Surprise 35th!

Well, we pulled it off!  It was a huge sucess and they had no idea!  We started the night off by taking my parents to dinner while her friend set up the party and greeted guests.  Our dinner came and went quicker than I had planned.  So, after much stalling at the table with silly chit chat, I decided I needed to make a, "pit stop" at CVS for some misc. items.  I was a texting fool to her friend at this point.  The best part, the crazy register lady at CVS bought me some time with telling me how much she loved Mary Poppins and singing tunes from the movie.  No joke, I was scared.

When we arrived to their home, the street was lined with cars.  My mom said, "Someone must be having a party."  My dad, the typical old fart he is, said, "Must be those young kids down the street."  Clint and I couldn't even make eye contact at that point.  My mom opened the front door and I let my dad in next.  Then all you heard was....SURPRISE!!!!

Both their faces lit up like Christmas trees.  About 30 of their closet friends and family were there to greet them.  My mom and dad were just so overjoyed by the thoughtfulness.

Cutting the cake

No one's family is as coo coo as mine...I am sorry, but we hold that title.  Here's us in our prom picture pose (Yep thats us in the tan)

And my decorations were a hit!

I am so happy all our hard work paid off.  To be totally honest, I had no idea if we were even going to have a party by Easter.  My dad works at a high end hotel and usually has to work large weddings on Saturday nights.  Lately, there has not been much business there.  So I figured we were safe.  Also, I had asked my mom to have my dad take April 10th off about 2 months ago, so we could take them to dinner.  At Easter, my mom told me that my dad had to work and we couldn't go out to dinner.  There was no way for him to take it off.  You can only imagine how nuts I was going after she laid that egg on me!  The party was a week away and she is telling me this?  Luckily, I had invited some of my dad's coworkers and had a telephone number to one.  My dad's co worker told me she already had it all planned out and was only having my dad work the morning shift that day.  PHEW!  I called my mom the next day and asked her if my dad got his schedule.  She claimed yes and said he has to work.  The next day, I was told the same thing!  Finally I had to do some sneaky lying to tell her my dad did not have to work.  Don't ask me how I did it, but I did!  Three days before the party...it was back on! 

After all the stress, I decided this was not a good idea and the last one I would be throwing.  But after seeing their faces, it was all worth it. 

Where have I been?

Work and home.  Why haven't I been posting?  Because I have been planning a surprise party for my parents' 35th Wedding Anniversary, which will be Saturday.  The party has been planned for months, but the last couple weeks has been crunch time!

Can I tell you how difficult it is to plan a surprise party?  I vow to never do this again!  My parents have almost ruined the surprise about 3 times.  Luckily I was, pulling my hair out, sneaky and got all the bugs worked out.

Also, it is very difficult to find 35th Wedding Anniversary decorations.  Therefore, I had to get a little crafty.  I thought I would show off what I did.  The traditional gift for the 35th is coral.  We decided to do a coral/beach theme.  Nothing over board.  Just suttle hints.

Don't be jealous, but I happen to be browsing around in the home section of Target and came across this tray on clearance for $3!  Perfect for placing finger foods on!

Next, displaying pictures.  I didn't want to do a collage or frames.  While looking around at Michael's, I thought filling a jar with sand and a sea shell, with the pictures, would work. 

Very inexpensive!

Since my mom's friend is going to be setting up the party while my brother and I distract my parents' out of their home, I thought I would make things easier on her and just get paper and plastic products.

I remembered I had this very cute container that could hold the plasticware and napkins!

Since I could not find anything that said, "35th" on it, Clint came up with a great idea of spray painting wooden numbers, drilling a hole at the bottom, and gluing them on sticks!

For finishing touches, I am going on a hunt tomorrow for coral color flowers.

The cheap break down:

Food/Beverages.................$250

Paper/Plastic Products......$10

Wood Numbers..................$1.40

Sticks..................................$0.40

Jars.....................................$6.00

Sand...................................$3.00

Shells..................................$3.00

Tray...................................$3.00

Spray Paint........................$6.00

Flowers................................$15.00

Total:   $297.00!!

Ways we saved:

-Having the party at my parents home

-Making the invites myself

-Making our own decorations

-Making some of the finger foods

I'll post pictures next week of the set up and party!

Days Like This...

Reminds me of this...

How is everyone else dealing with the snow?

One Year Ago Tomorrow...

I married the man of my dreams.

How are we going to celebrate?  Well, we were going to go on a small vacation to Florida, but that got canceled when we discovered that we needed a new washer and dryer.

Don't worry.  We thought of some other fun things to do instead.  Tonight, Friday, December 18th, we are going to see Cedric the Entertainer at the Detroit Opera House in downtown Detroit.  My parents, brother, and his girlfriend are going to join us. 

