Anna and Chad's wedding

Oh I LOVE the pictures from Anna and Chad's wedding! It reminds me of my own laid back wedding I guess....

Anda Marie Photography was so gracious to let me share these pictures with you. Tomorrow I will post the second half. In the meantime go visit her blog...or if you are like me and love flickr you can check out a bunch of her work here!

An easy afternoon project....

Or so the magazine claimed. A week and a half later I've almost finished the top. Yeah, I got a little obsessed over finishing it. There are about 3 squares I should rework but ya know what. Screw it! I think it looks just fine.

I have to put the border around it and then the batting and back but I think it's going to look really nice in the spare bedroom.

So what have you all been up to?

Cheryl and Doug

I love the black lace on Cheryl's dress! What a cool touch. Cheryl and Doug's wedding from Jennifer at Buckley Studios.

As a hobbiest photographer who would like to take it to the next level, I would love to follow Jennifer around for a few days to learn how to get some of the great pictures she takes. I love how Cheryl and Doug's wedding turned out but there are LOTS more great pictures to drool over at her website. Go check them out!

Are you ready for some new wedding porn?

Tomorrow I will share pictures from Cheryl and Doug's wedding from Jennifer at Buckley Studios.

I swam all the way to Houston

Well actually it just felt like it! We drove down Friday night to my best friend's house for a quick visit and to take her back a bunch of stuff that she had loaned me for our wedding. It was pouring rain all the way down and then when we drove back on Sunday it followed us home again. Not that I mind too much. It's been nice to have a break from the heat.

I need some help from all of you on a table decoration project.

It's a work thing but I thought there might be some really creative folks out there that wouldn't mind chiming in. We are having our annual meeting and we need to come up with several table displays, each table holds 8 people and they don't know if they will be round or long. Their only requirements are that it be something "sun" related and fairly easy to transport. The only thing I can come up with is to make a display out of sunflowers but they really aren't my favorite for a business type meeting....even if they are trying to make it "fun". Does business and fun EVER really go together?

Any Night Ranger fans out there?

David Zaijcek is a former member of the band from the mid 90's. The boy can still rock it out!

Lakeside Wedding

Need some help with that ring?

The flower girls were watching the cake cutting VERY intently

Every Labor Day Weekend one of the bands that my husband plays with is booked to play for a large group of people from two small towns in our area.

This year there was a wedding too.

John and Erin who just had a baby a few months ago (look for the red headed sweety) decided to get married at their annual get together.

Jim, who performed our wedding, married these two crazy kids. It was kinda cool to see him perform "our" ceremony again...right down to the happy dance and vows of "Abracadabra and Fried Green Tomatoes"

All pictures were taken by me on my brand new camera so pardon some of the quality issues I'm still learning how to use it.

ENJOY!!!

Chellie and John

Our engagement pictures (all the ones where I'm wearing the tan jacket) were taken by our wedding photographer: Rachel Terry of Stellar Photography in Grand County Colorado. The picture of us at the top of Pikes Peak (right after the proposal) was taken by some stranger :) LOL

John & I met on myspace (yep, that's right) LOL. I was moving from Colorado Springs out to Grand Junction, CO for an internship & was looking for people who knew the area so I could make friends & get some advice on what neighborhoods to avoid living in. John and I emailed & IM'ed for a few weeks and then he drove out to Colorado Springs (about a 5 hour drive) to meet me. We went on our first date at a pizza place & then went to see a movie. He drove us to the movie theater but since we were in my hometown I was giving him directions. I was telling him he needed to turn left & he said "nah, I'll go up one more stoplight"..well sure enough he realized he needed to have turned where I told him to and said "you were ABSOLUTELY right". I joke that that moment was when I knew he was the one for me. He says he knew I was the one during one of our long roadtrips. There is something about being able to be in a car with someone for hours on end & not get sick of one another or get irritable.
After about a year & a half of dating we started talking about getting married. We went & shopped for rings & I had a hard time finding something that I liked. Being a plus sized girl I have large fingers & the rings that I'd been trying on all seemed too "dainty" for my larger fingers...but I finally found a ring that I loved (a center stone with a halo of smaller diamonds around it which added to the size of the ring (making it look more substantial on my finger)... w/o adding significantly to the price of the ring b/c we could still go with a smaller/affordable diamond. After our shopping trip, I didn't know when it was going to happen & it seemed like forever (but it was really only a couple of months)... He proposed to me at the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs & after the proposal we went & had lunch at the same pizza parlor that we went on our first date. He did good :)

We've been engaged for just over 1 year and we're planning a small wedding at a ranch in the Rocky Mountains at the end of September.

