our wedding: pre-ceremony day one

welcome to the second post in the "our wedding" series! if you missed the first post detailing our wedding venue, you can view that here. while i know everyone wants to see all the "pinterest worthy" pictures and all that jazz, i want to detail (or at least go over) the happenings of the days that we were in fort bragg. if only just for me so i can remember because honestly, those days went by in such a blur! but don't worry, those pretty pictures will come soon enough!

we set out on our journey to fort bragg on the morning of may 4th. our caravan included my family, charles's family, and most of the wedding party. in our car, it was just charles, jc and i. jc has not been known as the best road tripper so i was a little worried about setting out on this four hour drive. but he did great! stayed awake the whole time (unfortunately) but stayed in good spirits. until we got about twenty minutes out from our destination. the last thirty or so minutes of the drive are through a very windy road up and over some mountains. i heard jc whining so i offered him an applesauce squeezy pouch which promptly got thrown up along with some chicken nuggets all over jc, his bear, and his car seat. that was fun. we pulled over and we managed to strip jc down and clean his car seat as well as we could and make it to our destination on time, just slightly puke covered.




we arrived first and were shortly greeted by our guests. everyone unloaded their cars, rooms were assigned and we started getting to it. like i said previously, we did everything ourselves. if i could have afforded to pay for a wedding planner or assistant or anything like that, i would have definitely paid for it because it was STRESSFUL! it took everything in my overthinking, overstressed out head to not freak out on everyone. i was just so thankful that everyone was super (beyond what anyone would expect) helpful and that our wedding day was finally here!

the weather was being very touchy. having our wedding on the northern california coast, i knew wind, rain and cold weather were all very likely. this day the wind was K-RAZY! so crazy i had to use a "K" instead of a "C". it looked like rain wasn't going to be a problem but the wind, oh man, it was bad. let's just say i was happy to partake in some "after the babies go to sleep" festivities.


to help ease my stress while the babies were awake, we took a trip down to the beach. the beach is a short walk from the house through meadows and fields. very pretty. we also had to decide for sure where we were going to have the ceremony. we had only visited the house once (and a year prior) before this day so our memory wasn't the best. but we found a perfect spot.



the boys help set up the tables and chairs that we rented from a local party supply business. i don't know how we made it fit on that deck but we did it. that was a major issue for me, worrying about how all of our tables and chairs were going to fit. when we picked our venue, we figured we'd maybe have 30 or 40 people who would actually want to make the drive out for the wedding. but more people really like us than we thought! we ended up with close to 60 guests so to say i was stressed about this would be an understatement. but it worked out and everyone had a place to sit!

we ended up having a very impromptu rehearsal dinner of round table pizza and sodas. classy, i know. i was also very worried about how the ceremony was going to work. we didn't have anyone to help direct us so we had to just count on everyone knowing when to go, where to stand, etc. over and over again charles had to be my reminder that it is not that big of a deal. yes it is our wedding but if someone doesn't walk fast enough or stand where they are supposed to, it is not the end of the world.

after the babies were put to bed, i enlisted the help of some of my bridesmaids plus one of the groomsmen's super awesome helpful girlfriend to make our bouquets. then there may have been some drinking. but the bouquets turned out great! keeping them super simple definitely made the difference.


now when i say we did everything ourselves, i mean it. we didn't even have a dj. and i kept putting it off so i ended up staying up way too late trying to go through ALL of our music to make our wedding playlist. the problem was that i tried to include charles in this task. we have similar music tastes but charles doesn't really understand what people want to hear or dance to at a wedding. super sad folk music the whole time? not going to cut it. i stayed up til probably two in the morning and still didn't finish it. i had to work on it the next day while i was getting my hair done! but hey, it all worked out in the end.

going to bed that night was not hard because i was exhausted but nothing could prepare me for the next day's events! check back soon for the next part of the series!

sidenote: most, if not all, of these photos were taken by our awesome friend mike. almost all the groomsmen are photographers and were taking pictures the whole time and for that, i am thankful.

our wedding: the venue

welcome to the first part of a series of posts detailing our wedding that took place on may 5, 2012. i've been disconnected from blogging lately but am ready to come on back. so i thought instead of posting 1093849 pictures in one post, i'd break it up into more manageable chunks.


