Happy Birthday Mom!!

Today is my mom's 50th birthday! We kind of spent the whole weekend celebrating! Not quite the whole weekend, John and I spent Friday night at the 10th Annual Ferndale Pub Crawl - always a lot of fun!

Saturday, we went on a dinner cruise on the Detroit Princess down the Detroit River for my mom's birthday. She expected me, John, Aunt Karen, Uncle Doug, and my cousin Alex. Aunt Karen and I arranged for her dad, stepmom, and Uncle Steve and Aunt Lynne to come as well...they came 4 hours from Indiana!! She was totally surprised! We had a really nice dinner, but the AC wasn't working too well and in 95 degree heat, that isn't too comfortable. But after dinner we went out onto the deck and it was nice and cool and we took some good photos!

Then Sunday morning, Aunt Karen held a brunch at her house for my mom before the Indiana folks all left...we ate a ton of yummy food and spent some nice time with our family.

Afterwards we went to the Scrapbook Zone to pick up my Design Team kit and we found that our cropping buddies, Deb, Dee, Paula and Lori had gotten my mom a cake and a gift and were totally confused as to why she hadn't shown up!! I had an idea that they were doing it, so I made sure we went. Very nice of them, we are so glad to have them as friends! On top of it all, my Design Team kit this month rocks....tons of great NEW product to use! Fun!!

Here are some photos from the weekend! (click on the collage to see it larger)


  

Living off the Land

 

We picked a couple of cucumbers today out of our garden! Very exciting stuff at the Murray household! We also picked some green beans! We have a lot of green tomatoes, but nothing red yet....we also have some red peppers that are getting pretty big! Anyone that knows anything about vegetable gardens...our cucumbers are big, but aren't very green in some areas. We ate it and some of it was really not too ripe tasting. How do we know when they are ready? Wait til it's totally green, even if it is large?

  

Rally caps AND gum??

Ok, so our rally efforts didn't work. The Tigers lost. We sat out in 98 degree heat, and chewed a whole pack of Big Leauge Chew each to rally the Tigers and they didn't win. Maybe we should stop going to games....every game we've been to this season they've lost. They don't lose too many, so that's kind of crazy! There were other people with us, but, we were the die hards, they couldn't take the heat. We chewed that gum for 4 innings!

At any rate, those photos will be fun to scrap!

In other news, Flip Murray is now a Detroit Piston. I don't really know anything about him, but I'm sure it was a good move...you can't go wrong with a Murray on your team, right? 

The gift

After much indecisiveness and work, this is the layout I made for Katie and Greg. I'm going to put it in a cream 12x12 frame for them. They come home from their honeymoon tomorrow and I'm hoping to get it to them then! They are both artists, and I hope they like it! It's so hard to scrap for people that know art, and design. The title are lyrics to the Beatles "In My Life," which has been their song for many years. I'm pretty happy with it, but I'm nervous about giving it to them!!

Pictures from the wedding!

I learned how to make a photo collage! Here are some pictures from the wedding!

  

Wedding weekend

What a weekend! I've been working so hard this weekend, I feel like I need a weekend to recover to go back to work! We went up north to Rogers City for my sister in law's wedding. We (John, me, John's brother Bryant and his wife Rachel) drove up Thursday night and stayed at Greg's (the groom's) parent's house. We got up on Friday and immediately started working! Rachel, me, and Katie (the bride), and the future mother in law Kathy, went out to get flowers for the wedding. We bought some, we cut some, and then proceeded to create centerpieces, bouquets, boutineers, and anything else we could with the flowers. This is a sample of one of our centerpieces.

We were up pretty late working on flowers and cleaning up the hall to get it ready for the reception that night, since we had to take a break for the rehearsal, and rehearsal dinner.

The morning of the wedding, Rachel and I picked up Katie and drove to the hall to set out the centerpieces and pick up all the bouquets and take some flowers to the ceremony site. We set up flowers at the ceremony, and then dropped off Katie to her bridesmaids to get her ready for the wedding. Rachel and I then rushed back to the hotel were we tried our best and failed at making the card box. In our defense, this was a last minute assignment, and we had minimal supplies. It was so miserable I won't even post it here! It may make it onto a scrapbook page though someday! It was definitely some good bonding time for Rachel and I! Instead of the card box, I will instead post a photo of me and Rachel.


After creating the "card box," We had about 45 minutes to get ready for the wedding, since we had yet another task before the wedding. So, we rushed to get beautiful, thinking that this must have been what Cinderella felt like working hard and then trying to get to the ball! With 45 minutes though, and no fairy godmother, we didn't exactly look quite as elegant as Cinderella did when we were finished!

Good thing we didn't though, because our next stop was to walk through the woods...Oh wait, I forgot to mention the wedding was in a field in the middle of the woods. So, then we had to walk through the woods and tie ribbons onto the trees so people would know they were heading in the right direction. We didn't have enough ribbon, nor enough time, so that didn't really matter. There ended up being a few ribbons here and there. And we ended up really hot and sweaty and dirty before the wedding even started. Nice. So then we went to the wedding.

