You've got the cutest little babyface...

I've been collecting pictures of Jeff and myself as babies and as we were growing up for a digital photo frame to put on the guest book table. I just had to share my favorite one. *swoon*

Lucky boy

This is our big, sweet, dopey, loving, happy-go-lucky Labrador Lucky. I believe his tail never stops wagging, even in his sleep. He loves swimming, retrieving ducks, keeping watch over the neighborhood, and a good scratch behind the ears. He managed to give us quite a scare this week!
Whenever I eat lunch at home, I'll usually give him a biscuit or treat before I go back to work. Monday when I was home though, he didn't get up, and I immediately knew something was very wrong. He was weak and could barely stand up, and there was upchuck in his kennel. I called Jeff and he came home and we tried for about 20 minutes to get him to perk up, but his poor tail wouldn't even wag. We called the vet and I ended up driving him out and turns out, he had the flu of all things! I had no idea that dogs could get it! The vet said most likely one of the neighbors that comes to visit him had it and transfered it to him. My poor buddy was running a 104.9 temp by the time we made it to the vet's office! They recommended leaving him there overnight so they could start some antibiotics and fluids and hopefully get him feeling better. By Tuesday though, he wasn't any better. He still had a 104.4 temp and had blood in his urine. When she said "possible kidney damage" over the phone I just about lost it. My poor baby was feeling terrible, couldn't understand why, and all he knew was that I had driven him to a strange place and left him. It wasn't a very good rest of the day.
By Wednesday though, our Lucky boy lived up to his name and pulled through! Jeff drove out to get him and though he's still moving a little slow and isn't quite back to 100% yet, his tail is wagging again, and that is the happiest sight in the world to me right now!

French Bread

Here is my first attempt at French bread. They turned out pretty well, even if they were a little too done. It's hard to tell but they are darker than they look in the picture. I attribute that to using wheat flour instead of white like the recipe called for, since wheat was all I had. I suppose that makes it NOT French bread...oh well. But the overall flavor was pretty good! Not bad for my first try!

CARD BOX

Well I finally completed the card box last night! I'd say it came out pretty well but I'll let you be the judge of that. First, though, here are a few selections from Etsy to use for comparison.


This first one is the closest to what I had in mind. It was priced at $35.00. Not TOO bad but still a little much to pay for something that just sits on the gift table all night.




This next selection boasted of being covered in silk and hand beaded lace and rang in at...are you ready for this?...$150.00. I am not even kidding. $150.00. For a card box. One hundred and fifty dollars. I'm not even sure what to say about that one...
Last but not least, here is my version. The hat boxes were about $8.00 for both, the fabric was out of that same $6.99 yard I used for the ring pillow, the ribbon and edging around the opening came to about $5.00 all together, and the spray paint for the lids was free from the hardware store (it pays to have connections :). I was hoping to make a nice bow from the green ribbon for the top like the card box in the first picture, but learned last night that my bow-making skills are not up to par, but that's okay, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.





Stay tuned for my next DIY project: The Unity Candle

Ring Pillow

In my search for accessories for the wedding, I've found that a lot of the white, floofy versions of things that are more mainstream just aren't ringing my bell. Those are fine and perfect for a white, floofy wedding, but our wedding is most definitely not. I started a list a while back of things that I would need to start gathering, and while I know we are still 8 months out, I thought it would be good to get as much stuff out of the way now, so that way I'm not stressing about it when we're 3 weeks out. The first thing I wanted to tackle was the ring bearer pillow. I searched all of the craft stores in Peoria, and all of the wedding accessory websites and kept coming up with the same white floofy pillows. Occasionally a brown satin version would pop up but it would almost always have crystals and rhinestones bedazzled on it and I'm just not a crystals and rhinestones kind of gal. So I turned to Ebay and the wonderful Etsy. There I found some marvelous examples of what I was going for.


This first one sang to me. Oh, the simplicity of it! The rustic brown, the soft petals of the flower! Lovely! It also rang in at the lovely price of $45.00. Add shipping to that and it was way more than I could justify spending on something that was only going to be featured for a 30 second walk down the aisle.



This one really caught my eye as well. The rich fall colors and the beautiful leaves were perfect! But it rang in at $36.00. Better than the first one, but still more than I was willing to shell out, especially after shipping was added on.




I finally broke down and resolved to make my own. I scoured online for fabric and pillow forms but couldn't find any that were priced well enough to save me very much money. I was getting frustrated until I remembered that UFS had wedding accessories every now and then. I took a gamble and drove downtown and sure enough, they had ring pillows for $5!! I figured I could just cut off the bows and beads and lace and just re-cover it with whatever I liked. So after checking out I drove up to Jo-Ann fabrics and found some beautiful brown and green fabric to use and even better, it was 30% off and came out to $6.99! So I bought a yard of fabric, some gold rope trim that was $1.99, a little package of four tassels for $.99 and a gold button for the center that was $.59!

Behold, my masterpiece!

The shape isn't perfect and the sewing technique I used for the trim is called hot glue gun, but I'm proud of it nonetheless, and it will do for a 30 second trip down the aisle :) All in all, I ended up spending about $15 total, less actually, though, since I used just a fraction of the fabric to cover the pillow. Way better than spending $40-$50.

Added bonus, I found two hat boxes, one for $2.99 and one for $4.99 that I am going to cover with the leftover fabric and glue together to make a card box for the gift table. If all goes well, I will hopefully have another crafty post soon!

Seriously?

District 150 decides not to have a snow day (which is really no surprise, when I was growing up they were famous for never taking snow days) and really, if people pay attention it's really not hard to maneuver in this amount of snow. But the superintendent then calls in to work due to weather? That's pretty gutsy. I'm sure one of the fine school bus drivers that are driving around in this crud and that are in charge of keeping the kids safe would be happy to drive to his house and pick him up....

Bread!

I present my first loaves of bread made with my wonderful mixer! They aren't perfectly shaped or rounded on top but man do they ever make up for it in taste. I was eating warm slices slathered in butter last night. This is probably not aiding my mission of losing a few pounds in time for trying on wedding dresses next week, but it was so worth it. I look forward to making many many more loaves.





In other news, my ring came in a whole week earlier than it was supposed to! The woman at Bremer's (her name is Dee-highly recommend her if you need anything jewelry related) called and said the goldsmith was going to be done with it at about 4:30, but Jeff's brother leaves work at 5:00 so I was good & patient and told Jeff we could wait until next week to get it. But his brother offered to stay late until we got back from picking it up so we rushed out to the North end of town and I was able to start the new year off as a properly engaged woman :) So yay! Hope you like it :) (please ignore my dry, cracked, red hands that are sorely in need of a manicure-I conveniently cropped my sad fingernails out of the picture)


So bread and a ring-not a bad start to 2010!