ENGAGEMENT PICS

Just wanted to show you some of my engagement pics! Here is a collage of my faves. We took them in downtown Memphis. We were going to go to the Botanical Gardens, but they charge way too much to let photographers take pictures there. We probably just should have snuck in! :)

My favorite background is acutally this big red door that our photographer found at this Episcopal Church near Lebonheur. It's so pretty

I also like the bridge picture, just because I love Memphis :) I wish we would have know which hotel everyone goes to to take pictures, so we could have went on the roof at night and got one.

One of my other faves is the one with my ring. I love love love my ring and I think it pops off of the rocks

We don't know which ones we want to order, but I don't want to get carried away since we have limited wall space in our house, and I know I am going to want TONS & TONS of wedding pictures :) We do have a $50.00 print credit to use at least though since we won our engagement pics in a contest.

SAVE THE DATES

I ordered out Save the Dates today :) I'm so excited about them because they are magnets! People can just stick them on their fridge so they won't lose them. I know when I have paper invitations, they always seem to get lost. Lately I have been putting them up in my kitchen on the cabinets so I don't forget about going to things. They even come with some super cute address labels too :) Hope you likes!

Since I have gotten a little older, I have friends getting married like crazy. Baby Showers, Wedding Showers, Birthday parties.....I love it though :) It's fun to be able to go to things and stay connected to old friends. I still need to sit down and decide what kind of parties I want to have for the wedding. It's only 5 months away, and I haven't even thought about what kind of showers I want. I think I just want to do one big couple's shower somewhere, because I'm not so much into going to parties alone. I would rather have Keith there, since most of our wedding guests I have met through him and his family. I probably won't end up having one until at least the end of June though, since school is so crazy and I'm trying to find a job.

Speaking of job.....I am going INSANE thinking about everything that is about to change. I have never been at a point in my life where I didn't know where I was going to be in 3 months. I am a planner to my core, and to not know what my life will be like after May 27th scares me SOOOO much. I know everything will work out, but I also know that I have a dream for my career, and I have recently found an opportunity for that dream to become a reality. I am praying to the nursing job gods every single day, because I am dying to get my dream job. I worked so hard to get to here, so I'm hoping my interviews go well and my passion for nursing comes through to them. Wish me luck!

Today's countdown: 149 days to the wedding &
                                  43 days until graduation!!!

Ella Mae or Marley,Jr.?

I love my sweet sweet girl Ella Mae. She's a chocolate lab that Keith & I got back in September. She has been so much fun, and is such a smart girl. Ryder & Lucy are still getting used to her, but they get better and better with eachother every day.

Now I know that labs are crazy and adventurous, but I work really hard to train Ella to be a good house dog. I can't stand it when people have dogs that stay outside and only see their owners once a day for food & water. To me, that's a cruel way to treat an animal that wants nothing more than to love on you. Ever since we got Ella, she has been an inside dog and has been really good at not chewing stuff up. We can even leave our shoes on the floor without her messing with them. I wish I could say the same for my brush and my hair clips though. We are still working on that.

 It took us 4 months to potty train her, which was rough, but we finally got it! Part of her problem is that she got a UTI that slowed down the process. We had to put her in diapers because she just constantly peed in the floor for a week.

Anywho, we made it through all of that, and now she is almost 9 months old! The last time we weighed her, she was 67 pounds! Hopefully she won't get any bigger, but I bet she does since she is still a puppy. She has learned to sit and lay down, and right now we are working on stay and come. I'm hoping one day she can be a pet therapy dog, and those are the 4 tricks she has to know really well to become one. She learned fetch in 2 seconds, but that's probably because she's a lab and it's in their blood to know how to do that. I love her tons, but I have one SERIOUS problem with her behavior. THIS:

She refuses....and I mean REFUSES to stop digging in this one spot in the yard. I have GOT to figure out a way to get her to stop,because Keith may or may not kill her. (I kid, I kid, but really.....it's bad). There is this one spot in the yard that just stays muddy because she goes over there and just dominates it with her face every time we leave her outside for more than a few minutes. Here is what she has done to it:

Keith had it covered up with an older pot and some boards, but she just pushes those aside and gets to it. PLEASE STOP DIGGING ELLA!!! PUH-LEASE! Everytime she does it I have to go hose her off and I get soaked. At least the weather is warmer now, so I don't freeze when I'm doing it :) Other than the digging, I love her so so much. Isn't she pretty when she is all nice and clean?

