A Week Around the Continent

Hello Friends!

A whirlwind week for us.  My husband and I just returned on Monday night from a week in Mexico.  Our primary reason for going was to celebrate a wedding.  Most of you know that my husband and I are Youth Pastors here in Canada and every other year we take our High School students on a Mission Trip to help with two churches in the Mexico City area.  We've become really close to the Pastor's family there and their son was getting married, and we were invited.   It was really important to us to go, but I asked my husband if there might be some way we might also add a few days of warm weather vacation along with it.  Turns out, because its the end of hurricane season in Mexico, it's quite inexpensive to go to a resort, so we also added 5 days in Cancun together!  In our 17 + years of marriage, and our 15 years of being parents we've never left our kids for more than a weekend, so this was a huge deal for all of us.  Gratefully my parents, and a number of our good friends were able to help us with the kids.  And though we all missed each other -  everything went great and we had an amazing, meaningful and precious time there together.

The wedding was amazing.  They are the most lovely, kind, warm, faith-filled and in-love couple!    I can't tell you what an honor it was to be a part of the celebration.   I feel so very blessed to know them and to see them begin their life together, and to see that God continues to use them in their community.

The wedding was outdoors in a garden type setting.  The weather was crazy beautiful.  Complete blue skies, and even after being in the sun in Cancun, I burned horribly that day!  

They had asked that everyone attending wear something purple, so the whole wedding coordinated so beautifully!

The reception was on the same site, just inside a larger building with an open air style to the garden where the ceremony had been.  We had a wonderful time.  Mexican weddings are full of celebration!  Lots of music and fun and laughter, our food was Carnitas (amoung many other yummy things) for supper which was delicious, with an amazing cake with mangos as the wedding cake.  And we saw many fun Mexican Wedding traditions along the way over the day.  

To match the wedding theme here is the card that I made for them. 

I just love the Cherry Blossoms set from Flourishes, and love the wedding theme that some of the sentiments have, especially the verse from John that's in it "love one another".  I know that cherry blossoms aren't purple :)  but it worked for the wedding.   Yes, I cut out the blossoms myself with my scissors - painstakingly, but it's worth it for the effect.  

I colored up the blossoms with Copics in different mixes of the Violet and Crocus Collections.  I used my Grand Calibur to make the largest circle card I could that would fit in a square Envelope I had.  As well as the Grand Scalloped Circle Dies and Grand Circle Dies, as well as as the sentiment on the Doily Heart Circle Dies.  I wanted it all in Spanish so I just printed the sentiment out on the computer, cut it out with the die and then sponged it with ink.  

For accent I have a lovely pearl fan spray, velvet metallic ribbon and then some silk ribbon along the bottom of the card ruffled up.  

Inside....

It reads something like  "Love one another.  As I also have loved you, so you must also love one another".  John 13:34 .  It's so hard for me to pull out the correct Spanish from my Spanish Bible because I'm still so elementary in my speaking and understanding - but it's coming.  Nothing like being immersed in Espanol for a week to help your language learning along!  I think it actually reads "also you must love one another".  

So...I'll try to show you some more photos of Cancun in the days ahead.  As soon as I get caught up.  My head is in a fog from being so far away and in another culture for a week.  Thanks for joining me to day!