Sarah »High School Senior«

I did my first High School Senior portrait shoot this past Sunday and all I have to say is WHAT A BLAST! We had so much fun.

Sarah is a totally awesome senior at Lincoln High School. My husband used to coach her basketball team a few years ago and we have kept in touch via Facebook. I posted that I was desperate for someone to take pictures of and she replied asking if I would like to do her Senior Portraits. I couldn't have been happier! Sarah is gorgeous, funny and about a foot taller than me, which was pretty funny during the shoot.

Sarah, good luck with the rest of your last year in high school! And I hope you enjoy your pictures!

Bishop's

The weather around here has really been confusing me. It's cold and very autumn-like in the morning, which get's me all excited because I love dressing in warm clothes. The around noon the temperature shoots up into the eighties, which stinks because I dressed for autumn weather!

Now what, you may ask, does this have to do with anything? Well, it's exactly what happened when Ryan and I went to Bishop's Pumpkin Farm. We had a lot of fun.


Can't you tell?

We mostly just walked around and held hands. We went and saw the animals at the animal farm. They had lots of cute little guys, like this Miniature Donkey!

I've never seen one in white! They also had very pretty Llama. Doesn't she look just ravishing in purple!?

They also had a corn maze, which we did last year, but at $4.75 per person, we decided to skip it this year.

We had to make a stop at the candy shop, of course. Last year we bought nearly 3 lbs. of fudge. I'm pretty sure we ended up throwing most of it away once we found it after a couple months in a drawer, so we bought half a pound this year, in addition to some salt water taffy (which is a weakness of mine). YUM!

I actually spent most of the time there trying to get Ryan to sit for some pictures. I'm pretty sure he's about as wiggly as a toddler. Most of the time he made faces like this...

But then, he gave me this look and I was lucky enough to snap the picture.

Definitely the best one I've ever taken of him. Just look at that face! I'm one lucky girl.

All in all, we had a lot of fun at the pumpkin farm. I love just going and walking around and looking at all of the beautiful pumpkins. I love how they come in all different shapes and sizes and colors. So diverse.

I hope everyone is having a good week and I hope someone is enjoying the Fall weather for me, since I'm obviously going to have to wait a while.

Living Greener and Salted Caramel Sauce

Last week I started reading Simple Mom's blog and it has really inspired me. After reading the a few of the posts I have decided to eliminate most if not all chemical cleaners from my home. I also ordered some soap nuts from Laundry Tree and I cannot wait to try them! An all natural alternative to expensive laundry detergent, woot woot!

Another thing she has inspired me to do is to join my local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). It's kind of like a co-op. I joined Farm Fresh To You. Instead of tilling fields in exchange for produce, I pay just $25 a week for a box of fresh organic produce delivered to my door every Thursday morning. How cool is that? I got my first box this morning and all I can say is "YUM!"

How gorgeous are those colors? My box included: 4 Gala Apples, 4 Red Bartlett Pears, 1 bunch of Collard Greens (which I have NO idea how to cook...), 1 lb. of Baby Bok Choy (again, never eaten this before), 3 Heirloom Tomatoes, 1 bunch of Broccoli, and 1 bunch of Lettuce. All Organic. Pretty good for $25, huh? I was so inspired by all of the gorgeous fall colors I decided that I needed to make myself a little snack with one of the apples. What could be yummier than apple slices and homemade salted caramel sauce?
Caramel sauce can be tricky if you don't have great instructions, but once you get the hang of it, it's SO easy to make and SO delicious. My absolute favorite recipe is from Bakingdom. Darla is amazing. Caramel sauce is really just a simple syrup (sugar, water, corn syrup) that you have boiled to go from this:

to this.

When a sugar recipe says to boil until amber color, this is the color you want. This caramel sauce turned out PERFECTLY. So after you boil it to be an amber color, you take the pot off heat and then add the cream. Now this is the tricky part. If your sugar syrup cools too quickly, aka you added cold cream too quickly, you syrup will get all lumpy and disgusting. So here's the trick I've learned. Let the cream sit out until it reaches room temperature, or do like I do... nuke it for about 30 seconds so that it is luke warm. This little trick (as well as trickling the cream into the syrup slowly while stirring) has worked for me every time! Anyway, this is what your caramel sauce should look like after the addition of cream. YUM.

