Reason #58 why I'm afraid of clowns

This picture just about sums it up. I'll be posting about two of my new favorite blogs today and tomorrow. This picture came from today's favorite: Cake Wrecks!

How terrified would you be if you were turning 6 and you were having a clown-themed birthday party and this is what showed up on the kitchen table for your birthday cake?!?!? Not only is this clown dead (see the eyes), but he has very scary lips that look like a 6-year-old wearing her mom's lipstick!

Cake Wrecks is a newer blog that updates frequently (which I love ... in fact, I read the whole blog in one sitting today), and shows some horrible, funny and strange professionally decorated cakes. The cake that started her blog was one that says: "Best Wishes Suzanne - Under Neat that - We Will Miss You." Seriously!?!? One of my other favorites is a cake I think I'll get for Molly: "It a Gril!"

Okay, go bookmark this blog and then check back often! It's worth a million laughs.

Cheating is stoopid!

Good to know that we aren't the only ones that are pissed about the new Trivia rules. Check out the comments on their original post: Change in use of Electronic Devices.

We did go to trivia this week (just Rachel, Amy, Mitzi and I) just so we could see each other this week. It was an interesting night, because without cheating, we were nowhere near the top 3 places! It used to be that we were always in the top 3 teams throughout the night.

What we did find, though, that was without any of our regular boys with us ... we found some new friends at our neighboring tables. Some of the teams were even willing to share answers with us in exchange for answers they didn't know! We continued to suck at sports and what-year-is-it questions ... that's where cheating would help us ... IF we were willing to be Cheater, Cheater Pumpkin Eaters! No thanks!

Do you hear that??

It's the sound of both my washing machine AND NEW DRYER running at the same time!

Laundry is my least favorite chore to do ... but I've never been so excited to do laundry as I am tonight! I've been here for over a month, and not being able to do laundry at home has been quite the hassle.

Yeah for Home Depot and free delivery and removal of my old, broken dryer!

How hard do you think she'd bite me?

I saw pictures for some of these doggy wigs on Cute Overload today.

I've seen and posted some pretty funny pictures of yorkies from CO, but this one might take the cake! This is one in a collection of many wigs for dogs called Wiggles Wigs for Dogs. I went to see if they had any fun, gray wigs for Miss Minners. I assume there aren't any gray wigs, because what fashionable girl wants to have gray hair by choice??? I think my favorite of the whole line is the "doll face" wig. Check it out!

Don't worry ... for you cat people, there are Kitty Wigs out there, too! They are even more ridiculous, if that's possible! :)

I'll save myself some time ...

... go read Jill's latest post!

I just finished watching tonight's episode of The Closer. Why is this show so awesome?!?!? I can't get enough of it. Kyra Sedgwick is amazing and should definitely win every award she is nominated for, for this role.

If you aren't watching, there is time to catch up. They play episodes on TNT all the time. Tonight's was particularly amazing. I cried through the whole thing and wished I had someone watching it with me so we could talk about it.

Jill beat me to the punch on posting about it ... so just go read it here, so I don't have to repeat all her thoughts. Sometimes we think so much alike, it's kind of creepy!

She is a very lucky baby!

Last weekend my cousin, Caroline, was in town and so all the women in our family got together for a yummy lunch at Laura's house. It is always lots of fun when we all get together ... however when there is a such a big group of us, it's hard to get a chance to talk to and catch up with everyone!

Since we were already getting together, the Aunts decided to also turn our reunion lunch into a baby shower for Molly! This was the first one, and boy was it fun!

My Aunt Susan, who is a fabulous florist in Wichita brought up the cutest centerpieces: baby bottles and pink shoes filled with flowers & pacifiers. Too cute. Molly came away with lots of goodies for the little girl, who we are calling Lulu until the real name is revealed when she comes.
Molly & little Lindy opening presents.

Bottle with binkies!

Cute, white kicks!

Presents!

More bottles & pretty flowers.

Pink "converse".

Little velcro shoes. I love the flowers on them!

Hurry up and get here, Lulu ... I can't wait to see you in those shoes!

Things are coming together ...

... Slowly but surely!

Mom and I ran errands for about 6 hours yesterday trying to get things done. This weekend has literally been the first time I haven't been up at school for the last 2 weeks! It was nice to sleep in and try to get things done.

