Wedding Shower Planning

Last Saturday I threw my first ever wedding shower, and I am so happy with how everything turned out!

My brother-in-law, David, is getting married in July and J and I are both standing in the wedding. In a short period of time David's fiancée, Tracey, has become one of my favourite people. They've decided to have their wedding in our church which is older and hasn't had many updates over the past 15 to 20 years. In order to get the church ready for the wedding without spending a fortune David and Tracey have been doing a lot of the upgrades themselves. The church is looking amazing, but it's taking a bit of a toil on them and their wedding planning/preparation is a little bit more stressful than it is for the average couple. Because of the added stress I really wanted to make sure Tracey's shower was perfect and something she would really enjoy. (I like to think I was pretty successful.)

I decided to go with a morning shower and serve breakfast type foods. I think this surprised some of the guests, but it worked really well. Months ago Tracey had pinned an image of a yogurt bar to her wedding planning board on Pinterest but in the end they decided to go with a candy bar. Since I knew she liked the idea of a yogurt bar I knew that was something I wanted to incorporate. I served vanilla yogurt with three different types of berries and granola. I love the chalk board easel and galvanized pail that I picked up at Micheals. The serving dishes all came from Dollarama. It was a big hit! We also served four different types of muffins made by my mother-in-law, some fresh fruit, and mini cinnamon rolls.

For the decorations I tried to go with a bit of a rustic theme. I made two banners (one said "Thank you" and the other said "From Miss to Mrs") using a free printable. (You can find it here.) It was so simple, and I love how they turned out. One of the other bridesmaids painted the "62 days" canvas and I just love it, it worked perfectly.

I also made a display of pictures of David and Tracey using paper doilies, twine, and clothespins. (I totally got that idea from Pinterest, you can see the original post it came from here.)

I painted mason jars and filled them with artificial flowers for centre pieces, and I covered water bottles with pretty duct tape so they'd look a little classier sitting on the tables. (I used this tutorial for help painting the mason jars. I ended up deciding not to distress them because I liked how they looked as they were.)

For the favours I bought little bottles of shower gel and stuck tags on them that said "From Tracey's shower to yours" and for the guest book I had everyone sign a white plate with Sharpies. (I used the oil ones as I've found they tend to fade less than the regular ones.)

And of course we played games! Tracey's sisters created a "Who Knows her Best" game and a "He said, She said" game that used their past Facebook statuses. We also played wedding pictionary,  "What's in Your Purse" and of course we played the clothespin game. I put all of the prizes in brown paper bags with purple tissue paper so they would match the theme of the shower.

I will admit that the shower may have consumed my life for a couple months. I work full-time so it felt like every day off was spent doing something shower-related but I didn't mind in the least. It turns out I really love planning events like this! Luckily one of the girls at work is going to need a baby shower soon and my brother is getting married next year. ;-)

I hope that this post helped a little if you're planning a shower! Let me know if you use any of these ideas, or if you have any ideas for the next shower I'll need to throw.

Birthday Ramblings

My third birthday... 30 years ago!

My birthday was on Tuesday. I turned thirty-three. 33! I don't know how that happened. Didn't I just turn 23?

J and I celebrated quietly at home. We had lobster and cheese cake and caught up on some TV shows we had missed. Not the most exciting birthday celebration, but life has been pretty hectic lately so I think it's what I needed.

We're going to continue the celebration Saturday night and go out for dinner with a couple of my girlfriends and their husbands. We're planning on checking out a new place called Truck Side, it's an indoor food truck food court. I'm pretty excited about it!

I'm not where I thought I'd be at 33, but I'm happy with where I am. Life is good, and I'm excited to see what this next year brings my way.

Let's try this again!

I feel like life is finally starting to get back to normal so I'm going to try to carve out a little bit of "me" time each day for my blog. I had all kinds of ideas of the past two months so I'm hoping that a) I remember some of them since I didn't write anything down and b) I'm able to execute them the way I envisioned them while I was laying in bed, or in the shower, or on my commute to work. (The shower tends to be where I do my best thinking...)

