Papa

On Tuesday, Mr. C's grandfather, aka Papa, passed away. He had been in poor health for a long time, and was undergoing radiation on his neck that made it very difficult for him to eat or speak. While we're both very sad, we're happy to know that he is no longer in pain.

Over Easter, the entirety of Mr. C's family was able to get together at Nana & Papa's house. Mr. C's Cousin Baseball, was throwing a surprise 60th birthday for Uncle Baseball in Ohio, where Cousin Baseball lives and works. That meant that Uncle Baseball, who lives in South Carolina, was able to reschedule the last half of his trip when we realized that Papa was really not doing well. We'd been planning on heading to Mr. C's parent's for Easter, but easily switched gears. It was really lovely getting to spend the entire weekend with Mr. C's extended family. We had our own mini Easter service in the living room, where one of Mr. C's younger cousins gave a sermon, and we all ate way too much ham.

I feel so lucky to have gotten to spend the time with Papa that I did. I don't have any grandparents left, so have really appreciated how lucky I was to come into a family with two. Papa & Nana embraced me with open arms, and made me feel like I was just another one of the grandkids, in the best way. I will always remember trying to sneak the good flavors of jelly beans out of the jar on Easter Sunday, and Papa waggling his finger at me with a smile. He loved his family, was devoted to his community, and will be sorely missed by us all.

Papa with his grandpuppy Bear in early April

Dressing Our Moms

My mom and Mr. C's mom are a study in opposites. Dr. Mom, mine, is a veterinarian who owns her own practice, doesn't take crap from anybody, and is more comfortable in an Iowa State sweatshirt and blue jeans than anything else. Her illustrative example is that when she was 7 months pregnant with me, she was testing for the next belt up in Tai Kwon Do. They wouldn't let her do flying sidekicks because of the pregnancy, and she was pissed. That, in one story, is my mom.

At a friends' wedding a few years ago. Silly faces, but typical wedding wear.

Mamma C, on the other hand, is a fashion conscious kindergarten teacher. I love her dearly, but she is so different from my own mom. Whereas my mother is taller than my 5' 7" by a solid inch and a half, Mamma C fits under my chin. As a result, she lives in high heels. Her illustrative example is that when we moved Sister C into her new apartment, carrying furniture and boxes, Mamma C was right there with us in leopard print stilettos.

Mr. C's family at a wedding last fall. Not pictures, Mamma C's stiletto shoes

So, when it came to choosing dresses for each lady, it was not an easy task. Mamma C needed something keeping with her usual style, while my mom is a one-dress-a-year type of girl, and anything too over the top would make everyone who knows her go "who the heck is that?" So, we set out looking for dresses that would make them both feel happy, comfortable, and like themselves.

For Mamma C, we were looking at sparkles. When both of our families were here with us, we went to the shop where I had bought my gown. Both mom's went through the racks. My mom didn't hit on anything that was perfect, but Mamma C picked out a few options. Finally, we settled on this stunner:

Style 114900 for Montage by Mon Cherie 

This was actually one of the more subdued dressed that Mamma C tried on. We were trying to find something that was still perfect for her, without being too unbalanced from the type of (read: simpler) dresses my mom was looking at. We went ahead and ordered this, with the caveat that we'll shorten it to a pencil skirt. It is going to look awesome. I haven't yet gotten to see Mamma C in it, but here's a photo of the dress:

Sneak peak of Sister C's dress!

My mom actually ended up finding her dress without me. We'd gone back and forth for awhile, and in fact when she and my dad came out to visit, she brought a couple of options with her. Unfortunately none of those worked, so the search continued. Now, Brother E broke up with his girlfriend last month, but she had been very close with my family. So much so that my mom took her along when looking for dresses. And boy, did they find a beauty.

Dress 72259 by C20 for Watters

Seriously, this is the perfect dress for my mom. Comfortable to move in, a good length, glamorous without being flashy. I was super excited that we had the chance to go try it on when I was home last month, so I could see it in person. It is so pretty! Then, of course, the next question has to be about jewelry and shoes. Because Mamma C's dress is so sparkly, I wanted my mom to have a fun necklace to balance it out. And boy, we managed it.

Bling!

See???? So pretty and sparkly. And matching earrings. And we found her some shoes that she'll be comfortable (and taller than me, always and still) in.

So that's the story of what our mom's our wearing. We still need to finalize the details for Mamma C, but next time they're in town we'll get to go try on her dress and see what she wants to pair with it. I can't wait!

Petals & Posies

During our trip back to Iowa, we had the chance to meet with our florist. My family has been using Carmen's for everything for years and years, to the point where I'm pretty sure if my dad forgets to order for my mom's anniversary, they call him and remind him.

The best part of working with them is that they already know me. Our particular florist, Debbie, is someone I've known for years. Her daughter and I graduated high school together, and were involved in church youth group a long time ago. It is one of those nice, comfortable, easy relationships with someone you've known forever.

