Live, Laugh, Love!

In case you haven't noticed our blog has a new look! Now that Chris and I are married we thought that it was time to make our blog more unified as well.
Now introducing the new and slightly improved blog for the Harts!

Joyful Harts

The new web address is: http://joyfulharts.blogspot.com/

Please follow us to hear all about our amazing life adventures together!!!

Things are about to get interesting ;)

Its all in the Details!

Hello dear followers, so I was just looking at my past blogs and realized I made quite a few promises that I have not kept. I gave you all of the pre-wedding pictures of how things were supposed to look, but I never followed up to show you how they actually turned out on the big day. I have some pictures that my wonderful friends and family took, here they are:

This is our escort card table, remember I showed you those wooden blocks (Here it the link to that blog post) that Chart's amazing Uncle Glen made for us? They hadn't been painted yet when you saw them, however here they are on the big day in all of their glory!!! :)

Oh and you had to have seen my mouth watering post on the infamous candy buffet right...?

(A little something Sweet...)

Well here it is all set up and full of delectable treats!

And as always here is my fabulous family assembling it while I was off getting ready.

A Little Bit of Life.....

Now that the dust has settle from the chaos of our wedding Chart and I have begun to focus on where we go from here. We have been diligently working on our resumes and portfolios... Ok I a have been working on my portfolio because I just so happened to have picked a very "special" major that requires a portfolio for interviews. Anyways, to say we have been working hard is an understatement! Chart is on the internet daily scouring over company websites and applying to anything that even remotely sounds like a step up from his current job. I too have been looking on company websites, however, another unfortunate thing with interior design is positions usually get filled by word of mouth, not by amazing resumes, portfolios or even interviews. Luckily, since I have been working in this industry for a couple of years now I have been given some opportunities to prove my self as a serious and devoted designer. Even though I am disgusted and some what annoyed that openings at desirable firms are awarded to people that are known by others in the industry rather than qualifications or abilities... It has finally paid off for me. A firm in San Jose heard about me and my skill set and started asking around if anyone knew how to get in touch with me. A friend of mine already works there and contacted me, I immediately sent over my resume and had an interview lined up for the next week! And you are now looking at the new DIRTT Designer for One Workplace in Milpitas!!!! I cant even begin to describe how excited I am to have been given this opportunity, my first day is June 25th!!! I am trying to convince my self that my pure excitement out weighs my nerves however those darn nerves keep getting the best of me. I have been told that this company is working on some very high end projects and that we are going to be Very busy. I know I am up for the challenge, but starting something new always freaks me out a little bit... Chart is super happy for me and my newly acquired position has inspired him to look even harder for a new job.

Since we are just starting out and we havent started a family or anything, our careers are very important to us. We are working really hard to be successful, which is a huge challenge not only in this economy, but also in this financially thriving area that we live in. We are working really hard though and the hope is that we will be able to buy our very own house in the next year or so.
I'll keep you posted ;)

In the mean time my momma came up this last weekend to celebrate my new job with me!!! We went to get pedicures and a celebratory dinner, it was sooo much fun!!! She even spent some quality time bike riding with Chart while I was at work on Monday.

Here are some pictures of our wonderful weekend, they make my heart so happy!!!

Chart and I were also lucky enough to go back to Exeter weekend before last for some wedding fun, my dad's best friend's son got married!!! I’ll be sharing those pictures shortly... They are pretty awesome!!! The day after the wedding we went to my little cousin Lynn's graduation party and my sweet uncle Ray took this pick of Chart and I and just sent it to me. I had to share :)

We are Famous!!! (Kinda)

Now that all of the wedding festivities are behind us, Chart and I can relax and just enjoy how perfectly everything turned out. We have been given a flood of compliments on our venue, the ceremony, the decorations, the candy buffet and my dress. I love that everyone had so much fun on our big day and that it turned out just as wonderful as we had hoped!!! On top of those wonderful compliments from our dearest families and friends we have been so blessed as to be featured on our Amazing photographers blog!!!

(Click the picture to view blog post)

Now I realize that making it on to a photographer's blog is far from famous. However, shortly after we returned from our honeymoon we found out some amazing news!!! Our photographer Allyson Magda had photographed the wedding of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg!!! Allyson was featured on People Magazine and various other publications!!! Ok, ok... I know that doesn't make us famous, but it still is so exciting to have had the same photographer as a celebrity!!! Its the cherry on top of our PERFECT wedding day. :)

Here is the photo featured on the cover of People!!!

The Honeymoon is over....

