I'm Grateful For... A Fantastic Shower

Last weekend was Lil Sis' wedding shower!!! It was a lot of planning, but such a joy. I had so much fun planning all of the little details. The theme was Up, as it is such a sweet, romantic story that Lil Sis and Kev saw together. Here are some pics from the planning and the shower.

Since their wedding colors are pool (Tiffany Blue) and yellow, I decided to go with those colors for the shower, too. I spent a lot of time wandering Party City to get paper products.

I got blue food and cake plates, yellow bowls and adorable blue and yellow popcorn containers. They were in the candy bar aisle, but they worked so well as popcorn holders! 

I was so excited when I found this decorative suitcase at Michaels. I was trying to play up the travel theme from Up and this was perfect! At the shower we used it to hold all of the popcorn containers. I swear I took a picture, but it is not on my camera :(

I had seen on pinterest someone who wrapped their silverware in doilies instead of napkins, which I thought was really cute. But you still need to have a napkin, so I did both :) I bought yellow silverware (Dollar Tree, people), blue napkins, white doilies and yellow curly ribbon. I wrapped them in the napkin first and then the doily. I put them in a light blue Easter Basket I found a Goodwill.

We covered the tables in plain colored plastic tablecloths. We set the favors and silverware out on the tables, mostly because at Big Sis's shower we totally forgot to give out the favors until half the guests had already left. We were left with far too many chocolate covered pretzels.

Momma made the candy covered Oreos in yellow and blue to look like Up's iconic balloons :) They are delish!

The centerpieces were a piece of travel-theme scrapbook paper, a double picture frame with a pic from Up and one of Lil Sis and Kev's engagement photos. We also tied a single blue or yellow balloon to it.

Kev's sister made wonderful banner with alternating pictures from Up and Lil Sis and Kev's engagement pictures. It looked awesome! (Their engagement pics were taken by another one of the bridesmaids).

So cute!

For food we had a variety of subs from Subway, Caesar salad, and popcorn. It was all so yummy and a great combo! For dessert we had chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with Dum-Dum suckers to look like balloons (another pinterest find). Lil E helped put in the blue polka-dot and silver cupcake liners, unwrap the suckers and stick the suckers into the cupcakes. They looked so cute and tasted yummy!

The shower was a big success! We had a great crowd, all of the female members of the wedding party, both moms, three grandmas, lots of aunts, cousins and their kids as well as our childhood babysitter. There were lots of little girls (and a couple of baby boys) who had a lot of fun playing together.

Our childhood babysitter, Jeanne, and Lil C. She was our second mom growing up and seeing her and seeing her play with Lil E and Lil C was one of the highlights of the shower!

Bridesmaids!

Grandmas!

After we ate we played a couple of games. We also had all of the guests write anniversary/well wishes for Lil Sis and Kev to read in the future. I had printed out travel scenes from Up as postcards. Big Sis had this awesome idea!

I wrote their names and wedding date on the back where you would put the address. 

We played two games, Bridal Bingo while she opened her gifts and a Disney Couples matching game :)

Sorry these pics are sideways, Kodak is not letting me rotate them and I can't find a way to do it on Blogger...

Game prizes brought by the bridesmaids. It was fun to see the different ideas everyone had. Everyone loved their prizes!

People were super generous and they got lots of wonderful gifts!!! And had quite the entourage of little girls to "help" her open them :)

Here's the card I got her: It has flaps that you open, which I thought was pretty awesome. I also got her a High School Musical Cookbook, because every new bride needs one :)

It was a great shower and I can't wait to celebrate the big day later this summer!

Big shot-out to all of the awesome ladies who helped make this day so special. My Aunt who offered her home and helped plan and took care of getting all of the food!! Momma who spent hours perfecting her candy-coated Oreo making technique. My lovely fellow brides/groomsmaids who offered planning tips, designed invites, made an adorable banner, brought awesome game prizes, helped set up and helped the party run smoothly. Lil E who helped with the cupcakes :) This shower would not have been possible without you!!!

I'm Grateful for...

