08.09.09

Happy Anniversary to us!

We are celebrating by eating our 1 year anniversary cake, having a yummy Italian dinner and taking the day off tomorrow.

Love.

12.13.08

Who says a 27 year old can't play dress up with their dolls?

9.15.08

One of the coolest gifts we got for the wedding was from my parents (as if they didn't get us enough). Early in the summer, they came up to Madison for the annual Art Fair on the Square. We visited many artists, but one in particular caught our eye. His name is Geoffrey Aaron Harris and his pieces were mostly renderings of vintage toys, advertisements, games, etc. The quality of his pieces were amazing and I couldn't stop staring at them. I was attracted to one image in particular though. I chatted with him for a short while, got his business card and decided to think about it.

Fast forward a month later....

I woke up on the day of our wedding, went to the bathroom, and when I returned to my bedroom there was a gift on my bed from my mom and dad...and guess what it was???

Yup, it was the print that I loved! (along with a super nice card that made me cry) It was so thoughtful...and now when I look at it, I will always think of: my parents, our amazing wedding, and of course our awesome Vegas honeymoon.

1 month

We have been married for 1 month today! Yeah, us.

I got an AWESOME present from my friend/bridesmaid, Meghan, this weekend. She did some sneaky work and emailed our photographer, Carrie (of CaseyBower Photography), to get the picture below and framed it for us! How cool is that? Extra cool because I had never seen this picture! Meghan said she just remembered Carrie taking it and thought it was so cute and wanted to frame it for us. Love them both...and it makes me even more anxious to get the rest of our pictures back!

7.18.08

I spent Friday night watching Ashley Paige: Bikini or Bust and making this card box!

This took a lot longer than I expected it to. What's so hard, cover the box in some paper and be done with it, right? Wrong.

First, ribbon is not easily adhered to things without Wonder Tape. I tried super glue and it just absorbed in the ribbon. I tried the EZ Runner Scrapbook Adhesive that I raved about earlier, but after a couple hours the ribbon started to curl. Wonder Tape was the key! It is double sided and has some magical adhesive formula that adhered to the ribbon.

I also measured the ribbon and cut it on an angle so it would fit together in each of the corners. Since the ribbon was fraying and looked crappy, I dipped the edges in some super glue to make a workable edge.

I used spray glue to stick the paper to the box. The spray glue was similar to rubber cement in consistency and workability in that it is semi-permanent when working with it. That was handy when I put the paper on the box off kilter a couple times.

Finally, I lined the bottom with a very small amount of packing tape so that the paper wouldn't rip or crinkle in transportation. Since packing tape is so transparent, you can hardly see it.

So what took so long? I don't know! It was just a tedious job. Getting everything to line up and to get the ribbon to look presentable took a lot of time. After I was done, I realized the design on the paper was upside down too. But there was no way I was doing it over again, so it is staying that way.

As for Ashley Paige: Bikini or Bust, it might be one of my new favorite shows. Her life/business is interesting and confusing to me. She is a super famous bikini designer with no money. Like she literally can't pay her rent. I was kind of uncomfortable watching it at times, but then I couldn't help but root for the girl. She is so sweet and artistic...and all she wants to do is make bikinis, darnit!

hair trial

I am having my hair trial tomorrow and I don't really know what I'm going to do! That's probably not good, is it?

I have had this picture for a long time. It was the first one I really liked. I suppose I would just have a low bun of some sort since I have no back views.

The Yellow Brick Blog posted these great pics that inspired her wedding day hair. and I love the way it looks from the front, but I dont know if I want the curly bun. I think I'd do some sort of basketweave or smooth bun.

The thing is, I hardly ever wear my hair up. Here I am on one of my better hair days. This is the way I think of myself: hair down, parted on the side.

So don't I want to look like myself on my wedding day? Paying someone to do what I do every day seems silly though. We'll see!.

bachelorette party revisited

This weekend was my bachelorette party. I still have to get pictures from the event and do a proper post. In the meantime, I thought I would revisit the bachelorette party I helped throw for Meghan back in '05 in honor of it.