This is totally off topic

but I feel it's important to take a moment to share this with all of you.

One of my co-workers was telling us this morning about how his mother had been scammed with the granny scam. They told his mother (73 years old) that her grandson was in jail and they needed to have her send money to get him out. They even got someone to get on the phone and say Grandma this is Z I need you to help me but don't tell mom and dad cause they will kill me!
They scammed her for $2000. The poor thing was so upset when she found out it was all a scam.
Please talk with all of your elderly relatives, maybe have a code word in place incase you really DO have an emergency and need them to send you money.
My co-worker said the hardest thing he's ever had to do was tell his mother she had just been scammed.

In other news.

I will be posting a wedding later tonight. The power cord to my laptop died on me this weekend so I didn't get to play much. I've got a new one now but I'm at work and not supposed to be playing on the internet.

Spring/Summer 2010 Color Trends

Have you ever noticed that you only see certain colors each season? Growing up in an extremely small town I was rather oblivious to that fact for a long time, until I got my very first job in retail when I was in my 20’s

I never knew that people spent months and months researching which color of blue was going to be “the one” for that season. Thank goodness there are people out there that like doing that because I’m NOT that detail oriented and I’m defiantly not very good at putting color combinations together. I tend to take the path of least resistance. My entire wardrobe is either navy, black or dark brown pants with white, black, teal or tangerine tops. I will occasionally buy a dark purple blouse if I’m feeling particularly frisky.

I’ve been out of retail for a LONG time so I’ve gotten away from watching what colors are “hot” but I was really excited to stumble across Artful Wedding Ideas . Michelle Mospens is the artist behind Artful Wedding Ideas and has been featured in The Knot magazines, Elite Wedding Collection, Modern Bride and Better Homes and Gardens. She has a posted about the color trends for spring 2010 I wish it had the names of the colors on there but having the pantone color number is VERY helpful. When we were working with Hatch Show Prints in Nashville for our wedding invitations, we were able to tell them what pantone color we wanted and they knew EXACTLY what we were talking about which was very helpful since I couldn’t just drop into their shop and check it in person.
Drop by her blog and check it out then let me know what colors you are planning on using for your wedding.

PS - she also does Custom Hand-painted invitations like these.

Are you a bargin hunter? SHOPPING ALERT!!!

Pictures (sorry they are so small) are off JCP's website.

I was walking through JC Penney's (Parks Mall in Arlington Texas) and noticed that they had just marked all of their summer decor stuff down to 75% off. Their Vibrant Garden collection really caught my eye. They still had lanterns in orange, green and a few reds. There were really fun candles and other cool stuff so I thought I would let you know.

Wouldn't those would be a great color combo for a spring/summer '10 wedding. Or shoot, if you live in the south, where it's WARM most of the year you could use them year round!

Let me know if your favorite stores are having a great sale that we can pass on. This is a great time to start stocking up on clearance items for weddings!

Heather and Jens

Heather sent me a few photos of her wedding to share with everyone. Their photographer was IQ Photo San Francisco Wedding Photography



She says....



My friend fowarded me a link saying that you were looking for some plus size bridal pictures.The look I went for was far from traditional but here you go :) A size 28 bride in a corset!There are tons more pictures on the photographers website http://clients.iqphoto.com/p371492929



Best Wishes-

Heather Powers Olsen.

Oh my GOSH!!!

THE Dude

Dave (L) and Walt Wilkins (R) are both rocking the Dude vibe

I finally saw The Big Lebowski for the very first time and......I really AM married to "The Dude". It was so strange. Some of his mannerisms were SOOOO much like Dave's that it was a little freaky.

Now I understand why people are always taking his picture and yelling "DUDE!" at him.