One Month Anniversary!

We have officially been married for a month! Time has really flown by, with some hard days, and some great days.....a month has gone by in a flash!

We have finally received our professional photographs from the wedding, and we love them! We ran over to the Maguires to share with Casey's parents and sister. (But we have a few more people we want to show first before we post them....so hang tight.) As a special anniversary dessert, my SIL baked chocolate cupcakes!!! And as a joke, I got a little on Casey's nose, just like a month ago at the wedding......well, look what he did to me!

At least I didn't get it UP my nose....but it sure got everywhere else!

And then, to mess with tradition (coz we're not superstitious)....we broke out our wedding cake and each had a bite. Figured it would probably taste better now than in a year........and it did! Yummo! But we still saved a tiny piece as a memento for our one year anniversary. Just couldn't part with it!

A Bittersweet weekend

Just got back from Placerville after a nice weekend with lots of family and friends. We had a celebration of Dad's life on Saturday, full of lots of friends (over 200 we estimated), lots of food and great stories and memories.

This was the picture we enlarged and had at the front door.


It was overwhelming at first to walk into a sea of people that I haven't seen in years.... my first, third, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade teachers.....my favorite Art teacher, my PE teacher from elementary school.....old friends from junior high....it was quite a trip down memory lane! Lots of Dad's old friends, coworkers, softball buddies, golf buddies.....the list is endless.

The room was only supposed to hold 100 people....I think we broke the rule there. Parking was down the street and it was pretty much standing room only! But it was so heartwarming and amazing to see the amount of people that knew Dad and loved him and had so many great things to say about him. I was always proud to have him as a father, but it was great to hear how wonderful he was to all of his friends too.

Walking around and mingling, I kept getting, "Where is your husband?" I tell ya, that was the weirdest thing! Coz it was the first time to hear that from so many people at one time....I liked getting used to it though!

Casey was quite the charmer.....as he naturally is. He met with lots of people who had heard great things about him, and they were not disappointed! He made a great speech about meeting Dad and trying to not be intimidated. He wishes that he had the rest of his life to try and impress him, but now he will look to him for guidance. And of course he made the audience chuckle, which he is always good at! Afterwards I had many people come up to me telling me what a good choice I made, that he was quite the guy, a winner and an A+. Warmed my heart, because they got to see the guy I love......who is very warm, kind, caring and super funny.

All in all, it was a nice day. It was some sort of closure to a tough time in my life. A month full of some very roller coaster emotions. But I got some great advice from my PE teacher, who lost her mom 13 years ago..... "Take each day one at a time. You get through it, and then tackle the next day. That's really all you can do."

But now that the dust has settled, and we get into the holiday season soon, it's going to hit us that he really is gone. Not on vacation, not coming back soon.......but on to a better place. Don't know when I will finally be ready to accept that. It will come eventually.......I'm just not ready yet.

He left too soon, we weren't quite done with him yet. But apparently, he has his own agenda now.....we'll catch up with him later.

Getting real.....

We got our official marriage license in the mail today! Now just to start the process of changing my name! This has me a little worried......going to take a while for everything to come into effect. Get ready for lots of paperwork and waiting time I guess.

Another little tidbit I wanted to share....the beautiful cupcakes that were suuuuuuper delicious. I really wish that baker was local to us....although then again maybe not....or I'll be putting back all that weight I lost! The flavors were mint chocolate chip, red velvet and banana chocolate chip. To die for!

The fun part though was designing the tiers that the cupcakes were resting on. My FIL and I designed the layout and then painted it white. I was then in charge of painting all the paisley design on it, and laying down the green ribbon. It turned out way cute I think.....then the baker placed all the cupcakes and cake on there.....along with the orchids. Perfect!

Our love for movies!

I have been hesitant to put any pictures of the wedding on the blog, because I have been waiting for the professional pics to come in. Any day now!

But I figured I could start to share some of our favorite details........

So some people have a theme with their wedding.......like the ocean, or a winery, or tuscan Italy..... we just wanted it to be about us and things that we love together......and of course, if you know Casey and I, we love to watch movies!!!!

All of the escort cards that told guests where they were sitting were fake movie tickets that I made through Publisher. It had both the name of the table, which was a movie, and the number of the table (like in the theaters when the movie you are seeing is in theater #6).

To present the escort cards to the guests, we made popcorn boxes and stuck all the movie tickets inside. Casey was the one in charge of this design, and he did such a great job I thought! We ended up buying popcorn boxes from Diddams, spray painted them silver and then glued on a small movie poster of the movie that corresponded with the name of the table. Then I helped glue caramel corn into each box....that was fun, yet smelly! (I was using silicone glue.) We added our antique popcorn maker as a cute nostalgic accent.

So then, at each table, there was a frame with the same movie poster. All of the movies were named after movies that Casey and I saw in the first year we were dating. There is proof in the frame, as I put each ORIGINAL movie stub from when we saw the movie. Yes, I saved them all! You'll see that this was the movie that we saw on February 13th--my birthday! Which was also our first date! Very fitting, so that was the name of our table!

I'm blinded!

My ring was just resized, joined and polished. I love when I get it back from the jewelers! It's always so shiny and sparkly! I practically am blinded when I look at it! Haha......

And on Casey's side of things with his ring.......it actually flew off of his finger last night at work! And apparently he wasn't doing anything intense with his hands. So he won't be wearing it for a while at work I guess.......doesn't want to lose it or break it (since it is made out of Tungsten and apparently it will shatter if dropped or slammed against anything hard/durable.) So after the initial 60 days is up, he can return it and get a smaller size.

Ikea: the true test

Casey and I made the mistake of heading to Ikea 2 days in a row.........both on the weekends. Bad idea.


Ikea is about 35 minutes away from our house, so usually we go when we really want/need something for the house. First day was a purchase, second day was a return. And boy, our buttons were pushed on the second day!


The parking lot was a zoo, and Casey was being quite the agressive driver as he was not happy with the situation. Then once we headed inside, the line for returns was insane and there were hundreds of people milling around inside......... this was the point where Casey leaned over to me and says........

"Ikea must be Swedish for Ultimate Relationship Test"

I laughed inside, but also knew that he was somewhat right! So many couples, just like us, head into Ikea or any other home furnishing store to find belongings to make their home....well, homier and more like them and their personalities.

At times, Casey and I do not agree on style/fashion/interior design/art. So whenever we do it is a miracle and usually an immediate buy. There are other times where I will think it will look great and he has no idea--obviously I am a little more visual when it comes to things of the matter. Those times are harder to convince him, so sometimes we make the purchase and he is usually shown proof that hey, that really does look good! (Ask him about this and he will most likely tell you that it was his idea all along.)


Anywho, the trip turned out to be a success because we pulled together as a team, while he handled the return and I ran around the store trying to pick out the exchanged items. Teamwork all around. That's what it takes sometimes......especially at Ikea!