I'm always on the look out for new kitchen gadgets that make cooking easier, so I was excited to find these. They are called Better Batter Whisks and they help scrape the bowl while you mix things. Notice they have little fins on them. What a genius idea! I think these are going on my Christmas list along with some other fun things I pinned from the Sur La Table website.
If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know I love owls. And in the winter, I love sweaters, so of course I love this! My sister-in-law is an awesome knitter, so I'm going to have show her this. I think she made a scarf that was similar to this before.
And you know I love dresses even though I rarely wear them or buy them for that matter. I love the style of this dress and the pleats are cute. Now if only it was a color that didn't make me look sickly!
With the cake cut, it was time to take part in a couple more wedding traditions.
First up, tossing the bouquet. My florist made a small toss bouquet with the same flowers as my bouquet. I'm so glad I did this because there was no way I was tossing my gorgeous bouquet! Before the toss, it was displayed on our cake table.
I went with the obvious music choice for this one.
I'm a notoriously bad thrower, but I told BM T I was trying to aim for her. She was right behind me, so this shouldn't be too hard, right?
Notice that BM T is clearly ready to grab it while MOH L and BM R are hiding in the back.
She made a valiant effort to snag it while the others looked on.
But unfortunately, I threw it a little too hard and it went over her head to the one person NOT trying to catch the bouquet!
I love that everyone pointed at her just in case you couldn't figure out who caught it.
So did it work? Well since MOH L has no intention of getting married, I'd say it never had a chance. But one of those single ladies has gotten married since our wedding. The girl in the yellow dress is my new sister-in-law!
I've been taking my photo challenge photos, but I haven't shared them with you! Here's the next batch!
A quick trip to the grocery store after work helped me get this one.
I work retail, so I spend my day with clothes. Hanging them, folding them, cleaning up messes left by other people, etc. And just what is it about a perfectly folded table that makes people want to mess it up? So when I get home, the last thing I really want to do is deal with clothes. So the laundry piles up and doesn't get put away and often my clothes do just end up on the floor. Eventually I get sick of it and clean it up and the vow to keep it clean. And then it just starts all over again.
The husband and the fat cat.
Forgive the poor lighting. Our stairs are naturally very dark and I didn't open the blinds at the bottom. The butterflies were cross-stitched by my grandma and they hung just like this in her house for years. When we bought the house, my aunt sent me these since she knows I like butterflies and I just had to hang them just like they were in my grandma's house.
I admit that I got off track and forgot to take pictures everyday. I decided to try to make up some that I missed on a trip to the zoo last weekend. The peacock was resting in the barnyard area of the zoo and he very nicely posed while I took pictures of his beautiful coloring.
I took a nap this day and missed most of the sunset. Here's what I saw from our back step.
I got the urge to paint my nails, so here's a portion of nail polish collection.
From our trip to the zoo.
My favorite animal at our local zoo, the red panda. This one was very active and I got lots of cute pictures.
Knowing my love of cake, you know I couldn't be in the same room as our gorgeous wedding cake and not want to cut into it already.
We ordered our cake from a local bakery. They had made the cake for a wedding I had attended a few years ago & I remembered how delicious that cake was when I was planning our wedding.
We went for a tasting and met with the baker to discuss design. I knew I wanted a square cake with 3 tiers and I wanted to incorporate our argyle theme on the middle cake. Originally, I only wanted the ribbons on the other 2 tiers, but after looking through the baker's photos, I liked the subtle diamond pattern. I liked that it looked slightly quilted and that it mimicked the argyle pattern.
Each tier was a different flavor. The bottom was white cake with raspberry filling, which is my favorite. The middle was chocolate with chocolate filling and the top was white with vanilla filling. We didn't plan to save our top, so I wanted a variety for people to choose from.
I picked up our topper at Michael's. It was on sale and I had a coupon, so I got a great deal on it!
Our DJ announced that we were cutting the cake and played the song I chose for this occasion.
We really had no idea what we were doing. We just cut into the cake and hoped for the best!
There was no chance of face smashing here. I had already warned M that any cake smashing would not be well received and I like cake way too much to waste it that way.
