I Can Hear the Bells and Boyers Tradition

Good Evening Friends!

What a weekend! I hope you survived the 95 degree weather today and that you have cooled off since mid-afternoon! I had a weekend full of wonderfullness, the biggest news being one of my absolute best friends in the whole entire world is ENGAGED!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Although I knew it was coming, when I saw her the same excitement and emotions overwhelmed me and I couldn't help but scream like a little girl and give her the hugest hug in the world! I was soooo proud of Ethan (her now fiance, that still sounds so weird!) for pulling everything off. He had every detail planned and he fooled her GOOD! (She thought they were spending the weekend in KC, but instead he made a pit-stop in Manhattan to propose first :) As I watched them this weekend, I saw their love illuminating. They have always been a fabulous couple, don't get my wrong, but this weekend there was something different. There was a twinkle in her eye, and he looked at her adoringly. It was so cute for me to watch them together and I can only hope that I have that same look someday :)

ENGAGED WITH A RING AND ALL!!!!!!

See, isn't she just glowing?!?!?! I'm so lucky to call her a best friend :) :) :)

Since I have a recent obsession with blogging, I have found tons of great blogs to follow and gain ideas from. I follow a blog called "Your Cup of Cake" and it is full of fabulous cupcake recipes! I was just yearning to make cupcakes for something, so Shelbi and Ethan's engagement was the perfect opportunity! When they got into town, I greeted them with...

...chocolate banana cupcakes with a peanut butter icing! They were mighty good if you ask me, but I cannot take credit for the recipe. (At this point, if I was a tech savvy girl I would post a link to the blog where I got this recipe, but my name is Brittany Boyers, so I will just reference the site and you can go to it if you so desire :) Your Cup of Cake is the name of the blog!

Shelbi has also never bought a wedding magazine (...I wish I could say the same for myself, whoops!) so of course I had to purchase a few wedding magazines for her to get started with this fun process that is ahead!

^^^^^^Pretty artsy right? RIGHT.^^^^^^

We spent most of Friday and Saturday morning catching up and talking about the proposal, and then went to an authentic KC barbecue place for lunch, and then off we headed to a Royals game Saturday night!

We met up with Allison and her brother, Will, when we got to the game! We were definitely enjoying some sun rays at this time, yikes it was hot there for a while!

AH the happy couple! I spy a pretty, gorgeous, shiny ring!!!

My sweet boy :) :) :)

After the game some other friends came over to see Shelbi and Ethan and we played a game of Z-Ball which is basically the best game ever! It is played on a pool table and it is super easy to learn and way intense. However, it can be dangerous, so be cautious as you play ;)

Today, we tackled moving my big stuff up to Manhattan. I am going to attempt to re-create these situations that occured today to you, however I will probably fail miserably. As you read, try and create a mental image of my family participating in these events.

We rented a Uhaul, and thus begins the Boyers tradition. We cannot go ANYWHERE without having some sort of drama. Someone is running late, someone is sick, someone is mad, someone is frustrated, someone is lost, something doesn't go according to plan, etc. etc. etc. So why would I think that a simple trip to Manhattan would be any different than any other trip we have taken? It took us literally an hour to load everything into the Uhaul, and all we had was 2 couches, a TV cabinet, a desk, and some random knick knack crap. Oh wait, 2 couches you ask? Why do you need TWO couches? Welllll, of course the couch I wanted to put in the house was most likely too small to fit through our small, old fashioned doorways. So we spent an hour loading TWO couches into the Uhaul on the off chance that the first one would not fit. Okay, stick with me, now the story gets really good.

We finally arrive to Manhattan, and it is the hotest, most humid day KC has seen in a month, topping at 95 degrees. We take the preferred couch out of the Uhaul and attempt to get it through the back door. It goes through that doorway pretty easily, however we sat with the couch in the kitchen for about 30 minutes strategizing the best way to fit it into the family room. My father, being the brilliant engineer taht he is, decides we should flip the couch vertical so that we can turn it and try and slide it into the room. Good idea in theory, but not when you have my dad and Cameron, and two weak, not work horse women like my mother and myself. My dad ends up getting trapped on our stairway and is hidden from view of everyone else. He is yelling orders at us trying to get the couch turned the right way to get the dang thing into the room. Everyone is now hot and sweating and my father threatened to take his shirt off, so that was our cue to hurry up and get this couch in before things got real awkward! Seriously, after about an HOUR of this, we managed to slide the couch into the room. We then spent 15 minutes talking about what we should have done, and what we should do in the future to get the thing back out of the house! (That will be another adventure that will be discussed later).

