On Our way to the Wedding :)

I am so excited that I cannot contain myself.  Our van is packed and by this time tomorrow we will be on our way to Tennessee for the wedding.  After months of DIY projects and making decisions about flowers, dresses, food, and more it is finally here.  Amazingly I think Kurt is as excited as I am :)  by this time next week we will be on our way home as a married couple.  A special thank you goes out to all of those who have helped us put together a wedding in less than 5 months.  Jackie (our unofficial and unpaid wedding planner) & Sasha (the best matron of honor a girl could ask for) who have both been important throughout the entire planning process.  Dawn & Stefanie for their help with the wedding invites.  Brittany for helping with the bridesmaids dresses.  Amy for her constant motivation and moral support.  Julie for her daily help with projects and ideas.  In less than a week I will be married.!!!!!!!

Salsa :) Wedding Favors

Where in the world did we get the idea to make Salsa as wedding favors??  Well we decided to plant a garden this year. So we went out and bought all kinds of plants: Strawberry, Lettuce, Potato, Tomato, Green Pepper, Jalapeno pepper, Cucumbers, Carrots, & Peas.  Clearly we went overboard.  We had a large garden (mostly full of tomatoes) then we had buckets along the side for potatoes, carrots, and a box of seeds in potting soil.  Before we knew it we had loads of green tomatoes. 

One night Kurt & I were sitting at home talking about a variety of topics and at one point we started talking about our wedding favors and came up with nothing good.  We then moved on and later began talking about our garden and I asked the question.

"what in the world are we going to do with all of those tomatoes" without thinking about it Kurt said "lets make salsa!"  And a wedding favor was born!

Salsa is actually really easy to make.  First we washed all the tomatoes and removed and spots. 

After the spots are removed you place the tomato's in to a pot of boiling water (roaring boil).  Leave them for three minutes and then remove.  The skins slide right off. 

Once you remove the skin you try to remove as many of the tomato seeds as you can.....this part takes a long time!

Before we removed the seeds!

We did not do as good with this as we probably should.  Once you have finished you should not be able to see large clumps of seeds.

Once all the seeds have been removed we placed the large chunks of tomato in my Pampered Chef Chopper and it worked like magic.

After all the tomatoes had been chopped we put them back in the pot to boil with the pepper, onions, and seasoning mix.

During this time you must also wash all the canning jars so that they are ready to go and then keep them warm so that you are putting warm salsa into a warm glass jar. 

The Salsa process is a long one!! The longest portion being the water bath sealing. For some reason I did not take any pictures of that part of the process.  It consist of filling a large pot with water and bringing it to a roaring boil.  Then you place the sealed jars of salsa in the pot and let them boil for about 20 minutes until the seal sticks.  Later we decorated them and put thank you notes on each one.  We made enough for each couple to take one home.  And a few extra for Kurt to eat because he really liked our salsa :)  I hope you like it too. 

Tissue Packets

Another DIY project I found on http://www.weddingbee.com/ which is pretty much my favorite site these days!   They are so simple to make!

I found a pack of pocket size tissues 60 tissues total for $2.00 that plus one roll of cellophane from the Dollar Tree.  (.10 each)

Sasha & I cut out squares of cellophane and folded them like a present and taped them on the back.  They looked so awesome!

A road trip & A July Wedding in the Bayou

Weddings Weddings Weddings!!!  It seems that everyone is getting married.  My Cousin Teryn (who I have not seen in many many years) just got married last weekend in the bayou.  My grandmother & I packed our bags and hit the road for Louisiana.  Many people in our family told me over and over that she would not go with me to this wedding but we proved them all wrong.  I personally think that she really wanted to see her grandchildren and great grandchildren.  We decided to make it an overnight trip so we left Early Saturday morning (day of the wedding) and got to our hotel just in time after our 8 hr drive to freshen up and head for the ceremony.   She got married at a place that was known for their crocodiles yikes.  It was a beautiful wedding and I LOVED her dress.  I didn't actually take too many pictures of the wedding because our seats were upfront but slightly blocked for pictures.  I did however get a lot of pictures of the kids and my other cousins It was so nice to be in the same space with them after such a long time. 

The happy couple :)

Granny holding Gavin (Kayle's youngest son)

she looks so happy to have one of her great grand babies in her arms.  This is the first time she met Gavin but it seems that they hit it off :)

Granny feeding Jackson (Kristance's youngest son)

BTW did I mention it was really hot like 100 degrees that day.  In case you can't tell by Jackson's hair.

He is not camera shy

Me holding Jackson he is such a cutie.

Granny with Eleanor

Attempting to get a picture with all 6 Great Grand kids.

I think that this one turned out the best <3

Nikia helping her nephew

Kayle with Gavin

It was a great trip!

I finally have my oh so perfect dress!!!!

After a few shopping attempts and an online order disaster I finally have the perfect wedding dress!!  It is more beautiful than I could ever imagine!  I must admit it did cost more than I wanted to spend but it was worth it. 

I have plans to have it altered to a knee length dress that  I can wear again that way I didn't spend so much money on a one time dress.

Giftbags for the out of town guest!

I got this idea from a DIY wedding website.  Which I have been addicted too since getting engaged.  The basic idea is to make welcome bags for all of your out of town guest and leave them at the hotel for the guest to get when they check in.  I spoke with a friend who does extreme couponing and she got me all of the supplies for a cheap price.  Sasha & I worked for about 4 hours to put them together.

The bags consisted of a silver paper bag from A.C.Moore, toothbrush, travel toothpaste, shampoo, bar of soap, razor, travel deodorant, panty liners, pack of gum, tic tac's , 2 bottles of water, 2 iced coffee drink, bags of chips, power bars, mini bag of chocolates, local area attractions, & Do not disturb sign.  The do not disturb sign was customized saying "Do not disturb we are recovering from the Thompson wedding" I wish I had gotten a picture.

I found a template for these labels online and my wonderful friend Jennifer recreated them with our information on them. 

  

Personal Care Items in a convenient bag (Sasha in the background). 

 Thank you Sasha & Sherri for all of your help with this project.  I couldn't have done it without you!

The invitations OY

After hours and hours of printing, cutting, glue sticks, and assembly I am finally done with those pesky invitations.  They are awesome to look at but boy were they time consuming. 

The inside!

The outside before the ribbon.

The ribbon process

Don't they look so beautiful & almost professional.  Maybe I am bias but I LOVE the invites. 

This was the special Saturday night of working while Kurt & his friends were having a cookout & a bonfire.  At different points in the night I had each of the guys helping me make invites :)