Advent List 2020

This year started just like any other...  

In the attempt to make things as normal for my children as possible, I have decided to go all out with Advent Activities this year, COVID style.  

The Advent Activities are a prized tradition in our household.  They are waited for all year and even my adult children like to get in on the action.  This year proved to be a bit of a challange when coming up with 24 family activities.  My daughter has a full time job, my husbands job is more stressful than ever, and most of the activities that we usually enjoy are canceled... but I decided to rise to the occasion and see if I couldn't finish out this year as good as it started (instead of all the garbage in the middle).

Advent Activities 2020

12/1 Getting our chocolate calendars and watching Elf (a December 1st Tradition!)

12/2 Getting our tree and making our yearly ornament

12/3 Making Cocoa Bombs

12/4 Making some ornaments for the birds

12/5 Put out  your shoes for St Nick

12/6 St Nicholas Day!

12/7 Winter Lantern craft

12/8 Making personal pizza and watching It's a Wonderful Life

12/9 Salt Crystal Snowflake 

12/10 Special Chocolate (mom teaches this day)

12/11 Waldorf style stained glass window stars

12/12 Gingerbread Houses

12/13 Fantasy Lights

12/14 Baking Orange Bread (For Saint Lucia's Day)

12/15 Shopping for siblings

12/16 Zoo Lights with Hot Cocoa

12/17 Grow A Tree activity

12/18 Game Night!

12/19 Drive-Through Nativity

12/20 Shop for mom & Dad

12/21 Christmas Light Scavneger Hunt

12/22 Caroling!

12/23 Cookies and gifts for neighbors

12/24 Create an Advent Tree

Sometimes we don’t do them all but it’s always fun to try!  

Family Photos 2020

This is the first time we have had professional pictures taken of our family.  It was so sweet to work with my friend Abbi Rhodes for these beautiful captures.  <3

This one is not my favorite picture of me, but I just thought it was SO funny that Luke and I have the exact same smirk!

School Interviews 2020-2021

Back to school interviews are still one of my very favorite traditions of the year...

Logan: Age 13, Grade 8th

Clothing size: Men's small shirt, youth 12 pants, shoes 9 1/2

Favorites-

Food: Sushi.  Anything with crab, crawfish, oysters, clams, muscles, etc.  I loved the Boiling Crawfish with the seafood boil and potatoes!  Yum!

Color: Purple

Animal: Ducks

Season: Winter.  Because Christmas Time, I really like going to Mt Rainier and snow and all that stuff.  The world seems calmer when its cold outside.

Music: Good rap, not mumble rapping, that annoys me.  Minecraft parodies which I play to laugh at and annoy my friends, because that is also fun.

What do you want to learn this year?

I would love to learn how to build a computer.  That sounds like a lot of fun.  I'd have to save up like a thousand dollars to do it but then dad and I could build a computer together and that would be fun.  I want to get better at bike riding.  It sounds fun and it's a hobby that takes some muscles.

What are your Boy Scout goals? 

Life Scout.  For sure.  Bunch of Merit Badges towards Eagle.  I'd love to be the youngest Boy Scout to in 216 to get Eagle.  That would be so cool!

Luke: Age 9, grade 4th

Clothing size: Youth med shirts, size 8 pants, shoes 2 1/2

Favorites-

Food: Thin Oreos like at SarahJean's house last night.

Color: Blue-ish purple, I forget what it's called, Periwinkle!  Yes!  That's it.

Animal: Wolf.  Wolves are very smart.  They could even beat a Cheetah.  They have stamina but they don't use it much because they will wait for the animal to tire and slow down and then they go in for the kill.

Season: I am stuck between summer and winter because in summer you can go in the pool but in winter you can build snowmen and stuff but pools are really amazing to me!

Music: Spiderman into the Spiderverse soundtrack.  It hasn't changed.

What do you want to learn this year?

I want to learn a lot about the constellations because I know they are made up of stars but I want to know more of them.  I also want to learn about different places and different countries.  And I hope we discover a new planet soon.  I want to learn about other moons.  I bet they found thousands upon thousands.  Jupiter has like probably 77 or 78.... to learn about new bugs and new animals, and many new things like salamanders or something.

The Wildflower Wedding - The Bridal Bouquet

I always find the bride bouquet to be the most personal piece of wedding flowers. And this time I got to make one for a girl I’ve known her whole life.

It isn't the flashiest of stories.  But like the first drink of a good cup of coffee, it is one of the best of the normal stories:

We went driving on the San Juan Islands on the way home from Cyan’s senior photo shoot and I stopped to pick some flowers as we waited for the ferry. And she said “could you do that for my wedding?”

And I was all “yeah. sure.”

