gina is 30

A big happy 30th birthday goes out to my sister today!

Let's take a trip down the past 30 years, shall we?

My guess this is 1982. I look to be around 1 year old which would make Gina 3 or 4.

I just like this picture. I would guess this is '83 or '84

Charm necklaces, jelly bracelets and jelly shoes...what more could 2 girls want in the mid 80s? Maybe some larger wrists actually...so that Gina doesn't have to hold her arms up to keep her plethora of bracelets on of course.
...And I could use some clothes that fit.
...and some better haircuts.

just taking a nap during a softball game, no big deal.

with our cat, Tacky (RIP Tacky!)
house on the rock. holla!
2 good little Catholic school girls...in need of a bang trim.

I think the side pony, perm, mexican poncho, neon camera, rolled jean shorts and tretorns should tell us this picture was taken circa 1990
These are from the same trip, and just needed to be posted to acknowledge the phase Gina went through when she was obsessed with Betty Boop.


8th grade graduation
The fam in Florida in 1993, I think. Fanny packs being sported by everyone but me. Unless I have one hiding under that massive tshirt.

High school graduation - 1996
this is the only picture I could find documenting 1997-2000.
college graduation - 2001?

2002 - Hoover Dam/Lake Mead

2003 - goin' to the chapel

2004

2005

2006
2007
2008

Happy Birthday, Gina! Looking forward to 30 more years of fun pictures! Wish I could be with you to celebrate. Have a fun day!

06.14.08

father and son (in hawaiian shirts)

pook

I'm going through the archives. I'll be posting pics for the next couple days. These are from a couple weeks ago. I couldn't decide which one I liked better.

4th O' July weekend (in pictures)

7.3.08

Tim McGraw

Summerfest

Diz
7.4.08

shopping

photo shoot

flirt

picnic

bags

earl

obvious

naughty

7.5.08

(engaged!)
7.6.08

home

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.

overpriced resale shop

I walk into Anthropologie behind a group of elderly women. The elderly women are curious about the new store. They have never been there. They enter the store and lay their eyes on Anthroplogie in it's purposefully shabby chic/boho decor and clothing. Sale tables in the front of the store house items in buckets with handwritten price flags on each one. The items include mix and match knobs for $3.95 each, aprons for $8.95, etc. The women converse as I listen:

"What is this store?"
"Oh! it's a resale shop."

I giggle.

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.

Five Guys

We finally got to check out Five Guys Burgers and Fries...affectionately known simply as Five Guys. We had heard big things about this place. It originated on the east coast, but from the look of their website it is moving westward. I would call them the east coast In-N-Out Burger. Like In-N-Out, they only have a few things on the menu: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, veggie burger, fries and cajun fries. Although, word on the street is that the "veggie burger" is just a bun with any vegetables you want on it.

Anyway, we walked in on a Friday night at around 6pm and there was a line about 8 people deep. The food was a little more expensive than I would typically spend on a burger and fries and such a place. $17 for both of us to have: a hamburger, a bacon cheeseburger, large fries and 2 sodas. We got our number (92) and took our seat. The restaurant is decorated pretty minimally. It kind of reminded me of Jimmy John's, but with less character. White and red tile with almost every square inch of the walls covered in articles about how great they are (Zagat ratings, food reviews, etc) and quotes by people raving about how delicious the burgers are. We waited for a while, maybe about 10 mins or more and all of a sudden we started hearing them call out, #95, 96, 99, 102...and remember, we are #92. So we are getting kind of pissed....We are hungry, they think they are awesome, they are charging us more than what we normally would pay for fast food and now, they obviously lost our order. So I got up and checked out the situation...sure enough, lost our order. They put a rush on it though and I had it in no time. They gained a few more points by doing this...

