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). 

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

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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).

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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!

It's finally the weekend and I have absolutely no idea where the past week went.  I'm feeling slightly at a loss for what to blog about so I decided to do something slightly different today and join a link up with A. Liz Adventures!

So here we go...my five on Friday!

1. My little cousin Stephanie's wedding is tomorrow and I can't wait! Stephanie is such a sweet, caring girl and I'm sure she and Cody will have a lifetime of happiness! 

Here are Stephanie, Whitney and I at a cousins wedding lonnnnng ago!

And now here she is! All grown up with her beautiful little family!

2. Abe and I finished registering at Target last weekend (thank goodness)! We still need to finish our Macy's registry, but we can only tackle on thing at at time.

        

 Abe was clearly pumped to be at Target...but eventually he got into using the gun! 

(I removed that sea urchin as soon as I got that gun back)

3. My dad's birthday was this past Monday and I was finally able to give him his gift today! I painted him this cooler to take to the beach in July. When we went to the beach several years ago he started calling his cooler "The Tackle Box" and this year I decided to make it official! I want to write a more detailed post on how to create a painted cooler of your own when I'm totally done with it!

4. I've started looking for someone to do my hair on the wedding day and I'm finding the whole process very confusing and stressful. I fell in love with a local girl because her Instagram is amazing, but she is WAY out of my price range. So the search continues! Wish me luck!

5. Can't think of anything else so here's a picture of my precious nephew (he learned to clap)!

When we began planning my MOH encouraged me to wait to leave for our honeymoon until Monday (instead of Sunday...the day after the wedding). She said that she was up super late the night of her wedding and that she couldn't imagine leaving the next day. The more I thought about it and researched flights, the more I realized that she was totally right. All of the flights out of Louisville to Belize leave really early in the morning. So with that in mind, I started to think about what we would do on Sunday. I read in my wedding planning book about a "Day After Brunch". On the Knot they talk about how its a good way to wind down the wedding festivities. Usually the couples families are invited as well as the wedding party and any guests who are still around (especially if they had to travel quite far to get to your wedding).

I'm particularly up for this idea because:

1. It's breakfast food...which is my favorite

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2. It's another really fun party to have with your loved ones (and the best part is that it doesn't need to be extravagant, most people actually recommend using flowers and decor from your wedding!)

3. It allows you to relax and get organized before leaving on the honeymoon!

What do you guys think about a day after brunch? 

After a crazy week and an even crazier weekend I can feel my life (maybe) getting back into order. Last week I was super busy at work and then got some 24 hour bug and was out of commission for an entire day (literally I napped 6 hours that day).

This past weekend provided a much needed break from work! I traveled to Lexington to go out with friends for Kendall's birthday.

I got to hang out with a few of my sweet maids and I had an absolute blast.

The next day I headed home to help my Momma get ready for a bridal luncheon that we were throwing for my little cousin on Sunday! I was in charge of decor and baking a charm pull cake for the Bride and her bridesmaids. I had heard of a charm pull cake from another blog and knew that I had to try and make one. I baked a homemade cake from a Martha Stewart recipe and then placed the charms under the cake. Initially when I looked into making this cake I thought you baked the charms into the cake, but after lots of Pinterest investigation I figured out that you just put the charms on the cake plate first then place the cake on top! 

The sweet Bride and almost all of her Maids!

I had so much fun with this sweet Bride to be and all the wonderful women in her life and I can't wait until her wedding in just a few weeks!

Now it's the start of a new week and I'm ready to get some things accomplished! Time to bring out the to-do list and get things checked off!