our wedding venue was definitely not your conventional venue. it was actually a rental house that over looked the beach in fort bragg, ca. we knew from the get-go that we wanted to have our wedding in fort bragg. we got engaged during our "babymoon" where we road tripped from sacramento to british columbia and back. on our way down the coast, we drove through the beautiful northern california coast line and we knew we had to have our wedding there. unfortunately, fort bragg is a good four hour drive from our hometown. with this in mind, we wanted to have the ability to house our wedding party so they wouldn't be bogged down with the added expense of finding a room. we all know being in a wedding can get very expensive and i kept that in mind with every decision that we made. we had a hard time finding a house that would let us have a wedding there but nye ranch pulled through! there was no "staff", just a house, so we did everything ourselves. we had to keep a pretty tight budget for this wedding. while i don't have a hard figure, i'd say we definitely kept it under $5000 but we were only able to do so because we have awesome family and friends who were all down to help. i would definitely recommend this type of venue to someone looking to have a laid back location with room for people to crash. but you have to keep in mind that to have that "laid back" feel, you need to put in a lot of work yourself!




our venue really set the tone for the wedding style. the home has a very rustic, country feel but being on the coast, it was very green and lush as well. i chose navy blue and kelly green as our wedding colors to complement the natural colors already present at the venue. the property also housed a barn and resident llamas (alpacas? i can't remember) who we probably kept awake during our crazy antics during the reception.




we had our wedding party and a few family members arrive one day prior to the ceremony and help us set up all the tables. the house easily slept our ten person wedding party, a couple strays, a couple babies and ourselves. our wedding was relatively small (50-60 guests including the bridal party) so we were able to easily have our ceremony take place on a bluff overlooking the beach and the reception on the back deck of the house. there was also a small grassy field with fire pits that definitely got some use during our chilly reception.



i love this house so much, i'd love to be able to go back just for fun!

check back in a couple days for more wedding posts!

life lately

looking at all these pictures makes me realize that the last month has been a blur. look i actually brushed my hair a couple times! to say we've been busy would be an understatement. after we purchased our new house, we had a month to do any renovations that we wanted to do before we moved in. so charles immediately went to work and even took a week off from work so he could devote all of his time to the new house. and even with hours of slave labor from friends and family, we STILL didn't finish everything. with a march 23rd deadline, we had to move in with rooms half-painted, floors halfway finished, and no baseboards anywhere. so of course, all of these things have been making moving even more difficult than it is normally. i didn't realize that was possible. so we've been unpacking at a snail's pace, living among the boxes. so many boxes in fact, jc learned a new word, "box". the only thing i can say is that jc really doesn't seem to mind it. he spent our first night, sleeping in his pack-n-play because he crib wasn't put together. i managed to make a space just barely big enough in his room for his pack-n-play. and he went to bed just like it was any other night. he gets excited when he goes to sleep and then wakes up and something different is put up or he finds now new-to-him toys because they've been in a box for two weeks. i love him so much.

and on top of allllll of that, we are getting married in a month! we are seriously getting down to the wire. my bridal shower is this weekend and i cannot even express how happy i am that my wonderful sister and mother planned the whole thing and all i have to do is show up. charles has to work and everyone i would ask to babysit will be at the shower so jc will be my date to my bridal shower. i think he'll be the life of the party.

i so badly don't want to disappear for the next month but it seriously took me eight hours to finish this blog post. i started at 5, then got distracted with a phone call with my sister about the shower, then had to make dinner, then had to clean up dinner, then had to clean up paint brushes and trays from earlier, then had to get jc ready for bed, then take a shower and THEN i could work on this post. time is so precious lately, i can't spend hours online everyday. i am going to try my hardest to keep the blog updated with new wedding events and big house news. but i probably won't have so much "filler" i guess. which hey, your google reader is probably pretty full anyway, huh?

hope everyone has a great easter weekend!

little bits of happiness, w.2

wow. i didn't mean to not do anything blog related for a week but it sort of worked out that way. after meeting with our caterer (who also happens to be charles's dad's fiancee) for our wedding over the weekend, i realized i still have SO MUCH to do! it really put my butt into gear. honestly, it is getting a little overwhelming. if it was just moving/renovating our new house or just planning our wedding, it would be a lot of work. but it is both. at the same time. ARGH! so i've been trying to prioritize and sending out our wedding invitations got the top spot. of course, "just sending them out" entails designing them, printing them and mailing them out. so it was a two day project. but they are done and in the mail!




