Our Ceremony 10/18/08

I never day dreamed about  what my wedding would be like as a girl or even as a teenager. The only thing I always pictured was that I would get married outdoors and then it would be a fairly intimate gathering. So, with those two things in mind and everything else thrown together in our short three and half month engagement, the Lord blessed me with a dream wedding. We were truly blessed by our family and friends who did more than I can begin to tell you to make this special day a beautiful and perfect memory for us.
I can't think of a more fun day in my life. When I finally got to meet my groom (before the ceremony) we spent the afternoon having an absolute blast taking pictures. (this was BIG because sean never likes taking pictures but we were in never never land!) We laughed so much and it was all such a surreal experience. I think we enjoyed the ceremony even more. After we walked ran out we looked at each other and both said lets do that again!
I like doing things different. I love some traditions but I didn't feel like tradition fit our personality and so I did some of things a little different.
For instance, I didn't use any traditional music for the ceremony.
I had Irish instrumental Music for the processional called Dueling Violins.
I walked into Stand By Me by Otis Redding
We Prayed and Had the Unity Ceremony to A Living Prayer
and We walked out to I'm a Believer by Smashmouth

It was fun and refelected our personalities and I wanted it to be that way.
I felt like I had been to a hundred of the same weddings and they were all beautiful but I'm not so much into the same.  So I wanted our day to be about us. Even if I had to buck tradition a little and walk over a pool and walk out to rock music and not have a single white tablecloth or a huge multi faceted bouquet or a veil and my bridesmaids held their little bitty flowers in one hand to the side as they walked down instead of in front of them clutched between their two hands.
But hey, I did have something old, new and blue!

Going to meet my groom (before the ceremony)

Hubba hubba!

embrace

Our adorable barefoot ring bearer

Our too cute flower girl

My sweet God-babies

Watching our step

Here comes the bride

Dad, trying not to cry 

My groom (I wonder what J was saying to him here...)

Leave and Cleave

Me, trying not to cry

Praying

Sand ceremony with both our parents

The Vows

The Rings

The Kiss

The Onlookers

The New Mr. and Mrs. 

The Exit

The successful exit...Somehow everyone thought we would fall in the pool...

The Happy Couple

Stopping to watch my beautiful wedding party exit against my coordinator's wishes ;)

My lil sis, Sean's Big Bro

My Big Sis and her Hubs

My Big Brother and His Wife

Sean's youngest sister and brother

one of my besties and Sean's buddy 

Another Bestie and my other Big Bro 

I'm missing the last  two couples picture :(

My oldest friend, another one of sean's sister's and two more of sean's friends

:(

My Mom er nem

Hubs  Mom er nem

We were so blessed with a perfect day.

The contribution from our family and friends was enormous. 

Praise the Lord for providing more than I ever imagined.

Linked up here Check out natasha's absolutely gorgous day!

Wedding Week Link Party: Engagement Photos

I'm linking up for 

Today is engagement photos.

I have a lot more but my old computer crashed and I haven't been able to get my pictures off of it

 :(

Here are a few I was able to pull from other sources.

The link party starts here.

Also, Visit Valerie here for tomorrows wedding week link up.

I don't want to be lonely no more

Hubs left this afternoon for a mens retreat while I was at work. I don't know how pilot and military wives and wives of other traveling men folk do it. I guess you get used to it but I surely am not used to it. I miss him alot and I haven't even made it through one night. Atleast I have BW (dog) to curl up next to me. 

I'm gonna do something like this tomorrow for St. Patricks (and more importantly for my big sisters birthday.) No way I'm getting pinched with my green jeans!

P.S. ignore the random clutch to the left side. I might have forgotten to take that off...

The Good, The Bad and The Nasty: yard sales, dog fights,missed alarms, learning to drive, blue birds and parasites

I am way to tired to elaborate on anything but I want to share the highlights of our weekend. The good the bad and the nasty.

1. Saturday AM: Successful yard sale, made $600. Not Bad for a bunch a stuff I wasn't using any way.

We have had a yard sale pretty much every year since we have been married. The first year we made $1200! It was like a bachelor closeout sale. Canoes, tires, rims, chipper shredders, speakers, etc. But I sold a lot of purses, clothes and accessories too. 

2. Saturday Afternoon: Some one stole our dog. We were able to get him back after an hour of confrontation and finally threatening to call police etc. It's a weird long story. The good news is he is back home now.

3.Sunday AM: Woke up to someone ringing doorbell at 7am because they thought my YARD sale was on sunday...did you see anything in my yard? 

4.went back to sleep and woke up 5 minutes before church started....made it in the doors just as the sermon was starting and even picked up Sean's sister on the way. Impressive.

5. I taught myself to drive a stick shift after a two minute phone lesson from hubs. I made it from our house to the shop, about 4 miles away, and back, by myself . Very Impressive. 

6. We made cute little  blue bird houses together. We made them out of things lying around the shop. The walls are  cedar fence boards and the roofs are cedar shakes leftover from the shed garden closet Sean built for his mom. I even did the power drilling. Is anyone impressed yet? 

7. I know your just dying to get to the nasty part. I think I have a parasite. Yep, pretty sure I brought some friends back with me from the cruise. Bet your weren't expecting that. When I say nasty, I deliver. I could be wrong and my symptoms aren't the typical symptoms you hear of but they are all symptoms of parasitic infections. We'll see, I'm going in for a test tomorrow but it will take a while to get results back.

So there is our weekend. Good, bad and pretty nasty, wouldn't you say?

What I Love About Sundays

Our Sunday in pictures

Does it seem like alot of our day consisted of pie? That's because it did. 

Sunday's are the best!

Little Red Table Re-Do

I painted this little sofa table red last september. My Vision was to paint it a barn red color and antique it. I you-tubed and googled (wow, those terms are probably going to be in the actual dictionary soon. Scary.) how to antique wood furniture. I decided that it was too many steps and a bit too much work for the time I had allowed for this project. So, I took a shortcut. I'm a little hesitant to admit it but I spray painted the table red. I had the intention of sanding it down a ton anyway so I felt okay with my decision. The only problem is I ran out of time and motivation to start the sanding process. So for the last five monthes it has looked like this:

Not terrible, but not what I had in mind. Last night I was really tired but determined to do something a little crafty or creative. I decided to tackle the table. So I stopped at Lowe's on the way home to grab some sand paper for my palm sander only to get home and find that my sander had gotten cleaned out of the garage and taken to Sean's workshop. I didn't feel like waiting for him to go get it, nor did I think he would fancy the idea of me asking him to do so at 7:00 on a friday night.

Once I get in my mind that I'm gonna do something I better go on and do it because by the next day I will have moved on to wanting to crochet a shower curtain or something.

So I sanded it by hand. So much for my spa manicure, huh? I mean I would have had to do alot of the sanding by hand anyway but some of the really hard stuff, like the top, would have been nice to have a little back up strength. My wrists were aching by halfway through.

Here is an upclose of how bright it was before:

                                      

See the difference?

                                      

I wish I could tell you it was finished but I actually didn't even touch the back or side panels or the back two legs. My wrists were literally throbbing. Thank you Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Also I need to work on the drawers a little more and a few other spots. But I'm happy with it. It looks just how I envisioned it! I asked Hubs, What do you think of the table?  Hubs: It looks old and beat up. 

Me: THANK YOU! 

 The instagram version of the mostly  finished product: