Brad and Sonya's 30th Anniversary Party

My in-laws recently celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary. My hubby and I decided to host an intimate dinner party for them and some of their close friends. We had so much fun prepping, hosting, and serving. Their actual anniversary was on June 27th but we hosted the party on July 1st. The dinner menu was as follows:

~Pear, walnut, and gorgonzola salad
~Homemade Focaccia Bread
~Grilled Asparagus and Grilled Sweet Potato
~Stuffed Pork Roast or Spinach and Cheese Ravioli
~Dessert: Creme Brulee

I made all of these courses, down to the salad dressing, myself (except for the ravioli). Everything turned out amazing...which was good considering it was my first time making all of these items.
If you are interested in any of the recipes I am more than happy to share. All of the recipes except the creme brulee came out of a cookbook that my mom let me borrow called "The Gathering of Friends."

I also did all of the decorating for the party. We decided to have the party out on our back patio. I hired my good friend Julia to do the flowers for me.
If you like what you see check her out at http://www.flowersbyj.com/Site/Home.html

We went with 3 cylinder vases filled with water, yellow floating orchids, and a floating candle on top. In the middle is a large cylinder bowl that has pieces of the floating orchids and several floating candles.

 One of my favorite things to see at an anniversary party is the bride's dress. My mother-in-law graciously let me display her wedding dress. Beautiful. (P.S. The secret to making it stand up is an ironing board.)

 On a table I had displayed their wedding picture, their wedding album, Sonya's bouquet from the wedding, the tie Brad wore when they were leaving the reception, the newspaper clipping announcing their wedding, and an arrangement of yellow roses (also done by flowers by j). The flowers they used in their wedding were yellow roses.

 My father in law brought me a bunch of pictures that he had recently found to display. I found 2 trellises in our backyard that I used to display the pictures. One of them had pictures from the wedding and the other one had pictures from Sonya's bridal shower and one from Brad's bachelor party.

 Our 8 dinner guests...

 Brandon decided to use the blow torch (that we were using for the creme brulee) to light the floating candles in the centerpieces. He was quite the entertainer that evening.

It was a great parry and we had so much fun doing it. Congratulations to my in-laws!! You are a great example of marriage for us.

So apparently I am not very good at keeping up on this blogging thing but life has been a little crazy lately. Summer is now in full swing for me. The hubs and I spent about 2 weeks in San Diego with both of our families. It was a great time to be with everyone.  Then when we got back from San Diego we were planning and preparing for a dinner that we hosted for my in-laws 30th Anniversary (blog to come about that with pictures soon).

For now I want to update you on the garden. Can I just say that I am pretty much in shock because this whole gardening thing is actually starting to work!! I was SO skeptical in the beginning because in the past I have killed just about every plant I have touched.   A few weeks ago we cut the cilantro and used it in some fabulous guacamole. We are hoping that it will continue to grow back throughout the summer.

Exciting News: I HAVE 7 TOMATOES!!! Woo Hoo!!!! It is so funny because I planted 3 different tomato plants from seedlings and one plant does not have any fruit on it yet, my biggest plant has 2 tomatoes, and my smallest plant (seriously, like a little midget tomato plant) has 5 on it. The small plant is a Roma  and the biggest one is a Better Boy. I also planted some tomato seeds and those plants are really growing but I think we are still a little while away from seeing any fruit.

My zucchini plant has a HUGE flower on it this morning, which if I remember correctly means that the zucchini cannot be too far behind.

My cucumber seeds all failed! BOOOO!!! Oh well, next time, I guess.

My bean plants continue to take off, but I have not seen too many "bean" looking things yet.

The other exciting thing is that my Dahlias have started to bloom and they are so amazing. Each plant is a different color and each day there is a new flower. They might be one of my new favorite flowers.
The hydrangea have also really taken off. Even though the plants were completely dead when we moved in, they have come back to life. I cannot take any of the credit for those though, my hubby is the one who did all of the maintenance on those.

I am just so excited to continue to watch all of the plants grow and change. And I really can't wait to eat my first tomato and zucchini!!

The garden has not changed too much in the last few days. The zucchini just looks like it is ready to burst and start showing some actual zucchini!! The cilantro continues to grow quickly and I am pretty sure that I will be able to use it fairly soon.

From the rain that we got last week the Dahlia's in the front yard have taken off!! There are not any flowers yet but the leaves are getting pretty large. I cannot wait to see beautiful flowers there.

I know that I have been slacking on getting some pictures up here but hopefully I will be able to get some up soon.

I am also very excited because Friday, June 3rd is my last day of school and then I will be able to focus more on the garden and other fun activites at home!! Maybe I will try out some painting or other crafts...although that makes me a little nervous! :)

Check back soon for pictures!

SPROUTS!

Sorry, I have been MIA the last couple of weeks, life has been crazy around our house. The exciting thing is that we have real sprouts!! I am so excited to know that my garden hasn't failed...yet! The first sprouts we got were the white & green beans. They have taken off like crazy. Next we started getting some cilantro, then came zucchini, cucumber, tomato, onion, and just the other day the jalapeno sprouted. The only one that has not sprouted at all is the lettuce, which I find a little funny because I thought that was supposed to be one of the easy ones! I am blaming it on the dog! ;)

My husband decided the other day while eating a grapefruit that he was going to plant his grapefruit seed--we haven't seen any sprouts from that yet, but we are waiting patiently!

I also recently planted some dahlia bulbs that one of my friends gave to me...hopefully they will brighten up our front yard!

I will try to post some pictures of our sprouts soon!

Oh and I almost forgot, this last weekend I bought some basil seedlings that I need to plant! Half of them are regular basil and the other half are lemon basil...yum!!

Pictures

Here are my pictures...

This first one is a shot from far away of my potted plants. I LOVE the 2 green ones I found at Ross! I also found a small cute purple one but it does not have anything planted in it yet.

 A close up of some of the potted plants. (Well technically not plants yet!)

 This just looks like a bunch of dirt, but has my tomatoes and green beans under there!
Not pictured: to the left is the onion and to the right is the white beans.

 It is hard to see from the shadows in this picture but these are my cucumber hills. The only vegetable I planted that had to be put into hills. There are 3 hills going vertically here. To the right of my cucumbers I have zucchini planted in horizontal rows (but they did not need to be in hills.)

Now we wait and see...

Well, I officially did it...I planted all of the vegetables yesterday. I am hoping that it will actually work and we will get some veggies from this (I still have my doubts)! I took some pictures to share with you but I am having some technical difficulties, hopefully I can get them up soon. I found some very cute pots at Ross and I planted some cilantro and jalapenos in those. In the garden bed on the side of the house I planted cucumber, zucchini, tomato, onion, green beans, and white beans. I am thinking that the hardest part about this garden will be keeping the dog out of it!

On Saturday morning I was asking Brandon about what type of fertilizer to get for the soil. He suggested I look for some kind of chicken poop fertilizer. Honestly, I thought that was kind of funny and hardly expected to find it at OSH...but I was wrong! There on the shelf I found a bag of "Chickity Poo Poo!" I thought it was so funny! But it also reminded me how incredibly smart my husband is. I am amazed at all of the information he knows about random things...like gardening. I am still amazed every time he decides to do some work on one of our cars and he walks right into the auto part store gets what he needs, goes home and does the work like it is no big deal. It seriously amazes me, and I am very grateful to have him and all of his knowledge around!

After I finished my gardening yesterday I decided to go to a "Womens Golf Clinic" that Brandon had mentioned to me. I knew that he REALLY wanted me to go but I was very unsure about it. I tend to be very self conscious when other people watch me do something (like trying to swing a golf club). I am really glad I went though. It was very informational and I also had fun. Hopefully I will be brave enough to actually get out and play with Brandon one of these days.

Tomatoes

Well, so far I have just planted tomatoes. I bought some seedlings from the store and they needed to be planted very soon after purchasing them so I put them into 2 pots that the previous tenants had left out back. I am hoping that these little plants really start to grow and give us some big beautiful tomatoes!!

I am hoping to start planting all of my seeds this weekend!! Brandon and I actually decided to move the vegetable garden to a different part of the backyard. There is a spot in the backyard that gets a little less sun, BUT already has soil on top of the adobe and has wood around it (to help protect it from the dog). We are going to plant some other plants in the spot that I tilled a couple of weekends ago. Or we also talked about the option of using that area for some planter boxes.  We will just have to see how everything turns out.

I am still feeling pretty overwhelmed with this whole gardening project but I know that I just need to jump in and do it. I am really excited to see what comes out of it, if anything!

Here is a picture of one of my little tomato pots!