Today has been a great day! I found lots of cool things!

Drew and I went thrift shopping and found a cute picnic basket and some other cool props for our engagement pictures! We are thinking of having a sort-of picnic in the park for them. I say “sort-of” picnic, because I want it to look nicer with a vase of fresh flowers, old books, a big pretty glass pitcher of lemonade…the sort of things that are too much work for any normal person to take on a real picnic. But I’m hoping they will make for nice pictures. We’ll see how it goes. 😉

We then ran by Jo-Ann’s to look for some other fun crafty things. We found some pretty burlap fabric to use for a picnic blanket for our engagement pictures (I wanted to use a quilt, but the ones we have aren’t in the prettiest colors and I won’t be home anytime soon to find a different one or make a new one). Lately I’ve really been into linen, burlap, and other fabrics that have noticeable grain lines. As you can see from my blog background. I don’t think that it will be the softest fabric to sit on, but it is really pretty and goes with the natural/country but classy look we are going for. 🙂 Plus, burlap is super cheap as far as fabric goes! It was $3.99 a yard! (before using any coupons/discounts/or sales) Ahh, just look at that nice prettiness:

As we were looking through the fabric selection, I found some pretty home decor fabrics that were on sale! I bought a little bit of two of them to make some pillows for Drew’s couch. (I really like the patterns on them, especially the brown/creme one!)

I also got some linen fabric and some other fun things to make a stitchery wall hanging thing. I miss sewing. As I was looking at the crafts stuff, Drew was walking around complaining about me taking too long and I guess looking cute at the same time, because somehow he got two different ladies to give him coupons. One for 50% off any fabric and another for 25% off of your entire purchase. Yay!

We went to Target because I had to get some toiletries and I wanted to look for a cute, simple and inexpensive tote bag to put all my painting supplies in, because next week we are starting a plein air painting series and we have to haul all of our painting stuff to Audubon Park all week. I toted my stuff to Drew’s house the other day in a plastic bag and it not only cut into my hands because it was too heavy, but the bag started to rip. My painting supplies were really expensive, so I really don’t want to drop them all over the place. Way to go me– I left all my bags of any sort at my home in Harrisburg. But, I found a really cute one for only $12.99. 🙂 Yay again! (I also found a really cute pink floral scarf there too! I love scarves!)

After that, we stopped to eat at a little cafe for lunch and then off to the mall. I swear, I hardly ever buy anything, or find anything I really like, but today I seemed to just hit the jackpot everywhere. I found a dress to wear for our engagement pictures that is really well made for a inexpensive dress from Macy’s, shoes to wear with it, that were a lot cheaper than I thought they would be, AND a Fossil cross-body small purse that is almost identical to Trang’s that I love and have been searching for something similar for months (Drew had promised to get me one as a Valentine’s day present and I hadn’t found one since then that I liked)! YAY! It was a very successful day! Plus, almost everything I bought was either on sale or reasonably priced! Quadruple yay! 🙂

Here is a little sneak peek of my engagement outfit: (That floral print is actually the scarf I bought from Target today. I’m thinking about using it as the sash for the dress because I’m not in love with the sash that came with it. It is a little thick for a sash, but I think it would work. It is a pretty perfect match for those shoes!)

I’m getting really excited about our engagement pictures. We’ve got a little project up our sleeves with them. I’ll tell you all about it, once I’m sure that it is going to work. 🙂 Wedding planning has actually made some progress in the last month. We’ve talked to venues, caterers, photographers, looked into prices for honeymoon locations, priced lots of things and come up with a how-much-we-think-this-wedding-is-going-to-cost-budget. Now we are trying to come up with a lets-actually-be-able-to-afford-this-wedding-budget. We are trying to figure out what is necessary, what isn’t, what we can do ourselves, and want we absolutely have to pay for. We’ve had a lot of good ideas lately about ways that we can save and how we can do things ourselves. It is starting to feel a little better. I want it to be a fun and pretty day, but I also don’t want to spend a ridiculous amount of money for just ONE DAY!  Is it a little too ambitious to cater a 250ish person event ourselves? What do you think? 🙂