Spring Break: Kansas Style

Spring Break: Kansas Style includes bi-polar weather, pulling honeysuckle roots, snuggling with doll babies and paint fumes. And, last but not least, crossing things off of my To Do list!

Here is a picture book of my Spring Break:

Chapter 1: Home and Yard Renovation at Northview

Mama "Marie" in Daddy's coat, so don't judge her. "Helloo!!
She's sneaking up to the Love Shack to survey the damage.

South of Northview (See: Love Shack) before My Guy showed the landscaping who's boss.


Daddy and I rocked these outfits for 4 days strong. On Friday, the weather was warm enough to take our sweatshirts off!

Shiver me timbers this gives me goosebumps.
Word to the wise: NEVER plant honeysuckle.
We worked well together. He was the coach, I was MVP.

Daddy felled limbs, Mama and I dragged them to The Pile.
These punks? They sat around and took a long break.
Baby Lisa was a pretty good Water Girl though.

I work hard for the money. So hard honey, honey.


Daddy and My Guy felled a lot of trees as this was the small pile.
Hope Rent-a-Son is up to the challenge!
Let's move on from Northview, shall we?


Chapter 2: Wedding Decor

Spray painted shepherd's hooks for the Unity Candle in the ceremony.
Spray painted old chalkboards from Mama's classroom

Upcoming project:
Spray paint this gate white and use clothes pins to clip pictures of B & L.
See the legs at the bottom? We will shove those in the ground so that the gate stands up tall.
Don't forget about the pomanders!


Chapter 3: Playing Dress Up
Baby Lisa, Spiderman, Hay Bee, and Baby B
We bribed Spiderman to try on his suit for a bite sized Snickers. It worked.
One day when Aunt L isn't looking, Hay Bee and I are going to take him back to college with us.
No pic of Baby B as she was, uh.. petrified.. of the tutu. Rats.

Bear on the other hand "loved this". Would you agree that she has King in her blood?

"I love this. Mommy love this."
Her Daddy J taking a pic for Mommy S while PaPa and Big J are looking on.

Speaking of Big J, he was not a fan of the suit. We were prepared with chocolate again and after some sweet talking from his Mamaw, he was dressed up.

Epilogue: Only because I am assuming you have stopped reading by this point.
Sick of the picture book?
If not, enjoy these out-takes that didn't make the picture book chapters.


I think we were about to bust a move.
That would be me and Hay Bee, not My Guy. Remember, he doesn't dance.
Yep, there she goes.
Then, she went all Khloe Kardashian on me. I was walking back from the shed, she literally jumped on piggy-back and then brought me to the ground. Apparently she didn't do enough manual labor if she had enough energy to jump on me.
And tickled me. The WORST torture ever.
Harley is licking my wounds.
Didn't even phase My Guy because this is a regular occurrence with Hay Bee around.

She tackled me right into a big pile of mud, dirt, leaves, roots, branches and probably cigarette butts from the old tenant. Barf.

On a similar note: I am terrified of the toast she will be giving at the reception.
Little does she know that we will have a kill-switch for the mic.


Here is a shout out to Harley, Z's bird dog.
Harley will be My Guy's Golden Retriever, Jasmine, Personal Trainer to get her back in shape.
This dog had been cooped up all winter (that's what you are supposed to do with bird dogs) and when we let her out to run, she held no resentment for the long winter's negligence.
Got to love dogs.
Plus, when you say "Kennel Up" she runs to the gate to pen herself up.
I guess Z has trained her.

What did you do with the Spring weather?

Spring Break love and all of mine!

Patience is a Virtue

Many a-times Mama has told me that patience is a virtue.

Long story short, on Wednesday Mama, Auntie J, Johnny Mike and Haley Beth and I went to the UPS store to run color copies of our invitations. Auntie J spent many, many hours painting and I had spent hours getting the wording, font, formatting and materials prepared.

We took all of these (Auntie J's paintings, the wording on a transparency, and our cardstock) over to the UPS store. We wanted them to lay the transparency and painting on the copier, load the cardstock and pump out 150 invitations.

Nope. The lady wanted to work it over on Publisher and email me the proof on Saturday to confirm and then print.. in April. Saturday has came and went, and no email proof.

Auntie J: did we see this coming?

Patience is a virtue.

Here's to hoping that I will a proof of a lovely invitation sitting in my inbox on Monday!

