Real Friends Make You Work

If you’re my friend on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, you might have seen a few post over the weekend about my trip to Ohio and Tennessee. The fun filled, fact filled, flurry of a trip consisted of two major parts that came together perfectly.

You see, a few months earlier I had worked up a plan with my fascinating, intelligent {and slightly crazy} friend, Jennifer (Twitter) to fly into Ohio and hang out at her house for a day. The visit would work perfectly into my trip to Nashville for the 2011 AgChat Foundation Conference and give Jennifer a driving buddy to the conference.

The plan was perfect really-until I learned that “we” had an event on Saturday.

So, I did what all people do that hang out with Jennifer-I worked.

I just giggled typing that.

If you know Jennifer, you know why- don’t worry, she’s probably giggling too.

On with the story.

Jennifer picked me up Saturday around 2 p.m. at the Columbus International Airport and off we went to the Center of Science and Industry (COSI) for their annual Farm Day’s celebration . For those of you {like me} who are not from Ohio, COSI is a non-profit organization that works prepare children for success in school and in life. They have hosted Farm Days: Little Seeds and Big Tractors for seven years inside the Columbus downtown district.

The event included education centers, combines, tractors, games, animals for the kids to pet and tons of fun giveaways. It was a neat opportunity to see what’s being done in other states by farmers to reach out to children.

On the other hand, there was some pretty fun humor there, if you have a good since of humor.

Don’t we wish everyone would follow this rule?

If you don’t laugh at that, I feel sorry for you.

Just curious, what’s being done around your community to connect more of us city-folk to farmers?

Holy Wedding Planning.

Hello, long lost friends. Whether you realize it or not, I have missed you. Life’s been pretty crazy but thankfully it’s coming back into perspective.

Throughout last month, wedding plans have really come along. We finalized a date- September 16, 2011. Yes, that’s 2011- now do you see why I’ve been a bit busy?

We also had some fabulous engagement pictures taken on the fly by a good friend of mine, and photographer, Wrenn Pacheco.

Here’s my favorite shot.

Or maybe it’s this one?

Or maybe this one?

Decisions, decisions. But who likes to decide?

That’s why I had all of the pictures above (and one more) made into large canvas’. I’m going to use them to decorate around the reception and then hang them in our house. I had them created in Downtown Manhattan at Acme Gift. I was very pleased with the price, which was about $150 cheaper than any other place I had found. I’m far from a canvas expert but the pictures have nice color and transport okay-with the exception of the canvas being a bit easy to leave fingerprints in. I assume this is because the quality is a bit lower. Either way, I thought it was a great find and a really great price.

Other wedding accomplishments include booking the place for the ceremony, booking C & W Ranch for the reception and purchasing my dress or dresses- yes, there’s a story there. It’s long and somewhat painful for me. I will tell you later.

Other things accomplished include getting the bouquets made, working on decorations for the reception, ordering cake and food, working on creating our boutonnieres, a trial run on wine jelly making for the rehearsal dinner takeaways and we mailed invitations.

I loved these invitations!!! I was lucky enough to have Brooke Clay (Twitter) from Rural Gone Urban create the invitations. They were PERFECT.

I don’t know if you know if I’ve introduced you to my wonderful friend, Brooke. I know I’ve mentioned her before, but I don’t think I have given her a formal introduction. Brooke is thoughtful, kind, funny, pretty-inside and out, extraordinarily talented in design, a hoot of a blogger and has more style in her pinky finger than I have in my whole body. She’s one of those people. Men love her, women want to be her and I’m just lucky to call her my friend.

By-the-way, did I say I have a cool friend Brooke? Anyway, I hope you have a Brooke in your life. If you’re lucky, you might have a few- and I’m jealous.

Anyway, back on track.

Now that the big things are finished, I’m relaxing. I’m going to keep decorations simple on focus on the important stuff. Brandon, our families and our friends.

Before I let you go, do you have any tips for me at this stage of the game? If so, throw me a bone. I could use it.