Babies on the mind!

Not for me! For my future niece! So I've been looking at baby things online just to see what my amazing new niece will need for when she is born and for Christmas, and New Years Eve, and Valentines Day, etc. Basically I'm excited to buy her some fun things! I have found the cutest website that I could spend WAY too much money on right now! It's called The Letter Tree . I am not going to talk about everything I found because it would be way too long but here are some highlights!
Here is an amazing monkey themed gift set. You get a stuffed monkey, a banana rattle, a blanket (or lovie as they call it, how cute is that?), a sign for the nursery that says "Shh Baby Sleeping", and a cute little basket. Now while I would really like to get this for my niece I think I really just might want it for myself!
Once again, this is something that I love, it is the color that would be appropriate for a niece but is it just something that I want for my babies that I will have one day? It's a set of three burp cloths and the middle one is sock monkeys!!! Niece might receive this but don't tell her that!
And here are some monogrammed baby scrubs. I don't know if Dr. Andrew would find these funny/cute or just stupid but I think they are funny/cute. I might save these till she is walking!
And OH MY GOSH! I can't even get over this! It is a crayon apron! Do you know how much I would have loved this when I was little. As soon as she is old enough to color she will get this from me because I love it so much. Though it might be something I keep at my house for when she visits. That way she can always remember that cool crayon apron that she got to wear at Aunt B and Uncle P's house! I remember I had this blue wooden crayon/craft caddy when I was little that I still to this day remember fondly. I think I got it for my 5th birthday!

And on a note seperate from babies, I think this would be a cute gift to bring to a couples wedding shower. How perfect for a couple that likes to tailgate or entertain. These are beverage coolers that you can gave monogrammed and they even have bottle openers attached to them!

So that is my find of the day! A wonderful new website full of fun gifts for my future niece and friends who will get married soon!

Don't do it!

I didn't want to do it but unfortunately I found myself at home tonight and nothing was on TV. I am just now remembering that I had wanted to watch part of When Harry Met Sally for the millionth time! Anyway, I got sucked into watching the Lohan "reality" TV show on E! and I have to say that it is awful times ten. Who knew that Lindsey Lohan's sister was recording a record, what, who is going to buy that? She is way too overdone for someone her age and the mom just makes me sad because she thinks that she is still 20 something. In fact, the mother and daughter seem to think that they are the same age. I don't want to be mean about them but I have to, they are just awful! Seriously I just lost about 20 minutes of my life! Should have stuck to HGTV even if I didn't like the show that was on!

8 year olds are great!

Today I had my bridal portraits taken and I think they went really well. Our photographer is amazing and I can't wait to see them! I tutor the two most adorable little girls from my school on Monday and Wednesdays all this summer and I had enough time to make it today after my portraits. On Monday I had warned them that I would probably have more makeup on than usual and that my hair might look fancy because I was having pictures taken in my wedding dress. When I got to the house today one of the little girls looked at me and asked "Where is your wedding dress?" It was so cute. She thought I was going to be showing up in my wedding dress today! Even after all of the smiling that I had just done, I was so happy to have her put such a big smile on my face!

preppy

I discovered this superprep blog through the Kate Spade website. Love it!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day Dad! I wanted to download some pictures in honor of Father's Day (would've done it for Mother's Day but was deep into the end of the year at school!).
Here are dad and RHRB at our uncle and aunt's wedding when she was the flower girl! Nice stash dad! How cute is little RHRB?!
I love this picture of me and dad! It is one in a series of pictures of us sitting on the deck of our old house. The caption I always give it is "You make the money dad, and give it to me!" Ha ha!
And here I am with dad and RHRB in Hawaii in 2000. Sorry for the bathing suit picture from when I am in college after gaining the freshman 15 and then the sophomore 5! Note the towel hiding the most important parts! I love this picture though because it was such a fun trip and I love the colors in this picture!
Dad and I have always been twins! It is why we always think the other is so good looking. This is at RHRB and Mr. Andrew's wedding in November 2006! Look how cute we are! See, never fails! I limited myself to uploading only 5 pictures because that is all that I could upload at once and I could have uploaded a ton more!
And here is to the future fathers! Here is to my brother in law, "Mr. Andrew" as our dad would call him, who is going to be a dad in about 2 1/2 months! You are are a fun brother in law who I like to hang out with, and apparently drink whiskey with! You are going to be a great dad! (And I might add that you are actually no longer Mr. Andrew but Dr. Andrew!) Look at how much fun we have!
I am so excited for my dad to walk me down the aisle in 48 DAYS!! We have joked about this day since I was little. We have always joked that I would be elbowing dad the whole way down the aisle because he would be saying something that would be intended to annoy me or make me feel embarassed. WARNING DAD-Do not make me elbow you or I will be blushing and beet red in all of my wedding pictures! I know it will be perfect and maybe we will stage some elbowing pictures just to be silly!

