On Tuesday, May 26, Chris & I received another wedding gift…tickets to the Thursday game versus the Red Sox! We were able to recruit a few people to come with us to a 12:10 game on very short notice and let’s just say it was an interesting game!

The end result was a Twins loss 3-1 (with 3 of the 4 runs coming from solo hr’s) but that’s not even close to the story of the game. There are many places across the web that have (<- great photo) different interpretations of the events (<-video) that led up to 2 players and 2 coaches being ejected from the game by home plate umpire Todd Tichenor!

Yep, Mike Redmond & Gardy were thrown out after Redmond started to argue a call at the plate in the top of the 7th inning. I think he may have gotten out 3 words before the ump threw him out…and according to Redmond he didn’t swear, instead he was saying “I got him. I got him.” This was the first ever ejection in Redmond’s 11 year career and that meant that the Twins lost their DH as Mauer was now needed to move into the Catcher position. Then, in the bottom of the 7th, the Red Sox catcher, Jason Varitek, stood up to argue about balls & strikes after Beckett (the pitcher) started yelling. Varitek was tossed and shortly thereafter the Sox coach, Terry Francona, was out too!

I may have done a bit of boo’ing from my almost-front row seats. Possibly. Even my untrained eye could tell the guy was having an off day. What I didn’t know is that this was his 17th MLB game…he was called up from AAA due to another ump being injured. Well, let’s just say that he didn’t leave a very good impression on the Twins or the Red Sox (or their fans!) after the game.

Here’s the Twins Recap and the Red Sox Recap in case you’re interested. Everyone is trying to be politically correct, but you can tell there’s underlying anger and frustration that this guy caused.

These are the people who joined me…Liz, Casey, Chris & my Dad. And a shot of how weird a batting stance Youkilis has!

And so now my record for the year is 1-3. I’m going to two games next week and there better be at LEAST one win in there. Or else.

Tonight I got out my baking tools and tried a new recipe. Banana Upside-Down Cake which I found on AllRecipes.com.
Basically, the recipe is…
One Banana Cake Mix (although some reviewers say white cake mix will work too)

Melted butter mixed with brown sugar, a layer of pecans and sliced bananas

Bake for a while & you get this!

The cake is actually for dessert on Friday night when we’re having Andy & Christy over, but I knew it was supposed to be warm Thursday evening so I decided to bake tonight. Hopefully it will hold up okay in the fridge because when we sampled it tonight it was delicious!

It seems to me that there are quite a few people working at Four51 who are decent baseball fans, so I decided to schedule a Wednesday night to see who would want to come out for a game. Turns out, a lot of the people working at Four51 also have church obligations on Wednesday night. Doh.

Well, there were supposed to be 4 of us going to the game which I thought was okay…we didn’t need a bunch of people in order to have a good time! Then, as game day approached we were down to 3 due to travel conflict and then day of we lost another. So, it ended up being just me & Tim and we had a blast! We met at the dome and again, our seats were in row 9 so they were pretty awesome.

The game went back and forth quite a bit starting in about the 4th inning. Probably around the 7th, Tim turned to me and said “Nikki, I don’t do extra innings” and it’s almost like he knew what was coming. The game ended up including 6 home runs (3 for each side) with the final one being a Crede GRAND SLAM in the 13th. Yikes. We left after the bottom of the 9th and I was home in time to listen to the last couple innings, and to be honest, I’m glad I left because it wasn’t over until midnight and taking the train at midnight on a week night would have sucked.

Anyway, back to the game. In the 6th inning, the Tigers were down 4-3 when up to the plate steps Inge. What do you know…2 run homer that practically landed in Tim’s lap! As usual, the crazy Twins fans in the HRP chanted “Throw It Back” over & over again…but Tim stood his ground and said NO. I’m glad he did because for the last season at the dome they have marked the balls with the metrodome logo…and besides, how often do you get to have a MLB Home Run ball?!?

The Twins scored in the bottom of the inning to take the lead, only to let it go again in the top of the 7th. The score was stuck at 7-9 for a while, until Gardy decided to pinch-hit Kubel and he blew the first pitch over the fence. It was awesome & the fans went crazy!

