Whirlwind Few Weeks!

This weekend will be the fifth and final weekend in a row of travel for us this fall.  All of our trips have been awesome, so it's been a fun couple of weeks, but I'm also ready for a little down time, since work is currently kicking my butt. 

That said, being busy has taken my time away from the blog, so I thought I'd take a few minutes and catch everyone up on the last few weeks!  There are a lot of pics, enjoy!

Two weekends after our engagement party, we went down to Islamorada with B's family.  We stayed two nights at Cheeca, where B & I originally wanted to get married.  Ironically, there was another couple getting married there the same weekend we were visiting and after seeing a "real wedding" there, I think we're both glad we're not getting married there.  It's still beautiful and relaxing, but Charlotte is the right place for us.  It will be easier on our family and friends to be there, which means more of them can join us, which means a packed dance floor.  Woohoo!

At dinner at the Green Turtle Inn - YUM

Gorgeous Sunrise

Our attempt at a bike ride :)  We rode to get sticky buns & back, hah

At an outdoor cafe in Miami.  We scoped out all the Jersey Shore hotspots..

The next weekend, we headed to Wrightsville Beach for the wedding of a good family friend.  There were two things that made this an especially amazing wedding:  they had Trolley Stop AT THE WEDDING & both the wedding and the reception were at the Carolina Yacht Club, which is full of special memories for us and the family of the groom.

The gorgeous bride

They had perfect weather...we stuck around after the ceremony to snap a few pics

My parents, looking cute as always

SOOO excited about hotdogs (they even had veggie dogs!)

The wedding pies (the bride hates cake)

Tim's first visit to the beach!

The next weekend, I was in Chapel Hill for a wedding of a good college friend.  Almost everyone was sans dates, so it was fun and much needed girl's weekend:

Teal was apparently the "hot" color for the night

Cute Seating Assignment card - the bride is a teacher

We played "emotions" at the table after dinner.  I believe our emotion to act out here was "you just found out you were rejected from Kappa"  Hilarious since the two of us could not have been less involved our final years at school.

This weekend we head to New Orleans for the last installment of B-turns-30-palooza.  One night with good friends & two nights of Widespread?  Yup. 

Stay tuned for more updates soon!

Tacky Tuesday

Between work and weekend trips, I'm buried..but I thought I'd leave you with a few "inspirational" wedding pics. 

If only I could incorporate rifles into my own wedding...

Maybe I should have my bridesmaids wear a hot hair piece?  And I definitely want them to make the stink face in our pictures.

 And there's this.  I have no words, except to say that I haven't seen a bow that big since I let my mom put bows in my hair back in elementary school.  Wow.

Happy tuesday y'all.

The Ingredients: Fabric!

I seriously heart our wedding planner.  She nailed fabric swatches, just like she did our color palette and style board.

Here is a sneak peak of the swatches (excuse the pictures, my bberry isn't the best):

Our base colors will be a mix of beige and navy pintuck table clothes.  We'll use the bright colors on accent tables and possibly as ties around the base.  And I think the cake/candy table is going to be hot pink, hah.

We are also (hopefully) planning to have lounge furniture near the dance floor and we wanted to bring in a pop of yellow by putting making some pillows to go on the lounges.  We've been struggling to find a bright, preppy, yet budget friendly fabric...until I found this swatch on one of the blogs I read:

The fabric is Paula Prass for Michael Miller Summer Soiree Chevron in Yellow and it was on sale - score!  Fabric.com has a pretty awesome return policy so I ordered 4 yards to qualify for free shipping and crossed my fingers that it looked good.

When I first pulled it out of the package, it looked a little mustardy...but in better light, and next to the samples, I think it looks great (the light in the pics is still pretty bad, but it does have a little more of a pop than I originally thought):

Progress feels good!  Carla, you're my hero ;)

It's Go Time..Save the Date Edition

I think I've mentioned this before, but we're SUPER stoked about our Save the Dates because they involve these:

I can't wait to share the finished product...if we ever get them out!

