My ring!!!

Last night Landon proposed :) We were in the basement hanging out and he asked me if I wanted to see something. I said sure what is it, and he said I had to guess. So I asked him for hints and after he gave me like 4 hints, I finally guessed, "is it a ring?" he said maybe,  I said "is it my ring?" he said maybe, and then he asked me if I wanted to see it, and I said "can I have it?" And he began laughing and said that I wasn't allowed to have it until December, but I could see it if I wanted to, just so I could know that he bought me one....So I said sure, let me see it....although I was a little bummed because I was expecting a proposal. So he went and got something out from under his bed, it was in a bag, and then a box, and then another box....And then his breathing became very shaky. I smiled as he gave me the opened box, and all I could say is "It's very pretty", but I didn't wanna look at it too much cause I would want it so much more. Then he asked me if I wanted it, and I just laughed and said "of course I do!" and he started laughing, and then about 5 minutes later, he looked at me and asked if I would marry him.....And I started squealing and laughing and saying yes like a million times, and he took my hand and slipped the ring on. It's the most gorgeous ring I've ever seen. It's an E on the DEF scale which means that the stone is colorless and only 2% of all the worlds diamonds are colorless. Its just over half a karat, and it has a white gold band.
                                                                             Here it is :)

 

I LOVE IT!!!!! I just think it is just so amazing and gorgeous and I am sooooo happy :)

Time for some sappy stuff...

  Alright, so recently I watched the movie P.S. I Love You....I've seen it before, but now that I'm no longer single, I think that it has a different impact on me that it did before. If you haven't seen the movie, its about a young woman named Holly ( who is played by Hillary Swank) who marries an Irish man named Jerry (who is played by Gerrard Butler), and they are married for 10 years. The movie opens up with them having an argument about something the husband had said, and she took it the wrong way. Well after about 10-15 minutes of the arguing, they apologize to each other and make up...You can just feel the love these two characters have for each other. Well, The next seen, after you fall in love with this couple, you see all these people wearing black, walking into a bar, and then you see the wife, and then you see an Urn...As it turns out Jerry has died, and they're having his funeral at a local bar. Well while the wife is grieving, she locks herself in her apartment for 4 weeks, until her Birthday, when her friends and family surprises her with a small party. She opens up the cake she received, and it says "Happy Birthday my love, love Jerry." She starts to get upset when shes handed a tape recorder that came with the cake. Jerry has recorded himself on a tape, telling her she is going to receive a series of letters from him, to help her through the grieving process.Well as the movie progresses, she gets the letters, and each one is just as loving and yet so sad as the first. As time goes by other men come into her life, and it becomes harder for her to move on.
  Through the rest of the movie, Holly visits Ireland where she first met Jerry, and visits his family, and meets a man who she finds very attractive man, but doesn't feel that its time to find someone else just yet. She goes home, and finds something that she fills up her time with...Designing shoes. And she becomes great at it, even though she begins to distance her friends. At the very end of this movie, she receives one last letter. In the letter, Jerry explains to her that it was a privilege to be her husband, and that he became a man while married to her. And then he tells her to not be afraid to fall in love again. He says that he was only one chapter in her life, but that she has many more chapters to go in hers. And she answers him back. She says that maybe one day she will fall in love again, but falling in love doesn't always has to be with a man, she fell in love with her job as a designer, and her family and her friends all over again.
  So while there is a slight happy ending there, I do think that it is a MUST see for every woman...even if you hate romantic movies. Personally it made me think. How would I be if I lost Landon after only 10 short years or sooner? Would I lock myself away from the world for weeks on end? Probably....would I hate my life? Most likely....Would I be able to move on? Well....I don't know...Right now I would tell you NO, that there was no way I would ever be able to love another man in my life.
  This movie is the saddest, most romantic, movie I have ever seen in my life and I love it. It's so very sweet. And I just love to see how her character deals with the extreme loss of her husband. I grew so attached to that couple through the movie, that I didn't want it to end. BUT anyway, I felt like I needed to talk about it :) I plan on Landon and I watching it together tomorrow afternoon while we're on our date. It's movies like this that really make you appreciate the man you have in your life.

