"The battle's done and we kinda won so we sound our victory cheer, tell me...
where do we go from here?"
photo by Jamie Kay Photography
Saturday was awesome. Seriously awesome.
But before I tell you all about that let's backtrack to Friday. My mom and Colin (my crazy awesome nephew, can't remember if I've mentioned him before) picked me up from work and Bug was insanely happy to see them. On the way home we stopped by Harris Teeter to check out what plants/flowers they had. I had decided earlier that live plants/flowers would look better than making arrangements and would work better with our semi-Native American theme. Plus they are a helluva lot less work. We found a couple good ones at Harris Teeter and after stopping at Meadows Farms on the way home we had all we needed.
But before I tell you all about that let's backtrack to Friday. My mom and Colin (my crazy awesome nephew, can't remember if I've mentioned him before) picked me up from work and Bug was insanely happy to see them. On the way home we stopped by Harris Teeter to check out what plants/flowers they had. I had decided earlier that live plants/flowers would look better than making arrangements and would work better with our semi-Native American theme. Plus they are a helluva lot less work. We found a couple good ones at Harris Teeter and after stopping at Meadows Farms on the way home we had all we needed.
I had planned on going out to Wegmans to order the photo cake once I dropped Mom & Colin off. In my researching I didn't see a way to order online and when I had called earlier in the week to check prices the guy I talked to said I just had to come in and place the order. My momma suggested I call and make sure someone would be in the bakery when I got there. The girl who answered seemed confused by my question and said
"I can take your order over then phone and you can email us the picture." That would have been awesome to know when I called earlier but my momma's suggestion and the Wegmans lady's answer saved me time and driving.
Saturday morning I tried to start the day by sleeping in a little but my body didn't cooperate. So instead I ran through my packing list a few dozen times and finished up some last minute touches before I loaded the car and headed out around noon. First stop was Target where I picked up the helium tank, pen for Tam, poster putty, and attempted to find some suction cup hooks. When I couldn't find them on my own I asked one of the Target guys if they sold suction cup hooks and where I could find them. He looked down the same aisles I did then took off. I thought he was going to check at customer service but when I finally found him (at least when I saw him from a distance) he had moved on to something else. Kinda annoying, right?
Figuring he wasn't going to actually help me anymore I abandoned the suction cup hooks and went to the pen aisle. While I was debating pen styles a guy came up to the employee in the same aisle and asked where the helium tanks were sold and I had to tell him that I had the last one on the shelf. Felt a little bad about that, hopefully he was able get one maybe from the stock. After I checked out I drove out to the Lowes in Gainesville. At Lowes I finally found the suction cup hooks and took a few moments in the plant aisle to see if they had anything better than the plants/flowers I bought on Friday. Once I decided the ones I already had were perfect I checked the time and saw I still had almost two hours before the cake would be ready. So I hit up Panera to grab a sandwich.
"I can take your order over then phone and you can email us the picture." That would have been awesome to know when I called earlier but my momma's suggestion and the Wegmans lady's answer saved me time and driving.
Saturday morning I tried to start the day by sleeping in a little but my body didn't cooperate. So instead I ran through my packing list a few dozen times and finished up some last minute touches before I loaded the car and headed out around noon. First stop was Target where I picked up the helium tank, pen for Tam, poster putty, and attempted to find some suction cup hooks. When I couldn't find them on my own I asked one of the Target guys if they sold suction cup hooks and where I could find them. He looked down the same aisles I did then took off. I thought he was going to check at customer service but when I finally found him (at least when I saw him from a distance) he had moved on to something else. Kinda annoying, right?
Figuring he wasn't going to actually help me anymore I abandoned the suction cup hooks and went to the pen aisle. While I was debating pen styles a guy came up to the employee in the same aisle and asked where the helium tanks were sold and I had to tell him that I had the last one on the shelf. Felt a little bad about that, hopefully he was able get one maybe from the stock. After I checked out I drove out to the Lowes in Gainesville. At Lowes I finally found the suction cup hooks and took a few moments in the plant aisle to see if they had anything better than the plants/flowers I bought on Friday. Once I decided the ones I already had were perfect I checked the time and saw I still had almost two hours before the cake would be ready. So I hit up Panera to grab a sandwich.
I have to say that I was really disappointed with the Wegmans cake. I don't know if it was lost in translation but I had asked for the photo to be as large as possible. They suggested a 1/2 sheet for the number of people we expected and I assumed they would lay the photo on the cake portrait style...instead they plopped it down in the middle of the cake horizontally with huge empty spaces on either side. It seriously looked like a piece of paper too, the edges weren't blended at all. Instead of possibly wasting time at Wegmans I took the cake as it was then stopped by Giant near Tam's house and picked up a can of frosting, the kind in the large cans that look like whipped cream, and some red sprinkles. When I got to Tam's house I went to work adding icing in spikes on either side. Of course nothing can be simple so I ran out of icing when I was about 2/3 done. Another trip to Giant to pick up more icing and some gold sprinkles then I was back to finish it up. It's not the way I wanted the cake to be but I'm fairly happy with it.
Unfortunately we were allowed in the room at Lion & Bull until 30 minutes before the party started so I got super flustered almost immediately. Didn't help that the tables were set up differently than I'd asked for. After we settled that and I gave everyone a job to do we were almost ready when people started showing up for the party. I had brought my dvd player along with the cords so I was able to connect that to the large flat screen above the fireplace to get the slideshow started. I had trouble when I was making the DVD with file sizes being too large to have the music and photos run on the DVD so I split them up. I used my movie editing software to save the music (fades and all) as one 3+ hour long mp3 and loaded it up on an iPod Touch. I wasn't sure about the music system at the Lion & Bull so I brought my mom's Bose...of course I forgot the remote for it so it was completely useless. Not sure if the music would have made much of an impact anyway because the crowd was fairly loud all night.
People started buying books almost immediately. At the beginning of the month I order a Square so we could take credit card payments and a little over 1/3 of the sales ended up being credit cards. Tam ended up selling 50 books! Check out the little slideshow below (all photos by Jamie Kay Photography) and you'll see what a great time it was. Thank you so much to everyone who came out!!
Unfortunately we were allowed in the room at Lion & Bull until 30 minutes before the party started so I got super flustered almost immediately. Didn't help that the tables were set up differently than I'd asked for. After we settled that and I gave everyone a job to do we were almost ready when people started showing up for the party. I had brought my dvd player along with the cords so I was able to connect that to the large flat screen above the fireplace to get the slideshow started. I had trouble when I was making the DVD with file sizes being too large to have the music and photos run on the DVD so I split them up. I used my movie editing software to save the music (fades and all) as one 3+ hour long mp3 and loaded it up on an iPod Touch. I wasn't sure about the music system at the Lion & Bull so I brought my mom's Bose...of course I forgot the remote for it so it was completely useless. Not sure if the music would have made much of an impact anyway because the crowd was fairly loud all night.
People started buying books almost immediately. At the beginning of the month I order a Square so we could take credit card payments and a little over 1/3 of the sales ended up being credit cards. Tam ended up selling 50 books! Check out the little slideshow below (all photos by Jamie Kay Photography) and you'll see what a great time it was. Thank you so much to everyone who came out!!
On Sunday both Tam and I were in a "what now?" stage. After all the time and energy spent leading up to that one night it left us a little restless the next day. She ended up coming over and we dished about the night, ate pizza, & watched Dowton Abbey.
Good times.
Good times.