Source

We are very excited to have dinner and a good laugh tonight.

Tomorrow night, December 19th (our actual anniversary), we are going to Holiday Nights at Greenfield Village.  It is a very fun event that is all outdoors.  It includes bonfires, hay rides, outdoor ice skating, and the great history at Greenfield Village.  Of course, Clint's favorite part is the warm cinnamon rolls.  

If you ask me, I wouldn't want to spend these two days any other way!

I have a small project I am working on to remember our honeymoon, which we took to Chicago.  It was the best part of the whole wedding process.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Chi-Ching!

Since meeting my lovely hubby, I have inherited his debts. Of course, I had debt as well, but not like Clint's. Being newlyweds, it has really pulled us together and made us work as a team. Sometimes, it was not the easiest task, but we are starting to see the results!

Poor guy...not his fault that he didn't understand how it all worked! Those shiny cards are addicting! But he has learned now. His debt has really put us in a tight spot at times. I think I counted about 7 cards...yes, 7! In 2 years, I have successfully gotten his debt down to 2 cards! Not an easy task. Lets just say, things we really wanted to do, had to wait...lots of boring nights at home. Most of the time, he would get offers from other credit card companies to transfer a balance at a 0% interest rate for a year. I was constantly doing this with him. Boy did that help! I felt better knowing all our hard earned money was not going towards interest rates.

After all that hard work, I decided to look into our home mortgage and see if I could get a better rate....and I did! From 7% down to 5.5%! That saved us over $150 on our mortgage per month! Chi-Ching!

Next, was our cell phone plans. We do not have a home phone, but both have cell phones. He has a lot of horrible luck with phones. They are always breaking before he can get a discount on a new one and the warranty is usually expired. So, I decided to buy him out of his plan and switch him over to my plan. I know, I know...why would I buy him out of his plan and pay around $200! Well, I did the math. A new phone would cost around that for him to buy, with no discount. That $200 smack-a-roos is going to save us $80 per month and here's how! I changed my plan to a family plan, with shared minutes, and was able to get him a new phone for nothing! Chi-Ching, Chi-Ching!

It's nice to be able to breathe every now and then. We aren't out of the water just yet, but these little things have really started to pay off.

Any other helpful tips that you can give, would be, in Clint's words, swwwwwwweeeeeeeeeettt!

Bachlorette Party Planning

Being the Matron of Honor for my best friends wedding, one of my jobs includes planning the bachelorette party. In some cases, this can be a sticky situation for bridesmaids. Not everyone will agree with your decision in the wedding party or has different beliefs. This was the case in this situation. Therefore, only two of the bridesmaids (myself and my girlfriend) are paying for and planning the party. So that called for a budget plan. Now, the bride means the world to me, so I wanted to make sure this party was in honor of her, the way she wanted it. We asked all the necessary questions:

1. What do you not want to do?
2. Where would you like to have it?
3. What dates work for you?
4. Who's invited?

We decided to have it at her mom's home because she had the most room to accommodate around 10-15 people. Next was sending out invitations. Since I love using photoshop, I decided to create a cute invite and print them on heavy card stock, 4x5 size. I wanted it to be personal and something people would get a kick out of.


For
decorations, I was a little sick of what stores like Lover's Lane had. Not everything has to scream
"Male Anatomy". So I found a cute idea from Martha Stewart. Paper flowers using paper lunch bags! I am just using the basic brown bags to save a little costs and adding glitter to dress them up.
Here are the instructions from marthastewart.com.

Now for the yummy part. Since there is only going to be near 10 people and the party will be after dinner time for most, we did not want to overwhelm people with food. Plus, I did not want to be in the kitchen all day and night getting things ready. We decided to grab a yummy assorted sandwich tray from Costco. The rest of the menu will be a dip with chips and fruit kabobs! I found this great idea from the thenest.com .

For the cake, I decided to do something different. I am not a huge fan of cake and find that others usually turn it down at parties like this. So why waste the money? This is where I thought about throwing in the "male anatomy". It will be a rice krispy treat cake using a naughty mold I picked up from Lover's Lane. Who doesn't love rice krispy treats???

As far as alcohol is concerned, there will be a few women preggos there. So, we did not want to make this a drinking party. One way to have fun, but not make it the main focus is a vodka watermelon or spiked punch. Both do not require a huge amount of alcohol, but still give you the liquior. Of course, cute labels will identify them so people know whats what.