The ring

So Landon bought my ring a couple of weeks go. We went to the jewelry store together to look at them and to get an idea of what I wanted. Well after looking and looking and talking with our great consultant, she finally said that I needed to go across the jewelry store so she could speak to him about something...I left and walked around for awhile, and some woman came up and sized my finger, and then they all told me that I had to leave the store! We were all laughing but I went out and decided to walk around and wait....When I cam back he had no bag, nothing in in hands except a piece of paper that showed the quality of diamonds on it. When I asked him what happened, he smiled and said that they were just talking about finances and things of that sort, but I KNEW he was lying. I looked at his pocket and saw a small box and I just smiled. Never said anything though. So a few days went by and he started giving me hints like "If you knew what I did for you, you would be nicer to me." And "If only you knew how much I love you...well, in December I guess you will.." So basically he totally gave it away, but he will NOT say that he purchased anything. So now I just have to wait until early December to get my ring :) We're having our engagement pictures made that month also by the most amazing photographer I know, Mrs. Allison Campbell. So hopefully this all works out and I get my ring before then ;)

The Honeymoon...

The view from Calton Hill in Edinburgh

So today Landon asked me to research places for our honeymoon. Weeeellll I went to google and typed in "Best honeymoon spots" and SO many tropical ones came up! Well he's not for the tropics, and I've had enough of them to last me for a little while. So I found two places that struck my interest. One is Edinburgh Scotland....I started looking at pictures they had on the travel site and OH MY GOODNESS is it ever gorgeous!!! The castles! The villages! The valleys! Its just simply beautiful there. 

  And then, I found somewhere that would be rather cheaper, and in a driving distance...Charleston South Carolina. I wasn't too thrilled at first, but after researching places and looking at pictures I think that it's probably one of the more beautiful places in the South. The houses are soooo old and gorgeous, and I love the whole Antebellum thing. And theres a beach, and tons of little Posh boutiques and outlets to shop at, and I just think it would be a very fun place to visit for our Honeymoon. They have super romantic carriage rides downtown, and very nice places to take walks, it just looks soooo romantic all over.  

Downtown Charleston SC

                                                 

Shutterfly books

  So I've decided to start a project for myself. I'm going to begin on making what is called Photobooks by Shutterfly. They're a lot like photo albums, except you don't have to past anything and its like an actual book, each page has pictures of us on it and maybe a little bit of wording and some embellishments. But it's really cool, if you haven't heard of it, I encourage you to look at it and see for yourself. BUT what we're going to be doing is a series of three books. One called a Courtship Book, one called an Engagement Book, and one called Our Wedding Book. And well, because we don't have very many pictures of us together during our Courtship phase we're going on Monday to a local park called Port Royal Sate Historic Park, and take a few pictures. THEN our Engagement photos will be taken in December at the local River Walk while it's all decorated with Christmas lights, and then eventually our Wedding photos. I'm rather excited about this little project, because you can get the sweetest little books and they aren't expensive at all. We're just going to be doing the 5 x 7 most likely with the soft cover, and then save the larger one which is 12 x 12 and a hard leather cover for our wedding photos.
  So anyway, if you'd like to check out the site here it is www.shutterfly.com . It's simply great, and I've heard nothing but good things about them and I'm just so excited!!!  As soon as we get our pictures finished on Monday I'll be sure to post a few to let you all see how they look :)

Registering

  So I went to Target today with Momma to start mine and Landon's registry. After signing up and doing every mandatory thing, I took the scanner and went to town. Momma said it would be difficult to not just scan everything I liked and she was right. I had to stick with a particular color scheme and pattern and things like that. So. I found a dinnerware set called Onyx that I loved, they're square pieces and 16 in a set, so I requested two sets so I would have enough to entertain.

