I Promise There's {a} Picture

So my sister - in - law is preggers and wanted one last hoo-rah before the baby. She heard of a bloggers get- away to Philly and that's how it all began. I was so excited to join her for the blogger meet up not only because I knew it'd be fun but because I was in need of a girl get-away too. We figured that since we would already be on the east coast that it'd be silly not to take a trip to New York as well.  Our flights and hotels were booked- our trip was set in stone!

We met up around 4:30 am at her house the morning of our flight. I was secretly nervous wreck but played it off as if I was only a little bit nervous to fly. And to my surprise and extreme satisfaction, the plane landed successfully for our 2 hour lay over in Minnesota where the fun began. We stopped at the McDonalds in the airport so Ashley could get some breakfast but it turned into what seemed like a 20 minute long language barrier battle with the lady behind the counter. After that I decided not to even attemp Mcy D's and to go for a not- ripe- enough- to- peel banana. I gave up on that mess and went to starbucks where as always nothing went wrong :)

We land in Philly and we are pumped because neither of us has been here before so we're picturing a wonderland full of Denises, Dees, Macs, and Charlies... maybe a few Franks but we'd look past those. But no, we miss our bus to the rental car service, got a car that we later on named Lucifer because when we were inside of it we could have sworn we'd died and gone to hell, and lost isn't even an appropriate word for what happened to us on the way to our hotel. My "GPS" went rogue and took us down in the process. On the upside, either one of us could probably get you any where you wanted to go around the philly area now. We get to the hotel, find out that our only option of parking service costs more a night than our hotel room did! And on top of all that, we had to carry our own luggage to our room (we tried a bell hop but they were of course all busy)... 2 girls on a 4 day trip = 75 bags. But please understand that through all of this we both kept a very good spirit about it all, we were cracking jokes and laughing majority of the time ( yes most of the laughter was primarily slap happy laughter, but laughter none the less). Then, starving we head to our blogger meet up for a cook  out and yes, you guessed it, we got lost. 3 phone calls to the hostess and a stop into a gas station kind of lost. Who knew Philly had 2 streets named Summit a block from each other and a subdivision with the same name as the area we were going to? Not us. But we found it and once we did, we had a blast with the girls.

The great part about the trip was that all of us girls had never met before, only  through blogs and yet we all traveled to come see each other and it wasn't awkward at all. It was a laid back atmosphere with a bunch of fun, creative, ready for a girl's weekend girls. We told stories about other blogs we liked or disliked and talked about our lives at home and just really started to get to know each other right away. What I think it was that brought us all together was the blogging. We were all our own person with completely different lives back home but we all had similar personalities and interests. I{we} honestly felt like we were all old friends that had just met back up after a few years apart. We went out to eat, went sightseeing, took pictures and the best part about the picture taking was that not once did I feel like the dork with a camera because we all had cameras all the time!

After a few more times of getting lost, a crazy man who dressed exactly like Charlie's character (we got our charlie fix!!) and a few more surprising charges and a delay in that expensive car service I mentioned earlier, we made it to New York.

This was my first time to New York and since Ashley used to live in the big apple, I followed her lead. We stayed at a cute little bed and breakfast right in Manhattan. I loved its location, its look, the sweet lady at the desk, and the idea that it had a pillow and a bed for me. Remember those 75 bags? Well this adorable little bed and breakfast only had stairs which made it not so good for us worn out girls. While in New York I came face to face with a live rat in the subway, saw Times Square, Ground Zero, Grand Central Park and my first Columbus Day parade. I really wish I would have taken a picture of the cute old man at the parade who wore italy's flag from head to toe. He may have even been wearing Italia boxers, my money's on yes.

Things in New York went very well over all but when we found a roach and a millipede in our room we were kind of grossed out. Ashley magically whipped out a zip lock baggie and caught the roach. Now this pregnant woman has walked all over for days, expirienced all the things I've just mentioned, didn't get any sleep because her so called pillow was a " piece of cardboard wrapped  in cotton" and just found a huge roach. So she walks it down the 3 flights of stairs to the receptionist to hand it to him and express her concern. This man then replied with accusing her of bringing it in her purse from home so that she could get a discount on her room... bad move Mr.Man. I  don't think I even have to explain what happened next. ( she actually handled it very well though) So I go down stairs to put something from my purse to my luggage ( we left  our luggage in the lobby while sightseeing) when Mr.Man notices a _sealed_ bag of gluten free cheese crunchies and then puts the blame on me for having food in my room. Now I'm not a confrontational person at all so when he said this I was thinking to myself dude, drop it its not a big deal but I never said a word or looked up. Once he repeated him self and asked me if I heard him I got pretty upset, told Mr. Man all about himself and his little roach friend and walked out. The City made me hard, what can I say?

