Expect the Unexpected

I love surprises. My family is always getting after me because I can guess gifts and surprises a lot of times. (And no I don't peek anymore, Mom!) Here are some pictures of a beautiful surprise I did not expect at the wedding I went to this weekend.
We drove to Minneapolis for the wedding of our good friends' son, who just graduated from West Point. The reception was at a beautiful clubhouse adjacent to a golf course that was full of flowers and huge trees of all sorts. One of my favorite flowers is the hydrangea and there were lots of them all over the place!
The blooms were huge and so perfectly round! They made a welcoming and elegant entryway for the reception.
I didn't expect to find fabulous Mexican food on this trip either. [I am not a food photographer so we will skip that part. :) ] In Ames, Iowa, there is a fabulous Mexican restaurant. If I could only remember the name! It's right off of the interstate. Growing up and living in Arizona for a large part of my life left me with a desire for spicier foods and REAL Mexican food. We have yet to find that here..... a lot of our friends will recommend restaurants that they think is great Mexi food, but, alas, it's not. This place was so good we ate dinner there on the way up and lunch there on the way back! Yum!

And speaking of yummy, unexpected things, my dogs love this card.

The SCS Technique Challenge was to use an unexpected (even weird!) embellishment. I peeked at a few cards before I started (which I never like to do before I make mine), but I just wasn't sure what types of things would be used! I found 4 cards that had very different embellishments and set to me thinking what I could use. We have dogs and they are a main part of our everyday life. So, this was what came to mind for the "unexpected."

So you all are dying to come eat at my house, right?? :) I DO make a good chicken enchilada casserole and I don't even put any dog bones in it...

As I was taking the picture for this, my two year old lab comes running in my stamp room (where she is not allowed) and starts sniffing everywhere, trying to get to this card. So I guess I am going to have to box it up and send it away to another SCS dog!! Otherwise, it will be shredded in moments when she gets ahold of it!

The little dog and dish are mounted on dimensionals and I handwrote the dinner invitation to match the font of the border stamp. Even though I didn't use the "I LOVE MY DOG!" stamp, I had to include it in the picture, because, after all, she was standing right there watching!

My dogs expect to get this card. They need to expect the unexpected: NOT!