Literally the honeymoon is over for Chart and I... We both started back to work on Monday, boy was that a rough transition! We went from waking up in a sun soaked room with ocean breezes, breakfast in bed, a stroll on the beach, a nap and a romantic dinner just the two of us every day... to a screaming alarm at 6am! Not only has the long work days and the 3 hr time change been rough, but we were getting to spend every day together and now its back to barely seeing each other in passing. Also as punishment for Chart taking off 2 weeks from work, he now has to work like 10 days straight and the closing shift I might add! That means go to work at 12 and get home at 11:30pm... I have to be at work at 9am so we briefly see each other in the morning and then maybe at night if I can manage to keep my little eyeballs open that long. This also means that he is not getting to attend our anual family trip to Yosemite!!! We were use to this kind of schedule before the wedding but after such an amazing honeymoon together, its kind of hard to fall back in to a schedule like this :(

The good news is that it wont always be like this and now we have our whole lives to spend together!!!! I am one lucky girl!!!

I also thought maybe I would share some of our honeymoon pics with you guys with the hope that I could escape a little back to that magical place ;)

Here is my handsome husband when we arrived at the airport in Maui!!!

This is the stunning view that greeted us at our hotel :D

And..... I told you we had some amazing food right? Check this out.

Be careful!!! You are drooling on your computer!!!! ;)

Here are some pictures of us together <3

Oh I almost forgot! We went sailing too!!!

It was a pretty Amazing trip that followed up our fairytale wedding, we couldn't have even asked for anything to be more perfect than it was!!! I feel blessed beyond words!!!

Here is a little bit of sunset to help you (and me) get through the rest of the week ;)

(A preview of the wedding photos will be up in the next few weeks, stay tuned!)

A Fairytale Wedding

Hi my lovely readers, if you have been wondering where I have been these past couple of weeks... I was getting Married!!! As you know, I have been working on my wedding for so long now and it turned out even more perfect than I could have even imagined. Everyone was right though, our perfect day flew by so quickly. I did my best to try and take in every perfect moment and just enjoy our wedding day together, but it didn't help. It was gone in a flash. Luckily at the last min we were able to book a wedding videographer and we were so happy we did. We spent all of our money on our photographer because we were told by so many people that that is the only thing you take away from your big day so make sure we had an amazing photographer. We took care of that though, Allyson Magda of Allyson Magda Photography blew us away with the pictures she took. She even set up her laptop at the reception so we could review the pics and all I can say is "WOW." I can't wait to see all of them. The only thing you didn't get to see in the pictures was all of the emotions we were feeling that day. There are tid bits of emotion, but all of the emotions we were feeling didn't come through in the pictures. Luckily we were blessed to hire Throttle Up Media to film our big day as well. Now we have the most stunning pictures of our big day and a video that captures all of the little bits that the photographs weren't able to. We just received the teaser video of our wedding and I wanted to share it with you guys. Here it is, let us know what you think!!! 

Just click on the picture below to view the video :)

And the count down begins....

Today is Sunday, a mere six days away from the big day. This time next week I will be waking up as Mrs. Sara Kay Hart, what an Exciting day!!! Everything is coming together so well too!!! I stayed home this weekend so I could relax a bit before a very hectic week while my Absolutely Wonderful Momma and Aunties did all of the things on my to do list! Can you believe it!! They picked up my dress at the cleaners, took it up to Fresno, did all of my last min shopping, picked up the napkins at the wedding venue to fold etc. Amazing... right? 

As if all of that wasn't good enough, our venue space greenery is actually filing in!!!  I know this may not seem that important to some of you, but for me, it has really been weighing on my mind. You see, this is how our wedding venue looked when we picked it.

Beautiful Right? Everything is so lush and green, it just felt like a secret garden, I fell in love with it!!!

Also this was the entry way to the space, everything just looked so Perfect!

Now, when we went to our food tasting about a month ago, I was Very disappointed... As if you didn't already know that though ;) I haven't been very subtle when it comes to my disappointment with how the venue looked... But seriously, from the walk way above to this..

And the venue space to this...

and this...

When we were there at the tasting everyone kept reassuring me that in a month the place would look totally different... Needless to say, this did Not make me feel any better. But... there was a light at the end of the tunnel.. It was just a little hard for me to see ;)

Dun Dunta Dun.... Here is how it looked as of yesterday :D

Yes, that is my adorable momma posing for the camera! :)

Ahhhhhhh...... Yes, that is a HUGE sigh of relief!!!! :)

Tasting Time!!!

This post is a little late, never the less I wanted to make sure I shared the adventures of our food tasting. So the way it works at our wedding venue is that they do a big food and wine tasting for all the brides and grooms of the whole year. Unfortunately the tasting was on March 10th and our wedding is only a little over a month later, so we had to make our choices pretty quickly. Now making our wine choices was super easy ;) however it was a little harder to make our food choices. I think that we made some Excellent decisions though and I can't wait for everyone to taste them on our big day!!! The venue made this more than just a tasting day though, they had all sorts of vendors there so we could see all of our options. They had bakeries, DJs, Photographers, Linen suppliers etc, however, again since it was only a month before our wedding I of course already had all of my vendors booked.... Just my luck.. That doesn't mean it wasn't a wonderful day though!!! Chris's mom and step dad had yet to see the venue so it was a great opportunity for us to spend some time with them and show them around.

