June Update and Progress Toward Goals

Is anyone else crazy busy this summer?!  We are only 17 days into June and it's already been a whirlwind for us.

I spent the first week of the month at a work event in Niagara Falls, NY.  We took the group on a tour of the area and it included a ride on the Maid of the Mist - that was my first time riding and it was a cool (and wet!) experience.  Crazy how close it gets to the falls!

That weekend I got home was our TWO-year wedding anniversary!  Adam and I flew over to the Biltmore on Sunday the 7th and enjoyed the beautiful estate and gardens.  I'm also keeping the tradition alive of taking a picture every year with our wedding pic!  

We have a big trip coming up soon that I will share all about when we return.  Right now it's major last minute planning time and making sure all the reservations are made!!  Can't wait for this adventure!

1.  Used Up Products:

• Only 1 this month!  The Victoria's Secret Endless Love shower gel.  I'm glad to see this go!  I've probably had it for 4-5 years, won't be repurchasing and I still have to use up the lotion!

 

2.  Books & Magazine

• 16 magazines cleared out this month!  I ended up taking quite a few on vacation with us and tossing them as I went - hence the million pics 
• 2 mystery books - 1 from Mary Higgins Clark and 1 written by her daughter, Carol.  Ironically, I had randomly grabbed two books to take and they ended up being a sequel!  That will never happen again.

3.  Blog Posts

• 2 posts

4.  Get More Exercise

• January = 40.71 miles
• February = 41.11 miles
• March = 49.59 miles
• April = 52.51 miles
• May =  50.86 miles

5.  Scrapbook Progress

• January = 30 pages
• February = 66 pages
• March = 31 pages
• April = 3 pages (bummer)
• May = 29 pages

Wedding Card Preservation

It's been a year since our wedding and I'm still trying to figure out how I want to preserve some of our keepsakes, cards and mementos.  It's mind-blowing that we've already been married 13 months!  This past weekend I spent some time and finally tackled the stacks of wedding cards that have just been collecting dust in my scrapbook room and here's what I did... 

These are mostly the cards from the actual wedding - all of the shower cards, etc were already sorted out.

I utilized the 12x12 envelope pages from the Project Life collection - LOVE these - and sorted the cards into cards from the actual wedding day guests and cards from gifts that were mailed to us before/after the wedding. 

Voila!  The envelope seals nicely and the cards lay so flat in the envelope and are protected from dust, getting folded, etc.  Plus, there's a pocket on the front if you want to slide a 4x6 card in it to journal/label what's in the envelope.

Here's a side shot of my 3 envelopes.  I plan to add some more envelopes to this binder and make it more of the thicker items I want to keep from the wedding so I don't make the actual picture scrapbooks of the wedding/pre-wedding to thick. 

You can see in this view here there's a smaller size envelope in the front of the larger 12x12 ones - I put the cards Adam and I exchanged before the wedding in here just to keep them separate.

Love the end result!  This has been a great way for me to store cards, larger items and I can totally see using this for baby cards, etc in the coming years.  

What did you do with all your wedding cards?  Any fun ideas out there to share?

One-Year Anniversary

 Happy 1-year anniversary to us!  What a fun, awesome, sweet year.  We spent the weekend on a little romantic get-a-way in Atlanta.  There were so many things I wanted to see/do there so we just made a weekend of it!

First stop Saturday - the GA Aquarium.

The otters - always my favorite!

 

Next stop - World of Coca-Cola

The highlight of the attraction was sampling the coke products from all around the world!

We had a hearty lunch at the well-known Varsity

Then it was off to the Margaret Mitchell House (really an apartment) where she wrote over 90% of Gone with the Wind.

We ended the evening with a romantic dinner at Bone's in Buckhead.  Awesome steak!

 

  

Day 2 started out with a Behind the Scenes Tour of CNN!

What a cool view!  Who knew they had the world record for the longest free-standing escalator??
 

Posing in front of the CNN building.

After we finished downtown, we moved back to Buckhead to check out the Atlanta History Center.  It was really neat to see all of the items pertaining to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Loved touring the beautiful, historic Swan House!