We had a pink themed party where everyone was required to wear something pink, everyone brought a "romantic" gift for the bride (and people interpreted that any way they wanted, which I thought was nice) and had a pink drink that we served.

My most favorite part was how I had everyone's drinks dressed up in dresses and veils. To do this, I bought a bunch of white Barbie dresses from the dollar store and glued a ribbon around the waist so I could tie a name tag onto it. To make the veils, I sewed some tulle onto a piece of elastic that fit around the neck of a bottle. It was so cute and a huge hit.

ug-ly

I think I have seen almost every episode of Say Yes to the Dress at this point and I love it so much. I actually kind of was rooting for that salesgirl, Claudia, even though she made a lot of excuses. My question though is, why do so many people love/want this dress?!?

I have seen it on at least 4 episodes and brides are practically ripping it off other brides while they are still trying it on. It is so awful to me. I just hate the crazy ruffles, low skirt, see through, scandalousness of it. I'm sorry, Pnina Tornai. I really am.

honeymoon, check.

We did it. We FINALLY decided on a honeymoon. After a lot of back and forth, we decided on going to Vegas. We finally nixed Mexico last week when we still did not get our passports. We then debated about Palm Springs, but ultimately decided Vegas was the cheapest and best option. We decided that since the all inclusive Mexican vaca is what we actually really wanted to do, we will go on a shorter honeymoon to save some money and (hopefully) go to Mexico for our 1 year anniversary. This way we don't have to go in the dead of summer also. We can wait until November or December of '09 when we will really enjoy the sun.

As far as Vegas goes...

We will be flying out of Milwaukee on Sunday at 8pm and getting in to Vegas at 9:30pm. This is perfect I think. It will give us enough time to sleep in on Sunday morning, catch up with some of our out of town guests and maybe open a gift or two.

We will be staying at The Palazzo in one of their standard suites (which is far from standard in my opinion). Remember this?

There is a sunken in living room in every standard suite. And you see that table in the far right hand corner of the picture? I'm pretty sure it is for honeymooners to have a room service brunch on the first day of their honeymoon.

Hopefully we will catch a couple shows, sit by the pool and we'll have some yummy and fancy meals. I'm also kind of hoping we will get an upgrade if we tell them we are on our honeymoon. We also get the following specials:

- $20 Food Credit at the 40/40 Club, ( Jay-Z's Sports Bar)
- $25 Slot Credit or Match Play
- Complimentary dessert with purchase of an entree at Morels, a French Steakhouse and Bistro (this place looks muy expensivo, so I'm not sure it we will take advantage of this)
- Complimentary dessert with purchase of an entree at Dos Caminos, a Mexican restaurant obviously

And besides all that, just look at how much fun people have there! :) This lady can hardly contain herself.

Our flight leaves Vegas on Thursday night at midnight and gets in to Milwaukee at 5am on Friday. (Mom, I hope you are ready to pick us up at the crack of dawn!!)

This gives us 3 whole days to be back home, get situated and relax before we have to go back to work on Monday.

We are actually really excited about this. It wasn't our first choice, but we are going to make it as romantic and special as possible. It's kind of awesome to now not only look foward to the wedding, but also to going on a fun vacation. Can't wait!

catholic wedding ceremony songs

Today we met with the Liturgical Director (LD) at our church to go over the songs that will be sung/played at our wedding. My mom used to sing in a group, so we are having 4 of her friends sing and play guitars along with LD, who will play piano as needed.

When we initially met with our priest, he told us that we were not allowed to have any rock n roll or broadway showtunes. I was kind of bummed about it, but later I decided I didn't really want to fight any battles and would find some liturgical songs I liked....

...Until last night when my mom and I were going over songs that she used to sing at weddings that technically are rock n roll and broadway showtunes, that I really liked. So, we decided to take her along to our meeting so she could fight our battles for us :) Turns out, there were no battles that needed to be fought though. All of the songs we liked and wanted, LD agreed upon was excited about them! It also turns out that he knows my mom's friend that will be playing guitar, so he was excited to be able to play with him. I think it will all be really good. Both LD and Mom's friend are super creative and musically talented that I have no doubt they will sound awesome.

