Happy Thanksgiving!

Since I had to work on Black Friday this year, Brendt and I couldn't travel to spend Thanksgiving with either of our families. When I mentioned this to my brothers, they immediately decided to spend the holiday with us in Bellevue! Shortly after we received that wonderful news, Brendt told me his parents were also changing their plans to head our way! Needless to say, we were pretty stoked to host a blended family Christmas! In preparation for this honor, we busted out our Christmas decorations to help set the mood for everyone's arrival.

We don't have a fireplace, so we hung our stockings from the floating shelves with care.

We transformed our armoire into a Santa shrine.

The final touch.

Ryn made these Christmas socks after seeing similar ones in a store. They turned out just darling. Times like these I wish I had any sort of crafting talent. She let us have our pick, and altho it was close we chose the sock on the...well, we'll let Ryn showcase it:

Ta-dah!

I wouldn't pet that if I were Heathyr....you never know if you are petting Baxter, the biggest sweetheart the world has ever seen, or his less hospitable brother, Snarles.

Kurt was a big fan of our tin race track. He wound it up and watched the cars race around the speedway several times. We couldn't bare to tell him that it would be a tie every time....

Here is Gwynn in her adorable party dress, sewn by Gramma Dworak.

Brendt and Ryn are preparing the turkey. Looks more like they are doing the jitterbug...

Meanwhile, we are making our own turkeys!

Can you spot the mutants? They really need to stop giving hormones to the livestock....

This turkey is not going willingly onto the dining room table.

Affectionate grandpa by day.

Stoic rock star by night.

Oh, I almost forgot! Here is the finished curtain. As you can see, I really need to press it--my iron doesn't get any of the wrinkles out, it just heats the fabric up. =(

Up With People (and sewing)

This weekend was a first for us. Up With People, Brendt's former touring group, was in North Platte, along with a former cast mate of Brendt's, Celiana. Of course, we had to stop in and see the show and catch up with Celiana, whom Brendt had not seen in almost ten years. That being said, we had one small dilemma: the boys. Since Rufus isn't up to date on his kennel cough vaccination (shame on us!) boarding them wasn't an option. We have asked my brother to watch them several times in the last month and a half, so we didn't really want to push our luck asking him again. Brendt was reluctant to leave our boys in the hands of his brother since he already has two larger dogs and a one-year-old. That left one viable option: take them with us! So we packed up the boys and headed to North Platte for our first pet-friendly hotel experience.

Reggie's not too sure about this new experience.

Looks like Rufus digs it tho!

Us with Ciliana.

For those of you who didn't know, my birthday was actually today! Brendt got me a sewing machine! I have been bugging him for months now about wanting one. But that's not all--he actually got up early this morning and surprised me with breakfast in bed before work. Now that's love! And then he did something that he's never done before...he sent me flowers at work! I am definitely going to have to surprise him with a singing telegram for his next birthday...

My birthday present in all its glory!

For my first projects, I bought super cheap fabric at Walmart. I figured no sense in wasting decent fabric when it is going to look like a grade school art project anyhow. I googled easy sewing projects for beginners and came up with my two warm up excersises: a tissue pouch so travel packs don't get demolished in your purse and a pillow slipcover.

My first project! I think the tissue pouch turned out really nice. I am considering sewing pouches for all of my belongings.

My second project! A pillow slip cover. It actually turned out so nice that i really wish I had bought better fabric. How was I to know that I was a sewing prodigy?

I took these shots of the back of the pillow to demonstrate its slip coverishness. Very easy to sew.

Ok, After I made the tissue pouch and pillow cover, I was feeling pretty confident about my sewing prowess. In fact, a wee bit too confident and I did a dumb, dumb thing. I decided I had enough experience to sew my own curtains. I learned a lot about fabric in the process because I made a couple of mistakes. For one, The material I got for the curtains ended up being super thin and transparent. It had looked so thick and luscious on the spool... =( Mistake number two was buying what I thought was a really cool green fabric to add a couple of stripes of color to the curtain.