A job I would NOT be good at!

PW and I are lucky enough to be getting some furniture reupholstered so that our place will all go together and look semi-adult vs. looking like a 27 year old girl lives there alone! One of the things I had planned to do was to reupholster a bench that I was lucky to inherit from my grandmother. I spent about 4 hours reupholstering it on Tuesday and I am really excited about it. It took the majority of my time to rip off the old upholstery. Once I had it all off the hardest part was finishing the corners so that they didn’t look horrible. I know it doesn’t look professional but I am actually pretty excited for how well my first home upholstery project went! Here are some pictures!

Here is a close up of what the checks look like. I think the bench needs some pillows on it. I went and looked for some today but found nothing . . .

Here is the bench with the swatches of the other fabrics we are using. Thank goodness I am marrying a boy who understands my love of the color blue! I think he was not a fan of the checks at first but I love the checks. The print on the left will be for two wing back chairs that we are inheriting from PW’s mom. The big check is what will be table skirt for a round end table I have. And the cream color fabric will be an arm chair and ottoman and the piping will be in the small check! I can’t wait to see it all put together!
So I was going to do another at home reupholstery job on some dining chairs that I inherited from my grandmother but after my bench job I changed my mind. First off I have always loved chairs that have covers with little skirts. Second the chairs are not straight on all sides and I just didn’t want to waste fabric doing a horrible job. SO we are going to get little chair covers like the ones on the Shabby Chic website (below) that are oh so cute. We are going to get them made in the small check fabric that the bench is in!

Front of skirt:
Back of skirt (ties on with little bows!):

I love Shabby Chic and if I was able to continue living in a space filled with light fabric and painted furniture I would! Trust me, if it were up to me I would be painting that bench an ivory color and destressing it! Unfortunately I have to agree with PW that it might just be a touch too girly for him. However when we have a house big enough to do it I will have my Shabby Chic room!

US Post Office . . . you need to give your employees some intelligent information so that they can help people

. . . otherwise you are just goint to be critisized for your lack of information, lack of help, and lack of intelligence and those of you who are good in those areas, I am sorry. I don't want you to have to make up for those who can't do their job well. Just be glad you don't work with the miserable women who work at the West Gray location in Houston, Texas!! Let's not think about their lack of help or intelligence I am sure that one day someone can help them to achieve that (seriously if you are in Houston, go somewhere else . . . hint Greenbriar)

Oh, look below, pretty!

So, I guess I need to update the fact that the down town US postal employees that helped us earlier this week were one in a million. Today we got the rest of the million who apparently hate life and don't want to help out anyone or make life easier for anyon. With that said, we had a horrible chase today looking to find a post office that would let us hand cancel the invitations so that we could get them out. West Gray said "We don't do that or let you do that but down town does" After we drove down town we found out once again that the Houston West Gray Post Office is awful and ignorant. Sorry, I don't want to be mean but they have told us so many false bits of info that I will NEVER return there. So after going to down town and finding out that they won't do it but if we leave our invitations on a counter the woman in the pasport office would "get to them if she got a chance and if not she would send them upstairs" yawn. Seriously, I'd rather leave my invitations on the street and hope they would get to the correct place the way I wanted rather than trust this lady. So, after reading numerous blogs about brides going to post offices and challenging the employes who eventually let them hand cancel, I wish I lived in you city. We finally found the best post office in Houston. The same one that was used to hand cancel RHRB's invitations yet we didn't go to them originally because they used to use red ink. Well, they use black now. We love them and I would love to go back and give the woman who not only helped us get a hand canceler but got us and EXTRA one, and give her a nice present. Seriously I wish I could tell her thank you in a good way.

