June Showers Bring July Weddings

So, it's been awhile. I could make lots of excuses, but honestly I just took a break! A lot has happened in our family in the past few months. Starting on Memorial Day, my wonderful Papa went to be with Jesus after a long, well-lived life. My sister flew home from New York to be with us and is here until her wedding in a few short days! I've been getting preparations together for my trip, spending much needed time with my family, and just being busy. So, that's the long and short of it!

I can't promise my blogging will get any more frequent over the next few months, but I do promise to give you updates of what's happening in my little life, and I will absolutely be bringing you LOADS of pictures from Africa!

This weekend we threw a bridal shower for my sister in honor of her impending nuptials. We had a small crowd, and a large amount of fun. Close friends, good food and laughter were all on the menu.

As stressed as I get right before a party, I can honestly say they are one of my favorite things to do. Buying decor, planning the menu and sending out invitations are all fun bits and pieces to any successful party. And even though the Bride 2 Be called me a "party nazi" I'll forgive her. ;-)

My mother made her famous Chicken Salad with Wild Rice, and we served them on croissants with garden greens. We had the Bride 2 Be's favorite, shrimp cocktail, along with deviled eggs, crackers & cheese, hummus & pretzels and fresh veggies.

I got the idea from Pinterest to do a Mini Fruit Pizza bar and it was definitely the hit of the party. One of the bridesmaids brought homemade sugar cookies and we topped them with fruit dip and assorted fresh fruits. They were delicious! We also had chocolate dipped pretzels and assorted candies for the guests to take home with them.

We were missing a bridesmaid and were all sad she couldn't be with us, but she'll be here very soon from New York and we will party hard while she's here. ;)

Happy Monday everyone!

-Jenn (With 2 N's)

P.S.

Best Fruit Dip Ever: 1 jar marshmallow creme & 1 package cream cheese.

Whip together and try not to bury your face in it.

P.P.S.

The bottom right picture perfectly illustrates our relationship as sisters. =)

Welcome Baby Noah!

We had a wonderful time this weekend for my bestie's baby shower, despite the insane 20 mph gusts of wind and chilly weather. We celebrated with a campfire, roasting hot dogs and s'mores, and having fun with friends and family.

Sherry and I coordinated on the decorations, and I love how they turned out. My favorite accessories were the mason jar table pieces and the SUPER easy hanging flowers we made from paper lunch sacks.

I was so happy to be able to host the shower for my friend, and am even more excited for December to be here so I can meet baby Noah!

Photos Courtesy of Turley Photography

Funny story: Right before the party started, the men headed into the woods to find logs and kindling to start our fire. When they got back, Sherry's hubs came up to her with his hand outstretched. He plopped a handful of acorns in her hand and said "Here, these match! Can you use them somewhere?" So we put them on the food table. ;-)

I absolutely LOVE hosting parties. It's probably one of my most favorite things to do. I love planning them, creating the decorations and deciding how to place everything. I think I even secretly love the morning-of stress bomb that always hits. :)

-Jenn (With 2 N's)

Click here for a tutorial on how to make your own hanging flowers.

Click here to download Woodbadge font.

Showers of Love

So, I'm pretty sure I'm the worst blogger in the history of...ever. But I have good excuses. So that makes it okay, right?

This weekend was . Crazy? Yes. Busy? Yes x2+infinity. Fun? Yes. It was everything. I like busy weekends, but this one almost got me. I'm still not caught up on sleep.

As I've been teasing about, there were two showers this weekend for my Bub and his girl. The personal/bridal shower was Friday night, and the wedding shower was Saturday afternoon. The party on Friday was at 7, and I get off work at 1. But work wasn't normal. Which, I'm not sure it ever is, but we had a big project due that came to us late and well...it was chaotic all morning.

As much as I needed to stay, I had plans, and left at 1. The rest of the crew managed to get it done, but anything that did go wrong, went wrong. Before I left our color printer decided to not speak to my computer. The job wouldn't even send to the printer. I got advice from my father and shut everything down, letting the machine take a break, and turned it back on 5 minutes later. It worked! I printed the 200 pages I needed, and went to the next page. (Our project was 20 pages, each at 200 copies.) Apparently the machine still didn't like me, and it refused to print again.

