Xapa to the World

Author: xapatotheworld

  • Getting Married: 8 Weeks – Workin and Weather

    In the last few weeks, Matt and I have been struggling through some goofy work schedules. Well, Matt’s work schedule is always goofy, but it did manage to get even more garbled up with an annual shutdown of the plant which had him working long hours for a week straight. Now he’s going to be covering vacation for another coworker, so he’ll be MIA in the mornings for a while. I was working on a big project with my bank and that had me stuck in a basement at our corporate office for two weeks. That’s about all I could handle, although, I have been able to go in early a couple days each following week to help a little more before the branch opens.

    I’m glad to be able to help. I’m glad that I have the skills to help with something like this. I’m glad that Matt and I have both been able to get overtime recently. It has helped a bunch with wedding bills. I don’t think we’ll have many (if any) lingering expenses after the wedding day, which is just as I wanted it. We wanted to go as simply and inexpensively as possible – apart from my requirement of a good photographer.

    But now, we’re under 10 weeks, close to 50 days until the wedding. Crazy to think about! And we’ve been doing really good on the timeline. Getting things done and ahead of time. But I can’t help but get a little….anxious? Is that the word? I’m not nervous or overly worrying about anything. I just have a lot on my mind. There’s a lot going on. Plus, I’m on this birth control, which seems to be the new scapegoat for every physical/emotional issue I have going on right now. My pH balance is off, so I’m on a minimal meat diet while I get more alkalines in my system. Good thing I love spinach, broccoli and carrots.

    To top it off, one of the biggest tasks we still have on our plate requires the wide open spaces of outside and warmer temps. Ohio has been less than obliging in this department. Darn Ohio. I love my state, but man! It’s like a woman going through menopause! There’s no guarantee what temperature we will have on a given day. NO GUARANTEE. Don’t even try to figure this place out. Yesterday, I left my house with gloves on and came home without my coat.

    I’m having dreamlike events. I’ve never sleep-walked before, at least that I know of. Trust me though, if I did, my family would be sure I knew about it. In the last month, I’ve had two dreamlike events that I can remember. I get up in the middle of the night and do some sort of task in my room and then crawl back into bed. I moved some clothes off a chair for the first one. When I woke up, they were definitely in the new location. The other night, I smelled a lot of garlic (mom made us some gluten-free meatloaf…that’s a whole other story). I got up to try and open my window, only to find it wouldn’t budge. I’m so glad I kept the locks set on those. I would’ve freezed to death!

    Is there some sort of Sun Dance we could do? I know there’s a rain dance, but I’m sure there’s a Sun Dance out there. I’d like to do that. Wanna join me? Then Matt will have more time to work on these.

    week 08 yellow jars

    Don’t those look fun? Don’t you wish you knew what those were for??? Yep. Our wedding’s going to be pretty fab. I like throwing this kind of party.

    Speaking of party, next Sunday will be my first bridal shower! I’m so excited! I’ve been breaking my original rule of not looking at the registries to see what has been bought. My thought is that once I see stuff being bought, I’ll not look. Right now, there’s zilch. Oh well. You still have time people, no worries. 🙂 I just really want that shower curtain…and step-stool…and those dinner plates…and the garden tools…and the bat house. Ok, that’s not on any of the registries, but we saw some cool ones at Rural King! How fun! I so want to have a bat house….and a rolling compost bin.

    Ok, I’m done. Time to go to work. 🙂

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

  • Getting Married: 9 Weeks – Shopping

    We were able to get a lot of things done this past week.

    Monday, my sister took her daughters, my two junior bridesmaids, to get their dresses. I was able to meet up with them and give my input on styles and such. They are going to be so lovely, I can’t wait to see them when the dresses are altered and they have their hair done up.

    After we left the dress shop, I stopped at Hobby Lobby to see what kind of stands they had for Unity Candles. Let me tell you, they were just pitiful. There was nothing really beautiful. I’ve got a more earthy turn and the ones they had were either glass with gem embellishments or metal with big random hearts all over. Definitely not my style at all.  I shared my dismay with Matt who immediately began searching online for one that would be a better fit.

    He found something so suited to what I wanted, it was fabulous. I ordered a set and it should be here by the beginning of May! I don’t want to share it, but here is the shop on Etsy. She has some other lovely things.

    Matt and I both had Thursday off and so decided to spend the day getting some other shopping done together. The plan was to find his clothes for the wedding (I’m fairly taken care of) and then find some cheap rings for the ceremony.  We went to JCPenney for the clothes and found just about everything we needed! Our bridal party are wearing/alternating of sorts, the wedding colors, and the thought was that to make Matt stand out more, we would have him all in red and then tan khakis. We easily found a red bow tie, but could not find a good fitting red shirt to match. So, Matt decided he’d rather stand out more by wearing a white shirt with the red accents. There’s nothing more frustrating than looking at wedding pictures and not being able to tell the groom apart from the rest of the guys. This would’ve been a problem because the best man (Matt’s brother Adam) would’ve been dressed almost the same as Matt. This will definitely keep him distinguishable.

