Our Engagement Party

As I talked about earlier, here, my parents threw us an engagement party this past weekend at my house in Ankeny. The weather was awesome, the food was amazing, and the people were a blast. Both Sean and I had so much fun with everyone that came. We are so lucky to have such amazing families! Thanks everyone for coming and making the night perfect :)

Earlier Saturday we had few minor tragedies. One being my mom making the strawberry shortcake biscuits....she is notorious for making blueberry muffins with baking SODA rather than baking POWDER. After 2 and a half double batched mixed, baked, and cooled Ashley asked my mom if she was making them right. My mom then looked at the recipe and realized that she again used soda rather than powder. Ashley and I made an emergency run to Fareway for more supplies (we also dropped our brother, Alex, off there for his first day of work there, so cool!).

There were also a few blown over vases for the flowers and spilled water from the wind. However, the wind ended up being a blessing otherwise the bugs would have been out and it also kept it from getting so hot.

My mom had planned a few games for the evening. The first was a game where Sean and I sat in chairs back to back. Each of us took our shoes off and gave one to the other person. My mom asked us questions such as..."Which one of you made the first move? Who does the laundry? Who is in charge of the check book? Which one of you is the first to make up after a fight?" and many others. Sean and I would hold up the shoe of the person that we believe best describes the question. It ended up being really fun!

The other game was an "obstacle course of life". Here is what we had to do:
1. get married (run from one side of the yard to the other with a bouquet)
2. go to work (put on our work jacket and ride to the other side on our bike)
3. do laundry (put towels in the basket and run to the other side and run back)
4. make the bed (put a pillow into a pillow case)
5. have kids (diaper a doll, we then had to carry the doll for the rest of the course)
6. make dinner (pour water in a pan and stir, and then run to the other side of the yard and put the pan on the table)
7. go through life's hard times (open the umbrella and run to the other side)
THE END

A number of couples completed the game, we don't need to say who the winners are. You know who you are :)

Here are some pictures from the obstacle course!

Jon and Emily

Matt and Jana

Ashley and Adam

notice Ashley's face in this one!! my mom is about to run right into her!!

My mom, Dawn, and dad, Dennis

Pat and Katie

As well as the planned games we also had a few bag toss games going. Here are some other pictures from the night:

Some of our flowers for the tables. So pretty!

Alex and Dane playing bags

Tim and Angela's Family

The Greteman Family

Abby and Bridget with Avery and Hailey

Sean and Brian

Heather and Chris

Ashley and Garrett

Garrett and Avery (our ring bearer and flower girl)

Lake of the Ozarks and bridesmaid dresses

Every year I get to spend a whole week at lake of the Ozarks with my mom's side of the family. There ends up being around 40 people in the house at some points during the week. We do a lot of overeating, sunning, floating on rafts, playing cards, laughing, and relaxing.

This was our mansion for the week. We stayed here last year and hopefully next year, also :)

This is a small group of us at our pool. The week we were there was so hot that the pool was not even refreshing when we got in...it was more like a hot tub.

The "party barge"

We had a couple bags tournaments, too!

I had so much fun with Garrett last week :) 

We played many games of spoons...it gets dangerous!

We made a trip to pirate's cove for some mini-golf like old times

 Garrett asked us to do the "kisses" picture

the bridesmaid dresses

The weather was not so great on Thursday of our trip so we went shopping. They have a very large and very nice outlet mall. We went to our normal stores: Nike outlet, Banana Republic, Under Armour, etc. Walking between stores we saw the BCBGMaxaria store. This was significant because I have been paying attention to this line a lot lately because I found a couple dresses (for bridesmaids) that I loved at Dillard's they just didn't come in the right color. We just ran in the store to check it out. We ended up finding the bridesmaids dresses!!!

Here is a sneak peak of Ashley, my sister, in the dress at the store.

I'm so happy to have that out of the way...I wanted to have coral dresses, but I was afraid of the color going out of season and we would not be able to find them anymore. But, we were very lucky and they had 3 dresses in the (almost) perfect sizes and they were in stock!

engagement pictures!!

last night our photographer, Caleb Jamin, came over to Iowa City to do our engagement pictures. We both had so much fun! Caleb took us all over downtown Iowa City, down by the river and IMU, Kinnick, and then to new recreation center pool. Here are some pictures (i took) while we were picking out our clothes:

I am positive our pictures will look better than those above! We are so lucky to have such a great photographer, and that he was willing to come over to Iowa City! It was very special to take pictures here where we met and live :) I'm sure we ended up with some great pictures and I can't wait to go pick them up!

Our new place!

so much has happened since our last post! Both of us have been working a lot, I (Amanda) have been on vacation...more on that later, and we have moved across town! First of all, we didn't end up going to Chicago that weekend that I posted about earlier, here. Instead, we did a lot of packing and saw the movie Horrible Bosses. That was HILARIOUS by the way. We both really enjoyed it. We also made breakfast like we were at Yolk. Here is our breakfasts, both were really good!

Sean wanted Bacon Waffles & Eggs, but we had to improvise and make bacon pancakes with bacon eggs on top since we didn't have a waffle iron.

I "ordered" the Fruit & Nut pancakes. It is multi-grain pancakes with pecans and banana slices inside and then strawberries on top.

Later, moving day came quick. My parents, my brother, and Sean's parents came over to help us move. We have accumulated a lot of stuff so it was great to have everyone help move :) Thanks for all your help everyone! Here are just a few pics from the move:

Here is a pic of our new place! It's an old picture (as you can see from the snow)

We are still working on making it really "our" place; like hanging pictures, getting curtains, and such. But, we are really enjoying it so far!

