Raindrops on roses

I was tagged by A Girl in Pearls & A Boy with Toys to list a handful of my favorite things (love following along during your wedding planning! If I can lend one piece of advice - when your day comes, enjoy it because it will go by in the blink of an eye!!).

So here are the rules: Tag and link back to the person who tagged you. List six little things that make you happy. Tag six bloggers and let them know they're “it".

I think SIL said it best: I haven't really garnered many followers so I think I'm going to skip the tagging other bloggers part. If you read this and you're inspired to make your own list, please do so. I'd love to see a few of your very favorite things!

And with that, ready, set, GO!

1. Home life with my husband and babies:

2. The life long girlfriends I've picked up somewhere along the way:

3. Enjoying a glass of wine:

4. Dancing like no one is watching:

photo by Jeff LaPlante

5. And last, but very certainly not least - the ones who would give up anything and everything for my sister and me:

Candy Apple

My partner-in-crime and I went to Williams-Sonoma yesterday to pick up a meat grinder attachment for our new KitchenAid mixer and while we were there, I spotted this lovely new 90th Anniversary mixer:

Isn't it beautiful? The sales associate told us they got it in a week and a half ago or so - about the same time I purchased ours. I wished I would've swung by here then so I could've purchased this beauty. I can't say the thought didn't cross my mind to return the one I already have (and have only used a handful of times, ok maybe more than that). Since I used a coupon though, I'd end up having to pay full price on the one at WM... so I guess I'll just have to drool over this one.

Pretty, Pretty Peonies!

Our flowers were ordered from Bridgewater Gardens and I was very impressed with the quality of peonies and how well they held up! Highly, highly recommend them - great service and they smelled and looked incredible! Here are all 8 dozen the day of the wedding along with 3 of my 5 girls!

Happy 4th!

Hope you guys had a fun and safe holiday! We drove over to the Couer d'Alene Resort with one of my BMs (Baybee!) and friends to see some pretty spectacular fireworks!

No Sporks here

When I saw these here, I thought it would be an easy way to add a little color to the tables. Sis and I spent an afternoon folding, cutting, tying, and repeating. Oh yeah, and there was definitely some more Arrested Development!

Each one turned out like this: And the final product:

Even the wine got dressed up!

The weekend my sis came to visit, we got a lot accomplished. One of those items were these little wine bottle bibs that said "Please drink responsibly!". We thought it'd be a good idea to have those on the drinks since the dirt road up to the ranch was long, narrow and basically on the edge of a cliff. These were pretty easy to make - just printed the note on a piece of card stock, used a few punches and looped them with twine. And yes, that's Three Buck Chuck!

Whew!

I've been kicking around my thoughts about the wedding, trying to decide where I was going to start my recaps. Everytime I thought I had a good topic to write about, I ended up getting bummed that the wedding/wedding weekend flew by too fast. I finally feel like I'm out of my hump - (glad to know I'm not the only one who had the post-wedding blues) and am ready to get back on the blogging wagon! But first I'll have to go back to a few DIYs completed before the big day....

We Got Hitched!

It was the most beautiful day, we couldn't have asked for anything more perfect. What an incredible feeling - the outpour of love from family and friends; repeating vows as old as time; seeing all of our hard work planning for months and months pay off. I keep replaying it all over and over so that I may never forget a single moment.
The father-daughter dance:

photos by Jenny Jimenez

Busy, busy bee

My little sister was in town this weekend and she helped me knock off a ton of item's off the to-do list. One of those was a hair trial - nothing like a good cup of coffee, good company, and some Arrested Development marathon action to make for a great Saturday morning!

Monkey Business

My handsome lil boy got his first summer shave this weekend, and wow - did he look good!

Bout's

Is it just me, or is 'boutonniere' a really difficult word to spell? Anyhow, I got an email last night from one of my BMs of a mock-up boutonniere she made for the wedding and I LOVED IT! Here is her awesome husband modeling it :)

bachelorette mayhem

My best-ies are throwing me a bachelorette party and I have no idea what the festivity entails, other than a postcard I received in the mail that said "We may all be miles apart...". I'm still not sure what I'm going to wear to the shindig but this is a good candidate:

from here

DIY Soap Bars

These are so stinkin' cute and would be such a thoughtful welcome gift for your guests!

found it here

As if I wasn't busy enough

My sis is coming to visit me this weekend and we're going to bust out a ton of wedding projects while she is here. On the list are ceremony programs and I'm totally loving these:

from here

walking down the aisle

With just a few weeks left, we still haven't decided on ceremony music. I know it will all come together :)

Someone suggested this version of Canon in D:

Apparently my occupation comes home with me

I'm dubbed the "slavedriver". We worked on the deck the ENTIRE Memorial Day weekend trying to get it done before all of our family and friends join us in the next couple of weeks.
That hole is where this huge old tree used to be that the previous homeowner built the deck around. That tree freaked me out whenever we had a good wind come through because you could hear it sway back and forth from inside the house. The guy who chopped it down told us it was a good thing we did because it wouldn't have made it another year. Eeek! No worries, we've planted 7 trees in the front and back yard to make up for chopping it down.

