A Wonderful Weekend- Recap

My 5 day weekend was AWESOME. I wish I could go back and do it all again. I'm already missing Aaron, but I will get to see him in 9 days for Thanksgiving at his house in Arkansas!  Here's a recap of all the fun things we did this weekend.

 

-I drove to Tahlequah early enough to fit in a dinner with my cousin, Blondell before Aaron got into town. We had a wonderful Mexican dinner and talked about weddings, but more importantly, we talked a lot about marriage. It was so good to see her and she gave me some great marriage advice. A big thanks to my cousin for graciously letting us stay at her lake house.

 

-On Friday, Aaron and I drove to Tulsa to register for our wedding. We registered at Bed, Bath, & Beyond and Target. It went sooooo much smoother than I expected. Aaron and I agreed on pretty much everything and we had a lot of fun doing it. It took us 3 hours at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I'll admit, I was quite overwhelmed at first. There is so much to look at and I didn't know what anything was because I don't cook. Thankfully, Aaron picked out all the kitchen gadgets and let me pick out all the decorations and bedding :)

On our way to register. We were very excited!

Picking out napkin rings. Aaron wasn't quite sure why we needed napkin rings...and he really wasn't sure why we needed to document it with pictures.

 

- Friday night we went to Valerie and Josh's wedding rehearsal. Afterwards, we had dinner with friends at Red Lobster and then we all went back to the lake house and hung out and stayed up talking until about 2:00am. It was fun to hang out with the groom-to-be on his last night as a single man and it was really cute when it finally hit him that he was getting married in the morning. He was so excited and happy!

 The soon-to-be newlyweds.

 Clearly they weren't paying attention. Typical boys.

His last night as a single man....he was excited!

 

-Saturday we attended the wedding. Aaron was a groomsman and I did the photography. Here are a few sneak peeks. I've got my work cut out for me in editing so that's what I'll be doing in my spare time for the next few days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-After the wedding we went to dinner with Aaron's family and then we headed to his parents house to spend the rest of the weekend. We went to church on Sunday morning and went duck hunting on Sunday afternoon. It was my first time to duck hunt and it was so much fun. Much more entertaining and exciting than deer hunting. I didn't have to sit still and stay quiet the whole time. It did make me sad when they shot the ducks, but it wasn't as bad as I thought.

 

 Can you see me?



 



-I headed back home today after lunch and I'm already counting down the days until Thanksgiving. It was such a great weekend and I enjoyed every minute of it.

 

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend, too! Happy Monday!

Saw It, Pinned It, Did It- #3

Linking up with Katie and Steph again for my favorite post of the week!

 

A few years ago I saw a tutorial on Pinterest for a DIY wine bottle vase and I knew I wanted to re-create it for a kitchen table centerpiece. It was the easiest and cheapest project. Just spray paint the bottle, wrap the top in twine, and add some flowers....VOILA!

 

My Pinspiration:

source:www.birdhousefamily.blogspot.com

 

My Version:

After that project I decided to start collecting glass bottles because I knew eventually I would use them as vases for our wedding. I'm not kidding, I have about three boxes full of various glass bottles in different sizes and shapes. I probably won't even use half of them.

 

My friend from work is a big Seltzer water drinker so she also brought me a box full of different Seltzer bottles and lately my mom and I have been working on this project.

 

The Pinspiration:

source: www.inspiringpretty.com

 

My Version:

 

We wrapped them in twine and mint green yarn. It's kind of hard to tell the color from the picture, but it's a lot more mint in person. I just realized after looking at this that we didn't go all the way to the top of ours....and now I'm wishing we did. That's okay though, because we've only made 7 so far so we can just go back and add it to the top. These will be used at the wedding sporadically as vases.

 





What I'm Loving Wednesday!

I'm linking up with Jamie for What I'm Loving Wednesday!

#1. I'm loving that today is my Friday and that I have Thursday-Monday off from work.

#2. The reason I'm off work is to celebrate the marriage of this sweet couple. The groom is one of Aaron's very close friends. He is a groomsman in the wedding and I am honored to be their photographer. I am super excited to celebrate their big day and I can't wait to see what a beautiful bride Valerie will be. I'm also excited about seeing and hanging out with all of our friends that will be there. It's been a while since I've seen all of Aaron's friends and their wives....and now a sweet baby girl that I can't wait to meet :)

 

#3. I love that all 5 of those days will be spent with my fiance, Aaron! I honestly cannot tell you the last time we spent 5 entire days together without either of us having to go in to work or go to class, etc. I seriously think it's probably been almost 3 years which is super crazy to think about.

#4. Our goal during those 5 days is to get registered and hopefully book our honeymoon....YAY!!! So excited to get those two things checked off the to-do list.

source: www.weheartit.com

I'm envisioning a place like this for our honeymoon......haha in my dreams. Honestly, we have no idea where we want to go. We just know it's going to be somewhere with a beach.

