Our sweet little wedding dress tags are so cute and tiny, and are perfect for attaching to gifts for the bride, bridal shower favors, thank you gifts for the maid of honor and bridesmaids, and the list goes on.  Speaking of wedding dresses.....



There is a new bride-to-be in our family!  Youngest daughter, Kaitlyn, recently became engaged, and talking about weddings and all the plans in the making has us almost giddy with excitement!  We can't wait for wedding dress shopping, bridal showers, and all the fun we're going to have planning her down-home, country wedding! Yay!

Drop by our Etsy shop if there is a wedding in your future!

~Laurie

It has taken a while to blog about our most recent family wedding.  Oldest daughter, Ashley was married to her sweetheart Richard in August 2016.  Three days before her wedding, my husband; her father, was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with severe pneumonia.  He quickly spiraled downhill, and Acute Respiratory Distress and Septic Shock was added to his diagnosis.  As a last ditch effort to save his life, he was transferred to Oregon Health and Science University on life support when we should have been going to a wedding rehearsal and dinner for our daughter.

Before he was intubated, my husband asked that our son walk his sister down the aisle in his place, and Ashley tucked Daddy's photo in her bouquet to walk down the aisle with her.



Through the grace of God, a clinical trial, and amazing physicians, his life was spared.  I left his side for a few hours to attend our daughter's wedding.  Our friends stepped up and made sure that everything was perfect, from flowers I'd planned to arrange, to food I was going to prepare.  It was amazing the way everything came together, but it's hard - still so hard - to think about this difficult time.

It had been so fun to prepare for Ashley's beautiful Victorian style wedding!  Her favorite color has always been purple, and we grew the flowers for her wedding cake that another daughter decorated for her. In another post, here you can see the wedding favors we had made for her special day.

We got through this very difficult time, and a few weeks after the wedding, Dad was strong enough to gather with the newlyweds for a second celebration; gift opening, eating the cake top, and best of all, finally the Father/Daughter dance they'd missed. Last fall this lovely union gave us our first grandchild!  My husband knows how close he was to missing this special blessing, and it's made our family closer than ever.

~Laurie

Hello there!

Our Etsy shop, this blog, and all of our social media sites have a whole new look for spring!  What do you think?!

It is acting anything but spring here in the Pacific Northwest! It snowed all day, with sub-freezing temperatures, and we have several inches of snow on the ground.  A far cry from this day four years ago, when Emily and Jacob were married!  It was a beautiful spring day, that was near 70 degrees!

Emily and Jacob had been a pair since 8th grade, and were married on March 7, 2015; exactly 10 years to the day of becoming boyfriend/girlfriend in 8th grade!  We had so much fun working together on their wedding preparations, that we started up Lottie Elizabeth just a couple of months later!

Here are some of my favorite photos from their wedding day! Theirs was a very sweet and heartfelt wedding, just like their marriage has been.  So lucky to have this wonderful couple as part of our family! Happy 4th anniversary, J&E!

Happy (hopefully soon!) spring!

~Laurie

When our son was to be married in the summer of 2015, it was our job to host the wedding rehearsal dinner.  The wedding was at a remote location (Bridal Veil Lakes - see it here.) We didn't have much of a selection of places to have the dinner, so we decided to do it all ourselves.  We rented a former locktender home in Cascade Locks, Oregon.  This beautiful historic building was constructed in 1904, and housed the early supervisors of the locks and canal which provided river boats safe passage around the famous Cascade Rapids.  It was the perfect place!


There is no place on earth more beautiful than the Columbia River Gorge on a beautiful, sunny July afternoon!

We'd designed invitations to send out prior to the occasion.  It was great fun coming up with ideas for a woodland theme!



We had three trays of salmon and 2 trays of chicken.

~Laurie 

Remember all of those dozens of jars we used for our mini pie jars for Lukas and Casey's wedding? Well, a year later we dug them out, washed them up, and used them for wedding favors at Ashley and Richard's wedding!

First we picked lots and lots and lots of blackberries, which was just time consuming but wasn't difficult because they are more than plentiful in the summertime in Southwest Washington State!

We wanted to add a twist to our blackberry jam, so we found a recipe calling for a just a hint of lavender; which was perfect for our plum/ivory/silver wedding colors.  See the recipe we used here.  (Be sure to use food-grade dried lavender for the jam!)



Ten days before the wedding, we collected several pounds of blackberries, and refrigerated them until jam making day.

We got together a week before the wedding with the bride-to-be, Ashley, her mother-in-law-to-be, some of the sister bridesmaids, and the Mother of the bride (me!), and the maid of honor (Emily).  We made jam all day long, and had so much fun hanging out together and making last minute preparations for the big day!

Later at home I made up the tags for the jars, covered them in some cute little paper doilies, and tied on some ribbon bows.  Back into the boxes the jars went for easy transport, and we were good to go!

~Laurie & Emily

Lukas and Casey's wedding in July 2015 at Bridal Veil Lakes, Oregon was breathtakingly beautiful!  Our last post covered the desserts we made for the wedding.  Enjoy these gorgeous photos of their special day!

Photos by Karen J. Hawley
Venue: Bridal Veil Lakes

~Laurie & Emily