Chocolate Praline Cake

My husband’s mom and dad have been in New Orleans visiting us for the past week. We’ve been busy doing all kinds of things around the city and traveling to other places close-by (we took a day trip to Grand Isle and spent the 4th of July on the beach in Gulf Shores). Today was my mother-in-law’s birthday and also their last day here before they head home in the morning, so Drew and I decided that we would make them dinner and bake his mom a birthday cake.

I actually had never baked a cake from scratch before. I’ve always wanted to, but just never really had the chance. I’m not a huge cake baker (I’m more of a cookie and other dessert person– cake isn’t my dessert of choice). It is usually just Drew and I here, so baking an entire cake on any normal day would mean that the two of us have an entire cake to eat. I don’t like wasting food, so I usually stick to baking cookies, that way we can only cook how many we will eat then, and then freeze the rest to bake later. (I have helped my mom bake many cakes before though!)

So, I did some searching online to find the best cake recipe that sounded like something Susie would like. As soon as I stumbled across this cake with “praline” in the title, I knew I had found the right one. How perfect to make a chocolate praline cake for her birthday being celebrated in New Orleans?! (Which is famous for its pralines, in case you didn’t know.)

This cake turned out amazing. It was delicious! So very rich and the praline topping was fantastic! Susie said it tasted like a candy bar! I will definitely be making this cake again. New birthday cake tradition, perhaps?

Chocolate Praline Cake

original recipe from here.

ingredients:

1/2 cup Butter (1 stick)
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 can (14 ounces) Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 cup Chopped Pecans
2 cups All-Purpose Flour
3/4 cup Unsweetened Cocoa
2 cups Granulated Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1 1/2 teaspoons Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Salt
2 large Eggs
1 cup Sour Cream
1/2 cup Canola Oil
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 teaspoon White Vinegar
1 cup hot Water
1/2 cup Fudge Topping
1/2 cup Chocolate Chips, melted
Chocolate Icing

Directions:

To make the cake:
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter the bottoms of two 9-inch round cake pans and fit a circle of parchment paper large enough to cover 1 inch up the side of each cake pan.
2. Heat the butter, brown sugar, and sweetened condensed milk in a 2-quart saucepan over medium heat until the butter melts and the sugar is dissolved. Do not boil.
3. Divide the sugar mixture between the prepared pans. Sprinkle 3/4 cup pecans over sugar mixture and set aside to cool.
4. In a large bowl, combine together the flour, cocoa, granulated sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
5. In a smaller bowl, combine the eggs, sour cream, oil, vanilla, vinegar, and hot water.
6. Mix wet ingredients into dry with a wooden spoon until batter is smooth.
7. Pour the batter into the cake pans — over sugar mixture — and bake until a wooden skewer inserted into the cake center comes out clean — 35 to 40 minutes.
8. Cool cakes in the pans for 10 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the pans and turn cakes out onto a cooling rack. Remove the paper and cool completely.

To assemble the cake:
1. Place bottom cake layer on plate or cake stand with the praline sugar mixture side facing up.
2. Spread the fudge topping over the praline sugar mixture side of bottom cake layer.
3. Place the second layer over the first and drizzle the top with the melted chocolate and the remaining 1/4 cup pecans.
4. Frost the cake sides with your favorite chocolate icing.

Enjoy!

P.S. — The chocolate cake this recipe makes is really excellent. I’ll definitely be using this recipe as my go-to chocolate cake recipe for when I’m making just a plain chocolate cake as well! 🙂

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Farmer’s Market & Homemade Muffins

When I was 14, I moved to St. Louis, MO for the summer to live with my older sister and be a nanny to my baby niece, Evie. Often on Saturday mornings, we would get up and go walk around and get fresh produce from the Soulard farmers market. I have many fond memories of that summer, farmers market included.

Just a couple weekends ago, Drew and I tried out the Saturday farmers market in New Orleans. I had wanted to go for a while, we just hadn’t because it is downtown, not close to our house, and only open for a couple hours on Saturday morning. Saturday morning is Drew’s day to sleep in and then get fresh croissants from the Patisserie upon waking at 2 in the afternoon. 😉 It was much smaller than I expected (not anything like I remember from St. Louis), but it was definitely worth waking up earlier for.

