Y'all! Where has the past month gone?! I meant to finish this forever ago but life has been crazy lately. So without further ado...part two of our bourbon trail adventure!!

After day one of our weekend (and a fab dinner at Louvino) we were ready to continue our adventure! We woke up early and headed to Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort. Our group arrived as soon as the distillery opened and went on the first tour of the day. I was having such a blast that I totally forgot to take any photos. This was my FAVORITE distillery by far! Not only is it a beautiful place, it's also so informative and very fun! Our tour guide was totally wonderful and we got to enjoy two different types of bourbon at the end of the tour (I actually got to try a vodka as well). If you are close to Frankfort go visit Buffalo Trace. The tour is free and totally fun!

Next we headed to Woodford Reserve in Versailles. This was another beautiful distillery located in the rolling countryside of Versailles. The tour was very nice (this distillery, like Makers Mark, was clearly a big operation). They had a bus that took us to visit the amazing stone buildings that the bourbon ages in. This is definitely another must visit!

  

I apologize for not posting much lately, but I have a plan to get back on track in the coming week (since we are almost at the two month mark)!! 

Another month...another list.

This months to dos include: 

Plan rehearsal dinner and decide on menu (I seriously need to get on this...)*
Plan day after brunch*
Shop for gifts for wedding party*
Research marriage license requirements*
Book hotel room for wedding night*
Get transportation for bridal party to wedding*
Order shuttles for guests staying at hotel*
Schedule beauty treatments*
Meet with officiant to plan ceremony
See sample centerpiece from florist/have a meeting with florist to discuss everything
Choose table linens
Make sure rentals are in order
Buy wedding rings (halfway done)
Start choosing songs for DJ and compile a DO NOT play list
Choose favors
Buy accessories for Abe
Find dresses for showers/rehearsal (showers are taken care of)
Check registries
Contact newspapers for guidelines about wedding announcements
Make dress fitting appointments (DONE)
Choose gifts for shower hostesses
Schedule food tasting for final menu (six to eight weeks pre wedding)
Finalize guest list (Pretty much DONE)
Weigh one complete invitation and choose stamps
Stuff wedding invitations
Rehearsal dinner invitations
Day after brunch invitations
Schedule rehearsal time and rehearsal dinner time
Decide on all special songs
Think about vows
Dance lessons (?)
Discuss when to start photography with Bella Grace
Book photo booth

(*these are from last month, oops)

Good grief. Better get on things...

In Kentucky we are know for many things but we tend to pride ourselves on good basketball, horse racing and bourbon. A few weekends ago Abe and I (along with his brother, his brother's sweet girlfriend and his Uncle) decided to finally explore the KY bourbon trail. We visited 5 different distilleries and had a wonderful time learning about how bourbon is made.

The first thing you need to know about Kentucky and bourbon is...

via Kentucky Kicks Ass

The second is that 95% of the world's (yes WORLD'S) bourbon is made in my beautiful home state (basically we have limestone which means good water for makin' bourbon...and also equals strong ponies for racing)

The first distillery we visited was Bulleit Frontier Whiskey here in Louisville. We were taken on a lovely little tour around the property before tasting three of Bulleit's bourbons. Although this distillery is a little bit hard to find, it's worth the trip to see the lovely rickhouses (where they put the bourbon to age and my favorite part of every tour) and meet the wonderful people working there.

Inside a rickhouse

After Bulleit, we headed to Makers Mark Distillery in Loretto. There were significantly more people visiting this distillery and you could tell they had a bigger operation. We were given a very informative tour and even got to stick our fingers down into fermenting barrels of bourbon to see what it tasted like. My favorite part of this tour was getting to hand dip our own bottles of Makers Mark in their signature red wax. 

After dipping our bottles, we headed to Kentucky Bourbon Distillers in Bardstown where Willett bourbon is made. This distillery isn't on the official bourbon trail, but we thought it would be fun to stop here on the way home. This small distillery is beautiful (and there was a kitty!) but the tour wasn't really worth the $7 cost.

I'll be back soon for part two of our bourbon trail adventure! 

This past Saturday I celebrated my twenty seventh birthday. I can not believe that another year has come and gone and that I'm in my late twenties. It's kind of terrifying but I feel like this year will be a good one!

       

       

I had a great time on my birthday! We got several wedding related things accomplished (set the menu and selected cake flavors/design) and managed to have some fun too!

I've seen several other bloggers discuss goals for the year when they have a birthday and I thought it would be fun to jot down some of my own goals that I hope to accomplish in the coming year.

1. Successfully plan our wedding! - This is an easy one! Can't wait!! (#102days) 

2. Continue to further my career - Now that I'm getting married, furthering my career and contributing more to our bills and expenses is one of my most important goals.

3. Create a newlywed budget and stick to it - Time to start saving money for more important things  (a new couch/car/home)! 

4. Read a new book each month - I love reading, time to make it a priority again! 

Thanks to all my wonderful, sweet friends for making my birthday amazing! I appreciate you all so much! 

The only candle we could find in the house (Yay I'm six!!)

When I attended my little cousins wedding a few weekends ago I noticed that she had some adorable chalkboard signs throughout her reception and I totally fell in love.

