It’s been a while. I kinda stopped blogging because I haven’t been doing anything other than wedding junk and in an effort not to bore you and turn this into a wedding blog I distanced myself, but it’s May now. I get married in 17 days. I can’t believe how quickly it went by!

Now I know I said I didn’t want to turn this into a wedding blog, but I mean…it’s my WEDDING! I have to post a couple more times about it, right?

I enlisted the help of my friend Chris again to create our wedding invites and I am OBSESSED with them so I had to share. I had the invite letter-pressed and they came out PERFECTLY!

I loved this gold ribbon belly band. Loved it so much that I bought every spool they had, but it still wasn’t enough so half our guests received lace belly bands instead.

I can’t wait for our big day!

Well he was the man I went to when I needed some amazing Save The Dates! I couldn’t be happier that I did because look at how amazing they turned out!

I’m in absolute love with the way they turned out and cannot wait to see the invites he’s designing for me!

I traveled to Sonoma and to Florida a couple times, painted, sewed and beaded my little heart out, turned 30, moved back to San Diego after 6 years in Los Angeles, got engaged, traveled to San Luis Obispo for a wedding and made it a mini road trip with my new fiance, suffered through time away from Ryan while he was on the road, reunited with him in Vegas, visited an old friend in Portland and met a blog friend IN REAL LIFE, reunited with Ryan again in Canby, Oregan, did some wedding crafts, dressed up for Halloween, lost my best friend (I love you Emma girl), adopted Elvira the Dachsund, bought a house and enjoyed the shit out of life.

So Ryan and I are not very serious people. The thought of staring longingly into each others eyes makes me feel uncomfortable and gives me one of those uncontrollable nervous laughs.

I literally could not look at Ryan without laughing.

The trick was to turn him away from me and I collected my composure.

I started to get the hang of things.

I felt very comfortable in this one because it was underneath the torture museum exhibit. Having typed that just now I realize how twisted I sound…

I added a little friend in this one. You see him?

After our little tromp through the “woods” (hey. It’s as close as we can get in San Diego) we headed out to the “big” city for some night life.

Love is in the air.

Now that I have your attention with my sweet graphics…if you haven’t fallen victim to my annoying tweets and facebook posts about my 50% off sale then maybe you’re one of the lucky ones because I’m only going to post here about it once .

If you haven’t visited the shop to see what’s available please do! The sale lasts from now until November 30th when you use the code thankful

Browse my handmade art, jewelry and more! Custom items also available at 50% off.

Disappointed, but not yet hopeless we headed out with our real estate agent (AKA my best friends mom). She brought us to this little beauty and Ryan and I fell in love as soon as we walked in the door.

Ignore the dead grass. That is on purpose because the HOA is putting in new front landscaping. My dad owns a fence company and makes beautiful iron gates so he’s going to make us something pretty for our front gate with “puppy pickets” to keep Elly safe and free to run her little heart out.

I love the plants in the walkway behind the gate. My brown thumb will surely kill those in a matter of days! Maybe I should invest in a landscaper .

The tree in the front yard has what looks like apples! Fruit trees make me very happy. I think I might want to plant some more in the backyard too!

The front entryway is one of my favorite things about the upgrades that were made to the house by the flippers. the tile design gives the house more character and says, “welcome to my home! Take a drink, have a seat and stay a while!” OK, so maybe it doesn’t say all that, but it’s pretty, right?

To the left of the entryway is the kitchen with updated granite counters and backsplash. We’re going to put pretty crystal knobs on all the cabinets to give it a personal touch.

Our dining area will have a little round table and a baker’s rack. There is no overhead lighting in the dining area for some reason, but eventually we’d like to have an electrician come in and spruce up the lighting and add a chandelier.

The living room on the other side of the kitchen wall has great flooring and a fireplace that matches the tile in the entryway/kitchen/bathrooms. I’ve never had my own fireplace before. I can’t wait to light a fire around Christmas time and snuggle up on the couch. I’m also excited to mount my TV on the wall. Having lived in rental apartments for a decade, I have not had this luxury. It’s the little things, right?

Because the house has a formal dining area and a large eat in kitchen we’ve decided to transform the formal dining space into Ryan’s den. He’s always wanted a big leather chair and one of those globes that are actually bar carts where he can sit and read and write and enjoy some man time.

There are three bedrooms so we will have our master, a guest room and a craft/art room. Eventually we will need to replace the carpet and maybe put nicer closet doors on, but those are nit-picky things for down the road.