    Did you know that suspenders are hard to find? I didn’t think they would be, what with the hipster culture going on right now. We are not hipster, but you plan on things being easy to find and when they aren’t, that’s frustrating. So, I went to my default problem-solving website to find what I needed. And, voila! Etsy pulled through again. Albeit, a little more pricey (more than half what the rest of Matt’s outfit cost!!), but I found what I was looking for.

    week09 suspendersThe shop owner is currently on vacation until the end of April, probably sewing up Matt’s suspenders! 😀 I can’t wait to see them in person. I hope they look as wonderful as I think they will.

    We finished up with the clothes and on a whim, stopped by the jewelry selection. We found just what we were looking for, probably cheaper than we could’ve found elsewhere too! It took some convincing, but we finally got the lady to understand that we weren’t looking for anything spectacular. See, Matt’s job requires him to be jewelry-free, including wedding bands. He needs something he can easily take off and put back on. He also needs something that isn’t so expensive that if he loses it, we’re devastated financially. We are willing to pay for certain aspects of this wedding, but other parts are just not a big deal to us. For me, we found a simple, narrow sterling silver band that will sit beautiful next to my white gold engagement ring. Maybe for our anniversary, we’ll spring for the matching band to my engagement ring, but it’s not essential. We just need something for the wedding. What we found cost us just over $75 together! I like that kind of spending.

    Might not be valuable to the world, but they're precious to us!
    Might not be valuable to the world, but they’re precious to us!

    While I’ve got you, I’ll let you in on a secret.

    I was at Target and found this lovely little glass pitcher, the kind with a spigot on the bottom for easy dispensing. It is very sweet. I wanted to add it to our registry, but I didn’t have time to go all the way back to the counter to get a scanner gun configured and go back to scan it and then leave again. It would’ve been a pain. But recently, I added the Target app to my Android. I signed in to my registry on my phone and found this handy-dandy bar code icon at the top of the screen. I touched it and amazingly, I could scan the barcode of the pitcher through my camera. In just a few moments, the pitcher was now on our registry! Remarkable! I was so excited that, had I had more time, I might have run around the store to add some more things on it, but I’m so glad to know that I can do this in the future. You can also manage your registry from there (increasing item counts and such. It’s a great tool. The only thing I couldn’t do was remove an item, but when I got to a computer, I could do that. Anyway, take that knowledge and go with it, m’dears! Oh, and remember that you have to scan the barcode on the actual item, not the one on the shelf with the price. Why they can’t work that out to be the same, I don’t know, but it’s ok. We still love them.

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

  • Getting Married: 10 Weeks – Fitting in Lithuanian

    70 Days and 10 Weeks. Wow! The time is getting so close!

    This past Sunday, Matt and I met with and booked an awesome DJ! I’ll have some more info up for you after the wedding about DJ B. We are pretty pleased with our pick. He was very organized, detailed, and personable. And he could laugh. That’s always a good sign.

    Tuesday night, Mom and I lugged my wedding dress and accessory clothing to David’s Bridal for my first fitting! It was pretty fun and informative. My dress is so gorgeous and detailed…that means alterations are going to be a bear. We actually have to go back at the end of April for a Part Two because she could only focus on the top part and not the hem. That’s right. I might be long-waisted, but I’m still short and the back was way too loose. The dress looked so pretty when I first tried it on, but it felt wonderful after she clipped it up to the right dimensions on the top.

    Who is this she? Her name is Grazina. From Lithuania and bearing a thick Eastern European accent – she was just what I wanted in a seamstress.  When we bought the dress, we also bought a slip to go under it. It had tulle and a couple layers to make the dress poof out a bit more. When I tried it on for the fitting, Grazina decided that it was too much and found one with tulle only towards the bottom. It fit so much better. Alas, that one was also too long, so she will probably have to alter that as well. But, at least we didn’t have to pay for the second one; she let us swap out the first one.

    I have been putting the finishing touches on the design for some of the favors. We are having a couple different favor choices and I love the variety of the reception so far. We have several cake flavors, different favors, and the decorations are going to be cockamamie – just my style. The music too, will exactly suit our taste, spanning a few decades. I absolutely can’t wait!

    I got a text from both my bridesmatrons. My MOH, Lanna, found her dress and it is so lovely! Amy sent me a picture of the dress she found for her daughter who is my flower girl. Both of those dresses are in yellow and Amy found red shoes to match. I know she is going to be so amazingly adorable. My sister is going to take my nieces out, who are my junior bridesmaids, to find their dresses hopefully this week.

    Things are starting to come together and the RSVP’s are coming in too!  I am so excited for all of this and hope that I don’t get too stressed out throughout the next 70 days. I’m so glad that Matt and I decided to stay home after the wedding if only just to be able to relax and recoup from all the planning and the day. I know that I will be exhausted.

    Oh, I bought a necklace to wear with my dress. I won’t post which one it is, but here is the link to the shop. I think her jewelry is darling!

    I will leave you with another shop to peruse. I’ve been following this Meg Duerksen’s blog for about a year now. She has creative women come to her done-up barn once a month for a crafting weekend and they get crazy! She is a Christian and inspires me in so many ways. She just reopened her online shop, so I think you should check it out.

    This next week will be – shopping for Matt’s outfit and our wedding bands! Yay!

    —————————–

    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles