Erin's Bridal Shower

Surprise, Surprise. This post is weeks late :)
Back in June (the same weekend we attended a wedding) I also cohosted a bridal shower for my old college roomie, Erin.
She lives in Chicago right now while she gets her masters and works full time from their city apt.
You may remember me posting about her engagement- it happened after a Red Sox game last summer. We helped her fiancé get her down to our University neighborhood, and to the door steps where she met him 10 years ago :) He had people waiting there playing music and he proposed right there!

Well, she is from Massachusetts and that's where we went to college. We also lived together in Boston  the year after college while we all worked and I planned my wedding. 
She moved to Austin, TX the year after I got married and that is where they will move back to at the end of the summer. The wedding is in Austin in December.

Since she is from MA, we had a bridal shower there with her mom,  family and MA friends.

 

My other unrelated friend, C, who lives in Chicago as well gave me the idea of making truffles as favors!  You may remember Anika and I went to Chicago to visit  Erin and C last fall :)

C told me the truffles were easy! She gave me two recipes: Chocolate chip cookie dough truffles and blackberry truffles.

The cookie dough part was easy to make- Recipe is HERE.

I made the dough weeks in advance so I could do a run through.
I have never dipped chocolate before, and let me just say- what a mess I made!! I bought the Wilton Candy melts from Joann's fabric and used a coupon.  After lots of frustration and even help from Andrew, All my dipped truffles looked like piles of shit. Literally.

So, we ate this batch and then tried again.

And again.
Then, when I finally got them right, there wasn't enough, so we made another batch. Practice was making me better at dipping though! Instead of dreading it, I was almost enjoying it. But, we have a bottom drawer freezer and someone kept trying to get into them : ) They were tempting to Andrew and myself as well. One day my mom dropped Anika off and Andrew told me my mom came in the house to bring Anika's stuff in, and came out with chocolate on her face. lol. He was kidding and trying to wind me up.

I kept them in the freezer and then on Friday night we boxed them up and stored the tray in the fridge. The shower was on Sunday, but we had the wedding Saturday.   My cohost got the purple and white boxes at Michaels and shipped them up to me from MA. My Michaels didn't carry the purple ones.

 

I got some purple chocolate too and melted it, put it in a plastic frosting bag thing and used my cake decorating stuff to drizzle the purple on!! Wow, I was getting fancy! haha.
 

 The other truffle recipe was THIS one. The blackberry ones were easy, but were too soft, so we ate them and didn't use them :)  I stuck with the cookie dough ones. OH, I also made about 8  Gluten free truffles for the bride.  I used coconut flour instead of regular. They weren't as tasty, but did the trick :)

Andrew helped with making boxes and tying them up.

 

 

I also needed to do flowers for the tables. The shower was at a restaurant that is special to the bride's family. She grew up going there.

I wanted to use flowers from our yard, my mom's yard and my Gram's yard, but I had no idea what would be in bloom that weekend!
So, I ordered some stuff from the florist the week before. I already had the round and tall vases, so I put the purple ribbon on the tall ones and added the white/clear rocks.

My mom picked up the flowers for me that morning. They were in a florist bucket.  The florist had explained how to put these leaves around the round low vases. It was harder to do than I thought it would be. My mom, Anika and I drove 2+ hours down to the shower location that morning. We had less than an hour to make all the arrangements before guests arrived.  Good thing we brought our flower cutters and supplies! In fact, my mom and cohost ended up making most of the arrangements because Anika was being super clingy and grumpy when we got there. Remember, late wedding the night before!

 

 

 

 

Me and the Guest of Honor!

 

 

 

This purple wire around the stems wasn't quite working like I thought it would either! haha

 

 

It was SOO hot that day. 100.  The room had AC units. Anika liked sitting in front of the wind :)

 

 

 

 

 

Me, Anika and My Mom :)

 

The restaurant is Italian so yummy Italian food.
 

 

 

 

 
A lot of the presents were shipped to Erin's house and/or people brought gift cards, so there weren't too many gifts to open. BUT, Anika was there to help with the gifts that were there!! haha.
PS. Anika is the flower girl in the wedding.

 

"ohhhhh"
NEXT! Anika, kept saying "NEXT!" after they opened a gift.

 

 

So, the gift I had already picked out for her was a customized/personalized cutting board.
I was having it shipped to her house. Then, she opened like 5 cutting boards as gifts! haha.

I still went with the cutting board. I am having it shipped directly to her house from the maker, so Ill have her take a photo and post it for you to see later. 

 

 

 

The hosts and the bride.
So, there are a lot more people in the bridal party, but they live in other parts of the country, so it was just the two of us on this one. And, the Bride's mom :)

 

 

Anika's balloon in the way on this one. 

 

 

I think she had a great time!! My mom helped take photos and there were about 150 photos of all the guests that I put on disks and sent right to the bride and her mom. I also emailed her the spreadsheet with her gifts on it. 
Now, we are onto the bach party planning!! That will be taking place later this summer on Cape Cod! It will be my longest time away from Anika.  I will also be about 30  weeks pregnant. It will be nice and relaxing.

Our Living Room

We bought our house four years ago. We didn't do much to decorate. Almost ALL OF our furniture has been hand me downs.  We have bought things little by little, but honestly, neither one of us are decorators or enjoy it much.  I like a clean home for sure. My house is almost always spotless, but pretty? Not really. Furniture can be expensive, so I always just avoid it. I know many people find GREAT pieces 2nd hand on Craigslist or yard sales- I have found some pieces that way that I LOVE, but I don't have the patience to do that all the time. The shelve in Anika's room is one of my favorite pieces and we got it from CL for $30.