Some Valentine's treats that are sans chocolate, for this gal who gave up chocolate for Lent. Although a helpful co-worker suggested that perhaps Valentine's Day was exempt from Lenten rules, I stuck to my guns. It's a good thing I enjoy:

Little Debbie Valentine's Cakes, vanilla flavored. These are the one of the only treats I prefer vanilla over chocolate, which is perfect for this year! I love these little guys. I bought four boxes a couple of weeks ago because they were Buy 3, Get 1 Free and 3 for $4 or something. Anyway, I still have lots left :)

Conversation Hearts. I know some people think they are gross; I heard someone describe eating them as eating chalk, but I love them! I sampled many while prepping our graphing activity at school.

The tasty Starburst that Momma included in my Valentine's Day care package. They were much appreciated amidst all of the chocolate.

Only 37 more days to go...

I'm Grateful For... Momma

This week's I'm Grateful For post is a little delayed, because its subject was visiting for a couple of days :)

Momma came out to see me Thursday night, just barely beating the snow and avoiding the stressful drive Lil Sis endured last week :) We went out to dinner and watched Glee and Grey's Anatomy.

 We were supposed to get a lot of snow and we were worried/hoping? we'd get a snow day, which would have been a little sad because Momma was supposed to come to school with me on Friday.

We ended up not getting much snow at all, so school was on. It was lots of fun to have Momma help out in my classroom all day. My kiddos loved meeting my mom. It was wonderful to have an extra set of hands all day and for Momma to finally have faces to put to the names of my little sweeties.

After school, we had a quick dinner at Pizza Hut and then headed to my school's annual talent show. I was in the staff act, set to the YMCA :) We had a blast performing for all of our awesome students and their families.

This morning we went out to breakfast and Momma was on her way. It was a quick trip, but a really nice one. I'm so grateful that Momma came out to visit and a million other things that would fill up a much longer blog! She is the best and I am so blessed to have her as my mom!!!!

A Day of Shopping

Today, Momma, Lil Sis and I headed out on a shopping mission: find a Mother of the Bride dress for Momma to wear to Lil Sis' wedding. We were also on the look-out for a dress for Lil E to wear as the flower girl.

(A little background. The wedding is happening in July. The bridesmaids are wearing "pool" which is basically Tiffany blue.)

We headed out to the local mall. We went to three stores and good choices at each. I think Momma tried on at least 20 dresses and had five very serious contenders.

We started at Macy's, where after trying on 5-6 dresses, we put three dresses on hold (one navy blue lacy/beaded number, a beige lace dress and a periwinkle beaded dress). (Sidenote: for being a semi-upscale place the fitting rooms at Macy's were sorely lacking, very bare, dingy and slightly dirty). After an ill-fated quest through their shoe department to look for silver shoes for me to wear at the wedding, we headed up to the little girls department. We found a really cute flower/tulley flower girl dress, but the shade of blue was just a little too green to match...

So we headed to Penney's, where we found about five dresses for Momma to try on. We found a couple of good choices for Momma (A navy blue and white rouched dress and an indigo dress with a verticle ruffle) and a really cute yellow and white lacy dress for Lil E. On our way out of Penney's we had to stop at the ICEE kiosk for a pre-lunch ICEE snack :)

At Sears we found 2 armloads full of dresses! Lil Sis also found some fetching hats, which I tried to convince her to wear as her headpiece at the wedding. After lots of, "I like it, but I liked other ones better," there were two contenders at Sears (a light pink ruffled dress and a navy blue satin). We found an adorable not-exactly-matching, but-far-enough-away-to-be-complementary blue flower girl dress. Unable to decide if the blue would work, we ended up buying both that dress and the yellow one from Penney's to compare to my bridesmaids dress and decide on a FG dress at a later date.

After reviewing all of the pics on Lil Sis' phone, Momma also decided to buy two dresses, show them off to a few more people and then decide which one to wear. She took home a to the knee, pink dress with some ruffles that angle diagonally across the dress and gather to one side (from Sears), and a navy blue, also to the knee, dress with a lacy overlay with some beads and sparkles (from Macy's). Both are great options and look beautiful on Momma! She also purchased a beautiful blue/purple number for the rehearsal dinner.

Not to be left out of all the shopping fun, Lil Sis got a bunch of cute work clothes at Maurice's (best fitting rooms of the day goes to Marice's- decorated cutely and chairs for those waiting!!) and I found some perfect silver, sparkly heels to complete my Maid of Honor ensem. I had been looking all over for these shoes I was picturing in my head and as we passed Deb to go into Payless, there they were in the window of Deb!

