Just a somebody

I know in my last post I said I’d be sharing how we built out photobooth, and some of the other pieces for our wedding. I promise those are still in the works and will be finished soon. Until then, we received all of our wedding photos! I am so amazed by how beautiful they are. Our photographer, Anna Morrison, did such an amazing job capturing us and our loved ones!

There are so many beautiful…

Wedding Weekend – Tips and Advice – Part 2

View of the front of the lodge, taken on our final visit before the wedding.

Okay, so hopefully you’ve found your dream venue, and if your venue is anything like ours, you’re starting with a blank slate. A lot of work is ahead!

Our venue was just under 100 miles from where we live so we were limited on visits to measure, and plan out decor.

Make sure to take photos of anything and…

DIY Wedding Save the Dates

Shortly after we got engaged, Mitchell and I sat down and looked around on pinterest, and found some save the date styles we liked. Origionally we had planned to DIY our save the dates AND invites, but we had a family friend offer to hand paint our invites for us, so in the end we only had to DIY our Save the dates.

Close up of the finished product

Just for fun, we hired Points of Measuret…

Wedding Weekend – Tips and advice – part 1

So as some of you may know, after 10.5 years of being together, my S/O and I finally decided to get married! We had a moderately long engagement (a year and a half) which gave me plenty, or perhaps too much time to plan everything out.

I was never one of those girls that dreamed about her wedding day, so I went into this completely unsure what I wanted to do with everything. My (then) Fiancé…

Cancer Free Party Decor

5 years ago my mother found out she had cancer. They were confident they had caught it early enough, and after one (rather grueling) surgery, and several weeks of radiation she found herself in remission. 

My mom and I a few years back on the Oregon coast,

This year, we were so ecstatic that she was finally able to say she was CANCER FREE that we threw her a fun little celebration. My…

Matron of Honor Proposal

Last December, on our 9th anniversary, my fiance’ proposed. I had every intention on waiting a couple months to ask our wedding party, but while we were on our Christmas vacation in Chicago, I found the perfect gift to ask my best friend to be my MOH.

We were walking around, looking for the Hershy’s store, however, to our surprise, it was closed! In it’s spot stood a Sugarfina, which, is a very…

Weddings, Vacations and more!

You’ll have to forgive my absence! Life got a little crazy there for a hot minute, but things seem to have settled down some so I should be able to blog somewhat more regularly.

Just a quick update, Mitchell and I are getting married, we spent Christmas in Illinois. We’ve moved into the cutest little house, and we’re deep into wedding planning. We went to Colorado for a few days and celebrated L…

DIY – Zojirushi Mug Customization

I’m back! Not only that, but I have a new DIY project to share with you!!

Mitchell’s mom’s birthday was this month, and one of the things she asked for was a pretty Zojirushi mug. So we with the help of his sister (she pitched in and paid half for the gift) we picked out the mug we thought their mom would enjoy the most.

We went with the Champagne Gold. I picked it up from a local store, Uwajima…

Pot-Pie, Revisited! (Seafood Pot Pie)

You read that right! It’s fall, so it’s time for my yearly check-up on our favorite recipe, the Chicken Pot-Pie!

I have been making, working on, and perfecting this recipe for 7 years now, and it’s just better and better every time.  Yesterday, Mitchell and I decided to make one to welcome fall.

We are now pescetarian, which means the only “meat” we eat is seafood. We mostly follow a vegetarian…

Overall, between deciding what to do, buying the supplies and actually creating the gift, it took me about a week. Most of that was trying to figure out just exactly what would be the perfect gift.

If you know me offline, you probably know that I love crafting. Anything that I can make on my own, I will. I think it’s something I inherited from my mom (and possibly my dad, what little I know/remember of him, he was always doing everything himself.)

