• Getting Married: 7 Weeks – Postcards, Painting, and Spring

    One of the things we are excited about (well, me way more so) is our idea of a guest book for the wedding. I might have mentioned it before in this blog series, but I absolutely love postcards. When I was out of the country, I would try to send postcards to friends and family and even some to myself. It was a fun time. I remember taking about an hour to sit in a cafe in Hiroshima, filling out postcards to send home before I hopped on the train back to Shimonoseki. That was a special time for me. A time to reflect on the crazy day I had, the things I had seen, and enjoy the scenery. There were even couple people with dogs who walked by and the dogs let me pet them! That was a rare occurrence in Japan. It was the saddest point of my time there.

    So, I have a bunch of postcards from all over that I’ve collected. But also, I have a bunch of friends and family from all over who may or may not be able to attend. Our guestbook will be all postcards that people have either mailed to us, or brought themselves, or just picked out at the ceremony/reception and filled out. We were so excited to get our first one in the mail from my Aunt Brenda a couple weeks ago!

    week 7 postcard

    Isn’t that fun?! It’s just the kind of thing we want. If YOU are picking out a postcard to send or bring with you, it can be whatever you like, but I would love it if it’s from something local to your area. Who knows, maybe we’ll take our postcards and visit each site in order throughout our marriage. That sure would be fun. If you want more instructions, check out our wedding website here.

    I absolutely love to paint. I’m a crafty person (if you can’t tell). Sometimes when I’m stressing, or overwhelmed with stuff, I just need to sit down with a paintbrush and go. I did that this week. It’s purposeful painting, not just for pleasure. I’ll be able to do more of that after the wedding, but right now, everything I do just about needs to be purposeful. I’ve had this bunny shelf for years! I mean, years!

    week 7 bunny shelf
    The project room is one glorious hot mess. Don’t look at it.

    I can’t remember when I got it, but I know I had it through elementary school. That was when I was most into bunnies. Then I loved wolves. Then I loved elephants, and that’s been a regular thing since. But I wanted to incorporate this into the wedding and then into the house afterwards. That will take some tweaking post-wedding day, but in the meantime, I needed to prime this baby and get some paint on her. I like to use flat house paint as a primer. It’s what we used in art class in high school and the habit just stuck with me. When I pried open the lid of my small paint can, this is what I found.

    week 7 old paint
    This used to be white…

    Gross, huh? Tell me about it. I thought it was weird that nothing was moving inside when I was shaking it up. Yep, spoiled to the core. I’ve never seen anything like it. Thankfully, there is a lumber/quasi-hardware shop right down the street from The House, so Matt and I drove there and picked out a fresh can.

    week 7 new paintIt’s better if the paint is not completely white. For some reason it’s harder to cover with darker colors. So, I got a tint called “Violet Puff.” Bahaha, so funny. But it did the job! And the bunny shelf is well on her way to lovely readiness. I’m pretty pleased with her. There are some other things I’m painting too, but I don’t like to give all my secrets away.

    Last Fall, I planted a bunch of bulbs outside the front of The House. I have so many wonderful ideas for those garden beds. The biggest issue is that they don’t get much sun, and there isn’t much drainage. Oh, and about 12 ugly bush stumps spread fairly evenly throughout them. Those are going to HAVE to go. Matt and I dug up some weeds and were working on one of the shrubs the other day. After we finished, I asked if he felt any great satisfaction from it. He shrugged. Me, being the prophet that I am, balked and said, “You are fulfilling a command of God here! You were made and commanded to rule and subdue the earth and that’s just what you’re doing…doesn’t that bring you satisfaction? You are living to the full potential of who God made you to be!” He didn’t seem quite as impressed as I was. Go figure.

    week 7 flowers

    I’m starting to think that those daffodils are supposed to be that short and NOT because they get hardly any sun, but those crocuses are HUGE!

    week 7 crocusesCrocuses are such a happy flower to me and remind me that winter is ending and spring is on its way. That makes you happy too, right?

    While we were weeding (significantly less weeds than were rampant through the bed last year…ahem), I found a whole walnut and decided to crack it open. I had a chopper looking tool (Mom just informed me that it’s a spade) and went at it. This was the result and how fun is that?!week 7 walnut

    We set it down and weren’t thinking about keeping it. Seems another creature thought it was just as yummy, er, lovely, and took off with it before we could try and keep it.

    In a few minutes, I will be heading out to my first wedding shower. I’ve been to several, but this will be MY first one. It’s up at Matt’s church and I’m really excited to go and see his family and church family – get to know them a bit better. It’s hard living further away from where I will be living and not be able to spend quality time with everyone. I’m sure I will have pictures for you next entry!

    —————————–

    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

  • 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. 🙂

    —————————–

    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

  • 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.

    —————————–

    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

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