1 year pre-versary

365 days until our wedding! So what did Sean and I do to celebrate? Well Sean worked all day and I am at home recovering from my wisdom teeth being extracted. I know...we are very un-exciting. BUT next weekend we may be heading to Chicago!!! YAY! I really hope we can make it because I'm so excited I can hardly contain myself (me likey Chicago a lot). I haven't been there in over a year and it's been over 2 years since we have been there together. I feel that it is time to go back! And this time I really wanna go to the Shed Aquarium. The spring break of our sophomore year we stayed for just a night downtown and we walked by there. I think we did a lot more walking than Sean would have liked on that short trip :) we walked all the way from our hotel, which was a couple blocks from the Hancock building, all the way out by Shedd Aquarium, and then to the Sear's Tower to catch the train. Luckily the weather was nice those days. Also, on that trip we went to the Natural History museum...not really my thing, but there were a couple neat exhibits. This time we are going to see dolphins!!!

Shedd Aquarium with the Chicago skyline and even some of the lake!

I am also looking forward to Yolk for breakfast. I have been telling Sean about this place since I went there with my family last year when we there for the Taste of Chicago. I have talked this place up so much I hope it meets his expectations now!

In addition, I'm hoping we have time to go to the beach for part of the day and go shopping (we have engagement pictures August 7th).

 

If we don't make it to Chicago we have a lot of other stuff we could be doing. The big thing being cleaning/packing since we are moving into a new apartment on the 27th! Sean and I are moving to the west side of Iowa City with my sister, Ashley. I'll be sure to post more on that later...but I'm excited to leave my current apartment for a NUMBER of reasons!!

 

I also just want to thank everyone for reading our blog :) Sean and I can't wait for a year from now when everyone comes together to help us celebrate! This next year will be full of planing and trying to make everything perfect with the hope that you all will enjoy it! Thank you for all the support and love!!

engagement party invites

So both Sean's and my parents wanted to have an engagement party for our families this summer. One of my duties this past week when I was home was to help make the invites for the party. Last Tuesday my mom, Abby, and I made an assembly line; my mom was in charge of inking, I was in charge of "powdering", and Abby was the embosser or heat tool-user. I really enjoyed making these invites and thank you mom and Abby for helping!! They turned out awesome! The invites were designed by my mom around a stamp that I made.

The stamp was from earlier in the summer when I felt like being crafty. I had seen it done in magazines and online a few times so I thought I would give it a try (at that point I had no idea what it would be used for...I just wanted to make one). I had to go to the art supply store and buy all the supplies...a rubber mat and a carving tool. Then I looked up online different tutorials for how to make it turn out the best. First, I made a design on the computer that I wanted. Next, I printed the image out and traced over it with a pencil. I then rubbed the image onto the rubber mat to have the image show up. After that, it was just a matter of carving around the letters! I LOVE the way it turned out!!

Like I said before, my mom did all the inking of the stamp. So she used the ink pads and made a tie-dyed type of look and then stamped onto white cardstock. Next, while the ink was still dry, I sprinkled the embossing powder onto the image. After all the excess is removed, Abby used the embossing tool to "crystallize" the image...pretty much the powder is like a wax or plastic material with a low melting temperature. Once it cools down and dries it leaves the image looking shiny and awesome! Here are some pics of the process:

When we were ready to put it all together it was easy. My mom had already cut the cardstock for the cards and made the inserts with the information of the party. All we had to do after we were done stamping the front was trimming the image and then gluing it all together.

We put them into the envelopes and the next day I went to the post office to find out the postage cost and got these sweet stamps :)

the Venue

We began looking for places to have the wedding almost immediately after we got engaged. We looked at places in Iowa City, Des Moines, and Ankeny....hotels, arboretums, golf courses, and many more places. We quickly narrowed it down to a few places that would accomodate our group and also had the look we were going for. Ideally, the look I was looking for was outdoors.

here are a few pics of inspiration

However, with the weather in Iowa being so iffy we threw that idea out the window. I still wanted the place to be comfortable, fun, "not stuffy", and bright. The place we chose is as close to the outdoors as we could get.

The venue is the Enrichment center on the Ankeny DMACC campus. I remember when my mom first found the place. She was on the phone talking to me about different venues in Ankeny to go visit. She was still looking online at places as she was talking to me, too. When she came across this she said "oooooh!! No I just found it. I found the place!" I was a little bit hesitant at first, but now I do believe it is the perfect fit for Sean and I.

Overall, the place is a white, modern, blank slate for us to make beautiful. The first area that you walk into is a large atrium that is floor to ceiling windows on 3 of the walls. One of the walls even has like a garage type door that can be opened to the outside. This is where the ceremony will take place. Also, it will be conveniently be converted into the coctail hour location. A large glass stairway is in the middle of the room. These are the stairs that I will hopefully NOT be falling down during the ceremony.

This is kinda the lay out for the ceremony site...well you can kinda get the picture.



The reception room right down the hall has TONS of windows that face west so we can watch the sunset :) (hopefully it will be pretty that night).

I'm not a fan of the chairs provided nor do I like chair covers....yuck. So we are renting fancy-shmancy white chairs that will be used for both the ceremony and the reception.

A few other important things this place has is plenty of nice bathrooms and tons of parking. :)