Best day EVER part 2

my fancy sister in law is baking a baby cousin for Riley in her belly! hooray for babies! 

I'm back with another non-fancy treat post! It has been one week since our wedding and I am still in love with that day and everything about it, I don't think that feeling will ever fade. Today we went into town for the first time as a married couple, which really is no different, but it was extra awesome when the lady at the health food store remembered I was getting married and I got to talk about the wedding and all the fun stuff for a good 5 minutes! I also got to say "my husband" over and over again which just makes me giddy :)  I figured since this is MY blog and no one is forced to read it (except for Ryan), it's ok for me to ramble on about our fancy wedding! So let me tell you about it!
Our wedding was mostly DIY. We used hay bales for seating at the ceremony site and covered them with random sheets and blankets. My fancy wedding planner is also my new sister in law/made of honor,Amber, and she did an amazing job helping create our dream wedding on a tiny budget. Our fancy photographer, Justin, is also Ryan's cousin and he did a fantastic job! I cant wait to see all the pictures! All of the food was catered by my awesome mom. she and my sister, Jack, slaved away days before the wedding making green chili & cheese tamales, and pork tamales. My mom worked all morning the day of the wedding making salsas, Spanish rice, beans and nopales (cactus salad). everything was wonderful! I took it upon myself to make all the desserts which included, chocolate mustaches and lips (to match our invitations), chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache, lemon cupcakes with lemon glaze and I converted my infamous lemon loaf into a bunt cake for Ryan and I to cut into. It was great. we also had s'mores and I made tomato jam as wedding favors for our guests (using tomatoes from our garden!). I painted trays from the dollar tree with chalkboard paint (thank you pinterest) and we used them to display our menu and as signs for the gift/favor table. We used an old bathtub as an ice chest which just might be my favorite thing ever! We used my moms old birdcage as a card holder and I think it looked so cute! all the banners and decorations were made by me and Riley, (shes an awesome little helper) Ryan and I decorated the Jam jars with burlap and twine and Ryan made the labels for me because I was too cheap to buy custom made ones :P I made Riley's crown out of flowers and a wooden wreath I found at the dollar tree. All our flowers were purchased from the local grocery store the day before the wedding and put together in old jars by, well, I don't really know who did them because I was instructed to stay in my apartment all morning, but i am guessing it was a team effort (Amber and Felecia?) So many people came together to help us out and we really could not have done it had it not been for every ones hard work.. our moms, our aunties/uncles, dad,cousins, grannies, our friends and our sisters. we had such a great team! I almost forgot to mention my awesome bouquet which was made the night before by my awesome mom, with some assistance from my BFF Melinda! I also must add my awesome 'MRS' necklace that was custom made by Rachel of PoppyandFern! I am in love with it! and in case anyone was wondering, my dress is from Ruche, my frustration with finding the perfect dress almost made me loss my mind, but Ruche to the rescue! It was perfect and I am so glad I had second thoughts about my original dress (which was also awesome, just not perfect) my boots are vintage Durangos I found on Etsy four years ago(when we were originally planning on getting married) Another awesome Etsy find was Riley's mustard cardigan. so perfect! (thank you fancy Mother-in-law). Riley was so cute walking down the aisle with her birdseed and wearing our wedding bands around her neck. What a great kid we have! We also had a fancy mule ride provided by some of our awesome neighbors, to take our guest to and from the ceremony site. It was such a magical day filled with all the people who mean the most to us. We truly are thankful and even though Ryan said many time leading up to the wedding "I cant wait for this to be over" when it was all over he sadly said "I wish we could keep celebrating!" ha! It was a little bittersweet to have everyone here and now have our home be so empty, we miss everyone!!! But it was a great time and lots of lovely memories, we only wish we had more time with everyone. Thank you to all who came and shared the love. we love you all so much! xoxo The Sitters

special thanks to Melinda for taking most of the pictures you see here, and anyone else I stole pictures from via facebook :)

Best day EVER

Excuse me while I take this time to NOT blog about some fancy treat. On Saturday, October 13th, 2012, I married my best friend. It was the best day ever. All of our family and friends came from all over to see us get hitched. I decided to take some time to share some of the great things about the wedding. Which was mostly DIY and included a whole lotta blood, sweat and tears! but for now, let me just say to my dear husband...I love you, and I am so very honored to be your wife. You have shown me what true love is, you have already made it very clear with the birth of our daughter that you are willing to take care of me in sickness and in health. you are a wonderful man and provider, and most of all a wonderful father. You are not afraid to make me cry, because lets face it, everything makes me cry, you are honest and understanding, you are a little crazy and strange and I love you for that! You are my best friend and there isn't anyone else I would rather spend all my days with. Love, Your Fancy Wife 

