Belated Baby Shower Recap!

I hosted a baby shower for my BFF K a few weeks ago and just realized I never posted about the party! It was great - everyone had fun and the decorations came together perfectly! I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves!

The main living room decorations - the 2nd floor railing was the perfect place to hang the fabric buntings that I got!

Presents!

I highly recommend co-ed baby showers - it was very laid back and fun to have boys there! (and a good shot of the paper lanterns we hung under the tent on the deck)

The mama to be! Doesn't she look so good for being 7 months preggo? She's not even wearing a maternity dress!!

The party planners with the mom-to-be (and all the food!)

Present Time!

Close up of the framed drawings that Jake and I gave them for the nursery.

Group shot!

I'd say my first experience with planning a baby shower was a success! Can't wait till the little man is here!

Salmon!

I really don't like Salmon. It's just a little bit too fishy for me. I much prefer mahi, tilapia, grouper...mild white fish = YUM! But I keep hearing about how amazing salmon (and other cold water fishes) are for you because of the omega-3's. My dad is a doctor and last month he went to this nutrition and wellness conference and he said the only thing they talked about all week was how amazing salmon was. He and my mom are now eating salmon like 3 times a week. So I decided I really needed to get over my aversion to it so that we can start eating it a lot too. I set a mid-year's resolution to try and eat salmon 2 times a week (considering before I was barely eating it 2 times a YEAR!)

Now that it's summer and we can grill the salmon outside, I'm even happier. I think part of my dislike was cooking it myself (J does all our grilling) and having it make our house smell fishy. So outside grilling is perfect! Jake does all the work and all the gross fishiness stays outside. I know, I'm weird.

I bought some salmon filets last night and we got to grilling them. I decided that if I'm going to jump headfirst into salmon, I would need some sort of a sauce to put on the salmon to make it a little bit easier to swallow. So I created my new "salmon sauce":

1/2 C Plain Fat Free Greek Yogurt

Juice from 1 lemon

A whole mess of fresh dill (we are growing dill on our deck, so I just cut a big bunch of it)

Garlic Pepper (you can buy garlic pepper in the grocery store and we're obsessed with it - gives a good garlicy flavor and it's sort of spicy! it's delish!)

Mix together and put it in the fridge for about an hour before you eat, to let the flavors meld together. Here's a crappy picture of the sauce after I made it:

And here's my plate of salmon, which we served with wild rice and balsamic roasted brussel sprouts (which got a bit burned in the oven - oops!)

And I enjoyed the salmon!! I ate my whole piece! The sauce definitely helped, but I did like it. So maybe I will be able to do this whole 2 times a week thing.

But I would love to get some new recipes for salmon. We can't grill it out with the same sauce 2 times a week obviously. So if anyone has any good recipes or ways they love to eat salmon, please share! Bonus points if they are easy and not too fishy for this non-salmon eater!

Budget Friendly Monogrammed Tray

I've been lusting after those cute monogrammed melamine trays I've been seeing all over the place. In our basement family room, we have a faux-leather ottoman as our coffee table and we really needed a tray to set on top, to store remotes and so we could set drinks down while we're watching TV.

 

I debating just ordering a tray that I had seen, but the $65+ price tag stopped me. We didn't even spent $65 on the ottoman itself! So I knew I could get creative and make one myself. I was at Crate and Barrel and spied this:

A perfect sized white melamine tray. For $17.95! And I had a 20% off coupon, so my total came to about $14. Major Score! 

So then I turned my BFF Etsy to find a monogram vinyl decal to put on the tray. Let me tell you, there are TONS of decals there! I finally decided on a pretty traditional monogram decal which was 8" and only $4! Here's the finished product:

The monogram is done in lime green and I love how it pops off of the white!

And here it is in use on our ottoman. Even J (who was not really all that excited when I told him about this project) admits it looks really good and is definitely useful!

So the grand total of this project came to about $25! Not horrible for an original tray that I "made"  myself! 

Happy Memorial Day! I'm off to our pool for the day! 