The bathrooms aren’t much, but they do the job.

We are going to turn the backyard into the yard of our dreams. There isn’t much space, but it’s just enough to fit an outdoor bar, seating, a hot tub and some pretty plants and veggies.

Well, that’s our future home! Hope you like the little tour. I can’t wait to get in there and start decorating everything! I’ve already started decorating in my head which is dangerous territory before you have the keys in your hand, but so far so good. No hiccups in Escrow so far *knock on wood*

Since we wanted to do a couple’s costume like we’ve done every other Halloween we’ve spent together, I came up with a plan.

He would be a Killer Klown and I would be his cotton candy cacoon victim!

His costume was easy: clown outfit, Killer Klown mask and a gun I found at Disneyland that looked similar to the one in the movie

For my costume (which I threw together on Halloween night) I made the hat using fabric and cardboard and sewed the cotton candy bottom from felt and added a sequin belt for some extra flare.

I took the day after Halloween off so I could go out and enjoy myself with one of Ryan’s friends/bandmates. Ryan was a hit, but nobody knew what I was supposed to be. I guess that’s what you get for dressing as a victim from a terrible 80′s horror movie.

Since Emma passed away I decided that I didn’t want to rush out and buy a new pet just to replace her. She couldn’t be replaced and I knew I would just be disappointed if I tried to, but it wasn’t long before I found myself wandering into pet stores and writing down the dates of pet adoption events. Part of me felt guilty, but I knew the right pet would find me at the right time. And that’s when we met Elvira “Elly” Thomas.

She is a mini dachshund and was just a few weeks old when we met her. One day while I was at work, Ryan went to check her out and as soon as their eyes locked he knew she was the one.

Emma was an older dog when I rescued her so I was not quite prepared for life in puppyville. Elvira chews on anything and everything, cries like a baby until she gets what she wants (which is usually cuddle time) and she is so attached to Ryan and me that the thought of being alone with my parents sends her into hysteria.

Danielle and Tammy were the sweetest ever and sent her some new clothes to keep her warm this winter

She loves to cuddle and burrow under blankets, but what she REALLY loves is to run around like a psycho in the backyard of my parent’s house. She is a little ball of energy and hops around like a bunny. She eats grass, carries sticks around, and bites our family cat in the face when he won’t play with her.

After a few restless nights, countless ungodly amounts of piss and crap and the innards of what used to be a doggy bed all over the floor I thought oh dear God what have we done? But when I look at her little angel face, her big floppy ears and tiny little legs as she smothers me with kisses just for being her mommy, it kind of makes all this doggy mommyhood worth it.

Via ♥

I’ve wanted to make our wedding very “Tera and Ryan” and sprinkle in a lot of personal touches so I decided to make these plaques!

It’s even more special because Ryan, The Love of My Life helped me craft!

We bought the wood at the craft store and used gold and green paint to “antique” them. After we did this I laid out the font and used a burning pen to burn the letters in. If I had to do it over again I would have burned the letters BEFORE we painted, but I was winging it. Overall I like how they turned out.

One thing I’ve ALWAYS had a hard time with is over scheduling myself. In Middle School I was in band, cheerleading, the dance team and in the school musical all at the same time. Luckily for me, when I got to High school I wasn’t allowed to do band and cheerleading so I had to choose one and devote my focus. I felt like I needed a little devoted focus again in life.

Another thing is that I started getting annoyed with blogging. I went against everything I’ve ever said about “blogging as if everyone is watching, even if you have 1 follower” and thought to myself, who the hell is even reading this anyway?! Why am I spending hours putting together a DIY that NOBODY is going to try? Blogging is stupid and I hate everything. That’s when I realized that blogging and I needed a trial separation. If you love something, let it go and all that junk.

The truth is, I love blogging. I love writing and telling pointless stories and posting photos of random shit only myself and my few readers care about. The added pressure (that bloggers impose on themselves) of collecting as many followers as possible and being one of the cool kids on the blogger block had me hating one of the things I loved. I was getting annoyed with the follower chasers posting about their goal for X amount of followers by the end of the month. To me, thousands of followers does not equal success. If you’re posting the same shit with a different color bow on it then you’re not presenting anything worthwhile.

So I’m still cutting back on the blogging. I’m not pressuring myself to post everyday or even every other day, but only when I have something I want to say or show. I don’t mind if I have 0 followers, or people think my DIYs are pointless and stupid. A lot of what I do is pointless, like watching reality TV, but most people do it still, right?

Talk to you soon.