Here is the budget broken down:
-Venue $0
- Decorations (paper bags, paper plates, cups, napkins, plastic ware, balloons) $30 (most supplies I already had at home)
- Food (sandwich tray, fruit, rice krispy ingredients) $50 (dip is being made by my mother)
- Cake Mold $10
- Card stock for invites $5
- Male Entertainment $140

Total = $235
Cost per person = $117.50

Not bad for two girls trying to throw a super fun party for a great person!

Pictures courtesy of thenest.com & marthastewart.com

Top This!

As I had mentioned before, my best friend is getting married on August 28th. As a wedding gift to her and her soon to be husband, I have decided to make her a guest book, featuring photos of the lovely couple through out their relationship for all to sign, and the cake topper for their cake.

What a dying art, cake toppers. It is not something you see too often anymore. What is seen more now a days is flowers all over the cake. (courtesy of theknot.com) Don't get me wrong. This look is, of course, beautiful and elegant, but doesn't say what I want it to for them. Personal touches are what makes the memories for me.

For our wedding we had used my grandparents cake topper that was 62 years old. It was so special and when I look at the pictures of it, I get teary eyed. I wanted my best friend to have this feeling when she passed down hers. So I gave her some options. What we came up with was a letter on top. She is very proud of her soon to be last name. Here is what I found on etsy.com from etsy.com user Justtoppers for her to use only it will be the letter G.

There were several other ideas I ran past her like this from esty.com user baumbirdy

or this from etsy user mosey.


My favorite was this one from etsy.com user amadalebel.



But in the end, I feel she made the right choice for her cake. Now, when she has a son, this can be passed down and be a rememberance of how long and committed the couple has been to each other.

Wedding Crazy!

Lord, have I been busy this summer!! What's taking up all my time? Well, it's my best friend's wedding. She is due to get married on August 28 of this year and I am the maid of honor. Both the bride and groom are very dear to my heart. I had introduced them to each other years ago. A couple years ago, the groom introduced me to Clint (my husband)! Now, we are one big happy "friend" family!

For my wedding, I hardly had time to be as creative as I would of liked. I almost feel that I neglicated my own wedding due to unexpected events. So her wedding is making up for mine and I am loving it! I feel like me again!

One project I have been working on is her table numbers. The happy couple are going to have pictures of themselves holding the numbers for each table. Here are a few previews:





I just photoshoped the numbers in instead of creating boards for each number. Now, I know this is not an original idea, but these two are the perfect couple to pull it off with their personalities. We had a blast creating these images and also added personality to the tables for the reception.







I couldn't have photographed a cuter pair and I know the guests will enjoy it!

Our Wedding

Our big day was on December 19, 2008. You know how you pick a date for something and you think to yourself, naw, it will be a perfect day. Nothing will go wrong. Well, my worst fear for that day did happen. A HUGE snow storm put quite a damper on our day. Guests arrived late, most importantly the judge. They were all tired and not in the party mood, for the most part. Although many of our guests told us they had a fabulous time. It was just such a draining day for everyone.

One thing I have to recommend is for brides to see their soon-to-be hubbys before the ceremony. We did this and I was very happy we did. It gave us a moment of privacy and calmed any nerves.

Our ceremony was great! It was actually our favorite part of the whole day, even though it was only about 10 minutes long.

Our photographer captured a cute moment where Clint gave me his wrong hand to put his band on and we realized it after the fact and ran with it. I think my mom caught it too by her reaction.

After dinner, everything just flew by. I do have to say though, we had a fabulous wedding party! They were absolutely perfect!

The dresses that the girls wore had to be one of my favorite details of that day. I was searching everywhere to find what I was looking for at a decent price. I did a google search and found these fab dresses at Ann Taylor for $80!! I let the girls pick out the ones that looked best on them and found a cute dress for my Jr. Bridesmaid at Davids Bridal. As a gift for the girls, I bought them shaws from Target and gave them $40 towards their dresses. They looked so pretty!

Nine months before the wedding, I had my first grandparent pass away. My grandfather died on March 28, 2008 from Lewy Body Deminita.  As a memory to him, I wore his WWII metal on my bouquet.
We also used my other grandparents cake topper, which was 62 years old.  My grandmother had passed away 2 months before our wedding of heart problems.  It was very sad to not have two important people there that day.

Our first dance was to, By Your Side, by Sade. It was the perfect song for the both of us.

 

My advise to couples planning the big day: Do what is important to you. Everyone always says it is suppose to be the happiest day of your life. I think the happiest day of our lives was not our wedding day. Don't get me wrong, we were very happy, but I think we did not do exactly what we wanted. We would of much rather did a wedding in the sand, but Christmas is our favorite time of year and we wanted all our family at it. I wouldn't take the day away, but I know now what I would of did differently. The happiest day of our lives was waking up the next day and finally being married. But that is what matters most.