Saving the bouquet

Toss the bouquet?

Since Drew and I got married in 2010, my wedding bouquet has been hanging in a bag "drying" at my parent's house. I didn't know what to do with it. I absolutely loved my bouquet. 

So it was sad that it was just sitting in a bag. Then one day I was at my best friend Salena's house, and saw what she did with her bouquet from 2011. Her bouquet was in a jar from her grandmothers house sitting in her bedroom. I loved the idea. It was simple, contained, and displayed. So...I stole her idea. 

2 years later. 

I didn't have a jar from my grandmother's house, so instead I opted for a jar from Michael's

I filled the jar with all the wonderful flowers from the best day of my life. I was left with the ribbon which held my great-grandmothers pin on our wedding day, and was featured on all of my bridesmaid's bouquet. So I used it to decorate the top of the jar. 

Now I have a wonderful keepsake of my wedding bouquet that is displayed in our home. What did you do to save your flowers from that special day?

Keeping up with the Hatmaker's

Drew & Holli take EVERYWHERE!

Sometimes with our travel schedule along with some of the people we have a chance to work with, I really do think we should have our own reality show. Gabby would be the star, of course.

Last year, I started to keep a "Hatmaker Travel Journal" to keep up with all the places (both good and bad) that we stay at, eat at, and whats yummy. I purchased a pack of craft journals for a wedding day present for Drew, but still had some left over. I thought this would be a great use of the other journals, plus I could draw and make them colorful.



During the busy parts of sale season, I did get behind a bit. Luckily, I have a pretty good memory and was able to recall many of the places we went to eat and what we ate. Though when we are in Louisville at the North American it isn't hard to remember how many times we eat at the Outback because its right beside our hotel.

So at the beginning of 2012 I sat down to total up our travels. Though I knew it was going to be a lot, I guess I was kind of surprised at the final numbers.



2011 Totals!
Nights in hotel: 101
This didn't include nights when we stopped at say Drew's parents to stay
Hotels: 42
Restaurants: 155
Half of which were Outback -> just kidding

The 2012 Hatmaker Travel Journal is up and running with a few entries already scribed in it. If you travel a lot, I highly suggest you do this. It was fun to look back and see where we had been. Plus it is a keepsake for many years.

Happy Traveling!