Shower Time!

Wow! What a crazy and great weekend! Saturday was the big day, I hosted Lindsey's bridal shower here at our house, along with the help of 5 other wonderful hostesses. Everything looked SO great and we really went all out with the blue and brown theme! Her sister Bethany and I are the maid/ matron of honor and we had so much fun emailing back and forth, planning, coming up with different ideas, shopping, picking things out, etc etc! We had a pretty good turn out (although a few who had rsvp'd did not show up) and Lindsey got some great gifts. So here are pictures, some I took, some I stole from Lindsey's mom since she got some better shots than I did!

These are blue and brown chocolates that I molded with a kit from Hobby Lobby! Really pretty easy to make and they are so cute!

The blue where white chocolate and in the shape of "bride" hearts.

And the milk chocolate hearts were the groom!

Lisa and Chêz chatting at the beginning.

Lisa's little girl Asia came and she LOVED Macy!

Mingling with guests.

The cake was my pride and joy. Lucy's did a great job with my requests and the design and it came out beautiful! I wished we didn't have to eat it!

I found pictures on the internet of the pattern I wanted them to do around the cake. It's a similar kind of damask pattern as Lindsey's wedding invitations.

The candy buffet! We had all kinds of blue, brown and white candy and guests made up their own little take home favor boxes! I also found really cute blue and brown printed tissue paper and I had no idea how I was actually going to use it, but it looked really cute on the buffet table!

All of the delicious food! The other hostesses did a great job helping with all the food!!

Another view of the table. Notice the blue and brown damask pattern plates and napkins that Bethany got! So cute!

I found this little plaque and since it was in Lindsey's colors I couldn't pass it up! We used it to decorate on the table! Of course all of us ACU girls were princesses!

Great drinks! Coffee punch, sweet tea, water and best of all margaritas!!

Blue hydrangeas!

All the hostesses! Couldn't have done it without these girls!

And all of us with Lindsey!!

Gift time!

Macy of course needed to be right in the middle of everything so she decided to curl up on Bethany's lap!

Watching Lindsey open gifts!

Goofball cutting the cake! I wish we could have kept it forever!

Enjoying cake and chatting with guests

Lindsey and her mom! What a great picture!!

ACU girls!

Me and Bethany, the MOH's!!

Marika... my full time consultant on all matters!

On Sunday afternoon Lindsey had another shower, but this time I got to attend as a guest. We played the game where you dress a "model" up in a dress made of toilet paper and the bride gets to choose her favorite design. I was of course volunteered so here are some pics of my couture dress!

What a fun weekend, but man, I was ready for some sleep when it was all over! The wedding is just about two months away! I am really excited for the week of the wedding but I'm already starting to wonder... what will I have to keep my imagination occupied after all the festivities are done and all the showers and parties are planned? I guess I will have to come up with more house projects!!

DONESKY!!

Transitions and baseboards are DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Check it out!!




Beautiful transitions from tile to wood!! Macy wanted to pose :)



Baseboards as far as the eye can see!!!


Ok, so there are a few places we haven't finished, but they are little and not really noticeable. We haven't done the baseboards around the fridge because we haven't really figured out how to do that. I'm guessing we'd have to pull the fridge out into the middle of the room so we can get back there, which mean's we'd probably have to unplug it. Really only a couple inches show around the fridge so we aren't in a huge hurry to do it, but eventually it will have to get done so it all looks uniform.


We also haven't put the transition down for the door to the half bath downstairs. There is still a gap there between the tile and wood, but its not extremley obvious. We started to cut the piece to go here but Andrew made a boo boo and cut it wrong so we had to scrap that. We need to go to Home Depot and buy one last lenght of the t-molding so we can finish this.

Also, now that we've put on all these shiny, new, baseboards they make the old trim look really dull. We used a brighter white than what was already in the house so at places where the baseboards meet a door frame (look at the third picture above) there is a definite contrast. Now I'm going to have to go back and repaint all the door frames, window sills, stair railings, etc. That will happen later on. We still need to caulk the baseboards and touch up the nail holes. I'm just glad to have them on all the walls!