On my list of things to do: shop for a dryer (mine is broken, so I've been taking laundry to M&D's) and to look for bookshelves. Miss Minners also had to be dropped off and picked up from PetSmart for a grooming appointment! She looks super cute now!

We ran all over town, and got a lot accomplished. My bank account balance is considerably smaller, but I got lots done. Dryer is purchased and will be delivered on Thursday! Bookshelves bought and put together by yours truly! Desk top bought and set up! New shower curtain rod put up and new bathroom towels hung! The list goes on and on!

Here are some pics of how things are starting to look finished around here.

Desk in back bedroom. I got the file cabinets from school, and bought the board to go on the top. Today's project was to cover them with contact paper.

Here's a side view of the contact paper. I still have to figure out what to do with the fronts of them.

This picture is old, but I don't think I shared it. Here are the apothecary jars that I've filled with rices, grains and peas. I love the finished look!

Here is one of the bookshelves I bought yesterday. Putting it together meant that I could finally unpack some of the many boxes of books I had up in the loft. Up until now, I didn't have anywhere for them to go. I saw in a magazine this summer, that someone had arranged the books according to the color on the cover. I loved that idea, so I did it this morning, and I really like the way it turned out!

Here is the beautiful, hand-painted couch that Aunt Susan & Cindy brought up from Wichita last weekend for me. It was quite the task to get it up the stairs to my condo and then up the stairs inside to set it up in the loft! Once it gets a bit cooler, the afternoon sun will be pleasant in the loft, and not steamy! This can be my new hang-out spot.

Here's the other bookshelf I put together. Not quite sure where it will go yet. The one thing I know for sure is that I've got plenty of books to fill it up!

Here is one part of my place that is finally done! You can't tell very well from this picture, but I painted my bathroom PINK! I was a bit apprehensive about it at first, but it is growing on me. My bathroom is so small, that it isn't overwhelming at all.

And here's the other bathroom that is completely done! I really love it. This was the first painting project and I finally got some towels and things hung on the walls.

It feels really nice to have some things start to come together. One of these days, I'll feel like my home is presentable and I can have some people over to celebrate! :)

Xtreme Team Research???

For those of you that read the blog regularly, you know that I've become quite obsessed with our local trivia nights! We started playing about a year ago, and since then, our team has won and lost, we've added members and lost members, we've tried new bars and gone back to the original ... and all along ... it's been a blast!

Most of us are teachers and trivia allows us to leave work behind for the night (even though the night normally consists of several school stories) and have a blast even though it means staying up late on a school night. Sometimes during a really busy week, I know that trivia night is the one fun thing I get to do that week with friend.

Lately, it hasn't been so much fun. We normally compete for 1st place with other other die-hard team, My Favorite Team. They've been playing at Tanner's longer than we have. They also have a consistent team and tons of useless knowledge like we do. The new top teams are other teams there that do nothing but cheat (with iPhones and voice-recognition devices), and have been winning and beating most of the other teams lately. Now, don't get me wrong, we have been known to cheat in the past with a phone call here and there and a few times we've had teammates with the internet on their phone. However, we also have a very well-rounded team and we all have our strengths that make for a good answers!

Anyhoo ... I was reading my daily blogs the other day and I read this! Xtreme Team Trivia: Change in use of Electronic Devices. The original rules stated that "cheating is encouraged" in the first 10 weeks ... but once you get into the regionals and then eventually the all-metro championships, cheating was prohibited! For The Finer Things Club, this was great news! We knew that meant that the teams that cheated all along would be sifted out and the really good teams would rise to the top!

The new rules allow electronic devices at every stage of the tournament! Amy said it best when she said, "That's not trivia ... that's research!" Who really wants to bring their laptops to a bar and sit around and look up things? I can do that at home! That also takes away the conversation and challenge. Boo!

So, the last few days some of us have been talking about giving up with trivia. Maybe we need to come up with another Wednesday night activity: bowling, dinner, movies, etc. There are 2 more weeks in this "season", so maybe after that we will make a decision about what we are going to do. In the meantime, we want it to be known to the "powers that be" that we think this new rule is stoopid and we think it takes away all the fun of our fun trivia nights!

You SPIN me right round, baby right round ...

The week before school, some of the girls from work got together for dinner. We usually go all out for our GNO (girls' night out), but Chelsey and Coryn had to be at work the next morning, and the rest of us were going up there to work, too!

