MMMMM...GOOD!

So today, instead of taking my lunch hour I took "dessert hour". One of my best friends, Kali, was in town for a lunch meeting and we decided to have dessert together after she was finished with work for the day. Kali said, "dessert is what you have with your pregnant friend instead of drinks!" So true! But one of these days we'll be having drinks again...probably not at 1pm on Wednesday but you get the point.

We decided on Fridays because they have great dessert and that's where Kali wanted to go (in my experience, you just don't question the pregnant lady) There desserts are huge so we decided to share but we got two:

The Brownie Obsession, which is a warm brownie covered in Ghirardelli chocolate-fudge sauce, vanilla ice cream, crushed pecans and carmel sauce...YUM!

And the Vanilla Bean Cheesecake. It's made with vanilla beans and layered with white chocolate mousse and shavings and has a vanilla graham cracker crust. And it looked just like picture with the chocolate drizzle and a strawberry....OH, SO GOOD!

A Big Day for Our Big Day

Yesterday was a big day for wedding planning. And, I'm rather excited about it so I thought I'd share my excitement with bloggerland.
Here is what I accomplished:
Booked our DJ

Decided on our wedding cake (my meeting with the cake lady is at 2pm on Saturday)

Registered at The Gift Horse

Ordered prints of our engagement pics from http://www.abrewerphotography.blogspot.com/

Received our first wedding gift (2 of the cutest single initial monogrammed tumblers)This is an example but the stitching is in black and of course it has a C instead of the T

The thing I'm most proud of is deciding on a cake,I never knew how tough that was going to be! Keil and I looked online for several different cakes that we like, we then narrowed it down to 4.
My favorite:

His favorite:

And two others we both liked:

Since neither of us were really giving any ground I decided to solicit some help from my wonderful bridesmaids (and my mom). I emailed all 4 cakes to all 4 ladies and 3 out of the 4 voted for Keil's cake...mine was a close second followed by the square/round combo cake. The more I looked at it, the more I decided that I really did like it too! It was everything we said we wanted, simple and classic! As I kept flipping from one cake to the other I realized I didn't really like the quilt-like pattern on the round cake and I wasn't a huge fan of the broach on the bow. Yep! I was starting to lean towards Keil's cake too :) So, I asked my mom...knowing that she would have my back! If she voted for the round cake then, that would be it, we would get the round cake! She took one look and said, the first one...the first one was Keil's cake. How in the world could 5 of the most important people in my life choose his cake?!? So, I started thinking and here is what I've decided. This is going to be our wedding cake:

With our monogram of course! The more I looked at it the more I fell in love with it. I love the dots on each layer and the ribbon at the bottom of each layer. We may move the monogram from the bottom to the 3rd layer but haven't decided yet. It will be a chocolate cake with either a Bourbon chocolate truffle filling or a simple dark chocolate filling, iced with butter cream icing (I hate fondant...it's pretty but tastes horrible! Sorry to those of you who had fondant icing)

Hope you all have a fabulous day!

I saw this cute little post on my future sister-in-law, Kelsey's, blog and just had to steal it from her. So here we go...

If I were a month, I'd be October
If I were a day of the week, I'd be Saturday
If I were a time of the day, I'd be 7pm
If I were a planet, I'd be Saturn
If I were a sea animal, I'd be a sea horse
If I were a direction, I'd be south
If I were a piece of furniture, I'd be my oversized chair (gosh, I love that chair!)
If I were a liquid, I'd be sweet tea
If I were a gemstone, I'd be a diamond
If I were a tree, I'd be a Cherry Tree

If I were a tool, I'd be a shovel
If I were a flower, I'd be a gerber daisy
If I were a kind of weather, I'd be cool and crisp
If I were a musical instrument, I'd be a guitar
If I were a color, I'd be blue
If I were an emotion, I'd be bliss
If I were a fruit, I'd be a cherry
If I were a sound, I'd be the rolling ocean waves

If I were an element, I'd be oxygen
If I were a car, I'd be a zoom-zoom!
If I were a food, I'd be ravioli
If I were a place, I'd be a beach
If I were a material, I'd be cashmere
If I were a taste, I'd be sweet
If I were a scent, I'd be fresh vanilla
If I were an object, I'd be a picture frame
If I were a body part, I'd be ears
If I were a facial expression, I'd be a sly little grin
If I were a song, I'd be Just Another Day in Paradise
If I were a pair of shoes, I'd be a pair of black pumps!

