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.

40 Weeks

I'm officially due TODAY! We've pretty much finished up everything we need to. We hung these Alphabet cards in her nursery this weekend and all we are waiting for is the bedding to arrive on Wednesday (it was on back order for months).

The mobile is hung.

The mural is done above the changing table.

The Bookshelf is built (I still have a few finishing touches left to put on it).

So Grateful

A few weeks ago my friends Ashley and Ranchel threw me a wonderful baby shower, I can not thank them enough for all the effort they put into it, they truly outdid themselves and it exceeded my expectations. . Here are just a few details:

Ashley made the wreath and hanging tissue balls, I thought they were so adorable.

Peonies from a local grower in Great Falls (this was the only thing I did, the girls did all the rest)

Diaper cakes made by Ashley and my sister, Elise, how adorable and useful:)

So creative, sugar and cream in sippy cups with baby spoons!

Most of my guest painted a onesie for Peanut, some were better than others, let's just leave it at that.

After is was all over I got to relax and enjoy some time with my friends, Ranchel and I go way back to middle school and Ashley and Kristen and I met in college through ADPi.

I also want to thank my sister who wrote down all the gifts and helped "hurry" it along since apparently that's the most boring part of a shower and no once wants to sit there for hours.

Good Belly shot, she's a big one!

I also want to Thank everyone who came to the shower and brought a gift for Peanut, Chris and I are so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends and we can't wait introduce Peanut to you all.

One of the most special gifts we recieved was this handmade quilt from Chris' family. Each Whinnie the Pooh character was hand stiched from 4 generations of women in his family. The Pooh Bear was done 10 years ago by his Great Grandmother, it is a tradition in their family that each great-grand-child recieve a blanket for their children, I know Peanut will love hers!

Peanut's Home

So a week after the conference we closed on Peanut's Home!!!! I still haven't unpacked half the boxes because I've been busy studying for my last architecture test which is this Tuesday. I also have one last wedding on June 5th to do before she arrives, so after that get ready to see her adorable nursery which is currently an empty room. We love you Peanut and I promise it will look adorable before we bring you home, even if I only have less than a month to pull it off.


Chris outside the bank holding the big fat check you have to bring to closing, we were so scared it was going to blow away in the wind on the way over.

Awesomeness!

As I mentioned in my last post about JSConf, I booked a wedding the same weekend, so while Chris was busy as a Pirate doing JSConf I was busy as a bee home alone arranging flowers for this wedding. And when I say home alone I mean no one else helped me on this wedding with the exception of my sister and future brother-in-law showing up a little early to help with last minute touches and delivery on the day of the wedding. I don't want to reveal too much information because I don't know what the rules are about this kind of stuff but this wedding will hopefully be featured in a magazine in a couple of months.

All photos were taken by Katie Stoops Photography

The bride and groom came to me with this magazine spread as inspiration. They wanted something different and unique, not one rose was used in the design. I love it when brides bring inspiration because it helps me get an idea of their style and expectations however I always warn brides I do not copy or replicate designs, I take what they like about the inspiration and make it my own unique design that reflects the bride and groom.

Survival

It seems like I have abandoned my blog, and yes in some extent I did but only because I felt like I could barley keep up with life let alone updating a blog.

The last time I left you all was right before JSConf, the conference that Chris and I put on back in April. Although it was well worth all the effort, leading up to the conference I wasn't sure if we were going to pull it off. This year I accidentally booked a wedding the same dayas the conference so I was MIA for most of the first day. My incredible husband really did most of the work and I can not say how proud of him I am.

Here he is all in his Pirate get up, which still to this day I don't understand why we made the theme Pirates, but it seemed to work and everyone loved it.

...and again just before it all started hanging out in our awesome Presidential Suite at Hotel Palamar surrounded by a tons of boxes full of swag.

All the swag that I had made: t-shirt, program, bag, nerd merit badge, and coffee mugs and beer mugs from two of our sponsors.

The best part of putting on this conference was that my work had no idea I was doing all this in my "free" time. This video was filmed on my lunch break the Monday after the conference.

"Game Room"
Chris and I now own Rock Band that we purchased for this room.