Lambeau Field Experience

As 2012 comes to an end, I could do a post and reflect on the last year...but that would take lots of time going through pictures and deciding something from each month of 2011 to blog about...well I don't want to do all that hard work. I'll do it next year :)

On Christmas Day, Tate and I went to Lambeau Field to watch the Packers take on the Bears. Tate's best friend had 2 extra tickets and was wondering if we wanted to buy them. I wasn't sure about going, but the last time I had gone (3+ years ago), I had a bit too much to drink and didn't take full advantage of what a great experience it could be. Everyone talks about this place, even if they dislike the Packers. Both teams that were playing on Christmas, I strongly dislike, but I decided it would be fun to go and to see what it's actually like.

I was so happy that we decided to go. It was so much fun...even though I am not a fan of the Packers. I was actually seated next to a Vikings fan so it make it 10x better!

Tailgating...and the guy taking the picture must have been intoxicated because the picture is blurry!

After tailgating by our vehicle for a bit, we decided to venture off to other tailgating areas and find some of Ed's (Tate's best friend) friends. It took us a while to find them, but we finally did among the 70,000+ in attendance.

After tailgating for a good hour, we ran into some of our really good friends that live in MN and had no idea they were going to be there. It seriously made this experience so much better...I was so elated and screaming and jumping up and down to see them. We ran into them among thousand and thousands of people, so I thought it was crazy that we actually ran into them.

My good friend, Natalie and her sister-in-law Jennifer...love them!!!

The boys

  

Everyone trying to get into the stadium

I loved going to the game and doing something with Tate that he loves so much. He was on cloud 9 the whole time...I mean he was spending time with his wife and best friend while watching his all time fav team, how could get it any better (well it would if I became a Packer fan, but I am sorry...that is not going to happen)!!!!

I have now officially experienced Lambeau Field...once for a Vikings vs Packers game where I lived it up (a little too much) and once as a supporter for my husband and just had a good time!!!

See you in 2012 :)



Sharing is Caring

I'm double posting it up today because I just found something that I ABSOLUTELY have to share!!! I just found a website that is the first invite only shopping community that gives members access to sought-after products in fashion, home and beauty. I was just browsing the site and found lots of things that I want to buy...boots for under $75, dresses under $50, the list goes on and on...

Click the picture to check it out!!!
 

 PS...this website was featured on GMA this morning...so I know it's legit!!! Happy Shopping!!!

Our 2011 Christmas

Hello everyone!! It seems like it's been FOREVER since I blogged...been a busy busy girl. I feel like I have finally caught up with everything at home and work that I can now sit down and blog about our Christmas.

We started decorating for Christmas on Thanksgiving weekend. Tate put up the tree and I decorated (Tate put the star on top). Mya really wanted to help Daddy put up the tree...it was so precious :)

I wish I had more items to decorate for the Holiday in our home. I like to go shopping for these items after Christmas because everything is usually 50% off. I did make due with what we had, but I most definitely went the day after Christmas this year and got some good stuff!!

We had many great Christmas celebrations with both of our families. We are very blessed to have so many loves ones to spend this joyous holiday with.

We started our Christmas celebration a week early by going to my parents. Since Tate and my family live 4.5 hours apart, my mom was willing to have our Christmas celebration the weekend before Christmas so that we wouldn't have to travel in one weekend to both places. We decided we will be switching off each year to each others family.

We had a great time @ my parents. My grandparents came over also. We had a very yummy brunch and opened gifts.

After having a great time with my family, we then headed over to our Godchild's home to spend time with her and her super cool parents :) Rylee is getting so big and we love seeing her. She loved her Christmas presents...especially the books!! (PS...go check out my Bestie's blog and follow...she just started)

We had all of Tate's family Christmas celebrations in one day...Christmas Eve. We first headed over to his Uncle's place around 3 to celebrate with his Dads side of the family. We had a very big early dinner and lots of yummy treats!!

After spending the afternoon with Tate's Dad side of the family, we then headed over to his Grandma's to spend Christmas with his Mom's side of the family. It was a really good time especially since we got to see Tate's aunt, Anita. She was diasnosed with cancer in August and the prognosis is not good. She was not able to make it to our wedding so we brought all our wedding photos and some raw footage of our ceremony for her to see. She loved seeing it. We loved seeing her and spending this holiday with her.

After filling our stomachs again and having lots of holiday cheer, we headed back to Tate's Mom's and opened gits with her and his brothers. I love love love watcing people open gifts that we gave to them, especially when it was something that they really wanted!! The way their eye light up, brings joy to me.

