Much ado about something BIG!

Becky is getting married in 2 weeks. So we threw her a bridal shower. Here is our lovely house with balloons marking the way, into our brightly colored home.
Here I am putting the finishing touches on my pumpkin muffins. Recipe courtesy of the Nut Tree in Northern California. I make them a bit more special by adding (my very own creation) cream cheese whipped cream and a pecan on top. They are lovely and SO delicious. My roommate Nicole can vouch for that. I think she ate like 5.
I also made cinnamon meringues -another invention of my own. They are normal meringues on the outside but the inside is bursting with dissolves-on-your-tongue cinnamon goodness.
I also made a test wedding cake for Becky (the bride, pictured behind cake) It was a vanilla sponge with a raspberry confiture, fresh raspberries and vanilla butter cream frosting. I added sliced almonds around the base and almond/raspberry flowers on top.
Slowly people started to filter in. Becky was worried that no one would show. Our little living room was packed however. Sophie also contributed amazing mini quiches to our menu. And

Lemonade with raspberries and mint leaves (from my very own garden).

We played a Becky and Travis Jeopardy, and for one of the challenge questions we had to make a wedding gown out of toilet paper. Our team won the points and we made sure the dress was modest. :)

The most fun for everyone (especially Becky) came when she opened gifts. Paige was the lovely photographer for the whole thing.
You can see from this photo that we were packed in quite tight. Luckily very few people had to sit on the floor.
Becky got a lot of amazing gifts. Among other reasons, it made me want to get married so I could receive such great loot. I gave her a pretty blue kettle.
It was a great bridal shower, and clean up was relatively quick. The preparation is what took the most time. I got home from work the night before around 11, and I had to bake the cake and the meringues. Then we cleaned the house and I wasn't in bed before 2am. Then I woke up at 730 to do the pumpkin muffins and get everything else settled before guests arrived. I was literally buttoning up my shirt when the first guest arrived. It doesn't matter how much work went into though, it was well worth it to give Becky a nice bridal shower. I hope she appreciates how much we do for her because we love her. And we are going to come to her house and use her nice cookware all the time now.

In other news, today was Lauren's 20th birthday today. Paige made breakfast of waffles and super good eggs. I made a pumpkin pie tonight from a REAL pumpkin. It was very good, if I do say so myself. I added a cream cheese glaze and I think it turned out very nicely. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. Too bad I could not get a good photo of it. This was the best I could get:Good weekend, except Saturday night. I had a DREADFUL date. The worst probably EVER. Luckily it only lasted 45 minutes and I was free from it. I told Lauren that I was done with dating for a while. She laughed and said "Until tomorrow when you get asked out again." I scoffed, who would ask me out tomorrow? But uhm, yeah, I did get asked out today. I can't complain, or at least I shouldn't... ALSO since I took up the guitar again, I have been searching for the chords for the song "Love" from Robin Hood. NO one has tabbed it out. So I sat down and figured it out myself. It took me a bit, but I really think I did it correctly. I've been so excited about it. I submitted my chords to Ultimate Guitar. I hope they accept them. That would be AWESOME. I also started to read Lord of the Rings again. I forgot how much I love this Trilogy.