it also helped me to take some time, sit down and write down every little thing that needs to be done for the wedding. a lot of it is just talking to charles and finalizing our decisions. sometimes it's so hard to do that when he gets home so late from work, we have dinner, spend time with jc, put jc down for bed and then we usually turn into zombies after that. so i had to make sure we talked about a few things every night. not too much because i don't want to overwhelm him but my list is two pages long. and growing.




but it definitely made me happy to write everything down and cross off a few important items off the list. currently, i'm on the hunt for jc's groomsmen outfit so he will match the rest of the groomsmen and narrowing down our search for a beachfront condo in san diego for our honeymoon. i guess i could have bigger problems, right?

i'm linking up with stephanie for little bits of happiness.

our love story, part two

photo by Stina Reffit Photography

so here we are for part two! you can catch part one here in case ya missed it. oh and you'll want to see the awesomesauce picture of charles and i before our FRESHMAN homecoming dance. it's all kinds of embarrassing.

again, this is from our wedding website so the tone is a little different than i normally like to keep it over here. hope you enjoy part two!

High school came and went. We moved into together the spring after we graduated, in March 2005. We lived in a tiny one bedroom duplex in a shady neighborhood. But it was amazing, because it was our place. Our first place together. We had always talked about how awesome it would be to be "grown ups" and live together. To go to sleep and wake up in the same place. And we finally had it.

We lived in that house for a couple years until we met one-third of the super friends, Garrett and Jessica. Within a couple months of knowing each other, we promptly decided that we needed to become roommates and move in together. And so it was. We moved into a four bedroom home with our new best friends. There were a lot of good times in that house. We like to refer to it as our "college years" even though only one of us was actively enrolled in school. But you get the idea.

um, yes i am lil jon. best halloween evar btw.

After living there for a couple more years, we decided it was once again time to move on our own. We moved into the house that Charles had lived in since he was three years old. This was the house that we would start to build our family. We just didn't know that part yet.

After a year of just hanging around, without much direction in our lives except working our nine to fives, the biggest change to our lives happened. On November 9th, 2009 we found out we were pregnant.

It wasn't part of our "plan" but sometimes life doesn't follow your plan. We knew this was supposed to happen ths way. This was for a reason. We were beyond excited to welcome a new member to our little family.

A couple months before we were expecting our new addition, we went on a babymoon, or one last trip before the baby comes. We traveled by car (Charles's '91 BMW, of course) north Interstate 5 through Northern California, Oregon, Washington and up to Vancouver, British Columbia and then back down the coast. One of our first stops was to Crater Lake. We had been told by many that it was worth the trip and they were right. It was breathtakingly beautiful. 

It was May 1st, 2010. There was several feet of snow atop this mountain with a lake in the middle of it. We were dressed for summer weather. After getting in a fight because Charles wanted to trek a little further in the snow and Melissa getting mad because "I'm 30 weeks pregnant! I'm not going to hike around in the snow!", Charles managed to talk Melissa into going a little further away from the rest of the tourists. That is where Charles got on one knee and proposed. In the snow with Crater Lake as the backdrop. The words he said are not remembered because of the anxiety going through Charles's brain and Melissa's absolute shock but they were special. And life changing.

On June 1st, 2010 a month to the date of our engagement, we welcomed John Charles the Third. He has made our lives whole. He fits so perfectly in our family and we are so thankful everyday that he is here.

our love story, part one

photo by Stina Reffitt Photography

being on the high of valentine's day over here, i decided now was as good a time as ever to share charles's and mine's love story. is that correct grammar? charles's and mine's? it doesn't sound like it. anyway, i needed to write it for our wedding website so i figured i might as well share it here too since i haven't divulged too much of that information yet. i'm pretty much just copying and pasting it over here so i apologize because the tone is a little different than i normally write. and it has a weird tense, i use "we" but also refer to myself as "Melissa". so yeah. it's kinda long so i'm going to break it up into two parts. check back tomorrow for part two!

Our story begins almost twelve years ago when two kids went to their first day of high school. Melissa had just moved to a new town, to a new school and was incredibly nervous. She didn't know anyone. Charles was going to a school where he would know the vast majority of the students because he had been going to school with them since he was in kindergarten. Our first class on the first day of high school was Computer Technology with Ms. Decoup-Lantay.

