Twenty Seven

Wow, busy few weeks :) Things are really starting to fly by as we make our way to our October wedding. I have mailed out the invites and have started getting response cards back! Every time I get one in the mail I just about run the block to get back home so I can set everything down and open it. I pretty much know everyone who will and won't be able to make it... but still! It's so exciting.
I have learned the art of Mod Podge... It's so great. I have been mod podge-ing everything :) I bought and redid a chest of drawers. They were a bit dingy so i sanded them down and painted them a violet color. I put new black handles on the drawers. It looks awesome! And then I mod podged it :) I lined the drawers with a black giraffe print fabric and applied mod podge all over it to seal it into the drawer. It works flawlessly. I will be posting pictures as soon as I get them taken :)
Joshua has been a busy bee, too. At the beginning of July, he went to "soldier of the quarter" board at Camp Carroll (his base in Waegwon) and won, which was great! Then at the end of July, he went to Seoul to compete in another "soldier of the quarter" board which he didn't win. Despite not winning, he had a great trip and learned a lot! Then, just today, he went to the promotion board to get approved for a promotion to Sgt. He had been studying for months- even since I had been in Korea with him! He said he did awesome. He even said he overheard them talking afterwards about how great he did! So kudos to Joshua!! I can't wait to find out his official score :)
Last weekend, I went and visited Melissa and my little "nephew" Antonio. They are one of my bridesmaids and my ring bearer. They are doing great! And looking great, too! Despite being just two, Antonio is almost fully potty trained! Usually boys are a lot harder to train, so kudos to Mel for the hard work! Antonio is getting so big. He is talking up a storm. He will tell you all about everything.
My oldest niece Emily came and visited my mother and me about two weekends ago. It was fun. Emily is a boatload of energy and a boatload of fun...for the most part. One night, when Joshua was on my computer screen on Skype, Emily rushed in and jumped on the bed and just started chatting him up! haha! She is such a sucker for Joshua. I guess there aren't a ton of males in this family as her daddy is away a lot for the army and her uncle is in Korea with Joshua and she doesn't get to see her grandfathers very often so any male adult interaction is appetizing for her. She just loves him! When we would hold hands, she used to try and come in the middle of us- I guess she didn't want Aunt Hannah to have all of Uncle Joshua's attention! Ha! She is a mess! But all in all, she is a lot of fun. Carly has also come over to visit. Carly is getting so big! She will be two about 2 weeks after the wedding so she is talking up a storm too. She likes to play "night night baby" where she puts her baby doll on her tummy and then covers her with a blankey. She then pats the baby's back and says "night night". She also likes to make me do the same thing :P She will make me lay down and she will take a blanket (no matter how small) and put it on my back and pat it saying "night night. night night" She copies anything that Emily is doing. When she can't find Emily, she will walk around saying "meme! meme! meme!!". It's funny to think that I was probably like that with my sister when we were small!
Work is fun. We had a fun country star come in to visit for a couple nights. He was very nice and fairly humble. He did bust out his guitar for us to see it! It looked really awesome. Super jealous of it! Some of the girls at work are so sweet. Since my best friend and MOH Ashley has moved to Washington DC, it's been tough having all my closest friends live so far away. The girls at work make that a little easier. It's nice to have some females to talk to when I get the chance to run into them at work :)
Speaking of work, we had "celebrate service" week at work and at the end of the week they had a big luncheon (which I couldn't attend since I was sleeping!) where they announced the employees of the month. They gave me employee of the month! How great! I've only been working with them for 4 months so everyone was so impressed! It was really exciting and really encouraged me to continue the good service to all of our guests!
The bridesmaids are in the midst of planning the bridal shower! We are going to have two showers. The BM's are planning the first one and my mom and aunt are planning the second one. I am really excited for both showers. I can't wait to see all my favorite ladies :)
Well, I will update as things draw closer!
Until next time,
The future Mrs.