Believe it or not a lot of stories and detail got left out of this only because I didn't want to ramble on and not all of it was web appropriate. Once you put something on the web it's there for life. Even though I mostly only named the negative things that happened on this trip, there were a lot of fun events that happened that make this trip one of my favorites. We both had such a blast and I know that I wouldn't have changed anything about it as cheesey and cliche as that sounds because it brought a bunch of great stories and inside jokes. It's safe to say I'm good on vacations for a while!

 oh yeah, and that picture I promised :

I call this "butcher baby". Yes, it is a baby, naked, holding a butcher knife. I think its a perfect explanation of our trip all in one little picture. haha



My Truly Scrumptious {Bridal} Shower

For as long as I can remember I have been obsessed with the great "Chitty-Chitty, Bang-Bang" when asked what I wanted my shower theme to be it took me a whole...2 seconds to decide! it was full of "toot sweets" and color, what more could a girl ask!

As much as I would like to take the credit for any of this, I can't. All of the decorations and goodies were possible because of my good ol' sis-in-law... yup, she's a keeper! haha. I mean really though, do these cupcakes not look irresistible?! 

I loved this hat! what I love even more than how cute and relevant it is, is that this started as a $1 sombrero!! 

 I have to admit that this and the very similar "J" & "T" are now used as decorations in our bedroom. yes, I amone of those women who love significant letters and I'm not afraid to post  them all over my walls. I'm currently on the hunt for a collage of multi colored / sized M's for our living room which you'll all see soon!!

 & last but not least the old fashioned car! It wouldn't be Chitty Chitty without it.

Our Wedding

Tyler and I are pretty simple people with a lot of inside jokes and stories, so for our wedding we knew we wanted something small and reasonable that would reflect us in a positive way. We had a small budget and an even smaller time limit especially since I wanted to hand make all the decorations (call me crazy) but it all worked out! We chose to have it in his grandmother's backyard; it's beautiful and simple and would be conveniently blooming at the perfect time for our wedding, May 29. As every bride says "it was the perfect wedding!" 

I was so proud of my bouquet! My sister-in-law made it for me and did a fabulous job. Everyone tried to talk me out of hand making my decorations and floral arrangements because of my time limit but Ty and I talked about it and decided no matter how hard we had to work at it, we would make this wedding as "us" as we could. I love every last detail so I would definitely recommend never going for less on your wedding (unless you're dealing with money of course, then there's always an alternate option) that's also why we wanted to hand make- it's so much cheaper!! It's kind of hard to see in the picture but there are even mini pinwheels in there to match my bridesmaids' "bouquets" which were large pinwheels  decorated with a mixture of ribbons. 

The men's boutinneires looked so good with their suits. We tied them in by using the same exact flowers that we used on the wedding cake which was also handmade by my mother-in-law. She was so excited to be able to make it and did an amazing job! It looked good enough to eat... just wouldn't taste too good haha. We did cupcakes instead. Thankfully Tyler's grandparents have a convection oven so it wasn't completely tiring to make and decorate 200 cupcakes!

We had to do a taco bar for our wedding because we have an on going joke with our family and friends that he and I live off tacos. It's kind of true actually! We make them all the time and add our own special mixture of seasonings to the meat which makes them irresistible! All the salt may give you a few heart problems haha but it's so worth it. Our distant family and friends were just dying to try the tacos we have been ranting and raving about so not only did we have to have tacos but we had to make the meat ourselves so they could get the full experience which just added another thing to our list of to-do's but like we said- we aren't going short on any detail! We also got a lot of good feed back on how unique and convenient tacos were for a wedding.

I got the inspiration for our centerpieces from a seasonal decoration in one of the stores in our local mall. We had to spend so much time in that store taking pictures and staring at the decorations to find out how to make them. I'm sure the employees thought we were fugitives of the local looney bin but hey, I got adorable center pieces out of it!! My grandma snagged a few after the wedding and uses them as decoration in her house so that must mean they're pretty cute because she has very particular style when it comes to home decor.  They were made out of 'Solo' bathroom cups, poster board, floral tape, wire, and  craft sticks.

There were so many wedding decorations that we made that I could go on and on about but this was one I thought was really creative. I was thinking of ways to keep kids entertained and something else to make our wedding fun. I didn't want an ordinary guest book so I decided to use a canvas and paints and let everyone sign and paint a picture that he and I could hang in our bedroom or in a "fun" room. It turned out great and was a piece of art that had a little bit of everyone in it.

Tyler and I are a spunky couple who married young and wouldn't change a thing about it! We of course have had some people telling us not to do it and to wait. We've also had a lot of people bulge their eyes when they find out we're married and say "but you're so young" they act like marriage = death.. haha! Our thoughts on that are that you're going to go through life regardless, there will be ups and downs and new things to be tried and discovered so why wouldn't you want to go through all of that with someone who you know will go through it all with you whole heartedly. I feel so blessed to have a best friend to experience everything life has to offer with. We're going to have times where we feel like marriage does = death because we're gonna want to kill each other!! But its going to be all part of the crazy life the world has to offer us. I'm ready to get the most out of life. -Carpe Diem- as some say. So i'm very excited to share all the miscellaneous things I think of with you!! Ready, Set, GO!