My soon to be sister in law...

Last weekend we had Sara's bridal shower at my house. Sara is going to be marrying Ian's brother, Zenos on June 2nd this year. Only a few more weeks to go! I had so much fun planning Sara's shower for her!!! I was really excited to try a few new things that worked out beautifully, like using real table linens, getting fresh flowers, having hanging chinese lanterns above our heads, and bringing my kitchen table outside for Sara to open her presents on. It was really fun being creative and thinking outside the normal box I usually do when throwing parties. My favorite part of planning for the shower was spending half the day on Friday with Noelle working on the flowers. She taught me so much about floral design. I'm surprised at how much I didn't know! It is harder than it looks. I couldn't have done it without her and by the time we were done, we not only had 4 beautiful center pieces but we also had a little baby jar of flowers for each table as well and a big beautiful bouquet for the food table, and lots of other various sized jars full of flowers all around the yard. It was so beautiful! And my mom was so nice to pick up and drop off all the beautiful white chairs we rented. What a load off my mind! When Sara came over, she looked so stunning with her hair all curled and wearing a pretty white dress with a beautiful crown of flowers her mother made her, with a little veil in the back and little rhinestones in the middle of the flowers. We decided we wanted to have a tostada bar so after a trip to the Dollar tree, we had lots of beautiful platters and bowls to work with. Sara, her mom and cousin Betsy made half the food and Mila and I provided the other half. It was super yummy! I just love me some good mexican food! Sara's mom sure knows how to cook! yuuuummmmm! We played some fun games like a scavenger hunt in our purses, present bingo, guessing games and some other active games Sara's mom planned for us. I think the funniest one was a game Sara's mom brought. She used shoe boxes and tied ribbons through it so it was able to be tied around our waists... The boxes were sealed shut with the lids on, but a hole was cut out of the middle of the box. Sara's mom filled the shoe boxes with limes and made us bounce around as much as we could so we could get as many limes out of the box that we could within a minute. Everyone was laughing. We had lots of gracious volunteers. I was thankful to Rachel for volunteering first because at first no one really wanted to do it, but once they saw how funny it was we had more volunteers for the next couple rounds. Then we took some pictures, lit some candles and Sara opened her presents while we served out the beautiful white and yellow cake Sara's mom made. It was a really fun and beautiful night. I hope Sara enjoyed it as much as me. Hopefully more! 

The cute invitation that Katie made for me! She did such a beautiful job!!!

The girls were such a big help the morning of the shower... first of all, they stayed out of the way, so that was good! And when I needed their help setting up tables and chairs, they were totally helping! They would each take a whole chair by themselves and go put it in place at one of the tables. They are awesome!

I made a banner with yellow letters and paper doilies as a background. It was really cute! It said, Sara (heart) Zenos. We had pretty tulle balls and lanterns hanging in the air. Ian was such a great help to me that day setting up, cleaning the yard, mowing, edging and hanging string so I could hang decorations. 

Pretty flowers!!!

I made homemade lemonade for the first time on Friday night. I'm glad it turned out pretty good! I'm actually not a big lemonade fan myself so I was nervous making it... I wasn't exactly sure what bitter/sweet ratio I was supposed to make, but it was completely gone and I even had an extra pitcher in the house, so that's a good sign! And then we had nice cold water.  

All the guests. I don't know more than half the people here, but we had a nice turnout! And I got to see some of the girls I used to teach when I was a young women leader because they go to singles ward with Sara. That was really fun for me!

To the left are the pictures of the jumping lime game I talked about earlier and the pictures on the right are our newlywed question game. We asked Sara a bunch of questions about Zenos. She got 4 or 5 wrong, which is pretty good! Everytime she got a question wrong, we wrapped her up in tulle. She had bracelets and a tiara on made out of tulle. The picture on the bottom right is Sara's cousin Betsy. She was a big help to me during the shower! =)

The beautiful cake! It was lemon on top and chocolate on the bottom 2 tiers and the chocolate had chocolate chips in it! It was soooo moist and yummy! Sara's mom is an awesome baker! This was Kira's favorite part of the day. =)

Our party favors were felt roses that we put onto hair clips. And our game prizes were some little gift boxes Sara got and I made little satin roses on hair clips with pearls in the middle to clip onto the bags for a pretty look. 

This is the cute apron and hot pads I made for Sara. Krystal helped me make the apron, I wouldn't have been able to do it without her!!! I also gave her a cupcake stand to go with her "cupcake" themed gift. We gave her some pretty lingerie and some flour/sugar jars to use in her kitchen. Rachel made her an awesome insulated pyrex dish carrier. I wish I had a picture of it. It was so awesome! My mom gave Sara some nice pots and pans. She got more lingerie, some home decor items, dishes, lots of baking things and casserole dishes. Sara is almost set in her kitchen!

The kids at the party were so funny. They enjoyed themselves on the swingset and on the trampoline. I'm so happy we have a fun backyard for kids to play in when they come over. Zoey went in the little play house and snuck some cake in there. She found a nice peaceful place to eat. She's so smart!