Married life

Quick update because my life is about to change like whoa:

Last Saturday, Seth and I got married. More pictures and details to come later. He wore his dress blues as a total surprise. I've never seen him in his dress uniform...EVER. I've seen a picture of him in them like 2 years ago, but that was the old dress uniform, and we bought this when I was in Germany in April, but they had to order some of it, so I've never seen him in it. Apparently everyone knew about this surprise except me, and it was the sexiest surprise ever.

We had a quick honeymoon in Northern Michigan the last few days and got back late last night. Yesterday we watched the sun rise over Lake Michigan in Traverse City and watched it set in South Haven. It was beautiful, but pictures haven't been uploaded yet. (Sorry!!!)

And now, we just found out a few hours ago that I can move to Washington with him when he heads out next week. I was not mentally prepared for this at all, and I'm a crazy ball of nerves right now. I'm excited, happy, scared, nervous, anxious and every other emotion simultaneously. I was thinking I'd be able to move out there in September or even October, so moving in July is a huge difference.

So if I don't blog for a while, it's because we're frantically packing up the apartment, saying all of our goodbyes, and driving out west...all in the next week.

Seth's home!!!! (and wedding weather)

Seth got home last night!!! Patrick and I picked him up from the airport yesterday evening. He's back in the states!!!! We were talking in the car ride home and he doesn't remember the last time he was home in the month of July. He thinks it's been before he joined the Army, and he's been in for almost 8 years now.

Anyways, Patrick made himself a little outfit for the homecoming. I bought the materials (duh, he's too young to work, and he doesn't get an allowance because he's naughty!) but this was all his idea. I swear.

waiting (napping) in the car, waiting for Seth!!!!

(he had so much fun, he wanted the underside of his shirt to be decorated too. and p.s. the t-shirt may have come from Gerber...for an infant 0-3 months. it may have also come in a 5 pack, so Patrick may be getting in touch with his crafty side and make some more t-shirts for himself. and p.s.s. folding 5 pure white infant shirts may have given me a bit of baby fever. i can't be certain though. )

They LOVED each other!! Patrick gave Seth all sorts of kisses and licked his face and cuddled up on his lap on the way home. Seth kept checking on him in the back seat to make sure he was content back there in his cage and he was cool enough. It was so cute!!

In wedding news....I checked the extended 12 day weather forecast to get a glimpse of the weather on our wedding day. Have I mentioned that the wedding is outside? In Michigan? Where weather is completely unpredictable? Yeah...it's supposed to be 94 degrees, "humid and warmer with rain." The rehearsal is supposed to be 85 degrees and mostly cloudy with thunderstorms.

I know, I shouldn't have even looked at the weather forecast, because it can change 2,309,098 times between now and then, but I couldn't help it. Sooo if you're the praying type, please pray that it's not nearly that hot because I will literally die in my dress. And my hair won't appreciate that weather. And neither will the guests. Please pray for 76 and sunny with a breeze. But I'm not picky!

Also, while mentioning I'm not picky...have I also mentioned that Seth's brother's wife will be wearing a white gown to MY wedding? It's floor length, pure white, and looks like it's a prom dress. She posted a picture of Facebook the other day and said it was for an upcoming wedding and everyone commented on how beautiful it is, and how she'll look stunning in it. Apparently she, along with all of her friends, do not know it's inappropriate to wear a white dress to a wedding UNLESS YOU'RE THE BRIDE! Honestly though, I find it hilarious. I'm not saying anything to her; I'll let the staredowns of the other guests do the talking for me.

Wedding favors: vanilla extract

For wedding favors, I made homemade vanilla extract! I am pretty in love with how they turned out. I bought a few economy size bottles of vodka from Sam's club, a pound Madagascar beans, then cut the beans in half, took a few shots of vodka to allow enough room in the bottle for the beans and let them sit for a few months, shaking once or twice a week.


And then the fun part began:

I bought a cheesecloth from Bed Bath and Beyond and strained out the bits of vanilla. The cheesecloth had bigger holes and some of the vanilla slipped through, so I folded it in half:


I bought seventy 2 oz bottles online and washed them one by one to make sure they were clean, poured the strained vanilla into a measuring cup and set up a little assembly line:


I had a few casualties along the way. I used a funnel to fill in each bottle, and it turns out the funnel can be deceiving and make them overflow very easily if you're not careful. It smelled really good though!