Yes, we used forks. They were on the table and we just naturally used them. It seemed a lot classier than shoving my fingers in somebody's mouth.
Mmmmm, raspberry filling! Our caterer includes cutting the cake in their packages, so once we made our cut, they took over and our guests helped themselves. And I'm proud to say that I had 2 pieces of cake at my wedding. I finished the piece that we cut and then later had a slice of chocolate. We actually ordered more cake than we needed, so we ended up taking the entire top home with us. We ended up sharing it with our families since we left on our honeymoon a couple days later.
We loved our cake so much, that we order all birthday cakes from our baker now.
My friend T first pinned this and I just love it. I would love to have a closet this big and of course, the clothes to fill it. Love the way the shoes are displayed. No more crawling on the floor to find the mate somewhere in my tiny closet. And of course, if I had a closet this grand, it would have to have a chandelier!
And if I had that closet, I might have the occasion to actually wear this dress. I just love sparkly dresses, but a dress like this would sit in my closet unworn for a long time.
I'm always looking for cute nursery/kids room ideas and this wall caught my eye. This is a great way to do a rainbow wall and I love that they used pastel shades instead of bright primary colors.
Now that the Winter 2011 colors (which I still haven't seen in person) have been released , a lot of people are starting to think about Spring 2012.
If you want to see a sneak peek of the colors that will be released in Spring 2012, head over to Oh My Vera.
There's been a lot of interest in what colors will be retiring next. (Yes, I do see what you're searching for when you stumble across my little blog.)
Well, I donned my Sherlock hat and grabbed a couple nicotine patches* and headed off to do some detective work. And here are my results...
I believe that Vera Bradley will be retiring 5 colors next spring. They usually retired 4 at a time, so this is a bit unusual, but I think I see why they are doing it.
English Meadow
Night & Day
Symphony in Hue
Twirly Birds Pink
Buttercup
So why these colors? Buttercup, Twirly Birds Pink, Symphony in Hue, and Night & Day are four of the oldest patterns still active. Twirly Birds Navy was retired last time, but they kept the pink. Now with Tea Garden released, there are 2 colors that benefit the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer, so it was time to retire the older color.
The Twirly Bird patterns were released with the already retired Versailles and the to be retired Buttercup, leaving only Baroque active from the Winter 2010 collection.
Symphony in Hue is from Winter 2009 and the other colors it was released with have long been retired. It must have been selling well, but with the release of Suzani in similar colors, it was time to go.
Night and Day has been a popular pattern since its release in Summer 2010. It will be the last of that collection to be retired. The release of Camellia in Spring 2012 will add another black and white pattern, so Night & Day is being cleared out.
English Meadow was released this year in the summer. So why retire it so quickly? Honestly, I don't know! I do know that Vera Bradley will retire colors that are not selling well, so perhaps it's just not popular. It's a little strange to see such a new color retire already, but I'm sure there's a good reason. Time to stock up if you're an English Meadow fan!
So, what do you think? Sad to see a pattern go? Surprised by any colors? Any idea why English Meadow is being retired so soon? Leave a comment and let's discuss!
*I don't smoke, but I couldn't resist a good Sherlock reference!
With our first dance out of the way, it was time for others to join us on the dance floor.
The one tradition that M and I did not include in our wedding was dancing with our parents. It was awkward enough having to dance by ourselves with everyone watching; we didn't need to do it more than once.
However, the first song our DJ played to open up the dance floor was You Are So Beautiful and my aunt encouraged my dad to dance with me, so I got the father/daughter dance with less awkwardness because there were others on the dance floor.
Speaking of others...
Here's BM T and her boyfriend R. I love this picture of them!
After the sweet slow dances, it got a little silly!
M is not a big dancer, so I danced with T instead.
Another one of my favorite pictures. This is what I look like with I am truly laughing and happy. I think Don't Stop Believin' was playing and I made the girls dance with me.
Some of our guests really got into the dancing.
T and our friend A taught C how to do the lawnmower. That little ham was loving the dance floor.