I thought all was well, I had my zoom lens and a grand idea to get this super fabulous photo of the bride and groom after their I Dos for a scrapbook page to give to them. So, I'm taking shot after shot and thinking I'm getting some great moments...to then notice that I had no memory card in the camera. Right before the moment I had been waiting all day to get, I realized I had no way to get it. It was the most depressing feeling right then. I really wanted a ceremony shot, because the location was so important to them. I was crushed. As soon as the ceremony ended, I ran through the woods, hey I was already hot and sweaty, right? to get my memory card from the car, and hurried back before I missed the family photos. I was hoping to catch them in a moment while the photographer took the family shots. I didn't get one. I got a couple of nice shots in between the posed photos...just not the moment I was looking for. Here is one of John and I that my brother in law took at the field.



Rachel and I then rushed off to the reception site to get the card box and a few other things there before people started arriving. Fortunately, everything seemed to be under control for the most part and once our husbands arrived with the rest of the bridal party,we enjoyed the rest of the evening, dancing all night! Here are some photos from the reception.

John gave the speech, and had us all in tears. My husband is so good at public speaking. He is so fun to watch and listen to!



This is the photo I'm thinking about using for my gift to them. What do you guys think?


And now blogger is being tempermental and won't let me post more photos, so that's it!

4th of July Memories

This post is a few days late, but hopefully everyone had a great 4th of July! John and I went to his uncle's for a bbq with some family that is in town for the wedding this weekend. We just hung out and played some bocce ball.

Later that night, John and I walked about 1.5 miles to see the Huntington Woods fireworks. It was nice, and really nice not having to drive and deal with parking and traffic.

On the Zone message board, Carrie challenged us to make a list of our 10 favorite 4th of July memories. I have great memories of 4th of July as a child, so I thought I'd give it a try.

10 Favorite 4th of July Memories
1. having our Indiana family come hang out for a long weekend at our house every year!
2. having fun in the pool with my cousins, aunts, uncles!
3. Wearing a fun red white and blue outfit every year!
4. Either going shopping with my mom, grandma and aunts, or staying at home and waiting to see what they brought back!
5. Going fireworks shopping with my mom to get ready for the weekend
6. watching my dad and uncles light the fireworks
7. Playing late night games with all the adults when my younger cousins went to bed.(I'm the oldest!)
8. Several years of seeing the Detroit fireworks with the Wayne State swim team - once we saw Chris Osgood in the 3 hour traffic jam on the way home.
9. Canoeing with John, my aunt, uncle, cousin and mom a few years ago. My mom and cousin flipped over a bunch of times and John and I saved a drunk guy from drowning.
10. Since we've been married, John and I have gone to see fireworks 4th of July evening, just the 2 of us and a blanket!

We are off tonight to Rogers City (up north) for my sister in law's wedding! Have a great weekend everyone!

Can this day get any worse??

First, it started with a really terrible day at work, followed by a headache that wouldn't leave.

Then, I found out that Stevie Y, our Red Wing captain for the last 20 years is retiring. Ok, we knew it was going to happen, and we knew it would be soon. But, it still hurts. Things just won't be the same.

Then, I thought to myself, Self, look at it this way, things can't get worse...you have the day off tomorrow! Nothing is better than a day off work. Things are good.


Then can you guess what happened? Ben Wallace, the face of the Detroit Pistons, has accepted the Chicago Bulls offer. He is no longer a Piston. Nobody really thought he would leave. He loves Detroit. Or, I suppose loved Detroit. Then again, maybe he didn't. I mean, we offered him $48 million and they offered him $52 million. When you are talking that many millions, does it really make a difference???? I'm really disappointed, Ben. What an incredible group of 5 guys we had.

Thank goodness for the Tigers. Did I mention the Tigers are the best team in baseball right now? That Pudge Rodriguez is the starting catcher for the All Star game? That Kenny Rogers is pitching in the All Star game? At least the Tigers can't disappoint me!

dress shopping! ugh!

Ok, so if you are reading this post, please comment and help me out!

I went shopping this weekend for for a dress to wear to my sister in law's wedding next weekend. On Saturday, I went by myself and didn't find a thing. I tried on a ton of dresses at Marshall Fields, and didn't like any of them.

So, then today, John comes with me, and we go to a different mall. We try Nordstrom and they have NOTHING. I had high hopes. We go to Marshall Fields at this mall, and they have a ton of different dresses than the other mall did. We found 5 that we really liked. 4 of them were basic black dresses, and the one we decided on was the only one that was different.

My sister in law's wedding is outside in a field, so I thought that a basic black dress just wouldn't fit. Although, she has told me that she doesn't want people to be more casual because the ceremony is outside. So, keep that in mind!

So, what I need help with.....is this a good dress for a wedding in field with an evening reception in a hall?

Secondly, I have a class reunion in August....I didn't want to buy another dress, but for some reason this dress isn't screaming class reunion. What do you think?

Here it is: (Keep in mind that my house has terrible lighting and no place for photos, which is why I'm in a doorway with terrible shadows! And I will be wearing makeup for the wedding!)
Click the photos to view larger




Funny thing...the day I shopped by myself, I found this dress that I thought was just a nice summer dress, and I could wear it to the rehearsal dinner...ended up looking a lot like the dress I bought for the wedding!