Then, I was introduced to embossing. And I fell in love and we had a love affair weekend of embossing everything possible. Really, everything. (I found myself making random cards for friends and embossing them just because it's so awesome). I went to Hobby Lobby, got a stamp cut out, a variety of stamps, a variety of color of ink pads, special textured paper, a hole puncher, embossing power and lots of other stuff (for hand made shower invitations, too) and walked out spending a good $100 $150. Oops. Instead of buying a heat gun and doing each tag individually, I googled to see if it was safe to bake a bunch of these in the oven. Turns out you can! Turn it on to about 250 degrees, and let them bake for 5 minutes or so. (I used foil on the cookie sheet, but that was a personal preference).

And since I love embossing so much, I wanted to emboss both sides (the front says 'thank you' and the back says 'homemade just for you by: Stacy and Seth'). But as every embosser knows, you can only emboss one side of a piece of paper. So I did what any normal girl who is crunched for time would do: I used my hand dandy stamper cutout thingy to cut twice as many circles as needed so I could then hand stamp each one, emboss each one, bake them all, let them cool and use a glue stick to glue them together one by one. Then I put them back on a cookie sheet, put DVD's over them, put some cans of vegetables on top to keep them from curling, and let them set over night to make sure they were good and stuck to each other. Then I signed our names on each one. I also stuck a label on each bottle, letting people know it is vanilla extract.

Then one Friday night, I put all the pieces together (after stopping by Joanne Fabric and getting a bunch of cream colored organza fabric). And ended up with these pretty little things:

After I got all the little parts done, and started actually piecing everything together, including cutting the fabric and ribbon and tying it all together, it took about 4 hours totals. We're giving one 2 oz bottle per party (instead of individual gifts for each person) so I only needed about 50. But I had a lot of vanilla left, plenty of extra bottles and other materials, so I made just over 60 total. There will be some lucky guests who get more than one bottle (and I know who they will be!!)

One day closer to the wedding! And to Seth being home :) And to my sister being home and to Patrick meeting his dad :)

Little tidbits

I've been slacking in my blogging, mainly because I've been too busy to devote a whole post on one thing, but since I want to blog, and I just pained my nails and am waiting for them to dry, here's a random post.

Patrick got his first bath this weekend! He looked completely ridiculous, all soaking wet and crying. He had a traumatic weekend. Event #1: I really hate/get disgusted by eye goop all up in the fur by the eyes, so I always dig it out. It was deeply stuck in his eye fur, so I got a warm rag to loosen it up and I started digging it out. He wasn't happy, so I enlisted my mom's help. He started snapping at her and she had to yell at him. He was upset when he got yelled at. Traumatic event #2: (this is gross and I'm sorry)...His little butthole is covered in fur. I can't even find it, to be honest. And when he poops, sometimes it gets stuck in his fur. And then he'll sit down...and smash poop into his butt fur. And then he gets mad because he KNOWS it's there but he can't get it off. So I got out a baby wipe and started cleaning him up. Apparently it was pulling his fur because he was snapping again and yelping. When it got warmer outside, I decided to start traumatic event #3, which was getting a bath. (I also thought that I could run warm water on the dried poop in the butt fur to like...melt it away. It worked eventually.).

poor guy. so skinny and scrawny and nerdy looking here!

crazy fur-do after his bath!

pre-bath, all curled up with Harry, my parent's dog. They LOVE each other.

***

Wedding is coming up. Like, SOON. Less than a month! I'm stressed to the max. I got all of the wedding favors (homemade vanilla extract) done this weekend! These deserve a post all on their own, so I'll try to do that this week. I'm very proud of how they turned out!

***

I cannot wait for the 4th of July! My sister is coming home in the afternoon and staying for a few weeks (for the wedding and all that). We're having a sister date: going to a little beach on a big lake we grew up by and watching the fireworks while having wine and cheese!! In high school, right after I got my driver's license, we'd go to this little island during the summer, and we'd hang out there all day, pack a picnic, play in the water, read books, have photoshoots, etc. We'd borrow my mom's minivan and drive to the lake. (It's awesome being 16 years old and driving a minivan...) I'm SO excited to see my sister!!! And have a sister date. It's long over due.

***

Seth comes home in just over two weeks! He doesn't even have to go back to Germany after that! For the first time in our relationship, he'll be in the US for an unknown length of time!! Of course, he'll be going to Washington shortly after the wedding...and I won't be going with right away...but at least we'll be in the same country, even if we're 3 hours apart. This will also be the first time that I'm in a time zone ahead of him. And this will be the first time we've seen each other in the month of July. Whoa.

