't had the time to sit down and finish painting. Joe and I have been so busy after work these past couple of weeks the game has had to sit on the bench for awhile. I do plan on getting to it, however, over the long 4th of July weekend! Will someone please tell me why it is not Friday yet?

One more thing, yesterday we received a RSVP that was a "yes" for two people and they forgot to put their names on it. Hmmm...wonder who it is?!

Halfway to Official!

With the possible government shutdown on July 1st looming over our heads, Joe and I went to Hennepin County this morning and applied for our marriage license! Our appointment was at 8am and because we arrived early (I always have to be on time especially if I have never been there before) we were walking back out at 7:55am! Joe didn't have to be to work until 9:30am and since I work five blocks away from the County, we walked around downtown and grabbed some breakfast. I have the copy, although unsigned, of our license in my purse and may have sneaked a few peaks at it throughout the day so far:)

Hennepin County Government Center

Our surroundings on one side!



I have also been dealing with Gander Mountain drama about our registry. I won't go into details because it would take forever and you'd probably get bored reading it but basically the store we registered at threw it away because they thought it was a copy and so some of the Gander Mountain locations never received the registry in the first place. Gander Mountain is not with the "technology times" like Target or even Menards for that matter. I had to call the Duluth store to get their copy, have them fax it to me at work so I could fax it back to the store we registered at. Not quite sure why the Duluth store didn't have a company directory with all that information but I ended up writing a letter to their corporate headquarters about our situation. Get this, the headquarters are in one of the buildings my boss owns. Small world. It wasn't a mean letter by any means, just a letter explaining my frustrations and what I think could be done to better improve the quality and service for their customers when it comes to registries. We'll see if they say anything!

Wedding Central

Our house is quickly filling up with all things wedding related and I'm running out of room!! Well, not really but it feels like it. I have named one of our spare rooms (we now have two with our last roommate moving out last week!!) "Wedding Central". Welcome.

This picture was taken awhile ago and to be honest, it looks even worse now! I couldn't get the whole room in one shot so use your imagination....boxes stacked on top of each other on the right side of this picture, photos for the slide show spewed across the floor and my veil now hanging in the closest. I should really have one of these signs on the door...

Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating but you can't really see the floor. It's a wedding war zone in there. Soon my "Wedding Central" room will be our office until we need more room for our future family:) But for now, I'll keep filling it up for 25 more days!

Cabin Fever along with Michael Buble!

What a great weekend and why did it have to end so quickly! Friday after work Joe and I headed up to his parent's cabin for a little R&R to kick start the weekend. We ended up hitting some detours so it took a little bit longer to get to our final destination but we finally pulled in around 9:30pm. Whoo:) Saturday was a full day out on the lake for us in the boat. I think we were out there for about four or five hours - Joe fished, I soaked up the sun for the first time this summer with sunscreen on of course! We found his Dad's fishing spot right under this big guy...

At one point there were two of them up there and we sat under him for a good hour and a half! It was so cool:)

Don't worry everyone, I have a swimsuit on! Joe also caught a 16 1/2in walleye but unfortunately it must be 17in in Wisconsin to keep it. Maybe next time...

I headed back home around 3pm while Joe stayed at the cabin until Sunday. I had to get back for the Michael Buble concert with my Mom and Sadie! It was such a good show and the opening act Naturally 7 was amazing! We had a great time and were up dancing for some of the show:) Here's a few pictures from the night!

Sunday was Sadie's 17th birthday! I can't believe my baby sister is 17!!! I still remember the day she was born and it has been so wonderful being a part of her life. She always makes me laugh and as she's been getting older, its been lovely having another person I can talk with about life and all that comes with it. A true friend and sister. Happy Birthday Sadie! Love you!!

Frame It, Curl It, Move it!

(Joe, don't read this unless we're married:) Last night I met with the gal, Jeni, who is going to be helping me out with framing the map for Joe! I picked out a rustic, brown frame and she'll mount it on a form board and laminate it so it doesn't bubble up or get warped someday down the road. I kept finding myself biting my tongue last night when I got home because I wanted to tell him about it so bad! I am excited to see the finished product up on our wall!!

After I met with Jeni, I headed off to my hair trial appointment for the wedding. My stylist, Ashley is awesome! She's young (probably around my age) and so much fun to talk to. We got a good idea of what she's going to do the morning of but I might go in for another run at it. Not because I didn't like how it looked but because I have so much hair she has to figure out a way to "hide" it. I really don't want a big lump of the back of my head and if she can practice again, then she'll be more comfortable and quicker putting the look together.

I finally made it home a little after 9pm and Joe was helping John pack up the last of his things. Our last and final roommate is officially on his own! John was a great roommate but I am so excited to have the house to ourselves, fill our kitchen with all the goodies we got at the showers and run around naked screaming at the top of my lungs!! Well, maybe not the last part but now if I ever get the urge, I could do it:) Haha. I'll spend the next few weeks before the wedding organizing, reorganizing and deep cleaning EVERYTHING!

