Flowers

With some time, a little patience, and the generous help of a few friends, putting together the wedding flowers was fairly easy. See the process here. This was by far my most favorite DIY wedding project!

These posts will be the last for a few weeks while we're off to Costa Rica! Hopefully we'll return with tons of photos and a few stories.

Details

More paper projects for the wedding: programs, table place cards and menus.

Lemon Chicken

This is my hands-down new favorite recipe, passed along from Kendall. It is really simple to throw together, especially if you have a mandolin (the cutting tool, not the instrument).

Here is what you need:

Lemons
Zucchini or yellow squash, or a combination of the two
“Thin and fancy” chicken cutlets (or regular chicken breasts pounded thin)
Feta cheese
Cous cous or rice or small pasta
EVOO, salt, pepper, dried oregano (you probably have all of these in your pantry)

Here is how you assemble the dish:

* Line baking pan with lemon slices, and top with chicken cutlets
* Slice zucchini into coins and toss with lemon juice, EVOO, salt, pepper, oregano
* Pour zucchini mix over the chicken and bake in 375 oven for 15-25 minutes
* Sprinkle feta on top of the dish and cook for an additional 5 minutes or until chicken is cooked through
* Serve over cous cous/rice/pasta

Notes: Your cooking time will vary depending on how thin the chicken cutlets are--the thinner the better; they will not dry out. Leftovers are delicious wrapped in a whole-wheat rollup. I also want to try this with tilapia...

Surprise!!

My family can be sneaky. I thought I was going to Louisville for a family shower and to attend grandma's annual church festival, but nobody told me there would be extra visitors in town--Monnica and Adeline flew in from Denver! It was the best surprise!!

Inviting

I realized I never posted the final product of our assembly line. These are the wedding invitations. All of the materials came from Paper Source. I printed everything at home, embossed the invites and stacked them with different papers and a decorative ribbon. The reply cards were simply stamped.

Things I have learned: 1. Keep the design simple when hand-assembling anything more than 25 cards. 2. Hand-feeding cards and envelopes takes lots of patience, but is worth it. 3. There is a difference between pigment and dye stamping inks. The ink I used on the majority of the reply cards (pigment) smudged a bit, but I finally figured it out by the time I stamped other items.