***

So the wedding. We're not having a military wedding. But I sorta wanted a little bit of something military in it, so I looked online for a military chaplain in our area to perform the ceremony. I found a lady and emailed her a while ago, and she took FOREVER to reply. Literally, forever. I was getting anxious, so I emailed her again and again. Over a span of about 4 weeks, she replied to my email twice. I'm still waiting on her to contact me to set up a time to meet to go over the ceremony (per her request). The wedding is less than a month and I've given up on her. But rest assured: my friend Molli referred me to a Reverend that has married numerous people in her family, and she said he's a really nice guy, lives in our town and is in high demand for performing weddings. I emailed him just last week...about a month before the wedding, and asked if by any chance if he's available on our date. Turns out he IS! It is TOTALLY fate and I am SO excited for him. I meet with him this Thursday to go over how we'd like the ceremony. I'm not contacting the Chaplain lady to let her know we're going with someone else. She penciled me in on her calendar, so she said, but she hasn't made any further contact. And honestly, I don't think she will. I want to see how long, if ever, she waits to contact me before the wedding. She knows the date, and the location, and I'm hoping she doesn't just show up and want to perform the ceremony. That'd be awkward.

Isn't Patrick the cutest?! I'm completely in love with him!

Please?

Can I please be done planning this wedding? I'm SO over it. I'm done working with so many different people and having to figure things out on my own. Clearly this is why they invented wedding planners. I thought I'd enjoy it. (When I was a little girl, I used to want to be a wedding planner. F that. No way, no how). I want to be done with doing all the little details by myself.

Has anyone felt this way while planning their wedding? I feel bad, because it's supposed to be exciting and fun, but I'm just overwhelmed having to do everything myself.

Can I please be done? I even said PLEASE.

Also, if I could please start my period soon, that'd be great. I'd be much less bitchy. Please can I?

Zappos.com

I am SUPER impressed with the customer service at Zappos.com!!!

I bought these pretttttty little things:


a few weeks ago and thought they fit. They were tight, but I thought they would stretch out (by walking around the house) the perfect amount to fit me just fine for my wedding day. Well, after I passed out during my dress fitting, I thought maybe they were too tight and cut off circulation to my feet/legs, and, in addition to my knees being locked, I wanted to be an attention whore and pass out.

Anyways, I contacted zappos.com customer service today since I threw out my original return label and they were SO helpful! They added me to their VIP shoe club (umm, hello, THANK YOU!!), and will be sending me out my new pair of shoes tomorrow!!! Before they even receive the pair I need to return! And these are Stuart Weitzman shoes...not cheap. I'm hoping the new size works just perfectly. Also, shipping is free for both receiving and returns. Can't get much better than that!


**Zappos.com did not pay me or do anything special for me to give this review. I just am very impressed with their customer service and willingness to send me a new pair of shoes before they receive the wrong size ones. **
P.S. Wedding is NEXT month! holycrapsomuchtodo. andinsolittletime. holycrapagain.

No brides were harmed in the dress fitting

On Saturday, I had my first dress fitting. I managed to pass out and collapse during it. Pretty awesome, right?! Apparently it's common.

The seamstress was yelling at me to stand still and not move. She put a rose up on the wall for me to stare at. I was standing there and thinking quietly. I even thought how I could probably easily get myself worked up for no reason at all, really. Then I pushed that thought away and was standing very still while she pinned the bottom of my dress so she can later hem it. The seamstress yelled at me, "This is the hem on YOUR dress. If you want it to look nice, you NEED TO NOT MOVE." (Ok lady, dang). After maybe about 20 minutes, I started to get really hot and felt like I was going to throw up. (I've passed out before, but I didn't want to acknowledge that I felt it happening again). Then the room started to get dizzy and I called my mom over. I said, "I'm really dizzy." That's the last thing I remember. The next thing I know, I'm down on the floor, kneeling, and my arms are stretched out and my mom's holding one, the seamstress is holding the other, they're saying my name and smacking my cheeks. Then employees started rushing over to me, they put a cold, wet rag on the back of my neck, fanned me down, gave me a bunch of water. They wouldn't let me get up for a while, but I felt completely fine.

I later asked my mom how long I was out for and she said just a few seconds, but it seemed like a long time. I asked her if she got any pictures of me and why didn't she pose me in positions that looked like I broke my leg or something. It would have been hilarious!!