Life is getting so good at the moment! Happy Friday:)

Uno Mas

I don't know how else I can say it...

ONE. MORE. MONTH!!!!!!

30 days.

Wow.

Mr. and Mrs. Joe Shelerud

Sarah Shelerud.

 Mrs. Shelerud

Joe's Wife

One happy, lucky, thankful, blessed, loved, proud, humbled, so excited I can't wait woman.

To Be Continued...

Well, the boards could have used a fourth coat but Joe and I decided against that and I wanted to get down to the fun stuff with the gray and navy paint. I started both of them, one I like more than the other, so I'm going to take a day or two off from working/blogging about these and let them sink in for a bit before I decide on the next step to take.

I've been busy making lists of all sorts for the big day. Lists on what needs to be set up, what needs to be taken down, what can be moved into the trailer when and all the little things in between. Hopefully that will make the day go by smoothly and when someone asks, "What can I do?" I can give them an area to be in charge of. You have all been warned...ask to help and I WILL put you to work!!

Until Paint Dries

Maybe that should be the title of this blog until I get these bean bag boards painted. I thought I would be able to get away with one more coat of white paint but even after that, I could still see the grain popping through. So while Joe worked on his temperature controller I litterally watched the paint dry.

A couple hours after I put on the second coat, the boards were dry enough to brush on another coat. The verdict is yet to be decided but I'm hoping when I get home tonight they'll be good to go! Third times the charm!

Bean Bag Toss

Good Monday Everyone! Boo to the weekend being over but every weekend that comes and goes brings Joe and I one more day closer to our big day. 33 days to be exact. WHOO!! We played at Valleyfair on Saturday and ended the night with a date to a fancy restaurant and a movie at home. It was perfect on a rainy Saturday. Then Sunday, the project began. Notice the word, "began". Um...I'm still working on it. haha. I guess I didn't realize that I would have to wait for the paint to dry (duh sarah) before painting our names or initials on them and that we would have to sand the boards down (thank you Lowe's for our new sander). It's a work in progress and I'm excited to get back on the paint brush tonight after work!

Our Bean Bags Came!!



Okay back to the boards. First, I had to sand these babies down. **Note: Joe did offer to sand but I really, really wanted to and he graciously let me man the power tool. It was awesome!

One down, one more to go. I was one a roll. After I finished both of them, my hands tingled for a solid 15 minutes after I was done. Everything was nice and smooth, ready for paint but I had to quit for about an hour to have a phone meeting with Becca from Gale Woods. We went through any questions we had, what they would be setting up for us, taking down, who would be our hosts and security guard - the logistics for the day. Then Joe and I tried to make steaks on the grill but our grill was acting up so our steak dinner turned into sloppy joes.

I ate fast and returned to the garage to start painting. We are not paint experts, we don't know what brushes are the best or whether the paint should be flat, satin, do we get a half gallon? gallon? In fact, this was our second paint project besides our picket fence we did last August which by the way is peeling already!!! So we guessed.

We picked up a gallon of white paint, an assortment of brushes and two samples of navy and gray paint. The picture above should be flipped but on the paint strip, we picked the bottom two. Hello Calavry and Sheffield Gray!

This is me with the sander! Safety glasses and all:)

I"ll l have to put on another coat of white paint since you can see the grain of the wood up close but they're coming! Hopefully I can start with the two colors by Wednesday. Not sure how I'm going to use them...I keep telling Joe "I'm freeing it". Ha. Wish me luck!

Our Weekend Project

Last weekend when I was visiting our friends Alsie, Josh and baby Grayson I picked up our new bean bag toss game! The previous neighbors left their homemade boards up in the rafters and now Joe and I are the lucky owners. They need paint and little bit of TLC but they'll spruce up quite nice. We can doing anything we want with them...like this

Joe and I will be picking up paint this weekend and hopefully start on them. The only thing we needed to complete the game were beans bags. And look what I found!!

Each set was $9.99 plus shipping so it was about $30 total for the two sets but they are heavy duty! We got them yesterday in the mail and I think they'll last many, many games:) I'll update to you on our progess Monday but until then have a wonderful weekend!!

We Did It!!

Joe and I passed premarital counseling! Well, I guess it wasn't a pass/fail type of thing but we made it through:) Last night after work we drove to Hinckley and met with our Pastor to talk about our family origins, finances and faith. I enjoyed this session much more than our previous session with him because we were able to converse with each other and share our story of how we came to be compared to the first time when Pastor Jeff did more of the talking and we did a whole lot of listening.

It was kind of funny when he was talking to us about finances and how we really need to start early on with our retirement and how much we need to save. Joe and I both laughed on the way home about how we wanted to interrupt him and say we're already on top of it! Joe is extremely good with all that finance fancy type of stuff. (I guess he should be if he's taking all these finance classes for his Master's!) Ha. Joe is my number guy...I put my total trust in his ability to make those money decisions, what kind of stocks we should have and where we should put our money so it helps us in the future when we're sick of working.