We ended up with a bouquet of fresh cut zinnias, creole tomatoes, fresh peaches, blueberries and several pots of fresh herbs to plant in our windowbox. Everything we bought was delicious. It so makes me miss living in the country and having a garden! For the city, it’s the next best thing.

With all the fresh blueberries we have, I’ve made blueberry walnut muffins with fresh lemon zest several times the last two weeks! So delicious! This muffin recipe is really great. My mom always uses this recipe too and it can easily be adapted for whatever kind of muffins you want to make.

blueberry walnut muffins with fresh lemon zest (or whatever kind you want to make)

ingredients:

-1 3/4 cup flour
-1/3 cup sugar
-2 tsp baking powder
-1/4 tsp salt
-3/4 cup milk
-1/4 cup oil
-1 beaten egg

for blueberry/walnut/lemon:
-3/4 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
-1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I like nuts, so I usually use closer to 1 cup)
-fresh zest from 1 lemon (or less, according to taste)

for banana/nut:
-reduce milk above to 1/2 cup
-3/4 cup mashed bananas
-1/2 cup chopped walnuts or other nuts (again I use more like 1 cup)

for cinnamon/peach:
-3/4 cup diced peaches
-1 tsp cinnamon
-1/2 tsp nutmeg (optional)

directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin cups.
2. Mix dry ingredients together.
3. Mix wet ingredients together in separate bowl.
4. Add wet ingredients into dry and add in fruit/nut mix-ins. Stir just until moistened. Batter should be lumpy.
**Important–do not overmix your muffin dough or your muffins won’t be as fluffy and will have a tougher texture.
5. Fill greased muffin cups 2/3 full.
6. Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

Enjoy!

P.S. Don’t those peaches look fabulous in that yellow bowl? I love that bright sunny pop of yellow in the kitchen! That bowl, along with the rest of its set in different colors, was a wedding gift from my friend, Jessica. Love them! 🙂

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Hello There :)

Hello! It has been a while! I’m still here, I’ve just been super busy the last few weeks!

I was in my hometown for several weeks attending my bridal shower and finishing up wedding projects! Then, June 2nd was our wedding day! It was an absolutely gorgeous day outside and everything turned out perfectly! It was one of the best days of my life thus far and I will remember it forever. I can’t wait to share pictures and projects from it with you! Then last week, we were on our honeymoon in Boston, New Hampshire and Maine. We had a great time! This week we are finally back in New Orleans, getting our house straightened up and trying to find places for all our wedding gifts!

Stay tuned! I have lots of wedding projects, pictures from our wedding and honeymoon, house projects and cool wedding gifts to share with you soon!

Here is a sneak peek of our wedding pictures from our photographer:

Can’t wait to get our pictures back!

Check out our awesome photographer’s other work, here.

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DIY Wedding Ribbon Wands

This past weekend was my 21st birthday! (May 13th) Last year on my birthday we were moving into our apartment, so this year it was definitely nice and relaxing weekend compared to that. Drew and I went to a local bakery for breakfast, went to the park and watercolor painted, went downtown for an early dinner and walked around the French Quarter, went to an organist concert in St. Louis Cathedral, visited with Drew’s cousin, Howell, at his house in the quarter, and made sure to stop and buy a drink in honor of my 21st! It really was one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had. Totally fun, relaxing and I had a wonderful day spending it with my soon-to-be husband! (The wedding is 2 1/2 weeks away!!) If you want to see some pics from it all, check out my Instagram pics, here.

This weekend was definitely the break I needed after all the wedding and school stresses lately. It was a refreshing and rejuvenating weekend that has helped me to tackle finishing several wedding projects and getting the house all cleaned before we have family in town tomorrow for Drew’s graduation this weekend!

This week we finally finished a project that we’ve literally been working on for months. Ribbon streamer wands for guests to shake as we walk back down the aisle as husband and wife!