Twenty Four

*Sigh* This week has been a long and rough one for me- emotionally.
I feel like I've been on an emotional rollercoaster this week. Ups & Downs. On top of that, I feel like I'm gaining weight- just what I want before I get all dolled up and walk down the aisle, right? Dang it!!
Went and visited my flower girls, aka- my two gorgeous nieces, today in Killeen. The oldest niece, Meme, had swimming lessons! I got a few fun shots of her in the water. The youngest niece was definitely jealous that Meme was in the water. She pouted for a while about it. I got a few fun shots of her, too :)

Carly and My sister, one of my bridesmaids, watching Meme swim!


Meme kicking around the water!


Carly drinking my sweet tea!

Last week, we had a fun guest- Adam West! Old school batman! How fun! It was neat to get to see him walk down our marble stairs and get into his car with his chauffer! Wouldn't that be fun to have someone drive you everywhere??! Ahh...the life,right?

I created a flickr.com page for wedding guests to post their pictures after the wedding. I also went to zazzle.com and created some small business size cards that have the directions of how to login to flickr.com to add pictures to our website once they get home from the wedding and get them downloaded! The little cards are going to look awesome! I'm so looking forward to receiving that package in the mail! WooHoo!
I also created (on zazzle.com) some postcards with our preprinted address on them and pictures of the Austin capitol from the 40s or 50s on it! I cropped and placed the pictures on there, etc all on my own! I figure we're going to give them out in our welcome baskets for out-of-towners and for our guests in general. My plan for them is to write their favorite part of our event and mail it back to us so that we can keep them as souveniers of our wedding weekend :)

Joshua has been doing well. He was out in the field for about a week and just made it home this past week. I am so glad he is back. It never fails to amaze me how much I miss him when I can't talk to him constantly. He's my partner in life and it never fails that when I can't talk to him a lot, I end up with a bajillion things to tell him by the end of the day! I can't wait for him to make it home from Korea... I just can't wait!
Since we are paying for the wedding, we are attempting to collect money so that we can pay for his ticket home but just haven't gotten it together yet. Ah! Money is one of my biggest stressors. We have been successful in planning this wedding and paying for it with cash and no loans, cc's, etc. I will be frustrated if we have to break that for a plane ticket. Boo!

Either way, we have just continued on our "planning path". We are looking forward to getting to next 3 1/2 months outta the way! October 3rd, here we come!!

Until Next Time,
The Future Mrs.!

Twenty-two

Ah. It's been a busy busy few weeks. Emily had her 5th birthday party last weekend. I cant believe she's already 5. I remember holding her in the hospital after she had just been born!! She is becoming such a big girl- she just lost her second tooth! :) What a little miniature grown up :)


Happy Memorial day. It's such a nice holiday to sit back and remember those soldiers passed. Luckily, Joshua got a 4 day weekend, so we got a chance to spend a lot more time over the wecam with eachother. So that was nice.
I am reupholstering a parsons chair from Ikea. I am very excited. It is going to be blue and white stripped.
I have been buying lots of cloth to stock up for while I'm over in Korea. I also made a little pin cushion and jar for all my needles,string,etc. It's been fun getting crafty and ready for the new house in Korea.
We had some fun guests staying at the hotel over this weekend- Black Sabbath snuck in around 2am in the middle of the night after a concert of theirs. They made sure there was no one else around in the lobby when they came in after unloading two big busses. Even though I don't listen to their music, it was still neat to see them. Another cool celeb on the list :)
The next thing on my list for wedding planning is purchasing our invites from here. We are slowly getting to the countdown-only 4 months and 3 days until the wedding :):) woo. I can't wait to Joshua to get home for the wedding. It will be so nice to have my best friend that close :)

These are the flowers that Joshua sent me :) Aren't they just divine? The note he sent was so fabulous, too! Although I know he'd be pretty angry if I put his mushy talk on a blog- so I can't disclose what he said! haha :) Trust me, it was way cute!