Something to Talk About

Wow, it's been a while since I last blogged. So, let me catch you up on some of the things that have been going on.
After our last snow, I made the big mistake of washing my Northface Coat. Why? you ask...well, my camera was in the pocket! And now it doesn't work. The memory card is fine and but the camera is shot. So, I guess I'm in the market for a new one. Any suggestions???
From my last post you can see that we have had our share of snow this winter. Last week, I got 2 snowdays (and I'm not a teacher!) Currently, it's snowing right now. The delivery company was supposed to deliver our Girl Scout Cookies today but because of the bad weather I belive they have decided to wait until tomorrow. SO, no cookies yet! I love this snow and think that it is abolutely beauitful but I'd much prefer the whiteness of Hawaii's sandy beaches! I guess I'll just have to wait until October (and I'm almost as patient as a child waiting to open the sucker from the bank)
This past weekend, I got into wedding planning mode. Well, actually, I was helped into wedding planning mode by my momma and my Nina. Time sure is passing us by! I seem to have lost my touch in decision making when it comes to this wedding. I just can't decide! And the things I've already decided on I'm starting to second guess! It's starting to be stressful! I guess I just need to get control of myself. We discussed flower options and made final decisions and now I'm doing some comparison shopping for them (I knew my good shopping skills would come into play eventually) and I have to call and reserve the chairs for the ceremony this week. I've employed my MOH to work on ideas for BM jewelry, I was having the worst time. I'm sure she'll do great...because she is so creative and objective. I can't wait to see what she comes up with. Keil and I are going to work on making a "wedding playlist" and finish our registries. He's fine with the registering as long as he gets to point the "gun". I'll keep you posted on the fun things that are happening with the wedding planning!
Lastly, speaking of wedding planning. I decided (like most brides) to let my hair grow for the wedding. It makes it easier to pick a hairstyle and for the stylist to work with. But, recently I've decided to dontate my hair to Locks of Love. After doing some research on it, I found out that you only have to have 10 inches to donate and I was pretty sure that I could get that by the wedding. So, I told everyone my plan! Here it is: if I get 10 inches before the wedding, I'm cutting it before but if not, I'll do it after. I was telling a co-worker the other day and she wanted to measure, I already have 7"!!! So, I think this cut could be closer than I anticipated. I'm excited to donate my hair to this wonderful cause but I'm a little nervous too! I'll for sure post pics for you all to see.
Well, that's all for now. Hope you all have a great week!

Snow Baby!

Today we took my nephew Davin to have some snow pics made with our wedding photographer www.abrewerphotography.com She had planned a mini-session and it really was mini, we were only there 10 minutes! She got some great shots of him...but that isn't hard, he's so beautiful! (I'm not proud or anything)
Anyway, here are some of Davin's first snow pictures



I can't yet decide which one is my favorite so I'm sure we'll end up with several of them.
While we were there we signed our wedding contract(sounds so official) and discussed some options on our engagement prints. I told Keil that everytime I look at Ashley's photos I get more and more excited about our wedding and the great moments she will capture! Only 8 months to go...

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

After waiting all winter long, the big snow is finally falling! The meteorologists have been calling for snow all week and we have been under a "winter storm advisory" for since yesterday afternoon. People have been scrambling to the grocery to stock up on the necessities and prepare for this big snow. Most of the schools in the area actually cancelled school yesterday anticipating that there would be snow today...wrong! It didn't start snowing here until about 3, so the kiddos could have at least gotten in a half day. Oh well, I guess everyone needs a snow day!

I had a snow day today too. My plans were to take a group of my older girls to Paoli Peaks this Sunday to hit the slopes so I took today as my "Sunday". I have a feeling that the weather may have other plans! We'll make a final decision tomorrow depending on road conditions and the forecast. I got to hang out at home, which has become one of my favorite things to do, play with the puppies and put some laundry away (something I don't think has been done this week).

Keil and made potato soup for dinner, it was delicious of course! After dinner we got all bundled up, put the puppies sweaters on (well, except for Levi because he darted out the door before we could wrangle him into the sweater) and took them for a walk. There are a few pics below from our excursion:

It's HERE

Keil's ring came in today!!! And I love it so much more than I did when we first looked at it. I actually got butterflies when I opened the box. I guess it is starting to feel so real, finally! I really want to post a picture of the real thing but I seem to have misplaced my camera...so pics to follow.
On another note, this weekend our "house project" was to install a new bathroom sink. I was pretty sure it'd be a quick in and out experience. Boy, was I wrong! I bought the cutest little pedestal sink and a new faucet from Lowes and I was so excited all the way home, Keil laughed the whole way home! First, we figured out that we needed a pipe wrench, which I didn't have (but acquired this morning) so that put the project on hold. The directions then said to turn off the water. Simple request, right? No way! You see, my house is the house that Jesus was born in (yep, it's that old!) so the shut off valve is not in the bathroom under the current sink. Problem: we can't find it! Keil and I both crawled under the house and it was a little scary, for me anyway, and we found the pipes but not the valve. So, we are once again, on hold until one of our dad's can come and lend a hand. My new sink is in the middle of my computer room floor just hanging out until it can relocate in it's permanent home. I'll keep you updated on the sink installation progress!

Have a great week!