it's the most wonderful time of the year..

Hey y'all! If any of you know me at all you know that I'm seriously obsessed with the holidays, Christmas in particular. Right when we got into our house I did not buy toilet paper, or food, or water. I bought a festive wreath and a coordinating apron and cupcake liners. Michael isn't really into holidays at all whatsoever so that makes it even easier since I can do whatever the heck I want to then use the phrase "Well aren't happy you have a cute wife who makes your house perfectly decorated and you always have cupcakes around?" when he complains about how many sparkly ornaments, bolts of fabric and pine cones I have seemed to "collected". Seriously anyone who knows anything about trimming a tree knows you can't leave blank spaces, c'mon babe. 

Since I've never had my own house before I might have dreamed about decorating the house more then I did the wedding, hence my convenient use of gold throughout our whole wedding. I knew I didn't want to spend a crap-ton of money and I knew I wanted to do most of it myself with things I found around the house and already had. I kind of ended up doing both. We conveniently got married three days before Black Friday which meant I could use some of our wedding money to get killer deals on the necessities for Christmas, like our Christmas Tree.  

 I don't use the fancy camera Michael bought me last year because well, I don't know how to use it. I should probably learn since the only way I can document anything photographically is though my iPhone! Oh Well! Y'all I got our 8 ft Christmas tree, ornaments, tree lights, outside lights, tree stand, gold tinsel garland, red beaded garland, burlap garland and tons of other Christmas decor for only $23 of our own money!  HAYYY! I got a big 'ole kiss after I told Michael that!

 I might do a close up of our Christmas tree since you cant half see it but it is covered in gold glitter, matte gold, white glitter and matte white ornaments. It has gold tinsel garland all over, a huge gold and burlap bow, a burlap tree skirt I made and a handmade lace garland. The lights might be my favorite part though, they are three different kinds of round pearlessent, matte, glitter and beaded bulbs. I lied, The bow is my favorite. When my grandma saw it she said "Well darlin', that is a bow and a half if I ever did see one!"...exactly the look I was going for grandma. Nailed it. 

 I am all about a "moment" in designing. My whole house is full of little "moments of pretties" I like to call them. A "moment of pretties" is a small little cluster, whether it be on a wall, in a corner, on a little table, or on your kitchen table. It gives your whole home a "Christmasy feel" all over instead of just a tree, stockings and a wreath.

 

This is a little cherry wood box Michael had had his whole life that sat empty in a junk room, until I saw it of course. It now sits right next to our Christmas tree adorned with pretties. I wanted to keep it pretty organic looking since the tree was so bold so I got some birch candle holders at Joann's and some cinnamon pine cones to keep it natural. We had the "Bless this Home" sign in the house since we moved it. I apparently needed some blessings when I picked out our non-seasonal home decor because almost everything says "Bless our Home", "Bless our family" or something with "Bless" on it. My sister noticed after everything was put up, oh well. At least people will leave feeling blessed. ANYWAYS, I obviously couldn't help myself and had to throw in a little shimmer. I made the little tree from a papermache cone and glitter glue.

 

This is a little arrangement I thought up after seeing it on one of my favorite blogs, House of Smiths. I have a big indented 5" by 5" square on the wall in our kitchen that need constant lovin' since its almost an eye sore. I was debating on whether I wanted to get a permanent, large piece to put here year round and then I thought what a perfect place it would be for "moments" every holiday! So with that, the decision was made for it to be ever changing..  

 

These lil' babes were a custom order I had made back in September by a cute gal from Boards by B!  I had taken down three other statement pieces on our entry wall and added these for some Christmas flair!

 

Wedding re-purposing central right here! For anyone who went to our wedding, the whole darn thing was gold sequins and glitter with little navy details! All the gold stems in the vase were lining the aisle and I just added some red sprigs to make it more festive. All the gold glitter ornaments I got for 50% off in the Christmas section at Hobby Lobby and used them in vases (same as that one) all around the reception.