 

 

#5. I LOVE that we marked another thing off our wedding to-do list this week by selecting a florist. I'm so excited that one of my bridesmaid's aunts is going to do our flowers. She does amazing work and I know she will be wonderful to work with. 

 

#6. I LOVE this song. The words really speak to me and make me think. Such a powerful song.

 

#7. I LOVE that one of my best friends just got engaged. I'm so happy for her and I can't wait for her wedding in Nashville in May! Aren't they a beautiful couple? Really excited for all the upcoming festivities and that we get to plan our weddings together!

 

 

#8. I LOVE this cute couple and so glad they trusted me to take their engagement pictures. They are also getting married in May in Vegas. Road trips in May with my best friends to celebrate two very special friends getting married = totally cool with me :)

 

 

Wishing everyone a happy Wednesday and hoping you have lots to LOVE today!

 

Our Engagement Pictures!

First of all, let me say this...... when it comes to photography and taking pictures of couples in love, I am obsessed! Just ask my friends and college roommates. I used to spend hours on the computer (wait, I still do) just looking at random photography blogs and swooning over adorable engagement/wedding pictures. To say I had done my research on photographers prior to getting engaged is probably an understatement. To me, photography is one of the most exciting and fun parts about the whole planning process. Therefore, I couldn't hardly stand the excitement about taking our engagement pictures. Here's what you should know:

1. We took our pictures at 8:30am and we woke up to frost and freezing temperatures. Thankfully, it ended up being the PERFECT day for pictures and we didn't even really get cold.

2. Aaron was ready for pictures to be done and over with. He was sick of trying on outfits and worried that he would look awkward in pictures. He was a trooper and looked so handsome and natural! He kept whispering silly things to me so that I would really laugh in the pictures. He even admitted after we were through that he had a lot of fun taking the pictures and it was much better than he expected. I'm glad he enjoyed it too!

3. The photographer, Shirley Kay Photography is seriously the BEST! Obviously, I didn't expect anything less because I had done my research. She picked out the three locations and I absolutely loved each one of them and had never been there before or seen pictures taken there before. She was easy to work with, made both of us feel super comfortable, and we got the edited pictures back to us in 2 days!! That's crazy fast. I would highly, highly recommend her to anyone in the area. Aaron even asked me after we took the pictures, "Are you sure you didn't know Shirley before hiring her to do our pictures because I feel like you guys acted like you've known each other for a long time?" She even came in to get her haircut by me the next week which was really sweet. All of this to say, we LOVE her, loved her work, and it makes me that more excited about bridal portraits and the wedding :))

So without further ado, here they are:

 

 

 

Okay so I sat here forever trying to upload all the pictures and it took forever and now I'm having some technical difficulties so if you're interested in viewing them all you can follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3743816961041.2132625.1444740071&type=1&l=f7c9f79f67

 

Have a Happy Monday!!

Saw It, Pinned It, Did It- #2

 

Linking up again with Katie & Stephanie for Saw It, Pinned It, Did It.

 

I combined two Pinterest things to make a few table top decorations for the wedding.

 

Here is my Pinspiration:

 

 I loved this bible verse and the font.

source: http://www.etsy.com/shop/PaisleyPolkaDotCo

I loved the wooden letter and burlap on this.

source:www.loveoffamilyandhome.blogspot.com

 

And here is my version:

I LOVE the way they turned out.

 

 This is what the frames looked like before. I bought them at a garage sale a long time ago for $0.50 a piece. I spray painted them white with a can of paint I already had. Then I glued on the burlap and scrapbook paper to the cardboard backing already in the frame. Next, I wrote the bible verse with a black sharpie and I was done with that one. For the other one, I painted a wooden letter from Hobby Lobby white and hot glued it onto the burlap. Super easy and super cheap!

 

We got out engagement pictures taken last week and I wanted to share a sneak peek. I'll do a whole post on it soon.

 

 

 

 



Happy Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!

I celebrated Halloween a little early this year because I have to close at work tonight:(
I got together with some friends from work and we had a pumpkin carving party. It was a ton of fun and we took way too many crazy pictures to prove it.

Our pumpkin carving competition turned into a dance competition between my co-worker's 12 year old daughter (yes, she's extremely tall for a 12 year old)  and my co-worker, Candace. Not quite sure who won, but it was hysterical.

We then proceeded to play hair salon in Patrice's in home, make shift salon....and of course we had to have a photo shoot of it too. Then we had another dance off competition with the Wii game, Just Dance.

I tried my best to recreate the little ghost cookies that I saw on Pinterest. Mine definitely didn't look as great, but they were sooo yummy. They were super easy to make. Just dip Nutter Butter's in white chocolate and add chocolate chip cookies as the eyes. You could do this for Christmas too and make little snowmen :)

 

The girls at work are dressing up today for Halloween. Since I didn't get around to making a costume this year, I'm going to recycle my mom's costume that she made a few years back.

I'm going as Jesse from Toy Story. Pictures to come.

 

Hope you have a Spooktacular Halloween (haha, yes I just said it) and stay safe!