Spring Tulip Wreath

My latest project...To welcome SPRING (so this new found snow from this morning needs to go away!)

 I found this lovely wreath on Pinterest hoping there would be a tutorial on it... unfortunately there was not. But i was determined not to spend $80 by buying this wreath...

Being that i am a blog stalker i have learned that there is always a way to figure out how to make it yourself, for less than buying already made. Wreaths scare me though, when we were making them for work around Christmas my wreaths had ISSUES! Anyways… so i just kind of jumped into this project blindly.

 
 I picked up my stems and trimmed them to the length that i wanted.  (i also hot glued the petal to the stem so i didn't have to worry about them falling off while in storage or anything like that) Then just kept adding, and adding, and adding.... The more flowers that were added the better it started to look.

A coworker today pointed out that my tulips were a lot bigger than the ones in the example i was going from. Which were the only ones my HOBLOB carried, they also didn't have the two pinks colors so i just went with the two. That difference and that my leaves were a lot bigger than the example as well which I’m sure is because of the fact that my tulips were bigger.

So this project took:
8 bundles of tulips @ 6.99 each - 50% off = 3.49 each
1 Foam Wreath @ 7.99 -40% Off Coupon = 4.79
1 Roll Ribbon @ 3.99 -50% off = 1.99
Hot Glue

TOTAL for this project = 34.70
Saved by making it myself = 45.30 + shipping & tax

Valentines 2012

Its Valentines weekend which means a mini vacation for us!!

We both were off work by about 2 on Friday, so since we had PLENTY of time to kill before we needed to leave. We took my car over to the Oceanside car wash. I was so excited I love OCEAN anything! Sadly I was disappointed it was not as great and magical as I thought it would be they need to add some wall paintings to that place!! ANYWAYS…..

The beautiful flowers that were delivered to me at work!

We packed our bags and headed up to SLC! (You would think with how many bags we had we were staying for the week and not just the night.) Makes me worried how many bags we will REALLY have when we ARE gone for a week!

Once we finally got checked in we still had some time to kill. So Nate brought up his FAVORITE topic, (of the moment) RENOVATING a home. Don’t get me wrong I love thinking about all the great things we can do to an older home, BUT when you start talking about to finances of it all, it can be quite overwhelming. It starts to really stress me out and puts me in a weird mood. I start to feel guilty about the not so little things we have planned for this year. For instance our Disneyland trip, buying me a new car, and maybe hopefully a baby, all things we DON’T have to do. It made me start to worry about our trip, THE biggest reason I love our weekend getaways is because I feel like we always come back feeling much closer to each other, its time for us to reconnect. 

I had made us reservations at the Market Street Grill about a month ago just to be safe. When I checked in and the hostess informed me that they were running about 20 minutes behind…..Not a big deal… Well 40+ minutes later we had still not been seated. (Why did I make a reservation again?)  Once we were finally seated and got wonderful food in our bellies everything was just fine! 

We saw “The Vow” on Saturday, Nate said he will never watch it again… He felt that Channing Tatum’s character was way too relatable and he didn’t like feeling that way. In other words the chick-flick did its job J I loved it and can’t wait to add it to our movie collection! AND… after seeing the movie I finally got the reconnected feeling I was waiting for. Right before the movie started Nate realized he was not wearing his wedding ring but he had in fact left it at the hotel, which we had just checked out of. Luckily we were able to call and someone ran up to our room and found his ring, which was SUCH A RELIEF! But it also meant we needed to hurry so we wouldn’t be late to our couples massage. Massage Envy did a great job Nate and I were both very impressed.

We ended our weekend with a quick trip to HOBLOB (Hobby Lobby) and some Café Rio.

Grace enjoyed our cafe rio too..

Valentines Day:
You would think i would learn after two years that even though he says he ISN'T doing anything for Valentines he IS! He kept telling me that NO i am not doing anything we already had ours... HE LIED. He had ROSES and a Red Velvet cake sent to me at work. I was in complete shock when my co worker walked in with these two boxes for me! We made a yummy steak and shrimp dinner together.

Nate turned 24!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Only thing missing was a banner!