We got back to our table, took our first bite and immediately forgot about all of their shortcomings. It was delicious! The regular burgers come stacked double, which Jon and I decided is quite convenient. We don't like when you get huge burgers at restaurants and you have to cut them in half to be able to pick them up and eat them. Jon also liked that the bacon on his cheeseburger fit his burger and wasn't hanging outside the bun. The fries were good in my book, but Jon wasn't the biggest fan. They are fresh cut potatoes and were just salty enough. I mean, I added more salt (because that is just what I do) but I think they were good and salty for the regular fry eater. We got a large fry and shared it, but it was more than enough. We didn't even finish it. I think we'll share the small next time.

While we were there, we decided to rank our favorite burgers in terms of deliciousness. Jon thought Five Guys was better than Dotty's, but I don't remember if he liked it better than Culver's....and he doesn't have a soft spot for Gille's like I do. I rank my favorite burgers like this:

1. Culver's
2. Gille's
3. Five Guys
4. Dotty's
5. Sobelman's
Honorable Mention: In-N-Out Burger (Only because it has been about 3 years since I have been there and I don't remember really what it tasted like, only what I felt while eating it...which was immense satisfaction)

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

burgers and fries

This is an ongoing post I have been writing for the past month:

I love McDonald's. I love the McChicken, the Filet-o-Fish, the burgers, the nuggets, the fries and even the diet coke is delicious. It is so convenient, so cheap and so entirely bad for you. It was becoming too easy to stop there and get lunch or dinner when we were in a rush/not feeling like cooking, etc. So, I decided to give it up for the month of April (and any place like it)....and you guys, it has been SO hard! I kept thinking I wanted to have an ongoing post of how I felt about McDonald's that particular day, but I didnt get around to it until today (the 21st). Oops. So I will summarize how the last 2 1/2 weeks have been. Things were easy peasy up until the week of the 14th. Since then, I have thought about having McDonald's at least once a day. I am a crazy person! I know this. May 1st can't come soon enough! Except, since I have gone without it this long, I am thinking I should stick it out as long as I can. We'll see what wins out (probably McDonalds, I'm not going to lie)

21st - It's Monday. Enough said. I wanted to go to McDonald's for lunch because I know all we have at home are Lean Cuisine french bread pizzas. I had those 3 times last week. /// Went home for lunch and watched a little Big Brother After Dark and had an Herb Roasted Chicken Lean Cuisine. This is actually one of my faves. It was pretty good.

22nd - Jon calls me at work to ask me if Culver's is the same as McDonalds. I say yes, we cannot go there either, I proceed to think about butterburgers for the rest of the day.

23rd - not feeling real good. My glands are kind of swollen and soup sounds much tastier.

24th - Still getting over the sickness. Still not diggin the idea of McD's.

25th - we went to Dotty's for dinner. I'm not sure if that was cheating. We DID have burgers and fries (and cheese curds...mmmmm), but it wasn't McDonald's :) And, it's Friday. I don't cook on Fridays.

26th - kind of want McDonalds.

27th - Had soup for lunch. Jon made homemade pizza for dinner. McDonald's would have been convenient, but we chose to eat what we had in the house. Yay us!

28th - Stopped at Target to get lunches for the week...including 3 Cheese Ziti Marinara by Smart Ones. It is my favorite and I have not thought about having McD's.

29th - stayed late at work, then did some errands. Jon wasn't going to be home for dinner. I kind of wanted to go to McDonald's, but I didn't!

30th - we went grocery shopping right after work and didn't get done until about 7, so we didnt feel like going home and starting to cook a meal at 7. Typically, we might have gone to McD's or Wendy's since they are right down the street. Tonight, we went to Subway! Yay us!

Recap:
So now it is May 1st and we are planning on making dinner at home tonight, but we'll see what happens in the future. This experiment was meant not only to cut out something that is really bad for you, but also to save money and be in the mind set to make meals rather than eat out. And I think we succeeded in that. The times when we were tempted to just go to McDonald's, we took a step back and realized that we were just being lazy and to get our butts in the kitchen to cook something. Tomorrow is Friday though and it's possible that we could relight the flame with McDonalds. Bottom line: I think I will think more about the money and the calories before I ever go there again.