Then, there always seems like other things that we need buy- new washer and dryer, new roof, new car, etc. Or, we spent a large amount of money to go to NZ this past year for almost a month. That wiped out our savings. Everyone likes to spend money in a different way- buying furniture is not our "Thing"  however we have paid off almost 30% of our house in just over 4 years, so it may not be nicely decorated, but it is a lot more OURS!!

We also are not home THAT much, so we don't get to sit around and realize how ugly everything is :)

 

 We have been fixing our living room little by little.
I have pulled together some photos from the past 4 years to show you.
Above was right after we moved in. That green couch was given to us and it served us well. It has a matching big chair and ottoman. The girl in photo is my friend A who passed away from cancer when I was 10 weeks pregnant with Anika.  She sure is missed.

 

 

Anika's first day home

We have a wood stove in the living room. It takes up a LOT of space. Especially when in use 6 months out of the year.  Andrew used that plastic blue thing to bring wood in from outside, but we did get a proper wood box a few years ago not shown in any photos. We have to have a wood box and a big safety gate around it now that we have a kid.  This chair above and below was also given to us,  by my college roommate's mom. It gets sat in a lot.  And the fabric has been getting VERY worn the past year. I look at it and cringe. It just doesn't look nice. I have wanted to reupholster it or get rid of it for a while. It is now in our basement because ONE DAY Andrew wants to get it reupholstered :)

 

This friend is sitting in the chair that matches the couch. Piri ruined the back of it a long time ago by sitting on it to look out the window.  She flattened the back cushion and IT was COVERED in her hair and there was no way to get her hair off it. A few months ago, I shoved it out our front door and took it to the dump.  And, my eye was on the couch next. I was OVER it. The cushions always fall off. I just grew to hate it more and  more.

Andrew's chair that he wore the fabric right off. This is him feeding Anika her FRIST bottle I had just pumped :) He had probably just come in from getting fire wood dressed like that.

Trin and Anika 4th of July 2 years ago in the big ugly chair near the window.

Anika and her twin cousins on the couch.

And this is bad. LOOK AT That TV area behind Anika. That "Stand" was a desk from my college apartment! ha.  The wires showing under it DROVE ME NUTS!  We did replace that with a proper stand over a year ago, so that was nice! You can also see ottoman here. That ottoman was nice because I used it to block area to stairs when Anika was little. Never had to get a gate for the bottom of the stairs.

The one thing we did do pretty early on was get custom dark wood blinds for the windows, so we did that at least. But, Andrew only wanted blinds, not curtains

This shows the TV stand in the corner.  A couple  months ago we moved that to the other side of the room and moved couch to get an idea if we could get a new Couch and Love seat.  We started shopping on Mother's Day weekend!! We actually bought a couch and love seat and went home and taped out our area to see what kind of space it would take up. We discovered what we bought was going to be WAYYYYY too big for the space, so we had to call and cancel. We went back out shopping the next day- of course all the stores are over an hour away. We also started training Piri to stay off the couch :)  We didn't want her to ruin another couch, especially one we were spending a lot on.

When we found the couch and love seat we wanted, we found out we could not have them delivered for a WHOLE MONTH! I was so bummed, but then I realized we kind of needed a month to get Piri used to the new rules.  Her nails are SOO long no matter how much we cut them.

During the month, my mom made curtains for us and I bought some floor lamps (the one above is a cheapo for the Christmas Tree shop and we replaced that). This room has NO ceiling lights, so we need the lamps.  The chairs on couch were keeping Piri off :) 
Andrew HATES curtains. He said they are so American and he was SO against them. He was SOO against them to the point that it was comical. I went ahead anyway and looked at fabric with my friends. I had lots of input.  He said they blocked his sunlight when the blinds were open.
I still made him hang the curtain rod and told him if he really hated them, I would take them down.

Pre curtains and New Couches above.

AND here is THE New Living ROOM!  New Curtains- which Andrew scrunches ALL THE WAY to the sides when he is home.  We started out with the couch pushed over into the corner so Piri's ottoman could be under the window. She is a watch dog- she needs to see what is going on outside, so blocking this window from her is tough.  We also couldn't take away her ONE spot left- the ottoman, so we have to keep that for now. Its functional for Piri, not pretty.  Also, come November, we will have a huge safety gate around the wood stove, so we need to keep couch back.

Tv on other side of the room.

People say we need a coffee table and area rug. I think we will get some small end tables for the sides of couches to put drinks on and stuff.  We actually have a bunch of Ash wood we cut down from our yard that my dad has dried out, and we can lay down as wood floors. We just need to move out for a few days and pay someone to do it :)  The off white wall you see is Tin. That is a safety feature for the wood stove.  The wood stove really dominates the room, but its so much more efficient to heat this way living in NH!  We LOVE the couches. I sit on the big one and Andrew sits on the love seat :)  I have found dog hair on the new couches a couple times, but hopefully not for long. They are real leather and if she rips them I will be sick. Just sick over it.  These are pretty much our first big furniture purchase. We did buy Anika's crib, dresser, guest room mattress,  and our bed mattress new! haha.

 

SO, there you have it -our improved living room. Still not perfect and pretty, but SUCH an improvement don't you think?