Bathroom Baskets

by Stephanie
I have been to a couple weddings that had little baskets in the bathrooms filled with all sorts of things that may come in handy. I usually end up needing to use a band aid, or a hair tie or something. It is one of those little things that I always thought was so helpful so we put together our bathroom baskets for the three bathrooms at my parents' house. Here are some pictures of what our baskets/trays look like and then a list of what is in the trays.

Q-tips
Band aids
Hair ties
Bobby pins
Comb
Tums
Aleave
Neosporin
Nail clippers
Oil absorbing sheets
Warm Vanilla Sugar body spray
Warm Vanilla Sugar body lotion
Nail file
Hair spray
Eucerin body lotion
Dr. Scholles Miracle Shield blister prevention stick
Clear nail polish (great for runs in your nylons!)
Sun screen
Apple scented hand sanitizer
Regular hand sanitizer
Wet ones
Shout stain removing wipes
Sewing kit
Lint roller
Listerine
Cups for listerine (or aleave)
Mint and Cinnamon gum
Mint and cinnamon breath strips
Dental floss
Single use "finger toothbrushes"
Paper hand towels
Kleenex


What do you think? Did we forget anything that might come in handy?

And yes, that is our mattress in the middle of the living room lol. We are sleeping downstairs since Harley is locked in our bedroom. When we had the bed in there she kept trying to jump onto the bed which was totally not allowed by the vet...so we have been exiled to the living room lol.
And they lived happily ever after...

My engagement ring!

by Stephanie
Ok so I somehow never put pictures of my engagement ring up here! It is so perfect. I love the vintage look of it, and the filigree (the engraving on the side) is amazing. I also love how it sticks up with the little hole underneath. It is an emerald cut surrounded by a bunch of small diamonds. The wedding band will look just like the band on the engagement ring. It also has the filigree which is nice. I love all the little diamonds on the ring. It makes it sparkle in ANY light. I like that it sparkles so much more than if it were just one single large diamond.

What do you think? Shiny and sparkly! :-D
And they lived happily ever after...

Poor Kitty :-(

by Stephanie

So we have been taking a little bit of a break from wedding related projects because one of our cats, Harley, managed to dislocate her elbow the other day. It was pretty bad. I am going to get a copy of the xray one of these days so I will post it. It was horrible!

The surgeon was able to get her elbow back in the socket and now she is in a big cast. The cast has to be on for two weeks total (one more week to go!) and then she can't really do much jumping, climbing, playing, etc for an entire MONTH after she gets the cast off!

The worst thing about the whole incident was that when we brought her home after they put the cast on she had a REALLY horrible reaction to coming off the last of the anesthesia combined with the opioid (basically really strong kitty morphine) pain medicine they were giving her. She started freaking out and hallucinating and screaming and thrashing around. It was honestly the scariest thing I have ever seen. We had to call the ER vet again and ended up having to lock her in the bedroom with all the lights out and no noise or people and let it pass. Basically any stimulation just made the freak out worse. The next morning she was back to acting normal which was nice. Well, normal for a cat who has a cast on anyway!

Needless to say, she does NOT like having the cast on. After about two days she figured out how to walk (hobble, hop) around really well. She can walk well enough that she can make a break for the door every time we open it up lol. She now feels good enough that she will sit next to the door and bang her cast on it over and over and over. It sounds like someone is knocking on the front door. The vet said she can bang it all she wants, it isn't going to hurt her elbow...instead, it will just drive me totally insane! We have been giving her Lorazepam which is supposed to calm her down a little bit, but it doesn't do anything.

Here are some pictures of our poor kitty in her cast. We both signed her cast with a purple sharpie which I thought was really cute :-)

Still totally wiped out after coming home

She is SUCH a daddy's girl lol.

The cast had to immobilize both the shoulder and the elbow.
Zoe is still wondering what the heck is stuck on Harley's arm!

"Get this stupid thing off of me!" She kept kicking at it for two whole days.

This is when she still refused to stand up. She would just drag herself around the room. It was so sad and funny all at the same time. At least she felt good enough to drink some water though!

It took her a while to figure out how to turn around with the cast on. She would just sit and stare at her bed because she couldn't figure out how to turn around enough to lie down. We would have to pick her up and put her in her bed.

"But I want to go outside!!!!"


She can stand!




"What do you mean I'm not supposed to play with anything!?"

"What if I just play with Zoe instead?"

Her arm sticks up in the air when she lies down on her side :-(

The used such cute VetWrap! It is more like a sticky ace bandage, or medical tape, than an actual plaster cast. She has a big plastic splint underneath, wraped up in gauze and then wrapped really tight in VetWrap.

She is so pretty. I wrote "I love you! Love Mommy" on her cast.

"I'm not playing I swear! I have NO idea how this mouse toy got under my paw..."

She really wanted to play so we made a makeshift toy for her. We didn't want her flopping all over the place throwing her mouse around so we tied it to some ribbon so we could control where the mouse was. She loved it!

Happy kitty.

She can walk!

You can sort of see what Danny wrote on her cast on the right. "Get well soon! Love Daddy"

They are such good sisters. Zoe misses playing with her SOOOO much.