Now the sauce is delicious as is, but to really make it something special (as well as making it a SALTED caramel sauce), add 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter and 1 1/2 teaspoons of crushed sea salt, stir until combined. Now comes the hard part, waiting for it to cool. As temped as you might be, DO NOT stick your fingers in the culinary napalm. Please wait for it to cool, I can't be responsible for your third-degree burns.
Now just drizzle this sauce over slices of apple (or ice cream or popcorn or pretty much anything) for a yummy snack!

The last thing I will leave you with is my newest Starbucks obsession. Pumpkin Chai Tea Latte. It's pretty much pumpkin pie in drink form. Unfortunately, I'm going to need to cut back on those. Neither the waistline or the wallet are appreciating them.

Love you all! See you on Sunday!

Wedding Recap!

The amazing Tracy Moore has blogged our wedding photos! Click on the image below to be redirected to our wedding post!
Ryan and I have been married for a whole 3 weeks! It doesn't feel like it at all. It feels like the wedding was last week! Since the honeymoon, quite a bit has happened. I've started a new full time job while the hubster is finishing his last weeks at his job while looking for a new place of employment while doing some pre-training with the local marine recruiters. Hopefully he'll be in Dress Blues before we know it.

So, I got to excited about posting about the honeymoon I never got a chance to blog about the pre-wedding experience. We all had so much fun the few days before the wedding. The Friday before, the whole wedding party and immediate family got together for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. It was a good thing too because about 10 minutes before the rehearsal, one of the groomsmen texted me to ask what the address was! Oh those boys will never learn. We had a lot of fun playing around the ceremony site. My mom did a great job of directing everyone.





The rehearsal dinner was a couple hours later at Dave and Busters. Everyone had a great time! We ate and drank and played lots of games. I actually won a couple rounds of Trivia and Lea and I won the jackpot on Deal or No Deal!
On Saturday I helped my mom with floral arrangements for the wedding (she did ALL of the flowers, isn't that incredible!?) and then went to the BBQ that Ryan's family hosted. It was nice to meet everyone before the big day. After the BBQ all of the bridesmaids, Tracy, and a few of Ryan's cousins came over for a night before sleep over. We played Liar's Dice and then took an impromptu trip to the grocery store for some yummy snacks. Our fun little trip included jay walking, hiding in the bushes from cop cars, walking through a Carl's Jr. drive through and being generally rowdy in the grocery store. We stayed up pretty late, but I don't regret a single moment.

The next morning everyone was getting ready, doing hair and make up, getting dressed, etc. I had a hair and make-up stylist come to my house to avoid any running around. I felt surprisingly calm through the entire getting ready process. Even once we got to the venue. I really didn't start to get nervous until about 5 minutes before walking down the aisle. I started getting sweaty palms and feeling light headed. I stumbled a couple times down the aisle (I forgot to kick out while i walked so I stepped on the front of my dress!), but luckily I stayed on my feet. The ceremony was short and sweet. Then came pictures (I sat in a tree in my wedding dress!) while everyone else drank and snacked. Then dinner and dancing! All in all everything went well, no major hiccups.

Anyway, this will probably be one of my last wedding related posts, I'm sure they get old after a while. If you attended our wedding, leave me a comment letting me know what your favorite part was! I'll see everyone again next Sunday!

Married!

It's official! Ryan and I are now a married couple. Let the boring married life rituals commence. Just kidding. We have been having so much fun! The wedding went off without a hitch (if you don't count me almost falling on my face down the aisle because I forgot to "kick out" while walking so I wouldn't step on my dress...), the ceremony was short and sweet, the wine was delicious (or so I was told) and the dance party was the best I've ever been to, but I may be biased. The next day was just as much fun! Ryan, Tracy, Matt and I got up at the butt-crack of dawn the next morning to do a "trash the dress" photoshoot. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what this is, it is a photo shoot sometime after the wedding where you do something in your wedding dress that you would never dream of doing before the wedding. Most brides jump in a pool or pond or lay in the ocean. I thought we'd do something a little more unique... How about a bride on horseback? Before that day, I had never ridden a horse in a dress and I'm pretty sure my horse had never had a giant white dress on his back, but he did great! No fall-offs, no bolting, no close calls, Jack was a very good boy.
I wish I had professional pictures from the shoot, but it'll be another couple weeks before I get to see those, so here are some that were taken by a family member. And as a disclaimer, I almost always wear my helmet while riding, but I think that might have looked a little funny with the gown...