Overall, a very productive day! I can't wait for the big day to be here!!!

Oh What a Night!

Last night, Momma, Daddy and I went to the Tigers game against the White Sox. We got their early to get our Going, Going Green hats! They're basically green Tigers hats with a recycling symbol on them, but we love our giveaways! Daddy even left and re-entered with our extra ticket to get Lil Sis a hat, even though she couldn't come to the game.

It was super duper hot out, 95 degrees!! And very sunny. But luckily our seats went into the shade pretty quickly...

After four and a half innings, we were down 8-1 after Brad Penny had a tough outing with little help from the defense (four runs were unearned...) We scored a couple of runs in the bottom of the fifth and kept battling back, scoring another run on a solo homerun.

Around the 8th inning, the sky started looking ominous, very cloudy. We could see lightning in the distance. It started getting windy and trash was flying all around the stadium.

The Tigers came up to bat and got a double. Just as the rain started to fall, they posted a message on the scoreboard saying those in the upper sections needed to evacuate and go to the lower level! But the players were still on the field. Yikes.

We went into the tunnel just behind our seats as they pulled the players off the field. It was raining pretty hard and lots of people were leaving. About half an hour after the rain started, the rain stopped and an usher told us we could go back to our seats. There were probably a couple of thousand fans left.

The Tigers got a hit to score the runner at second in the rest of the eighth, so it was 8-6.

Then came the ninth. Austin Jackson got a triple (his second of the game and his fourth hit of the night). Ryan Raburn followed with a two-run homer!!!!!!!! So the game was tied. The small crowd that was left was going crazy.

Delmon Young struck out.

Migel Cabrera was up with two outs. On the first pitch, he hit a walk-off homerun!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was crazy awesome. Although, I saw the left fielder walking forwards and I thought he was coming in to catch it because I had no idea where the ball was. Really he was coming off the field because the game was over :)

It was sooooooooooooo exciting. We were sooooooooooooo glad that we stayed. This is the reason that we never leave until the last out, you never know when your team will come back from 8-1, come back from a rain delay and win the game in the most dramatic fashion!!!!!!!! Such a fantastic game, that I will never forget.

Tuesdays at 10

Tuesdays at 10 get a little crazy at the Bean house. There are four shows that we want to watch and our DVR can only record one, while we watch another. This presents quite a conundrum.

Up until a few weeks ago our plan went like this:

Momma and Jillibean watch


On our main TV, while we record


And Daddy watches
upstairs.

This was working fine, until the return of White Collar in January.
Now there was no way that Jillibean could watch the three shows she wanted to (Parenthood, The Good Wife and White Collar). So we had to switch it up a little.

Now Momma and I still watch Parenthood, but we don't record anything. Daddy still watched Detroit 1*8*7 upstairs.

Then Wednesday night while Momma and Daddy watch American Idol, I watch The Good Wife and White Collar online in the basement. Not a great system, but it works :)

Snowpocalypse Part 3

Even though I never got a call from our school fan-out... We got another snow day thanks to Snowpocalpyse 2011.

I woke up around 9:00 again, grateful to see a text from a co-worker confirming that there was no school :) I chillaxed, checking facebook/the internet and eating Momma's delish chocolate chip muffins. Then I worked out again (it's so much easier to work out when you don't have to go to work!)

Momma and I decided to venture out to run some errands and get lunch. We bought new yarn for hat knitting and Valentine's day crafts for our students. Such fun, bright, new colors! I can't wait to get started knitting.

Then we headed to Panera for lunch!!!!! Delish. Their mac and cheese is the bombdotcom. (not my pic...)

Next we stopped at the library, since I almost finished with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I had a nice chat with the cute, young, male librarian about the Chronicles of Narnia and which order they should be read in. :)

I worked for an hour on job applications, not fun, but it had to be done...

I finished The L, The W, and the W.

And organized all of our old yarn, into neat skeins. (This is the before picture...)

Then dinner, getting ready for school tomorrow, watching American Idol, Grey's and Bones.

