Day 2

*Whew*

Today was a long day...a very productive and fun day, but long nonetheless.

I woke up this morning, very well-rested, around 8am and came downstairs to make myself a cup of tea. Thomas was already awake and watching tv so we had a quiet, lovely moment to chat. We eventually woke Monique and got ourselves dressed, and made our way to the small town of Damascus, about 25 minutes outside of Portland, where we had a truly amazing breakfast at Dean's Homestyle Cafe. This place has the really kitchy, country diner feel with customers ranging from Hell's Angels, to older gentlemen who are clearly regulars, to a foursome looking like they were on their way to tee time. I had a perfectly portioned breakfast of two eggs (overeasy), with 2 slices of bacon, and two slices of sourdough toast, complete with homemade raspberry jam and a great cup 'o joe.
Thomas and Monique had equally delicious and satisfying breakfasts (although mine was the only plate that ended up totally clean). We pushed our plates aside and got out their big box of wedding invitations...which, Monique and Thomas lovingly hand-made. Between the three of us we added additional invites to the rehearsal dinner to those family and close friends who will be included in their big day and sealed them all...155 of 'em! A sweet woman at the table next to ours warned us to beware that we could all end up dead from licking the envelopes...obviously a Seinfeld fan!
After we left Dean's we took a scenic trip to Aurora to drive by the location of their wedding ceremony and reception at the well-manicured Heritage House Garden. The garden itself is really beautiful and will serve as the perfect backdrop to their summer wedding and the entire estate is surrounded by a hazelnut orchard (mmm...hazelnuts...). I learned today that outside of Greece, Oregon is the largest exporter of hazelnuts in the world! You learn something new every day...

We dropped the invitations off at the post-office and headed home to work on the wedding favors. These are the sweetest little envelopes that Monique painstakingly stamped (198 of 'em!) which we filled with Leucanthemum x superbum seeds (aka. shasta daisies). Monique then sewed a little card to each envelope which reads...
She (cleverly) sewed the favors in long strands so that she didn't have to keep cutting them off the sewing machine each time, leaving us with long strands of these adorable favors. I volunteered to cut them apart while watching the new The Office and 30 Rock...I know David wasn't a fan, but I was so happy to have new episodes on that I'd have watched 30 minutes of either Steve Carrell or Tina Fey farting and been plenty entertained...
After we finished up the wedding favors, we headed to the other side of Portland to visit Monique's sister (Colette) and brother-in-law (Fletcher) and their newborn identical twin boys, Eli & Dane who will both be a month old on April 18th. This is (obviously) my brother-in-law Thomas holding both the twins (Dane is on the left and Eli is on the right). The boys are a pretty healthy size for newborns, but in Thomas's big arms look like tiny dolls. Adorable.We finally made it to dinner at Ruby Tuesdays at 8pm for a really delicious dinner...but all three of us were wiped (Monique looked like she could probably fall asleep face first into her chicken pot pie if she stopped moving for too long), so we headed home to crawl into pjs and get some good rest (of course, I had to blog about the day first).

But now I'm off to bed to rest up for more fun, wedding-related craft projects tomorrow! Stay tuned for an update of my adventure!