We're getting closer though.... Today I ordered some awesome baker's twine to "package" the save the dates all together.  I'm SO excited my awesome friend (and bridesmaid) clued me into baker's twine.  I needed something to hold all the components of the save the dates together and literally had like 8 other options at home but I wasn't really happy with any of them.  This is perfect and just what we needed!  We ordered ours here.

 

We also just got in the stamp I ordered from Emilie Friday, which we'll use for our return address on all the envelopes.  I LOVE their stamps and had a really hard time choosing, but here is the style we settled on:

I'm going to begin the assembly process this week (kill me now) - thank god B has offered to help!  Hopefully within the next two weeks we'll have these bad boys out the door!  SO excited!

Recipe: Pumpkin Cream Cheese

I admit it, I'm a pumpkin junkie.  One of the main reasons I love fall is because pumpkin stuff is everywhere.  Just to name a few faves:

• The pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks
• The pumpkin donuts at Dunkin
• Pumpkin candles
• Pumpkin bread (thank you to my friend, E, for bringing me a homemade loaf last night!)
• Pumpkin pie

One of my new favorite things is pumpkin cream cheese.  I discovered a great recipe for this last year on one of the food blogs I follow, Gina's Skinny Recipes.  I've modified her recipe to be slightly less good for you and a little sweeter.  If you want the original, click here.

Here is my modified version (I also double her recipe so both B & I can eat this on bagels for breakfast - I like it on Cinnamon Raisin & Honey Wheat):

• 16 oz Philadelphia cream cheese
• 1 cup pureed pumpkin (canned is fine)
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ginger
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp all spice
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• pinch salt (tiny pinch)
• 1 tsp maple syrup

Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl and beat until smooth. If you don't want to make a ton of this recipe, I would definitely half it - it does make a lot!

I think this would be awesome if you put chopped up walnuts in it as well, I might try that next time.

Enjoy!

Tim's Photoshoot

A while back, well before Charlie was in the picture, I decided to ask our (completely kick ass) wedding photographers to photograph Tim and get some prints framed for B's 30th birthday present.  When I first met with Drea & Casey they had an entire wall of doggie prints in their studio and I was totally inspired.  Since B is even more obsessed with Tim than I am, I knew he would love the prints.

I spent a morning with Drea in the studio.  Tim was not the best subject (teaching him "Sit" and "Stay" before the session would have been really helpful) - but we got some amazing shots!

Here are some of my favorites:

Yesterday, Casey came over and hung the framed prints in our bedroom.

Here is the finished product - SO happy with how these came out  (sorry for the crappy shot - haven't had time to download any pics from the last two weeks):

Guess we'll be going back to the studio with Charlie...and both pups will definitely be making an appearance in our engagement pics.  Thank god Drea & Casey love dogs!

Enjoy!

A Family of Four!

Meet the newest member of our family, Charlie:

We adopted Charlie last week from an awesome rescue organization in Charlotte called Peanut's Place (read "Peanut's Story - heartbreaking & heartwarming).   We didn't intend to get another dog anytime soon, but I was looking for a new harness for Tim and somehow ended up on Petfinder.  When I read Charlie's story I knew we had to do something.

Charlie came to Peanut's Place from Animal Control, with bad burns on his back.  No one is sure where the burns came from but one theory is that someone threw acid on Charlie because he is a "designer dog".  So sick and unfathomable, but apparently it happens; Charlie is the sixth "burn victim" that Peanut's Place has had this year.  Ugh.

This is what Charlie looked like in his Petfinder profile (just to give you an idea):

 

We got Charlie last Wednesday night and he's slowly getting adjusted to our family.  He's even taken over Tim's crate at the office...well at least when Tim takes a break (even though we have two identical crates for them, they seem to like the same one, hah).  I think Tim knows he is injured and has been sweet to Charlie since the start:

 

Charlie's back seems to be healing well and he seems fairly unaffected by whatever happened.  He loves people and wags his little yorkie tail almost all the time, especially when we get out the leash or someone new comes by for a visit.  It's amazing to me that a dog can go through so much and still be so sweet and happy.  We're so excited he's part of our family.

I'll try and post better pics soon - he is SO cute and we're so glad he's a pope :)