The other funny thing about her that drives me crazy sometimes is that she is always in the way when you are trying to get stuff done. If you are cooking or doing laundry, you are constantly tripping over her. She just likes to lay in the weirdest places too, like the doorway (which is right in the way, of course!)

I love this picture. I told her to look at me so I could take the picture, and she decides to only open one eye. Smarty pants ;) The only other crazy thing she is obsessed with is water. I'm talking about drinking from the toilet, running into the bathroom every time you go into it, ripping down the shower curtain and jumping in the shower with you obsessed with water. Yes that really happened, but I don't think you want to see pictures of me trying to get her out of the shower while I'm in it :) In conclusion I'm so glad that we have Ella, if for no other reason that to make us laugh every day. If we can get this digging thing under control, she will be such a great part of our lives for many years to come :)

Trying to be crafty ...

One thing I wish I were better at: crafting! I LOVE LOVE LOVE to read other people's blogs about how they make all these neat little things for their homes. I am super jealous of anyone who can sew too. It takes me 30 minutes just to get the thread ready, and I still don't know how to tie it right. I need to learn before I start having kids, or Keith is gonna kill me for spending a million dollars on cute little boutique stuff for them to wear. I just love it so much :) All the cute little applique shirts, and the tutus, and the monogram on everything & (okay I'm stopping now!) The one thing I have taught myself to do is to make letters to hang on the wall with ribbon. I just love it for baby rooms. I got to experiment with Marlee's letters first, and they look a little rough, but still alot cuter than if I paid someone 12.00 a letter to do it for me (crazy price!)

After I did Marlee's letters, I decided to make some for baby Tinley's room too.

I think these turned out a little cuter, but I'm biased because I'm in love with black & green, and that's what

 April decided to do Tinley Jo's nursery in:

I finally figured out how to tie them in a better bow when I got to do Emme's letters for my friend Ashley, and now I'm obsessed with making these things! I can't wait to make some for baby Garrison's room once Patrick & Juli pick out the decorations and the bedding :)

So now I'm even more obsessed with personalizing everything I buy as baby gifts, since I figured out how to make these cute :) I hope you guys like them!

 I also personalized some wedding presents for Marlee, Rylee, & Tyler (ringbearer & flowergirls for the wedding). Aren't these just so cute?! They look even better with their initials on them than they did before I put them on there. This will be cute for them to carry around on the wedding day, so they don't spill drink all over their outfits :) I got lucky finding them, because they are the perfect size for them!

162 days....

162 days seems like so much time. When I say 5 months though, I start to panic inside a little :) I have only had one change or new development when it comes to wedding planning.....the Bridesmaids' shoes I ordered before are a no go. You know how stuff always looks better online? Yeah, that happened to me. They looked so great, and seemed to have all the bright fall colors I was looking for to tie in all the dresses. When you look at them in real life though, they are full of pink and purple and don't work with my colors at all (sad face). I never really have been a fan of wedge shoes either, and now I just hate them more. It just seems like an awful lot of shoe to be lugging around all day long. Anywho, I decided with a few of the girls to just pick out a pair of shoes from David's Bridal and have them dyed the color of all their dresses, since all brown or all black shoes wouldn't match everyone. Pretty simple solution, but David's Bridal shoes ARE NOT cheap. The cheapest ones I could find that were pretty were $59.00! Thank goodness the dress is super cheap, and they can actually wear it again. Dyeing them only costrs $4.00 too, so that's also a relief. Here's a pic of them, except they will be the same colors of the girl's dresses when they are done :)

Bridesmaids Dresses

The time has finally come, and I have locked in my decision for bridesmaid's dresses. This has been the hardest decision for me to make, since I could not decide what colors I wanted to use. About a month ago, I finally decided that I would use fall colors for the wedding. It started out that way in the first place, and I changed the color scheme 8,000 times after that, until finally I came back to the first choice I had made. That's how I like to do things I guess. I second guess myself alot, and this was apparently no different. I finally walked into David's Bridal friday afternoon with Milena & Ande and just decided. Thank goodness someone else was there with me to give me advice. I never realized that having someone confirm or deny your thought could lead you to making a decision faster. I always assumed that opinions would give you mixed signals, so you should just decide everything for yourself. They helped me a ton, however, when it came down to the final decision. I think I kept trying to second guess myself because I had never seen these colors in a wedding before, and I was afraid it would be too loud/tacky for people's tastes. Ande made a very good point of telling me that I like the colors, and Keith likes the colors, and the wedding is about us more than anything else. That's all I really needed to hear her say to finally make me decide that these colors were the right choice for me. I know this decision wasn't supposed to be this hard (it's kind of petty when you really think about all the other hard decisions you have to make in a lifetime), but it was....and I'm so glad it's decided and I get to share it with everyone today.