Melissa had arrived to class early and had been anxiously awaiting for the bell to ring. Charles wandered in, skateboard in hand, seconds before class had officially begun. Because of his late arrival, there was only a couple seats left. One was next to Melissa. And without hesitation, he swooped right in and sat down.

As prepared as Melissa was, mysteriously, she forgot to pack a pen with her for the first day of school. She asked Charles if he had a pen she could borrow. Lucky for Charles, he found the one pen in his backpack that he had swiped out of the telephone drawer that morning that hadn't been chewed on by his sisters. And the conversation began.

The next couple months were hard, as most young love can be. Of course, Charles had a girlfriend already. With his charismatic ways, who could resist? This kept our relationship platonic but it was only obvious to anyone within a five foot range that we were totally into each other. We talked on the phone everyday, exchanged emails, instant messaged, couldn't get enough of each other. But with respect to his relationship, we kept it at that. Charles even tried to set Melissa up with several of his friends. Later, he admitted to doing so to keep her close. But it was no use, the feelings were still there.

The fall was approaching and so was the fall homecoming dance. And the news came. Charles was now single. How convienient. With that, Charles asked Melissa to be his date to the dance. And before the dance even happened, we officially became a couple on October 19, 2000, the day before Melissa turned 15.

keep it real melissa has to cut in here because O.M.G. you guys. really. we are 14 in this picture. my hair is all sorts of awesome, i weigh like 100 pounds and i'm wearing an illusion necklace. i know you had one too.

We were children. We realize that now. But somehow, with our immature minds and lack of experience, we knew that we had something special. Enough that even through all the drama that can happen in high school, we managed to avoid it. We knew we had to hold onto each other. 

our save-the-dates

i am a big proponent of not spending extra money where it is not needed. i know that just because something has the word "wedding" or "baby" in front of it, the cost is jacked up. and i know a lot of these items are created to make us think that we NEED them for our wedding or baby and can't live without them. when in reality, people got along without these items for hundreds of years and they got along just fine.

save-the-dates are one of those items that seemed to have appear somewhat recently that everyone NEEDS to do for their wedding. it NEEDS to be included in the already super expensive wedding stationery that goes out to your friends and families and inevitably ends up the garbage. BUT, since we are having a "destination" wedding (i always feel silly saying that because it is just a four hour drive from where we live) and a lot of our family live out of state, we decided that sending out save the dates was an important element to include to make sure everyone can get time off as needed, schedule and purchase plane tickets and so on and so forth.

since we have a very tight budget set for our wedding (hello buying a house and we already have a kid and i don't work outside the home), i had already planned on designing and printing our save-the-dates myself. i was so excited when i found wedding chicks and their FREE wedding printables. yes, FREE. and they are super cute! i instantly fell in love with the bunting printable (hi i am melissa and i am obsessed with bunting and birds). when i plugged in our names and it spit out our save-the-date, i liked it but i wasn't so much in love with it anymore. i wasn't a big fan of the original font or color scheme. thanks to my newly obtained photoshop skillz, i was able to use their same basic idea but change the color of the bunting to match our wedding colors (kelly green and navy blue) and change the font to the other thing i'm obsessed with, lobster two. i used it on our christmas cards too.




so there it is, in all of it's glory! now, we just have to print and mail them out. i feel like such a failure because i really wanted to send these out with our christmas cards (because, remember we are on a budget and postage is expensive) but we weren't able to get our engagement photos in time and then christmas happened, you know how it goes. so my goal is to get these out on friday. so if you're invited to our wedding, check your mailbox next week!

you'll also see that we have an official wedding website, melissaandcharles.com through wedding wire. you can check it out now if you want but there isn't really anything there yet besides a countdown to our wedding which gives me a mini panic attack every time i look at it.

yay, one more thing to check off the wedding to-do list!

a look back at goals i set six months ago

ok, so a few months back i decided to make some "the year is halfway over" resolutions. i thought now would be a good time to reflect on what has come of these goals and add some new ones to the bunch.

here are my previous goals:
1. Make a conscious effort to be healthier. i feel like i can cross this off my list and not feel like a liar. because i DID make a conscious effort for a good period of time during the last few months. if you were a reader a couple months ago, you may have noticed my buff mama monday posts...and that they suddenly and abruptly disappeared. i don't really have a good reason for that. i got sick, didn't go the gym for a while, then when i was ready to go back, i learned that they had closed down. sooooo, i stopped working out. but i did go for a couple months, so i'm counting this as done.

