Memorial Day

Stay-cations: A vacation spent at or near your own home, rather than traveling to another location. 

For this past weekend we knew we wanted to get out of town in some way for the holiday weekend but the thought of a 5+ hour drive wasn't appealing this time around...so we opted for a 40 minute drive to Scottsdale, AZ and had ourselves a stay-cation with our friends Joe and Kelly! 

 Southwest Bistro  

Valentine's Day in 2011    

Third Anniversary in 2012

 No diets allowed this weekend!

It was the perfect solution for us! 

 Stay-cations are the best!!!

Wall Demolition

We are making some changes to the house this week. The inspiration came from the picture below. I was looking at listings in my area and this house had a similar floor plan but they didn't have the connecting wall between the living room and kitchen.

I looks more spacious without that wall so we decided to try something similar.

We made a hole in the wall!!!!

I'm still adjusting to the view but I already like how it allows more sunlight into the kitchen area.

Keep y'all posted on the progress...

Bible Study

On April 15, my brother, my sister and I started having bible studies. I know your probably thinking why would we need bible studies? Shouldn't we be giving them instead? Well YOU ARE PROBABLY RIGHT! lol. I would love to give bible studies to anyone that is really interested but I will be pretty honest to say I don't feel confident enough to do it. I hope you know what I mean by that, it's not that I don't understand but rather that I would like to feel better prepared when asked a biblical or reference question. 

Here is our teacher, Chris! We are staying dedicated to our weekly bible studies and I am enjoying this experience with them. At first I thought it would be hard to take him serious as our teacher since we tend to joke around a lot and we have a ton of inside jokes. I am happy to say we take our bible study very serious...with a few minor distractions, like snack breaks and texting. We are going on week 4 today with only 8 more week left!

I do want to take this opportunity to say that if your reading this post and you are interested in receiving bible studies, please contact me by phone/email/comment. 

Fourth Anniversary

Last week San Diego was wonderful. It was a breezy 68 degrees during the day, perfect for window shopping and eating out on the patio. I just didn't go prepared for the night temperatures, which was 56 degrees. I knew it would be cold at night and I still didn't think of packing a sweater. grrr. I was freezing at night! We had decided early on that this was going to be a relaxing vacation and we did just that! Relaxed all day long! lol.

We stayed at the Hilton Resort. The atmosphere here was very tropical and as I reading the hotel brochure I learned that was exactly what they wanted. They wanted a "Tahiti" setting to be exact.

So this pretty much sums up all the pictures I took this year. I failed so badly at capturing pictures of this special trip. I'll make sure to do better next time :)

We {heart} Food

First stop was Anothy's Grotto (of course!)

Our Ziemer friends highly recommended this place for breakfast. So..we stood in line just too see how good pancakes could really be. I gotta say, it was WELL worth the wait!

I was so happy to see they had ONE gluten free option, Woo Hoo!

At Extraordinary Desserts!

On our trip we had lots of good food to eat! It was the best and I did eat non-gluten free a few times while on vacation. I had already decided to do that when we started making plans to go to San Diego....so I didn't feel as bad while eating it! lol. Although I did try to be careful and not go overboard!

April

This month has two special dates for me. 

The first one is my sister's birthday...but this year was a little extra special because not only did she turn 21 but she turned 21 on April 21st. You know what that means? Golden Birthday! We threw her a fuchsia and GOLD party!

The second is the obvious, our wedding anniversary! The big FOUR! lol! Okay maybe not that big but we are still deeply in love and the best of friends so I am very thankful for another milestone in our marriage! My desire is to always make a BIG deal of these milestones, lol, I want to go all out every year. I make sure to plan a nice getaway to our favorite spot, San Diego...so San Diego here we come!

 Here we are at Newport Beach on our 1st wedding anniversary back in 2010.

Happy 2nd Anniversary HERE

Happy 3rd Anniversary HERE

And guess what.........................

More pictures to come...soon.

Wedding Designs

I'm onto another wedding already! 

This one is Ivory with Pearl accents, those pearls are pretty popular!

(The Bride - The Groom)

More of this wedding projects to come soon!

Pure Elegance

It was almost a year ago this month that I got a call from my friend, Lynnette asking me if I would help as her wedding coordinator. Wedding + Coordinating are two of my many passions, so of course I said YES! When we had our first meeting, I was ready to help her make decisions or at least put her ideas together, because that's usually what happens on a first meeting. Little did I know how o-r-g-a-n-i-z-e-d this bride truly was. 

She had all her details down to the "T" from ribbons and pearls to even where the pillows would go! (hey that rhymes! lol) I was even more excited to help her set up this event after seeing all her ideas.When it was all set up this past weekend, it was all her style and personalty, there was no way you could look at it and not think "This is so Lynnette's style!"

I had an amazing team of 8 that helped me set up the Cocktail Hour, Ceremony and Reception in less than 3 hours! Is that awesome or what? Organization is a huge part of it, but the team just ROCKED! We stayed until the end and cleared up each section as it ended, so needles to say, I was wiped out by 10pm! My body was sore for 3 days after from all the walking and lifting, but I would do it all over again for any friend of mine!

Here are a few pictures I took on a camera phone. Wish I had more to share (sad face) of the other areas we decorated.

Lynnette had a Wedding Tree, it's a popular alternative to having a guestbook!

The Cocktail Hour area, this is before the appetizers were set up.

 Reception!

Right before Lynnette walked down the aisle, I got to take a picture and wish her the best!

Simply Beautiful!