The black dishes I found

Then I found some red plates and bowls to just use for every day stuff, then I looked for some decent glassware. I found the perfect wine glasses, flutes and ordinary glasses and registered for them, and then found everything I needed for baking and cooking. After that I moved to the bedroom things. We found the prettiest comforters made of silk, one was a chocolate brown and the other was a cream/caramel color one, and we found blankets to match both, a set of sheets and pillow cases. Once the bedroom was finished we moved on to the bathroom. I really didn't know what colors I wanted my bathroom to be, but I decided there on the spot, I decided to go with a country yellow, with a light blue and a dark brown...Now it may not sound very pretty, but those colors just looked perfect together, so I started scanning towels, wash cloths, soap dishes and things of that sort, and THEN we were finished. I managed to pick out a few things that I thought he would enjoy like a set of 4 really cool Beer Mugs and I plan on taking him back and letting him see anything that he likes and may want to register for. But so far I believe I've registered for everything I need with the exceptions of a few things.
  I thought that maybe starting the registry now would be the best thing to do with the date of the wedding being up in the air, and I wanted to get it done while I still had time on my hands with everything. Didn't wanna forget about it. Now I have to go to Belk to register for CRYSTAL!!! 
I'm kinda excited about that, I already have my eyes on a vase that I want and a salad bowl! :) But anyway, we're just getting that much closer to the wedding!

Up in the Air

So as of right now our wedding date is kinda up in the air. Landon found out last week that he did not receive the job he applied for at TVA, BUT he qualified for two jobs, one here, and one in Memphis. While both of them are excellent jobs, they have different deadlines. The job here is in about 10 months, which would give me PLENTY of time to plan our wedding, and the one in Memphis is in about 4-6 months we THINK, it could be longer, it could be sooner. So right now, I'm just kinda working on the planning here and there, and getting my lists all together and things of that sort. I haven't purchased anything except for my dress, but I have ordered a few samples for invitations, and picked the one I like best out.
  So basically I'm at a point of not knowing if I should plan or if I shouldn't, but I'm trying to get everything ready just in case. The cake has been picked out, the invitations have been picked out, the dress has been purchased, the suits have been picked out and the decorations....All I need to do now, is to ORDER everything, and pick out my Bridesmaid dresses, my favors, register, and find gifts for the Bridal Party and a few other people. PLUS we have to find a house, and of course everything that goes along with that....But as for the actual wedding we don't have much left to do which I'm happy about, just need to find out a date!
   I suppose I should start looking at different living places in Memphis, and places its decent to live at, and places to stay away from. I'm just kinda worried about moving to Memphis because I hear so many things about that place, and mainly bad things. Lots of gang violence and things of that sort. But I reckon we can do it :) I'll keep everyone updated while this is all going on.

The Mansion..

  Tomorrow Landon and I are going out and looking for places to hold our reception. The first stop on our list is the Smith Trahern Mansion here in town. Its probably one of the oldest buildings here at I believe 150 years old.

As you can see, its very large and very gorgeous, but the sad thing is that its in slight disrepair according to one of the local newspapers.... But tomorrow we're going to see if we can tour it, and decide. I've been there many times and it's beautiful on the inside, just old...The main room is a very light pink with a winding staircase, then there's a smaller purple room that looks to be like it was once the drawing room, then theres a small green room called the modern room, and a rather large kitchen. Then upstairs the room is pale blue, and there are about 3 more rooms upstairs I think. So it would be PERFECT for our reception...And the only reason we're going to look at it tomorrow is because apparently we have to book it ONE YEAR in advance is we wanna use it...UGH...But hopefully it will all work out, I love that old Mansion and it just looks like it would be so romantic.


  We're also looking for other places too, to keep our options open, and so far we've only found one. Some place called WaterStreet Event Center here in town...Apparently its rather new compared to most places and from the site it looks rather nice...I just have no idea if its big enough....but it is pretty...