Wedding Wednesday: The Details

Another installment of Wedding Wednesday! Today we're talking about the details - place cards, favors, programs, etc. Our ceremony programs were fans, since it was a late summer outdoor wedding. They got a lot of use! They had a navy backing and then we did half with yellow ribbon and half with green ribbon. My day of coordinator was sweet enough to lay them out on the seats and alternate the ribbon color for me, since she knew I was slightly OCD about that sort of stuff. I just loved the look of them sitting on each seat. We also did menu cards, tucked into each napkin at each place setting. Our monogram and wedding date was up top (we also used that same monogram on the programs). They were backed with bright yellow paper and I love how that popped against our navy linens. We did beer koozies as a sort of informal favor. We decided we wanted to do koozies just about a week before the wedding (we weren't going to do any favors at all), so it was a bit of a scramble to find them last minute. We just had the wedding date printed on them - nothing else - because I thought it looked pretty cute that way. Also, I'm not a super huge fan of personalized ones with the names and some cheesey graphic. They sat in glass containers at each bar for people to grab. The Pillows! My favorite "DIY" project of the wedding - I just didn't do it myself. ha! My wonderful MOH and her mom helped me with sewing about 20 pillows that we placed around the benches at the venue. We used really fun, bright fabrics so they made the benches look a little bit more welcoming. It was nice to sort of make it feel a bit "loungey" around the gardens. After the wedding, I re-covered the pillows in more neutral fabric and now we use them in our family room!

Our place cards were also another favorite detail of mine. I knew I wanted to use wheatgrass to hold our place cards, because I think it looks really fresh and whimsical. I found a seller on Etsy to make the 75 flags for me - she did half polka dots and half stripes, which were attached to lollipop sticks which got stuck into the grass trays. I did the "calligraphy" myself the week of the wedding with a navy sharpie. It wasn't perfect by any means, but I think it carried over with the laid back feel of the place cards and looked pretty cute. We also did 2 large vases of fresh lemons and limes on that table to add some color.
The Ice Cream Cart - such a fun surprise for the guests, as well as a nice treat for a late night snack on a hot night. People seriously attacked that thing when it was brought out (right after cake cutting). It had a whole assortment of fun ice cream treats, like what the ice cream man would bring, and even our older guests were so excited about it!

So those are some of the details from our wedding - Happy Wednesday!

(all photos by Egomedia Photography)

2 Things...

1. I took the new job!!! I was able to negotiate a little bit on the salary to get it a bit higher, and I decided my quality of life is worth more than money anyways. I'm really excited to start something new and exciting - AND get my weekends and nights back! I start June 14th and I will even have a full week off in between jobs to relax and catch up on life...I'm so excited I was able to work in a weeks long vacation before I start! And we'll be going down to Florida for my BFF C's wedding during part of that week, so I'm even more excited!

2. I decided not to sell my wedding dress. It just didn't feel right - I love that dress way too much to get rid of it. I did offer to let her borrow the dress, and she came over to try it on and it was actually a little bit too tight and too short anyways, so that made me feel ever better! ha! And seeing someone else wearing my wedding dress confirmed even more that I will never sell it. It was so weird to see her in it! so it's still hanging in the back of my closet and hopefully one day it will be able to be used somehow for our future children. 

Thanks for all the advice/help on my latest two dilemmas. I really appreciate it!  

I'm really just posting this to try and wrap my brain around some things and writing stuff down like this always helps. However, I would like any advice that anyone would like to throw my way, as I'm having to make a tough decision this weekend.

I was offered a new job today. I was actively looking for a new job (and have been for a few months now). My current job is the wedding coordinator for a large hotel chain (internationally known) in my town. I basically do sales of potential brides, then handle all the weddings once they have booked here, and then I'm the on-site contact for the day of the wedding as well (so I attend/coordinate all the weddings held here - about 60 to 70 a year). I do love aspects of my job, but after 4 seasons of planning weddings non-stop, I was/am burned out. Majorly. The hours are insane. I work 60-70 hours a week in the summer, primarily during the weekends. I work every Saturday, all year long. Most of my Saturdays are 12, 13, sometimes 14 hour days.

I knew all this going into the job 4 years ago, but it's still a difficult transition to deal with never having off on a weekend to spend time with my family, J and my friends. Constantly having to turn down invitations to certain things (weddings, parties) because I can't take off any time in the summer, at all. In the 4 years that I worked there, I have taken 2 vacations, 1 of which was for my wedding and honeymoon and the other was just 4 days off to attend another wedding. So it was draining to say the least.

Not that I don't love weddings, brides, etc. but at this point in my life, I started feeling like I was missing out on a lot. Also, we do want to have kids at some point in the near future, and I didn't feel like I would be able to have kids working my current hours. I also have other gripes about the job - mainly pretty horrible and annoying co-workers. I could probably write 50 blog posts about that.

I am on a salary, with a bonus system in place for upselling clients/brides on better food/beverage/upgrades. The first two years at my job were awesome and I was making more money than I ever have before. That's really the only thing that made the hours tolerable.