We met at the new SPIN! Pizza in Olathe by Mitzi's. If you haven't been there yet, you are CRAZY! They have 3 (so far) locations around the Metro, the best tasting pizza in town (potato pizza is my new fav), damn good salads (I go for the 8-Color, Mitzi is going to marry the Sonoma), great atmosphere, doggy nights on the patios and BYO-Wine for a $2 corking fee during the week.

Hmmmm ... I wonder if I can get any free food from my free promotion for them. Do I know anyone that has any connections at SPIN? ;)

Anyhoo ... here is one pic of the girls and some pics of the new digs. Pretty cool design!

My classroom finally came together

Working about 10-14 hours a week for the last 2 weeks have finally paid off! You saw the "before" pictures of my classroom. Now here are pictures from the first few days.

Looking back at the first pictures, I'm AMAZED how well it all came together!!! I did a damn good job, if I do say so myself. The kids all seem to love the new room, and all the parents told me tonight that it seems so much bigger and the coat cubbies in our room (for the first time) are starting to grow on me.






Unfortunately, my desk corner is still a mess. Even worse is that it is at the front of the room this year, when it used to be at the back. At the end of last year, I just threw things in boxes and labeled them "To Be Filed". Yep, they still need to be filed. Amy swears that my area actually looks organized, but I can tell that it is still close to looking like this mess from last year!

I'm very proud of myself, and all the hard work has paid off! We had district meetings, an ice cream social / classroom sneak-peek on Sunday night, first full week of school, and Back to School night all in one week and I'm still alive to post about it! :)

Painting project #49

Oh goodness! I just uploaded pictures from my camera and realized I have about 6 blogs worth of pictures to share. So hopefully tonight I can get some posts set up so you all have fun things to look at the next few days.

Tonight's post is to share pictures of one of my latest painting projects!

Mom and I frequent estate and some garage sales. I love to go and look at the vintage clothes and purses (!) and see what sort of furniture or decorating items I can pick up. Mom likes to go and look at lamps, china and other serving pieces and kitchenware.

The latest "wants" are bookshelves (why are they so expensive, new?) and some sort of table/cabinet I can use when I get a bigger TV. I also realized that I was in need of a small table to put right in my entry way for mail, keys, Minnie's leash and other random items. We walked into one of 3 estate sales for the day and we split up. Mom called me from the garage where she found this table!

I looked at it, uncovered the crap on top of it and immediately saw how sturdy it was. Furniture isn't made like that anymore. It was a 50% off day, but I had to ask about the price. We quickly asked one of the workers how much it was ($20, I think) and we got it literally before 2 other people said, "I want that!"

Hoping it would fit in my tiny Bug (it did), we drove away. When we got in the car, I asked Mom what color to paint it. She said, "Don't think I'm crazy, but ..." I said, "Green!" Sure enough, we were thinking the same thing. Mom thought I should try and pull in some of the color from my couch pillows.

See the lime green in the "circle" pillow on the left?? That really bright green? That's it! So, we went home to grab the pillow and then immediately went to Sherwin Williams. When I get a project idea in my head, I want to start immediately. We went and asked Newguy McPaintyman to help us match the pillow color with the swatches. He was trying to persuade me to get more of a yellow color, but Mom and I agreed that we wanted to go with the obnoxious green, no matter how strange it looked. The swatch color is actually called "Eye Catching"!

I got home the next day and opened the can to find what seemed to be bright neon yellow! It matched my paint swatch perfectly, but it just didn't look right.

Here is the table in the the middle of coats 2 and 3. In some lights it seems yellow and in others, it looks more green. Can you see the Olympics I was watching!?!?

Here it is almost done (except for the feet) and next to the pillow we used for the color.

And here it is "finished" back in the front entryway. I'm still deciding whether or not to do a glaze or some sort of green topcoat on it, but after painting this table and 2 bathrooms, I need a break! What do you think about it???

This article is terrifying!

The World According to College Freshmen.

So is the fact that my students this year were born in 1999! OH MY GOODNESS ... I'M OLD!

This kitty & I feel the same way today

This is the latest from Itty Bitty Kitty Committee!


I've told you before that IBKC is one of my favorite blogs that I read daily (you should, too)! This is today's post about little Orson Davenport that is the last of his litter to be adopted out.

The human foster parent is starting to think that maybe it's because of his poor attitude! ;) I love the "twin" girls in the background giving the stink-eye. It's like this is a picture of a bunch of kitty bullies! Ha!

I hate to admit this ...