Kubel came in to play left field after that and the fans in the HRP were cheering for him. One guy probably went a little far when he yelled “you can have my girlfriend if I can have your autograph.”

Needless to say, that’s where it sat until the top of the 13th when Crain got called with a Balk which scored the go-ahead run. Ugh. Some how the Twins decided they were going to win this game and as I mentioned earlier…broke it open with a walk-off Grand Slam!

I just realized that I haven’t documented 2 of the 3 Twins games I’ve been to this year! Shame on me. Especially because they each have a story to go along with them.

Monday night’s this year are Market Monday and that means that on the day you purchase your ticket, you can get a Home Run Porch seat for the ‘price’ the market is at. For example: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 8,277 on Friday, May 22 which means that tickets in the Home Run Porch for applicable Monday home games purchased through May 29 will be $8.00. I thought that was a pretty good deal so I recruited some friends and we were off!

The tickets we got were in row 9 which was awesome. We could yell & the left fielder would definitely hear us. And, these were the fine folks who agreed to come along: Christy, Andy, Josh and of course Chris. Unfortunately for the boys…the guy sitting behind Josh didn’t shut up the ENTIRE game. He left to get some food at one point, but I’m pretty sure he found someone to talk to in line as well.

And, as you can tell from that picture, the home run porch was FULL that night…on a Monday. Well, turns out that you can buy the tickets on the day of and so rather than sitting in the cheap seats, people choose the home run porch. And, along with the patrons of the cheap seats comes…you guessed it…beach balls. Ugh. SO ANNOYING. Seriously people, if you want to play with a beach ball, then go to the beach. I wanted to watch baseball and that’s why I was at the game. So, wouldn’t you know, sometime probably around mid-game I had a beach ball land in my lap. And. I promptly put it under my seat. And then got boo’d. A. LOT. The people in front of me were like “you HAVE to give it back!” and my response was “nope, I don’t want to get hit again” - end of story. This is a picture of me with the beach ball (and Christy & Andy), which I did actually take home with me.

I do have to admit, I was a little worried for my safety! Luckily nothing happened and I was able to make it home safely. Unfortunately, the Twins played horribly. That made for 2 loses in a row this season for me but, I’m glad Chris was able to make it to the game and I guess we had a couple good stories come out of it!

One of the first decisions I made about the wedding was that I wanted to have a Photobooth. Now, it took a little while to convince Chris that it was a good use of a splurge in honor of our big day…but he eventually came around and I’m SO glad he did!

I don’t remember signing a contract for Murzyn Hall, but I do remember that I submitted our contract to The Traveling Photobooth the week that we left for Europe. I was really excited because we checked off a couple things from the list in one big swoop. The contract for the photobooth included A) a favor for the guests (two copies of each strip are printed…one for us, one for the guest), B) our Guest Book (where the 2nd strip went) and C) Thank You cards. Awesome.

In order to make the photobooth fit into our Travel theme, I came up with the idea of indicating that this is where you go to get your “passport photos” taken. My Aunt Julie was nice enough to make a sign for the wall and the decorators made it look great!

There were a few people who missed out on the fun (and a few people who participated made up for them by taking multiples) but it is so much fun to look back through the book at everyone that was celebrating with us. One of the most fun things is to check out the creativity everyone had. This is Jayne & Me trying to come up with a funny idea…

…and the end result!


There are a few of the photobooth strips online here if you’d like to see some of the other goofyness that happened.

…in our yard! YAY! We’ve got grass growing on the alley side of the house. It’s a little patchy, but it’s growing. Plus, Chris told me that our paper grass seed is growing and by looking very closely I could also see some. It should be more obvious in a week or so. Now, I wish the extra stuff that we had to use to help the grass grow would disintegrate so the lawn doesn’t look so weird!

After the wedding, I had a bunch of projects that I wanted to get done. We tackled 3 of them this weekend alone!

The second project - painting the spare room that will turn into our office (and my scrapbooking room!). The room started out white so we skipped primer.

Chris started out by painting the white around the windows and on the trim. He began this work while I was “hemming” the curtains (they give you iron on stuff to hem, it’s kinda cool). Once I was done with that he was ready to start painting the green!