Other than that, PW is on his bachelor weekend this weekend. They are in Austin and I just hope it is going ok! Tomorrow mom, dad, and I drive to Dallas to go to our last girly shower.

Today before he headed out to his big weekend PW picked up our wedding bands and above is a shot of them! I am so in love with both of them. PW's says RRR 8-2-08 PBW on the inside! I want to get my engagement ring engraved with that one day since I can't get my wedding band engraved with anything. I LOVE my wedding band. I haven't even tried it on yet but I helped design it and it looks just like what I wanted. Yay!

I am sorry to be mean toward US Postal workers. It is unfortunate that the employees of that company seem to be unwilling to help the public. I realize that this is not true of all US Postal workers but I have found this to be true with three of the locations I have tried out. I have also read many blogs that have had the same info that I have so at least it isn't just in Houston!

Get ready for a very boring post to anyone other than the people who are getting married and needing to send out their invitations right now while the new, correct price wedding stamps are unavailable! The past two weeks have been spent thinking about how to get around the fact that we wanted to have the invitations reach guests by June 2nd but the stamps done come out till June 10th. The new wedding stamps are green for the RSVP card and orange for the actual invitation. First of all what man decided on these two colors for wedding stamps? I like the green but the orange? Come on!

So after a thinking hard about our options we discovered the dragonfly stamp below which is just a little more than the actual postage that we need. We went to THREE post offices looking for these stamps. Finally at the downtown post office we were able to talk to an intelligent person who was able to tell us that they haven't been delivered to post offices yet. They tried to tell me at first that "they weren't available till June 10" which I knew was untrue for two reasons. First, the internet says they are available now and have been since May 19. Second, Miss Tiramisu from Weddingbee has already posted pictures of her invitations with the dragonfly stamps on them! I sent some quick messages to Miss Tiramisu and was quickly answered with very helpful information. If you haven't gone to Weddingbee yet, you must go look through it!

So we are using the liberty bell for the RSVP cards and the dragonflies for the invitations. I like the colors of the dragonfly and I like that the liberty bell says "forever" on it which is a good message for a wedding!
So, we got online and ordered our dragonfly stamps yesterday. And this morning I received an email saying that they have shipped. So if all goes well, the invitations should go out on Friday! I would really like to call the lady from the US Post offices's 1-800 number who told me that I couldn't order the dragonfly stamps to let her know that you can in fact order them so that when the next person calls she can give out correct information! Needless to say I have had it with the people who work behind the desk at post offices. They just don't care and if they don't know the real answer they just tell you what they want without checking. Though if you are in Houston and need postal help go to the downtown post office because the employees there were friendly, helpful, and double checked information to get it correct. Very different from the other post office experiences. Oh and the best thing about the down town post office. . . it is mere minutes from Ninfa's on Navigation and so RAR and I got to go get margaritas!

So luckily it is summer time and I can stress out and worry about something as silly as stamps. It makes me feel a little crazy but I want my invitations to look nice all the way down to the most minute details! And I have to say that I've come across MANY brides who have blogged about the same issue so it makes me feel a little bit better!

I am sorry if I have put anyone to sleep with this post! I know RAR will appreciate it since she went through it all with me!

sock monkey crib bedding

Okay, this is kind of wacky, and I would never pick it, but I also kind of love it, including the red Jenny Lind crib! It's my favorite brown-and-red color scheme.

bird and banner

In my ceaseless baby research, I somehow came across this graphic design team that makes amazing wedding invitations. Their home page makes me very happy.

stationery for dogs

Click through and then on "products" and then on the word "dogs."

Cute or disturbing?