Driving Myself Crazy

If I were to go into another interview, I think my biggest flaw would have to be my ability to overthink things. I love researching things so much that I end up becoming completely overwhelmed. Case and point: we went wedding dress shopping for the very first time this weekend before the engagement party and I actually fell in love with a dress that just felt like me. While I adored other dresses too, this one made me smile just a bit more :)

Being that my wedding is a whole year away and we already put a deposit on the dress, I need to stop looking at other dresses or I really will drive myself crazy. I guess one good thing is that when I look at other dresses, I wouldn't trade mine for 95% of the ones I see and I can only wear one dress that day, right?! I'm pulling the plug on looking at other dresses. Now.

Throwing an Engagement Party

Now that I've somewhat recovered from our engagement party this weekend, I'd like to share all the ideas and work that went into it! Obviously if I could have it my way, I wanted tiny perfect cupcakes with tiny perfect signs that say our wedding date and "save the date". Unfortunately this didn't happen since I just simply ran out of time! Oh, and I had to scrap an entire batch of "the best red velvet cupcakes" I found on Pinterest because they tasted like playdough. I hate playdough! I ended up buying chocolate cake mix and used my favorite cream cheese icing (Sprinkles recipe) to quickly decorate a bunch of mini cupcakes.

I received a ton of help from my family to set up and cook for the party. We must have had between 25-30 guests there and needed to feed them all but in a fun and not formal way. I was running around so much that day that I forgot to take some pictures of the actual set up of the food but here's what we served:

• Shrimp ceviche
• Antipasto Pasta salad - I doubled this recipe for the amount of people that were there and had tons of leftovers for my coworkers the next Monday, very easy and very tasty
• Stuffed mushrooms - these were amazing but my sister luckily had her husband to help her clean the mushrooms and scoop the filling since this is a rather time consuming meal
• Spinach and Artichoke Dip, tortilla chips, pita chips, and salsa for variety
• Crockpot Sweet & Tangy Meatballs - the recipe also includes a step further for creating meatball sliders but the meatballs alone were such a huge hit, fed a bunch of people, and were complimented on! Do THIS if nothing else. 
• Cupcakes, store bought chocolate and coconut macarons
• Pre-made sandwiches that we set next to a panini grill if anyone wanted a grilled sandwich. This was such a great idea of my sister's and a lot of people did utilize the "panini bar"

Drinks:

• Lots of ice on the side, one tub to cool the beers and another for serving
• Mimosas
• Soda

Antipasto Pasta Salad

Stuffed Mushrooms

Crockpot Meatballs

For the decorations, we made six pom-poms as seen here. I made two white, two sea green, and two peachy/vanilla for variety. It became fluffiness overload inside so we hung two of these outside where people would be hanging out too.  

My proudest decoration would have to be this right here:

It was such a blast having our closest family and friends (only the wedding parties were invited otherwise we'd be on capacity OVERLOAD). For our other friends, we just decided to meet them up for drinks after and there were no hard feelings! Love it. 

Wedding Planning

I'm not going to lie, jumping into the whole list of everything that had to be accomplished was extremely scary. A month into our engagement, we were able to narrow down from several venues in the area (and some a little bit more on the outskirts of town) to decide our 'perfect' place. There's probably no harm no foul in creating a list of venues that we were considering right? I just won't mention where we have chosen (just yet)!

1. Event 1013 - This location was so unique and we loved that it was in downtown Plano. While we didn't entirely want a hotel ballroom feel, we felt like perhaps we could meet in the middle a little bit more with the upscaleness. This venue also let's you decide on how hands-on or hands-off you'd like to be with their package choices.

2. Noah's - Such a close contender! The facility itself is gorgeous - we loved the ballroom, gameroom/guy's room (there's a pool and shuffle table!), and the ceiling options. The only downside was that this place is pretty much completely hands off and again, we wanted just a little more service provided. They also have multiple locations available, with some even being built as we speak.

