Wine & Roses

Although I'm getting more and more sick of planning my wedding, (seriously I could give a crap about place cards at this point), I'm getting more and more excited about the actual day.  Mike and I visited Wine & Roses this weekend to finish up everything with our wedding lady Julie and for me to do my hair and makeup trials.  To be honest, I was not looking forward to getting my hair and makeup done.  I am really bad at telling hair people what I want and I usually end up not liking what I've agreed to do.  Mike and I didn't get into Lodi and checked into our hotel room until about 1:30am so of course we overslept and ended up racing to get out the door and make it to my 9:00am hair appointment.  Thankfully, once I got there and got checked in, the spa was incredibly relaxing.  They have you wait in a room calling the Tranquility Room and it looks like this:

Seriously gorgeous.  There is the fire going and comfy chairs to lounge in, and relaxing music playing in the speakers.  You look out the window and there are fountains going.  So pretty.

This definitely helped relieve some of my stress.  My hair lady ended up being this super cute girl and she really liked my hair idea so that helped a lot too.  This is what I asked her to base the hair on:

After playing around with it for awhile and putting on my hair piece, this is what we came up with:

I love how messy it is...it's very me!  It was a relief when that was over and it had gone so well.  I was nervous to get my  makeup done afterwards because A:  I don't generally wear very much makeup, B:  I am horrible at sitting still, C:  I'd never gotten my makeup done before, and D:  I hate having to sit in front of a mirror for that long.  Thankfully, the girl that did my makeup was really sweet and gorgeous and this is how it ended up:

I look gross in this picture, but it's not the makeup's fault!  I'm also a little freaked out about how my hair looks from the front, but we'll figure it out!

(fun fact, I didn't do either of these looks on my wedding day, I am the least decisive person ever whoops)

The meeting with the wedding lady went great and although I think we're spending way too much money, I'm really psyched to have our wedding at Wine & Roses.  Here are some pics I'm obsessed with right now of the venue.

Oh also, instead of printing and folding them ourselves like we planned, we stole 20 Lodi maps from our hotel.  We're the classiest bride and groom EVER.

Menus

Mike and I have gone back and forth about menus at the wedding reception.  We had started out saying we'd have one per table and we'd frame it in a cute frame rather than having one at each plate.  I designed something really simple and have been searching and searching for gray card stock to print it on.  Have I mentioned how hard doing your own wedding is in this damn town?!  Mike threw me for a loop the other day when he decided to announce that each guest should have a menu instead of doing the framed one per table.  I looked online and had picked out these from Wedding Paper Divas that matched our invitations.

I started playing with these today and got frustrated because they wouldn't let me cut out stuff I didn't want in there like our names.  I think if you're seated at the tables already...you know whose wedding you're at!  There also wasn't enough room for our entrées because their names are long.  I decided to make my own based on these.  What do you guys think??

I just have to order some white card stock and print them out.  Please give me your opinions if you think I need to change anything!

DIY Project for the Day

We went over to the mo-in-law's house this morning and realized that she had quite a bit of fabric left over from the table runners she made us for the wedding.  By the way, have I mentioned how handy it is having a mo-in-law who is an amazing seamstress?!  Rather than renting fancier linens or spending more on centerpieces, I bought some fabric I love at the Online Fabric Store and mo-in-law sewed them into simple fabric runners for our wedding tables.  Super handy.

Anyways, we realized we had some extra fabric so I decided to use some of it to cover the cork board we'd planned to use for our escort cards.  This created a brand new DIY project for me and rather than thinking about it and planning, I did it right when we got home.  Thankfully, I didn't destroy anything so I can show you how I did it and my finished product.

All you need is:

A cork board/bulletin board, we bought ours at Target.  You're probably supposed to use one without a frame, but that's for people who plan ahead, not me!

Some fabric, ours is by Amy Butler and it's called Optic.  I looove it.  It's the perfect colors for our wedding and it's just modern enough for us.  If anyone wants a table runner in this pattern when the wedding is over...we have 3 extra!

A stapler, scissors, and a ruler.

