Shannon's Bridal Shower

It was yesterday afternoon. It was a huge success and everyone had a good time! We had 23 people there all together. Shannon looked so beautiful and happy. I'm so excited to be getting such a great sister-in-law. We played about five games in all, plus we gave away as door prizes two of the rose bowls we used as decorations. The flowers were so pretty. Two bowls of red roses and one bowl of burnt orange and pink roses, which we gave to Shannon. The food was delicious- my mom made it all. We had a glazed fruit salad, a chicken caesar tortellini salad, artichoke dip with melba toast, and a BLT dip in cherry tomatoes. I had several people ask me today for recipes!



The Bride-To-Be with my Aunt Carol












I made this sign to tie around the pillar in front of our house. It was a lot plainer than I wanted it to be, but it got the job done.







I was in charge of making sure the present opening went smoothly, while my mom wrote down what she received from each person. The two girls on the right are Shannon's nieces- soon to be my brother's nieces too!









We had four carafes filled with drinks: water, ice tea, tropical ice tea, and lemonade. I made tags to tie around the neck of each carafe. The tags were just the plain white gift tags. I soaked them in some tea that my dad already had made expecting to get an antiqued-brown look. I didn't realize it was peach flavored tea and they came out pink instead. But they looked good so I kept them. I inked the edges with a gold ink pad and used this really cute pink ribbon that I found at my favorite scrapbook store.

Fridays Don't Rock When You Have To Work the Weekends

I created this board for one of the games we will be playing at Shannon's bridal shower next weekend. It's our version of The Newlywed Game, but we decided to call it The Fiance Game.

The numbered cards slip off and on the back are questions about Matt that Shannon has to try and answer. I love this patterned paper and the swirl clips. They didn't show up too well in the picture though. That just goes to show my rather sad photography skills.

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I've decided that I need to join a 12-step program for people with an addiction to books. I must have some sort of disease, like booklustinitis. Seriously. A couple of days ago I bought a book about books. It's called The Book of Great Books: A Guide to 100 World Classics. So now I can read about all these books that I have already read. How silly is that. I spotted this book in the "Last Chance" bin at Barnes and Noble. I'm doubly ashamed of myself for purchasing it since it was from a chain and not an indy store. I now own over 400 books. They are jammed into my bookcase, armoire, under my bed, in the garage, in my hope chest, and as soon as my brother moves out this weekend I am going to store some in his old room too. Step 1: Admitting you have a problem.

Friday Night

I am a little saddened that it is 9:30 on a Friday night and I am sitting at home blogging. But not too saddened, because I am having a good time lounging around my house and pampering myself. I guess I should look on the bright side- I am not flooding my lungs with tremendous amounts of second hand smoke and pickling my liver with tequila.

I don't have to work at all this weekend, which is lovely. I am getting burnt out, which is causing me to be crabby with some of the golfers. Of course, some of the customers are doofuses who deserve my crabiness. I have reached the point where can't stand to be there longer than an hour and I watch the clock all day. I really like what I do, not that it is that hard, but I just don't have enough to do and that causes the day to drag on. I have the whole weekend off and I am going to enjoy every minute of it. Well, not every minute, because I do have to take my last AEPA test to get my teacher certification. Such an intense test- pretty hard. I am a little worried. I passed the other two easily, but this one I am predicting to be a bit too much for me. I realize now that I should have paid better attention in some of my classes. I am taking the Special Education: Cross-Categorical Subject Knowledge Test. There are so many laws and legislative numbers that I don't remember. I drifted a lot during my special ed classes. Spent a lot of time doodling and creating to-do lists. Not such a good idea, I guess. The test is in Flag, so I am driving up there tomorrow morning and will plan on coming back Sunday morning. The test is from 1pm-4pm. After that Aimee and I are getting together to, hopefully, finalize our travel plans. Then I am going to dinner with Schmidt, and hopefully Aimee too, followed by a night of pubcrawling and dancing. I'm looking forward to seeing my two girls again. I really, really miss them. I am also looking forward to stopping in at Tacos Los Altos. One of the top five best Mexican restaurants ever! They make the yummiest carne asada burritos.

I went with Shannon today for the second fitting for her wedding dress. This was the first time I've seen her in the dress. I just saw it on the hanger once before. It is sooooo beautiful. We took lots of pictures of her in it, but I obviously can't post them yet. There was so much involved in getting her in the dress, lots of layers, and arranging the dress, then hooking up the bustle. Shannon kept telling me to pay attention because this will very likely be my job come August 4th. There were two other women who were also getting their dresses fitted. Both had beautiful, elaborate dresses that looked gorgeous on them, but it made me realize even more that this is the complete opposite from what I want my dress and wedding to be like. That's what makes weddings so cool. They are all so unique, but still beautiful and emotional and all those mushy things.