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Baby Traffas’s Quilt


While Aaron was away this weekend in Sacramento. I decided that I would trust the sonogram technician and go ahead and start a quilt for a little baby BOY!  I was so excited to get started on something for the little one. Aaron and I haven’t really bought anything yet as we were waiting to find out the gender.

Quilt fabric selections

I have made quilts in the past with my Grandma Poe but that has been many many years and they were always squares of the same size. Anyhow I found this pattern at a local quilting shop and I just love it.

By the end of the day on Saturday I had been to 4 quilting/fabric shops in town looking for just the right fabric. I really thought I had nailed it when I got home with my selections.  So I started cutting away making tons of little blocks to be sewn back together. I worked and worked all day, but had to get some sleep so I called it quits when I had 1/4 of the squares assembled.  I felt so proud of myself.

Sunday morning I woke up feeling terrible as I have been battling a sinus cold, but then I saw all of the cute little square laying there just waiting to be sewn together, so got back to work. I sewed all of the squares together to complete the front of the quilt. Then I laid the quilt on the bed to take a look at my progress.  I was somehow disappointed with my work. I had tried so hard to choose fabrics that complimented each other but  now the only color I was seeing when I looked at the quilt was ORANGE!

Baby Boy’s Quilt

I thought, “what can I do now it is completely sewn together.” So I did something very silly and started ripping out the seams. I also added some large solid squares of the blue fabrics. Then re-sewed the quilt back together. I am much happier with it now, but it is still not exactly what I was thinking in my head.

Last night I finished adding the quilt batting and the quilt backing. The quilt backing is the dark blue fabric already used in the quilt. Now I still need to decide if I am going to try actually quilting the blanket with the wandering stitch as the pattern picture had shown or stick with just hand tying the quilt.  Either way I think will be fine. I know that the hand tied would take less time, but I think the stitched quilting would look really nice. I have no experience with stitching a quilt. My Grandma always preferred the hand tied when we were young because it took less time and we (the kids) could help. So for now I will stay undecided about how I will be finishing up the quilt. The final step will be to decide on binding for the edges. The patterns says it is not something that is completely necessary but it just seems like it would be a nice finishing touch. I think I may use the same dark blue fabric that I used for the backing.

Baby’s Quilt Close Up

I think this could be a really fun starting point for our little guy’s room. I love the baby dinosaurs fabric and I was thinking about trying to use it somewhere else in the room. Possible curtains, who knows at this point. Luckily I have plenty of time to decide.

Just over 150 days till he is due to arrive. Can’t wait to meet him.

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It’s a BOY!

Aaron and I are announcing today that we’re expecting our first child.
Our son is due in early September and we couldn’t be more excited.
He’ll be the first grandchild on Aaron’s side of the family and the first
male grandchild on my side.

We had our first sonagram on Wednesday, and here are the first
pictures and videos of our son.

Videos of our Son

 

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Thank You Thank You Thank You

Aaron and I have so many people to thank for helping our wedding run so smoothly. We are so lucky to have such wonderful and helpful family members that made everything happen.

A few special thank-yous to Mom, Debbie Poe, who designed all of the flowers at the ceremony and reception. This was a huge job and she truly made everything look amazing.

Grandma Ruby Poe for sewing the bridesmaid’s and flower girl’s dresses and assisting with some last minute tuxedo fitting. As well as a few alterations to my wedding gown. Everyone looked great and it’s all your fault.

Aunt Patsy and her daughters Valerie and Michelle for providing beautiful music for our ceremony. Aunts Lori, Debbie and Julie for helping getting everything in place for the reception and for serving the cake. Uncle Dale for running out to the store when we forgot to have forks for the cake! 🙂 We really appreciate all you guys.

My parent and Aaron’s parents for truly making it happen, for working so hard to make our dreams come true. We love you guys so much and are so blessed to have such wonderful parents to call our own.

Our siblings, you all pitched in and helped set up and then clean it all up after the party. We are so lucky to have such close families who are willing to do anything we ask just to make our day special.

I am so proud to call all of you my family. There were tons of hours of preparation that went into planning our wedding and Aaron and I could not be happier with the end result.

Please be sure to check out some of the pictures from the wedding and our honeymoon to Jamaica. Aaron has several blog posts and picture sets chronicling our trip at his website.  If you have any pictures you would like to share from our wedding please upload them to the website. We can’t wait to share the picture from our professional photographer which will be posted on Mosaic Photo’s website.

Thanks again to everyone who attended the wedding and made our wedding truly special.

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Wedding is nigh

The wedding is upon us. For those of you looking for the quick details, here they are.