3. The Oasis on Lake Travis - While we have always dreamed of getting married in Austin, it would be so much easier to be able to plan a wedding in town so I could make tastings and trials. First of all, Kelsey Shipman (the coordinator) is pretty much amazing and provided us all the information we needed. It came down to be much more affordable here since they're an actual restaurant so you don't have to hire additional service. Let's just say that this is where we're leaving our hearts for more convenience.

4. Food minimums/all-inclusive packages helped us narrow down from these amazing venues that we considered: Marie Gabrielle Restaurant, The Milestone, Chapel at Ana Villa, and Ashton Gardens. All four of these locations had stunning decor and would be lovely to have a ceremony at. Keep in mind, I believe that most of these choices are still able to work with their clients to possibly be flexible with their options.

5. Our special venue. It's just perfect for us. We were looking for a place that still worked closely with vendors and could provide us a list but did not require any sort of food or beverage minimum! There's also plenty of  not awkward spaces for our guests to mingle between the ceremony and reception. We personally hate nothing more than going to events where we're all stuck in a certain area with strangers. This is when our inner-introverts come out! Another important priority was having a location convenient for our guests and plenty of parking. I'll say more at another time.

High Stress!

This past month has been an extremely intense time, and not necessarily in the best way. Before our trip, I'll be going to a conference for my job, taking a comprehensive exam, and a midterm exam for my graduate school program. We're also having the floors re-done, so in the meantime, we went ahead and tore up the carpet and are prepping it with Kilz to get rid of any of the pet urine smells (apparently this works?) from both the previous owner as well as the little brat who lives at home. In addition, my dental appointment has been postponed yet another week and I never realized how annoying and exhausting it is to be done with any work for the teeth. I need the next couple weeks to fly by smoothly!

Getting in the Christmas spirit

Since we were iced in for a few days last week, Alex and I found time to bust out those cans of paint and finish the living room walls. For the living room, we used Behr in Manhattan Mist to contrast the slightly darker Behr in Timberwolf Grey in the kitchen (photos to come soon). I was so happy to be able to put up the Christmas decorations on the mantle since the paint was all set!

I found both frames (and the lantern) at HomeGoods a while back and have been alternating the pictures inside. I found some great printables on Pinterest for Halloween and Thanksgiving but I thought I'd try my hand at creating my own for Christmas that you can download here. For the 8x10 printables, I usually get them printed at Walgreens for a quick and affordable way to change up the home. 

The stockings can be found at Target but I know a lot of people can't find the letters they need. Luckily the boyfriend, dog, and I all have first letters that were available there! Christmas is right around the corner and I hope you're not stressing out too much about decorating. Just a few touches here and there will make all the difference :) 

  

Black Friday Steal

Although I cringed at the fact that many stores were opening for Black Friday shopping at a time when people should be hanging out with their families, we were all done eating and decided to check out Target and Best Buy for any good deals. We were able to get Star Trek: Into Darkness for only $7 on Blu-Ray at Best Buy - score! Such a good movie too.

My other proud purchase would be the Christmas tree that is currently sitting in our livingroom. It took a while to get over the fact that it was pre-lit with colored lights instead of white lights, but since we're getting the hand-me-down bigger tree from Alex's parents next year, $30 for this six-footer wasn't a bad deal!

Most of our decorations came from Target. Isn't the plaid tree skirt adorable? 

Last Minute Details

Whoa, where has the past couple of months gone? My sister's wedding was a lot of fun and although I should have started memorizing my speech earlier, I think it went just fine! I volunteered to create the placement cards for the tables as well as the menu signs.

The dinner was held at a delicious Chinese restaurant and each table had family-styled serving so we made one of these menu signs at each table. You can see that the menu and the house signs are in boxed frames that we got at Ikea here, except we took out the matting for the time-being to fit the 5x7 photos. I had a GRAND idea for the placement cards and attempted to make all of them on chalkboard background and similar fonts as the menus and the house signs. They ALL turned out blurry so I scrapped the idea and went with the simple Avery templates which my sister actually liked a lot! One of those Keep It Simple, Stupid moments... If you're liking the fonts, I found it from this blogger: here. The fonts are Return to Sender and Chalkhand Lettering.