... but I'm really excited for The Hills Season 4 to start this Monday!

Who's with me??? Julie, I know you like The Hills!

Since most other shows aren't started back up yet, this will give me something to watch until my other favorites start.

The trailer:
*

*

Oh cool, iPod guy!

Dad sent me a link to this today ... I thought it was pretty funny!

*

*

Just wait until you see the transformation!

This is what my new room looked like when I got back into school about 2 weeks ago. As you know from previous posts, the construction made learning, teaching and just being difficult last school year. The packing-up process at the end of the year was very chaotic!

I think it's all paid off! The new building is beautiful, and the 4th grade team is lucky because we get to be in the new addition.



We got into the school and found that there was still lots to be done construction-wise, and even today (2 days before school starts) there are still lots of things to be fixed. We are short desks and chairs, we continue to get new kids each day, we are looking for boxes and text books, we don't have working phones and/or computers, the new copiers and printers are causing issues. I know it will all come together ... it just takes time.

I've been taking more pictures of my room along the way. I don't think non-teachers know how much time and effort it takes to get ready for the beginning of the school year. So much so, that I'm missing out on Megan's fun Bachelorette party this weekend in Chicago! I'll miss you girls ... have fun without me!

I'll be back up at school tomorrow to continue getting things put away and labeled. As for the rest of my really exciting Friday night? I'll be writing students' names on name tags and working on getting my bathroom painted! Woo Hoo!

Thanks for calling!

Went to bed late last night after our big trivia win and after trying to stay awake to watch Project Runway.

I remember setting my alarm for 6:30am before I went to bed. The plan was for a couple of us to meet in the school parking lot at 7:45 to take 1 car to our whole-district meeting.

At 7:48am I woke to a noise and so I started pawing away at my alarm clock. I didn't turn off! That's because it was my phone that was ringing. Mitzi said, "Are you on your way?" Um. No. I wasn't. I had just woken up.

I was in such a deep sleep, that I must have turned my alarm off in the middle of a dream. This is why I normally have 2 alarms: TV and clock! I don't have a TV in my room yet, so that is why I've just been sticking with my clock.

As soon as I told Mitz that I just woke up, I was so flustered ... I couldn't figure out what was going on! It was like one of those times when you take a nap in the afternoon and wake up at 7:00pm and you see your clock and think it's 7:00am and you get really confused!

Somehow ... amazingly, I got up, ready, left my condo and drove to get to our meeting by 8:15! That might be a record for me. Too bad it put me in a foul mood to start the day.

Would anyone like to be my wake-up caller for me for the next week or so??? ;)

Too tired to think ... but too stressed not to enjoy a night at trivia!

WOW! What a day!

Even though I've been working basically full days in my classroom for the last week, today was our first official day back. It started with meetings at our home buildings and then everyone was off to the high schools for district inservices. Our meeting was on teaching writing in our classrooms and getting kids to become much better and more confident writers by practicing every day! I'm actually really excited about it ... which is also scary since Mitzi has been the writing teacher for us for the 3 years I've been in 4th grade.

After our meetings, we went back to our building to work in our rooms some more. At some point late this afternoon, I apparently put my cranky pants on. I was grumpy and I couldn't figure it out. I wasn't being very helpful to my team and I definitely wasn't getting any work done in my room. I think it was due to a shortage of desks, chairs and materials (we've gotten 8 new kids in our grade this summer). I decided that my time would be better spent shopping for some organization items I need for my classroom.

Trip to Walmart, Kohls and Office Max and then it was finally back home. Luckily, I have the greatest parents and they offered to take Minnie for the night. The poor thing has been mad at me for leaving her home alone all day. She has stopped coming to greet me at the door and won't hang out with me on the couch. :(

Here she is in her old hang-out spot on the pillows/back of the couch ... she won't sleep there anymore since I've gone back to work. Oh well ... I think she'll get used to it soon.

Anyhoo ... on to Trivia! We had a fun group tonight: Travis & his girls (Mitzi, Jill, Rachel, Amy, Brenda and me). We actually did really well ... but there were some tough questions. Lots of movie, commercial and sports-themed clips. Going into the final round, we were in 4th place. Not bad! We decided to move up close to the DJ stand for the final question, because you get 100 extra points if you are one of the first teams to turn in your answers. A few weeks ago, we lost by mere seconds!