I got it in my head, that I had to make them something they could wear, so I thought and though, different ideas. A few that popped into my head:

Shoes, to wear at the reception, something comfy that says “MR & MRS ____” Hoodies, we live in the PNW after all. One that said “Husband” and one that said “Wife” T-Shirts that say “HONEYMOON 2017” on the back and MR ____ on the front or MRS ____ on hers. T-Shirts that say “WIFE” and “HUSBAND” Sweats that say their wedding hashtag and a bunch of others. I thought of making them their very own glasses to drink out of at the wedding, customizing something off their registry…

But I daringly went “rogue” and created something not on their list, and that was customized to their wedding day specifically.

I went out on a hunt for all the supplies, and something unique to wrap the gift in. While out and about, I came up with the idea to use my die-cut and make her a wedding dress card. I don’t know, maybe it was cheesy but I liked the way it turned out.

I tried to make sure everything matched the wedding colors, and headed home to start the project.

If you’d like to create this DIY gift, you’ll need the following:

For the Card: White Cardstock Glitter cardstock Decorative paper of your choice for bottom of dress Color of cardstock of your choice for bow I bought all of my paper from Michaels.

If you’re free-drawing your dress, you’ll want to do so in pencil. If you’re like me and have a die-cut for everything… then go ahead and use your die-cut for the dress. I cut the dress 3 times, and then cut off the top of the glittery paper, and glued it to the white cardstock, and then cut the bottom off of the fancy paper and glued just a little bit of it, to the bottom, white cardstock.

Then, I cut the bow out, and glued it over the seam where the two meet.

The card is that simple!

Now the gift, I

made them custom t-shirts. One that says Mr. and one that says Mrs. Then,on the back they both say the date of their wedding…In this case it’s 09.09.17.

What you’ll need: I used my die cut letters and numbers for this project. I went and purchased Glittery iron on vinyl and non glittery iron on vinyl.

I simply cut out the letters with my die-cut, and placed them on the t-shirts where I thought they fit best, and laid a towel on top of them, and ironed away. It took probably about 45minutes per shirt to get them to stick properly. Overall I think they came out pretty adorable! I think the future bride and groom enjoyed them too!

As for wrapping, I just found a super cute storage box, some pink ombre’ tissue paper, rose-gold ribbon (one of their wedding colors) and ombre’ ribbon for the bow. I taped the card to the box, and voila!

Favorite Recipes: Sweet Potato Pita Pockets

The last several times Lauren and I have video chatted, she’s very kindly asked that I return to my blog, and each time I tell her “I will!” It’s not that I’ve intentionally not posted, just, life is busy! Today, I bring you one of mine and Mitchell’s favorite recipes. Sweet Potato Pita Pockets!

What you’ll need (to feed 2 people): 1 (or 2 depending on size) Sweet potatoes Pita Pockets 1 (or if…

That meant that I had a 5 day weekend (opposed to my usual 3!) The first day of my break, was spent helping a good friend, who, conveniently enough, shares the same name as me, though she spells it differently.

She and I have been working really hard helping piece together the plans for her wedding this spring. About a week ago, we went out and casually scoped out Hobby Lobby, and a few other stores just to see if there was anything we could get for their wedding. We ended up finding more than we had expected! We found these adorable little bottles for her wedding favors!

While at Hobby Lobby, we also found moss, (two different kinds) and these adorable figurines. This shopping trip inspired her to make little mini “terrariums” as favors for her wedding guests. She got the idea from a couple of places. She had ordered her fiancé a super cute Chewbacca terrarium a while back (Sorta like this one, but a little different..) and from this pin she found on pinterest. (Follow my blog on pinterest, if you haven’t already!)

Here is a photo of the finished product:

Enough with the back story, lets get crafting! to make these terrarium’s you’ll need:

Bottles of some sort, we bought these ones from hobby lobby. (still on sale!) Moss, we bought this one, and this one. Sand Figurines Twine Tags Tweezers Glue (optional)

Above are photos of our supplies (most of them.)

Step 1: Remove price tags from bottles (if applicable) – To do this, soak them in warm soapy water. To dry, we used a couple hair dryers, but you could also let them air dry.