And then she said “No really. Would you do the flowers for my wedding?”

And I looked into her completely serious face... And I said yes, in my van, with a handful of lavender from the field we were just at and Queen Anne’s Lace from the side of the road in my hand.

If only she knew how close to bittersweet tears she took me in that moment... (it’s not hard to do. I’m a sap.)

So when I said yes, I was in. Dedicated. All completely in.

In this bouquet are dahlias from @connellsdahlias, flowers I got through @teressajohnson, and even a few from @larchefarm, who was so wonderful in helping me find the last few bits I needed for this event... but many, many of these flowers were from my garden, planted and cultivated with this exact bride in mind.

She asked for crazy. She asked for fun, and wild, and muted rainbow. And I did everything in my power to give her just what she asked for and a tiny bit more.

See, hidden in this bouquet was her first kiss as a bride. A thimble to give her Peter Pan (her favorite book, which has a subtle theme throughout my flower-work for the wedding). 

Can you see the thimble?

The thimble was 100 years old, gotten from my great aunt’s sewing table my mother left to me. It is a tiny treasure, meant to be given away. The first of many tiny treasures you give away to your partner to create a life together. ❤️ Because it really is all about the little things. Those little things make a life (and a damn good story).

The Wildflower Wedding - Bridesmaid's Flowers

It would be hard to imagine the blessing it is to watch these girls grow up and start their lives together unless you had been part of it.  They have been close friends for the entirety of their school careers as most of them met when they were in Preschool or Kindergarten.  Now the first one of them is getting married, three more are in college, and one is headed to nursing school.  Their lives are truly beautiful and so are they!

Flower crowns are easy to make if you know the trick of it.  The easiest way to make one is to make a ton of mini bouquets, called posies, and put them in water until the day of the event. I had learned this over much trial and error in the last couple months. My dear friend at @sheholdsdearly helped me make more than 100 posies for these crowns the day before the wedding.  At one point, sending me to the venue so I could measure the space for the floral backdrop and working on them herself for hours! She blessed me far more than she knows that day.

Inspired by the theme of "wild", most of these are things we found on our properties or in the creek near our house.  The blackberries and Hawthorn were dethorned by hand before we made the posies so nothing poked the bridesmaids at the event.  The bachelor buttons and straw flowers were gathered from my own yard and the roses and carnations were purchased.  

The bouquets mirrored the elements of the bride's bouquet but smaller and less elaborate.  

The Wildflower Wedding - Cake Flowers

The cake is such a wedding statement piece!  The bride and I discussed the cake decorations ahead of time and I wanted to create a beautiful pastel rainbow on the cake that echoed her bouquet.  

I got done with the backdrop and all of the bouquets and touch ups on all the floral headbands I went to the tent and was completely shocked by the color of the frosting ferns that garnished the cakes!  We had talked about deep forest green ferns, but the color was very different than I was expecting and did not match with the brides "pastely" cake flower choices...

I believe that it turned out just beautiful and unique anyway, though, didn't it?  

All my plans went out the window and I had to reinvent what I was doing on the fly!  This is when having buckets full of flowers and willing hosts comes in very handy.  I asked ushers to help me move all the buckets to the dinner tent and I started to dig in.   

Pastels were out with this deep green and bright chartreuse frosting.  But as the saying goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention." and I had many beautiful things left over.

For the cake, I used white sweet peas, burgundy and Ferncliff copper dahlias from @connelsdahlias, chocolate cosmos, peach petunias (from the organic hanging baskets at the venue, I mean, I got creative), and then green hazelnuts from my tree, calendula blossoms, rose buds, burgundy bachelor buttons, white roses, pineapple sage, sweet pea greens, and mint sprigs.

After all the confusion, it really did turn out stunning and each piece made quite a statement!

Hannah's Bachelorette Weekend

As the girls were growing up, we always joked that they would all be in each others weddings...  well it finally happened.  14 years of friendship, through everything, thick and thin, and this August one of them is finally getting married!  My daughter and her friend planned out the Bachelorette Weekend and they and I traveled to the beach house with them to help with all the setting up.  On my way, I grabbed some sweet treats to welcome the girls into the house.

We decorated the beach house with all shades of peach, pink, and white.  

Of course, I had to bring a bunch of flowers from the garden brighten up the the sweet spaces like the master bathroom, master bedroom, and the tables.

Then we created a photo wall for the girls to have fun with.  

And Cyan, the Maid of Honor, brought a bunch of balloons!

These sweet, huge tissue paper flowers were placed everywhere along with some beautiful greenery to make the entire place lively and bright!

The bride got her own room, of course, and we got to spend a while making it a splendid spot for her 

to stay.