Pretty cool huh?


We left for our honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico two days later. We had SO much fun. We went to Dreams Villamagna Resort in Nuevo Vallarta. It's a beautiful all inclusive resort and to be completely honest, aside from the drive to and from the airport, we never left the resort. The room was gorgeous. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of the room but it looks exactly like the picture in the ad:

Photo Copyright Dreams Resorts

Gorgeous, right?! We pretty much just drank fruity drinks (and tequila, of course) while laying by the pool and just generally relaxing. We just so happened to be in Mexico during Mexican Independence Day, which was SO cool. Ryan and I were walking down to the pool in the morning when we saw them setting up what looked like all sorts of fun stuff. There were vendors and a pool-side authentic Mexican dinner and that's when I saw it. They were setting up a mechanical bull. I about LOST IT. I LOVE mechanical bulls! I pestered the hubs to go find out what was going on. He came back with the best news ever. A Bull riding competition. No. Way. I talked for the rest of the day about how I was going to win the competition.

After a delicious dinner and a couple tequila shots, the competition started. There were about 12 people signed up to compete. I was one of two girls. Ryan and I watched as grown man after grown man got on the bull and got dumped within about 3 seconds. Oh boy was I pumped. They called my name and I pretty much ran up to the bull and hopped on. Ryan was too busy taking pictures to count but I'm pretty sure I rode that bull for 7-9 seconds. Heck yes! It came down to me and one other girl in the finals. We both rode again and I will admit that she was some stiff competition. In the end it came down to the audience. Whomever got more applause won. Guess who that was... THAT'S RIGHT! IT WAS ME! And what did I win, you ask? Why alcohol of course! Tequila, you ask? No actually... Gin. Wait, Gin? I won a bull riding competition in Mexico and they give me a bottle of GIN?! Oh well, alcohol is alcohol!
The rest of the night consisted of partying with some other couples we met at the resort. We had the best time on our honeymoon and we have the pictures to prove it! Let the picture overload begin!
Our view from our front door.
One of the 5 restaurants, Oceana.
Another restaurant, World Cafe.
Our first evening in Mexico!


The "Mexican Flag" shot. 3 shot glasses. First was lime juice, second was tequila and third was tomato juice. YUCK. Hence the after face...

The infamous bull ride!
And the prized Gin...
How handsome is he?! I'm so lucky!

The sunset from our balcony!
Hope you all enjoyed the pictures! See ya soon!

5 days!

So, I am terrible about updating this blog. Wedding things have been pretty crazy for the past week. It's amazing how money seems to just continuously slip away while planning a wedding. Anyway, we are 5 days from the wedding. I can't believe the day is literally right around the corner, if felt like yesterday that I was looking at the wedding countdown on the Knot and it read "145 days to go." Now instead of counting months or even weeks, were are just DAYS away.

Things left to do: get the marriage license (check!), buy Ryan's ring (check!) as well as stockings for me for the wedding, get my first brazilian wax (I am TERRIFIED), meet with the officiant, attend the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, get my nails done and then relax at the family BBQ the evening before the big day. Very exciting stuff.

The girl's night sleep over was super fun. Played a game called "Dirty Minds" which was endless amounts of fun. We had cotton candy martinis and peaches and cream jello shots. Played about 5 rounds of Liar's Dice (which is an awesome game, by the way). We finally stopped after Lea had won her fifth consecutive game. We watched the Sex and the City movie while playing Truth or Dare. It was an awesome night filled with sugar and estrogen.

I didn't take a fun pictures of the sleep over, but I DID snap a few of the girls playing at the dog park that morning. So here are some pictures of my furry babies at the park for your viewing pleasure!

Have a great week everyone. I'll try to do another post between now and wedding day!