The only drawback is that our church just got rid of their organ, so we will not have that grand sound during the processional and recessional. That's alright though. I'm already over it.

Songs we picked:

Prelude: Sabbath Prayer
Beginning Today
Morning Has Broken
Processional: Canon in D
Responsorial Psalm: Taste and See
Alleluia: Celtic Alleluia
Lighting of Unity Candle: The Wedding Song
Sign of Peace: instrumental (leaving this up to LD and Mom's friend to do a little improvisational liturgical jamming :) )
Recessional: Ode to Joy

P.S. I mentioned our church got rid of their organ. We found out today that when they bought it over 25 years ago, it was already a 50 year old organ that they had bought used. It was basically a piece of junk that was constantly needing repairs. So, they researched organ builders and found one they liked and now just need to raise enough money to pay for it. They already have about 90% of the funds for it and are expecting to have the new organ in February of '09. Idiotically (in my book), they chucked the old one before they even got the new one. That's beside the point though. Guess how much it costs for a brand new organ? Seriously, take a guess. The answer for the one our church is purchasing is in the comments.

lunchtime

I had a very exciting lunch. I only live about 2 miles from work, so I tend to go home for lunch. Today was much more exciting that other days though...

We got our first responses for the wedding! 7 of them to be exact.

AND

I got 2 packages delivered from UPS! One I was expecting, but the other I was not.

So fun this getting married thing :)

shower time!

Saturday morning I was showered with love, laughter and gifts. Kind of cheesy, right? Seriously though, it was tons of fun and I felt very loved.

We had a nice brunch spread along with my favorite dessert to eat and Gina also put together a fun game to play. She asked Jon and I separate questions and video taped our answers and had a little multiple choice question and answer game. It was cute!

I saw a lot of friends and family that I don't get to see very often and I got lots of great stuff! There were about 40 people at this shower and the only drawback was that I wish I could have talked to more people for longer periods of time. I felt like I was jumping from table to table spending just a few minutes with the different groups of people that were there. They were all so generous to take time out of their day and bring me a gift and I just felt bad. I hear this is only a precursor for the wedding day.

When I got home and started unpacking everything, I sort of felt like I has just been to Oprah's favorite things or something. It was so exciting!

Here I am in action:
yummy buttercream cakes
with some of my best girls - Meghan (BM), Shari, Andrea (BM), Molly, Me, Dizzy (BM)

Mom and Gina (MOH)
...and with my ribbon bouquet.

Here are some things I/we got:

honeymoon rollercoaster

You want to know what is DE-pressing? The gas prices and its effect on the price of traveling. So much that it is almost not worth traveling. Not even to the desert in the summertime.

We are procrastinators and decided that when it came to getting passports, why do it now, when we can do it later? Since it is now T-63 days until the wedding/honemoon, I think we are cutting it a little close to get the passports in our hot little hands before the big day. I know we can rush them, but then we are just spending a lot of exta money to get it in time and we might as well just stay domestic and spend that extra money on something we can enjoy. Even if we still did go through with getting the passports, I feel nervous booking a passport required vaca without having one yet.

So, I started looking into other options. Remember back when I thought it would be fun to go to California? Turns out that was a pretty expensive idea 4 months ago, so I don't even want to think about what the prices would be like now. We also nixed a lot of those ideas because we were really looking to do as little activity as possible on the honeymoon.

A couple weeks ago, I got an email from The Palazzo in Vegas about their special summer rates. $159 for a 720 square foot room with a sunken in living room. I think that might be bigger than our apartment, and I love Vegas. I was feeling optimistic. The Palazzo is The Venetian's brand new tower/resort. It opened in March I think, so it really is brand new. Check it out

I thought it was a fantastic deal and maybe we should consider Vegas.