Here the couch is in the room. Next time you see this couch, please remember this little story I just told and the absolute TURMOIL we went through to get it into the stinking house!!!

Overall, it was a FABULOUS weekend with so many great memories!! I can't wait to start wedding planning with Shelbi, and I can't wait to use the new couch in our house in like a month and a half!! Have a wonderful week!

Until then,

Brittany

Not Enough Hours in a Day

It is 11:16 and there were about a million things I was supposed to get done after work today and I accomplished two things, and they weren't even that fun.

1. I looked for a new phone. If you know me at all, you know this was not a fun adventure. I hate getting new phones. I get so frustrated with learning how to use them, and I almost never like the new phone better than the old one. But, my phone sucks and my dad pretty much forced me out the door to look at them, so I did. And I found one...it's decent, not my favorite, but it will have to do. This phone will be purchased soon...ick.

2. I cleaned my room. Another unfortunate way to spend my Thursday night. I am moving half of my bedroom to my new bedroom in Manhattan, so there was junk sitting everywhere because of the in-between stage I am currently in. Beyond this, I have friends coming from out of town this weekend (I am SOOOOOO EXCITED FOR THEM TO BE IN KC!!!!) so I needed to clean so they could actually get in and out of my room. GRRR. It's done, and you can once again see the floor which is always a good thing.

I did accomplish those two things, but there was still so much more I needed to get done!! Outfits for a photo shoot need to be chosen, birthday gift wrapping needed to be done, ingredients for cupcakes needed to be bought, Royals tickets needed to be purchased, ick and so much more. Good thing tomorrow is Friday and I might have a little bit of time to accomplish some of these things before my friends get into town. The next post will be so exciting because it will recap my weekend which currently looks like it will consist of cupcakes, cute lunches, Royals games, fun photoshoot, and moving!! So you know what that means...STAY TUNED!!

Until then,

Brittany

Happy Father's Day!!

I hope everyone is having a fabulous Father's Day so far! We are getting ready to do dinner somewhere (BBQ is Dad's favorite, so I'm sure that's where we will end up :) I hope you all are fortunate enough to find some time to spend with your dad today. I am so blessed to have such an incredible father figure placed in my life. My dad is devoted, steady, loyal, truthful, strong, selfless, giving, generous, hard working, and humble. He has always set such a great example of what it means to live a godly life and has shown me how a real man treats a woman. I am so glad he is in my life and that today, we get to celebrate him!! Enjoy this picture montage and have a fabulous Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all you dads!! :)

Until then,

Brittany

Day Date

Cam and I haven't been on a legitimate date in a while forever, so we decided to go on a day date today! We had lots of fun plans, however not everything went exactly according to plan. My dear friend, Kayla, blogged about a delicious looking pizza place called Blue Grotto in Brookside. It had fabulous outdoor seating, so we decided to give a go.

We are boring and ordered a pepporoni pizza, but it was delicious!

Although the above pictures make the outdoor seating look FABULOUS, we found this to be not necessarily true today. We sat down around 11:15 to eat, and we told the hostess we wanted to sit outside because it was a "beautiful day." Welllll, it was beautiful for about 5 minutes until the two wasps started swarming around our table area. Just ignore them, right? Well let me tell you a little tid bit of knowledge about Cameron Christopher...wasps are his absolute enemy. I seriously think he would rather sleep with a lion, jump out of a moving airplane, or sit in an igloo for 24 hours before he would want to be within 2 miles of a wasp. It was impossible to have a normal conversation with him, because his little eyes were constantly focused on the dang wasp. After getting rather frustrated with having a conversation with myself, I suggested we go inside to eat. He said no, he would take care of it. He proceeded to take the pillows we were sitting on swat at the wasp (isn't that the LAST thing you are supposed to do with an insect swarming around you?!) Anywho, he eventually killed the wasp, however the rest of the lunch was spent complaining (from he and I) about how hot it was outside. GEEEEZ, not the lunch we were planning on.

After lunch, we drove around and looked at houses down around the plaza area. Looking at houses have become our new fetish. Last weekend we went on a house tour with my parents and looked at model homes, and we love seeing beat up houses and talking about how we can fix them up and make it our own! We found some great ones today on our way downtown...

We loved the country/Victorian look of this one, and the best part was...

...it was for sale! We should have made an offer...haha, well maybe not, but we will keep that type of house in mind for the future!

On our way downtown, we also spotted TWO weddings, so of course I made Cameron turn around so I could be a massive creeper and take pictures!