Luckily Chris's step dad is a wonderful photographer and he captured this special day for us, because Chris and I were too lame to even remember to bring a camera! Hahaha 

Here we are in line getting our food samples

There were so many people there tasting with us....

It was also a great day because we were able to see how all of the flowers and greenery were just starting to bloom and grow. I was a little worried because some of the foliage was a little sparse in some areas... Although with all of this rainy weather, I am confident it will be Beautiful for our big day!!! :)

All in all we had a Magical day, my mom, grandma Betty, sister and Chris's mom and step dad all were there to make it even better. It makes me so excited for the big day we have in only..... 11 days!!!!

Yes that is my husband to be.... LOL.

I just Love him!!!!

A little something Sweet...

Candy! Is there anything better than a sweet little piece of candy? The delectable little morsel that melts away on your tongue giving you an oh so sweet sensation... Well what about an entire candy buffet???? Yes Please!!! Wish granted!!! At our little shindig we will be providing our guests with a fabulous candy experience.

Candy buffets have been slowly catching on at weddings or so that is what I am seeing. Often brides use it in place of a wedding cake, now if you know me, you know that would NOT happen at my wedding. Instead my goal is to give my guests an Amazing experience!!! I want them to drink out of swirly straws and kick off their shoes and dance the night away in flip flops, snuggle with each other under the stars and most importantly... I want them to over indulge on delectable sweets :D I am having a 3 tier white wedding cake, caramel cupcake wedding favors and most importantly a white candy buffet!

I have seen candy buffets done in so many ways, they can be playful and silly or elegant and sophisticated. Many brides match their candy colors to their wedding colors, however as you may or may not know my wedding colors are black and white. This doesn't leave much room for color on the candy buffet and for some reason to me black candy sounds a little repulsive. Therefore we will be featuring an all white candy buffet!

This was my inspiration for my candy buffet, but I warn you mine does not look this amazing.

These were some other inspirations

Creating a candy buffet became more of a challenge to create than originally planned... The containers were costly and I had to think about what candy was going in which containers before I purchased them... Also since I will not be setting up the buffet on wedding day, I had to some how convey my vision to my wonderful aunties and wish them luck ;) I am doing my best to make it easier on them though, I made a chart with numbers explaining which candy goes in which jar and I drew an elevation and a plan view of the jars. Hahaha I knew all this design schooling would come in handy some where ;) I would show you this drawing but it isn't very exciting, however to further assist my aunties I set up the entire candy buffet at my momma's house and took pictures. Hahaha I know this probably sounds a little extreme, but I wanted to make sure I had purchased enough candy to fill the jars. Nothing looks worse on a candy buffet than anemic candy jars...

Here are my pictures, I think it turned out great! I cant wait to see it all set up on the big day :D

Shower Time!!! Bows and Cupcakes and Cotton Candy.... Oh my!!

Hello my dear readers, I am so sorry I have abandon you for these past couple of weeks. Things have been very hectic!!! The wedding is now a mere 23 days away, eeek! There is so so soooo much to do still. I hate to tell you though, I wasn't just working on wedding stuff the whole time I have been away. I managed to squeeze in a little bit of fun at my bridal shower on St. Patricks day :) The shower turned out better than I had hoped. Now you are probably wondering why I said the shower was better than I had hoped.... Well I know traditionally a shower is thrown for the bride by other people, but as most of you may know, I am a bit of a control freak. Also I came up with some ideas of things I wanted at my shower so I couldn't very well demand my wonderful family do it while I sat around doing nothing now could I. The most fabulous thing I wanted was a Ribbon Wall!!! I have seen these during my wedding blogging and just fell in love with them and I being the crafty person I am thought they seemed very simple to make. Here are some examples of the ribbon walls I had seen... Take at look and let me know if you fall in love with them like I did ;)

Pretty great huh?

Well I feel like our ribbon wall came out just as great and it hardly took much time at all. My mom ordered 3 colors (Black, Pink and White) of 2.5" ribbon in 10 yd rolls and she got a 10' piece of PVC pipe. We measured the wall that it was going to hang on to make sure we cut the ribbons to the right length, this was the part that took the most time.

Once we had all of the ribbon cut to the same size we began laying the ribbon out on the floor, alternating the colors. This is just how I wanted to do it, but I have seen it where there is no order to the colors and they are just placed randomly, this looks just as cute :)

Here are the ribbons being laid out in our pattern, pay no attention to the black one on the end that was clearly placed out of order... haha :)

Here are the ribbons all laid out

We used double sided permanent tape to secure the ribbons to the PVC pipe, it seemed to work rather well.

After we got it all taped to the PVC pipe it was time to stand her up and see how she did...

And what do you know, it turned out B-E-A-utiful!!! Just as I had hoped it would and it really made an amazing focal point at the shower, I was so happy with it!!! Here are some of the fun pictures from the shower.

Didn't it just turn out perfect???? :) And so Yummy!!!