At 1 it was still being stupid, so I put in an emergency call to the service department. The genius service tech was in our area and was coming to check it out. (All the while I'm running errands trying to get ready for that evening.) Eventually my boss got it to print by using his computer. Apparently mine and the printer were mad at each other. It just wanted to add to the chaos of the weekend, I suppose.

Eventually, 7 came around, and after much preparation and decorating, the shower turned out perfectly. We got tons of compliments on the decorations and food set-up. The sad part, I was so busy I only snapped a couple shots on my phone...and none of the food, which was the pretty part!

After perusing Pinterest for half of my life (it seems) I gathered what ideas I had found and combined them. I loved this idea of hanging balloons instead of using helium, and this idea of making tissue paper pom-pons. I hadn't taken into account the ceiling fan in the living room, but it was easy to work around. If I had an extra hour, I would've hung twice the amount of ballons, but I like the way it turned out.

Since I don't have pictures of the food, I will just refer you to the recipes. And let me tell you, they were yumolah!

I was in charge of making tortilla roll-ups, which are pretty much the easiest things ever to make. You could mix up almost anything and they would be good. This is the only picture I thought to snap, while I was making them. These pictured are the Creamy Ham Roll-Ups, with slight variations from the original recipe. (Like, I used WAY more than 6 slices of ham.) I also made Southwest Chicken Roll-Ups. The original recipe calls them "spicy," because it has cayenne, but I'm a wuss and left it out. I also didn't think to pick up cilantro on my grocery trip, so mine is slightly different. Both recipes made much more than I needed, so in place of extra cream cheese I added about 2 or 3 huge spoonfuls of sour cream and only used an 8oz. block of the cream cheese. It helped to thin out the mixtures a tad, and made them go a little bit further. I also used half a can of Rotel in each mixture. I really liked the flavor it added, and they both turned out delicious.

My aunt made these AMAZING Baby BLT's, which were a major pain in the behind, but were ridiculously delicious. It took forever to core the tiny tomatoes, but they were cute and wonderful. I'm thinking about making the spread for a sandwich, with sliced tomatoes. *swoon* She also made some yummy Pepperoni Pizza Puffs, in a mini muffin tin so they'd be dainty and easy to handle. They were a bit on the lukewarm side by the time we ate, but were still good dipped in marinara sauce.

We also had a veggie bar (fashioned after this idea) and a cracker and cheese tray.

For dessert I had my amazing baker friend fix up 2 dozen cupcakes, which were wonderful as his stuff always is, and my aunt made these adorable Kiss Pies. Just be warned, they're so little you can easily pop 47 of them in your mouth before you realize they're all gone.

The bride to be and her mother had asked me awhile back about making purple punch for the wedding. Earlier in the year I made some delicious blue punch for my bestie's baby shower, and I figured I could easily make it purple by changing the kool-aid mixture.

The original recipe was one packet of blue-raspberry Kool-Aid, mixed with one bottle of Sprite and one can of frozen pina-colada juice concentrate. It was seriously the best punch I've ever had.

So, I just swapped out the blue-raspberry for grape, and voila! Purple Punch. My taste buds must've been off, because I hated it. I thought it was nasty. But all the girls seemed to like it. I needed to make some Saturday for the wedding shower, so I swapped out the pina colada for limeade juice concentrate. It gave it a tangier taste and I liked it MUCH better, but others told me they liked the pina colada version. So, it just depends on your taste buds I guess!

All in all, both showers turned out wonderfully. Friday it was nice getting just the girls together for a night of fun, and Saturday we invited Bub along, and all the guys, and had a good time of talking and chatting, and eating more cake. I've had enough cake to fill me until the wedding, for sure!

I wish I could say that the month is going to slow down, but it's just fixing to gain speed. I have a HUGE freelance project I'm starting this evening, along with 2 other wonderful designers, that needs to be done by January. It's only an entire design of a 200 page history book. I'm sort of cringing inside thinking of all the work I'll be doing in the coming months, but I'm also really excited about it. It's the history of the United Pentecostal Church in Oklahoma, and I'm really honored to be able to work on such an important project.

Oh yeah, and my big sister is coming home!!!! We're really happy someone is getting married because it means sister comes home for a few days! =)

As my father would say, "I said ALL that to say this," October is going to be thus named "The Month of Insanity." I'm sure my blog posts will be few, but hopefully not far between. Just stick with me and I promise things will be interesting!