I hope you all had a great Christmas and was able to spend it with loved ones!! We still have one more Christmas celebration. My mom's side of the family is in a couple weeks. I love when the Holiday is extended :)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, Best Wishes...etc.

We are off to my in-laws in a few hours but I wanted to be sure to post and wish you all a safe and happy holiday!

DIY Wedding Projects...in action

I had done many wedding DIY projects throughout the planning process and I am excited to share all of them in action.

All photos are from the very talented Kimberly Williams Photography.

These hangers were my very first DIY project. I loved making all of them for my bridesmaids. They were fun to make but also very tedious.

I even made one for myself.

So these are not really a DIY project, but I did design them myself. We ordered our Save the Date magnets from Magnet Street and were so happy with the it. We received many compliments on them.

This is a beautiful picture of my wedding veil and yes...I did make this. My mom was a HUGE help with this as she is good with a needle and thread. I could not come to terms with spending $100+ on a head piece that I would only be wearing for around an hour. I always new I wanted a super long veil and new that would cost a fortune. This project was by far the easiest and biggest cost savings.

We knew that as soon as our godchild was born that she would be part of our wedding. We knew that she would only be a little over a year old and knew that walking would have either just began or she may not have even started. We also knew that kids can be very fussy, so we knew we wanted a wagon for Rylee to ride in. This wagon has been a part of our family for some time. My parents currently use it up north to haul around lumber and rocks. I had my parents bring it down so we could use it. I had to repaint it and make it look purdy. It was perfect, free and Rylee looked adorable riding in it.

The invitations was the project that gave me the biggest headache. I am a perfectionist and wanted them certain way. Trying to figure out where everything had to be and to make sure it printed all OK made me stressed, but I really love how they turned out.

The DIY project that I am most proud of is the jewelry I made for my bridesmaids. I knew I wanted them to wear pearls but couldn't find anything that I thought looked good for the price range I was looking in. I feel like the jewelry I made was better than what I had found and was so happy with how they turned out. All the girls liked the necklace and earrings and I feel like they all looked fabulous on them.

Our guestbook...another 1/2 DIY project. I designed it online with our engagement pictures on Mixbook. I loved the idea of having something for our guest to sign and also having it be something that would not be stuffed away in a box for years.

This was our cardbox that I made out of 8x10 frames and put some of our engagement pictures in it. I enjoyed making this and I loved that it's something that I can have in the home now that the wedding is over. I probably will take it apart and use the frame at different places around the house. I love doing projects that can be later a part of our home instead of just being tossed.

Our wonderful programs that were very time consuming and another headache of mine. I do love how they turned out though. This is what I was envisioning from the very beginning of wedding planning so I am happy that I was able to make them and do it at a very low cost. I made about 125 of them for a guest list of about 240. We had about 5 leftover so we made what I think was the perfect amount.

This was my last DIY project and I made it the final week before the wedding. I had bought the hoodie from Old Navy for super cheap and purchased the rhinestones off ETSY. I picked the fonts and ironed it on when I received it. This cost a little less than $20. I still have it and wear it very proudly :)

Birthday Fun

This past Saturday we celebrated a good friends birthday. We started the night out by going out to dinner with a group for friends to Cooper's Pub. It was my first time having dinner there and it was really good. I had the pan crusted walleye and it was really delicious.

Tate and the birthday boy

The birthday boy's better half and myself

 After we had a great dinner, we went back to our friends apartment to enjoy some time before they all went downtown for the evening. While back at the apartment, I was introduced to a new drinking card game and I just have to share it with all of you.

The game is called 'Turrets' (there is many different spellings for this game it seems since it's a newer game)
-At least 3 people needed (the more the better)
-You need a deck of cards to play
-The object of the game is to say a word before the dealer
-Pick a person to be the dealer and the dealers first opponent is the person to their left, then go clockwise.
-The dealer deals down a card face up between them and their opponent. Whatever the card starts with (Q-Queen, T-2, F-4...you get it) the first person to yell a word wins. The loser drinks five. So if the card is a 6 and the dealer yells 'sugar', the dealer wins.
-As the game goes on, it gets harder because no repeats are allowed.
-The word is not allowed to be a proper noun or a number...and it can't be king, queen or jack (the name of the card).
-We played it a lot like F' the dealer. Once the dealer beat 3 people (not in a row since the game is really hard), they can pass the cards onto the next person.