(Photo stolen from my cousin's Insta)

Since then I've been searching Pinterest for lots of ideas on how I can incorporate cute chalkboard signs into my own wedding.

I LOVE when they are used in lieu of a program (in my opinion just a waste of paper). 

via

I also totally love when they are decorated with beautiful flowers (and used to encourage Instagramming).

via

Pinterest has also been super helpful for finding ideas on how to save money when using chalkboards in a wedding! For instance, purchasing this chalkboard easel from Ikea and painting it white (see below). There are also many tutorials on how to turn a piece of wood into a chalkboard of any size (check here for a good one).

via

What do you think about using chalkboards for wedding decor? 

I honestly can't believe that we only have four months until the big day. It's crazy and feels like time is totally flying by! Attempting to get our calendar straight for the next four months and have details fall into place is really stressful. There are so many things to consider and trying to get more than one thing planned in one day makes me want to pull my hair out. This past weekend we tried to get a lot of things accomplished on Sunday and it all got to be a bit too stressful.

This months to dos include: 

Plan rehearsal dinner/find location (I seriously need to get on this...)*
Plan day after brunch*
Order invitations (Gonna do this TOMORROW)*
Order enclosures to go with invitations (Gonna do this TOMORROW)*
Decide on suit or tux and place order for Groom*
Order flower girl's dress*
Schedule tasting/choose cake design
Book hairstylist
Shop for gifts for wedding party
Research marriage license requirements
Shop for accessories to go with my dress
Book hotel room for wedding night
Compile guest lists for showers
Get transportation for bridal party to wedding
Order shuttles for guests staying at hotel
Schedule beauty treatments

(*these are from last month, oops)

Goodness...thats a lot to do.

In other news, a few weekends ago our sweet wedding planners threw a launch party for their business. It was down on the river and so so nice! Abe was away for a bachelor party and so I brought my mom with me. We had a great time hanging out with their other brides and getting to know several vendors that they had invited (we were actually able to find people to do our restroom trailer rental, YAY for getting things done)! 

In other news I picked up my dress last weekend and there has been a setback. It came with a RIP in it. The ladies at the store assured me that it would be super easy to fix, but it totally freaked me out. Apparently in the shipping process it got stuck on its hanger which caused the small hole. I'm trying not to think about it too much and hope that the seamstress can fix everything. 

We also finished up our Macy's wedding registry this past weekend. I highly recommend splitting up your registering into several days. It can be quite overwhelming deciding how many/which kind of towels/sheets/plates we will need. A coffee break was necessary in order to keep our sanity.

Lets hope this month we can be super successful and get lots of our checklist accomplished!

My dad's birthday was a few weekends ago and because he happens to be one of the hardest people to buy gifts for I decided to make him a present instead of buying something. We are all headed to the beach on a family vacation in a little over a month and I wanted to make something for him that we could take with us! A few years ago when we went to this same beach my dad took to calling his cooler "The Tackle Box". With that in mind (and because I'm a sorority alumni who never got to make one of these) I decided to paint a cooler for him! I knew that cooler painting can be a long a tedious process so for my first ever cooler I decided to paint just the lid instead of the whole cooler.

STEP ONE: Choose your cooler!
I went to Walmart and picked this one up for under $20.

STEP TWO: Sand your cooler!

So according to The Cooler Connection on Facebook, this step is done to ensure that the paint has something to stick to. I didn't really do a perfect job on this step, but the paint seemed to stick just fine!

STEP THREE: Set up your drop cloth!
I knew I only wanted to paint the top of my cooler so to ensure that none of the sides got paint on them I suck a plastic drop cloth under the lid of the cooler and wrapped it around the sides.

STEP FOUR: Prime your cooler!
I'm not totally sure if I necessarily needed this step (since the cooler lid was already white) but I wanted to make sure I followed the steps I'd found on The Cooler Connection. I picked up this can of Krylon Fusion spray paint (make sure you get this kind because it's specifically made to bond to plastic). I then let it all dry for about an hour.

STEP FIVE: Work on your design!

I'd done some Pinteresting to figure out what type of designs I wanted to paint on my cooler lid. I found this adorable design for fish tackle and freehanded it on the side (at first I though it looked like crap, but I improved on it later on). Now for the lettering I followed another recommendation from the Cooler Connection! I printed off the words in the font that I wanted and then took a pencil and scribbled on the back of paper. I then laid them out on top of the cooler and traced each letter. This allowed the pencil to be transferred onto the cooler so painting would be WAY easier. I'm not sure if you can see the outline in the picture on the right but that's what it looked like after I traced.

       

STEP SIX: Paint your cooler!

I used black acrylic paint to paint the letters on the cooler.

STEP SEVEN: Clean up your lines!
I then used a paint pen to clean up the lines around my lettering. I also used the paint pen to outline the fish tackle on the side. After doing this I liked them WAY more. Then I let all the pain dry overnight.

STEP EIGHT: Seal your cooler!
The last step was to seal my cooler with Outdoor Modge Podge (the one in the green bottle). I did two coats of the Modge Podge.

      

Then I let it all dry! Here's my finished product! 

I'm super happy with how it turned out and now I can't wait to paint another one!