So the final decision about the bridesmaids dresses are: fern, ruby, golden, tangerine, cocoa, sunbeam, and wine. WHEW! I did it :) Now I know you are freaking out inside and saying, "OMG!  Seriously? How/Why did she pick so many colors!?". Well.....my absolute FAVORITE part about fall is seeing all the leaves change colors. I LOVE LOVE LOVE seeing all the pretty colors, and they are also my favorite kind of pictures to take. Nothing is better to me than a backdrop of bright colored leaves all around you when you want to capture memories. I also love the football type weather in the fall too, which is why we picked a fall evening setting to get married. I also decided to alternate between bright and dark colors so one section of girls wouldn't look louder than another section. That's was Milena's idea actually :) Good call. I picked out the actual dresses myself, and fell in love with the ones that had pockets and ruching (my 2 favorite things a dress has to offer). Anywho, hope you guys like it, because I'm in love with it!

I also ordered their shoes yesterday, and they should be here sometime next week. I got an awesome deal at Kohl's for $20 off each pair. I have been looking for some wedge platform sandals for them to wear for a while, since we will be outside most of the day for the wedding, and I didn't want them to have to dig their heels out of the grass every 5 seconds. I found the cutest sandals to tie in all the fall colors, and they match every girl's dress really well too.

I love that they kind of "dress the outfit down" a little. I didn't want the wedding to be super fancy, but I still wanted it to look really nice. I'm really happy with my how it's all turning out, and I can't wait to see everyone all dressed up and pretty on our big day :)

A Great Weekend...

I love pretty weather. I'm in a better mood just by waking up to sunshine in the morning. This weekend was so so pretty, and I  hope it keeps it up for a while before it starts getting miserable hot this summer. Saturday evening, I had a Scentsy party at my house. It was fun getting to see everybody, and I got a lot of free stuff just for hosting. I hope people had a good time there, even though I couldn't figure out how to total any of the orders at first :)

Thanks everybody who came to the party. I love having people over, and I hope you guys had fun and ate good!!

Scentsy is one of my favorite things to keep in the house because it always smells so good when I walk in the house. It is the only thing I have ever found to cover up the smell of the dogs being in the house all the time. I never knew what scents I liked because you can't usually smell everything before you order them, but the Scentsy consultant had all the little smeller samples for us to choose from, which made it so much nicer and easier to order stuff. My nose was fried after smelling every single sample though!

I also got a lot of free stuff just for my friends buying stuff, and for hosting a party. I added it all up last night and I am getting about $250 worth of Scentsy merchandise for $75! Not too shabby, and I will definetly not have to buy any more scents until next year. I'm giving away some of the stuff as gifts too. Here is my new Scentsy warmer that I got at the party. I love that's it green, and it will work for Spring & Summer so I won't have to switch it out for a while:

My favorite part about our mantel decorations is definetly our prom glasses from high school. I'm thinking about using them in the wedding as our toasting flutes, because I think it's so cute that we went to both proms together :)

Sunday Ande came over and we went to Em's bridal shower together. Em definetly had one of the nicest showers I've ever seen. Her table centerpieces and her cake were beautiful, and she got a ton of gifts! It's so great to see so many people come together to celebrate people getting married. Her wedding colors are so pretty, and I can't wait to see how gorgeous the wedding is. Ande's baby girl, Amelia, got sleepy and fussy so we had to leave the shower early, and she ended up taking a nap on my bed once we got back. I don't think a sleeping baby could look any cuter than this:

Isn't she pretty? Even though she looks just like her daddy, I can already see alot of Ande in her personality. Amelia LOVES to make funny faces at everyone, and I don't think Ande and I have a single picture together from college where she isn't making some kind of funny face. I love all my friends having babies before me, because it teaches me so much for when Keith and I start a family. Plus, I seriously love to spoil them :) I used to be terrified of raising my own child for fear of screwing it up, but seeing how great all my friends are at being mommies gives me a lot more confidence. It's nice to know that I will have friends that have done it before me to give me advice and stuff too :) After Amelia woke up, we all sat outside and watched the dogs play. It was so nice getting to just sit outside, talk, and do nothing!

Spring Break is over and I'm so sad, because I am to the point where I loathe school and just want to graduate SO bad. I'm also back to job hunting on Monday, which is super nerve wracking to me. If I don't get hired somewhere before May, I just might lose my mind. Everybody cross their fingers for me to get one soon :)

67 days until graduation!!!!!