It's the little things that matter...

All those small details are what go into all that wedding planning. It took a year for Jordan and Stephanie to see their vision for their wedding, make decisions, and carry it out. We got to help out with some of the decorating and desserts at the ceremony and reception. Here are some pictures for you to enjoy (and for us to remember!) all of those details:

The Ceremony

The Wedding Clothes
(Check out those rhinestones that line her veil and Jordan's black & white shoes!)

Notice how the rouching on Stephanie's gown is repeated in the dress that Lizzie wore. Details details!!

Jackson felt so handsome in his bow-tie and boutineer, and all the guys (Jeremy too!) got to wear a HOT PINK tie!!

The Bridal Party

Maid of Honor, Bridesmaids, Groomsmen, Trevor as Best Man, Logan as Ring Bearer, Lizzie as Flower Girl

The Reception & Decor

This last bit of fun was a treat for everyone! The candy table was a hit! The table itself was darling - complete with tag labels and little scoopers for each candy. We saw more adults coming back for seconds and thirds than children!

It was a beautiful day that ended with a rockin' fun party. The wedding itself was the most meaningful part of the day, but what made it feel even more special were all those little things that were all in the details...

Jordan & Stephanie got married!!

October 9, 2010

Jordan and Stephanie said, "I do" last Saturday. They had a one year engagement (it was an eternity!!) and we were all so happy that their wedding day had arrived. Jordan looked handsome in his black tux. Stephanie looked beautiful in her white gown. They both professed their love for each other in their vows and shared some chuckles through the ceremony. Everything was perfect.

Congrats to the new Mr. & Mrs. Duran. We love you guys. And we are thrilled to see you begin your new life together!

The BEST Waffles of ALL TIME!

Last Sunday, a delicious treat was delivered to our kitchen at breakfast time. It was one delicious pumpkin waffle with homemade buttermilk syrup. Oh. My. Goodness! It was a fall flavor explosion in my mouth! I decided to replicate this deliciousness and served up these waffles for dinner last night. They were a hit with everyone! We have found a new fall favorite. Jeremy has already requested these waffles for Halloween breakfast.

Here are the recipes if you'd like to try them at your house:


Pumpkin Waffles
(Most of this recipe was taken from THIS BLOG. I made some of my own adjustments.)

1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 3/4 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup canned pumpkin (Do not use "Pumpkin Pie Filling" make sure you get 100% pumpkin)
1/4 c. vegetable oil

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat waffle iron.
2. Mix all ingredients in your standing mixer scraping sides to make sure all dry ingredients mix in well.
3. Use 1/3 cup batter for each 4 inch waffle.
4. Cook until lightly browned - they will come out a little doughy, which adds to the pumpkin pie texture!
5. Drizzle with homemade Buttermilk Syrup and enjoy!

Makes about 8 4-inch waffles.


Buttermilk Syrup
(from AllRecipes.com)

• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 tablespoons corn syrup
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

In a saucepan, stir together the sugar, buttermilk, butter, corn syrup, and baking soda. Bring to a boil, and cook for 7 minutes. Remove from the heat, and stir in the vanilla. Syrup will have a foamy texture - make sure it does not spill over the side of your pan!

I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do...

Walk up to our home and you will be greeted by a cheerful sight. (The spooky stuff will come later, I promise!) A pumpkin patch on our porch! (CVS was sporting some $5 off coupons on Halloween decor - we scored $15 worth of FREE pumpkins!) Come Halloween week, all of these pumpkins will be carved in to masterfully creepy creations...

Now, step through our front door and enjoy my take on a Halloween wreath. A dollar store sparkly skeleton encircled with some black dollar store garland. Oooooooo... spooky....

Enjoy a few Halloween touches in our front living room. This "skulls in a jar idea" came from a blog I stalk. As you can see, the dollar store has been very good to us this year...

Atop the piano you will find one of our favorite skeleton friends, Jack Skellington. He takes the place of honor above the focal point in this room. Notice he is encircled with more of that awesome black garland.