Debbie and I chatted via email for a few weeks prior to our visit. I'd pinned some ideas of flowers that I'd liked and sent her a list, and she let me know what their supplier would be able to provide during our wedding. Unfortunately, the downside of an August wedding is that a couple of my favorites, peonies and tulips, are going to be too hard to get. But, Debbie is going to bring some awesome flowers. Here are some of the photos I sent her for inspiration:

via Style Me Pretty

via Wedding Obesssion - Could basically duplicate the one on the left and I'd be happy

via Brides

We walked through a whole list of who will get what. My bouquet will be mostly blush colored with some ivory, and the girls will have mostly ivory with some blush, and both will have the brunia berries and lambs ear or dusty miller. Our mom's are getting wrist corsages, as is my brother's girlfriend, who will hopefully also be our ceremony musician.

She also had some fantastic ideas for our centerpieces. Awhile back, I saw this picture and fell in love:

via Buzzfeed

Seriously, how adorable is that? My parents have been assigned the task of gathering books. I had planned on buying gold plate stands to prop the books up, but when I showed Debbie this, she had a better idea. A few days after we got back home from our trip, she sent me this:

I love how she incorporated the book into the arrangement. These were just the flowers she had available, not necessarily what she'll be using for real. We talked with her about adding more flower, less greenery. We're also going to hopefully do half of the tables like this, half with a large manzanita branch as the focal point. When I go back in April, I'll meet with her again and see what we can do. 

Hair & Makeup Trial

Welp, I'm officially a bad blogger. My apologies for the long delay in posting. I'll blame it on a combination of bad weather, food poisoning, a nasty cold, and general wedding fatigue. I'll address the last one in another post (probably?) but for now, I'll keep plowing through our busy Christmas planning extravaganza.

I wasn't really sure what to expect going into my hair trial, to be honest. I have very, very, very fine and thin blonde hair, and many times in the past attempted updos have left me looking quite bald. I really wanted to avoid that. I spent quite a bit of time looking around Pinterest trying to find photos that I thought would work with my hair. I wanted an updo with some volume, and with details on the side so when my veil, which is nearly opaque, is on, you can still see that my hair is done up.

Here are the ideas I brought in:

via Wedding Window

via The Knot

We tried a couple of variations, and this is what we ended up with:

Side View

From the back

Front View

At the time, I really liked it. The side wisps drove me nuts, within the hour I'd tucked them behind my ears. But now, with some distance, I'm not sure how I feel. I like the way it looks from the front, but I really don't like the side view. I'm not sure how to fix that, but when I go back in April I'm going to try again.

The other thing is that, by the time we'd gotten the braid and the poof, she had almost no hair left to make the bun at the bottom. As such, Lady A and I are going to start looking around for extensions. I've never worn them before, but I think it make be the solution we're looking for. My plan is to try to find a set of real hair clip-ins. I'll let you know how that goes!

As for the makeup, that I was less thrilled with. It didn't look bad, at all, but I made the mistake of telling her I don't wear a lot of makeup normally, so I think she was afraid to use very much on me. As a result, it actually is much softer than what I wear when I'm dressing up to go out. Unfortunately, I didn't get a great photo, but here you go:

30 minutes post trial

Obviously, there needs to be a more permanent lipstick solution. The other thing is that we're having a formal evening wedding, and I don't know that this is enough "umph" to match that. I'm also seriously considering seeing if they do lashes. As you can see, I get crinkly eyes when I smile, and I think I'd like to have some more definition.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Recipes?

Mostly Homemade Chicken Pot Pie

Growing up, I used to love the freezer chicken pot pies. On a cold, wet day, they were the perfect comfort food. As an adult, and especially as one who tries to pay attention to what I eat, I've avoided pot pies altogether. Between the fat and the sodium, I haven't even wanted to try.

But, with the Polar Vortex descending, I found myself craving crusty, gooey, chicken and veggies. So, I ran around the internet a bit, but never quite found something that was perfect. The recipe below borrows a bit from a couple of easily accessed recipes, but I mostly just threw stuff into the pot.

Mostly Homemade Chicken Pot Pie

Ingredients:

• 1 Tube low-fat crescent rolls (or biscuits of your choice)
• 1.5 cups chicken broth
• 3/4 cups chopped onions (or a sprinkle of dehydrated onions, if you hate onions like I do)
• 1 cup potato, chopped
• 1 cup carrots, chopped
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1 large chicken breast, cut into pieces
• 3/4 cup reduced fat milk
• 1/4 cup AP flour
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. In a large pan, bring broth to a boil
3. Stir in all vegetables except peas, return to a boil, then let simmer for 5-6 minutes
4. Add chicken and frozen peas, return to boil, then let simmer for 5 minutes
5. In a separate bowl, slowly whisk milk into flour until well blended
6. Add flour mixture into chicken mixture and stir well. Turn heat to medium and allow to thicken, approximately 5 minutes
7. Add thyme, salt, and pepper, mix well. 
8. Coat individual ramekins (or a larger dish, your choice!) with PAM or another non-stick spray
9. Lay one biscuit into the bottom of the ramekin, and pour 1/4 of chicken mixture over biscuit. Layer additional biscuit over top of chicken mixture. Repeat for remaining ramekins. 
10. Place all ramekins on a baking sheet and slide into oven for 14 minutes, or until biscuit on top is golden brown. 