We already had these vases in our kitchen corner since I bought them for our fall decorating, I'm thinking about replacing the yellow one with a red one though since I don't love the look of it for Christmas BUT I filled all of these vases up with the same ornaments from our tree and kitchen table to keep the design continuous through the house. That little Christmas countdown sign is from the $1 section at Target and the little tree still needs to be painted over so, no judgement please! Impulse buy! I cant say no to polka dots, ever. 

 

Y'all, It's hard to take pictures of a banister, so I apologize. But I wrapped it in gold mesh I had leftover from the wedding, burlap garland, red beaded garland and then double wrapped it in the evergreen garland. It's stupid cute in person, just trust me. 

 

We have a HUGE island in our kitchen, I don't even know what to do with it. About 7 months ago I started having my friends who drank save their wine bottles for me and saving them from work because I thought I could use them as centerpieces at our future wedding but then I realized that we are Mormon and if I had hundreds of wine bottles at our wedding people would be suspicious...so I sadly had to let Michael use most of them for target practice (sorry guys) and I kept about 40 of them and put them in this copper planter I got in the gardening section at Target. It is probably the easiest thing to decorate in our home since I can just change out the sprigs with every season change! This year I got red glitter twists, gold glitter pine cones and evergreen sprigs. Since our kitchen is so big, the island is basically dead center of the downstairs so I tied the gold glitter pine cones to the ornaments all over, the red glitter twists to the shelf, Roudolf's nose, a blanket I bought that isn't pictured (I lied, you can kind of see it in that picture ^ on the edge of the couch) and the matte evergreen sprigs and garland to the tree, birch candle holders and natural pine cones so everything would tie together ALL OVER the dang place!

This whole post probably doesn't make sense to ANYONE but to me, but it is how I conceptually design everything in my life. Whether it be weddings, a decorative wall or my outfits.

I hope y'all like it and could feel the Christmas love from the Gonzo home right through your computer screen!!

Love always,

The Gonzo's

XO

13 day wedding.

I would just like to start by saying, this is going to be a LONG, raw and real post. Hope you're ready for a 

novel.

Michael is in the Utah military and every summer he goes to training for three-ish months. One day, I was at the temple and randomly decided to call him, knowing he couldn't and wouldn't answer but, he did. Michael then told me he "told all the people in Utah maybe October would be a good time to come down for a wedding". Mind you, we aren't even engaged yet. I then obviously freaked out and like the control freak I am, started making plans, hired a wedding planner (don't know why) told all my family and friends, started looking at venues, picking colors, the whole nine. 

Michael came home. We didn't get to talk a whole lot while he was gone, hardly at all actually. When he came home to visit in July though, we talked about this wedding I had been planning. Of course I was expecting him to actually propose, be excited, want to help. He didn't, nope, not at all. As a wedding planner and a girl, I NEEDED ANSWERS and also I NEEDED TIME to plan things. My incessant prying, questioning, digging and getting incredibly upset did not help my case at all. Michael went back to Utah and this "wedding" was off. 

I was obviously super upset and resentful towards him. I was embarrassed, hurt, confused, and to be quite honest I was really questioning whether Michael actually did want to marry me or even honestly, be with me at all. I was worried I pushed him away, I was worried I completely smothered him and I was worried he was going to think I was crazy, legitimately. 

 Right after all of this had happened, I made a very fast decision, 4 days fast, to convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Strongly against my families will. I had researched the church as much as I could, and I did believe it was true but the thing that drew me to my decision was the church's devoutness to family and relationships. I had seen countless amounts of my friends get married, be happy, start families and I was the LAST one. All of my relationships had failed. Michael is LDS. At that point in our relationship I truly believed that my conversion was the only thing that would help our relationship. I thought it would show him that I was really serious. I thought, even though he never once said it, Michael needed me to convert to be "okay" with spending the rest of his life with me. It was my last attempt and desperately trying to convince him to marry me. The words "Well now that I'm Mormon, we have a different timeline then normal couples, you should probably propose now...." came out of my mouth to him countless times.