Another productive and relaxing Snow Day :)

Snowpocalypse 2011 Part 2

My eyes opened Wednesday morning, I rolled over and the clock said 9:00. I smiled, it was so nice not to have an alarm wake me up. I peeked out the window to see how much we'd gotten, but it was hard to tell when everything was white!

Turns out we'd only gotten about 6-8" at that point, but snow was still swirling and whirling from the sky.

I checked out facebook and all my blogs and ate breakfast while watching the news with Momma and Daddy.

Then I decided that since I had lots of extra time to relax, I should get in a work out. So I did one of my Dancing with the Stars workouts and chatted with Momma while she sewed in the basement. She did some quilt sewing and made two cute wallet/credit card holders, which are perfect for carrying in small purses, when you don't need your whole wallet.

I put comfy sweats back on :) I watched The Good Wife online, while knitting. I love the Good Wife!!! Such a good show, with great acting, complex plots, intriguing legal cases, interesting characters, so good!

After that I was going to watch White Collar, but it wasn't posted yet. So I called my dear friend Laura H. We haven't talked in awhile, and since we both had snow days it seemed like a good day to catch up. We had a lovely chat :)

Then I worked on online job applications for about an hour, but I figured that I should get some work done. This is around the time that Momma found out she didn't have school again on Thursday... and I was very jealous.

After dinner I re-planned my week based on our snow day, read some of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and made crafts for my class's marketplace next week, (I'll show them to you later :) while watching American Idol, and some shows my dad likes.

Then Momma saw online that our school is cancelled again tomorrow!!!!! I haven't got the call yet, but we've found it online two different places... so the Snowpocalypse will live to blog another day :)

Thanks for Daddy for snow-blowing once and shoveling another time!!!! We love and appreciate your hard work!!

Oscar Double Feature 2011

As I wrote about here, it is my tradition to go to the movies and see a double feature of movies nominated for Oscars. Well, Oscar nominations came out Tuesday and so the Third Annual Jillibean Oscar Double Feature happened on Saturday!

The past two years I've gone to see the movies on my own, because I couldn't convince my friends to go see two Oscar contenders with me. But this year, since I'm back home with the fam, I had some company.

I had a tough time deciding what I wanted to see this year. My first year I saw Revolutionary Road and Slumdog Millionaire. Last year I saw Invictus and Crazy Heart. I loved all of them except Revolutionary Road.

This year I really wanted to see The King's Speech so that was a must. I have heard nothing but wonderful things about it. I had a super difficult time choosing between True Grit and The Fighter. Momma and Daddy had already seen True Grit without me, but I love Jeff Bridges and for some reason it just looks really good to me. But I love Christian Bale and have heard wonderful things about the Fighter. Eventually I made Lil Sis choose which one she'd rather go see. She chose the Fighter. The King's Speech was rated R, but only for swearing that happens as a part of his therapy. The Fighter I believe is also R, again, just for language, but not as part of any therapy :) Both of them are tremendous movies though, so you should definitely see them both!!

Daddy decided that he wanted to see the Fighter with us, but Momma stayed home, but they both wanted to see the King's Speech. So we go to the theater and bought three tix for The Fighter and four for The King's Speech. I think the ticket guy thought we were crazy... We also got a huge popcorn and ICEEs and planned to take full advantage of the free refills :)



I loved the Fighter. It was a beautiful story with wonderful actors and not too much boxing :) The basic story is that Micky (Mark Wahlberg) is a boxer, who is trained by his brother, Dickey, a former boxer and current druggie/loser. After Dickey gets into some trouble and Micky meets a nice girl (Amy Adams) he decides to get some real trainers and keep fighting. Then there's some boxing... but not too much, really.

I love Christian Bale and he was excellent as Dickey Ecklund, a washed up boxer who's now a druggie. It was sad to see Christian bale as a druggie/crazyface. I much prefer to see him this way...

Or especially this way...

... but his acting was excellent!!

Amy Adams was in it too. Love her! I couldn't find a good picture of her (i.e. one where she was covered up) that I liked so I used this one from Enchanted (also because it has Patrick Dempsey in it...) She was wonderful as Micky Ward's girlfriend.

It was a great movie, I would definitely recommend it.