2. Take a graphic design/web design class. i can most assuredly cross this off my list! i took a graphics communication class at the junior college that was bascially an intro to photoshop. i learned a lot, including that graphic design is not something that i will be pursuing further. i'm so happy to have acquired the photoshop skills that i did, but i'm ready to move on.

3. "Finish" JC's room. this definitely did not happen. not too long after i made these goals, we learned that we would have to be moving at some indefinite date. so the idea of decorating a room that we would be packing up soon, lost it's steam. but i do have full intentions of taking this back up once we move into a new house.

4. Learn to sew. my old sewing machine never got fixed, so therefore it stayed bootsy. but, there is a glimmer of hope at the end of this because i got a new sewing machine for christmas!! yes it is still in the box but only because i'm not sure where to set it up for now. again, a problem with living in a house that you won't be living in for much longer. i'm not ready to commit to a space, but once i do, it will be done!

5. Open an Etsy store. so this is a complicated one. i did it, for sure but i am officially closing up shop for now on aquamarine vintage. i thought i had a good combination of vintage goods and hand knit goods. the shop wasn't a complete failure because i did sell everything that i listed, it's just that i didn't list very much. i was unable to set aside enough time to find goods to sell or knit anything to sell. so this is done but i am done with the shop. i do have ideas for a new shop but am not ready to break ground quite yet.

6. Start saving money for a down payment on a house. i'm not going to cross this off because we didn't really make a conscious effort to save anymore than we already had set aside. here we are, six months later and we are REALLY looking at buying a house but don't have much more to show for it. we'll be able to do it, but we just are not going to be able to put more down.

7. And last but definitely not least, plan our wedding. welp, the wedding is not completely planned but is definitely further along. do i still want to throw up when i start planning the wedding for longer than 20 minutes? a little bit. do i still beg charles to let us just elope? sometimes. but we are getting further along. we have a date set, a venue reserved, a photographer hired, and most of our bridal party picked out. so we are getting there.

all in all, i'm pretty happy with what i accomplished. i gave myself the freedom to not feel tied down by my goals. if the goal was no longer important or relevant, i didn't have to beat myself up for not pursuing it or finishing it. i am ready to continue pursuing a couple of these and adding more to the bunch; i'll post about them tomorrow! happy new year everyone!

week in iphone photos

here we are. another week closer to christmas! i can't believe how fast it's approaching. it's great though because i'm totally in the christmas spirit this year (last year i was feeling a little grinch-y). not too brag or anything, but we've got most of our christmas shopping done and the house is decorated all festive-like. it's so great to see jc's excitement over our christmas tree. he is obsessed with balls so of course, he spends a good portion of the day pointing at all the ornaments on the tree and saying "ooooooooh!" and "A BALL!" our poor tree is looking a little barren on the bottom 1/4 but i'd rather have it look empty than have to worry about jc pulling off all the ornaments within his reach.

so besides getting our christmas on, we had a nice little week. jc and i were super productive one morning and rewarded ourselves with a trip to the park where jc made some new friends. i went on a hunt for some baby sized snow pants and mittens (for our trip to tahoe this weekend!!!!) and got distracted by teeny tiny itsy bitsy baby clothes with a fox on them. my ovaries were screaming. jc got super into his blocks again. he'll stack them up and when one of them inevitably doesn't fit right or falls off he says "oh no!" it's pretty much the cutest thing ever. i had my last day of school and my teacher is so awesome that he brought in pizza! you should have seen a room full of adults turn into second graders when we saw the stack of pizza boxes he carried in. yesterday was super busy. we went and took our engagement photos (FINALLY!) in the morning, so i curled my hair using stephanie's tutorial and it worked great! it was a little wonky at first because i normally straighten my hair with my right hand but she uses her left hand; but i figured it out. then we went to jc's bff's first birthday party and had a blasty blast. when we came home, we were all super tired and just watched some tv, ate some cheese and i tried to be productive and folded some laundry. super exciting!








i hope to share our engagement photos soon, well as soon as we get them back from our photographer but if you want to see a preview, you can see a couple at our photographer's facebook page. hope you all have a great week!

{linking up with a good life and life rearranged}

buff mama monday w.1, let's do this

Source: None via Melissa on Pinterest

For a split second, maybe you thought that was a picture of me. That would be awesome.