The drawbacks:

• It's not terribly romantic (or it could be!)
• we have both been there multiple times (we were hoping to go somewhere neither of us had been)
• we would probably pay close to the same amount for this trip as we would to go to an all-inclusive
• it will be HOT...and that might even be an understatement.

The positives:

• We love it there!
• The restaurants are amazing and we could treat ourselves to a couple really nice meals
• I love a show...and they have plenty to choose from
• The room. It would be amazing. I imagine getting room service and eating it in our sunken living room :)
• the Bellagio fountains. I will never tire of them.
• The pool areas. They have lounge chairs built in the pools. (this could also be a negative if it is too hot to lay by the pool)

So last week, the prices for flights hovered around $250 per person.

Today?

$359!

Three hundred and fifty nine mother f'n dollars. Why? Why? Why? Why? (I'm sorry. I never swear)

I don't know what to do now. Wait for last minute deals? Still go to Vegas, but don't stay at the luxurious Palazzo? (That doesn't seem as cool to me.) Still try for the passport and go to Cabo (our first choice)?

And don't even say go to Door County. It's not happening.

About getting those things done

Re: my post from last week:

1. I picked up the bowls and it feels great knowing I don't have to think about the centerpieces anymore. Well, except for buying all the components, but I won't be able to do that until the week of the wedding anyway.

2. Went to Rose's Flower Shop to talk flowers. Monique, who I think is the owner, and I chatted for quite a while and I just love her! She was very straight forward and actually gave me tips on how I could save money. She was my kind of lady. I like the look of 1 flower bouquets and my first choices were ranunculus or peonies, but being that they are out of season I had to come up with a different plan. Let's take a moment and see how beautious my bouquet could have been though...

At the time, I pretty much decided on white hydrangeas for me and smaller green ones for the bridesmaids. Kind of like these:

Although, I've been on the dahlia/zinnia/spider mum train this week, so I might switch it up. I am thinking they are more me than the hydrangeas. Imagine the below in white and green:

I have always liked the punch of color these green spider mums would give too.

3. My mom and I went to get our dresses fitted. Very exciting! I'll have to go back in a couple weeks for another fitting. I hope it looks good after it gets altered...I don't know if that is a common worry, but I sort of am nervous about that

4. Drove all the way to what felt like the end of the earth (Oak Creek - ha!) to pick up some free envelopes from Molly. Seriously though, I came from Brookfield and felt like I was driving forever to get there. And in my defense, it probably was about a 40 minute drive. It was worth it though because I got all my wedding envelopes, plus some...all for the cost of a Starbucks gift card that I chose to give even though she asked for nothing. I think I have about 300 A7 envelopes in 4 different colors now.

5. Got my hair high/low lighted at the Vici Beauty School. The student I got was super cute and really good. I am trying to gradually get closer to my natural hair color. I had been highlighting my hair for what seems like forever and it is a lot to keep up with. I don't know if I will ever give it up completely, but hopefully if I have less blonde in my hair, it will be easier to maintain. I was there for about 3 hours and it cost $60.

6. Did not get the invitations printed yet. What is wrong with us!? It is getting dangerously close to crunch time.

7. Saw Sex and the City and loved it so much. In hindsight, there were things I thought that weren't necessary, but overall I was immensely satisfied! I kind of wanted to see it again immediately after it was over. I thought Charlotte especially had some great lines and brought out lots of emotion.

As for what we have on our agenda this weekend...

• This Saturday we have our engaged enrichment day. It is a day long retreat you have to go through if you are getting married in the Catholic church. I can think of a lot of other things I'd like to do on Saturday, but I am sure it won't be as bad as we think it will be.

• Hopefully laying by the pool on Sunday if it isn't raining
  

• We are also going to get those invites printed. I mean, it's not even funny anymore.

1. faye and greer 2. Vogue Flowers 3. The Knot 4. unknown 5. Mrs. Lime from the Weddingbee's BM bouquets 6. unknown 7. urban bride

getting stuff done!

I am getting lots done this week and feeling real good about it...