Our fun DJ, Big Dog, was happy to inform us that we had answered the question "well enough" to win for the night. Our question was a clip of the song, "Glory of Love" and we had to figure out who sang it and what year it hit #1 on the charts. [I'll post the answer in the comments for those of you that want to test your trivia skills!]

After we claimed our prize for the big win, Big Dog said something about "Yeah ... who is The Bets Week Ever ... and I like The Chittum Files, too!" OH MY GOODNESS! Interesting ... but not really surprising. If you google "Xtreme team trivia", Jilly is right there on the 1st page. I used to be there, too. He mentioned that he had read a couple of our posts about trivia ... so I guess I have to watch what I say. Right, Big Dog?!?!? ;)

I do see that now Big Dog/Xtreme Team Trivia has their own bloggy blog ... maybe he was inspired by us! :) I'll mark it as a favorite and be back to read in the future.

Okay, off to bed. It's been a long day and tomorrow might be longer. Since I have no trivia tomorrow night, it will probably be a long night in my classroom getting stuff organized and ready. Night!

Summer days driftin' away ...

Summer is officially over.

Boo.

We report back to work officially tomorrow morning at 8:30am. This will be tough since I could barely drag my hiney out of bed at 9:00 this morning. It has helped a little that I've been going up to work for the past week in my classroom ... but I'm still in the habit of staying up too late at night. That will need to change soon.

Kids don't come until Monday morning.

Yeah.

I'm sure I'll have more updates before they come. I'd also like to get some pictures posted of my NEW classroom! Keep bugging me, if I don't get them posted in the next few days.

Off to watch more Olympics and to get some more things cleaned up around here so my family doesn't think I'm a complete bum when they come see the condo on Saturday! :)

One less thing to worry about!

I've heard before that every year you eat several spiders in your sleep. It scared me, but I assumed there wasn't much I could do about it.

Tonight I saw this on my MSN homepage, "Eating Spiders". So, of course, I had to click on the link.

Check out what the article said:

You eat eight spiders every year in your sleep. True?

Nope, says MythBusters. There's no evidence that spiders secretly crawl into our mouths while we're sleeping. Even if you were lying perfectly still, your breathing would scare a spider off, so it's unlikely to hang out around your mouth. Alas, the bad news: You probably consume more spiders when you are awake -- in your food. Here's why: The Food and Drug Administration guidelines allow a certain level of whole insects or parts in some food products, such as those containing fruits or vegetables. Yum.

I couldn't stop watching

Did anyone else watch the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics last night!?!?!

At first, I wasn't really into it, but after about 10 minutes, I was amazed! I couldn't stop watching. I'm not sure if I could pick a favorite portion of the ceremony. Here are some of my favorites:

• The LED floor with the dancers doing the painting with their hands and feet.
• The drummers at the very beginning. Very cool!
• The men doing Tai Chi ... those circles were perfect!
• The dancers walking around the latitude lines of the globe (side note: I wish I had a video clip of this to show my kiddos the difference between latitude and longitude lines).
• The printing blocks that made wave and ripple motions.
• The footprint fireworks "walking" down the main street to the stadium at the beginning.
• The lime green lit costumes.
  

Fun facts I heard while watching:

• 87 of the 204 present countries have never won a medal at the Olympics. In some cases, the Olympians that perform in the first events will lose and then leave to go home immediately.
  
• The printing blocks had people inside them to move. Pretty amazing since I thought for sure these were hooked up electronically to move.
• There were 15,000+ performers. None of them performed twice, so once their "dance" was over, they were done. When someone asked why they had so many performers it was said, "Well, we have the people!"
  
• The stadium was built "around" the opening ceremonies.
  
• Most of the opening "scenes" had 2008 performers.
  
• I believe they said that LED floor was the largest LED screen in the world (147 x 22 meters).
  
• There were 47 different sets of costumes.
• The "globe walkers" trained for 8 months, with the hardest job being on those that had to walk around the Equator.
  
• All the volunteers for the ceremony began rehearsing in March of 2008.
• Greece is always the first country in the Parade of Nations and the host country is always the last. All other nations march "alphabetically" according to the host nation's written language. In 2004, Greece went both first and last.
  

If you didn't get a chance to watch, you should do a little google imaging online, but here is the link to the main Olympic Games site with many slideshows. [HERE]
I also found some more great pictures HERE and HERE!

I used to like you ... now I don't

I saw this sad news on my MSN homepage tonight when I got home from school. Yuck.

Edwards admits to affair.