The fitting room is filled with mirrors, no windows and no air circulation. The seamstress asked if my knees had been locked (probably, I don't really know, but I was standing completely still for at least 20 minutes not moving AT ALL) and said that it's common to lock your knees, and after a long period of time, you pass out. She said that about 1 in 20 brides pass out during their dress fitting. (Not going to lie, I was a little disappointed to not be the first do do this. Just add my name to the list, I guess). I've heard before to not lock your knees during your wedding ceremony, but never for the dress fitting. So take warning, other brides :) I have pictures of the cold, wet rag on my neck (you know, as proof that I passed out, since my mom failed to get pictures of me!) but I can't put them on here, because Seth can't see my dress.

In other news, I got Patrick on Saturday!!! He is the cutest little puppy ever!!!And SO sweet and such a little lovebug!! The owners met me at the bridal shop and we did the exchange there in the parking lot. Then I promptly went to Petco and spent a bunch of money getting things for him. It was cold and rainy so I had Patrick wrapped up in a jacket from the car. He was so cute all cuddled up and everyone wanted to pet him!!! He threw up on the jacket when we were checking out. He is doing really well at my parent's house and I spent the night with him on Saturday. He slept in his crate for about an hour then started to cry a little bit so I brought him to bed with me. He curled up right next to me (he didn't pee in the bed either!!!) and slept soundly all night long. He had a little chew toy bone thingy on the bed and he played with that in the morning and rolled around in the bed and loved his little belly being scratched. I'm so madly in love with him already!! I can't wait until Seth comes home to meet him!!!

Two months exactly till the wedding!!

Moving...

is already a pain in the ass.

In less than three months, we'll be in Washington!!! While I'm super excited about this, I'm also already getting slightly stressed out about the packing part, on top of the whole planning a wedding thing. My parents brought me some boxes today so I can start packing little things that I won't need in the next three months. I started with my books. I found a Babysitter's Club book (!!!!) that unfortunately isn't worthy of being moved to Washington. Yeah, they were sweet books in the 90's, but I've moved on to different kinds of books. I also found old paperwork from my apartment with my first roommate. Paperwork that said rent money hadn't been received for multiple months in a row and the electric payment hadn't been made in many months in a row. Yep, quality roommate she was. I shredded that paperwork, just like I shredded her right out of my life a while ago. She tried to friend me on MySpace (back when that was all the rage) and I couldn't decline her friend request fast enough.

Anyways, back to moving. I'm also starting to think of things I buy and if I can use them up by the time we move. I have three shampoo/conditioners in my bathroom right now. I use them all on a regular basis. Plus, I have an extra spare in the hall closet. I'm prettttty sure this will last me the next three months. Loose translation: I won't need to buy shampoo or conditioner until I'm in Washington. That's crazy to think about!!

I got a fair amount of wedding stuff done today. All of the groomsman's suits have been purchased. The best man's suit is being custom made in Germany and he should have it in a few weeks. Invitations will be here on Monday and will be in the mail by the end of the week. We're doing our own food and bought catering type supplies for that today. I have my first dress fitting next Saturday. The day before, one of my bridesmaids, Bekah, is spending the night and we're going to figure out how many flowers we're going to need and she's going to place the order (the place I'm ordering from requires a membership and she is a member). We're also going to get her dress. I'm going to paint signs to put along the route to the location. We got the wood today. Tomorrow I'm going to work on distressing it and in the next few weeks, I'll paint our names with arrows pointing which direction to go.

I got my oh so gorgeous wedding shoes in the mail the other day! I'm in love with them. The night I got them, I may have put them on a chair next to my bed when I went to bed. And when I woke up in the morning, I may have talked to them and said, "oh, good morning beautiful shoes. Nice of you to greet me this morning." And if I'm really being honest, I may have even put them in my bed next to me, laid them on my pillow and put my head next to them. And then I realized my shoes really shouldn't sleep in my bed with me, because I might roll over and poke an eye out with the heel. So that's when they went onto the chair to greet me in the morning.

It's past 1 AM now and I'm rambling. That's all the updates I have for now!

I'll leave you a beautiful picture :)

I cheated

My good friend and co-worker Sarah is throwing me a bridal shower on Sunday! She handmade these invitations herself!!! Aren't the SO pretty?! I'm in love with them.

little pink rhinestones!!

I found matching Thank You cards! Could they be any more prefect for the cards that she handmade? Thanks, American Greetings for creating these especially for me.

And confession time: I may have just cheated and looked at our registry to see what items have been fulfilled. Oops?