1. picking up bowls from a friend that she is letting us use for centerpieces.
2. meeting with the florist
3. getting my dress altered
4. picking up some free paper products from a super generous chica
5. getting my hair highlighted
6. hopefully getting our invitations printed already.
7. seeing the Sex and the City movie - hoody hooooo!

I am sure a detailed update will follow.

thankyouverymuch

Jon's mom just got a Cricut and let me borrow it. She owns her own crafty business where she will use this machine, but I have often wondered how much the regular person would feel the need to die cut...so much where they have to buy a $200 machine. On top of that, buy the cartidges for extra die cuts at $90 a pop. (I think these are the average prices anyway. I just Google'd it and the prices greatly vary) People go crazy for this stuff too. They have the cartridges under lock and key at Michael's and on one of my last visits, I overheard people feverishly asking the employees when they would get the Disney Cricut cartridge back in stock. Regardless, I welcomed to opportunity to spend the weekend with the thing, see what all the hype was all about, be crafty and cut stuff. And cut stuff is what I did.

I had bought some blank note cards at Micheal's a while ago in their dollar bins and I decided to spice them up with the help of some leftover paper I had and the Cricut. I will be having to thank people a lot in the near future, so I figured thank you cards would be a wise choice. I made 60 of these babies.

ring a ding ding

We got our wedding bands this weekend! It was much more painless than I anticipated it would be. For some reason, I thought it was going to be a really long process. You see, from time to time, if Jon and I would be in a mall or something, we would pop in a jewelry store just to see what they had to offer. I always left a little dejected because the channels didn't match up or my engagement ring paired with the band looked too big for my finger or the salesperson would tell me I should leave at least 6 weeks to be able to get the ring sized, etc. I should have known the original jewelry store where Jon got the ring would have a perfect match. And they did! I still had a couple decisions to make though. My ring is a round stone with 3 channel set princess cut side stones on each side. A channel set princess cut band would technically match it, but I was loving the round one! After wearing them both and staring at them both, I decided on the round band and I am so glad. I love how it looks together and alone. Jon opted for a titanium beveled edge band. Here they are...

...and the set

100 days

100 days to go and I have JUST kind of started realizing this thing is around the corner and need to get on the ball. What have I done in the past 50 days?

• met with Aly for a cake tasting. (must decide on what decorations we'd like asap)
• made appointment to get dress altered
• made reservation for rehearsal dinner (must decide what food and drink we'd like to offer)
• made appointment to talk to florist. Decided to only have my bouquet made by the florist and we'll do the rest.
• Suits were bought by the boys
• bought the ties for the boys
• reserved our hotel room for the wedding night
• made a list of songs we'd like to be played at the reception.
• finished second registry
• decided on bridesmaid dresses (need to make decision about shoes and accessories)
• met with our priest, got an idea of how the ceremony is going to go, took our marriage test

things that I NEED to do asap:

• make hair appointment for the day of the wedding
• get going on finalizing, printing and assembling invitations
• figure out honeymoon
• figure out favors
• pick readings, songs for ceremony

centerpieces

I made a little mock up of what our table might look like with a sheet and a black sash. Yup, I'm resourceful.

Idea #1 - Baby's breath. It's inexpensive, goes with my color scheme and would fill a vase for very little money. The downside is, it stinks! Seriously, baby's breath does not smell nice at all. This could be done with Queen Anne's Lace probably though. How does that smell?

idea #2 - Limes. This idea was #1 in my head before doing this test and it quickly went to the bottom after I tried it out. I didn't have any vases that fit them very well, so it was kind of hard to get a feel for what it would look like if it was packed full...but it still isn't my favorite and I won't be persuing this idea.

idea #3 - Apples. This is a front runner. I love how bold the colors are and that they would be consumable after the wedding.

where do I live again?

I have not stayed in Madison for a whole weekend since the last weekend in February. A little ridiculous? Most definitely. We are busy peeps though, what can I say.

March 1-2: Green Bay for Todd's big 30th bday. Just 3 days later, I turned right back around and drove back to Green Bay when Cooper was born. I decorated that beautiful cake below. You want to know how I did it, right? I know you do. It looks so professional. Well, I'll tell you.

