Check out the Love

This past Saturday was my Bridal Shower. I learned that:

I have such great friends and family that did way to much for me, I'm not photogenic at all and my 5 chins come out in candid photos, that it's really hard to get around and talk to everyone, that being the center of attention is not fun, and that madlibs are still my favorite game to play.

(L-R)Bridesmaids Partner in Crime, Mini-Me, Me, Bridesmaids College and Hot mama, and MOH Cooper. Bridesmaid Flirty couldn't make it as she's in Florida, but she was there in spirit.

My girls put together a shower for me at Lillian's restaurant in Saratoga. Although I live in Saratoga, I have never been to Lilians...so this was my first experience there.

We had the whole upstairs room to ourselves and there were windows that overlooked Saratoga that you could see out of, the upstairs was so cute you didn't even need to decorate. There was only one waitress waiting on us, so that was slightly annoying, but she was super nice.

My friends and family came to cellebrate with me and they spolied me silly:
Do you see the fabulous pink coach umbrella in the background the Maids used as deocration because they were "showering me with gifts"? That was the only decoration the Bridesmaids bought and it was given to me from the girls after the party. It was highly useful on Saturday because the whether was so rainy! Thanks girls, for being so cute!

MOH Cooper had a great idea and had Bridesmaid Partner in Crime on camera duty. They then gave me the photo card to keep with all the pictures on it. Sadly, I don't have a ton to share with you, as I take horrible (and I mean horrible)Candid shots.

The girls planned a great and fun shower for me and I couldn't have asked for a better day! MOH Cooper made a worksheet for everyone asking them to fill in the spots with thier favorite thing about me, favorite memory with me, advice to give me for married life, and a spot to tell me something on their own. After the guests filled the sheets out they were asked to put it into a scrapbook they had purchased and I now have them all. They are great keepsakes and funny to read through.

MOH also had a fun Mad Libs game set up. She found a Bridal mad libs online and used that for the story part. She then made a few index cards (with blanks to fill in such as adjective, adverb, etc.) and had each table fill out 1 card. She collected the cards and filled in the story. She then Read the whole thing to everyone. We were all dying of laughter and for some reason the "toe" was the favorite body part to use, as it was used about 3 times in the story. The mad Libs was great. i highly recomend to anyone.

We had a great lunch and then opened gifts.

People got us items off my registry that I had really wanted, but there were also a few unexpected gifts like this one from my mama:
yes, that is a PINK kitchen aid mixer. My lil' sis got us a whole bunch of Pink items made by kitchen aid to go with this. The man is not to happy about the all the pink! My aunt also got us a set of Pink pots and pans. The Man is never going to cook now.

I found that the unexpected gifts were my favorites of the day. The Man's Aunt who couldn't make the trip sent us a present that I think is just fantastic.

It's my new last name, and she took the pictures and made this herself.



My Crafty friend R also gave us something I will forever treasure:

You may recognize this as my invite, but she crafted it into a cool picture. How awesome right? She crafted MOH Cooper's invite 2 years ago, so secretely I was hoping she'd do the same for me. She didn't disapoint.

Thanks girls for throwing me a great shower!!!

My favorite gifts were the ones you can't put a price tag on. What was your favorite gift from your shower?

Come on Show the Love

Can I even begin to say how much I LOVE my bridesmaids? They are fabulous, and because of that, I wanted to get them all a little somethin' somethin' for throwing my my bridal shower this past weekend.

Last week, I busted out my Gocco and got to work. Gocco and I have a love/hate relationship. seriously, some days I love it, some days I despise it... last week was all about loving it, but also hating it a lot. I wanted to make all 6 of them some note cards with their names on them. Which was not working out for me at first, but ended up turning out pretty good.

I had purchased some design from istockphoto and some of them did not work out at all with gocco. So that part was really frustrating, especially since blubls and screens for gocco are getting harder to find. However, I ended up purchasing some other designs after that worked much much better.

I don't have pictures of all the designs I used because I'm a bad blogger, but here is the first one on their stacks.


I also made them all some thank you cards.
I folded the cards (they each got 13) and added some pink envelopes and tied them together with a silver ribbon.

I got them all a foamburst from Bath and Body works as this is the most amazing product I've ever used and they were on super sale. I thought they girls could all use a little luxery in their lives.

I also made them all my amazing HUGE cookies that are like the big cookies you get in the coffee shops.

I had found some cute shape cut outs online and printed them along with messages for the girls.

Here they are all put together:

I got the bags from Target and pulled off the handles. I cut the toop of the bag with my scisors that hhad the wave design, stuck them closed with a glue dot. Then I cut some ribbon and placed it on the top to fancy it up a little, attached the Thank You sign, and a Pink Glitter letter for each of their names. I needed to differentiate them somehow since I made them notecards with their names on them!

I got some really great thank you's from the girls as they were not expecting anything.

My shower was wonderful, and I'll be blogging about it soon.

A Surprise for Me!

MOH Cooper called me the other morning inquiring if I could "fit her into" my weekly schedule. She knows I've been a little crazed lately. I contemplated saying I didn't have time because I have some things I'm working hard to complete before the weekend, well, really before tomorrow. Did I mention time is flying by at warp speed and the evenings never feel quite long enough to accomplish all that I want.

Despite my nagging mind saying "no no no need to finish project," my mouth said "yes." And I'm glad I did. MOH Cooper wouldn't tell me anything about out meet up so I knew she was up to something, I just didn't know what it was.

She texted me while I was at work telling me to meet her in a town nearby, but wouldn't give me the location. She had me meet her at the mall, where I got out of my car, into hers, and then she brought me to the super secret location.