Changes are a-happenin'

I mentioned in a previous post that Seth got orders to his next duty station. Which means I know where I'll be moving after our July wedding! He knew the tentative date that he had to be to Ft. Lewis and while I was in Germany, I learned the official date he has to sign in. And it is much sooner than I was anticipating, but you won't find me complaining about that!

And can I just say, thank you from the bottom of my heart, Army, for not royally screwing up our wedding date. Because these orders are much sooner than I think both of us expected, we chose a wedding date that we thought would be safe. Safe meaning he'd be back from Afghanistan by that time, but not at his next duty station yet and he'd be going back to Germany afterward. (Yeah, yeah, I know, this is the military we're talking about. No date is ever safe).

Anyways, the date for this works out pretty perfectly, considering the circumstances. He signs out of his current post about 2 weeks before the wedding. He'll be home for 30 days of leave before he has to report to Ft. Lewis. While we had planned on a road trip to the east coast for our honeymoon, we'll now be packing up the apartment and taking a road trip to the west coast to start our lives together! East coast....west coast...at least we'll be going to a coast! Luckily, we hadn't planned anything for the honeymoon yet, because we didn't know how much time he'd be home after the wedding. We were just going to wing it all. Now that we know how much time we have, we've come up with a new plan: after the wedding, we'll go up north and go camping for 3 or so days, come back, pack up the rest of the apartment for 2 days, pack up a moving truck the next 2 days, and then we'll head out to the west coast the following day (which is 9 days after the wedding). We're anticipating it taking us 5 days to drive out there (yay for driving moving trucks going over the mountains!) and that'll put us in Washington about a week before he has to sign in. We'll unload our stuff real quick and then take a few day trip to the coast. While our honeymoon has changed significantly from what originally was supposed to happen, I'm totally content with our new plan and can't wait for it. Yes, it will be an extremely crazy and hectic summer but I can't wait!!

Besides, lmc told me that all the cool kids delay their honeymoon by a year because the Army has other plans for us. We will totally be part of the cool club now! And bonus...we'll be on the joint air force base in Washington. Helllllllllo Space-A delayed honeymoon to Hawaiiiiiii!

Wedding song

When you got married, did you walk down the aisle to the traditional wedding march song? Or did you walk down to a different song? If so, what is it?

I'll be walking down the aisle in 140 days to this song!! Chantel Kreviazuk's Feels Like Home. The moment I first heard this song, I knew it'd be the song I'd walk down the aisle to. (For the record though, I had always been one of those girls that wanted the traditional wedding march. Not so anymore and I couldn't be anymore excited for it!!).

Wedding...Thursday.

As you can see, I’ve avoided Wedding Wednesday because I’m a slacker. But here’s why:

1. I’m meeting with Bekah, Laura and my sister tonight to talk about and figure out the flowers!
2. I just emailed our cake baker our flavors and fillings (which, for your virtual taste buds will be: French vanilla with Bavarian crème, chocolate with red raspberry filling and red velvet with crème cheese!!)
3. I know the kind of vanilla beans I’m going to order…just waiting for payday tomorrow to order them.
4. I have blocked out our hotel rooms and the contract is coming to me in the mail.

Which leaves me with:

1. Attending the flower shop…might be hard to do with my sister because she leaves in less than two weeks and the flower shop has very limited hours.
2. Figure out the wording on our invitations… I’ll find some samples this weekend and hopefully order those early next week.
3. Order the vanilla beans and get that started...will be started by the first week in March.
4. Publish our wedding website on theknot.com…that’ll be one of my weekend projects!
   

Wedding Wednesday

It’s 150 days away!! :)

I have a few things accomplished from my to-do list from last week:

• Fill in all the fun details in my wedding planner and organizer pink/white polka dot book!!
• Get a sample color green for our cake baker so she knows what color we need

Ok, I wish I would have gotten a little more than that done in the last week. Crap. But, I did make a lot of progress on our wedding website, but pictures have to be uploaded one at a time (after I spent a good 30 minutes picking out our 20 best pictures, I learned this when the page said it failed to upload the pictures). So that was really annoying and I was frustrated, so I stopped for the day and I’ve only managed to upload one other one since then. I have the rest of it mostly done, I just have to copy/paste the stuff onto the website. I worked on it/typed it all up a while ago, and put it all in a Word doc, because I was waiting to ask one of the girls if she’ll be a bridesmaid, so I’d say I’m like 90% done with this.

