THE WEDDING! And the Journey Along the Way!

(Katie and TJ...my daughter and son-in-law.)

Well, it's been over two months since my last post.  But it's been with good reason!  My daughter got married on June 30th and for the past six months it's been a whirlwind of a ride!  The wedding went without a hitch...absolutely gorgeous!  But it wasn't without a few glitches along the way!

We live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.  But I'm originally from North Carolina.  Needless to say, we don't have any immediate family living near us.  So, when I found out we would have eleven family members coming out from North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Illinois, my "homing instincts" went into gear.  I had to get my house AND my yard in order to greet my family, some of whom had never been out here before.

(One of my many projects...installing the boarder and building this bed.  It's beautiful at night when the solar lights are shining bright!)

So, in addition to planning a wedding with my daughter, I was painting, cleaning, weeding, planting, and doing numerous home and garden projects as well.  And as I said above, things did not always go smoothly.  Our first incident happened during our yard sale.  Oh yeah, did I mention I prepared for a yard sale during this time, as well?  Anyway, a pole inside the garage had slipped in a barrel and happened to be blocking the garage door.  We didn't realize this and when my son went to close it, the door caught the pole.  Instead of the door stopping and going back up, one side kept going down while the other side got stuck by the pole.  This caused the cable to come off and get all tangled up.  We couldn't fix it, so that meant a call to the garage door repairman.  One check written!

(Another project...my friend and her husband brought their power washer and cleaned the front porch, driveway, sidewalk and the back deck.  Then hubby and I did some repair work on the deck, replacing all the fascia boards, as well as the steps on each side.  Then we put a fresh coat of paint on it.  This is a large deck and was a pretty big project!  I love how it all turned out, though!)

The second incident was a result of my daughter's long hair.  The tub backed completely up.  This could have been an easy fix, but our "snake" wouldn't fit down the drain.  So while the plumber was here, he went to flush some of the hair down the toilet and said it didn't sound right.  He took the lid off the bowl and water was gushing out like a waterfall.  So THAT had to be totally rebuilt.  Another check written!

(After the plumber left, I proceeded to paint the ceiling, walls and baseboard.  During painting, I had the black cabinet down and sitting on the hall floor.)

(So Harley decided to take up residency!)

The third incident happened a little over a week later.  I was watering my plants out on the deck and asked my son to pull the hose from around the house.  Neither of us realized the hose was all kinked up in knots and when he pulled it (pretty hard) he broke the pipe going to the faucet UNDER THE HOUSE!  My husband went to turn the main valve off inside the house, but it was hooked up directly to the street.  He had to go to the street to turn it off, and of course he was having a hard time getting it turned off.  So under the house was one big mud hole!  That meant no water until I could get a plumber out the next day.  ANOTHER check written.

(Another huge project...this side of the house use to be lined with ferns...about 12 of them!  Well, they had gotten SO huge, we could no longer walk along this pathway.  So, I decided they had to go!  I would get out there every day and work at digging them up.  They have huge root balls and with them being right up against the house, it was hard to dig completely around them.  This made it that much more difficult to get up!  Not sure WHAT I was thinking when I planted them, but they were a tremendous amount of work to dig out!  We also had blackberries that had sprouted up EVERYWHERE!  Another huge job...getting rid of those!  I still plan to put some ground cover and mulch along this walkway.)

Well, at this point I figured "three strikes", so nothing more would happen.  NOT THE CASE!  The worse was yet to come.  In early June, my youngest son, Justin, went to Mose's Lake over in central Washington to ride ATVs on the sand dunes.  I really had a bad feeling about his going, but I also wanted him to have fun with his future brother-in-law and others that were going.  He ended up flipping his ATV and despite having a roll bar on it, his instinct was to stick his hand out to "catch the fall".  In doing this, he messed his arm and hand up pretty bad, dislocating his wrist and breaking bones in his hand and both bones in his lower arm.  He also had a couple of bad lacerations from the breaks.  It was pretty bad...enough so that the two hospitals over there wouldn't take him.  They both said he needed to be sent to Harborview in Seattle.  This is a top notch Trauma Center, and when people are sent there, you know it's bad! But I was glad to know he would be in good hands.  So they actually put him on a fixed wing plane and flew him over here.  This was the worst day of my life!  First, getting "the call", and then it was so hard as a mother not being there to comfort him and be with him.  It was about a three hour drive from here, so there was no point in our driving there.  But we were waiting at Harborview when he got there.  He ended up having surgery on his hand that night and then on his arm a couple of days later.  He was in the hospital for four days.  His stitches are out now and he's in a regular cast now until the end of the month.  Not sure what they'll put him in then, but he'll have to have quite a bit of physical therapy once he gets it off.  LOTS of checks yet to be written, but I would write away everything I own as long as he's okay.  It could have been so much worse and I thank God every day that it wasn't.

(Love this photo of Justin with his new brother-in-law!)