We've really made huge progress in the past few weeks and the bridal shower this weekend has been a big motivator. I wish I could talk more about plans for the shower but I know Lindsey reads this and I can't give anything away! After the shower I will post lost of pics of everything! I am so excited about this weekend and am hoping everything goes well. One of the reasons I wanted a house so badly was so I could entertain and do things like this so I'm really glad to be able to host the shower for Lindsey!

Is it weird when....

Is it weird when you are checking out at your local grocery store and the girl who always rings you up says, "I think you guys are the ones who always buy shallots?" I guess on the one hand it's nice that the employees remember you, but kind of weird that they remember you based on an obscure item in the produce section that they always have to look up the code for. I honestly didn't know what a shallot was until about 6 months ago when I got a cook book that calls for shallots in a lot or recipes. For those of you who don't know, its kind of like a cross between an onion and garlic, with a sweeter, milder taste than an onion. There wasn't much point to this post, I just thought it was a funny little anecdote about grocery shopping. I will post again soon with some real house info.

Night!

Ch-ch-changes

Just because I haven't posted much lately, doesn't mean we haven't been doing anything! The baseboards are entirely finished in one room!! The remaining room is about half done and it is much smaller and doesn't have tricky angles so we should be able to knock the work out in one night. It feels so good to have the end in sight! Now I have to say, we still have to do the baseboards upstairs in our master bathroom, but they aren't as high of a priority right now. Since I am hosting a shower here at the house in ELEVEN (can't believe it!) days, getting the downstairs area done was top of the list. After the baseboards are done, we have to lay the transitions between the wood and tile and do a few touch up jobs here and there, but the downstairs is so close to DONE-SKY!

We've also been hard at work packing up the Christmas decorations and cleaning up after the holiday mess. Putting everything away is so much less fun than putting it up. The decorating is so fun and festive and then after New Years rolls around you just wish it would put itself away. Anyway, here are pics of the un-Christmafied house and the beautiful new baseboards in the formal living/ dining room!








And here is a runner I got for the walkway, which I love and is the perfect colors for the room! I'm thinking about going back and getting the larger matching rug to go under the dining table.


And here is the area rug we got for the family room. At first I was really enjoying the hardwood and didn't want to cover it up, but I finally gave in and decided it would be good to cover at least part of it.



This evening while hard at work packing up Christmas and cleaning, I decided to unpack my grandma's wedding china that my mom gave to me. My mom didn't really want to hold on to it anymore, and I wasn't about to let it get away so I claimed it. Unfortunately we didn't have anywhere to put it for a long time so it's been in boxes since we moved to Texas and even before that, in Connecticut at my parent's house. Well it's finally out of the box and I'm glad to report none of it was broken in the several moves. I love the antique look of it and think it's so great to have this! My grandparents were married on June 17, 1940 so the china is almost 70 years old.




One last recent addition, we got a dog bed that was supposed to be for Beamer but as you can see, Macy is more than happy to share it with him, or take over the whole thing for herself.




At least they can share nicely!!

Ringing in the New Year

Happy 2009! 2008 was a great year and we have been so blessed in many ways! We had a great time last night with friends, some good Austin music, and good barbecue. We started out at a friend's party, then went downtown to Stubbs for dinner and a show. Black Joe Lewis put on a really fun show, and I even got to talk to him for a minute! Much to Andrew's chagrin, I gave "Black Joe" Andrew's beer (I was holding it and he hadn't began to drink it yet) and toasted with him to a happy new year. Joe had the beer on stage with him and was drinking it between songs; I was so proud! Andrew pointed out that since he was the entertainment, he was probably getting free drinks from the bar, but in my excitement of talking to him I wasn't really thinking that through. After the show we went back to the party for a little while. Anyway, here are some pictures from our evening!



When we parked downtown for the show, there was shattered glass on the ground in the parking spot in front of us. It was kind of ominous considering recent events. Everything turned out ok.


Here is Black Joe holding the beer I gave him!


And drinking the beer I gave him!


Self portrait right after we rang in the New Year!



Second try


The whole band from above


The guitarist used to be quite attractive but he grew out his hair and got some weird facial hair.


Back at the party with Steph and Windy.


I went in for the high ten and Laynie totally dissed me.


Wow guys.


Windy trying to teach Andrew to two-step.



All the girls wanted to dance with Andrew... its ok, I'm cool with it ;)