My mom and I made these for my older sister’s wedding a few years ago as well. You can see some of them being shaken in the background of this picture.

Here are all 200 of ours now finally finished:

To make these, you need:

-wooden dowel rods (we used 1/4″ x 48″ Birch Dowels, cut into fourths to make 12in long dowels)
-lots and lots of ribbon (cut into 15-16in lengths)
-hot glue gun & hot glue sticks
-wood stain (if you want to stain yours)
-sandpaper (if you cut your dowels)

For our dowel rods, we ordered them online here. We ordered fifty 1/4″ x 48″ Birch Dowels, and then cut each of them into 12in lengths, to give us 200 wooden streamer sticks.

Since we cut these with a little hand saw, there were some little splintery edges on them, so we took some sandpaper and lightly sanded the ends. (This part takes a while, so enlist help from your fiance and bridesmaids!)

You can leave them like this if you want, or you can choose to paint or stain them. For ours, I wanted them to be stained a little darker to coordinate better with my tastes and other wedding stuff. I already had stain on hand from my office desk, so I used that. It really didn’t take that long to coat them all with a rag with some stain on it.

I don’t remember exactly how many spools of ribbon we bought for this, but it was a lot. We got most of ours from Walmart and a sale bin at Michaels, but you could also look online and see if you could find some bulk discounts on it. The ribbon part of this project can make it kind-of pricey.

Since our spools of ribbon were different lengths (3 yards, 6 yards, 10 yards, etc.) we calculated up what length would be best to cut each into, to make sure we weren’t left with any short end pieces. All of our lengths ended up being around 15 or 16 inches. Much shorter than that wouldn’t be as flowy and much longer than that might get all tangled up.

Here are piles of all our cut ribbons. We used a mixture of pinks, greens, oranges, whites, golds, and neutrals. I wanted more salmon/coral colors, but I couldn’t find any ribbons in those colors at Walmart or Michaels.

After the paint or stain on your wooden dowels has dried, it’s time to start gluing on ribbons! We decided to use 3 or 4 ribbons on each streamer.

For ours, we stuck the ribbons on with hot glue like this:

Then we wrapped a piece of wider pink ribbon around it to cover up those ends. In the end, they looked like this:

Here is one finished streamer:

Then repeat the process 200 times! It was definitely a time-consuming activity, but I’m really pleased with how they turned out. I think they will make for some fun pictures of us walking back down the aisle with them all flowing in the air.

I really like the various ribbons we chose:

I love the mixture of the burlap ribbons, the lace, the colors, and the patterns. So pretty.

I can’t wait for the wedding!! Only 2 1/2 weeks away! Getting exciting! 🙂

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Bad Days

Lately, I’ve had a lot of stress and pressure in my life. Mainly because I feel spread way too thin.

Trying to co-run a business, make time for design work or stuff for clients that Drew needs me to do, trying to finish up all my assignments, papers and projects to end this year of school, study for final exams, trying to wrap up all the ten million little things that still have to be done for our wedding and honeymoon in three weeks, planning to have family and company over for Drew’s graduation next week and not to mention all the bazillion household things like laundry, cleaning, dinner and loading the dishwasher that have to be done on a daily/weekly basis. I’m juggling too many balls in the air, and then that happens, one or all of them are bound to drop at some point.

The last few weeks have been a struggle to keep those balls all up in the air, and lately it feels as if one after another after another keep dropping.

Wedding planning has been really, really stressful lately. That is something I’ve been trying desperately to avoid. I want this planning time to be enjoyable. I want to soak it all in and remember these days as good ones preparing everything for our lives together. It is a day that I’ve been planning for my whole life, and more intensely for the past year and a half that we’ve been engaged. I’ve spent that time making lists to make sure that things got done ahead of time and spaced out so that there wouldn’t be any one time of planning that would get more intensely stressful. I’ve worked extremely hard planning out all the details, talking to vendors, designing the paper and stationary all myself, etc. etc. etc. I have put so much time, energy and hard work into this event and I want it to come across beautifully in the end.