Paperwork Schmaperwork

Tomorrow, My Guy and I will go the courthouse to apply for our marriage license.

I hate paperwork. I never have the documents I need. I never even know what documents I'm supposed to have are, let alone where those documents are located!

On a side note, next year at this time I will be waist deep wading through taxes and I will probably be in tears. But why go there?


Because I am all about lists (thank you Daddy) I have prepared a rough list of what you need to get married in Kansas:
-Two forms of identification: Driver's license, Social Security card, passport will all work

-We will both be present, but only one person is required. Which led me to tell My Guy: If we are both in the joint agreement to get married, we will both be present to apply for the license, end of discussion.

-3 day waiting period and the license is valid for 6 months

-$75 cash: license fee and surcharge

-Neither myself nor My Guy have previously been married so we didn't even read through that clause. We also ignored the clauses about cousin marriages, same sex marriages, common law marriages, and under-age marriages.

That should be it!

Knowing my luck, the County Clerk will be on vacation, or the office will be closed on Fridays, or not taking applications for young, naive, in-love couples.

Wish me luck and send up a prayer for us to be patient tomorrow and our upcoming marriage while you are at it!

Love and Marriage love and all of mine!

My Lovely Assistant Baby Lisa

My Lovely Assistant Baby Lisa is actually my sister D. Her Baby Lisa fame is from Dog the Bounty Hunter; we used to just call her Baby, but Baby Lisa is so much more fun to say!

Back to Backyard Chic Blog.

Baby Lisa and I attempted to make a DIY (Not DUI as Baby Lisa kept referring to it as) tutorial of making wedding pomanders for Flower Girls to carry.

Materials for one pomander: 3 bunches of silk white roses, one foam ball*, 6 push pins, ribbon and wire cutters.
1. Start by cutting a piece of ribbon 12-18 inches.
2. Overlap the ends of the ribbon and push the push-pins through the ribbon into the foam. We didn't, but I would suggest hot-gluing the ribbon first, and then sticking pins in the foam ball.
3. Secure with enough pins so that the handle is attached.
4. Using the wire cutters, cut the blooms off of the stem, leaving about 2 inches of stem.

5. Stick the stem into the foam ball near the ribbon and work around the top circumference working your way to the uh,, equator, and down to the uh, South Pole of the foam ball.
6. Stagger the flowers so that the petals just kiss the next bloom and you cannot see the green foam beneath.

7. Cover the whole ball with blooms!

This was a fun DIY project too! We figured out that the foam balls we bought were too big, so Baby Lisa and I ran errands today and bought a pair of smaller foam balls to re-do the pomanders so that the doll babies will be able to actually carry the pomanders down the aisle!

Thank you Baby Lisa for taking the photos!

Pomander love and all of mine!

The Countdown Continues.

3 months.

14 weekends.

92 days.

I don't even want to open up my The Knot page to see how far behind we are on it's suggested to-do list.

It was 41* at 6 o'clock tonight. It will warm up before June, right?

Countdown love and all of mine!


PS. The renovations commence this weekend for the wedding garden and our new home!

A Thank You in Blog Form

Dear Mama, Daddy, and The GP's,

Thank you for your models of marriage, friendship, and love. My Guy and I are so BLESSED to have such wonderful examples to follow.

Thank you for teaching us that love, true love, is worth protecting.

Thank you for teaching us that love, true love, is worth having, and anything worth having is something to work for.

Thank you for teaching us that love, true love, is built off of friendship, trust, laughter, honesty, communication, and passion.

Thank you for teaching us that love, true love, came from God who loved us first before we knew how to love Him, or each other.

Thank you for teaching us how to love.

All our love,
B & L


Seriously, we are so blessed to have two sets of parents that have amazing marriages and families and four sets of grandparents that have proven that love conquers all.

We will be recognizing these marriages by displaying their wedding photos at the reception. I am working on collecting, scanning, printing and framing pictures of Mama and Daddy's wedding, Mama and Daddy -in-law's wedding, both sets of My Guy's GP's wedding photos and both sets of my GP's wedding photos.

Inspiration picture:Vintage Chic meets Backyard Chic.

Love and Marriage love and all of mine!