One of the things that I'm really excited about is monthly guest posts I have lined up. Lauren, my best friend since forever has (finally!) started a blog. Lauren and I have been best friends since grade seven, despite being complete opposites in many ways. The biggest difference is that she's healthy. No, really. Lauren is a real inspiration when it comes to being active and eating properly. She is extremely passionate when it comes to fitness and eating properly and she's going to be sharing some of that passion over here once a month. I can't wait! (If you can't wait either you can check her out over at The Golden Graham Girl for now.)

 

Here's a quick snap shot of my week taken from my phone... 

1. The shower I was planning for my brother-in-law's fiancee finally happened on Saturday. Everything went really well, I was super pleased with how everything turned out. I'm actually planning a post about it because I stole a lot of great ideas off Pinterest that I want to share. 

2. It's finally barbecue season! We've had the longest winter ever but it's finally nice enough to barbecue. J made supper Saturday night as part of my early birthday present. 

3. I found a new summer-y "adult" beverage that I really enjoy. It's white peach and it's delicious. (PS: Doesn't my jamicure look fabulous? I recently started selling Jamberry and I love it!) 

4. Daisy has completely destroyed the back of our loveseat so this past week we finally went out to buy some new furniture. It's not being delivered until May 28th but I am so excited! I can't wait to actually be able to have company over again. 

5. My brother popped in for a visit and Daisy got so freaking excited. Uncle Jon is definitely her favourite human. 

6. Our passports arrived! J and I are leaving for our first big trip together in 28 days. We're heading to Washington, DC and West Virginia. I'm so excited! 

Hopefully you'll be hearing more from me soon. :-)

Grateful

On Saturday, February 7th J decided to go skiing as a reward for himself after the 20 hours of overtime he had put in. 

At 12:17 that I was on my way home from work when he called. 

"You're going to kill me," was the first thing he said to me. 

He had wiped out on his first run down the hill. Ski patrol had gotten him down the hill, and he was waiting for an ambulance to get there. 

The first responders were pretty sure he had a break in his lower leg. 

I managed to drive myself to my parents' place and then had my dad drive me to the hospital. 

X-Rays confirmed it, J's leg was indeed broken. And not just a little broken. He had a spiral fracture is his tibia and a break in his fibula. The X-ray technician told him it was a "doozy" and everyone who's seen the X-ray since has made a similar comment. 

Post-surgery x-ray. You can see the rod & pins. 

We were transferred to Halifax later that evening for more X-rays and to wait for surgery. J eventually had surgery on Monday afternoon. He had a rod inserted with pins at the knee and ankle. (Gross.) He was released the next day and we started the rehabilitation process, plus the process of applying for EI since he'll be off work for several months. 

It's been quite the struggle. I'm not used to doing everything around the house plus everything for J plus working full-time. The first couple weeks I spent A LOT of time crying and a lot of time praying for strength. 

And you know what? Things are getting better. Slowly, but I'm starting to feel like we're going to make it. My head is above water, I'm getting enough sleep, J is impressing the physiotherapist, and Daisy and I are doing lots of bonding on our daily walks. 

Daisy and I enjoying our evening walk.

When I start getting stressed or overwhelmed I remind myself how much worse it could have been. I could have lost J that day. Or he could have permanently damaged himself. And I am so grateful to still have him by my side. (Even when he's complaining about how bored he is.) I think I've been guilty of taking my husband for granted. Not just all the things he does, but his strength and his presence. Those couple nights without him in the bed beside me were really, really hard. There are a lot of lessons in this situation - and some are easier to take than others - but I'm also grateful for every one of them. 

PS: This was very long, and very ramble-y. Ooops. 

Going Viral

I don't talk about work on my blog a lot for several different reasons, but I'm throwing caution to the wind tonight. Mostly because I'm really freaking proud, but partly because what I'm going to talk about has been all over the internet and the local news for the past five days.

