put a bow on it: shower

and in today's edition of posts where I talk too much...we have my first bridal shower!

The friends mentioned in the previous post (Lyns, Haylie and Steph) and one more, Lauren, and their moms threw me this shower in Houston.

It was SUCH a nice shower! Haylie's mom is super crafty so everything turned out perfect. They had all the shower guests bring a recipe and with their gift they put all of them in a recipe binder. I love it and refer to it weekly!

I'm not one for shower games, but the one they did was really fun. Every guest brought an additional small gift in different wrapping than the regular one. I had to open each one and guess who brought it. For example, a guest brought olive oil and it was my sister-in-law because she loves to cook Italian food. (Ok, I got this one wrong, but it paints the picture.) For every guess I got right, I got fun goodies that they knew I loved, like Goldfish, nail polish and candy.

We got tons of fun presents - my family and friends are seriously the best! Here's some pictures from the day.

the dessert table set up - so yummy!

hostesses and my mom

bridesmaids minus two

mother-in-law!

Click here to see other wedding posts!

Time for the surprise engagement dinner post!

I have the sweetest childhood and forever best friend, Lyndsay. She lives in Northwest Arkie so we don't get to see each other a lot, but when we do, we make the most of it.

Luckily we got to celebrate the engagement because we were both home in Houston for Christmas. (She also helped me pick a wedding venue that week!)

Every holiday that I'm back home for, I always have either a lunch or dinner with my best friends from high school. Lyns, Haylie, Steph and I had already had our lunch that week so it surprised me that they also planned a dinner later on that week. I didn't think anything of it when they said the boys were welcome to come, though.

The night of the dinner Haylie, Lyns, A and I all rode together to Campioni's (check it out if ever in NW Houston, deeeelish!) and met Steph and JR there. We walked in and bypassed the hostess stand, and like a dummy I didn't think anything of it. Out of the corner of my eye I see my sister and everyone yelled surprise. I was SHOCKED! It is SO hard to surprise me, and they pulled it off. I mean, just check out this face, says it all.

at least I dressed cute!

the mastermind behind it all

Lyndsay had my mom give her phone numbers for all of our family friends so that they could be there with us. It truly was the most thoughtful thing ever and SUCH a fun night.