Friday, December 31, 2010

Goodbye 2010 . . . Helloooo 2011!

Happy New Year everyone! I can't believe how fast this year went by and all the exciting things that had happened. Here's a little recap of what's been going on in our lives this past year.

January: I bought my BLUE 2006 Hyundai Sonata. I absolutely love driving around in it! Also Matt and I bought a house in Overland Park, Ks!

February: Matt started his new job at Burns & McDonnell as a Consultant Electrical Engineer and he loves it! I'm soo proud of him!

March: I moved from Ames, Ia into our new house in Kansas!

April: Matt and I flew to California to visit our good friend Scott. While we were there we went to San Fransisco and then to a few wineries in Napa Valley. On our 2nd to last day there Matt proposed to me on top of a mountain at the Pride Mountain Vineyard! I can definitely say one of the best vacations i've ever had!

May: My little brother Paul graduated from IKM-Manning High School, I'm soo proud of you Paul!

June: We had a house warming party for our friends and family to come see the new place and to see the minor changes we've made to it. We still have a long way to go but we're getting there, it's been a great learning experience!

July: Speaking of great learning experiences, at the end of this month I started a contract position with Hallmark in Kansas City, Mo. I met some great people and learned a lot at my time there.

August: Matt and I joined his dad's side of the family in the Ozarks for the Martin Family reunion, it was a fun time catching up with everyone that was there. At the end of the month my good friends Holly and Mike Rau got married! I had the honor of being Holly's personal attendant, and she'll be one of mine in our wedding. Congrats again you two, I hope you have many happy years together! Continuing with the wedding talk, Matt and I set the date this month for our big day to be August 20, 2011!

September: We had a bunch of friends come visit us and met new friends as well. When Angela, Tom, and Dave came to visit we had a blast going to the Kansas City Art Festival at the Plaza, and catching up on each others lives.

October: Another one of my good friends Amanda and her boyfriend Brandon came to visit us. Matt showed them a little bit of KC & took them to Power & Light, where we stumbled upon a free Smashmouth concert! Two weeks later I went wedding dress shopping with my mom, Matt's mom, and my cousins Taylor and Marina and ended up finding my dress! Then the next day I joined the newlyweds Holly and Mike for the one mile zoo run at the Henry Doorly Zoo.

November: This wasn't the greatest of months but thankfully I had Matt, my loving family and great friends to help me through it and to help me just roll with the punches. For Thanksgiving Matt and I traveled about 6 hours to Peoria, Il to visit the Martin clan for the holidays! One of my good friends also let me know that her and her husband are expecting their first child to come in June! This definitely kept me going this month.

December: A much better month, I was able to reconnect with a lot of great friends from high school and spend time with both of our families for the Holidays. I also had three interviews for a Design Consultant position, I haven't heard a hiring decision yet but i'm hoping that something good will come my way career wise in 2011!

Overall 2010 was a great year and i'm excited for the new year to come!
Continue reading Goodbye 2010 . . . Helloooo 2011!

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Holiday Centerpiece Ideas

Ok so it's been a couple of days since I posted my last blog, sorry! Since I skipped a few days and I promised I would try to come up with an inexpensive Holiday decorating idea or tip everyday til Christmas, i'll post a few today to make up time. :) I'm mainly focusing on centerpiece ideas. After I finished decorating our Christmas tree this year, I had a few leftover ornaments and a decorative bowl from Target. So I just dumped out the decorations that were already in the bowl and replaced them with the ornaments. A picture of that is in one of my previous posts.

My next idea was to take a glass cake stand and gather either artificial garland, or go to my backyard and cut a few pine needles off our pine tree :). You can place several different items in the center of the stand, it just depends on what you have on hand or what you're willing to spend money on, and also what kind of look you're going for. Here are a few more ideas that I found while searching online, and they all seem pretty easy to create as well (my favorite one is in the middle). Here is another idea that I just love. Thanks for stopping by!





Continue reading Holiday Centerpiece Ideas

Thursday, December 2, 2010

More Christmas Decor :)

I can't believe it's December 2nd already! Today is also my mom's birthday, Happy Birthday Mom! I love you! So I have had a lot of free time lately and I have been able to clean and decorate the house. I just wanted to share what I made yesterday after reading Modern Jane's blog. It's a free and easy way to decorate for Christmas, all you need is a color printer, paper and a picture frame. You can go here for the free Christmas printable, you can also use this cute one too. Here is what the finished product looks like!

From now until Christmas I'm going to do my best to post a free or mostly free holiday decoration idea or tip. So keep checking back to see what I have come up with!
Continue reading More Christmas Decor :)

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Engagement Photos!!

There here!! I received our engagement pictures in the mail yesterday and I love all of them! It was very hard to choose my favorites because they all looked soo good! I also was just way too excited and I already started designing my save the date and it's pretty much finished (even though I won't be sending those out for at least 2 more months!). Well as I promised, here are my two favorites:







I hope everyone has a great day! :)
Continue reading Engagement Photos!!