I'll tell you what's not awesome. I'm no where NEAR that level of feeling comfortable walking around in a bikini. I don't even want to see myself in a bikini; I wouldn't want to put anyone else through that misery.

If you remember my post about the goals that I set for the rest of the year, "making healthy choices" is one of them. Notice that I didn't say "lose weight" or "drop dress sizes". It was my way of making my goal seem more doable. But it also makes me less motivated to "lose weight" or "drop dress sizes".

When I saw that Vanessa over at The Crafty Nest (one of my blogger inspirations) is starting up a weekly "buff mama" link up, I had to join. I need more motivation than what I've got now. I know I don't like how I look. I know I have a wedding coming up in (eek!) nine months. I know that I feel tired and sluggish all the time. But those reasons have not been enough for me to get off my butt.

Source: None via Melissa on Pinterest

I know that I will probably never be as skinny as Katy Perry or look as amazing as Kim Kardashian looks in a bikini, but I definitely want to try. I can't expect for that to happen without putting in any effort.

As of yet, I'm not set on my exercise/diet plans. I've tried just hitting the treadmill at home during nap time, but I lost steam after a couple of weeks. I started doing C25K and it was ok, just kinda boring. I'm thinking about joining a gym. I have a friend who goes pretty relig so I would have a workout buddy. Stroller Strides has a LivingSocial deal right now too. I really just don't like exercising so I get bored easily. And I always feel like I have 102958210 more things that I need to be doing instead.

Let me know if you've tried anything that has worked for you. Preferably something that can be disguised as "fun". Link up with Vanessa too so we can all track each other's progress! Maybe in a few months, we'll look like Beyonce. Maybe.

Source: cityrag.com via Melissa on Pinterest

wednesday wishes: goals for the rest of the year

I was inspired by Silly Grrl's blog the other day and decided that I wanted to sit down and make a list of goals for myself for the rest of the year. No pressure goals that if I don't accomplish, it's not the end of the world. Well, some of them would be a big deal if I neglected but others aren't so bad. I realized that I usually have a running list of "things I need/want to do" but I stop there. I don't like to formally give them titles like "goals" because then I feel pressure and anxiety about completing them. After reading her post, I realized that it's ok if I don't complete every goal I have within a certain amount of time. Or it's ok to say "I don't really care about that anymore" and just walk away from a goal. And I can add goals too. People change their minds. It's ok, really.

1. Make a conscious effort to be healthier. I have horrible eating habits. I don't exercise at all. Unless you count carrying around an 18 pound baby occasionally. Charles and I both want to start The 17 Day Diet but until we are both ready to buckle down, I am just trying to take some baby steps towards a healthier lifestyle. We have both stopped drinking soda and amped up our water drinking habits. Desserts are usually a daily occurrence here so I've tried to cut that out. Also just trying to eat smaller portions. I tried to start going for daily walks with the baby and the dog but I was deterred on Monday by the direct sunlight streaming down onto my little guy's face. Our stroller seriously lacks adequate sun protection so I looked on Maclaren's website and found that they sell a big sunshade attachment so hopefully that will help in the walk department.

2. Take a graphic design/web design class. I'm signed up for a Photoshop class in the Fall! I'm waitlisted so I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get in but I feel good about it. I'm actually really excited now after talking to my soon-to-be mother-in-law because she might be able to watch JC on the day that I would go to class. That was my big deterrent to taking the class.

3. "Finish" JC's room. Of course, his room will never be "finished" but I would like to at least get some of the pictures that I have hung up on the walls. We have some kind of phobia to hanging things up on the wall around here. I think because we had to spend a lot of time removing wallpaper, texturing, and painting most of the walls we are little gun-shy when it comes to blemishing our fresh walls with nail holes. I know hanging up a few things will really change the look of his room. In my dream world, I would also refinish his two dressers buuuuuut one step at a time here.

4. Learn to sew. This has been a goal on my list for a loooooooooong time. I finally sat down with my sister AND Charles's sister to try to teach me but we determined that the sewing machine I have is straight bootsy. So, I have to fix it or get a new one before I go further.

5. Open an Etsy store. Ever since I started knitting almost five years ago, anytime I show someone my finished product I get the comment "Oh wow! You could sell this!" It's always been a dream of mine but selling something handmade is difficult. Especially something like knitting, which in my case, takes a looooooooong time to complete a project. I've been brainstorming about ideas for items to sell that won't take three years to complete.