Step 2: Once all the bottles are dry, put them out on your work surface. Then fill one by one with about 1 tablespoon of sand. The container of sand we purchased filled 35 of our bottles.

Step 3: Cut your Spanish moss into small pieces, and place them inside each bottle. If you’re using the Spanish moss, remember to cut it first, we learned that the hard way.

Step 4: Tear off a small piece of the other moss, and place inside the bottle on top of the Spanish moss. I made sure you could see the Spanish moss underneath the green moss.

Step 5: Figurines. We sorted ours first, and planned out how we were going to place them in each bottle. My friend grabbed some tweezers to easily place them in the bottles. We ended up sticking some glue on the bottom of a couple to keep them in place.

Step 6: Put lids on each bottle, and use some twine to attach a tag.

All the lids, with our scissors and twine.

The finished product, with tags attached. Wedding date blurred because all the invites haven’t been handed out yet :)

Bonus Step Tags: I made the tags for this gift using my trusty cricut. These were custom made, but there are plenty of options out there on the cricut website, and even pinterest. I suggest making something that fits the vibe for the wedding/event, but also goes with the bottles well.

Here are some more photos of the finished product!

Photos of our crafts for the 2016 -2017 school year!

I was going to be super productive, and include tutorials and tips and tricks for the crafts we’ve done at school this year, but, I figured I’d save your inboxes, from being spammed with too many posts. So you’re just going to get a little description with each photo.

The month of November, we taught the kids about thankfulness. We had them make little feather hats, like those the native…

Vegan foods and a .com?!

While we were in Colorado visiting Lauren we ate a little healthier than we normally do. Actually, during our entire stay, we only had a couple meals that weren’t vegetarian. Since we’ve been back 90% of our meals that I’ve made here at home have been vegetarian. For no reason other than it’s easy, cheaper, and healthy. We aren’t big meat eaters, so it really isn’t that big of a change.

Tonight,…

Meiko wearing my antlers

Colorado! I thought I’d post a “how our Christmas went” type of blog, since Lauren took the time to do so too!

  We started Christmas Eve with Mitchell’s family. Breakfast, and stockings, and a little bit of time just hanging out. It was low-key and drama free. 4 pups, 9 people and Christmas Cheer.

After we had finished celebrations with them, we decided it was time to finish up packing, and spend some more time with Kitten before we left her for the week. (This was the longest we’ve ever left her, I was feeling really guilty.)

We had an uber come pick us up, and we nervously, and excitedly packed all our luggage in the back of her explorer, and headed on our way to the airport. I don’t fly very often, and actually, the last time I was on a plane was 2009 when my stepdad passed away. I was a little nervous and unsure how quickly we’d be able to get through security, and even more worried about how my anxiety would be on the plane. I don’t have a normal and rational fear of the plane crashing (and honestly I personally would never be afraid of that…) My anxiety about flying is ridiculous and silly, but it’s very real.

Mitchell and I decided to get to the airport early.

Never. Again.

It’s been ages since I’ve flown, and even longer since I’ve flown on my own (those of you that followed me from LiveJournal will remember the last time I flew alone was 2007 to Texas.)

Last time I flew things were a little different, and being three and a half hours early for your flight was no big deal.

So Mitchell and I thought nothing of getting to the airport a little early, put our anxieties at ease, and have a little time to relax before hopping on a plane full of complete strangers.

Imagine our surprise when we got there and our airline had a sign saying no one was going to be at the counter until 2 hours before flight. We had 2 checked bags, which meant we couldn’t go through security or anything until they were at the counter. So we had a long 1.5 hour wait… we sat, and talked, my anxiety rose, people stared at us.

Mitchell and I post security, showing off our attire.

oh, pause! I forgot to tell you! We went to the airport in our Christmas PJ’s (Mitchell’s Christmas Pikachu PJ’s and my Bumble PJ’s) wearing our Pikachu hoodies and a santa hat, and I had antlers and Mitchell had Pikachu ears on top of our santa hats! We both had these fabulous christmas light necklaces that I found on amazon.

