April Showers

We’re back! Back in our own home… doesn’t it feel amazing to be back in your own bed after a long trip??! I had the best time in our hometown and was able to fit so much in; a bridal shower for my best friend {Kayleigh}, and her beautiful wedding, Mother’s Day with our Moms and Grandmas, my Dad’s birthday, family photos and time with our friends and family. I’m sure I have hundreds of pictures from the trip, but I am going to limit myself to sharing some from the bridal shower!

We threw a wine and cheese shower and the theme was ‘Stock the Cellar’. We asked the guests to bring the bride a bottle of wine to help get her collection started. We handmade a lot of the décor: personalized bottle labels, cork monogram letters, printable chalkboard quotes, and a rustic wine crate and rack. We had purple wild flowers, in wine bottles, on each table, and a collage of pictures of the bride and groom. It turned out so beautiful, the weather was great, the yard was gorgeous and Kayleigh made out like a bandit with all of the wine she was given!

The food, drinks and desserts were sooo yummy and all homemade by our girlfriends, Aubrey and Amy. Aubrey is also the owner of Alluring Events and Design, you definitely want this girl on your side when planning anything from birthday parties to huge weddings! Here is a link to her site, lucky me to plan a shower with such a talented chick! Amy, who I’ve raved about before, makes the most delicious desserts, you can contact me for her info… she made white wine frozen yogurt and homemade truffles for the shower, I literally stuffed my face! I also want to send a shout out to Kaitlyn, Laura and Channing who did so much to make this shower beautiful for Kayleigh, you girls rock and I loved getting to spend so much time together this week!!!

Okay, that’s enough from me, time for the good stuff, the pictures…

Over the next month or so I am going to put a few posts up that show how we made some of the décor and chalkboard printables, be on the look out! Kayleigh is on her honeymoon now… Hope you’re having an awesome time!! Love you!

          xoxo,

                   Rachele

A Box of Sunshine

          

          How awesome is this!? Send someone a box of sunshine, such a sweet and simple way to brighten their day. I saw something similar (on Pinterest- of course) and knew I was going to make and send my own special surprise.

          For my box I hit up Target and a local candy shop to find all kinds of fun things, what I ended up with is: A candle, a card game, lotion, straws, lemon drops, candy coated almonds, balloons, silly glasses, a fruity drink, lemon candy cane sticks, a monogrammed mug and a giant lollipop.

          I arranged everything into a box and added a little note saying “Sending you a box of sunshine to brighten your day, as you have always brightened mine!” Lastly I took scraps and cut sunbursts out of card stock to cheer it up even more.

I love love love this idea, and I love the fact that you can add anything yellow to your box and really personalize it to the person or people you’re sending it to. I took a few minutes to compile a ‘list of yellow’ and give you ideas of fun things to send. I broke my list up into three sections, so you can check out ideas for the babes in your life, the hunks, and the littles.

Imagine how much joy you can bring to someone you love, it is the perfect way to let them know you’re thinking about them. So, send someone a box of sunshine and brighten their day!

          xoxo,

                   Rachele

Love is in the air

It’s LOVE month!! What better way to celebrate love than with a brand new baby girl!? Our teeny little niece, Audrey Joy, is here and she is as sweet as can be! I’ve been waiting to show off a few pictures of her and I figured a Valentines post was the perfect time!

Speaking of love and Valentine's Day I have two DIY crafts to show off from two of my favorite girls, Heather and Channing.

My Cousin, Heather, is super woman, I am always amazed at what she can accomplish in a day. On top of her busy schedule she took the time to make us the cutest Valentine's wreath for our front door. It is an argyle wreath made from yarn and felt hearts. Thank you, Heather, I love it! Heather also has a blog where she posts everything from recipes and crafts to parties and school projects. The name of her blog is Teaspoons & Twine and you can check it out and follow her by clicking HERE.

A while ago I made a trip to California and stayed a few nights with one of my girlfriends, Channing, who wanted to make a project that she had seen on Pinterest. So, we headed to Hobby Lobby for the supplies and went to work making decorative vases. We used left over wine bottles, jute twine, yarn, chevron burlap, buttons and a lot of hot glue. In the end we had four wrapped wine bottle vases that spelled out the word ‘love’. I think they came out really great and I love the color scheme she chose to make them in.

That is all for my Valentine's post. A lot has been going on here and I can’t wait to share the projects that are under way. Our house is slowly getting the face lift I have been daydreaming about. We still have work to do, but within the next month I’ll be able to post pics and give a sneak peak at what we are working on this week. Happy Valentine's Day to all, don't forget to show some extra love this month!

     xoxo,

              Rachele

A very Remi Christmas

Merry Christmas to all of our family and friends!! We love and miss all of you and wish we were together today. We are very grateful for the time we had in Ca a few weeks ago to celebrate Christmas a little early. We saw our families, ate delicious dinners, watched the kids tear through their presents, walked down Candy Cane Lane and were able to celebrate with my best friend on the night of her engagement!

JD is off work Christmas Eve and Christmas morning and we could not be happier about it. Last Christmas he was still in the academy and we spent Christmas across the country from each other. This year we are keeping it low key and making red velvet pancakes for breakfast, then relaxing in our pajamas all day.

