i think i found my wedding invites

Isn't it gorgeous?!click it!! its clickable! :0) it is letter pressed. and it is exactly how i want them to look, color, wording, everything. but it will cost a small fortune. good news is that it is only 1 color and not 2 . 2 colors would have been a lot more. now all i have to do is find a local company that letter presses. do you know of anyone that is cheaper than $1000 for 75 invites? i think it's wrong when the invites cost as much,if not more, than the food or d.j. i could use all of the help i can get. who /what did you use when you got married?

PART 2 of S.P.A.W... the location

The place is called River Oaks Hot Springs. to the right is River Oaks Golf Course and to the left is River Oaks Hot Spring and Spa. so its a little confusing if you are looking for it. but its gorgeous. above is Noah and Aiden walking down towards the huge pond/mini lake.

this is the gazebo. you can get married here. its cute, but not really my style. its on the property so it is still an option.

view from the gazebo looking left

view from the gazebo looking right

this is the amphitheater. it is most likely where we would want to get married at. this is looking out towards huge pond/mini lake. i think it is really pretty.

view from the bottom of the amphitheater looking up. its on a slight hill, so we would try to figure out how to seat everybody without chairs( they aren't allowed on the hill). maybe with rows of fabric that everybody could sit on so the wouldn't ruin their dresses and slacks. oh and if we choose to have it here its probably going to be a semi-casual wedding( though no jeans please) so everybody isn't dressed to the nines and having to walk around in the grass getting their heels stuck. i know from experience from a few weddings i was in.

this is the pavilion where the reception would be held.

looking in toward the kitchen.

I'm in the same spot, but now looking out towards the pond/lake. gazebo left amphitheater center.

side view of the pavilion.

this fan is towards the kitchen. it is huge! i guess why the company is called big ass fans. funny.

this is a sneak peek at what I'm doing for Alicia's baby shower. they are coffee filter roses. her shower / I'm turning 27 is in 2 weeks! 2 WEEKS I'm kind of freaking out a bit. hopefully everything will come together nicely, if not God help me that it does.

because it could happen to you

you can find all of these pictures and WAY more right HERE

send me my birthday money early 'cause i'm spending it on Alicia!

J/K but not really. the just kidding is about sending money. and the not really is because any extra money i have is going towards my little sister's baby shower, which happens to be on my birthday. oh and gifts i want to make her too. i found so many cute ideas on another blog that i read called homemade by Jill and i think she found these ideas on other blogs. there are some amazing ideas.

isn't this cute?! the instructions make it look super easy to do.

and this guy too, looks super easy to make




stroller quilt, ties on the top and the bottom folds under and buttons

so you can keep the baby's feet warm

crib rail guard, really cute

happy birthday banner, just might turn into a "welcome baby Wild" banner

this one doesn't look so easy but i really like it!

i LOVE this idea! the baby wont be able to use for at least 3 more years, so I've got plenty of time to make it

this one too! crayon roll, baby wont need it for a few years

burp cloths, i think these are really easy too

next post: planning Alicia's baby shower :0)

because i would NEVER want this at my babyshower cake

this, i stumbled across at this great website called cake wrecks. she shows these crazy cakes that people have actually PAID FOR. that one of the rules, that it has to be made by a "professional" i use the term loosely, because wait til you see these cakes. there is a wedding cake in there that will make you want to cry. cause if that was me on my wedding day i would be so upset/angry. and i would do exactly what the bride did.

some of the cakes are pretty crazy. if i was a baker i would never do something like that and then send it to the customer knowing that they probably wont like it. if you know me then you know how crazy i am when i make stuff. i have to make sure its perfect. i dont like to half-ass anything or it will eat at me until its done right. so check out her website and if you come across any crazy cakes let her know. she will most likely post them on her page!

3 weeks and not a peep A.K.A. a REALLY long post

out of the 3 weeks that I've been M.I.A. from blogging, i have been pretty busy. i had my nephew for 2 of those weeks. my sister wanted to go to vegas for a week without kids so i took Kyle and Alexis' dad took her. Kyle is a boy who likes to stay busy. he is almost 8 and has A.D.D. so when i say busy i mean, wanting to do something new EVERY 10 minutes. so while he was here we did all kinds of things. there was no staying home and being lazy( OK MAYBE there was, just a little bit).


my sister drove him down from lake Isabella after she got off work, so they didn't get here until that evening. i had just gotten back from the water park ( it was $10 for me and Aiden was free, couldn't pass it up) and thought that kyle would REALLY love to go. it was being built when he was here last year, and i told him last year "oh, well maybe next year". so this was "next year" and he doesn't forget anything. so we HAD to go, i couldn't get around it. when he finally gets to my house, i let him know that we will go sometime during the week, probably Monday or Tuesday. that was my first mistake. all day Sunday he kept asking me how many more days till we go to the water park. or the one that drove me crazy, he would say " i wish we were( insert something OTHER than what were are doing here)". FINALLY the day comes. he is excited beyond belief. i guess if i were 7 and got to go to the water park all day, i would be excited too!

excited!

too bad you cant really see kyle's face

smiley guy

not so smiley guy. he didn't want to be held by kyle

handsome little man

this one i called the toilet bowl, cause you go down the tube then you spin around the inside then it shoots you out of the bottom into a little pool of water.

this is what kyle wanted to go down last,he said. can you see him in between the 2 slides, ya that tiny little speck? that's kyle. you might need to click on the picture to really see him. once he got up there it must have looked too crazy cause he didn't end up going down the slide, just back down the stairs. i kind of don't blame him.

but in kyles defense, he did go down these 2 million times. i think he said that he liked the red one more. top of the slides.....

