Daniela's Bridal Shower

As stressed as I was, I was SO happy to be a part of putting Daniela's Bridal Shower on.  She is one of my best friends and I am so happy for her new life with Tony (who we also love) :)

Thank you all for coming and celebrating with Daniela!  

I wanted to post the pictures so anyone who wants, can have copies of the pictures.  I tried to get a picture with everyone next to Daniela, but if I missed you I am really sorry :(

Week from HELL

Oh my gosh I can't believe I survived last week!  Here is the list of things I HAD to do, nothing on this list could be moved to the next week:

-sign lease with new renters for the condo
-after those renters fell through find new renters (in 4 days) to sign a new lease
-answer calls/answer questions etc./eventually pick the best one
-make new lease and have new lease signed
-finalize the rsvp list for Daniela's shower
-find chairs for 50 people! and tables
-purchase/make food for 50 people
-make centerpieces, pom poms and other decor for bridal shower
-move my furniture out of the condo
-clean out my garage in order to fit furniture
-work everyday until 8-9pm

As well as the stuff that normal people do on a regular basis that seems to be a constant battle for me:
Shower, brush my hair, get dressed, eat 3 meals etc.  I never really understood all that.

At approximately 9:00 pm on Thursday night I come home with the after math of what I thought was the most creative and thrifty idea ever to solve the centerpiece problem,
I saw beautiful flowers in a shopping center parking lot and I decided that I pay taxes, so I would cut the flowers and use them in my centerpieces... 

So the petals were falling all over the place, so what that the shower wasn't until Saturday, so what that there were bugs all over them and they were sticky, they were FREE people!

So after realizing that everyone was looking at me like I was an 8 year old girl that just brought home a lost dog/wolf with rabies, I explained how cute I was going to make them.

That is what began------"The Intervention".

Maybe it was the knowledge that I couldn't sleep at night, maybe it was the tears I was fighting back, or maybe it was the bugs and petals I was trailing in the house, but Diana looked at me and said, "I am doing the flowers."  Then Greg, Diana, Josh and William all went through my list and sorted out what needed to happen for me to survive and came up with a plan.

William and I left------The Intervention and went to my car where I began a mild dose of a panic attack.  It looked something similar to this (even ask William!):

Well that ended that day.  The next day, after meeting the soon to be new tenants and signing the lease, I came home to Diana and Josh's beautiful creations:

Diana and Josh got a bunch of vases, spray painted them and purchased all the flowers and made the centerpieces.  I wanted to have a panic attack of thanks when I saw them!

Then it was time to conquer the garage.  William decided that it was better for him to do it without me seeing how I tend to be a little attached to my things :)

                                                 

The next issue was the seating for 50 people.  I called my boss Monique and asked to borrow some of the spa's tables, chairs and tablecloths and...she let me!!!!!  So William and I (but really just William) came and picked up all of them and took them to the party location to be set up.

That night we had to make all the food for the party.  We were up until 3am making all of it!!!

My alarm went off at 8am on Saturday and it was time to do the last minute prepping for the shower.  Tarah came over and helped prep the last minute things and transport them over.  

And then of course it was time to set up everything for the shower.

The shower turned out really well and I got a chance to sit down a couple of times so that was nice :)

The shower ended at 2pm and we had the carpet cleaners scheduled to arrive at the condo at 3pm, so we had an hour to clean up, gossip, bring the chair and tables back to the Murrieta Day Spa and get to the condo to meet the carpet cleaners there.  

Lets be honest, if it was just me, there is no way that would happen.  (And check out that butt) ;)  

We were stressing, but we get to the condo on time.  Actually in perfect time to find out that the key I had didn't work, and my previous renter had forgotten to leave her copies in the mail box so I thought for sure I could break into the house and open it.

I couldn't. 

SO instead I had to call her to meet us and drop off the keys while the carpet cleaners watched us taking sad pictures of ourselves outside.

But even that got boring.

The key finally arrived, the carpet cleaners came in and naturally we headed off to the nearest Chik Fil A for our chicken, CHIK FIL A SAUCE and Oreo Smoothies.  

It got real serious. Real fast, when they left. We had to move furniture into the garage, clean up everything that was left, AND clean up the whole condo.  

And if you thought that it was easy, we were there from 3pm to 4am THEN woke up early to be there from 10am to 2pm the next day cleaning!!!

The keys were handed over at 2pm on Sunday and we were done.  We were finally done.  DONE I SAY! DONE!  

Well maybe there is still some aftermath lingering, but nothing a couple of massages and laying out at the beach with a virgin pina colada couldn't fix ;)

This blog entry would not be complete without giving a public thanks to everyone who took part in saving my life: Diana, Greg, Josh, Andrea, Ava, Tarah (and her mom), Daniela, Monique, Kristen, Miranda, Stacy, Joy, Lisa, and especially WILLIAM <3

My new to do list for this week:

-blog about Daniela's shower ;)

-blog about making the pom poms (so cute!) ;)

-blog about making the invitations ;)

1 of 16 Weddings this Summer

That is right people...SIXTEEN freakin weddings!!!  Don't worry I am not actually going to attend all 16 due to compassion on Mr. Barnard, but I will be attending more than half of those which is still A LOT!  

So this wedding was my cousin John John's.  He got married in the LDS San Diego Temple, and had a reception in an outside courtyard in Orange County.  My family (minus Ryan and Jenny) came out to the wedding as well as some cousins, aunts and uncles so it was so much fun being reunited!