Once employees showed up at the counter, we lined up (took a good 30 minutes to get through the counter) and we headed off to security! Everything went smoothly, and the photo above was us celebrating finally making it through security! We wondered down to our gate, found it, and then decided it was time to find a place to get some food and a drink or two.

We stumbled across this place called Africa Lounge. We sat in the bar, Mitchell ordered a “large” beer (which to our surprise was HUGE) and I got their alcoholic coffee. It was super delicious, we sat, ate some food and gushed about how excited we were to be on our very first vacation!

After our meal at the Africa Lounge, we continued on to the nearby bookstore, picked up a bottle of water (mitchell has to take some congestion meds when he flies, and we both felt we needed to hydrate.)  We picked up a few fun souvenirs for Lauren and Elisabeth, and headed to the gate. We got t

Successfully boarded on the plane!

here just in time for boarding, and loaded on the plane. We got settled, my anxiety went down a little, and we sat back and relaxed.

  While on our 2.5 hour flight to Denver, we goofed off, closed our eyes, and made friends with the girl sitting next to us (bless her heart, I may have accidentally caught her in the background of some of our selfies.

Mitchell played some games on his phone, I listened to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on Audible and we both took turns watching out the window.

We didn’t fall asleep at all, but we did close our eyes, our flight left at 7, and landed at 10:30. We had been up since 8am, and with a mixture of holiday stress, and traveling stress, we were exhausted!

About 15 minutes before landing we turned off our music and chatted about how  excited

Sleepy, but incredibly happy to be on vacation!

we were to get to Colorado and see our friends. We also looked out the window and guessed what we could see.

  We came to the conclusion that we could see Colorado Springs, which is where Lauren’s parents live, and what we assume was a bunch of other nearby towns.

The plane has landed! 

Our flight was pretty uneventful, we had some turbulence, that the flight attendants were spooked by, but honestly it wasn’t bad at all. It did cause one of the bathroom doors to fly open, but I bet it wasn’t closed all the way.

  Once the plane had landed they told us we could turn off airplane mode, and we texted Lauren to let her know we had landed.

We got off the plane, and Mitchell went to the bathroom while I explored a nearby gift shop.

I looked for snacks but decided to just wait until we left the airport.

While walking to baggage claim, we found this guy, so we both decided to pose with him, I don’t have a copy of the photo of me, because it is on Mitchell’s phone, and I’m too lazy to ask for it. :D

We wondered our way down the escalator, to the train, and then to baggage claim.

Once at baggage claim, we heard several people pointing and saying “They were on our flight!”

All day people were snapping photos of us, pointing, and cheering us on. The flight attendants, and everyone we came in contact with loved our outfits and Christmas spirit. How else would one travel on Christmas eve?? :P

Our bags were the first off the plane (WIN!) and we headed out to get in the car with Lauren and Sidney!

Lauren’s photo of her stocking goodies

Once we got to their house, we had a snack and went to bed, we were exhausted! We woke up the next day to a delicious breakfast cooked by both Sidney and Lauren, and enjoyed their company.

  We all had agreed that we’d spend the day at home just relaxing. So we did, and it was wonderful. We opened stockings, ate yummy food and played games together.

later in the evening, Lauren’s parents came, we had dinner, opened some wonderful and

Christmas Dinner, sorry, I had eaten most of it already

thoughtful gifts, and enjoyed the company. It truly was one of the best Christmases we’ve had, ever. Good food, good company, lots of happiness, and love. I am so grateful for Lauren and Gene inviting us into their home on such a major holiday! We are so lucky to have such loving and caring people in our lives!

  Ken and Kathy (Lauren’s parents, two people I have always adored) brought some gifts for everyone, and some delicious Christmas dinner!

A thoughtful ornament made by Lauren’s Family

After Christmas dinner we hung out a bit more and went to bed. We didn’t have any solid plans for the week, but I think the plan for Monday was to go into Denver and look at the Capitol building, get brunch and explore a little.