You place the fabric face down on a hard surface, or if you're fancy like me, the floor.  Place the bulletin board face down on top of the fabric.  Measure your fabric so there is about a 1.5" border around the bulletin board and cut off any excess fabric.  We had some ratty edges on our fabric so I made sure to use that part for this project since it's not going to show.

Pull one edge of the fabric really tight and staple it to the bulletin board.  Make sure you pull it really tight so it doesn't cause wrinkles.  Do this all the way around the board.

That's it!  If you use a plain piece of cork board without a frame, you can then put a cute frame around the board, but I'm going to leave mine the way it is.  

I found some really cute yellow quilting pins at Walmart that I'm going to use to pin the escort cards to our board.  Bonus for the mo-in-law, she gets 100 yellow quilting pins after the wedding.

**Update:  the finished product at the wedding, I decided to use funny or embarrassing pictures of each guest instead of traditional escort cards. This is seriously my favorite thing I made for the wedding and it was a huge hit.

More Inspiration

Things That Inspire Me

Not in general.

Just for the wedding.

I've got quite the one-track mind lately.

2010

I cannot believe another year is over!  2010 really flew by for me.  I've been sitting here trying to look back and remember what all happened last year and it's really just a blur.  Here are some of the greatest hits that I can remember from 2010:

1)  Moving into our house and making it into our home.  We bought the house in 2009, but didn't move in and start making it ours until the very beginning of 2010.  Decorating and making this place homey with Mike was a great experience and no matter where we move, I'm always going to love this crazy yellow house so much.

2)  Getting engaged!  Mike and I have been talking about marriage since we first started dating, so I thought getting officially engaged wouldn't be a big deal for us.  When it actually happened though, I couldn't have been happier and it's a day I'll remember forever!  Also, if you haven't noticed...I'm a little obsessed with my ring...

3)  Getting a job.  Five months of unemployment was not awesome.  As evidenced by my rambling first couple of blogs on here.  A month off work is great.  Five is not.  Obviously I'm not super psyched to be a 27 year old college grad who is still a receptionist, but it sure as hell beats being a 27 year old college grad with no job!  Also, I get to wear this snazzy shirt to work once a week.  Jealous?

4)  Getting to see dad.  Since my dad moved to the East Coast, I haven't gotten to see him super often what with both of our schedules and the cost of air travel.  In 2010, I got to see him twice which was really awesome.  The best part was that he got to come stay in Ridgecrest, see our house, and meet Mike's family.  Mike even got an opportunity alone with him to ask his blessing to propose which I'm sure meant a lot to my dad.  I also got to see him with some more of his family when we laid my aunt to rest.  It was really sad, but I was happy to get to be there with my dad's crazy siblings while we broke the law, cried, and laughed together.

5)  Game night with the Way's.  There are few things I love in this world as much as my sister and her best friends the Way's.  Since we moved back to R/C, we don't get to see either of them much so their once a year game nights are always really special and fun for us.  Add to that some wine tasting and a sighting of two of our favorite Top Chef contestants and this year was better than ever!

6) Trip to Vegas.  While we couldn't hang with our crazy friends since, as everyone so lovingly likes to remind us, we are old and lame, Mike and I ended up having an amazing time together.  Trips like this one where we end up spending a lot of time alone, just wandering around and entertaining ourselves really makes us realize how perfect we are for each other and how happy we make each other.  Coming out on top because of how much we won on penny and nickel slots helped too!

7)  Vanessa was here!  I never get to see one of my best friends Vanessa because she lives so far away so having her home this summer was great.  Just getting to sit at her parent's house with her, Kristin, and a huge glass of wine, were some of my best times this year.

Typical

Okay, I'm sick of typing and Mike just gave the dogs baths so they are both wigging out and running around like maniacs so I'll just put the rest of the great things about 2010 in pictures.  Happy New Year!

Being Laura's date to a wedding

The Comic Book Twins coming to visit

Visiting Brian & Denae and falling in love with little Colby

Hiking!

So You Think You Can Dance with the Smith's

Adopting Demon Dog