Creative inspiration comes from anywhere. This year, I happened across several ideas on random blogs linked through other blogs. I stumbled upon this blog and instantly fell in love with the candy corn candles. Since we had about 12 pounds of candy corn sitting in my living room (thank you Jordan & Stephanie's wedding reception!) I figured it would be an inexpensive and super cute decorating item.

Come into the kitchen and see the fall festival above our cabinets. Mr. Jack-o-lantern is peeking out from the other pumpkins in the patch.

For Family Home Evening we scared up some little ghosties out of suckers, rubber bands, and basic white napkins. Our kids have the best time crafting these small spookies. They are quick and easy and are age appropriate for our crowd ages 4 - 35. :)

And finally, the piece de resistance, my favorite little vingette this year, hiding behind glass in the TV cabinet, the skull with spooky clock and melting candle.

I don't know what it is, but the skulls and skeletons are speaking to me this year. Maybe they're speaking to you too? Happy Halloween decorating!

Padres vs. Dodgers

While on our week-long trip to San Diego this summer we decided to take in a Padres game. Jeremy loves to take advantage of every opportunity to take the kids to watch professional sports. I like going to the game too, but not for any sports inclined reason. I like the smells, the sights, and especially the crowd watching. The Padres were playing the Dodgers on the night we went to the game.

Logan played baseball for with our local club baseball program and, coincidentally, the name of his team was the Dodgers! Ha! Logan had a major ethical struggle when trying to decide who to root for on this night. "Daddy loves the Padres. So I like the Padres too. We are in San Diego after all. But I was a Dodger. They are my team." He went round and round with himself all night trying to decide back and forth which team would be his. Finally, towards the end of the game, he made his choice. He chose the Dodgers. Good boy. You stick with your guns Logie Man!

My favorite part of the game is the beginning. Yep, the Star Spangled Banner. It makes me cry every time, with the stadium reeking of patriotism and waving flags. But most of the time we're too late to hear it. So when we finally get our booties in our seats before the first pitch, or tip-off, or kick-off, that is a rare moment. Tonight was one of those few and far between times when we actually got to hear the National Anthem! Here it is in all it's glory for you to enjoy. Check out that marine's awesome baritone voice:

You can see just as the video cuts out the huge helicopters that did a fly over at the end of the song. They came out of nowhere! IT. WAS. AWESOME! There were 3 of them. And inside every one were several service men in their orange jumpsuits waving at the crowd! They were THAT close! Bummer I quit recording at just the wrong moment. :(

Here was our view at the start of the game. Beautiful sunset. It was so perfect that it looked fake. Does it not look like a sound stage for a movie set? Maybe Mary Poppins just before "Step-in Time" with all those rooftops?? Here's a close-up for you to really appreciate that saturated pink skyline. I pay attention to the important details here. What? What game? Oh, yeah.

A close up of Logan's Dodgers

The highlight of Jeremy's night was right here. On the scoreboard. No, it had nothing to do with the score (can't remember who won, actually...). It was his FACE on the crowd cam!! He and Logan had 5 seconds of fame as the camera filmed their faces and streamed them up on the screen. What?! That was a once in a lifetime opportunity!! Wow. It was a most bizarre feeling to see a loved one's face so big and larger than life up on that scoreboard screen. Jeremy reveled in his new fame. He rubbed it in real good to the rest of us that "were not good enough" to catch the attention of the camera. Thanks sweetie. Thanks for stealing our dream of baseball billboard fame.

Towards the end of the night we realized that our time enjoying the game was finished. Here was our first clue that the kids were done with the game - ipods. The ipod glaze took over and we knew then that it was time to call it a night.

We had fun while our energy lasted. Late nights and little kids are never a good mix. Padres and Dodgers you played hard and you entertained us for most of the evening. We'll be back to see you again someday.

San Diego Children's Museum

In August our family took a week-long trip down to San Diego. Jeremy was in a conference most of the week so the kids and I took advantage of our time and headed out on the town. Our first stop was the San Deigo Children's Museum.

