Hannah's Surprise Bridal Shower

My cousin, Hannah, had a surprise shower today that was so much fun! Her mom, dad and sisters planned the shower and it was really nice to get the whole family together. It was SO hard to keep it a secret from her when she was here for dinner last night. We all arrived at her house in Gettysburg at about 12:00 and hid in the corner. She got there shortly after and was in tears immediately. She had no idea!

I took this picture too early, it got filled with way more food later :)

Orangina and bubbly fruit drinks! My fave

The cake - so delish with strawberries in between the layers

Surprise!

Opening my "Travelling Bride" gift - which I'll give more info on later

The sisters

Hannie and me

Her dad came by at the end

56 Years

Today my grandparents are celebrating their 56th wedding anniversary. I am so happy that they are here to celebrate with us. They are such a perfect couple; I don't think it is possible for two people to love each other more than they do. We are all very lucky to have them as our family. 

My cousin, Hannah, who lives in Cozumel now is also in town visiting. She hasn't been back in almost a year so it was great to see her. We had such a great dinner of scalloped potatoes, flank steak and asparagus. I don't have any pictures of that because it was devoured way too quickly, but I can share some pictures of dessert! My grandma's favorite dessert thing on the planet is ice cream. Our first thought was to get them a cake, then we thought about an ice cream cake for her, and then we decided to do make-your-own sundaes. 

We gathered Milwuakees Frozen Custard, Girl Scout cookies, white chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips, walnuts, strawberries and whipped cream and went to town. It was so perfect.

 We got my grandparent's started for them so they looked pretty :)

Todd and Jill

My Grandparents

My Dad and Dana, my aunt

My concoction: white choc chips, strawbs and the shortbread GS cookie

I think this picture describes my grandparents perfectly.

Crisis Averted

Well I had one of my first INCREDIBLY stressful moments during this wedding planning. We have been so fortunate so far because most decisions have been easy. Perk of planning a wedding so soon? You have to make decisions, which makes it easier! So the crisis tonight was bridesmaid dress related. The place we found the bridesmaid dress sells out of sizes/dresses SO quickly its unbelievable. The dress went on sale a few days ago, but had all of the sizes still in stock yesterday. I got online this evening and 3 sizes were already gone, including size 2! I have some tiny girls as bridesmaids, so I panicked. After about 2 hours of back and forth with one of my cousins, and finally hearing back from two other bridesmaids that they had actually already ordered (thought they hadn't)... everything is fine. One of my bridesmaids even got 2 dresses in case one didn't fit her, so we have an extra dress in case something happens! And we can just return whoever's doesn't fit since we have the extra, even though they are sold out. I literally thought I would have 1/2 my girls in this dress, and the other 1/2 would have to find a different about 2 hours ago. Now, everything is wonderful again and the girls will all match! Phew.

Getting Closer

The last few weeks have been crazy busy with wedding planning. We have gotten so much taken care of, but still have some pretty important stuff left (invitations!). I am finally starting to feel like the major, hard decisions are behind us though, so now I just have to stress about whether or not the right decision was made :) You know, typical me.

So, an update on the list from a few posts ago:

Pick out a venue

Set a date

Send invitations

Finish wedding website

Find a dress

Find shoes and accessories

Find bridesmaids clothing

Find clothes for Zach

Find clothes for his guys

Food tasting & menu selection

Cake tasting

Choose flowers & decorations

Decide on music

Buy thank you cards

Plan honeymoon

The BIGGIES from the past week have been selecting Zach's outfit, the bridesmaids dresses and the groomsmen's clothing. After you find the venue, I think the clothing is the most stressful portion. We also found a few decorations, but have many more to come!

Lastly, we had SO much fun picking out the guys clothes. The girl that helped us (Savvy was her name, and it was appropriate) was so much fun and we were laughing the whole time. The guys gave us fashion shows and we pretty much claimed the entire back of the Tysons store for ourselves.

And no, we did not buy these.

Date Night: Hooked

My best friend Kristen is SO awesome at giving gifts. She has a great knack for finding things that people will really enjoy. This year, for xmas, she got me Zach and I a 4-course dinner for 2 at Hooked. We love sushi, and it doesn't get much better than Hooked. Also, she knew we would love to go DO something, rather than just an item. She was right - we had a blast. We rarely go out to dinner, let alone treat ourselves to such a nice meal. THANK YOU Kristen. Now, I just need to give her MY xmas gift (which has been sitting by the stairs from my room for 2 months now).

My 1st course: Spicy Yellowtail  and Seaweed Salad

Zach's: Calamari and Spicy Shrimp Tempura

Zach's 2nd course: Waikiki Roll (coconut shrimp inside)

My 2nd course: Sake poached, sesame crusted scallops

My 3rd course: Neptune Roll (tempura lobster tail!)

It deserved two pictures

Zach's 3rd course: Crab Cakes

And to finish it all of, we both got a Flourless Chocolate Torte and Tropical Tapioca

Well, Zach got 2 tapiocas, because I wasn't interested

And despite my kind and generous gift of sharing my tapioca with him, he still threatened to fling whipped cream at me.

But it wouldn't have been a normal night if he hadn't.

Red Velvet Cookies

Every time I have made Red Velvet Cookies at work, I get asked for the recipe. Yesterday I made them because it was Zach's manager's birthday. I decided that this time, I should go ahead and post it on here. This is a seriously easy recipe, and having the mixer makes it even better. This is actually the reason Zach thought to get me the KitchenAid for xmas, because he was sick of having to help me stir when my arm got tired :) So here goes:

You need:

A box of red velvet mix

1 1/2 - 2 cups white chocolate chips

1 cup flour

1 egg

2 sticks of butter


Edit: Zach thinks I should share how AWESOME these are with cream cheese frosting to dunk them in. He is right. Add that to your ingredients list.

After you preheat the over to 350, mix the butter until soft and fluffy. It is much faster/easier if you have let it sit out a bit to soften, but I rarely plan that far in advance. Once it is softened, it should look like this:

Then you want to slowly mix in the cake mix and the flour. I alternate between the two, but I don't think its crucial that you do it one way or the other. It is going to look pretty dry along the way.

Once it is all mixed in, add the egg and mix until that is fully incorporated. Then you can go ahead and form small balls of dough and start baking. *Note: do not make these right before heading out to an event, or anywhere that you don't want your hands to be stained red. Also, I apologize in advance for how ridiculously bad (worse than normal) the picture below is. I was about to shove them in the oven when I decided to grab the camera and snap a shot.

I have seen a few recipes recommend cooking these for anywhere from 5-10 minutes. I usually get to cook them for at least 12 minutes, so I recommend keeping your eye on them. They should look kind of crackly on the outside once they are done.

I have also seen recipes that call to use white chocolate chunks, instead of chips, but I find that the chips are much easier. They are seriously SO delicious and I get compliments from everyone that tries them. I have even had people offer to pay me to bake a batch for them. 

My Girls

Now that I have my dress, it's time to find the bridesmaid dresses. Since my dress is casual, I want to make sure I find a dress that will look great and appropriate on the girls, but isn't too dressy or traditional. I also don't want it to be incredibly expensive. Here are a few of the options I love so far:

www.inweddingdress.com

www.freepeople.com

              

www.victoriassecret.com

www.victoriassecret.com

www.etsy.com

www.urbanoutfitters.com

This last one, the Urban Outfitters dress, is probably my favorite so far. It is such a hard decision!