We had so much fun playing this game. It is so difficult to think of a word so fast. I love learning new games and playing them...I'm such a 'game' person. If any of you play...have fun :)

Wedding Thank You

Now that I have all the wedding thank you cards sent out, I can share our actual card with all of you.

Tate and I were going back and forth whether to do a 'personalized' thank you card with a wedding photo or to do a generic one from the local department store that were super cheap. We thought about what we liked when we received wedding thank you cards and it was decided then that we would definitely be doing a personalized thank you with a wedding photo.

We then had to decide where to order our personalized thank you cards. There are so many websites out there that offer photo cards. I did some research and we decided to order them from the same place that we ordered our wedding photo guest book. We decided to order them from Mixbook.

We had loved our book and new that our thank you cards would turn out perfect. It also was helpful that they have groupon deals all the time so I got such a great deal on them.
  

We had our photographer send us some pictures to choose from so that we could get the cards ordered and sent out before she was finished with all our pictures. She sent us 6 different pictures and Tate and I loved them all. We decided on this one because it was different and was so beautiful!!!

We just got all of our wedding photos back this past Saturday and I can't wait to share them with you. I have to go through 600+ photos to decide which ones to post, but it will definitely be worth the wait. :)
 

Guest Post...Wall Stripes

Happy Monday everyone. I have my first guest post from my good friend Lindsey Houston. Lindsey and I went to high school together. Since then, Lindsey decided to leave the frozen tundra for warmer climate and currently resides in Florida with her husband and their cute dog.


Here is the pretty cowgirl :)

Guest Post - Harvest My Design

Hey ya’ll I’m Lindsey and I blog over at Harvest My Design! I’m so thankful and happy that Bridget has asked me to guest post… It’s my first one, yay! My blog focuses on mostly interior design but I also through in some hobbies, fun and a lot of my dog. I’m a little bit country, but ever since seeing the movie Country Strong, I try to be a lot of country. J Hope you enjoy!

Bridget has asked me to post on the wall stripes I recently did in our master bedroom, so I’ll try to give you a step by step tutorial on what I did.

The first thing I did of course was pick out the color I wanted to use for the stripes. We were lucky enough to move into our home with freshly painted walls that are tan in color. The color I chose to contrast with the tan color that was already on the wall was an off-white hue called ‘Country Dairy’ by Behr.

The next step was to measure and pencil out the stripes. I used a ruler to make sure my stripes were 1 foot apart and I used a long level to make sure my stripes were completely straight from floor to ceiling. This was much easier than I anticipated and keep in mind if your lines are off a little bit here and there it won’t be noticeable when you’re done.

Once I had my straight lines penciled in it was time to begin taping off the stripes. This was the most time consuming phase of the project, but relatively easy to do. I made sure I placed my painter’s tape just a hair inside the pencil marks so that the new paint would cover up the pencil lines I had previously drawn. The most important thing to remember in this step is to press over your painters tape with a flat edge such as a credit card, which is what I used.

 After the stripes had been taped off it was time for painting to begin. This was fast and easy… I gave each stripe two coats with my roller brush and went around the trim, ceiling and sides with an angled brush. I have found it’s much easier to do my edges by hand instead of trying to tape them all off, so as you can see I didn’t tape either side of the wall or the ceiling.

I let the ‘Country Dairy’ color dry for 24 hours and then I pulled off the painter’s tape. When pulling off the tape make sure to pull away from the fresh paint. Once you’ve pulled off the tape you may a few spots that you’ll need to touch up whether some paint bled through the tape or the tape pulled off some of the older paint… regardless, make sure to have a little bit of each color available for touchups. Note: if you don’t have previous paint color that was used you can cut a small sample from the wall and take it to be matched. In my experience Sherwin Williams is the very best at matching paint.

Ta Da

Items needed for project:

Paint

Paint Brush

Paint Roller

Level

Pencil

Ruler

Painter’s Tape

Drop Cloth

Step Ladder

Important Tips for this DIY Project:

Make sure to use a flat edge to go over the painter’s tape before you begin painting… it really works!

Always take your painter’s tape off pulling it away from the fresh paint.

Don’t be intimidated by this project… it’s much easier than it looks.

DIY Network also provides a great tutorial that can be seen at the following site: http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/striping-paint-technique/index.html

Thank you Bridget for asking me to guest post on your blog, so fun! I hope this helps anyone who wants to try this DIY project, happy painting! If you have any questions stop by my blog and ask away.