Om nom nom. This was really great, and we actually fought over the leftovers. I may decide to forgo the bottom biscuit in future. While tasty, I'm not sure it outweighed the added calories. Otherwise, this was very yummy.

Oh, and as always use caution when opening canned biscuits. I was chatting with a friend while I made these, and he sent me this:

True life, people. I get tense just watching this.

Delicious Desserts - Macarons

If you read my previous post, you'll have seen that I was not 100% on the cake train. Although, if there were an actual train of cake, I could probably get on-board with that. Anyway, when we were still deciding whether or not to do cake, we decided to bring in another dessert option.

To preface this, I had the opportunity during college to live in Paris not once, but twice, during two different May Terms. The last time I was there, in 2009, I lived right off of La Place de la Madeleine. Big, beautiful Neo-Classical church, on a site line down La Rue Royale towards La Place de la Concorde. I know all of that might mean nothing to you, but the salient point here is that in the Place Madeleine is a pretty little shop called Ladurée, of macaron fame. It isn't their biggest shop, but that didn't make it any less tempting. I did manage to avoid eating macarons every single day, but definitely managed to make a few visits every week.

Left to Right: Raspberry, Coffee, Pumpkin Spice, Pistachio (2), Lavender White Chocolate

What all of that means for the wedding, really, is that I wanted macarons. And, luckily for me, there's a wonderful little French cafe in Des Moines called La Mie. My mom goes there quite a bit, uses it for informal meetings for work, and she raves about their macarons.

So, on Monday, BM S, Brother E, his girlfriend A, Mr. C and I met at La Mie to taste some macarons. As BM S is expecting a little bee in July, she abstained from any of the creme filled (aka raw egg) macarons, but she did get to help me taste my favorite, raspberry. We decided we're going to order 300 macarons (for 150 guests), in each flavor except the Lavendar White Chocolate. It didn't do a lot for me. The coffee didn't either, but Mr. C loves coffee so I figured I'd give him that one.

Mmm.....macarons

Now, two questions remain. First, we have to pick up the macarons the day before the wedding as the cafe is closed on Sundays, and find enough refrigerator storage to keep them all cold. This may mean spreading them out between bridesmaids, their parents, and some local family friends with the hope that they all get to the venue in time. I'm also going to try talking to our caterers to see if they have storage space for them in a big fridge somewhere.

The other question is, how do we want to display them? I'll come back to that, I promise. For now, I'm going to leave you hanging :)

Delicious Desserts - Cake

I will be perfectly honest, Mr. C and I are not huge cake people. I mean, if somebody sets a piece of cake in front of me, I will eat it, although that may be more of a statement of my willpower than my cake preference. Mr. C is pretty much in the same boat. Ice cream, pie, tortes, cookies, crepes, custards, you name them, we eat them. But cake definitely isn't our go to.

However, when we mentioned our thought of ditching cake altogether to our respective parents, they suggested that even if the tow of us didn't want cake, most people come to a wedding expecting cake. And, as much as we are okay with changing things up, we figured this was not the hill to die on.

So, on Thursday we found ourselves at the local grocery store, tasting cake. And, I will admit, as there were pieces of cake (mostly in cupcake form) set in front of me, I ate them and they were yummy. Because I'm a bad blogger, I didn't take any pictures. We tried four flavors; vanilla, chocolate, champagne, and red velvet. The vanilla and chocolate tasted pretty average. Not bad, but hey if we were going to have cake it may as well be delicious. And look pretty.

Imagine this, except two tiers and without the flowers on the side - via The Knot

Going in, I knew that we wanted to do a couple of smaller tiers, then the rest in sheet cakes. We chose two flavors; champagne and red velvet. In the tasting, the champagne cake was violent, neon pink. The baker said they actually tint it, and for our cake she'd have them tone it down to a pale blush. Perfect, non? So, we're doing that on the top layer, and the red velvet on the bottom. Then we'll do two sheets, one of each. Also, for no charge, they're going to add our monogram to the top of each of the cut sheet pieces.

For not having been thrilled about the idea of cake, I'm actually pretty happy with how it is going. Our initial plan is to have the florist drop off a ribbon for the baker to use, but after thinking about it for awhile, I want to see if they can do something that is edible. If not, ribbon is fine, but a little painted gold band would be lovely. We got a beautiful serving set as a gift from family friends of Mr. C, which was totally unexpected but that I am very happy to have. Now, the only thing is to find a cake stand!