Happy Monday!

-Jenn (With 2 N's)

A Blessed Birthday Weekend

Can I just say how blessed I am? As much as I hate to admit it, I have a tendency to forget that and feel sorry for myself on many occasions. BUT, I have amazing friends and family, and with their help I had a wonderful birthday weekend.

Friday afternoon I had a late lunch with my best girlfriend at my favorite Chinese fast food joint, and afterwards we found this cute pastry shop. It was a brand new business, and we had fun trying out what they had to offer!

We both tried the strawberry cupcake with fresh strawberries baked into the cupcake, and topped with a delicious cream cheese icing.

It was pretty yummy. :)

After lunch I went to her house, where she (bless her) helped me sew together my circle garland for the dinner party I was having that evening. She's a dear, because it took a little longer than we had expected. BUT, we got it done! (Check back later in the week for a short tutorial.)

After we finally got the garland done, I rushed home to get the dining room decorated for dinner with Bestie #2, and it turned out just like I wanted! Simple, but fun.

On the way home I stopped and bought a bouquet of fresh flowers for my vases. The colors worked perfectly with my decor, and the entire bouquet was only $7!

I was really happy with how the whole thing came together at the last minute. The day before (Thursday) I had gone to Hobby Lobby with all my girlfriends *wink* and purchased my "place mats" and had them laminated.

I also snagged the two smaller vases (yellow & purple) to go with the two larger ones I already had, as well as the adorable straws. I just love those straws. I think I'm going to use them all the time now. They are made of plastic, so they are completely re-usable!

The place mats worked great and I loved them. I also picked up the mason jars, used as cups, from a dear friend who still has 5 dozen left in his garage. (Anyone need cups??)

And see those gorgeous green bowls? Those are my first Anthropologie purchase ever. I went with the bestie last summer and they had these half price. I just couldn't pass them up! And now I wish I'd gotten 6 instead of 4.

And here's the garland! It looked super cute in our huge window. However, there were some complications with it. But that can be saved for later. =)

Father fixed some ah-mazing steaks (on my request) and we had fresh salad and baked potato to go along. It was deeeee-licious!

And to top it all of, my phenomenally talented friend Dustin, from The Frosted Bowl made me this adorable cake!! He even made sure to put the 2nd N in my name. (See how he accented it? I just loved it!) My silly mother wanted me to have a candle to "blow out" so she stuck this one on there. She's a mess!

So see...I'm a blessed bird! (As my bestest friend would say.) Friday night was so much fun with my bestie and her hubby and baby. We talked, laughed, shared funny stories and jokes, attempted to play a game, and just had a wonderful time together.

I can't wait to see what this next year has to offer. I'm ready, so bring it on!!

-Jenn (With 2 N's)

Summer Time. Party Time. Any time.

This weekend my very best friend and her husband are coming to dinner for my birthday! I had all these grand plans of having all of my closest friends over, and I was so sad that half of them already had plans. BUT, I get to have celebratory lunch with Bestie#1 on Friday, and celebratory dinner with Bestie#2 that evening! Jesus blessed me with some spectacular friends.

I normally don't go all out for dinner parties, but I wanted to make this one special. It will be the first time Bestie#2 has been to my house with her newest addition, Sir Andrew! So I wanted to make it extra special.

I've been searching Pinterest and the internet for easy DIY ideas for decorating, and I love all the ideas I've found!

I had the idea to use a piece of laminated scrapbook paper as placemats, and I really like this idea from Martha herself. Simply cut a V into the corner of your placemat to make a cute pop-up name tag!

I've been seeing these adorable garlands and mobiles made of circles. In our dining room we have a beautiful full length window, so I'm planning on making these to hang there. I can't wait to see the effect with the sun shining through the window!

I just love the feeling of this set-up. I planned on having flowers on the table, in some bright, colorful vases I've been saving.

This is my perfect color palette. I love vibrant, bright colors, and these will be what I decorate with.

I really like the look of mason jars as cups, and have access to the jars with handles on them, which I love. I also really like the cute, striped straws that have been cropping up everywhere lately. I plan on getting some to match the color theme!

I can't wait to show you guys how it all turns out!!

-Jenn (With 2 N's)

Click here to visit my Party Ideas pinboard on Pinterest!