shower project

Well, this is pretty long overdue only because I've been wanting to post this for awhile and only just now found the time to do so. My dear friend, Amy, recently had her first baby, a precious little boy -- Kyle. And he looks like a Kyle, too. :) He also looks JUST LIKE his daddy. We took a meal to Joey & Amy last night and I got to hold the little booger...oh.my. He was just the sweetest thing, and even woke long enough for Jeff and I to see his cute little eyes. :)

So I say all this to say that we threw Amy a shower back at the end of March. We tried to do it mid-March, but little Kyle decided he would be a little difficult and cause some trouble for Momma...we had to reschedule to a later date; I'm just glad we got it in! He was born 9 days later! Anyway, I designed the invitation for her shower along with some other things for some games we played, the gift log and her thank you notes. Had a GREAT time designing & coordinating everything! Thought I'd share a few of those projects here:

You didn't think I'd end this post without a photo of "the little booger", did you? Cute as can be.

wanna get away?

Back in November, our sweet Sunday School class threw us a "surprise!-you've-been-teaching-for-5+years!" party. It was completely unexpected and so very, very thoughtful of them. They had a photo slideshow going the entire time with past class events and kind words of encouragement that some of them had written. Everyone brought all kinds of good food and we just had a sweet time of fellowship & good fun. AND THEN, as if the party wasn't enough, they presented us with a night's stay in a bed & breakfast downtown and 2 movie tickets! We were speechless.

We still have the movie tickets to use, but we used the bed & breakfast gift certificate this past Thursday night and had a great time. We arrived at the Front Street Inn around 7pm and got settled into our room, the Pearl Buck suite. We then walked the block down to The Little Dipper for dinner reservations at 7:45pm. I have been to the Little Dipper once for a "ladies night out" type thing but Jeff had never been. What I experienced at the "ladies night out" was nothing like what we had that night! So it was kind of a new experience for both us. It was fantastic!

Around 9:30pm we headed back up to the FSI to use the nice jacuzzi hot tub in our room! It was so relaxing; we had bubble bath and just really enjoyed spending time together, talking over things going on in our lives.

The next morning they served a complimentary breakfast that included everything from bagels, to cereal, fruit, muffins, banana bread, 2 kinds of quiche/casserole...oh, it was all soo good! The coffee was the FSI's own special blend, too. Very tasty. We checked out around 10:30am and emerged to a beautiful, sunshine-y Good Friday.

I've included some of the photos from the "getaway" below -- a thousand thank yous to our fantastic Sunday School class, our "family"...we are so blessed to have each one of you in our lives!

[first course was cheese fondue -- we chose Baja Cheddar and got misc veggies & tortilla chips to dip in...next course was a salad but I didn't include a photo of those (a salad's a salad, right? but their ranch is fantastic!)]

[next course after the salads was our entree -- we chose Surf & Turf which included filet mignon, shrimp, lobster & cheese-filled ravioli and misc veggies with 4 dipping sauces (we chose marinara, creamy dill (my fave!), drawn butter & honey dijon)]

[this is the pot our entree cooked in -- steaming vegetable broth with rosemary; we got a "cheat sheet" of sorts that told us how long to leave our food in for]

[and then of course, there was DESSERT -- we chose milk chocolate & peanut butter fondue and got the following to dip in it...]

[H-E-A-V-E-N]

new tricks...

A couple weekends ago, I took a trip to Lexington with my friend, Elizabeth, our end result being to go to Charlotte and walk through the new IKEA store there. We did that and had a great time, as I knew we would.

But you didn't think I'd come all that way and not see my niece, did you? No, I didn't think so. She was just over 8 months old then and learning new tricks! Wanna see?

The last time I saw her was at 6 1/2 months (you saw those photos in my last post) and she has changed so much just in that short time! Much more hair, standing/leaning against the couch by herself, and this! I don't know how but she's gotten cuter! I could just eat her up...

I'll leave you with this photo -- my fave at the moment. I love it when I capture exactly what I was going for! Her eyes actually came out red in the photo but I learned a really cool, really easy trick to take out redeye in Photoshop. Observe...