DIY: Fancy fall inspired wreath

Fall is upon us! well, sorta...I think most people start to welcome fall as soon as the Pumpkin spice latte becomes available, I however, might just be the only person on the planet who isn't crazy about them. I mean, I have tried, really, I tried to like me some pumpkin latte, but I just dont see what the big deal is. Now bring on the peppermint mocha and we have a different story. But this post is not about starbucks and their fancy lattes, it is about my obsession with this awesome wreath. Awesome right? now I am not one to spend that kind of money on decorations, I mean, I would but Ryan would probably leave me. So I decided to make my own! and you should too! its not hard really. All the supplies I used came from the dollar tree! Now, I know mine is not as fancy as the one on Etsy, but I used what I had...fake flowers found at the dollar tree are not the nicest but hey, the closest Michaels is 2 hours away and what can I say, I am cheap. ok, ok, so here is what i did...

I am really bad at taking pictures when doing DIY projects..and i wasnt planning on making this a blog post, but here you go, I started with a dark woody wreath. I suppose you can use any type you find and any size really..I picked this one because it was easy to just stick flowers in between the branches, but you could also use a hot glue gun to stick the flowers on. 

I picked a variaty of fall colors and simply cut the flowers away from the "bouquet" leaving about 3 inches of stem to stick through the wreath.  I first used up all the big flowers I had, alternating colors,

Ta-Da! now you can leave it as is or keep going...

next I added some of these fun things(I dont know what the name of this type of "flower" is, i know, i suck)

I just stuck them in between every two flowers or so...i had an odd number but the end result still looked fine

for some added color I took these guys, 

and I cut them off the stem, leaving no stem attached. 

I used some hot glue and glued the dark red flowers in the middle of each of the mustard color flowers. please excuse this picture, I had a four year old photographer. :)

nice huh?

next i took some ribbon and fed it through the back of the wreath 

and there you have it!

Sorry for such horrible pictures, I promise to get better :D Happy Crafting! -Jess

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Weekend : fancy dark chocolate chip Zucchini cookies

Riley's afternoon snack..fresh from the garden 

I think I need to iron my apron :/

My girl 

Our weekend was very uneventful. Ryan was feeling under the weather, so we decided to stay home and let him rest. On Saturday, Riley and I decided to make cookies., well, I decided, it wasn't until she saw me pull out the giant bag of chocolate chips that she decided to help because she knew she could get a sample :)

 Sunday I made my fourth batch of Tomato Jam which is a pretty painful process(did i mention how much i hate chopping tomatoes?) but I know my efforts will be much appreciated. The recipe for anyone who is interested, can be found here.

 I think I already mentioned the high volume of zucchinis coming out of my garden. I have made so many variations of zucchini and was getting a little bored so in my attempt to make something fancy and interesting, I added a cup of shredded zucchini to my chocolate chip cookies. I know it sounds kinda weird, and when Ryan saw the finished product he said "whats that green shit?" which made me laugh, but I also felt a little scared that I had ruined a perfectly good cookie. But they were awesome! and really really moist, even today..two days later, they are still as good as they were Saturday.
 In my attempt to make the most of my time, I also made some hummus which I served with dinner Saturday night. That recipe will be up later this week, but for now you can enjoy this super fancy cookie recipe.
Happy Baking-Jess

Chocolate Chip Zucchini cookies
Ingredients 
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened 
3/4 cup organic granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup shredded zucchini 
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 1/4 cup dark chocolate chips
1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

In a medium bowl, whisk together flours, baking soda, and salt. In the bowl of stand mixer cream together butter, sugars and vanilla until light and fluffy. add eggs one at a time, add zucchini and mix well. remove bowl from mixer and mix in nuts and chocolate chips by hand with a rubber spatula until well combined. on baking sheets lined with silpats (because i dont like a mess) use a cookie scooper (small ice cream scoop) to scoop out cookies, about 1 1/2 inchs apart. place sheets in freezer or fridge to firm. meanwhile preheat oven to 375, bake cookies for 12-13 minutes until golden brown and puffy. let cool for 5 minutes before removing from sheet, place on cookie rack to cool and try not to eat them all while they are still warm. trust me they are delicious this way so it will be hard, but you can do it! be strong! -Enjoy