 

But  I suppose the only way to find out is to look for ourselves! Anyway, I will give an update as soon as we decide on a place!  OH! And if anyone has any ideas of where we could have this reception in Clarksville TN just let me know!!

The cake

  I have officially decided!!! The cake is by Martha Stewart and its called the Calico Wedding Cake.

 Instead of the spring colors that you see here, we're using our fall colors, like yellow and rust and deep green, and small hints of orange and brown. But I saw this on her website today and thought YES. And now all I need to decide on is a Grooms cake for Landon. He said he wants a chocolate fountain sooooo I suppose I should find something with that.lol. But anyway, back to MY cake. I just love it, I think its so delicate and girly and yet kinda elegant, and I think it will go perfectly with the other things in the wedding.
Also shown here its covered in fondant, and because I cannot stomach the stuff I plan on having it covered in better cream...I think thats what Momma called it anyway. But I'm excited! Now I just need to find a baker whose local and can handle something like this :)

Becoming a Princess

  So, today my Aunt Laurie and my Grandmother Geri whom I call Nana wanted to take me to look ay wedding dresses just for fun. We went to David's Bridal and were met by consultant Rachael who began asking me questions. "What kind of dress are you looking for?" she asked me, and I told her just something very simple, and that I was really just looking to see what I liked, not exactly looking to buy. So she began running around and pulling dresses off the wall, and then brought be to a large room full of mirrored doors. Asked me to pick out some shoes, and went to get the undergarments while I was looking. She came back and we walked into the room and began trying on dresses. I really liked the first one we tried and I said it was my favorite so far, and then a second which I hated, and then a third which took the place of my favorite....Then my Aunt pulled a dress and brought it to me. It was a little big, and had a bunch of crystals on the bodice, but I figured I would try it anyway. After slipping it on with the help of Rachael I stepped outside the room, looked in the mirror and fell in LOVE!!! This was MY dress! It was made of Chiffon and flowed like it was made for a Princess! The crystal embellishments around the bodice and down the back of the train were simply beautiful...And then, OHHHH then Rachael pulls out a veil. The veil was two layers, one for the back and one was the "blusher", and had very delicate scalloped ends, and on the edges was tiny crystals embroidered all around it in the shapes of flowers. GORGEOUS!!! And then to top it all off she placed a crystal head band on my head and I felt just like a Princess! My Aunt and Nana gave their "Ahhhh's" and then Laurie asked me how much I liked it and I told her that I loved it and it was my dress, and even though my Mother was not present, and even though I wanted her to be so badly, my Aunt Laurie and Nana did the most amazing thing. They purchased the gown for me, along with the veil, the headpiece, and the undergarments. I was so thrilled and I still am! I know our wedding is rather far away, but this gown could NOT wait.

  My consultant was so very great and patient with me, in fact I think I may write her a "thank you" card. She gave me a bunch of Bridal Magazines, and gave me two gift cards to Shutterfly for Photobooks for our Engagement Photos and our Wedding Photos. She was the biggest help ever! I'm just so very happy about this dress and I think that its just so very perfect in every single way possible. Its ivory, chiffon, has crystals, it flows when I walk, its COMFY, and I can SIT in it!! I can't wait to post pictures of it!.....Well, anyway, I wanted to let you all in on what happened to me today! And how happy I am!

Waiting, waiting, waiting...

   So it looks like I won't be getting my ring until sometime in December. With phone bills, vet visits, credit card bills and car payments, money is kinda tight. I'm kinda disappointed about it but theres not much that can be done, at least I know its coming right? Well, I'm still going to plan and stuff, probably not as much, but I may as well. Landon doesn't seem to understand why I'm planning, he says we have over a year, and well I know we have awhile, I'm just kinda relying off of my Martha Stewart Wedding Planner right now. I just wish he was a little more excited about this than he seems to be. But hes a guy so I guess I can't expect much excitement about this from him.

