Summer Revue - part 1... A Wedding Shower

I had the most amazing summer, this summer.  Truly.  It was a planned and busy summer with loads of family, loads of activities that involved family and our beautiful province too.  I was so busy this summer, I just couldn't make time to blog.. and I was sad about that.  So.. my plan is to blog a few events that need to be shared.  Someday, I plan on having my blog published (for my own use) to keep as a memento.  There are so many wonderful things in my life that I want to commemorate ... and the winter months are the months to catch up on those things that I didn't have time to blog about.  When I go to publish my blog, I will rearrange the blogs into the right order so eventually it will be the right order.

I have lived in this community going on 25 years.  Coming from a military family, and marrying into a military life... I never imagined I would ever have the luxury of becoming part of a community. You know,  really living in a community and feeling like its my home.  I have friends that I will grow old with and I know lots of people at the grocery store and I know tons of kids, and have watched them grow into adults and get married and have kids.  Not only does that mean I am getting old.. but it also means that I am  a part of this community.

So... that being said, in a long and obscure way, I was honoured to host a wedding shower this summer for sweet little Ashley Walker who I have known since she was 4.  She and her family have been in my life all that time, even though they moved twice in our friendship life.  Her mom, Debbie and I have been "stay home mom" friends, then "working mom" friends, then "Brownie Leader" friends, and "running the roads with our kids" friends (we earlier post about busy life as a mom).  Our lives have been entangled enough over the past 25 years... that I feel we are WAY MORE than friends.  And, in many ways, better than family!

Ashley's wedding was set for Sept.. so a July shower was perfect timing.  I was finished work in early July and expecting company in a few weeks... I was cleaning and baking for my company to arrive so having a Wedding Shower was perfect timing, since I was already in the entertaining mode!  I was also working on a wedding bouquet for my own daughter Stephanie who was getting married in mid August.. and that just made everything feel romantic!

Michelle and Jack arrived the day before Ashley's shower to help with the set up and my niece, Aubrey arrive from Ottawa the day before that.
I had lots of help to decorate and do the last minute food prep and Lauren arrived shortly after lunch to set up for the games and activities part of the shower.  I was very thankful she did that part, since I am not that experienced at those parts of the party.

I will gladly admit that Pinterest helped me with so many fun ideas for the food and decorations.  We had three kinds of punch..

Red Wine punch, Watermelon strawberry punch and Lemon Lime Punch.

Ashley's wedding colors were Orange and Silver, and therefore,

I made sure that most of my accents were in those colours.

  We had fresh fruit and fresh veggie cups.  Hidden in the

 bottom of the cups for the veggies was a yummy onion dip, 

and there was a fruit dip to pour on the top of the fruit cups.

Michelle is well stocked in fun cake servers and I borrowed a matching set from Paula.   

Tea biscuits served with 4 types of butter...  Lemon butter, cinnamon/walnut, raspberry and plain

Sweets included heart shaped jam filled sugar cookies, gluten free chocolate squares, Cupcakes with or gummy orange slices, wedding cake cookies.   Along with orange candies and orange cheese.. it was a pretty and yummy display of food.

Aubrey, my niece had a blast with her new camera and took lots of "art type" pictures of my veggie and fruit display.. and they were so pretty I had to share them.  She has quite the artists eye.. which she gets from her dad.. who is quite the photographer. She didn't take many pictures of the people who were there, the decorations on the walls and entrance way..  we played several games and they were all really fun...  identifying "white" powder in many forms.  we all felt and sniffed baggies of white powder... and then had to guess what they were..  Sugar.. baking powder... soda... flour...baby powder.. and I can't remember the rest, but I was totally wrong on most of them.!

Our next game was designing a wedding dress out of 2 rolls of toilet paper.  I have very little imagination so I was sure this would be horrible!  I certainly wasn't going to be a model for the game, and I was scared to be a designer.. but the three brave souls and there design teams went off in all directions in the house...  and these were the final designs.  Ashley's grandmother-in-law "to be" was fashioned in a beautiful strapless off the waist Mermaid type gown, accented with a small flower bouquet and some sort of bow/veil.   To the left, Michelle was also in a Mermaid style dress, but hers was off one shoulder, some hip bling and a sexy headpiece.  Conveniently, her dress falls to the ground on command, which would come in very handy for the honeymoon!  Last but not least, is sexy Jackie, who was fashioned in a plunging neckline of a dress (which we had to accentuate the boob area to make the plunge work).  It was a sassy short number, for the sleazy bride and her dress came with flowers, head dress and waist bling. 

Ashley was our judge and she was quite impressed with all of the designs.. and frankly, so was I.  Its amazing what you can do with a couple of rolls of toilet paper and some very creative women!

Ashley, her two sister in laws.. sizing up and appreciating our dress designs!

Finally, Ashley was blessed with wonderful gifts from her family and friends.  Her kitchen cupboards will be adorned with new and shiny eating and cooking items.  She will have soft and lush towels to offer anyone who gets to spend the night... and lots of baking supplies to get her started on her adventures of baking!

Ashley is surrounded by newly married girls, and although they all seem so serious, they are all remembering when they were in the spotlight and had to open gifts in front of everyone.  I had forgotten how nerve wrecking this could be.  Ashley did an amazing job and was as cute as a button through the whole thing.

With Michelle and Lauren's help, we pulled off a beautiful and fun wedding shower for the cutest bride of 2012!

*** added as an afterthought.. well, actually thanks to Debbie's reminder**

Final added pictures.  We had great hopes of getting the carpet removed from the steps going both up and down stairs during the first weeks of the summer.  It was easy to remove the carpet and underlay but then with working full days... having to precision cut, sand and stain (several coats), battle potato bugs in our garden (by hand, no less) and wedding shower prep (on my part)...  the stairs just weren't coming together.
On the night before the shower... Michelle dragged out my markers and proceeded to decorate the stairs in honour of Ashley's shower!
The stairs didn't actually get finished until our exciting summer was over.. so we had the pleasure of enjoying these decorated stairs all summer..