So she gets her cast off on May 4th. Hopefully when the take her cast off the elbow will stay in place. There is a chance that it could pop back out if the ligaments haven't healed themselves all the way. If it pops back out they have to do surgery and screw the elbow in and maybe use some pins...not what we want to have happen. Please keep your fingers crossed that it stays in place!

Once things calm down here I promise I will be back to all my wedding projects!
And they lived happily ever after...

Wedding Search-A-Word

by Stephanie
I hate when you go to weddings and it takes forever to get everyone seated and situated before the ceremony actually starts. You end up reading through the program 10 times trying to kill some time.

That is why Danny and I decided to put a "wedding search-a-word" puzzle into our program packet! (Yes, I said "program packet" you will read why it is a "packet" later...once I finish the programs and can take pictures).

I decided to do a search-a-word instead of a cross word puzzle for two reasons. One, I thought it was more fair to those people who wouldn't know the answers to the "clues" in the cross word puzzle. Not everyone at the wedding will know all the same things about us as other people. Two, my grandpa loves search a words and I always remember watching him do them, and helping him out with them, which was a lot of fun growing up.

Here is a picture of what it will look like (I made it a really small picture so people don't find all the words now instead of at the wedding ceremony! No cheating!)
What do you guys think? Do you think it is a fun idea? Do you think anyone will actually DO the search-a-word?

And they lived happily ever after...

Tulips!

by Stephanie
This is a totally non-wedding related post, but these pictures are so amazing I just had to share them with you guys! These are aerial pictures of the tulip fields in the Netherlands near Amsterdam. Amsterdam is one of my three favorite places in Europe (in no particular order, Prague, the imperial gardens & zoo in Vienna, and Amsterdam). Amsterdam was one of the cities that Danny and I went to this past summer, but we didn't get a chance to go out to the tulip fields (they weren't really in bloom like they are now anyway).

I have never seen so many types of tulips as I did in the flower markets in Amsterdam....they were amazing!
And they lived happily ever after...

The "Trash the Dress" Dress!!!!

by Stephanie
So I ended up canceling the other orders I made for the dresses. Instead of getting a dress online I ended up going to the bridal shop where I got my actual wedding dress. They had an entire RACK of sample dresses that have been discontinued. They sell them at a huge discount and then whatever they don't sell they donate to a charity for breast cancer that takes used wedding dresses. The only problem with getting a sample dress is that all the dresses only come in one size! Luckily, I am the PERFECT sample size! The girls in the shop said that never happens. Yay!

So the dress I ended up getting was originally $1200...and I got it for $200 including tax! I can't even buy a dress that fits from the shopping mall for that price! (I know this because I have been looking for months for a dress to wear to Dana's wedding. No luck so far...lame!) The only thing I need is for the tailor to take in the top a little bit, but the bridal shop said that since I will be getting my real wedding dress altered a little that the lady the recommended probably wont even charge me to take in the top of the second dress. Awesome!

It is a totally wacky dress, but it is so fun and I think the pictures will turn out great. Also, it looks really poofy but it isn't that heavy so I don't have to worry about drowning in the ocean in the dress lol. Seriously though, I was worried about that!

I think it will be fun to wear something different for the trash the dress session. It is still poofy enough that it looks like a wedding dress, but I won't feel too bad for possibly ruining a beautifully beaded or lace dress.

Danny is going to go to Ross and Marshals to look for a pair of cheap slacks and a button down and maybe a jacket if he can find one for really cheap. Man this is going to be soooo awesome!!!

Since it isn't my actual wedding dress and I am just going to wear it for the trash the dress photo session I figured it wouldn't be bad if Danny took a couple pictures of me in the dress for me to share!

What do you think of the dress?

And they lived happily ever after...

Trash the Dress!

by Stephanie
Our photographer offered to stay an extra day and do a "trash the dress" photo session with us! A trash the dress session is when you take pictures in the ocean, or cimbing around in trees, or doing other crazy things. You get some REALLY cool pictures, but you run the risk of trashing your wedding dress (hence the name!). A lot of people will buy another, cheap, or used wedding dress to wear instead of wearing their actual wedding dress.

Since I love my actual wedding dress too much to possibly destroy I bought a used wedding dress on eBay and a new one from some online discount store (I can return both in case they don't fit. The one from the discount store is supposed to be tailored to my dimensions, but you never know with these places. It is probably made in china and could end up being a total rip off lol). Hopefully one of the dresses will work out!


Here is a picture of the eBay dress:
And here is a picture of the online discount place dress:


Here are some fun random trash the dress pictures I found online:


I figure if neither of these dresses end up working out, then I might look around to see if any of the bridal stores in the area would sell me one of the sample dresses that is starting to get a little worse for wear. I guess a lot of bridal stores start doing that around May. Worse comes to worse, I wait until I can find a sample dress for sale and we can do a trash the dress session at some other later date.

It should be really fun though! We could take pictures at the beach, on the cliffs, climbing around on all my parents' tractor equipment, climbing trees, hanging out on the docks and piers, etc.

What do you guys think?

And they lived happily ever after...