Turns out the fabric actually had a fade effect going on. Whoops. This called for a quick redesign.

Probably around four hours of work later and here is one finished panel....just three more to go! It doesn't really look that bad, but you can definitely tell it is homemade. Not too bad for my first curtain but I think for my next project I'll stick to pouches. =)

Tess and Isaac's Wedding

Last weekend I had the privilege of being Matron of Honor in a longtime friend's wedding. It was a blast! Unfortunately for everyone, I was the only local to the area, meaning it was my responsibility to know my way around town and scout out some locations for festivities. Too bad I'm still learning my way around. Hopefully it wasn't too painful for everyone else who had to try to navigate Omaha with my subpar directions. Enough with that. Let's get to the good stuff!

Hotel
It might seem odd that I am blogging the hotel room, but I had to show off our good fortune. The hotel we stayed at was overbooked and they had given our reserved room away to create a block for the girls on a high school soccer team! This turned out to be fabulous news, as they upgraded us to a suite and ate the difference!

Bachelorette Party
It was all I could do to come up with some PG rated photos for this part....this is about all that was left over after taking out the naughty ones. =)
The blushing bride.
Mom, if you are reading this, I had NOthInG to do with her attire!

Me and Linz, one of Tessa's personal attendants--also a friend from high school.

Getting Ready for "I Do"
The salon we went to was pretty cool. Of course, any salon that lets you enjoy a mimosa while they work on your hair ranks pretty high in my book. Here is a play-by-play of the bride getting ready.
First stop, hair.



Next stop, nails.

Finally, a little bit of makeup as the final touch.

This bride is ready for her ceremony! Here she is traveling to the Joslyn Castle incognito.

The Ceremony
I don't have any pictures of the ceremony, but I can explain it. It was a Christian/Jewish hybrid ceremony. The first part was pretty traditional--he talked about love and read some excerpts from the bible. Then, for the finale, the bride and groom kissed, Isaac stomped on and shattered a glass, and we all shouted 'Mazel Tov!'
This is my one picture of the bride all decked out. Her 'something blue' was her pair of icy blue shoes which she carried throughout the reception.

The Reception
Ok, now to the reception. To understand the reception, you have to understand the location. The wedding was at the Joslyn Castle, which on the outside, looks like a castle. On the inside, however, it looks like a haunted mansion. This being the case, there were a lot of smaller rooms, not really any big spaces save for the room the ceremony was held in. There was no DJ, no bouquet toss, no dollar dance---but there was plenty of food and beer. This being said, you can see how the reception was really just a big house party!
There was a rock band room! These are some college buddies rocking out! From left to right, Foster, Tom, and Seier.We spent the first half of the reception running around striking goofy poses. Oh, the memories!

For the guestbook, there was a pile of scrapbook pages and a table of costume pieces. The idea was to pose for a picture with the Halloween props and sign a scrapbook page. Then, when Tess gets back from the honeymoon, she will match up the pics with the signed pages and have a silly picture guestbook. Here Florez and Jess are posing with some props on the throne.

Lindsay on her throne. I like the way she thinks!

Some goofy poses:


For the second half of the reception, striking a silly pose was getting to be too much thinking. We had to create something to do since there were so many of us in an empty mansion without cards. Thus was born, Tournament Rock, Paper, Scissors. This was quite possibly my favorite part of the night!Looks like Foster crushed Flores.


The Morning AfterSomeone had dreadful bedhead.

Happy Halloween

Just a short post so you can see our Halloween costumes. Try and guess who Brendt is before scrolling down to see the answer.

I'm Velma from Scooby Doo. I'm standing here with a couple of my coworkers who coordinated their costumes. Aren't they cute?

We ended up heading to KC the day after Halloween with some friends. The drive was gorgeous so we took a photo out the car window.

P.S. Brendt is Dilbert. =)