Photo Friday: October porch

Here are the pumpkins we picked out last Saturday at the Elk Grove Giant Pumpkin & Harvest Festival!


They're sitting on our porch, along with my new cute Halloween sign


and my autumn wreath on the door.

Thankful Thursday: Mom & Dad

Click this button to go to Miss I Dew's blog!

Today I’m thankful for my parents. They’re awesome!

Lately I realize more and more how much I’m turning into my mother. She's one of the kindest, most generous people I know, and yes she gets on my nerves sometimes, but I'm happy to be like her.

If it weren't for my Mom and Dad, I could not be the confident, independent woman I am today.

I love you guys!

Wishful Wednesday: Appearance

“I wish” .... I could change one physical trait about myself and that would be ______.


Click the Wishful Wednesday button to go to Kelsey’s blog!

I’m a very confident person, but there are still several things that come to mind with this prompt. I guess the number one would be my legs. They're just way too big, and I don't think any amount of exercise and/or diet will make them petite. I'd love to feel great it short shorts, but it's not happening. That's just the way I'm made, unfortunately.

Goal #52: Buy flowers at the farmers market

For a while, I've been wanting to arrange the flowers for our wedding myself (with the help of several lovely people to whom I'll be extremely grateful). Florists are crazy expensive, and my thought is "how hard can it be?" I gave it a try on Sunday, since it'll soon be cold and they won't be selling flowers at the farmers market.

My favorite flowers are dahlias:

This arrangement isn't by me. I'm just showing you how pretty dahlias are.

I really wanted to get those, but the first stand we went to didn't have any, so I assumed no one else would either. I just bought some zinnias for $6. It was cheap, that's good, but I was sad when I saw beautiful dahlias later on. Maybe next weekend...

Here's what I did. I've done some reading on what you're supposed to do to make them last longer, and these were the things that I remembered.

First I pulled off all of the leaves.

Then I clipped off the ends of the stems under running water, and put them in a vase with water.

I used half of them to make a bouquet, and half for a centerpiece. The centerpiece is awesome, and exactly what I want. The bouquet needs some practice - but that also has to do with me not loving zinnias. Next time I'll definitely make sure to buy the right type of flowers.

Here are the centerpieces:

Thank you Ikea for 100 tealights for $4!

I love them! They'll look even better with roses and dahlias. I don't really have detailed instructions. I just cut the stems to the right length, and put them in the mason jars (which is what I want to use at our wedding. I need to start collecting 3 different sizes for each table). It was easy :)

For the bouquet, I taped together groups of 3-4 flowers with floral tape (err, duct tape. I need to buy floral tape).

Once I had enough smaller groups of flowers, I taped them all together into a larger bouquet at the top and bottom.

This bouquet has about 30 zinnias and it's smaller than I'd like. I would have added more but I wanted to save enough for the vases.

I wrapped the stems with ribbon that I had already, and secured it with a pin. I'll buy prettier ribbon later.

I think it went pretty well for my first go at DIY flowers! I'm confident that this will work out and we'll save hundreds of dollars.

I spent about an hour or less on this. I think with more people we should be able to do more centerpieces quickly.

I'm actually looking forward to doing this with my mom - I think it'll be fun :)

P.S. click here for my list of 100 goals to accomplish before my 30th birthday (buy flowers at the farmers market was one of them).

Update: I put these together Sunday and it's now Tuesday. They still look good. Yay :)

New look

I redesigned my blog last week! What do you think? I got tired of the old one and I think this one’s cute. See the lighthouse picture at the top of the page? I know it doesn’t really match, but isn’t it pretty? That’s the lighthouse where we’re getting married! On the other side of it there’s a big grassy area where our wedding ceremony will be ♥

Photo Friday

I'm going to start posting some of my favorite photos every Friday, because it's catchy and fun... and I think it's a good idea. Sometimes they'll be photos taken by me, and sometimes they'll just be something pretty that I like. I'm having fun already!

For my first Photo Friday I went way back into my MySpace pictures to February 2006, my first trip to Hawaii. This is my brother Tom and I on the North Shore of Oahu.

Thankful Thursday

I fear that I may be going overboard on the "post to match the day" thing (I have another original one coming tomorrow - original as in I made it up... impressed?). Oh well, I came across this idea and it's so cute that I just have to participate!

Click the Thankful Thursdays button to go to Miss I Dew's blog (she's getting married this weekend!)

Thankful Thursday is simple and sweet. I think being optomistic is a great quality to have, and I always try to see the positive in situations. Blogging Thankful Thursdays helps you to appreciate what you have, and there's always something to be thankful for.

Today I am thankful for changing weather. This week it's in the 70s and 80s. Especially compared to last week's 100, this is perfect! My fall wreath is hanging on the door, we're going to the Elk Grove Pumpkin & Harvest Festival, and soon everyone's going to be in a great holiday mood. I'm thankful for Fall!

Images from weheartit.com