This children's museum was awesome! Everything was interactive and all of the activities were included with your paid admission. Here were some of the fun exhibits:

Chariot Races

Barn Crafting

City Blocks
you're never to old to play with blocks...

Sculpture Painting

Clay Sculpting

Downstairs was the bounce house. Next to the bounce house stood this enormous beautiful scroll work structure! It was like a massive birdcage - minus the birds. Beautiful, eh?

Rock Wall

After all that fun we headed outside for a lunch break. This little park was where Trevor uttered the classic line regarding all the homeless fellows in the park, "Shhh... the people are trying to take their naps." Oh, it was a sweet moment. He didn't want to wake them! That's my boy - he knows that sleep is an essential part of life.

We found out later that this park was directly across the street from where they hold the annual Comic Con! Someday we WILL attend that gathering. And now we know where it is!

Whenever we get the chance to visit a children's museum I'm always reminded that there is a kid that lives inside all of us. Even our older boys that are slowly becoming "too cool" for whatever-silly-actitivity-mommy-has-planned enjoy playing, or crafting, or building, or painting. It was a great day trip and we recommend it to any family making a trip to San Diego.

Girl's Weekend to Solvang

As a final hurrah for the summer, the Ward family girls decided to take a weekend for some relaxing rejuvenation time. Our destination of choice - Solvang, CA.

We had one full day to do whatever our hearts desired. And what did we do? What do girls LOVE to do? We shopped! Solvang is a sweet shop-filled town. The Christmas store had us enamored for a good hour or so. It was jam-packed with ornament after ornament in every shape and style.

Kaleigh and Kelly enjoying some glass blown under the sea ornaments

Meg thought the rodent tree was cute while I enjoyed the music tree...

Of course we had to stop at the cupcake shoppe. This window display was soooo cute! And those cupcakes were as delicious as they look.

Here's proof that we were actually in Solvang. What a cute bunch of girls!

The building style and charm of this town feels almost like walking the streets of Disneyland. The streets are clean. The shops are quaint. The people are kind and friendly. Although, we didn't see anyone wearing those Dutch wooden clog shoes...

We ate a yummy lunch at a small outdoor cafe and then decided to catch a girly movie that afternoon. - Eat, Pray, Love. This movie had just come out and we are all Julia Roberts fans.

It's always fun to see your favorites on the big screen. We were all entertained by this show. It was neat to travel the world with Julia's character and see her eat all of the great foods. I read one review of this movie and thought it was spot on: Of the three (Eat, Pray, Love) verbs in the title, it was the "Eat" portion of the movie that the viewers enjoyed most. We got to see Julia EAT and EAT and EAT! And what was she eating? CARBS!! Pizza. and pasta. and gelato. Oh, it was fabulous. If the movie stars can do it then so can we!

Here are some of the favorite quotes from the show:

"Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit."

"I'm having a relationship with my pizza... I have no interest in being obese - I'm just through with the guilt." Tomorrow we're going to go buy some bigger jeans!"

I give this movie 2 1/2 Thanksgiving turkey breakfasts out of 5. My low rating is because of the overall message/moral of the movie. It just wasn't in line with my own personal values. Surely a rental, but still entertaining.


After the movie we had another fun adventure...car trouble! All of us ladies put our heads together under the hood and tried to figure out the problem. (How many women does it take to fix a car? Uh huh.) After calling all of our husbands we finally figured out the problem. The battery in Aimee's car decided it was time to pass on. One phone call to AAA, one run to the automotive store, and one hour later we were back in business.

Kristen, this is for you!

As I said before, we did our fair share of shopping this weekend. After our car repair fun we finished off our evening at Ross. Everyone found something sweet to take home. Kristen especially enjoyed this muumuu. She had no problem trying it on and modeling down the middle of the store. LOVE that inhibition!!





All in all it was a great trip. Hubby, thanks for urging me to go and convincing me to leave you at home with the kiddies. Ladies, thanks for the fun and the memories.