In honor of my little sick pup

Today Miss Minners went to the vet for her yearly vaccinations. The first year we went, she had a allergic reaction about 5 minutes after our friendly vet gave her the shots. Her little eyes puffed up and turned pink and her tongue and gums turned completely white. She ended up having to stay there and it was one of the scariest days since I've had her ... she was only 4 months old!


Here are pictures of her from that day: Scruffy & being tiny on the left; sick & in her new bed on the right.

Last year, we went through the same thing, but this time they kept her at the vet after the shots so they could watch her and give her antihistamines. She did really well while she was there, and then when I brought her home, she puffed up again and continued to react to the meds.

So after that, the lovely girls at my vet put a note in Minnie's file and we had planned to give her antihistamines before and after the shots and let her spend the day there. Today was the day. At 10:00 this morning they called me and let me know that she was doing fine, had her shots and was begging for belly rubs all day.

I went to pick her up and the report was that she did very well and didn't have any reactions. Perfect! I thought maybe she had grown out of her allergy. Well, I spoke too soon. We had barely walked in the door when Minnie got sick and then her eyes and muzzle started puffing up again. She got sick exactly 8 hours after her last antihistamine shot. :( I called them back and they wanted me to rush her back in.

When we got there, one of the girls (who has known Minnie since I got her at 8 weeks) was at the door waiting for us and they let me carry her into the back room for her shots. I've never been back there. She shook the entire time, but hopefully she'll do well through the night. It makes me so sad to see her feeling crummy. I know she can't enjoy having this reaction to her meds.

Since we got home the 2nd time from the vet, she's been sleeping on and off on the couch and in her kennel.

Here's a video I took of Minnie earlier this week enjoying some peanut butter on her nose, when she was feeling much better!
{This one's for you, Jenny!}

Always saddle your own horse!

This morning, I saw that my cousin Katherine has posted a link to this fabulous video about American Cowgirls! The video (see below) features Miss Connie Reeves who passed away at age 101, after she was thrown off her favorite horse Dr. Pepper.

While this may not seem interesting to you, it is interesting to me because Connie Reeves taught horseback riding at the camp I went to in Texas for seven summers. She also taught my sister (even though she was terrified and quit after her first year), my cousins Katherine, Hannah & Janie and our mothers Caroline, Dinah & Suzanne! Connie saw met me at age 9 and then continued to talk about the Hampton twins (my mom and aunt) and told stories about teaching them to ride horses, too!

These beautiful photos of Connie come from the American Cowgirl website. There are many other great women who are featured on the site, but Connie holds a special place in my heart because I know her. In addition, she was not only inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, but she was one of two women to win an award from the National CowBOY and Western Heritage Museum. Pretty amazing!

If you look at her in this photo, that is exactly how I remember her. I distinctly remember her hands and they look the same way in this photo.

Here's a picture of Connie riding one of her horses from Camp Waldemar in the Guadalupe River. She rode horses every day that she could, up until the day that she fell off the horse that ultimately caused her fatal injuries at age 101. She taught young girls to ride horseback for 67 years at Waldemar, and was estimated to teach 36,000 girls! Pretty impressive.

This is the last photo I found. When Connie died in 2003, the news was shared all over the world. She made such an impact on people, whether or not they knew her.

Here is the video from the American Cowgirl site:
*

*
I think it is really touching, and Connie is also really funny in the video, talking about how you can't have much to say if you can't curse, calling a girl riding with a saddle a sissy and making fun of her 70-year-old friends!
{On a side note, I like the song that goes along with the video, but I can't figure out what it is. Anyone know?}

I hope you enjoy! Any Waldemar girls reading, feel free to share your thoughts on Connie!

Just beautiful!

Last week, I posted a link to the engagement pictures for Megan & John. Now I have a few of the beautiful wedding pictures that Kelley took at Julie & Mike's wedding! You HAVE to go check out her portfolios on her website!

As someone that loves photography, it was so much fun to see Kelley and her assistant in action! She also rode on the "party bus" with us from the ceremony to the reception, so we got to see her work up close (sitting on the coolers & standing in the door!)!

Kelley has a blog that she keeps updated with some of her favorite pics from the weddings, family shoots, engagement shoots, etc, that she takes. I've been checking back daily to see if she has posted any from Julie & Mike's wedding ... and sure enough, on Sunday she did!

You have to go check out all the pictures, but here are a few of my favorites!