Lately, I’ve had this overwhelming sense of worry about the wedding plans. What if things don’t come together like I’ve envisioned? What if all these ideas that look great in my head look horrible or unfinished together in the end? A million “What ifs.” I’m afraid other people will look at the stuff that I put together and not like it.

Which is a totally silly thing to think. Who cares if someone else doesn’t like it, right? It isn’t their wedding. All that matters is that I like it and at the end of the day we are husband and wife. The food, flowers, decorations, weather, all that doesn’t mean a thing. But it is still so hard to get those thoughts out of my head.

It has been especially hard these last few weeks because I’ve gotten a lot of negative comments about wedding stuff. Vendors, family, friends saying things like “So and so didn’t like the RSVPs,” “Those are too small, why would you pick those?,” “those are too big,” “you really want that color?,” “No one else likes that,” “When are you going to do this,” “Why don’t you do it this way,” “That is going to look horrible together,” “That is going to look like a 5th grader put it together,” etc, etc, etc… I don’t know why so many people feel it necessary to express their negative feelings to a bride three weeks before her wedding day, but it isn’t very nice and it puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on me. It makes me feel self-conscious about myself and my choices and when I let it get to me, it makes me a really sad and unhappy person.

I’ve been really sad the past few weeks. Upset about wedding stuff, pressured to get things done right this second when I don’t have any seconds right now to give to them, stressed about finals and school projects not going the way they should.

I’ve been trying to hold it together the past several weeks, but I’ve fallen apart more than once. Yesterday in particular was a really bad day. Yesterday was my last final. I’ve been done with classes for over a week and have been studying for finals and finishing projects. Surprisingly with everything else on my plate, I feel like I did really well at all my finals and got everything in on time and did my best. I thought I would be relieved once I turned in my printmaking final yesterday. However, I got the news yesterday that my French class that I’ve been working hard to try to take this summer at UNO isn’t going to transfer to Tulane for stupid reasons. I spent the last month, applying to UNO, paying money for application to them, talking to a million people, getting everything taken care of so I could register for classes, messing with residency information and immunization records to try to get this all worked out so that I could pay a bunch of money just to take one French class there. I need another French class to graduate and I need to take it during the summer so that it is all I have to worry about at one time because I really struggled with my previous French classes. I’m getting married and we are going on our honeymooon, so I had to take the class online because I won’t be in New Orleans to go to class everyday during that time. My academic advisor said before I even started the process that it should all be fine. But the French department refuses to offer credit for any online class, and they didn’t feel the need to inform me of that until after I put in all the work to try to make things work at UNO.

So now I have to try to fit that into my schedule next year along with all the other crazy hard classes I have to take to finish up a double major in both English and Studio Art. Talk about balls dropping, next year is going to be nearly impossible.

After dwelling on all that stuff yesterday along with all the other stresses in my life, I was starting to get really depressed. Saddened by the way things are going and how lately it seems like one thing after another keeps going wrong. When you start thinking about all those things, then you find a million other things in your life that you are unsatisfied with and it is a horrible downward cycle.

Last night, while wallowing in my sorrows, I saw this quote that a Facebook friend had shared on her wall. It was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment.

How perfectly true is that. It is so easy to have one bad day (or even a string of them) and then all of a sudden find it hard to remember all the million great things you have in your life. All your blessings, all your talents, all that you are capable of, forgotten in the midst of a few stressful circumstances.

But my words of encouragement didn’t stop there. Every night before I go to bed, I read the bible verse of the day on my Bible app on my phone and focus on that and how it relates to my life and then often go on and read the rest of the chapter it comes from. The past few days, every single scripture has been spot on to things that have been happening in my life lately. God always has the right words to say in every moment. Yesterday’s scripture was from Philippians 4 (one of my favorite chapters of the Bible).

Multiple parts of this scripture were exactly the positive words I needed to hear.

Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”

I was so not rejoicing to God for all the wonderful things he has given me in life by focusing on all the bad things.

Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” 

By spending all day worrying about what I was going to do about my wedding plans, what I was going to do about my French class, how I would handle all those classes next year, talking myself through all the bad things happening, I wasn’t spending enough time praying about those situations and giving them over to God. I was worrying myself to death and for what? Over a French class? It might be a hard class, but it is such a minor detail in the scheme of life.

