Blog Schedule and Planning

There are so many things going on in our lives that I have decided to create a schedule to organize the posts more effectively. I firmly believe that the most important thing in life is to live it, so I won’t be posting every day but generally speaking this will be the schedule:

Sports Sunday: These posts will be about games we attend, our favorite teams, the leagues we play in, and the occasional update on the teams we coach. We are huge sports fans so there should be some interesting content on Sports Sunday!

Marriage Monday: These posts will include updates on how things are going for us, lessons learned, advice that we have seen that we think may be helpful to others, and some wedding planning advice.

Traveling Tuesdays: These posts will address updates on our travels, great travel deals, travel tips, etc. Traveling is one of my absolute favorite things to do, so I’m really looking forward to Tuesdays!

Pins on Wednes: This day will be all about projects, ideas and things from Pinterest. Pinterest has been a slight addiction for me for a while now and this will give me an outlet to share successes and failures. 

Tasteful Thursdays: If we try an awesome recipe it will be posted here, with pics! Reviews for great restaurants or even not so great ones will appear here as well.

Fabulous Fridays: Fridays will be about reviews on deals and freebies attained on the internet. I love Groupon and Living Social, so look for reviews on products, services, etc. purchased from these sites. 

Silly Saturdays: Quotes, Cartoons and just plain ole fun!

Teacher Time Out: Occasionally I will post some things about education-these post however will not be limited to a certain day of the week.

Random Post: To keep from limiting the blog, there may be some random ideas that come up that do not "fit" a category in the schedule. I already have one product review in my head that I plan to post soon. :-)  

Planning Tools: 

I have also searched for some tools to help me as a new blogger with planning and have come across two sources that I plan to use. 

The above set of FREE printables was found here. There are quite a few pages that do not apply to me as I do not have giveaways, sponsors, etc. but I love the functionality of planning tools. 

The FREE resource above was found here. If I can actually keep up with the blog over the next few months I hope to use her 2014 planner when it is released to create a similar book for 2014. 

I’m hopeful that setting this schedule and using these tools will hold me more accountable to posting. 

We shall see!

My Pinterest Board Threw Up at Our Party!

Because of the destination wedding we planned parties for those that could not attend in Texas and in Ohio. The Ohio party is this weekend so I will post about it at a later date. We held the Texas party on July 12th and it was a great time!

With wedding and party planning  I was all about Pinterest! We chose a rustic location for the celebration and wanted something more laid back, we were not having three wedding receptions! Below are some images of our set up for the event and some commentary about the vendors. I can tell you I highly recommend them all!

The party was held at Town Hall Texas. We couldn't have asked for a better venue or owners to work with. Anything we needed they took care of and then some. This place has endless possibilities for any event!

 Our linens were provided by Monrreal and Co.. I won a discount on the linens at the Southwest Bridal Show in Humble. They didn't have burlap prior to our event and made a special order of it just to meet our needs. We couldn't be happier with their prompt service and excellent customer service. 

For decor we used mason jars wrapped in burlap with hydrangeas. They turned out perfectly and some of the hydrangeas are still alive at my moms house :-) The flowers were ordered from Rainforest Flowers. These ladies were amazing, and I told Josh if he ever has flowers delivered to me he should use them. 

I also had some jars with floating candles in them that were placed on wooden pedestals that were purchased on ebay. In fact, quite a lot of the items for the event were ebay finds- including my dress!

 We had a dessert bar with items from Pie Town. It was delicious! We had apple pie, pecan pie, apple crumb pie, a fruit platter and some creme pie samplers. I purchased a catering deal from groupon for this and couldn't have been more pleased. 

For additional decor we used several burlap signs that I purchased from ebay, we had signs for dessert, drinks, cards, food, etc. They fit perfectly with the rustic theme. Another thing that was perfect for the theme was the food. We had a BBQ dinner from Rudy's, green beans provided by my mom and rolls from Texas Roadhouse (thanks to mom for the rolls too).

 Lighting and music was provided by Space City Djs. Another great vendor with great customer service! I bought a deal from I Do Daily Deal for their services. 

 My grandmother made a wedding cake for us and we used state shaped cake toppers I bought from Etsy. I absolutely loved them and they fit perfectly with the rustic theme. You can find this item at http://www.etsy.com/shop/PrinceWhitaker.

 Margarita machines were the perfect fit for this celebration and they were provided by Frozen Ice We had virgin strawberry daiquiri (which everyone loved), peach bellini, pomegranate margarita and margarita gold. Our bar tender made a nice little rainbow mixture of the drinks that everyone enjoyed. 

 Here is a table full of pins! For the guestbook we used a photo-book with our engagement pictures, we had a rustic box for cards and used a vintage suitcase for advice cards. The photo-book was free from shutterfly, the card box and the suitcase were from ebay.

 Another pinterest project were the chalkboard painted picture frames. Chalkboard paint is the one of the best ideas ever! I can't wait to find another project for the can of paint I have.

 I absolutely loved the comments on the advice cards- some things contradict each other so I guess Josh and I will have to figure some things out on our own, :-) 

This was the setup for the photo booth. Again Space City Djs did an excellent job. The photo book we received at the end of the night was priceless!

The Wedding Day!

I can't believe that it has been exactly one month since our wedding. Time is flying by so incredibly fast!

The day started out with a few bumps, but what wedding day doesn't? My main concern the entire time with planning was with the weather. Our coordinator called a few hours before with a weather update and explained that there was potential for rain and wanted to know if I would like to move all the festivities indoors! I was at a lost for words. I was devastated at the possibility that we had gone all the way to Punta Cana to have a beach wedding and she was asking if I wanted an indoor wedding? Seriously, if we wanted an indoor wedding we would have had the wedding in the U.S.! With some calming words from my mother and a few prayers we stuck to our guns and decided to keep everything outside, In the end I am so happy that we did, it all came out beautifully!

The ceremony was held on Isla beach at 3pm and we were lucky that it was cooler and had a bit more cloud cover than it did on Friday for the rehersal. We did pictures on the beach, had our cocktail party at the Isla Gazebo at 5pm and the reception at Sax Pool at 6pm. The day was perfect and we had the most amazing group of people there to share it all with us. 

To view more pictures go to our facebook wedding page.

Best Day Ever!

One would think that I am talking about our wedding day (which is tied of course), but I had no idea that our rehearsal dinner would be the most amazing time during our trip. I do have to say that it was the best day in most part because I could still eat! Something about bridal jitters and being a perfectionist made my stomach so upset that I couldn't eat anything on our wedding day until the reception. In 30 years of life, this has never happened! I am known for how much I can eat! 

Anyway, while looking for something for the group to do as an excursion and treat for them making the big trip to Punta Cana for our big day I stumbled upon La Barcaza. Initially after reading outstanding reviews I wanted to use the boat for our reception, but they did not have our date available.  Though this was disappointing, I decided that it would make for a great laid back rehearsal dinner. I was not wrong!

The crew on La Barcaza made sure that everything was perfect from the drinks, music and food. You can't really ask for more with this catamaran cruise: we saw the sunset, ate well, had great drinks, swam in the natural pool, and danced the night away. 

Here is the link if you want to take a look at La Barcaza.