Swan House was recently in the Hunger Games movie!

This is actually the front of the home. 

But alas, our weekend had to come to an end.  Once we got home, we sampled our year-old wedding cake!  Neither of us could remember what flavor the top tier was!  It tasted okay - def. not as wonderful as it was a year ago!  I think I'm just excited to finally have that space back in my freezer!!  Here's to Year 2! XoXo

Fantabulous Cricut Challenge #192 - Use a Sentiment

WOW -- is it cold out there!!  It was a frigid 5 degrees on my way into work this morning.  I'd love to have a few "snow" days to stay home and keep up the scrapbooking roll I've been on the last few days!  Unfortunately, I don't see that in my future so I have to stick with grabbing a few minutes here and there throughout the week to throw a page or two together.  Last night before the BCS Championship game, (and while dinner was in the oven) I raced up to my scrapbook room to put together a page for the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge for the week.   This weeks challenge is to use a sentiment and I knew I could incorporate it into the next page I had up to make for my current album - the year of wedding planning/being engaged!  Here's what I came up with:

I used the Sweethearts Cricut cartridge to cut "Save the Date", the engagement ring and the envelopes on the second page.  

I used a 6"x12" Becky Higgings page protector and also one of the Project Life journaling cards from the Blush Core Kit.  

So far in my "engagement" album I'm up to December 2012!  Getting all the engagement pics scrapbooked was quite the endeavor from the weekend but I LOVE the way the pages turned out.  I'll share some pictures soon. 

On another fun note, it's been exactly 5 years since Adam and I met for the first time in "real".  We first met up to watch the BCS Championship game in 2009 in Mobile!  Time really flies.  

Stay warm out there!

 

Deckin' the Halls

WOW -- December already!  With Thanksgiving being so late this year it definitely cut into "deckin' the halls!"  I will admit.. I put our big Christmas tree up pre-Thanksgiving as well as the WVU themed dining room tree.  I did this for several reasons.. mostly because my family was at our house for Thanksgiving and I wanted them to get to see our trees.  This past week, I spent time decorating the other areas of the house.  My absolute favorite decorations this year has to be in the dining room!  We finally got the rest of the furniture for the dining room (sideboard and china cabinet) in October and having the additional area on top of the sideboard to decorate has made for the perfect spot!  Plus, I used some of our wedding decor and it's an instant rush of happy memories when I see it in there.   

Let's rewind.. 

When I was schemin' what the wedding ceremony would look like, I spent a lot of time thinking about the aisle.  I liked the idea of rose petals, candles and lanterns.  I looked at hundreds of lanterns in various price points/styles.  I didn't want anything too ornate or too small and alas, I finally found the perfect lanterns at Hobby Lobby!  Two stores and two special orders later, I had enough lanterns to line the aisle for the ceremony.  I reused the lanterns as additional decor for the reception as well.  Plus, I knew the lanterns would be beautiful to decorate with in coming years.  

Here's the lanterns in action at the wedding:

(The candles are also from Hobby Lobby and are beautiful! They matched the pattern on our cake.)  I alternated tall and shorter lanterns down both sides of the aisle and put pink rose petals in between. 

After the ceremony, we had some of the lanterns moved up to the MASSIVE mantle

Other lanterns found a reception spot behind the main wedding cake

So now, fast forward to my Christmas decorating.... 

The lanterns and candles are from the wedding as well as the crystal candle holder near the feather tree.  The white reindeer are a find from my mom from a few years ago but I've seen a lot of similar ones in the stores this year.  The feather wreath around the smaller lantern is from Michaels and was purchased with the anticipation of being used at the wedding but at the last minute didn't get used.  The white feather tree is actually from my college days at WVU!  I bought this at Macy's in Pittsburgh and still absolutely love it.  I worry everyday that Mason is going to get hold of it.  I decided to forgo the normal hot pink ornaments I put on it and "adult-ed" it up with some silver and slightly gold smaller balls instead.  

Did anyone else recycle items from their wedding into their home decorating?!