Our Daughter's Wedding Was Beautiful

Our daughter's wedding was August 2nd!  It was so beautiful!  They had the ceremony at their new house.  Her husband just bought it a few months ago and he has been living there since then.  It was charming and sweet, just like our girl Andrea.  You can read more about the ceremony at our photographer, Lydia Photography blog

She did an amazing job of capturing the feel of the wedding and the perfectness of the day.

Here is a photo of my husband, Dave, walking Andrea down the aisle.  I think this is among my top 3 photos from the wedding.

For the reception we rented a hall a couple of miles away called The Horsemen's Lodge in Grass Valley.  We had some amazing help from family and friends on setting everything up and bringing food, etc.  Andrea's maid of honor's mother did all of the decorations for the hall, including the table decorations.

Here are a couple of photos of the hall.

It was a lot of work, but it was so fun and a day to be remembered forever.  Congratulations and best wishes Andrea and Roland!

Daughter's Wedding Takes Over Mom's Life

Wow, are we getting close.  Two weeks from tomorrow is the big day of my oldest daughter's wedding.  Last Saturday her bridesmaids threw her a bridal shower here at our home.  Here is a photo of the beautiful table they did.

Of course a ton of yummy finger foods were added to the table as well.  Tomorrow is another bridal shower being put on by the ladies of their church.  Did I mention that her fiance is a pastor?  They will be the pastoral couple for a small First Baptist Church in Nevada City and will be living 10 minutes from me.  Yeah!!

These next two weeks are going to be incredibly busy.  This is where all the little tiny details have to come together.  Who is going to pick up what when and bring it where?  The ceremony will be in their soon-to-be backyard and the reception across town at The Horsemen's Lodge.  Her maid of honor's mother has been amazing in helping with the decorations for that and the arch at the ceremony.  It is all so much work, but also so much fun.  What a very special time in our daughter's life!  Loving it!!!

Wedding Guest Book Finally Finished!

My daughter's wedding is fast approaching - August 2nd to be exact!  It is getting pretty exciting, if not a little bit stressful.  So I finished the wedding guest book that she asked me to make for her the other day.  Here is a photo of the front of it.

Her theme is country shabby chic, so this should be perfect.  Here are a few pages from the inside.

I got the Keys to a Happy Marriage printables on Etsy.  I also saw a cute Sign Our Guestbook on Etsy that I am going to buy and put it in a shabby chic white picture frame where the paint is kind of chipping off.

This Saturday we are taking a trip to Hobby Lobby and/or Michaels for table decorations and other decorations.  For us, this is an event, because the closest of these is a one-hour drive.  But we make a day of it - going to lunch, etc.

Crafty Superstar Spotlight

This week I have the honor of being a Crafty Superstar at the Cut Out + Keep website.  Each day one of my projects will be featured.  There are already five projects posted, which include a triple pocket mini album, an origami mini album, an altered journal, a collage book, and a heart shaped corner book mark.  These are complete little tutorials.  There are still two projects to be unveiled this weekend, which include a magazine wrapper coaster (upcycled projects are a passion of mine) and a shirt mini album or card.  I was thinking Father's Day when I added that project, but it is getting published a week late for that.  That is okay though - it is always a good project for a male birthday, etc.

Making Mini Scrapbooks Newsletter

In the past it has been very laborious to put out a newsletter because of the software/web hosting I was using.  It is a great web hosting company because it is great for people like me who do not know how to build a website by themselves.  But it used to be very clunky.  They made some upgrades a year or so ago with a simple drag and drop way of doing things, which has helped me create pages faster and better!  But they hadn't upgraded the newsletter publishing feature until recently.  Well, in fact, it is still in Beta, but I went ahead and gave it a try yesterday and found it works pretty well.  So I published a quick little newsletter that you can read by subscribing here.  The GREAT news is that with this easier, more efficient, much less clunky way of doing things, I will be able to improve the newsletter and start sending out more frequent editions.  I am thrilled!

Duct Tape Binding Tutorial

I have been wanting to create a tutorial for this duct tape binding mini scrapbook album for quite a while.  I finally finished it this morning.  What is nice about this binding is that it allows you to have a lot of bulky pages.

Calendar Journaling

For the month of May I wanted to try the calendar journaling that I had seen online.  It was easy enough to just jot something down each day of the month.  It's kind of cool, but at the end of the month I missed three days and today I couldn't remember a single thing from last Thursday.  Ha ha