......bottom of the slides.

the rest of the week i ended up watching my friends kids while she was at work. so he had a 4 year old boy(Ryin) to play with and Aiden had a little girl(Ellie) 2 months younger than him to play with. the boys had a water gun fight, made a huge mural with chalk on the back porch and watched a ton of movies. and of course, i have NO pictures. way to go auntie!

on to the weekend! we originally were supposed to go up to Etna for Noah's grandparents 50Th wedding anniversary/ family reunion, but money was tight so we had to change our plans and tell everybody we weren't going to make it. that's why i took kyle for the week cause i thought that we weren't going to drive all the way up there. well Noah's mom calls and gives us gas money to make it up there. this was mid week AFTER i already had taken kyle. kind of short notice. i was stressing out about the drive. 535 miles & 9 hours in a car with a crazy toddler and a 7 year old boy with A.D.D. , not my idea of fun . plus i knew i was going to have to be the one sitting in back with them both. Mitch and Noah in the front cause they were switching off driving. lucky for me, my car has a DVD player in the back so that was one crisis averted. whenever we stopped to get gas i would let them out so that they could run around and get some energy out.

on the way there

that would be the sun. it was so smokey on the way up

if you can see through all of the smoke, that is lake Shasta. which looked REALLY low.

black butte summit

Mt. Shasta through all of the smoke

almost there and he is getting restless.

FINALLY we get there, its about 9:30 pm. we, like everybody else, are sleeping in tents. luckily Noah's mom already set ours up so we didn't have to set up tents in the dark. she also set up an air mattress for me and Noah . score! his grandparents have ten acres up in Etna. 2 huge grassy pastures, everybody camped on one with tents and motor homes. the other pasture was for games. they have horseshoe pits and boccie ball to keep us busy. they also have a projector and screen for movies once it gets dark. that was really cool. and to help me keep kyle busy there was a swimming pool, and 10 mules. Noah's grandpa runs a mule pack/trail riding business. i think that explains it right. oh and to keep the grown ups busy after all the kiddies went to bed the was PLENTY of alcohol.

mule rides to keep him busy.



2 of many tables for the party

playing in the tent.

we spent a short weekend up there. i wish we could have stayed longer, just so i could get to see what all it has to offer. the ride home was a little more pleasant than the ride up, thank god.

on to the next week! we started off this week with the fair. it comes to town for about 2 weeks and has a day where the kids are free. can you guess which day we went? kids day! they have all kinds of stuff on kids day.home depot does some thing every year. last year the kids got to choose out of about 5 things to build Alexis (who was here last year) and kyle chose to build a wooden boat. this year they got to choose to decorate a kids size home depot smock or to decorate a piece of tile. kyle want to do the tile. he painted it to look like the American flag. the tile was shaped that way so it worked out perfect. i did get a picture of it... but its on my phone. next we saw my friend Brian at the fireman's booth. he showed the kids around the fire engine. kyle got to sit in the drivers seat.

kyle got to sit in the drivers seat.

Aiden got to meet Smokey the bear. i used to work for the Forest Service in high school so Smokey will always hold a special place in my heart.

every year they always have some kind of eating contest. last year it was a hot dog, kyle placed 3rd! this year it was an ice cream eating contest. we looked everywhere to find it. even ask the information booth. we couldn't find it. but we did find the face painters!

kyle got his face painted with an awesome looking spider!

last year they had a cake decorating thing for the kids and i told kyle that we could do that again. too bad we wandered around for ever looking for the ice cream thing and we missed it! arrgh. but we had fun while we were there. though i didn't get to eat any of the yummy fair food i normally get. i only got a corn dog that i had to share with a starving toddler, so not much for me. i wish i could have had a funnel cake or maybe even one of those yummy cinnamon rolls with the cream cheese frosting. looks like we will just have to go to the fair when its in Bakersfield.

for the rest of the week we pretty much stayed home but did a lot of fun things. we had a water balloon fight 2 days in a row. Noah even got to join in on one of those days. we let the dog out to play in the front yard,let her chase a football while Mitch, Michelle, Noah, Kyle, Aiden and myself were all playing out front. Michelle's 18Th birthday was the week before and i promised her a cake so kyle got to help me with that. she loves pink and she loves zebra so this cake was perfect for her.do you see that dark spot on the top right? Aiden touched the cake and i had to smooth it out at the last minute

homemade butter cream icing and cake recipe you can find here. incase you are wondering, that is strawberries and whipped cream in between each layer.

on to the second weekend! finally my sister gets here on saturday, again after work so she didnt get here till the evening. i made her dinner so that we would have to go out to eat and haul all of the kids around. the next morning she had promised kyle that we would go to the beach, so after a yummy breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon and 2 kinds of muffins( blueberry and lemon poppyseed) we loaded everyone up and headed down to pismo. while we were there we saw 3 DOLPHINS!!!! i was so excited to see them, that of course i didnt get any pictures of them playing in the surf and doing tricks.but i did bring my camera. now for some pictures of pismo fun!

Noah and Aiden

Aiden being silly

Kyle

my sister is going to kill me for this one. but she doesnt read my blog so she wont even know. this is a picture of her (yvonne), her dad mike, her daughter Alexis ( top left) and kyle (top right).

so thats how i spent a good chunk of july. what did you do?