6. Start saving money for a down payment on a house. Buying a house is a real option for us in the very near future so we really need to do this. We have a little bit saved from my tax return but we need more. So we need to stop spending... a little difficult with a wedding coming up but if we can just save a little bit more, I'll be happy.

7. And last but definitely not least, plan our wedding. We are finally getting some forward progress in getting this wedding off the ground and it is really exciting. I really can't look at wedding stuff for more than thirty minutes at a time because I get overwhelmed. I'm currently awaiting the arrival of a contract for the venue that we picked out and once that's done we can FINALLY set a date.

Linking up my post with Brooke at Bright Wishes.

hanging out at the beach & nye ranch

After we visited the Mendocino Botanical Gardens on Sunday, we checked into our motel, got comfy and ate some yummy Mexican food for dinner. We asked the lovely people at our motel's front desk if they had any recommendations for easy beach access. A quick drive down Main Street took us to a pretty nice little beach to hang out and play in the sand. We weren't brave enough to enter the water, it's pretty cold still! But the sand was nice.


Oh and I almost forgot, we got ice cream! Super awesome ice cream at this place called Cowlicks. I managed to not get sand in it.



I love Northern California beaches but I could definitely do without the excess seaweed. Ew.





JC was having fun playing with the sand. It was the first time we let him just go to town in it.





I still spent a good amount of time trying to keep sand out of JC's mouth. Keyword: trying.



So I loaded up this post with pictures from the beach on Sunday because we were so excited to see Nye Ranch on Monday we neglected to take any pictures. Blog fail. Charles took some videos but I look pissed off in most of it because he was taking too long, inmyopinion. So if you want to see pictures, visit their site.

Buuuuut, we did visit Nye Ranch on Monday and it was pretty awesome. To be completely honest, we weren't "blown away" at first. In fact, it took me a couple of days to fall in love with it. The house is older and pretty "rustic". But it has SO MUCH room for people to sleep which is really what we want the house for. And it's on the beach. And they will let you have a wedding there. Check, check, and a BIG check.

After coming home and thinking about it, we decided to make it our venue! I cannot even halfway express how incredibly exciting this is. I know we can make this house super cute. I say "we" but Charles has already bowed out of this responsibility. Luckily, I have really creative friends/family (I'm talking to YOU Kristen!) who I know will have tons of great ideas. I'm not sure if we will have the ceremony on the deck overlooking the ocean or actually on a bluff at the beach. Both are viable options, I guess it depends on how "rustic" we want to be. It's not a short walk to the beach and it's through a grassy walkway so we'll have to see what we are willing to put our guests through. By the way, did I mention that they have ALPACAS. Three of them to be exact. We are currently in process, talking to the owner of the house so we can get a date set. But the plan is for the beginning of May next year. SO EXCITED!!!! To quote JC, we are "happy happy happy!"

mendocino botanical gardens

On Sunday, we drove up to Fort Bragg to check out some wedding venues. Our first stop was the Mendocino Botanical Gardens. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect when we got there, but it was pretty awesome. Charles who is my gardening/photography nerd was in heaven. Warning, this post is VERY photo heavy. All photos taken by Charles except for the one of him, I took that one!



They had some of the craziest looking plants! Some of these things look like they belong on King Kong's island or Little Shop of Horrors.









The succulent/cactus display was our favorite. Some of these plants were HUGE!





This place literally was amazing. It felt like I was walking in Bambi's forest. It was breathtakingly beautiful. And we hadn't even seen the ocean yet!



JC was semi-interested at first.



Then he fell asleep. This NEVER happens. He had to be pretty tired to fall asleep in his stroller, especially while I was pushing him through bumpy, gravel trails and on bluffs overlooking the ocean. He really couldn't care less.









This is the Event Lawn. They had several spots at the gardens that were set up for weddings. We really liked the Dahlia Garden but they said that it's not normally in bloom until July and we want to get married in the Spring. This lawn was huge and it's what we would have chosen for the reception space if we did the ceremony on the bluff. But it really seemed way too big for the intimate wedding we have in mind.



This is the bluff area where they have wedding ceremonies. I really liked it and there were several spots that could work. And the views were awesome.





But ultimately, it wasn't exactly what we wanted. We want a house. So the search continued... dun dun dun!

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