Nate had his 24th birthday yesterday! Right after I got off work I was supposed to head straight to Costco to pick of some Ice Cream, BUT I really wanted to get Nate some Balloons for his birthday so…. I went to Pioneer Gift and Copy. They have the cutest balloons there. I would recommend them for ANY of your balloon / party needs! I’m sure the people that were driving past me as I was trying to get this BIG bundle of balloons in my car were getting great entertainment. When I finally got home I quickly started to finish the cake so I could attempt to get the kitchen back in order BEFORE Nate got home… Well that DIDN’T happen. Nate got home and helped me put the kitchen back together. We were planning on having Tomato Macaroni for dinner and when I say WE I mean HE. (I do NOT like Tomato Macaroni I always joke with him that it would be the same if he just thickened some Tomato Soup and poured it over Noodles) Since we had just cleaned the kitchen we didn’t want to mess to up before his family came over for cake. So we went to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner and stopped at Costco to get the Ice Cream that I had forgotten. I didn’t completely avoid Tomato Macaroni night though he asked if he could have it later this week….. 

I will FOREVER go there for my BALLOONS!

I like to have a theme that I can work with, so that I can coordinate the cake, gifts, and decorations. The theme for his birthday this year was FISHING! He got a FISH balloon... Some new shoes he can wear with pants... (Not sure what that means but that's what he asked for)  I was going to pick out a new hat for him but I struggled, so I took him to pick out a hat and his shoes. And I also got him a Fishing Wii game that he is HOOKED on! (No pun intended) 

He was excited to open his MASS present

Fake Surprise ( he picked it out)

Fake surprise take 2

Hey a REAL surprise face!!

 His cake was another story… I tried making my own fondant this time around and FAILED. It also didn’t help that I was a little short on the amount I had rolled out and I didn’t want to dye more so I had to pull it weird which made it NOT SMOOTH :( I am definitely learning through trial and error what works for me. It did taste AMAZING though. The top tier was White Cake with buttercream frosting with a fresh strawberry filling. The bottom was Chocolate Cake with Oreo buttercream and an Oreo filling. 

I was trying to get an angle that you could see the little fishing pole and wire you can kinda see it

HAPPY 24^th BIRTHDAY Nate!!!

Remington

My Moms dog Jose had a litter of adorable puppies! She is a Golden-Doddle and the Dad is a Lab-Doddle so they are adorable little puppies. Nate and I found one that we fell in love with! He was so cuddly and just like a little baby! Nate even named him Remington we called him Remi and Chubby. But my mother didn't love me enough to keep him at her house for me...so..she SOLD him.. So here is a post of remembering my adorable little (once was mine) puppy..

These puppies were GINORMOUS they were way to young to be eating big dog food

When ever you walked into their room you would get attacked it was super cute they were like little piranhas

This our Remington cute, fat, and lazy.. :)

Smiths 1/9/12

Is it sad that my trip to the grocery store has become one of the highlights of my week? Sometimes of my month, since i don't go weekly?...

When i do my trip i am planning my entire month of food plus all my coupon items.. We budget $200 a month for groceries and couponing items. This trip i had a full list of all the things i needed plus a separate list of all my coupon items.. Luckily my food list was MOSTLY fresh fruits and veggies and a couple other loose odds and ends ( which added up ) BUT my coupons were all in order! We collected all of our items and headed to the register. Nate and i started making our bets, of what we thought the total would be. i could tell Nate thought we were going to be over budget. It didn't help that by the time everything was scanned it was showing 341!! I even panicked a little when i saw that! After we scanned our Fresh Values and handed her my stack of 50+ coupons all valued at a $1 or more we just watched the numbers go down and down. All the way down to 141. That is $59 dollars UNDER my budget and i am OK with that!
Spent $66 on groceries for the month & $75 on my coupon items
All of my couponed items would have been $195 which means on that alone i saved $120 with coupons and items being on sale.

Our haul included..
7- Old Spice Body Washes
7- Olay Body Washes
7- Secret Deodorants
14- Old Spice Deodorants
7- Boxes of Tide
7- Herbal Essence Hair Spray
8- Covergirl eye shadows

Our haul!

The receipt went down to my knees!!

Gracie loves when we make little forts for her!

Isabelle's 4th Birthday!

My adorable niece Isabelle turned 4 yesterday and i was lucky enough to be able to make her birthday cake for her.. The theme was pink princess so here is what we came up with....

It was thrown together really quick and i did learn some valuable lessons.. Letting someone else bake the cake is AWESOME but.. Don't just assume they know what your brain is thinking if you need 2 of each you need to tell them and not just assume they make cakes in their sleep like i do. Luckily i was able to figure it out without loosing all the height of the cake! Looks pretty cute for a short afternoon of work.

Year in Review 2011

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