1. Buy a blank cake at Pick N Save the night before you go to Green Bay at 9pm.

2. Get home and realize don't have a tube of frosting to decorate it like you thought you did.

3. Decide you'll deal with it in the morning and watch an episode of Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee. Ironically, she is making cookies and made a semi-homemade frosting with powdered sugar, water and food coloring. You realize it is a little runny, but you are going to have it in the refrigerator overnight, so it should harden by the morning

4. Mix aforementioned ingredients and fashion a "30" on the cake

5. Place in refrigerator

6. Leave for Green Bay at approximately 9am the next morning. Hold the cake in your lap, to avoid any shifting that may occur had it been left unattended in the back seat.

7. Pick up Barney.

8. Place cake in the back seat now that there is an appropriate chaperone for the cake

9. Drive for about an hour and realize the cake has been on an angle with the sun beating down into the car and the design that was slaved over and carefully taken care of, now looks like this.

Oh, and here is Cooper, about 1 minute after I got the hospital and obviously needed a picture immediately.

March 8-9: In Milwaukee by myself for my cousin's baby shower.

March 14-16: In Milwaukee together to take a marriage test at St. Jude and for cake tasting with Aly. The test was seriously a scantron, #2 pencil style test that we took at the church rectory. I think we were supposed to take it in separate rooms, but our priest did not require that. So we pretty much compared answers on the entire test. We will be meeting with a couple from church to discuss the results in a couple weeks I guess. As for the cake tasting, we had a great flavors and designs to choose from. We haven't made any final decisions yet, but look how yummy! I couldn't stop eating the butter cream frosting. So delish.

March 22-23: Easter and we headed back up to Green Bay to celebrate with the fam.

Jon and I had to head back to Madison (the city) around the same time everyone else went to church, but were still getting our things together at the same time they all left, which left us alone in the house with Madison (the dog) for a little while. We were tidying up the basement where we were staying and Madison was sort of poking around down there with us, but then went upstairs. As I was packing up, I realized quite a while had passed and I didn't hear a peep from upstairs. I figured that probably wasn't a good thing and decided to check out what Madison had gotten herself into. What I found when I went upstairs was this:

That's right, just chillin on the couch, doing absolutely nothing. I took this opportunity to try and be artistic and had a little photo shoot with little Mad Dog

March 27th - My 27th Birthday. My golden birthday, if you will. Jon gets ready and is out the door before I even get out of bed most days...and when I went to the bathroom, I was greeted with this. So sweet :)

March 29-30: I was actually free and had a relaxing weekend planned until I decided to tag along to Chicago with Shari to visit Andrea. We went out for Mexican, drank margaritas and other cocktails and had a great time...of course. I expected nothing less, which is why I gave up my relaxing weekend.

April 4-6: Milwaukee again. Jon went to the Brewer game and we checked out the Body Worlds exhibit. Amazing. It is a must see. Todd went to the Brewer game with Jon, so we got to hang with Coop during the game which was great. It's hard only seeing him every couple weeks. You hear that, Gina? I want to see that little babe every day.

This weekend, Jon is out of town, so I am back in Milwaukee yet again. It has kind of felt like the old days before I moved to Madison. Last night, Meghan and I went to Pizzeria Piccola, which we used to do weekly 3 years ago. Afterward we went to Target, duh. Then we went back to her house where we talked and read magazines. Basically, it might as well have been 2005 because that is exactly what we have done on any given night back then.

Today, I had lunch at Chili's with some girls I used to work with at Betty Brinn. We had chips and salsa and margaritas (Yes, that's right, margs at lunch. We don't mess around). We frequented the Chili's happy hour back in '05 also. Afterward, did a little shopping with Mom. Tonight had dinner with Dizzy and Andy at Saz's and finished off with pie at Baker's Square. It was so random...and I am here to tell you that Baker's Square at 8:30 on a Saturday night is a little depressing. The french silk pie was yummy though.

The next 2 weekends we are actually staying home and our gas tanks will thank us.