Philippians 4:8, “Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”

Such an excellent reminder any day, but specifically yesterday, where were my positive and lovely thoughts instead of those negative ones?

Philippians 4:13, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

French class next year, finishing up two majors, hours and hours of art studios each semester. Bring it on. It might not be the most fun year of my life, but I can do it.

One of the things I really like about my Bible, is the study notes that it has for every verse. Those often bring more understanding about the scriptures and give it a better relevance to everyday situations. I found this one particularly pertinent:

“It’s easy to get discouraged about unpleasant circumstances or to take unimportant events too seriously. If you haven’t been joyful lately, you may not be looking at life from the right perspective.”

Umm hello, I think that was written specifically for me to get through yesterday. Really wise words.

So I’m trying, trying to take all that to heart and forget about the unimportant stuff. I should be excited and happy and joyful! My 21st birthday is in 2 days! The love of my life graduates from college in a week! My bridal shower is in two weeks and our wedding is in three weeks! I have a wonderful person to share my life with, we have a cute little house, we have food to eat, we have a nice event planned to share the start of our married lives with the rest of those people closest to us. We have a lot of great things going on! We have a lot of people that care about us and want to be a part of that day.

We have a lot to rejoice in the Lord for!

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Easter Weekend at the Beach

How was your Easter weekend? Ours was great!

We didn’t get to go home to Illinois to spend it with our family (it is a ten hour drive each way and Drew only had Saturday and Sunday off work– way too long and exhausting to drive each way to only be there for just over 24 hours!). Since the end of school for us and our wedding day are both quickly approaching, we decided the best thing to do on our weekend was to get some much needed rest and relaxation. What better way to do that than with a mini-vacation?!

We decided to head to Gulf Shores, Alabama to the beach! It is only a few hours from here, so it was a nice little weekend trip. I had Friday off school and used that day to get a much needed haircut and work on some wedding projects. Then Saturday morning, we got up, put our stuff in the car, and were on our way. We took a nice little scenic drive through the country for part of the way and stopped in this cute little quaint beach town of Fairhope, Alabama for lunch and to walk through some shops and art galleries. Once we checked into our hotel in Gulf Shores, we spent the afternoon on the beach and then went out for dinner (really great seafood).

We lucked out with a really awesome room in a nice hotel for not too expensive (we only stayed one night). Our room was huge and on the end of the hotel, so we had a nice window and balcony facing the beach and also three more windows that gave us views of the beach and city from the other sides as well. Sunday we got up, watched the waves from the balcony, then went on a walk down the beach. The water right in front of our hotel was really awesome and super clear. There was also this really cool sandbar that allowed you to be able to walk pretty far out without getting in water too deep. It was perfect. We loaded up our stuff, checked out and headed to eat some Easter lunch at a cute little local diner. We spent a little time driving around and shopping, then headed back home.

It was a really perfect and relaxing weekend! I wish it had been longer! Here are some of our photos via Instragram:

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The Most Amazing Brownies

This past weekend, Drew, my friend Jessica, and I were busy working on a craft project for the wedding. While we were working, I made these brownies for us to snack on. My mom used to make these and it had been so long since I had had them. They are delicious!

The Most Amazing Brownies

ingredients:
-one box fudge brownie mix (including oil & eggs, per package directions)
-1 jar marshmallow creme
-1 cup peanut butter
-1 1/2 cups chocolate chips (I prefer a mix of milk chocolate and semi-sweet, but whatever your preference is)
-1 Tbsp butter
-2 cups crisp rice cereal

directions:
1. Mix up your brownie mix according to the package directions. Bake as directed, using a 9×13 pan.
2. Let cool completely, then spread marshmallow creme on top of brownie layer.
3. In a saucepan, melt butter, peanut butter, and chocolate chips.
4. Add in crisp rice cereal and mix well.
5. Spread chocolate/peanut butter coated cereal on top of marshmallow creme layer.
6. Enjoy! (P.S. The brownies cut nicer if refrigerated until chilled before cutting.)