As much as Carly looks like she wasn't enjoying it and is asian, she is actually white and we had a lot of fun together

 And my parents :)  I love seeing "old" couples at young weddings, it gives me the warm fuzzies.  Like, "Oh, people do love each other forever, ahhhh :)"

And me with my love.  Not my favorite picture, but had no other choice but to add it.

I wish I took more pictures of her dress!  It was sooo beautiful.  I will try to find some from their facebook pages and steal them for your viewing pleasure :)

2 1/2 of my favorite people, Brooke, Mom and William

Don't let the pose confuse you, that is not my boyfriend that is my mom.  Although I love her very much I am not in love with her ;)

The cake.  I chose a red velvet piece.  Big mistake.

The flower girl and ring bearer <3  This little girl (my cousin Summer's daughter) looks EXACTLY like my sister Jenny at her age...it freaked me the freak out!

I told my mom I would post the picture below because I got some really REALLY bad pictures of her and was cracking up so she spent the whole night with my camera taking bad pictures of me.  This was the prettiest of them :)

I LOVE the sparklers, but it was extremely scary.  I thought I was either going to A) Catch on fire B) Catch someone else on fire which caused me to be paranoid the entire time.  So as much as I would like to give sparklers a 10/10 rating, I will have to make it a 7.5/10 rating.

Here is to 15 more!  

Mad Hatter Fiesta

So at my new church (ward) they threw a Mad Hatter Party to celebrate all the many hats we wear.  And I was sooo excited because you all know how much I LOVE themed parties!

And then when I found out Diana Dowden had inherited her mother-in-law's collection of hats I nearly pooped my pants with excitement!  Thank goodness they were cheetah print pants so any markings would be easily disguised as part of the design ;)

Andrea in her hat

Me in mine

     

And Diana in hers

I was confused when I walked in and it looked like a fiesta, so to stop any further confusion to you all, I will now refer to this evening as the !Mad Hatter Fiesta!  (Close your eyes and imagine the first exclamation point upside down and you will feel like you were there) 

 MMMmmm...homemade Cafe Rio.  Soooooo (as Joy calls it) yummy!

 Look at the high society ladies

 We entertained ourselves by dying our tongues with the frosting from the cupcakes.  For some reason it was hilarious to us at the time...

I have a secret desire to wear some of her hats in real life, not just when I am pretending to attend a British wedding in front of my mirror in my room.  I don't know if I am ready to go public yet, but that will be my next fashion venture...vintage high society hats.  Thank you Mad Hatter Fiesta for the inspiration :)

Best Date to Date

William and I decided we wanted to do more special dates with each other.  (Thanks to one of my top love languages) :) And we decided we would take turns in the asking, planning and executing of the process.  They can be simple or extravagant and we don't have a set date for them.  

I got an email at work earlier in the week from him saying that I couldn't make any plans on Saturday and to be ready by 10am and don't eat breakfast.  He even gave me what kind of clothes to pack and added a "do not be too excited disclaimer" lol.  

Saturday he arrives at my house with these:

Flowers and a picture frame.  Don't forget these items as they will come into play later in the date.

We go to Jamba Juice and get smoothies and breakfast twist thingys that are divine and head to the pool to work on the golden brown tan ;)

After we could noticeably see tan lines it was time for the next step where we changed into the "workout clothes" portion and headed for a picnic and hike!

He had made bomb sandwiches, pasta salad, grapes, and a ding dong (which he realizes were both just for him as those things are naaaassssty.)

This is just before our hike.

So on our way to the hike we went further than where we were going to stop on accident and by doing so, saw this white older van with this guy shaving outside of his car.  Kind of weird but we figured he was just some mountain man that liked a clean shave to not look suspicious and we ended up eventually turning around and going back to the original trail head never seeing him again.  

Keep in mind our picnic lasted about 45 minutes, so it was about an hour since we last saw him miles away on the side of the road.  But then just as we were about to leave on the hike he pulls into where we had parked and is just standing outside his van like a true killer.  

William was so excited to go on the hike and I was like there is NO WAY that guy is a killer and he is going to kill us and he was shaving to look like he wasn't a killer.  William said I was being paranoid and he was just a mountain man and he wasn't a killer because there was a dog in the van.  

I obviously didn't listen because I KNEW he was a killer, and even if William could protect me either 1. he would die protecting me and I wasn't happy about that or 2. he would wait until we went on our hike, syphon our gas so we had to walk back to to civilization and kill us on our way.  Needless to say we didn't go.  So if anyone went missing around Tenaja Falls I know who stole/murdered them.

Next on the list that he had planned was a delicioso dinner.

Right before dinner I found his secret notes of the date that he had been planning that whole week!  So cute!!!  He even had little lists of supplies he would need.  I think finding this note was my favorite part of the whole day :)

 After dinner we went to see the new Avengers movie that was stupid, yet entertaining.  I give it a 6.5/10.
 We got out of the movie around 1:30am and usually at that time at night its pretty standard that we say our goodbyes and go home.  But for some reason he kept telling me he wanted to come inside for a little bit, which I thought was kind of weird but was excited for the extra couple minutes to be with him so I agreed to the after hours visit.

Earlier that morning he gave me that picture remember?...well he told me he put multiple pictures of us in it and wanted me to see them.  So I open the back of the frame to find...

An envelope containing two tickets to see the musical WICKED!!!!   

I am so excited!  I have been wanting to see that FOREVER!

I had so much fun not worrying about any of the plans and just being able to enjoy the different activities with him and being surprised each time.  I feel so lucky to have such a great man.  I love him end of story.  

XOXO