So, we were still in the middle of planning a wedding.  And it was a little over three weeks away.  Needless to say, the stress levels were high, and on numerous occasions I just had to retreat and have a good cry.  But fortunately I have a good friend who is like no other.  Shelley was there every bit of the way.  We have always gotten together twice a week anyway, so during these regular outings she helped me prepare for the wedding in so many ways.  And she helped me get through one incident after another.  When she saw something that needed to be done and knew that she or her husband could do it, she would take it home with her and bring it back all finished a couple of days later.  She went to the venue every time I went, whether to meet with the caterer or to just look around for ideas.  And on the morning of the wedding, she came by the house to pack her Suburban and hubby's truck with everything we had going to the venue.  Then she came by the salon to take Katie and her bridesmaids to the venue while I went back home to pick up my sister-in-law.  I could not have made it through all this without her!

(My friend, Shelley, her husband, Kraig, and their two kids. Shelley is STILL red here from near heat exhaustion due to all her hard work getting everything set up!  Kraig is SO talented!  He made the Space Needle piece below that they used as their "guest book".  One of MANY things he did for us to help us prepare for the big day!)

(This piece turned out absolutely awesome!!!  I found the perfect clip art of the Space Needle, printed it up and had Staples enlarge it to 4 feet.  Kraig used it as a template and cut the Needle out of a sheet of heavy aluminum he had left from one of his jobs.  He's a contractor and a darn good one!  Shelley spray painted the Needle, as well as the board Kraig had cut to fit it.  Then he mounted the Needle to the board.  It was the perfect size to fit all the well wishes from the guests!  The Space Needle is where TJ proposed to Katie!)

And then there is my WONDERFUL sister-in-law, Isla K.!  She and my brother left Raleigh, NC, on June 14, driving this way and seeing the sights of the country along the way.  They got here on June 26th, the Wednesday before the wedding, and she went into high gear helping with the final preparations and getting ready for wedding day.  We had asked her to be our wedding day coordinator.  She was my wedding planner when I got married 33 years ago.  And she is such an organized, well prepared person.  She immediately put me at ease, and I knew once she got here, everything was going to go off without a hitch.  And it did.  They stayed for a week after the wedding and we enjoyed seeing the sights of Seattle and Mt. Rainier while they were here.  They left on Sunday, and I spent the better part of the day fighting tears.  They are still on the road, enjoying more sights along the way, back home to North Carolina.

(My brother, sister-in-law, hubby and me, before boarding the cruise that took us through Lake Union, Lake Washington, past Bill Gate's home and past the houseboat where "Sleepless in Seattle" was filmed.  SO MUCH FUN!)

The wedding was at Swans Trail Farms on June 30th at 3 p.m.  It's an actual working farm, but it's a beautiful venue that holds weddings on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.  It was an absolutely beautiful day, blue skies and gorgeous views of the Cascades and Mt. Baker.  Our only complaint was it was HOT!  We don't usually have hot temperatures up here until mid August.  But it was 87 degrees.  Fortunately, the humidity isn't high here.  And our family from Texas thought the temperatures were GREAT, having just come from 100 plus temperatures!  But the ceremony hall was cool, and the breezes made it nice!

(They could have chosen to have their wedding outside on the grounds.  But they didn't want the stress of knowing the chances of it raining out here on any given day.)

(It was a good thing they went with an indoor ceremony...it was so much cooler in here than outside in the sun!)

The couple just got back from their honeymoon last night.  Some of us went over to their apartment yesterday, cleaned it and decorated it with lots of decor we had used at the wedding.  I fixed them a casserole and baked some cookies and bought a few groceries for them to come home to.  This a cute photo posted by one of Katie's friend and bridesmaid, who helped us.

Instead of rice, we threw poms poms as they left after the reception.  We had TONS of pom poms and they ALL had to be picked up afterward.  Fortunately, the guests that stayed till the end were all the young friends of Katie and TJ, and they ALL pitched in and had them picked up in a matter of minutes.  I saved those pom poms, along with a bunch of paper hearts we had left, and we scattered them EVERYWHERE in their apartment!  We found every nook and cranny and put pom poms there!  They will be finding them until they move out...and probably even afterward!  Katie had to go back to work today, but TJ had today off.  I have a feeling I know who will be picking up most of those pom poms! :)

We haven't gotten our photos back from the photographer, but we had so many family and friends taking photos, as well.  And with today's social media, photos were being posted on Facebook even before the reception was over.  I've collected a few of my favorites and posted them on my Olde Annie Primitives Facebook fan page.  You can also see a lot of our decorating ideas.  They both work for local newspapers, so we incorporated newspaper throughout the decor.  We used burlap and lots of Goodwill finds, as well.  I plan to post some of the professional photos once we get them.  But in the meantime, you can hop over to my OAP Facebook page and take a look at the photos I've posted by clicking here:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152991752905322.1073741828.447004370321&type=1

I've enjoyed my time off from sewing, and it's going to be hard getting back into the swing of things.  But I have several orders waiting to be placed, so I need to start sewing pretty soon.  I thank those customers for being so patient with me!  I hope to be back in full force by the beginning of August with all new fall and Halloween creations.  Thanks so much for stopping by and reminiscing the last few weeks with me!  Hope you enjoyed it!  ~~Annie