These really are the perfect mixture of gooey, soft and crunchy! So delicious!

P.S. In completely unrelated to brownie news, our wedding is exactly 2 months away today!!! It is getting so close! I’m so excited! 🙂

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Our Wedding Rings

Wedding rings are literally one of the smallest aspects of a wedding, but really in many ways are one of the largest. After the ceremony is over, the guests have left, the pictures have been taken, the flowers have died and the dress has been hung back in the closet, the rings are the one small daily reminder that you wear with you for the rest of your life as a symbol of your love and the reasons why you tied the knot in the first place.

We have a lot of other things to buy for the wedding, so we are definitely on a budget, but I wanted to make sure whatever rings we picked out were what we liked and were high quality, since they are going to get a lot of daily use. I also wanted them to be special and sentimental as well. I would have loved to have a wedding band with little diamonds all the way around it, but that simply wasn’t in our budget right now. I wanted to try to get both of our wedding bands for under $800.

Since I had already given up on the idea of diamonds around my wedding band, I decided I just wanted a plain, simple, thin white gold band that would match the band on my engagement ring. I originally talked to the lady that made my engagement ring to talk to her about making me a thin, simple band. Then I realized that I already had a ring that looked like a wedding band– my promise ring. Drew gave me my promise ring on my 17th birthday, now nearly 4 years ago. It is engraved on the inside with the words, “Andrew and Caitlin Forever.” I wore it everyday from then on, until the day we got engaged when I replaced it with my engagement ring. It really meant a lot to me, and I was sad for it to just be sitting unused. It didn’t however, look very good with my engagement ring. It was too thick for my tastes and was rounded on the outside, which I didn’t like either.

See what I mean? The thin, delicate look of my engagement ring just didn’t look good with my promise ring. So, I took it to a local jeweler here in New Orleans and had them make it skinnier and more flat on the outside, while still keeping the inscription inside. It turned out a little thicker than my engagement ring band, but still much thinner than before. I think it was as thin as they could go without having to re-engrave the words inside and make them smaller. I love it so much more now that it looks like this:

It is hard to believe that it is the same ring! It looks so much better with my engagement ring and I’m happy that I got to re-use it since it has a lot of sentimental value. I’m so happy that they were able to keep the original inscription without having to re-engrave it as well. Plus, guess how much it cost? $70. Much cheaper than it would have been to buy a new wedding ring!

I was so excited about getting it back and seeing how it turned out. We also ordered Drew’s wedding ring at about the same time. We ended up having it made by the same lady that made my engagement ring, so that they would be more cohesive and because we really liked that lady’s work. We also couldn’t find anything like what we wanted in the jewelry stores we looked in and their prices were much more expensive than what the custom-made lady was going to charge us. Additionally, I wanted to add a little something more sentimental to Drew’s ring as well. Since mine was engraved, I thought about having his ring engraved, but in the end decided that I would prefer to have a little tiny heart etched in the inside of his ring instead, to literally mean that he holds my heart. The lady that made it was happy to add that tiny detail. His ring is 6mm wide, smooth with a satin finish in white gold. Here is how his turned out:

I love how mine turned out to be a mini-version of his:

I love them! Drew’s ring was $725, which was quite a bit cheaper than the $1500-$2500 that we saw for similar rings in the jewelry store that re-did my ring. Plus I love that we both have rings made my the same lady and that she was able to add that tiny heart to it as well. So, our total for both of our wedding rings was $795!! $5 below our original $800 budget! How awesome!

If you are interested in looking at work by the lady that made our rings, you can see her work in her Etsy store, here, or on her website, here. She is really nice, does amazing work, and her prices are pretty reasonable for custom handmade jewelry compared to a chain jewelry store. (My engagement ring was actually appraised at several hundred dollars more than what we paid for it!) If you like my engagement ring, there is one that she has for sale that is almost identical, here.