Last May, due to the economy, they cut our salaries by about 20% and took away all bonuses. In addition to our (new, lower) salary, we do now get 1% of our total sales for each month. In the winter (slow months), that can be as little as $50 (literally) and in the summer, that 1% can be as high as a few thousand dollars. But the problem is that it's never regular - I never know what my paycheck is going to be before I open it - a little scary to say the least! Especially with having a mortgage and bills...it was insane during Christmas to receive hardly any money! And couple the lower salary with the fact that I was still working over 50 hours a week - there was a major problem. J figured out that my hourly rate was like $1.56 or something crazy like that. Oh, and also to save money, my company took away paid holidays. So now we can either work Christmas Day, Thanksgiving, etc. or not get paid for them. Yeah, sounds illegal huh?

Anyways, I started looking for a new job because I was pretty fed up and really sad about how the job I once loved had become something I now hate. I contemplated starting my own wedding planning business, but that's just not something that would be an option for us financially right now.

So after 3 rounds of interviews, I was offered a new job with another hotel chain in my town. This job is doing corporate events, some marketing (which is my background) and a little bit of sales for the hotel. It definitely does interest me, even though I do love weddings, I think a change into the more corporate side of things could be very interesting. The other thing - the job is Monday - Friday from 8 to 5 every day. No weekends, no nights. Straight normal 40 hour a week job.

Here is my dilemma - the salary. I haven't sat down yet to figure out my exact salary at my current job (since I never have a regular paycheck anymore, to be honest, I don't even know what my salary is!). But this new job is less than I am making now - not by much, but I'm pretty sure it's less.

So I guess my question is - should I accept this new job and the new (probably lower) salary? Is it wrong to take a job making less, when I know my quality of life will be so much better, since I'll have so much more time for my friends and family? I know you should constantly strive to make more, but when does that get outweighed by my own personal sanity of leaving a job that I'm so unhappy at? And then I worry, there are definitely aspects of my job THAT I LOVE - will I regret leaving? I absolutely adore my brides - the wonderful feedback and thank you notes that I have received over the last 4 years is seriously incredible. I'm also really scared/sad to think about telling my boss that I'm leaving - he will seriously be floored and upset. Also, I'm leaving a whole summer of brides in the lurch with a new coordinator taking over their weddings - which I feel guilty about already.

Ok, really I just wanted to get this all out. Trying to wrap my brain around everything. I have to give the new job an answer on Monday. I doubt I will be getting much sleep this weekend.

Babies!

This weekend I'm co-hosting a baby shower for my BFF K. She's due in July with her first little boy, who they are naming Will. We're actually doing a co-ed shower because she wanted her husband to be involved. So it's really more of a laid back cookout with lawn games (cornhole, bocce ball, croquet) - not a whole lot of traditional baby shower stuff (no cheesy games, etc.). But of course, I'm still going crazy with fun decorations!

We're doing bright blue, bright green and brown for the colors. Here's the invitation we had designed:Taking off from the flag garland on the invite, I actually had a seller on Etsy make three flag garlands out of fun print fabric that matches our colors. This is serving double duty as shower decor, and then we plan to give K the garlands after the shower for her to use in the nursery!I also found a really fun "It's a Boy" banner to hang behind K as she's opening all the presents, also from Etsy.
And because I'm seriously NOT crafty, I also had a seller on Etsy make cute cupcake flags. I debated making my own, but I knew they would come out much better if they were done by someone who knows what they are doing. (horrible picture because I had bad lighting, but they are so adorable!)

I'll be sure to post pictures of the shower next week!

I'm also really excited about the shower gift I'm giving. I didn't just want to get her something off of her registry (even though I'm sure most mom's would disagree with this and tell me she needs practical gifts!) But I went the sentimental route with my gift. My good friend Tara is an AMAZING illustrator - she's done a bunch of children's books and tons of other stuff. She draws and then hand colors everything - her work is seriously incredible. Right after K found out she was having a boy and decided on a name, I had Tara do a custom illustration for me, which I had framed so they can hang it in the nursery.

Isn't it adorable? She drew them based on a photo of K and her husband and then added that adorable quote from Peter Pan. I love how she made the word "will" in a different color, since that's his name. So that is printed to 8x10 and then she actually made me two smaller drawings, one of a sailboat and one of an airplane (both 7x7) for them to hang as a set. They are all done in the colors of the nursery and I had them framed in fun, bright orange frames. I can't wait until she sees them!

Of course, I had to get him some baby clothes as well, since he needs to be the best dressed baby ever. There are tons of really cute clothes for boys! I found this at Janie and Jack (obsessed with that store) and then had it monogrammed (of course!) - I'm seriously in love with this outfit!

How cute is that? I love the little crab!

I also found some other cute little outfits -- an adorable striped Polo onesie:

And I had to buy him his first seersucker - look how adorable that outfit is...

So I've gone way overboard, but I can't help it - he's definitely going to be the most spoiled baby ever!!