His bling

When Steele and I first started looking for rings for him, he really wanted a dark (preferably black) tungsten ring with some bling in it. He found this ring that he really loved, but when we tried contacting the vendor they never returned our messages.

Crappy picture of it since now it's apparently sold out:
Bigger picture of it, but with the wrong color of diamonds:
Anyway, we went around to many local jewelers to see if they could find this ring or something like it, or even attempt to make it. After many rejections, Steele was pretty bummed and gave up on looking. He finally came around a few months later and we decided to stop in a jewelery store just to have a peek. As luck would have it, they had a new style in that he really liked, so he tried it on and 15 minutes later we were walking out of the store with this ring:

Sorry, don't know where I found this one!

And my non-pro version of it after being shinied up this weekend! So excited he'll be wearing it in a few short weeks!

Puppy Love

Chloe:Riley:
And the latest addition, Bailey, trying to befriend Gonzo - the grumpy cat.

Rehearsal Invitations

Since our wedding invitations were so time consuming, I wanted to put together something much, much more simple for the rehearsal invites. I even considered not sending any out, but my love for paper was much too great!

I printed these on regular cardstock I had leftover from the invites and was able to fit both pages on just one sheet. I used a Martha Stewart craft punch for the top page and made sure to align the red underneath so it showed through. After placing the first page on top of the second, I used a rectangular punch I found at Michael's and tied a knot through the two punches to bind the pages together.

I had some leftover scrapbook paper that I traced an envelope template onto by carefully disassembling an envelope I had around the house in the right size and then cut and folded to make envelopes. And voila, they were off!

I'll have two please!

Thinking some freshly squeezed lemonade would be a yummy homemade drink for an outdoor wedding or summer picnic!

One Month

One month from today before God, friends and family I will marry the love of my life on this beautiful property:

TBC & Oh My Deer

About a month ago, I forgot to mention that Steele and I were featured on The Bride's Cafe AND Oh My Deer. Janie, Chelsea (and Jenny, our photographer) - YOU ROCK!!

Finally, our invitations!

Here are the invitations, as promised! These were a true labor of love!! Steele and I started working on them back in January and about 3 weeks ago one of my BMs and I spent 7 hours (yes, SEVEN!) corner-cutting and assembling these babies. We used Brock and Minion for the fonts. I also had a Spanish version that I made for those family members que no hablan Inglés. I mailed ourselves a copy before sending them out to our guests. I hope they liked them! I scanned the bird details from a congrats/wedding card we'd sent to 2 different couples! I wonder if they noticed when they received our invites...I don't know if you can tell, but at the bottom of the RSVP card, it had a note that said "Psst...Help the newlyweds build their cookbook by bringing your favorite recipe to the reception! See you soon...Mireya & Steele" Who knows if our guests will actually do it, but it was a fun little detail none-the-less!I just finished our rehearsal dinner invites and a draft of our program. I'll post some pictures soon :)

Yes, yes, and yes!!!

This is my kind of wedding! Love the dresses, love the details, LOVE this wedding!

check more out here

The latest wedding news

I'll start with the sad news: I had been working on a post with pictures of our final invitations, having not added the pictures to the actual post. Over the weekend I made a BIG boo-boo and pulled out my xD-card from my laptop without safely doing so. I lost over 400 pictures, including our dogs when they were puppies, college graduation, Xmas, Thanksgiving, house projects, my friend's wedding this past weekend (which I'm REALLY bummed about because I was so excited to share her BEAUTIFUL wedding), and of course our invitations. Fortunately, 75% of those pictures I've either saved on my laptop, at work, or emailed them to family and friends so it's not a complete lost. I was devasted none-the-less (note to self: NEVER, EVER, EVER do that again!!!!). I am pretty sure the card is fried *tear* so as soon as I get a chance to purchase a new one and take pictures of the invitations, I will def. be posting them! I might be able to find Percy's camera somewhere and post some of the fun responses we've been getting back!!

On other news (this is the good stuff!!) we received confirmation from a Pastor we have been talking with that he will be performing the ceremony! Yippeee!! This has been a pretty stressful part of our planning (um, the wedding is less than two months away and we STILL hadn't nailed an officiant down) so I was overjoyed when I received the email!

I'm currently working on our rehearsal dinner invitations. They are going to be very simple and def. not as labor intensive as our wedding ones (Baybee, if you are reading this, I LOVE YOU! You are awesome for a bajillion reasons, one of which is helping me finish those darn things!) We've booked the location for the rehearsal and although it's a little hole in the wall, their food is DELISH!

6 weeks away and things are coming along! I'm so excited to be marrying my man!