Until Next Time,
The future Mrs.

Twenty-One

Emily's tote :)
Its petite, but I think thats why I like it so much!
What you will need:
-Two regular size bandana's
-Scissors
-Sewing machine
-A few pins to stick in the fabric!
-Paint pen
-Stencils for words/decoration

I bought two bandana's from Walmart for $1/each.


I folded it "hot dog style". In layman's terms-I folded it across its horizontal axis :)


Then folded it across its vertical axis...or hamburger style :)

I sewed three edges of it (including the side that was already connected) leaving the top of the bag opened. Once i had gotten three sides sewn, I turned it inside out so that it wouldnt have all the stitching on the outside.


I folded down the edges on top of sewed the down so that the edges would be smooth on top-not jagged.
After that, i started the straps.
With my other bandana, I opened it and then folded it hot dog style as well. I cut two vertical strips off of it and pinned them in place for sewing onto the bag! Make sure to keep your ends on the "soon-to-be-straps" covered! ( so make sure to pin them from the inside out. Next, with your sewing machine, make sure to sew the straps on-go over it a few times. Since I was making this bag for my 5 year old niece flower girl, I knew the straps needed to be sturdy. No wonder what she will put in there!


After that, I put a peice of cardboard in the bag and wrote her name and put a few bits of decoration on it.



It was a fun project that I'm sure Emily will enjoy! :)

Until Next Time,
The future Mrs. D :)

Twenty

Good early morning, All. Just stopping in since I just finished another project which I am quite proud of, if I do say so myself :)

For this blog, I am going to show how i made my bridesmaid's bags....
**WARNING!** If you are a bridesmaid and you read this-you WILL ruin the surprise for yourself :(

I made tote bags for all 4 of my girls :)
I bought black bags from Hobby Lobby and decorated them. I'm going to put things in them, but this is the biggest part of the present! :)
What you will need:
Black tote bag
sewing machine
Thick Ribbon of choice color
2nd skinnier ribbon of different choice color
string of choice colors for sewing
paint pen
stencils for letters/decoration!
iron-on letters


1. First things first.the black bags!


2. I first wrote each of the "_____ maid" parts. and put the design around them.
Each girl gets a different verb in front of maid... some of them are inside jokes and some of them are just the words i know describe them perfectly! Choosing each girl's word was probably the best part of this project! Make sure you've got your thesaurus for this one, ladies! :)


3. Next, we get the first big ribbon!!
I chose a pink polka dot ribbon since our colors are dark pink and black!
I sewed the ribbon onto the bag. Be careful-if you dont use the string color that matches your ribbon of choice-they will be able to easily see where you didn't have that "perfect" straight line...hehe that happened to me quite a few times!


4. I discovered that it is a LOT easier to just tie a bow and sew the bow on instead of sewing the ribbon around like i had with the thick pink. When i was attempting to sew the bow on, I did make a discovery: going through the middle of the bow is NOT a good idea. I broke two sewing needles by going through the middle! It was just too dang thick, I guess! Either way, I think it turned out well!


5. Last, but never least, I put an initial of the girls on the back of the bags. Sadly...I forgot to take a picture of it... but I can tell you it looks really cute! For ashley's, I put a cursive letter "A" on the back of the bag in the middle of it.


I also made my oldest niece Emily a tote bag but i made it from two bandanas! It looks awesome! I've got pictures of it- but I'm going to use it for another blog :)

Until next time,
The future Mrs. :)

Nineteen

I figured I'd post up a few of my wedding crafts since they are what consumes me lately other than work. As soon as i get pictures of everything, will put up pictures/instructions. Some of these things don't look as good in the pictures as they do in real life, so bear with me. Just figured it'd give me something to blog about versus boring you with our not exciting lives lol

Enjoy-more to come in the next few days :)

Until Next Time,
The Future Mrs. :)