  We woke up Monday morning, and Lauren told us that the Capitol building was closed, but we could still go into the city if we wanted, we ended up deciding to not do so, but we did go to the COOLEST museum Mitchell and I have been to.

Lauren took us into Denver to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Boy was it busy there! So many people had the same great idea we had, but that didn’t stop us! We spent a whole 5 hours at the museum and still didn’t see everything. I’ve included some of the photos we took there, below.

We came home that night, and relaxed, played more games, and enjoyed good food.

Tuesday, we went into Denver, saw Lauren’s work, and went to the 16th Street Mall and

went into the cutest little store called I (heart) Denver and bought souvenirs for Mitchell’s mom and our friends Katy and Adam.

  Then, we went to REI to rent snowshoes, for our snowventure the next day! The REI we went to was MASSIVE. As a Seattleite, I honestly have never seen an REI as huge as this one. It was amazing!

We came home after a very long day out (another 5 hours) without lunch, starving, and exhausted. We ate dinner (Noodle soup made by Lauren.) 

After dinner, we sat down and worked on our D&D characters with Elisabeth and Lauren.

Lauren, Gene, Sidney and Elisabeth have been playing D&D for quite some time, and Lauren has been inviting me to play for just about as long as she’s been playing.

Mitchell and I discussed it and decided we wanted to give it a try while we were in Denver, so that night we sat down, created our characters, and played the first half of our very first D&D adventure!

We were off to a rough start, both rolling 1s, but I ended up having much better luck the rest of the game and kicked major butt.

We played for about an hour that night, and had a blast, but by the end of the evening, we were exhausted. I went to bed after we finished D&D for the evening, Mitchell stayed up and played video games with Sidney.

The next day, Wednesday, We woke up early, layered up, and took the snowshoes up to the Rocky Mountains.

It was just Mitchell, Lauren and I, but we were all super excited to snowshoe together!

We packed up, got in the car and headed toward the mountains. Lauren took us to Estes Park. It was a little bit of a drive, but it wasn’t too bad. I enjoyed looking around, we drove through Boulder, and even drove past the hotel that inspired The Shining.

As we climbed higher we saw our first snow flurries (first for the entire visit, Denver didn’t get any snow, it was colder here in Seattle!)

We pulled into the park, only to have a ranger tell us it wasn’t safe for her car. He directed us to another area (Devil’s Gulch) to snowshoe. So we turned around and headed there. Sadly there wasn’t enough snow to snowshoe, but we did hike! We saw some amazing sights, and several elk! It was all around a great time!

We came home that evening, and went out to dinner at a vegan restaurant called Native Foods. (There’s one in Oregon, and I plan on visiting it!)  The food there was DELICIOUS, and I wish we had one locally!

After dinner,

The last photo I took at Lauren’s house

we came back, finished out or D&D, I made butterbeer and then we headed to bed.

Thursday, we woke up, hung out, and Lauren and I went to return the snowshoes that we sadly didn’t get to use, and we came home, relaxed, since it was our last day there, and played games. I went to bed around 9pm. We had to be up and out of the house by 3:30 am.

We packed everything up that night, and said our goodbyes to Elisabeth, (Sidney was already in bed) and set our alarms for our early wake-up.

We sadly woke up, loaded up the car and headed to the airport before anyone else was awake for the day.

G

ene came with Lauren to drop us off. We said our goodbyes and headed in. The atmosphere in the airport this time wasn’t quite as chipper, and the lines were longer. We waited 45 mintues to check our bags, and then 30 minutes through security. Then we had to ride the train to our flight. We got some breakfast at Dunkin Doughnuts, and then we got to the gate with just 5 minutes to spare before they boarded us.

Our flight home was uneventful, I slept most of it, and woke up just in time to see this beautiful view!

Overall, it was a wonderful way to spend our Christmas. Mitchell and I had a great time, and definitely plan on visiting again! We both agree that this was the best way to spend our favorite time of the year!

Below, are some photos I didn’t include in the post, mainly Lauren’s cat Pippin.