Let Them Eat Cake...

Along our journey in the Hills we met our photographer, Angela Pierson.  She was super nice & we can't wait to work with her.  I have a feeling we will have wonderful traditional shots as well as several fun photos.  Angela is open to just about anything & seems very laid back.  I'm sure we will all work well together.

After the ceremony & photos we will be having dinner at an Italian restaurant.  The facility is new & the staff was more than helpful, willing to take time to talk to us & ask several questions.  This restaurant was not our first choice, however, upon seeing both dinner locations, the decision was easy.  Here's a peek at our dinner location:

We can have this private room for the night for a fee, or risk overflow from the restaurant if they are busy that night.  They also have a patio area behind the restaurant they are willing to reserve for us if the weather is nice.  The owner is allowing us to bring in a dessert so we found a small cake shop in town.  A 10" cake was ordered.  It is red velvet with cream cheese frosting & chocolate piping.  Hopefully when it is done it will look something like this (white one) with roses on top:

Away We Go...

We just returned from a four day trip to the Black Hills.  This trip was to finalize plans, meet all the important people & have some fun with the boys.  The South Dakota weather was very non-cooperative so we decide to take our time driving South.  A drive down the Enchanted Highway entertained the boys for the first few hours...

After listening to the boys yell "I wanna go home" for a couple hours, we arrived in SD.  Our first stop was the gazebo we chose as our wedding location.  Everything was booked, sight unseen, & finding photos of this place is next to impossible...  Here's what it looks like-

Back in the Saddle Again...

Alright. We have avoided all this wedding stuff way too much.  It's been about 2 months now, or is it 3 months since we worked on wedding plans...  Now that the pressure is officially on, let's get stuff done!

While we were slacking we were having fun...  Yet another out of town trip, this time to see all of these guys:

While we were there I decided to gracefully wipe out on the stairs & injure my foot, ankle, & knee.  Nothing was broken but it did slow me down long enough to wreck Memorial Day weekend. :(

So... Now that we are back on track for wedding related stuff we are going to take a trip to the Black Hills.  We still have to see exactly where we are getting married (remember this post), meet the photographer (Angela Pierson), and meet with a hair guru.

While we are on our mini camping trip the boys will get to check out Reptile Gardens & Storybook Island.  I'm sure there will be lots about it posted later...  

Latest Creations...

Well before we started working on garage sale stuff (which is going rather well, almost all big furniture is gone) I was working on dressers for the master bedroom.  The boys have my dressers & Jamie doesn't have any.  I have way too many clothes, so a dresser is a must. 

Jamie found this Kent Coffey dresser on clean up week.  It was going to be sent to the local land fill.  I wish I had taken pictures of it before I painted because the dresser was awful looking.  There was peeling reddish brown paint that had to be sanded/scraped off.  After priming & painting it looks like this (still needs knobs):

Then a good friend gave us another small dress so I did the same thing... Sand-Prime-Paint for this end result:

Not bad for two free dressers... While I was busy painting the boys were working on their own creations.  For Mother's Day each boy decorated a cake for me at a local grocery store.  They were so proud!  The boy's figured it must be my birthday cake so they sang "Happy Birthday" many, many, many times that day.  It was very cute!

Garage Days

Have been spending every free moment preparing for a garage sale.  The house is a complete mess with boxes unpacked everywhere so we can organize & tag all the sale items.  Wish us luck!

A Guy & A Truck

Jamie's been crazy busy the last few days.  He traveled East to move the remainder of his personal items, furniture, & car out of storage.  The lucky man got to make the cross country trip alone in a 16ft truck.  I think he's pretty happy to be home after living in this for the last 3 days..

The truck got unloaded into the garage.  We have been working on the mess all morning.  After removing all the kitchen & linen items it now looks like this:

That's a major improvement from last night.  Several of the items will be sold on a local classified site, the rest will find their home inside the house.  :)

Bridesmaid Dress!

After many hours of searching every store we could think of, Mae & I finally decided on a dress. We took a chance on Ebay.  I had a friend bid for me as I was too busy having a girls night out with friends (thanks Ashley for hanging at home that evening).  She got us a great deal too!  This is the Dessy 2015, which sells regular price for $130-180.  Ashley got the winning bid plus shipping for a whopping $35!  Awesome!