When Love Gives You Lemons

A detail that My Guy and I agreed upon quite handily was that as soon as the ceremony was over, we wanted the reception starting immediately. The Mr. and I will retreat to my parents' house to sign our Wedding Certificate while our guests will mingle and meander from the ceremony area over the the reception area.

In the midst of this mingling and meandering, guests will be treated to a glass of lemonade to sip on and toast as the Wedding Party and My Guy and I enter the reception. Mama and I have been collecting Mason Jars to fill with lemonade and have been looking for a drink dispenser (as Mama's takes approximately 37 minutes to fill a small glass).

Here is an inspiration pic for the lemonade stand:
How Backyard Chic is this lemonade stand?
A wooden Lemonade Stand sign, a few chic straws and I think that we will be good to go!

I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of having 200 glasses of refreshing lemonade in a short amount of time. I have a few sorority sisters that volunteered to help. I might put these sisters to work pouring drinks!

Lemonade love and all of mine!

Help me Raquel! Help! Help me Raquel!

Raquel was my dance teacher for many years.
How great of a name is Raquel for a dance teacher?
I want her help again.
My Guy NEEDS her help but that is another story.

Why?

I know you've seen THIS.


And you may have even seen THIS:
(I know Mama doesn't miss Bonnie Hunt and so she has even seen it!)


Well, I have had THIS IDEA running through the back of my mind and found this.


Baby Sisters: What do you say? Help me put those years with Raquel to good use?


PS. Do you think that will make the bouquet toss less awkward or take it to a whole new level of awkward? I'm all about un-awkward!

PPS. Stay tuned for more dancing fun!

Plans for Plan B

April showers bring May flowers and May flowers bring June weddings!

This March rain is making me optimistic that Spring is here, trees will start budding, and Mama and I can start planting flowers! I know that Daddy is looking forward to the grass coming in, if those pesky birds don't eat the grass seed first!

However, with all of this optimism is still the fear that we will be rained out and resort to Plan B.

Plan A includes outdoor ceremony and reception.
Plan A 1/2 includes outdoor ceremony and reception with a few sprinkles of rain.
Plan B includes Mother Nature shutting down Plan A and moving the ceremony and reception next door.

My parents live next door to a new elementary school (great for our parking situation!) and there would be plenty of room for the the ceremony on the stage of the all-purpose room and the reception in the gymnasium. We would move all of our rented items: chairs, tables, linens, arbor, food, cake, drinks and flower arrangements into the school. It won't be the homey feeling of our backyard, but I'm confident that we will be able to dress up the space to be as Backyard Chic as possible!


It took me awhile to come to terms with these Plan B plans but now I am on-board for 5 reasons:

5. It would be a convenient, simple solution without guests having to figure out where the new location would be.

4. There is plenty of space for both the ceremony and the reception.

3. It's a cheap back-up and we wouldn't need to reserve another venue. Plus, my mom teaches there and I was student of the school many years ago! It also is a nod to my teaching career.

2. Daddy says people will understand about Plan B if the weather is not cooperating.

1. At the end of the day, indoors or out, I'll be a
MARRIED WOMAN!
Here's to seeing the BIG picture in planning this wedding!


Sunshine love and all of mine!

Bear and Baby B

I have posted a lot lately about my ring bearer fiasco but I haven't given much love to my little girls that will be flower girls. How could I have overlooked these precious babies?

Bear and Baby B are both darlings. They might just steal the show.
That's Baby B's Mommy (my Aunt L) in the back!

Bear has the blondest curls and the the best baby rolls to love on. Some have said that Bear resembles Baby Lace and personally I think that she is one adorable doll baby.

Baby B is the strongest little fighter that I know and soon she will be walking all the way down the aisle! She is also the best cuddle bug! One look at this Cuddle Bug "oohhing" at you and your heart will melt!

These doll babies will be wearing tutus and leotards (a nod to my dancing days!) and this has been a work in project for some time! My Soon 2B Sissy Amanda Jo taught me how to tie tutus and make flower headbands. So I have finished the tutus and am working on adding "lace" to the leotards and will be making flower headbands over Spring Break. This has been one of my favorite DIY projects for sure!

Inspiration Pictures:
Flower headbands

Lovely tutu

Flower Girl love and all of mine!

PS. With my mom's red-haired-skip-a-generation genes and My Guy's coloring, I am pretty sure that we'll have a few red-headed babies running around. If they will be as adorable as this Doll Baby in the tutu that will be just fine with me!