I'm not to shabby myself...

I also know my way around the kitchen. I've fallen in love with two new cookbooks I got from friends as wedding presents and can't wait to dive in.

First up: Parsnip Soup, Butter Lettuce Salad with Peach dressing.



Main course: A page out of Sunny Anderson's book...Pork Chops with an Apple Cider and Onion Gravy with Roasted Potatoes.




And it was all possible with my favorite kitchen item, my Lodge dutch oven, I could cook everything in here!

Oh dutch oven, how I love thee...

First home-cooked meal as a married couple

We brought back some brats from The Brat Stop on our way home from our mini moon in Lake Geneva, WI. We had a nice quaint trip, and were excited to get back to normalcy and COOKING!

Have I mentioned how lucky I am to be married to a great cook?



We discovered a new love for a WI Microbrew...

More wedding helpers

Gotta give props to my aunts and cousins for helping out with all the small wedding projects, but I know they secretly loved it. Here they are filling up the small packets of rice...

Wedding Shout Outs

So our kickass Videographer, a friend of mine, Ryan Ferguson went around during cocktail hour and shot people sending us nice messages, most of them were nice, some were very sweet and thoughtful, some offered advice, others were shy, others, JIM STANLEY, not so shy....

Wedding Rice

The old ancient tradition of throwing rice at the newly married couple is one of peace and prosperity. It dates back to ancient Greek custom of throwing wheat or some sort of grain for many reasons:
1. To wish that the couple may never go hungry and always have everything they need
2. That the bride be fruitful
3. To ward off evil spirits, because well-fed spirits, would bring no trouble to the couple.

So we threw rice...little did I know that Jon would be flicking it out of my hair so it wouldn't come out in pictures later...

Wedding stuff

So I can't wait to get all my wedding photos back from our Photographer Pamela Luedeke! I'm sure she got great shots, especially of all the details, my family and I, and Jon slaved over! Here are a few sneak peaks at some pics...

Here we are assembling the menus, which apparently none of my aunts noticed, probably because none of them had their reading glasses on...


Final product, my flash SUCKS, will have to wait for Pam's final shots...


Placecards were a total last minute thought, I knew I wanted to use the velvet ribbon from the invites, but didn't have enough! So I bought some peacock blue ribbon to mix and match them...


Here I am hot gluing something...


And again Pops helped, loved developing systems for doing things faster and "more efficiently" and he did, he scored and folded all my programs, TWICE, had to re-print after finding a typo, I had spelled Jon's name wrong: JONANTHAN





Last but not least my dear sister and mother helped cut organza sashes for the chair Peacock ties, all 222 of them! And Oli steamed them too. Again, Pops tried to develop a system, but we booted him out...





All in all, i had a wonderful time with all my DIY projects, who even knows if I saved money, it added a unique touch!