Stationery card

Initial Wreath Christmas Card

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She strikes again!

My coworker is amazing at decorating cookies, you can see her other work here. This morning she gave this strawberry themed birthday gift to another coworker. I thought the idea was just too cute not to share.

A pot to grow strawberries in with adorable strawberry cookies baked by her.

Bringing in the New Year in Style

CHEERS TO 2011!

It was the day before New Years Eve and I got a voicemail from my good friend Ashley with two suggestions on what we should do for New Years, option 1 was to come over to our house and make dinner and option 2 was to research going out somewhere, and at the end of the VM she said, but I like option 1 better... and how could I turn her down since she offered to do most of the cooking.

Since I wasn't going to be cooking I used my time to pull out my china and crystal. I haven't used it in a while and I was getting the itch to pull it out, and why not it was New Years Eve after all!!

It was a small intimate group, just the 4 of us and Virginia. It's hard to see but Virginia helped her dad picked out the yellow flowers from Whole Foods when he went to go buy the craft brew, I love having a daughter!

While picking up the beer Chris picked up a dozen oysters and shucked them himself, I made him crush the ice in the blender to make it look pretty, he wasn't too happy about that extra step.

As the main course Ashley wanted to make Lobster potpies from a recipe she found in her Cosmo magazine. The only thing Ashley asked me to make was a salad but I wanted to make it a 4 course meal so I also added a soup.

For the first course Chris picked up clam chowder pre made from the deli section, it was very tasty and so easy, just heat and serve!

For the second course I made a pear and brie salad with candied pecans with a white balsamic dressing.

The yummy finished product! In Ashley style she monogramed them, only the "H's" turned out, the W's were unrecognizable.

For the finale of the night Ashley saw these desserts on Oprah and really wanted to make them, champagne cupcakes with champagne frosting and strawberries soaked in champagne. YUM!

Happy New Year

....and now it's time to take down all the Christmas decorations. Decorating my new home this year was a lot of fun.

Although my sister thought I was crazy, I knew when we purchased the house in April that I would be hanging wreaths in every window. I found these red glitter bows at Michael's and I loved how they sparkled in the sunlight.

We had these stocking from a few years ago but this year I added our initials by cutting out the letters from felt. I couldn't find a matching stocking for Virginia so we got the "my first christmas" stocking instead. We also enjoyed a fire for most of the holiday season.

Our tree came from the famous Sextons in McLean, fraser firs are my favorite...and now I'm sad the holiday season is over and we have to take it all down. From our family to yours, we hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and cheers to 2011.

2010 Christmas Card

Peppermint Dots Christmas Card

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Briar Patch Bride

Back in October I had the pleasure of doing a wedding out in Middleburg at the Briar Patch. It was one of my more unique weddings and I really loved how the whole wedding turned out. Please check out Kristen Garners Blog for the entire wedding. But what many brides don't see is what goes on before you are handed the bouquet or see the flowers on the table. When the flowers are delivered all the stems are cut and the flowers are placed in water to rehydrate. We also have to take inventory to make sure all the flowers we ordered arrived and are in good condition. Not often but sometimes they send use the wrong item and it's our job to make sure we catch it in time to have them send a replacement. For this wedding I ordered 6 bunches of orange mokara orchids but only 5 came along with a random "ugly" color which I absolutely could not use, if we catch the mistake within 24 hours we get a refund, if not, it's our loss. Some flowers have to be wired to hold up in the bouquets, these orchids went in the bridal and bridesmaids bouquets. To ensure all table arrangements look the same, an assembly line process is set up. My sister Elise is becoming very skilled at helping. The corsages for this wedding were made of white Dahlias and Red James Storie orchids with a slap bracelet, which has become very popular. I have started labeling the boutonnieres because often times after I pin them all on there are extras that no one knows who they belong to, when they are labeled it's easy to see... the father of the brides still needs his etc. Transportation is always a concern, getting the flowers safely to the event is our top priority. After many ideas we have concluded that stapling the box the vase comes in to a piece of plywood works best for us, it also makes it easy to carry the centerpieces inside, all we have to do is carry the entire board. After we dropped off the flowers my husband, sister and parents all went a mile down the road to Chrysalis winery and relaxed after a weekend of hard work.

Happy Birthday Elise

My sister, Elise is a CPA and when I asked what she will be doing for her Birthday she responded "working late" so I thought it was only appropriate to give her a cupcake with a calculator on it. Elise, I hope you have a wonderful Birthday at work.

Carnation Wedding

Back in May I did an almost all carnation wedding, the bride loved carnations and like most other brides this season she loved the color purple. I did a lot of purple weddings this summer but each one was unique and different, this bride paired purple with ice blue. Unfortunately I never got any professional photos back from this bride so you will all have to suffer through looking at mine.

Bridal Bouquet

I tried to get the bride to include other flowers but she wanted all carnations. I actually really love how it turned out.

Bridesmaids bouquet

My arrangements are the ones on the far left and right, they are completely out of scale for this church and I'm sure people were confused why there were also yellow ones under the altar (one is missing). The ones under the alter were provided by the church and I kept asking the altar attendant who was putting them out, are you sure the bride wants these? and they assured me the bride was ok with it, I hope they were right.

The caters trucks got extremely lost getting to the reception so they had a lot of their wait staff sitting around doing nothing, so my Dad (on the left) asked one if he could help carry in the centerpieces.

I like to place my own centerpieces, that way I can take one last look around and make sure everything looks ok, so I waited for the truck to arrive and the linens to be put on the table. I wish I had a photo with the whole table set, she had pretty silver chargers.

What do you do when your bride asks for a cake topper and you show up and find this? Hmmm... I ended up tearing apart my cake topper and placing flowers on each tier. Only to have the the cake lady (a co-work of the groom who was also a guest) come waltzing in after I was all done. She said, oh I didn't know what to do with the top of the cake so I just threw a bow on it, we can take it off. I was in SHOCK, no we couldn't, I just disassembled my topper and stuck all the flower on the cake. I think I made the flowers a little heavy looking but I wanted to make sure the bride got her money's worth of flowers since she paid for a topper. I kept telling the cake lady, please explain to the bride I didn't want to take the bow off and ruin the cake.

In the car

Table arrangements ready to be put in the car.

My Dad is great at transportation and staples the boxes the vases come in to a board so they don't slide around.

In the cooler: corsage, bouts and the brides bouquet next to a bridesmaids bouquet.

Welcome Virginia Abigail

She's here! She came on July 3rd at 2:49 am, which yes... that means she's more than a month old! She was a big baby at 9lbs 8 oz and with the great support of my coach (my loving husband) we made it through 9 hours of labor with no drugs. Chris and I took 12 weeks of The Bradley Method to prepare for the birth, but no matter how many classes you take, nothing prepares you for that moment when they hand you your baby and your whole world changes. I am loving motherhood and we feel so blessed to have Virginia in our life, some mornings I'll spend the whole morning just snuggling up with her in bed thinking how did I get so lucky to have this little angel in my life.

At 5 days old we got these photos taken by LitteMoonPhotography. It's amazing how much she has changed in the past month, I'll make sure to post more photos later.