I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on. Then we stepped out in front of a cute little spa and she informed me that we were going to get pampered. Since my Bridal Shower is this weekend, she made us appointments to get pedicures. The Maids were all in on it.

I have to say, this was something unexpected are really great that all the girls did for me. I wouldn't have spent money on getting one for myself right now with the wedding around the corner (actually, it was my first one and it was fabulous) so it was really thoughtful and sweet of them to all do that for me.


Thanks girls, You're all fabulous. And don't worry, I have a surprise of my own for all of you comming up soon.

Curses to my Feet!

I found the Puuuuuuuuuuuurfect pair of hot pink shoes for my upcomming bridal shower (next saturday). I found them online and promtly ordered them. I'm glad I did because I don't see the hot pink ones available anymore. Here is a store picture of the shoe, but mine are pink, hot pink.

I've been eagerly waiting thier arrival plus the arrival of two others that I just had to have while I was browsing the 6pm site.

Yesterday, they came. I was so excited, I ripped open the box they came in and promptly tried to put them on my foot. Yes, I said Tried. I did not accomplish this task. My foot, apparently was not thin enough to fit into the unusually narrow shoe (eventhough it said medium!). *sigh* so now, instead of being able to wear these beauties I have to bring them to the post office and ship them away. Only to have to go and find another pair of shoes for next weekend. I also need to ship back the pair of black shoes I ordered. I was begining to wonder if perhaps something was wrong with my foot, but the third pair fit perfectly, although those will not go with my shower attire.

I guess shopping in store it will be. I just find such cute ones online that I never see in the store.

Anyone else have shoe dissapointment when ordering online?

The Rehearsal Dinner

We lucked out with my Future In Laws willing to plan and pay for our rehearsal dinner. Since we are paying for the wedding ourselves, this was a welcome break. Future MIL planned something I never in a million years thought she would. She planned our rehearsal dinner to be something that really fit us. She definitely went outside her comfort zone and planned and thought outside of the box.

Our rehearsal is going to be on a boat from the Lake George Steamboat Company, that will go around Lake George while we are dinning. They rented out a whole floor of the boat for little old us and about 50 of our friends. Okay, so 50 people is a lot, but because it's on a boat, we needed to meet a minimum requirement of people so Future MIL wanted to extend the invite to some additional people. We invited our whole wedding party and their SO's so that already added up to about 26 people plus two of us so making the 50 mark was pretty easy. We invited my parents and grandparents, and a bunch of people on the Man's side that he grew up with or were important to him.

That's when I decided we needed Invitations for the rehearsal and since FMIL needed a head count, I am having people RSVP to her.

But really, I wanted a chance to bust out my Gocco and do some fun projects on it and this was the perfect opportunity.

I bought an image off of Istockphoto and went to town creating my invite. First I used some fancy scissors I had laying around to cut out a wave-like pattern on the top. Next, I burned a screen and Gocco-ed the image onto the pearlescent white cardstock I had leftover. After it dried, I used my paper cutter to trim the invite down a little.

I then gocco-ed the words and sprinkled clear embossing powder over the black words and turquoise embossing powder over our names. When I was ready I used my embossing gun to emboss and raise all the wording. I love how that came out.



Closer look**Please excuse the white splotch, these photo's are edited to prevent personal info from being viewed they aren't really there.


I decided I wanted to add a little pizazz and got out my acrylic paint. I placed a plastic cup upside down on the table and balance my invite ontop. I carefully used a spongy brush to paint the sides pink. I think they came out super good, and I love the assed pink!

Was there a project you really enjoyed creating? What was it?

Sales!

Bath and Body works is having a 75% off sale if anyone is interested.

Back in the old days, I mean, back when I was younger and in high school, I fell in love with something they made called "foaming shower gel." Seriously, this stuff was amazing. And then, they discontinued it.

Well, it's back and on sale for $4 down from $9 if you want to try it out or gift it to someone. It'll be $4 well spent.

You're Invited (The Breakdown)

I'm not talking about a mental breakdown that you might associate going hand in hand with Invitations, but rather the Cost breakdown.

My Invites were a little different cost wise since I won the invites from hellolucky!, but I thought I'd share my cost breakdown with you anyway. I could have just went with the Invites I won for free, but I had been dreaming of pocketfolds ever since I heard of their existance... and so the insanity began.

The cost breakdown:

50 invites & 50 rsvp's won from HelloLucky!(they actually sent me 62) = Free
100 Pocketfolds ($41.99/pack * 2 packs) from paperandmore = $84.00
2 Canson watercolor books bought from AC Moore= ~$12.00 (I used the watercolor paper to make the inserts, I cut them down)
3 Spools of Pink ribbon= $3.00
Double Sided Tape= ~$3.00
Glue Dots= $3.99
1" squares were scraps that I used my Gocco to put our names on and glued 1 swarvbski 5mm flatback crystal that I had left over from my cake topper= Free
Stamps= $80
A7 envelopes= $30 for 100* from paperandmore
RSVP Envelopes- $24.00 for 100* from paperandmore

*Hello Lucky sent me envelopes but I wanted to use different ones but don't worry, I'm getting good use out of the envelopes they sent me
**I needed 70 invites and had gotten sent 62, so I decided to print my own 8 on my printer using the watercolor paper I had.
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Total= $230/70= $3.29 each including postage

Yikes, it's a little more than I had wanted to spend AND I won free invites to top it off. I certainly thought I would have done better.

Did the cost of your invites please you or scare you?