   But now, all I have to do is wait. And wait....And wait. I guess I can do it. I worked on seating arrangements yesterday, and I'm still trying to figure it out. I have a bigger family than he does, and I don't want everything to look Lop sided, so I'm trying to figure out ways that it'll look good and even. We also did some research into wedding tents, and we're looking at renting a couple, one for the reception and one for the wedding. But I'm praying that it doesn't rain that day, that would just ruin everything for me.

   Anyway, I felt the need to say what was going on recently, and I'll post again soon or whenever something new happens! :)

The beginning of a "Fairytale"

  So, I figured that while I was home I would say....WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!! It became official last night when he apologized that he didn't have my ring, because hes still investing in it :) But oh my goodness, I'm so excited now! His little secret was a dozen of GORGEOUS and HUGE red roses, and a nice walk along the river. I enjoy the simple dates so much! So anyway, I'm hoping that the ring will be payed off by the time out 6th month anniversary rolls around, which means he has just under two weeks to finish it. But I'm getting a head start on everything already, I have my color scheme already picked out, the flowers, the venue, the date, AND the Bridesmaid dresses.  Obviously they will be a different color, probably Brown or a darker cream...hmmmm.

  All I need to do now is, buy the flowers, and a groom's cake, finish selecting the bridal party, find a wedding dress and shoes, decide if i wanna have a large reception with lunch/dinner provided, decide on music, book a photographer....and so on and so forth. But I'm sure I can get this done...I've been checking out books at the local Library on weddings and wedding planners and Martha Stewart Weddings, so I'm good to go. And I found these nifty little drinks called "Pumpkin tinis" that just look so pretty and so much fun, and some other kind of cocktail called the Caramel Pumpkin Pie Tini, and it looks yummy.... I also think I've decided on a cake to be honest, but i have to have him decide with me apparently...ugh Martha.. The one I want is simple and covered in frosted fruit. I just think its very elegant and simple for a simple wedding. But anyway, I suppose I'll let him have SOME say in the matter, since I guess its his wedding too... Anyway, I'm off to plan some more! I should have more updates soon :)

The "Secret"

 

   So, I've been dating this amazing guy for just about 6 months now, and I would say that from about month number 4 I knew I wanted to marry him. He has seen me at my best, and he has seen me at my complete and utter worst. So, the past few weeks or so we've been talking about "forever" and things of that sort, and one night while sitting on the front porch at my parents house around midnight, we were drinking our piping hot coffee and he asked me what kind of ring I wanted. After jumping and spilling my coffee on the ground I smiled and told him that something small and simple would suit me just fine.
 After all this happened, some drama happened in my life...ugh teenage girls....And after telling him of this drama, he said that he is on a mission to cheer me up. Well we went out that night and while he was driving he said he had a secret for me. Well when someone says that have a secret to tell me I get all excited and stuff, so I started prying as to what this secret was. He said he couldn't tell me! I was so annoyed, but I kept trying. After days and days, and did I say days? We went to the pound to pick up a doggy friend for us both, and while waiting I casually mentioned the "Secret", he of course just laughed at me, said I was adorable and nothing else....GRRRRRR. So I asked him to just give me a hint, a simple hint would be ok right? So he said "They are very pretty"....They? Pretty? Hmm....So I thought and I thought and I THOUGHT and nothing came to mind, so later that night I asked for ANOTHER hint, and he said "every girl likes them"..AH HAH! Right then and there I knew what it was, but I had to pretend like I didn't cause I obviously didn't want to ruin something that he had planned. So I kept "guessing". A kitten? a puppy? a teddy bear? He shook his head "no", and I told him that I would quit asking what it was, IF he told me before Saturday...So here is it Thursday night and he said he plans on telling me the "Secret" tomorrow night :) I'm oh so thrilled and excited and I just wish it would get here a lot sooner.