We even found a couple in a carriage! So cute :) :)

We shopped around the plaza and had a fun time looking at stores with things that were way out of our price range! I love the stuff in Anthropologie, but holy moly, we found a cute shirt for $149, no thank you! After getting bored of shopping (which was mighty quick, do you know Cameron Thomsen? Shopping for him is short lived always), we went over to McCormick and Schmick's for some yummy dessert!

Oh the chocolate bag...if you have never had this, you are missing out on life. For those of you out of town, next time you come to KC force me to take you to get this, you will not regret it.

I also ordered some delicious lemonade that hit the spot on a hot summer day :)

Although our day didn't go exactly according to plan, we still had a great time and it was nice to spend some alone time together :) (We don't get much of that around the Boyers' household).

Take your loved one out for a nice date sometime soon, they are so fun and so worth it! :)

Until then,

Brittany

DIY Inspiration

I have continued work on my room for next year, even though doing so is rather pointless given I will only be there for a short while. I keep telling myself I will soon use all of it for a guest room, but some other important steps in life have to happen first before I will have a husband, house, and guest room :) Either way, I have made some more progress with fun DIY ideas for cheap that I would like to share with you as inspiration!

I had all my suppies ready to go to turn some boring household items, into beautiful creations for a bedroom!

I took a plain brown frame from Wal Mart ($2) and used some excess fabric, and spray adhesive and turned it into...

this! Super cute and a good use of extra fabric if you happen to have any that matches your room colors!

I was super stoked about the hand made frames!

I also bought some blue spray paint that matched my room and spray painted a mirror to give the room a modern edge and add some color!

Before...                                                                               After! :)

I also had some wooden shelves from the house that needed painting, along with a hot pink full length mirror, so we attempted to spray paint that..

...but it turned out to be somewhat of an epic fail...the mirror at least (can you see the pink shining through?! Ordinarilly pink is totally my thing, but it just wasn't working with the ambiance of the rest of the room :)

Beyond these DIY things for the house, I have also found some fun DIY wedding ideas (not that I'm looking...haha) but they are just fun ideas so I thought I would share!

For a summer wedding it can get hot, so here is a fun idea you can make for your wedding! On one side is the program for the wedding and the other side can have a romantic wedding quote, or a picture of the couple!

It's an easy DIY project that can also bring personality to your wedding ceremony.

I loved this idea too! You can find some wallpaper that matches your wedding, or just a fun pattern that you like and it can serve as a little flower holder for the end of your aisle or pews. Fun, cute, and adds character!

I'm sure you have all seen brown lunch sacks before, but what a fun way to light up your wedding at night! You can grab colored bags of your choice and put a cheap little candle on the inside and it can light up the sidewalk or outside of your reception venue! Inexpensive and so cute!

This is a fun idea I have never seen before. You take string of any color and wrap it all around a blown up balloon. Afer it has been placed on the balloon, spray the string, and then pop the balloon, and this is what you are left with! Fun string balls that look so romantic on a table at a reception!

And last but certainly not least, my personal favorite, stenciled coffee cups! You can find cheap white coffee cups at the dollar store or Wal Mart and then stencil on the word "LOVE" or whatever you want! You can then fill the cups with flowers or whatever you want and this makes a cute idea for a guest book table or somewhere else in the wedding!

I hope these house/wedding ideas have inspired you to do more DIY projects! You can easily do ALL of these things I PROMISE! If I can conquer them, you can too!! :)

Until then,

Brittany

Good Food, Great Friends

I love food. It's no suprise to ANY of you about this statement. I love food, and even more I love GOOD food. I am a sucker for chain food restaurants, (there is just something so American about a good old fashioned Applebess) but I also love finding new restaurants to try out. Last weekend we met our friends Augie and Allison at a new burger place called Blanc Burger.

It was very contemporary and modern looking on the inside, but they also had really cute seating outside. It was a beautiful night and a great evening to catch up with friends over some good food. Cam got a delicious chocolate shake, Augie embarked on some great looking beer (if beer is your thing that is) and Allison and I got a cherry limeade drink that was FABULOUS. We all ordered hamburgers, duh, and they were sooo good and we got a side of fries that came looking like this...

They came in cute little mini shopping carts with some awesome dipping sauces. Basically, if you are looking for a fun night out, this new place would be a great selection!

Another thing I love is dessert. Yes, dessert is fatty, sugary, and so not good for you, but I just can't say no to those things. D and AJ wanted to get together with Cam to talk about his internship, so we had a chill night at my house and had wine...

and Tippins cheesecake...

It was a delicious combo, and it was great company as well :)

It was a fun night that proved, there really is nothing better than good food and great friends :) I hope you are able to get together with some friends soon over some delicious meals and catch up just like we were able to do :)

Until then,

Brittany