Then Daddy went home to hang out for a bit and Lil Sis and I sat around the theater for 2 hours until The King's Speech started. We could have left to shop or something, but then we couldn't get free refills on our popcorn and ICEEs. So we sat by the arcade and chatted/people watched.

While we were waiting Lil Sis asked why I kept calling Mark Wahlberg, Marky Mark. Because that was his rapper name of course! She didn't know that he used to be a rapper named Marky Mark, so I had to google him on my new smartphone. Did you know that in addition to being Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, he was also an original member of NKOTB with his brother, before he left (because he didn't like their bubble gum pop image) and was replaced by Joey McIntyre? The things you learn chilling at the movie theater.

Then we got refills and headed in to The King's Speech. Momma and Daddy met us. When they got their Lil Sis and I were the youngest people in the theater by about 30 years. Once Momma and Daddy got there they were probs the next youngest people... until a like twelve year old boy came in.



I love, love, loved The King's Speech!!! It was beautiful, the story was very moving, the acting excellent. If you haven't already seen it, go see it now! I'll wait...

The movie is about Albert, the Duke of York, son of the King of England, set between the two world wars. He has a terrible stammer; the movie starts with him struggling mightily through a speech. I seriously wanted to reach through the screen and give him a big hug as he nervously awaited his turn to speak :( He starts meeting with a speech therapist who has some unconventional methods to try to help him. Eventually after some death and mishagosh, he becomes king, at which point he really needs his stammer to be gone, like yesterday.

Collin Firth is stupendous as Bertie, aka the Duke of York, aka King George VI. He made you so sympathetic and empathetic towards Bertie. And did an amazing job making the stutter sound real. Give him the Oscar already!!

I didn't find it at all strange seeing

as
but Lil Sis couldn't help thinking "You killed Sirius!" every time she saw her...

We all loved both movies and would definitely recommend them. But really both movies were so wonderfully done, everyone should see them!!! The Oscars are Feb. 27th so there is still plenty of time to see them. I'll have seen at least 5/10 Best Picture Nominations :)

The Chronic- What? -cles of Narnia!

For our annual New Year's Girls Movie Day while Daddy Watches Football, this year we chose to see The Dawn Treader, the third movie in the Chronicles of Narnia. We, three girls, had all seen the previous two and loved them, but Momma hadn't seen either. She was fine with us just telling her about them, but I wanted her to see them first. (Plus I wanted to see them again, so I remembered everything.)

So, the night of Dec. 30th we all watched The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

Love this movie! Lil Sis and I originally saw it in theaters with our friends Lauren and Katlyn who just happen to be sisters as well. We had such fun, goofy time. We went to Pizza Hut afterwards and could not stop giggling :)

Also I love James McAvoy as Mr. Tumnus. The best!

And I love the names the kids are crowned with at the end. High Queen Susan of the Southern Sea and all that. Good times.

We were all off doing different things New Year's Eve, so we couldn't watch Prince Caspian then. After a long search for Prince Caspian at the local video store (I searched under practically every category in the Ps (children, family, Disney, New Releases... nothing) until finally I realized that since Eclipse was under the Ts for the Twilight Saga: Eclipse that Prince Caspian was probably in the Cs for the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

Momma and I somehow managed to squeeze in a viewing of Prince Caspian just before we left for the 5:45 showing of the Dawn Treader.


I love this movie too. Prince Caspian is the bombdotcom. Love his accent, such a cutie! Yes please!

I love going to the movies, the popcorn, the ICEES, the huge screen. Good times. I really liked Dawn Treader.

The kid who played Eustace was so good at being annoying. The special effects were good. I would have liked more of the older kids, but I know that is following the books, so I can't complain. And of course I like me some Prince Caspian.

There was this five-ish year old boy sitting on the other side of Momma who kept asking his mom questions throughout the movie. Lil Sis and I thought he was adorable (the first time a faun came on scream, he said, "Mr. Tumnus!) and he knew a lot of the characters for being five. But Momma was really annoyed by him because I guess his Mom kept answering his questions and threatening to make him leave and stuff, that we couldn't hear... oops.

I love watching these movies and looking for the Christian influence and symbolism. I wrote a paper in college about the Christian perspectives in The L, The W, and the W and it is really interesting to me. Very good stuff.


Check out this video from SNL about the Chronicles of Narnia, which inspired this blog's title