Rachel's Shower

The next day in our week of festivities was Friday and it was Rachel's shower in Orem. So I went back down so Christina and Ashley and I could get to work on it. Ashley & Christina were bridesmaids so it worked out great to have them host it at Christina's house the night before the wedding when alot of the family would be in town. We actually spent all of Friday morning shopping and getting Christina's wedding outfit done. That was fun but we spent too much time I guess. After lunch we hit Costco and a few other stores to get all the food for the shower. We spent what was left of the afternoon making fabulous food:

We had a really good time with the food making it so pretty and special for Rachel. Even Benjy was a kitchen helper. The theme was Rachel's "Sweet New Life" so we had a big candy buffet to eat too. We had so much stuff. Since it was dinner time we wanted to make sure everyone had enough to eat!! Lets just say we had plenty to spare.

Laura & Rachel trying to decide where to start.

We played a couple of fun games. You might notice Jeff in the background there in the red shirt. Well he was trying to get my video camera to work on the computer or the TV for the how well do you know each other game. He slaved away but we just couldn't do it with out the firewire darn it. I gotta say Jeff was a rock star that afternoon. He worked so hard to help us get ready. He was our slave for anything we needed even assembling food in the kitchen. Just when we thought we weren't going to get ready in time Rachel and her cousin came and pitched right in too. Jeff and dad and all the guys went to Buffalo Wild Wings for their party while we had our shower. What a team effort. Anyways back to the shower. After the games we enjoyed watching her open her presents.

 The quilt that Grandma Davy made. It's a Hawaiian pattern and she knew Jeff liked Hawaii.

Here' the quilt I made for them.

The party girls!!

 A cute set from Shelie Jensen for their home.

And the fun stuff...

One last quilt.

She got lots of lovely stuff. It was a very fun night and another chance for both sides of the family to meet each other and get to know each family better. That night after all was over Mendis and I drove the cake up to SLC. I can't believe I didn't get a picture of it in the car. It was hilarious because to fit it in I had to put the passenger seat totally down and everything. It was sliding around a bit so even though it was about midnight it was a scarey ride. I was praying I didn't have to slam the brakes on for anything or it would be trashed. The cake spent the night in the front seat of the car until I could get it into the JSB the next morning at 9. Man was I ever relieved when that was done!!

Wedding Week Begins

Well time for the WEDDING WEEK posts:

Since it was my job to make the wedding cake I decided it would be best for me to get up to SLC asap and get started on my little project. I left Tuesday night with a car load of stuff for the cake, loads of stuff for the shower and loads of stuff for the wedding and reception. Mendis drove up the next day with Delmar since they had business meetings to attend that week. 

 I had baked the cakes at home but I wanted to make some fondant ruffles and had never done anything like that. I watched a couple of youtube videos at home so I had a basic idea of what I wanted to do but that's it. So I spent Wednesday in SLC looking for a certain powder that would make fondant like gumpaste so I could do this ruffling technique. Well there was only 1 store in all of SLC or Provo that carried this powder and that was a store called Orson Gygi's. 

I never made the connection until I got there and saw the store sign. And let me just say it is the motherland of kitchen stores. Orson Gygi is actually the uncle to Rachel's Grandfather or at least I think that's how it goes. I talked to the staff but dang it no family discount was offered hahaha. I spent hours in there wandering around trying no spend every dime I had ever made in my lifetime. They have absolutely everything you wold ever need in any kitchen. Man it was fun. They obviously have cooking classes there and I am all over that when I recover from the wedding!

So that evening we checked into our hotel in SLC and hurried over to the Temple so we could be there when Rachel went through. It was really a lovely night. Afterwards we had dinner with Delmar at PF Chang's. It was a great day that helped me rest up for the next one.

Thursday was wedding cake day. I had to drove back down to Orem so I could do this at Christina's house. There was so much construction on the I-15 that week that it was terrible driving back and forth. The cake took forever. The ruffling didn't go as quickly as I thought it would but by 4ish I was about done!

This is a view from the back and you really can't see much of anything. I was so tired and rushed I didn't get a picture from the front or any detail or anything...what was I thinking? SO I booked it out of there and rushed up to Salt Lake. I had to swing by our hotel and get Mendis and then we rushed up to Ogden to have dinner with the Gygi family. I say rushed because once again the traffic through the construction was herrendous. I couldn't leave any earlier though because I had to finish the cake! You can't leave fondant in the middle of a project. Meanwhile Ashley was driving up to Orem from Delta as fast as she could so her and Christina could join us in Ogden for dinner. Craziness. They would have been right behind us but hit major slowdowns on the freeway. 

Thank goodness the Gygi's are patient because they waited forever for us to all get there. So after the rush was over we enjoyed a great dinner together.

After dinner they took us to Farr's Ice Cream in North Ogden for another treat. We had the best ice cream and I was introduced to black licorice. It sounds nasty but it was so creamy and mild and divine. As you can see Jeff & Rachel enjoyed it. It was a crazy busy couple of days but it wasn't about to slow down yet...

Wedding Prep Part 2

 The new blogger style is driving me nuts. I can't put things where I want them so this post will be a learning experience aka a mess! Mendis and I spent all month out back getting the yard ready to go for the Open House. We had planters to finish, areas to clean up. He was still pouring walls and stuff too. I spent lots of bucks on flowers and did some replanting all over the front and the back. It's amazing how many flowers it takes to look like you did anything at all. I had to hand water these babies for a month until Mendis turned the water up on them.


I restored this old park bench. I sanded it and repainted the wood and the iron to clean it up. It's about half done here:

 I restained this old fence too because it was looking pretty shabby. That took much longer than I thought it would too but it was well worth the effort.

Jolynn spent an afternoon with me after work one day and we strung lights in the three trees in our back yard. Also easier said than done. It took us forever and it took tons of lights. She lent me all of her lights and thankfully Charlie lent me tons of his. I had kept all our white lights out from Christmas for this fun little project. We barely had enough even with all these. Of course many of them didn't work so that was a bummer. There were 2 more boxes I didn't even take a picture of so lots of little white lights.

 Most of my time was spent on this garden. I had months of weeding to catch up on out there. Tons of replanting to do and then mulching it all with bark. I bet there was a dozen blags of bark in this baby. Cutting back the rosemary was fun because it was always full of bees so I had to wait until dark to work on that because I am allergic to bee stings. I eradicated 2 wasp nests while I was at it. I think we went through 4 bottle of hornet/wasp spray this spring alone. Those suckers are everywhere!

 Some of the lights on the trees after we finished.

 Mendis spent alot of time finishing these 2 planter boxes for me. Eventually they will be filled with lantana but until then we filled them with lights. It was quite pretty when we finished.

Here are a few pics of the back yard over the years...kinda fun

Now for the really old stuff:

 

 

 And Done:

Of course we will never truly be finished but we are getting much closer!!