We have a new member in our household this Christmas, a very handsome 8 week old chocolate lab puppy named Remi (Remington). Remi was an early Christmas present from JD, he surprised me with him about a week ago! He is so much fun, has lots of energy, loves to snuggle and is a crack up to watch. So far he has kept me on my toes, the only time I trust him is when he’s sound asleep. Remi has already proven to be the most popular in the Poplin house, and I'm sure he will be for a very long time!

This will definitely be a Christmas to remember, our first Christmas in AZ, in our own home, with a new puppy! Thank you so much to my in-laws and the Antonio's who helped JD surprise me with Remi, I know a lot of work went into making it happen and I feel so special! Congratulations to Kayleigh and Mark on their engagement, we are so happy for the two of you! From our home to yours we wish everyone a very merry love filled Christmas and we hope all of you have a happy new year!!

     xoxo,

              Rachele

Under the stars... and into the woods

Ever since I was a baby the end of summer meant camping, at the same camp ground in the same camp site each year. My parents have been taking my brother and me to Sand Flats since I was a baby, and my grandparents started it all by taking my Dad and his siblings to this same site since my Dad was a baby. Whether it was just my immediate family or my entire Dad’s side full of aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins, we always made a camping trip together before school started back up.

I hadn’t been camping in years and had really been missing it, plus JD and I had never gone camping together, so we had plans in the works for a while and this year we were finally able to go! So a few weeks ago, JD and I drove to northern Ca, packed my Dad’s truck full of camping supplies and hit the road with him. (The trip fell on our 6 year anniversary!)

It’s about a four hour drive up into the Sierras and once you reach the turn off you definitely need a truck or bigger 4 wheel drive car to get down the “road”. It’s not so much a road as it is a very old washed out river bed, nothing is paved and it is full of dips, large rocks, steep turns and a dusty down hill grade. Getting back up the dry river bed is no easy feat either, it takes about 30 minutes to strategically go down or up it.

We had such a great time while we were there, and it was an amazing change of scenery and temperature to be in the nicely shaded, cool and crisp green woods. I love that is it isn’t a well known camping area; we had the whole place to ourselves. The water and rapids are only a two minute walk, which is perfect when you’re roughing it outside and you need the (freezing) water to clean off and brush your teeth. We took long walks and hikes each day, explored a lot, had some target practice with the BB guns, relaxed, cooked our meals over the fire and woke up to deer outside our tent in the mornings.

Going back to one of my favorite places, and getting to show JD, was really fun and brought back a ton of childhood memories for me and for my Dad. I’m so happy we finally went. Sand Flats is such an important place to my family and has always been popular with the Meier’s; I can’t wait for it to be just as popular of a place with future Poplin’s!

 

     xoxo,

              Rachele

 

Aloha love

I am saying adios to August and welcoming September with open arms! September is the beginning of my favorite time of the year! Soon there will be hot caramel cider at Starbucks, cooler weather, pumpkins, sweaters, boots and I will be able to light my fall spice candle! I just hope Arizona actually cools off and I will get the fall season that I love so much.

I was thinking back and last year at this exact time JD was in Georgia, we had just thrown a surprise 50^th /85^th Hawaiian Luau for his Mom and Grandma and the next morning his parents and I got on a plane for AZ. We flew out here for a few days in the hopes of finding a home for me and JD. We definitely succeeded, within the first two days we saw about 12 homes, I made an offer on one, the offer was accepted and we had the home inspection completed!

I will have to post some before and after pictures of the house soon, but for now I wanted to show off the birthday luau party and pics. JD’s Mom, Aunt and super talent cousin did an amazing job with this party for his Grandma’s 85^th (and we even tricked his Momma into setting up for her own 50^th surprise). They went all out for this bash complete with a Tiki bar, Hawaiian dancers, and a pig roasting on a spit. It was the perfect way to end summer and his sweet Grandma loved the party and the reunion with family who flew in from all over the Midwest. Aloha!

 

     xoxo,

              Rachele

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Birthday Boy & Baseball

A happy birthday blog post for my hubby, (better late than never right?) The week before last was my main man’s birthday, the big 2-8! JD had to work on his b-day so I planned a fun day together on his next day off.

 My guy works extremely hard and I wanted to make sure he had a day that was relaxing, fun and very “JD”, and if you know JD you know that baseball is numero uno on his list! So, I got tickets to the AZ Diamonbacks game, along with ‘all you can eat seats’. I can’t lie, we were excited, we looove us some ballpark food!

 JD got off work later in the evening so I took him to In N Out for dinner (which is a 30 minute drive and 2 towns over for us). After working there for a few years he gets withdrawals not having an INO around the corner, so he was a happy guy. At INO I surprised him with the tickets to the game for the next day and we headed home to relax the rest of the night. Back at the house I gave him his ‘sweet’ birthday card made from his favorite candies… it was a lot of fun to make, you can find lots of ideas for it on Pinterest (of course!).

The game was great and the stadium was pretty awesome. I’m happy we did something to celebrate my handsome hubby, I really love that man!! Happy birthday JD! Enjoy the pics everyone!

 

  xoxo,

            Rachele