I really hate to say this but before Michael I was a little too confident. I was very sure of myself. I thought guys didn't deserve me. I always thought I could do much better then who I was with. I "didn't need a man". When I met Michael I needed him, and I needed him desperately. I wanted to impress him and I wanted him to like me. I wanted him so badly because he was everything I thought I never wanted, and I still felt like I was supposed to be with him. He was everything I wanted to be myself. From the start and about 6-7 months into our relationship I was terrified Michael was "going to see me for who I really was" or who I, now previously, thought I was. After being baptized into the church, I did change. Michael did not change. My family was furious with me. People reamed me daily about my choice, told me I was in a cult, I was going to hell. I would say the change went from being very sad and desperate, to very angry, to being resentful and mean, to being distant and uninvolved. That last part is where our relationship completely shifted. Resentful, mean, distant and uninvolved.  I don't want to throw my husband under the bus, but when your then girlfriend is so hurt, she can't even look at you without getting angry and your the dead horse she is kicking, it changes the way you see her and intern, other girls. This completely shook me to my core.  This was NOT like him, there was a reason. This was someone I never knew he could be. Nonetheless, the reason was me. 

It took everything inside both of us to stay. It took countless nights of fighting, leaving and crying. It took months for the trust to be rebuilt on both our parts. Eventually, we were okay. We wanted to be with each other. I knew, marriage was not a good idea anymore, nor right now at least, and I gave up on that dream. Maybe marriage wasn't a good idea, but a puppy was. After a puppy was, a house was. 

The house.

One of the most incredibly stressful, heartbreaking months of my life. For the first time in a long time, Michael and I were on the same page. We wanted to start a life together, both of us were at the same place, finally. We found our dream home. We were pre-approved for our dream home. We went to every inspection. We met our neighbors. We stayed up late and dreamed of our future there. We bought furniture for there. We were, finally, planning our wedding there. 13 hours before we were supposed to move in, we got the most heartbreaking call. We actually didn't get the house. They we're sorry. We still had to pay. We didn't get all of our money back. It wasn't fair. I vividly remember in a cry/scream to him "Why...why does this always happen to US?! Why can't we ever just be HAPPY?!" 

Damage control set in and I had to find us a home. The next day I went out with our realtor again. I found our new dream home. We totally re-located our search from Phoenix to Gilbert. I found us our home without him. I was crying when I told him. We got the house. We again, 13 hours from moving in got a call. "Your home has been broken into, they took everything, I don't know when it will be fixed, but I'll let you know"...Why does this happen to us? Why can't we just be happy? We ended up waiting for it to be fixed, and our new home, was everything we ever wanted.

As awful and as painful as those 6 weeks were, we could not have done it without each other. After we got the news the house was done, Michael finally really proposed.

Life was so good again. 

Remember when I said up there that we were finally planning our wedding in that house? We really were. People bought plane tickets, bus fares, everything. Our wedding was to be on November 17th, 2013. After we didn't get the house, we devastatingly had to tell everyone the wedding was off. People still wanted to come though, for thanksgiving. 

Michael and I had tossed around ideas of just getting married in the bishops office while everyone was here just to "get it over with" and then post a picture saying "guess what?! we're married!" but Michael didn't like that idea. I didn't like the idea of living together before we were married because I knew it was against the churches rules. One day we were driving and I just blurted out reluctantly "You want me to plan a wedding for you? Because I can, if you really want me to". Much to my shock, he said yes. That was on November 13th 2013. It took 13 days to plan our wedding. With much help from our families and friends we did it. On November 26th 2013, I walked down the aisle, in a wedding dress, after my 7 perfectly shimmering bridesmaids, and his handsome groomsmen, at a gorgeous country club to my incredible husband, in his military uniform, with our bishop there surrounded by 125 of our closest family and friends. It was the most amazing night of my entire life. I cannot believe how far we have come. I cannot believe this is where we ended up.  We look back and our trials and seriously if we hadn't have had them, we would not be who we are today. Michael is, and I say this wholeheartedly, every single thing I could have ever asked for in my life. Looking back now I can only say "Why did this happen to us, of all people?! How the heck are we SO HAPPY?!"