One thing Pastor Jeff told us to do was make a plan for our marriage - what we expect of each other in all aspects of our soon-to-be marriage whether it'd be finances, faith, our relationship to each other, to our families and eventually our own kids one day. We talked a bit about this on our way home and both felt it was an important topic to put some time into and to let each other know our expectations. It's one thing to get married and have the perfect day you've been planning months for, but it's another to have a lifelong marriage with your best friend.

I feel like the meaning of marriage has changed drastically over the past many decades. Many people give up too quickly when they're going through a rough patch, many think it's going to be easy because you "love each other and no one gets you like they do" type of thing, when the truth is, it's not always going to be easy. I know Joe and I will have our fair share of arguments and there will be times when we don't like each other but I'm not going to dwell on all the bad that might happen because what's the fun in waiting for that?

Pastor Jeff asked "Why a Christian wedding when you could have gone a different route? What is so important about a Christan marriage to you?" And he said, it's because of forgiveness. Christ died on the cross for all who have sinned and has forgiven us when frankly, we don't really deserve it. His grace covers us and when our spouse has hurt us and we don't feel like loving them in that moment, we must remember that in Christ's eyes, they are forgiven and Christ loves them. I know I'm not explaining his conversation about Jesus's forgiveness very well but it really made an impression on my heart. Forgiveness is powerful.

T Swift!

Last night was the night Sadie and I have been waiting for since I told her about the tickets back in February! Taylor Swift was finally in town for her Speak Now Tour and my mom graciously drove Sadie down so we could go together. I got these tickets for Sadie's birthday and I don't know how I'll ever top this birthday present:) We had such a good time and Sadie is definitely a screamer! I had to plug my ears she was so loud! We sang along to every song, took some good pictures and made another memory together for the books! Thanks for being such an awesome concert buddy Sadie! Happy Birthday!!! Love you!

Cake Topper!

I promised I'd share pictures of the cake topper I made so today is your lucky day! I used the same fabric as the larger bunting banners I posted about yesterday and picked up the dowells at Michael's for real cheap - under $3 for a pack of 12!

 

A little hand sewing going on

Wrapped the thread around the top of the dowel quite
a few times to make sure it stayed on

Bada bing bada boom and we have a cake topper folks! I loved how it turned out and think it will look great on our cake! I showed Joe my little project yesterday and he loved it as well. I've been going through my "To Do" list and we're getting close to being done. Wouldn't it be nice to have everything ready to go by the beginning of July and then we can just sit back and relax before the big day? Oh the dream...

PS...Sadie and I are going to see Taylor Swift tonight at the XCEL Energy Center! Can't wait!

D-I-Ying All Over The Place

Joe is HOME! I picked him up from the airport around 6:30 this morning and he is just as cute as I remember:) Yea, I may have missed him a little a lot!!! I really didn't get a chance to talk with him because he was exhausted from an overnight flight, I was tired from getting up so early & he raced off to work as so as we got home but I packed him a lunch and sent him on his way. He even got me a present from Alaska! It's an Under Armor Jacket which I won't be able to wear it until Fall/Winter comes around but I love it! He is such a thoughtful person:)

This weekend I went home since I can't handle being in the house by myself for more than one night at a time. After work on Friday I went straight to my cousin Cody's grad party. Grad party food = delicious. He's headed off to UMD (where I went!) and know he will have lots of fun and do great! I gave him some good advice like take advantage of all college has to offer - meet new people, attend school/sporting events, enjoy every moment, even finals week.

Saturday Sadie and I headed off to Duluth to run some errands. I had to get more fabric for another project I was working on and then went to Michael's to get a few things for our cake topper. (Pictures to come!). Our last stop was to Ulta. Ulta is a huge makeup store and I am in desperate need of help when it comes to that department. Sadie found someone to help me figure out what to wear for the big day and uunfortunately she put on a ton of makeup. More than the "light, summery, fresh" look I was going for and I walked out looking like this...

I don't even look like myself (or maybe it's just a bad picture of myself) and I had about four layers on my face alone. I had to wash my face twice before I got remotely close to getting all the makeup off. For a girl who wears little makeup to having more products on her face than she can count with BOTH hands...let's just say I'll be sticking to the saying, "Less is More". Here's a couple more pictures of Sadie on her second wind at Michael's.

Back to my DIY escapade. Sadie and I spent some time at Hancock Fabrics to find a few more fabrics for the bunting banners I want to make. Sadie was a great help and we found some keepers. Three yards of fabric, a few more smaller squares and bias tape all for a grand total of $28. Score! It may have taken me four hours to cut everything and pin for my grandma to sew together but I love the banners so far!



The paper template for the pendants



The winning fabrics - these will go on the tables with the yellow
runners - the beverage, gift and dessert table)



 


Three eight foot banners pinned and ready for sewing!



 

This last banner is a little different than the rest. I originally was going to do one that said "thank you" for when we send out our thank you's but then I remembered seeing a banner that said "mr and mrs". So as you can see, I have two spaces for the mr and three for the mrs. If I change my mind there are enough pendants to write thank you as well.