This is what it looked like while we were working (well, I guess I had already thrown away the tray liner and roller pad):

And, the final result (at least of the paint):

Now, just have to find the right furniture to put everything together!

We had a travel theme to our wedding. It all started at a friend’s birthday dinner. A bunch of us were sitting around talking about the wedding and next think you know everyone thinks a travel themed wedding would be perfect for Chris & I. Well, everyone except Chris actually. Thankfully he came around. First, we had passport invites. They were AWESOME and 100% designed by Chris based on a very rough draft I put together.

I knew we were going to have to have assigned tables so we could fit the largest number of people into the least number of tables. I figured we would have standard table tent cards until I came across this idea: Escort Cards! I originally saw this post on Boarding Passes as Save The Dates and that’s what we used to start with. Chris designed the cards & while he was out at his bachelor party I enlisted my dad to help make them! I printed each one with the appropriate name and table number while he rounded the corners and stacked them by table.


The next question was…how to make them available to our guests. Well, to be honest, I’m not sure how well this worked, but this is what we decided:

I borrowed suitcases from my Grandma. Turns out my Grandpa’s name is still on the luggage tags which is neat.

Then, on top of the suitcases was a cardboard box that I found at JoAnn’s that Chris spray painted brown and we added some of the stickers that Jenny gave me at the bridal shower. That box held all of the cards, sorted alphabetically by last name. By the time of the wedding it was very empty!


I think it was a fun, cool way to continue the travel theme. And, I’m glad that Chris is good with Photoshop and was willing to be the wedding designer for me. The details really made the day that much more special for me…and we really do love to travel!

After the wedding, I had a bunch of projects that I wanted to get done. We tackled 3 of them this weekend alone!

First up - new blinds and curtains for the living room. This idea came about when we saw some blinds on Target.com and decided to use wedding gift cards to purchase them. After that we were looking at curtains and didn’t see anything we really liked at Target. Next we looked at Ikea and there we found some we liked. Well, it turns out that once we were in the store we only used the ones we selected for one window and found another pattern for the rest.

When I moved in there were mini-blinds on the living room windows and white curtains. Like this:

Then, Chris installed the blinds, we tried out the curtains (and I went to Ikea to pick up more) and Chris instaled the rods and hooks too.

And, the final result in the dining room (we got these curtains for $9.99 on sale!):

And, the final result in the living room:

There are multiple reasons that the children of my friends Brian & Amy called our big day “The Bestest Wedding EVER” but one of the main reasons was our beautiful, fun, colorful candy buffet!

It all started with me reading the Weddingbee blog. The ladies who blog about their weddings have TONS of great ideas, and this was one of them. At first when I mentioned this idea to Chris he poo poo’d (is that how you spell it) it but somehow, magically, a couple months later he mentioned it out of the blue! He offered to go to Savers and pick out different glass jars. I was ecstatic, to say the least!

After multiple trips to different Savers, Chris was able to locate quite an assortment of jars! We even found a few containers around the house to use too.

Then it came time to buy candy. Wow, purchasing bulk candy for 200 people is not cheap! I found a couple different sites and selected my color scheme of Blue, Green & Pink. I figure that tied all our colors together, the blue & green from the travel theme and the pink from my bouquet. I tried to picture what candies would go in each container and with fingers-crossed, placed my order. After everything arrived, we washed out the glass containers and I did a trial run to make sure we had enough of each type of candy to fill the containers we had. I didn’t care too much about running out of candy, but I wanted to make sure it looked great before anyone touched it! Here’s a photo of my trial:

After that, I handed the project over to my trusted decorators and they took over & did a magnificent job!

And…after Tim put the table skirt on and Shannon & Katie figured out my mess of stuff…it turned out great! I had included some framed photos in case they wanted to use them & it worked out nicely as a break between the candy and the cake.

Overall, I am very happy with the decision to include a candy buffet at our wedding and with the candy choices we made. The colors were bright & vibrant and most importantly, fun!


PS The other reasons we had the bestest wedding were the chocolate bars on the tables when they arrived, unlimited orange soda and spaghetti for dinner! Yay!