Last Friday a woman driving by the store I work at snapped a picture of one of my employees walking home an elderly blind woman. She uploaded the picture to Facebook and tagged my boss (whom she used to work for) in it, asking him to thank this young man for being such a great employee.

Since Friday the picture has now received over 15830 likes, 191 comments, and has been shared 5875 times.

This young man (Austin) and the customer in the picture were interviewed by all three of our local TV channels. (CBC, Global, and CTV.) Then, the icing on the cake was Sunday when two of my staff simultaneously texted me to let me know that the story had hit Cosmo Online. Later on Sunday it even hit Fox News too.

Walking this customer (her name is Mary and she is an absolutely sweet heart) home is something my staff does on a regular basis. On multiple occassions my faith in humanity has been restored by the amazingly sweet things my staff will do for our customers. Sometimes young people all get lumped together in an unflattering way, but the team of young men and young women who work for me and in other departments of our store blow me away on a regular basis. I am so glad that they're getting this recognition, and I couldn't be prouder!

PS: While I do work for Sobeys, all opinions are my own. (But I'm pretty sure everyone is pretty darn proud!)

My Messy House

My house is currently a disaster.

Nothing is where it belongs, and there is dog and cat fur everywhere.

By the time I get home in the evening after work and then make supper all I want to do is curl up on the couch with J and watch TV. And then on my day off I feel like I "deserve" a day to relax and do nothing except read and play on the internet.

I thought about doing PopSugar's 30-Day Cleaning Challenge. It seemed fitting since I'm already doing their 2015 Reading Challenge, but I don't necessarily think my microwave and my oven are the first place to start. I think I need to get the house clean, and then start using some sort of schedule that involves doing one or two quick tasks each night. I've seen some on Pinterest, I just need to find the right one for me. (Or find one that's pretty close to tweak a bit.)

Do you have any tricks for keeping your house clean and tidy?

Closet Make-Over

Now that my students loans are almost completely paid off (two more payments!) J and I have decided to start doing some little things around the house. Part of it is because we're hoping to sell within the next couple years and we'd like to make a little money, and part of it is just because we haven't done much since we bought our place three years ago.

So far we've laid new flooring in the living room and dining room, plus we've given the spare room and the office a minor face lift. (Check out the fun I had giving our filing cabinet a new paint job...) The next room we plan on tackling is our master bedroom. But, before we could even start thinking about painting and re-decorating the room needed to be completely re-organized.

We decided to start with the closet and our dresser drawers this weekend. We ran a few errands in the morning, including getting our passport pictures done (yay!) and taking a run to Home Depot to pick out some kind of closet shelving kit. We went with the 5-8' FreeSlide because it looked like the best for our needs, and it was within our budget. (We had a $50 gift card and it was $59.99, so it was perfect.)

We've been horrible lately when it comes to putting our clothes away after we do laundry so we had baskets full of clean laundry everywhere, and most of it wasn't folded. So Saturday evening we threw in a DVD (Mom's Night Out, which was really cute) and started folding and organizing clothes. Of course we had some helpers during our laundry folding. Sydney wanted to play in every basket we opened, and Daisy wanted to knock over every pile of clean clothes she could. Luckily Daisy got tired eventually!

Sunday after church I took a little nap (like I do pretty much every Saturday) and J started putting up the closet organizer. It's a good thing my husband is handy, because the instructions aren't the greatest and they were designed for an 8' closet even though the organizer is for a 5' to 8' closet. Our closet is only 6' so he had to do some playing to get everything in and the way we wanted it. We spent Sunday evening sorting and putting away all of our clothes. We are huge pack rats, but we forced ourselves to throw out anything really ratty and we filled a couple garbage bags with clothes to donate somewhere. By the time we went to bed I was extremely happy with how the closet looked. Now it's time to pick out paint colours!