*******

I haven’t shared much else about wedding planning lately, but since some people are really interested in my planning process, here is what else we’ve gotten done in the last couple months:

-We completed our wedding registries at Target, Macy’s, Dillard’s and our hometown Durham’s Hardware Store
-We sent out our Save-the-Dates
-We booked our honeymoon!! We did this in mid-December. We are flying into Boston, Massachusetts and spending a few days there, heading on up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire for a few days, and then heading on up to Portland, Maine for a few days! We can’t wait to see this area of the country (I’ve been when I was a baby and my parents have been several times and always talk about how beautiful it is!), and we have cute little Bed and Breakfasts reserved to stay in and can’t wait for sailboat rides, seeing lighthouses, art museums, Drew’s brewery tours, and relaxing and enjoying our first week of marriage!
-I picked up my wedding dress
-I bought my wedding shoes
-I ordered and picked up my veil
-We booked the DJ for the wedding ceremony and reception
-We picked out the men’s tuxes.
-We met with the caterer to discuss the reception menu.
-We talked to the florist.
-We booked our cake baker.
-We reserved a bed and breakfast for our wedding night.
-We, of course, ordered our wedding rings!

We still have lots to do, but it is nice that most of the big things are out of the way. We just have to get the bridesmaids dresses done (my mom is making them), design/print/mail the invitations, get all the small little decor/favors/table decorations, etc… bought/made/completed and about a million more things, but at least we are down to the fun decorative to-do items! I can’t believe the wedding is just over 2 months away!!

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Baby Jackson

I’ve been spending my Spring Break partially in my hometown running wedding errands and partially at my sister’s home in Nashville, welcoming my new baby nephew!! Baby Jackson was born on March 14, 2012 at 1:27 am. He weighed 8 pounds, 15 ounces and measured 22 inches long. Older sisters Evie and Georgiana are very excited and enthralled with their baby brother! Isn’t he just so sweet?!

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Tornado

Early this morning, Drew and I were awoken by a call from Drew’s mom telling us that a tornado had run through our hometown of Harrisburg, Illinois. We both immediately started calling everyone we knew, checking to make sure that they were safe, alive, and well. My mom and sisters were asleep and didn’t even know what had happened, and luckily were all okay and the damage was no where near them. My grandpa was fine as well. My grandma lives a block away from the tornado’s path, and luckily was also okay and her home wasn’t damaged. Everyone in Drew’s family was okay, but two of his brothers lived right in the path of the destruction and both of their houses were badly damaged.

This aerial view of part of town shows where the tornado went through. The red boxes are over both of Drew’s brothers houses. They were just out of the tornado’s main path. We are all so lucky that they are alive and well.

As the day progressed, we learned more about the disaster. The tornado was an EF4, which is the second strongest tornado on the Fujita scale. Winds were supposedly up to 170 miles an hour. The tornado went through right before 5 am, only minutes from when the tornado sirens went off. Many people were still asleep in their homes and weren’t aware of what was going on. The structural damage from all the pictures I’ve seen and accounts from people is horrific. It tore through homes, businesses, shopping centers, and even through part of the hospital. Over 30o homes were damaged.

There have been hundreds of injuries and 6 confirmed deaths. I knew one girl that died today. She was only a year older than me and we went to high school together. One of my best friends was really close friends with her. I was on several church trips with her as well. She was incredibly sweet, a nurse, a strong Christian, and a little kids Sunday school teacher. The tornado ripped right through her apartment. I can’t believe such a sweet soul was taken today, but I know she is in a much better place.

Hearing of her death, hearing of friends and family who lost their homes, and seeing the destruction of my tiny hometown all over national news has been pretty unreal and emotional. It is hard to be so far away during times like these. I so wish I could be there right now to help out. I’m proud of my town for grouping together in times of need and being selfless, giving, and full of kindness and willing to help everyone else out. Times like these really put the important things in life into perspective.

I pray for strength for all the hurting families and those that have lots of work ahead of them to re-build their homes and businesses. I also give praise for all those that are alive and well and am so happy that the damage wasn’t even worse.

I ask for your thoughts and prayers for my hometown and all that it has lost today.

Photo from Harrisburg’s Daily Register

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