The wedding ceremony will be at 4 p.m. on Saturday, 25 September, at St. Boniface in Sharon, Kansas. Sharon is small, the church is in the northeast part of town and is quite unmissable.

The reception will be held just east of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, at the Barber County Heritage Center, at the intersection of US-160 and Isabel Rd. We’ll start serving cocktails at 5:30 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m., followed by a dance. View directions as well as accomodations.

Those of you joining us for the rehearsal are invited to meet us at the church no later than 6:15 p.m. on Friday. We’ll eat following the rehearsal at the Knight’s of Columbus hall in Sharon.

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One Month

We are on a mad dash to the finish line. I have lists upon lists of things to check, confirm and order. I cannot believe we are only 4 weeks away! I am excited to announce that the invitations are all mailed out, which is probably why you are visiting our wedding website.  We had quite the debacle trying to get the invitations printed. In the end everything worked out with Copies 4 Less in Manhattan who came to our rescue and had the invitations printed and cut the same day we took them in; I look forward to working with them on the wedding programs.

Last weekend we had a wonderful Couples Shower in Sharon. It was so nice to meet some the women of Sharon that I have heard so much about through the years. We are so lucky to have so many people supporting us during this time. Some close friends and I celebrated my Bachelorette party in Wichita over the weekend. It was very fun! Aaron and his fellas will be going out this weekend to Kansas City, I hope they behave themselves. 😉

Aaron and I have plenty of decisions left to make. It is so fun seeing all of the pieces of what will make our day unique floating around the house. My grandma Ruby Poe has started assembling the bridesmaid’s dresses and they are more perfect than I could have imagined. This weekend Holly and I will are taking my rings into be resized and soldered together. I finally ordered Aaron’s ring today, hopefully it is the right size.

Aaron and I booked our honeymoon to JAMAICA! We will be staying at the Couples Tower Isle resort in Ocho Rios, Jamaica! We can’t wait!

The next few weeks are going to fly by and I cannot wait till September 25. We have so many reasons to be excited, I am most looking forward to seeing family and friends and of course taking this next step in our lives together.

See ya soon!

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50 Days and Counting

The days are flying by! I cannot believe we only have 50 days left until we get married.  These days are going to be very busy. Aaron and I have been working  hard on getting all of the details worked out for our big day. The invitations are almost ready to be mailed out. The invitations were designed by my brother Craig and I could not be happier with the final product. We still have considerable work to do on the guest list, but it is coming together.

Aaron and I have not yet decided on our honeymoon destination. We are looking pretty seriously at Jamaica, oh it just looks so gorgeous. We thought we wanted to stay away from the beach but I think the all inclusive resorts are what sold us. We still have to decide on which resort though.

Last weekend we had a bridal shower in Manhattan hosted by the lovely bridesmaids. I had a great time and I hope everyone who was able to attend also had fun. In a couple of weeks we will have a couples shower in Sharon, and later that night I will have my Bachelorette party in Wichita! Aaron will not have his Bachelor party until the following weekend in Kansas City.

We are so lucky to have so many fantastic and fun people in our lives to share this exciting time. Thanks for all your help and love 🙂

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Mosaic Photo

Diane and I are honored to have been accepted by Mosaic Photo in Wichita. Most wedding photographers grab little more than the required shots of the family and do the required amount of Photoshop work before charging the couple a ton of money and restricting the usage rights for the images. These guys at Mosaic flip that model upside down by turning wedding photography into art. Their shots are plentiful – both planned and candid – and they are image processing ninjas. They’re going to allow us to use and replicate the images at will, and best of all, they’re geeks like us. We’re excited to get to welcome them to Barber County in September, and promise to ensure that they have a fantastic time.

In the meantime, click the link to the left to check out their portfolio.

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Something Blue

I have been busy thinking of all of the ways to make our day truly special.  I have so great ideas and cannot wait to share them with everyone. This past weekend was very busy. We headed down to Sharon on Friday and Aaron played a show at The Plum Thickett in Kiowa.  On Saturday Aaron had another show in Medicine Lodge with the Blaine Younger Band.  Both show went well, it is always nice when he plays so close to home.

On Sunday I headed to Wichita with my Mom, Aaron’s Mom and my Grandma Ruby. We were on a mission to find fabric for the bridesmaid dresses and flower girl dresses. We were partially successful, we found all of the fabric for the flower girl dresses which will be white with blue sashes. However we only found about half of the fabric needed for the five bridesmaids’ dresses. Because my grandma is custom making all of the dresses I was able to design them exactly how I wanted. I decided to go with a v-neck cross over bodice with an a-line tea length skirt accented by a black sash. The dresses will be made of cobalt blue satin. I am so lucky to have such a talented grandma to make these dresses.

I also picked up my wedding gown a couple of weeks ago, it is perfect! I was a little nervous as I order a different color than I tried on at the store. Luckily I made the right decision and it is the right dress for me. I will have to have some minor alterations made, most of which is having the dress shortened. My sister Holly just got married in January and she offered to let me borrow her veil, which looks great with my dress. I  feel so blessed to have family who are willing to let me borrow and offer their talent and skills to make my special day even more memorable.

I have been searching for a wedding memory book and had no luck finding one I like. So I decided I am going to make my own. It is a creative memories 8×8 scrapbook that I will be able to personalize to tell the story of our engagement and marriage. I just started working on the book last night and cannot wait to get home and continue my work.

I still have a thousand things to do before we are ready, but after getting my dress I told Aaron that I was ready. It is funny how getting that dress really made me feel like it was all coming together.

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Let the Planning Begin

Aaron and I have started to make some decisions on our upcoming wedding. So far we have decided that we will be getting married on September 25, 2010 in St. Boniface Catholic Church in Sharon, KS. The reception will be held in Medicine Lodge, KS  at The Heritage Center.  We have also decided on the colors we will be using: black, white and blue.

I found my gown at a little bridal store in Downs Kansas, actually the same store Megan (Aaron’s sister) and Holly (my sister) found their wedding gowns. I did have a bit of a blunder in my wedding dress shopping. I decided on one dress, bought it and took it home, but about three days after I did this I was such a mess, I had the worst case of buyer’s remorse ever! I knew this dress was not “the dress”. But not to worry the wonderful and sweet woman at the store let me come back in an choose a different dress. My mom had went with me the first time and taken pictures of me in some of the gowns. Once I saw the pictures I knew for sure which dress I wanted. I went back to the store tried it on and ordered it. My wedding gown should be in sometime this month. I cannot wait to see it. I would post a picture, but I am trying to keep Aaron from seeing the dress. I don’t know if I will be successful in this attempt to keep it a secret from Aaron, but I am going to try for now.

We recently receive the final versions of our engagement pictures, they are wonderful. We are so excited to be getting married.

Aaron and I have also decided on who will be in our wedding party.

Diane’s Ladies:

Matron of Honor
Holly VanSkike (Diane’s sister)
Bridesmaids
Megan Piester (Aaron’s sister)
Christine Poe (Diane’s sister-in-law)
Erica Traffas (Aaron’s sister)
Lindsay Poe (Diane’s sister-in-law)

Aaron’s Gentlemen:

Best Man
Kyle Dohm (Aaron’s friend)
Groomsmen
Rob Spector (Aaron’s friend)
Wayne Graham (Aaron’s cousin)
Mason Powell (Aaron’s friend)
Andrew Piester (Aaron’s brother-in-law)
Ushers
Craig Poe (Diane’s brother)
David Poe (Diane’s brother)
Josh Jacobs (Aaron’s friend)
Mark Hunter (Aaron’s friend)
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The Proposal Details

October 17, 2009-San Francisco

Aaron and I rolled out of bed to go down to Ocean Beach which was only a block from where we were staying.  We had planned to do this early because we weren’t sure how much time we would have to spend at the beach on our trip to San Francisco.  Aaron and I had each seen the ocean, but this was our first time to see it while we were together.  That morning the ocean was beautiful a little foggy, but beautiful.

Aaron walked me down close to the water and gave me a hug.  He started to tell me how happy he was that we came to San Francisco and how the last 3 years of his life had been so great.  That was right about the time I started to realize what was going on.  I hugged Aaron tighter as he continued with his kind words.  Before I knew it he was down on one knee right in front of me holding a little black box containing a gorgeous 3/4ct. diamond engagement ring.  And that is when he said “Diane, will you marry me?”  I was so excited, I said “YES YES YES!”  and hugged him tightly. As Aaron slid the ring on my finger I couldn’t help but tear up.  It was perfect, the ring was beautiful and the setting on the beach was so special.  I could not have asked for anything more.

I wanted Aaron to sit down with me, I just needed to take a minute and absorb everything that had just happened, so we headed back up to a bench and that is when the phone calls began.  We called our families to let them know of our exiting news.

Palace of Fine Arts

Palace of Fine Arts

Aaron and I spent the rest of the day touring San Francisco.  We went to the Golden Gate Bridge as well as The Palace of Fine Arts.  One of my favorite places we went was “The View” a bar at the top of the Marriott in downtown San Francisco.  From “The View” we were able to get a view of the entire city and the bay, it was amazing!

Aaron had also planned for a friend to take our engagement pictures while we were in San Fran, so we will have pictures from all over the city.  I cannot wait to get those pictures.

To say the least we had a fantastic time in San Francisco!