And about the flowers…Bekah and Laura were supposed to come over last night, but that didn’t work out. I was looking forward to it, and was semi-annoyed when they both cancelled. They both claim next week is better for them, so we’ll see. The flower shop is only open until 3 PM on week days, until noon on Saturday’s and it’s closed on Sundays. That severly limits when we can go, since we both work during the week, and it’s about an hour away. So that one will be an interesting trip to plan.

But, in my defense, my sister has been living with me for the past few weeks and I’ve not done a lot of the stuff I could normally accomplish because we’ve been hanging out and working on vajournals. She’ll be going back to Oregon in about 3 weeks and then I’ll be back into the swing of things.

It would be really convenient for Seth to be here right now so we could plan these things together. He would keep me on track and focused on getting this stuff done, and he would be able to help out. Instead, we have to email back and forth, which just delays things even more. (You would think that knowing that, that would get me in gear for getting things accomplished sooner rather than later. Unfortuatnely, that is not the case. I don't know what my problem is). TheKnot.com said we need to figure out our groomsmens’ tuxes this month, which is more of his part to coordinate, I think, but I'll be doing that too.

Is this deployment over yet?

February Wedding To-Do list

So our wedding is 157 days away (WHOA!) and time is going to go by really fast, especially with homecoming, going to Germany at some point, end of the school year, etc. And my sister is only here through the end of the month, so I decided I needed to make a to-do wedding list for this month. I’m going to be hard on myself for following this to-do list too, for the sake of my sanity.

• Finish our wedding website on theknot.com


• Consult with Bekah, Laura and my sister about all flower arrangements


• Go to the flower shop with Bekah and my sister


• Finalize and order invitations


• Order mass amounts of vanilla beans (and vodka) for wedding favors


• Get vanilla extract brewing


• Fill in all the fun details in my wedding planner and organizer pink/white polka dot book!!


• Get a sample color green for our cake baker so she knows what color we need


• Email cake baker our flavors and fillings


• Book a block of hotel rooms at a few different places around here
  

It might not seem like a lot, but I feel like it is! Wish me luck!

Wedding Wednesday!

Another edition of Wedding Wednesday!

We got a few things wedding related accomplished while Seth was home on R&R.

• We went cake tasting. We're going with a local lady who actually lives just down the street from me and she works out of her home. She came highly recommended from some of my coworkers (and my dad's boss, whose daughter is getting married the same day as us, is going with the same lady!) It'll be octagon, or hexagon...I can't remember, but it has sides, I do know that much! It's not a circle, oval, rectangle or square. It will have ribbon on it and a series of three little dots. It's three tiered and each tier will be a different flavor: red velvet with a cream cheese filling, chocolate with red raspberry filling and french vanilla with Bavarian cream filling. We tasted her vanilla cake with French vanilla filling and it was heavenly!! (Before we walked into her house, I asked him, "do we eat the entire piece of cake?" thinking we'd have a few different flavors and plus, I've seen plenty of wedding shows and they only have a bite or two typically. He said he didn't know, but he didn't care, he was eating the whole piece. haha And to be honest and fair, we both finished off the piece of cake. Etiquette? What's that?)
  
  (Sorry for the very poor quality...this is a picture of a picture of a picture. The baker lady had a picture of it, and Seth took a picture on his phone so I wouldn't forget it, and then I took a picture of the picture on his phone. The black will be replaced with green ribbon, and there will be green dots on it and we'll have fresh fuchsia flowers on it!!!! Plus, it will only be 3 tiers and it will be hexagon or octagon..whichever it is!)
  
  
• We picked out his wedding band....I assume he probably won't be home in enough time for us to order it before the wedding, so we have it now :)
• Last Sunday, my sister and I went to Barnes and Noble and looked at wedding bouquet books. She's a flower connoisseur and knows what is in season when, if they're a good cut flower or not, what they look good with and what they don't look good with and she even knows like, all of the Latin names of plants. I'm not kidding. We spent a few hours at B&N, I found a HUGE pink and white polka dotted wedding planning guide/book, and we were brainstorming ideas. My bouquet will be dark pink peonies, some flower that has white little buds and then bright green leaves. The guys will most likely have white orchid boutonnieres. And for the table center pieces, I'm thinking dahlia's! There are so many different varieties of them and they come in lots of different colors. They even have a variety that is called a dinner plate dahlia that is as big as an adult (human) head!! They're gorgeous flowers and Seth likes them too. How can you not like these pretty little (or big) things?!

It was really fun and felt good (and real!) to actually do wedding stuff with him in person, instead of sending lots of emails back and forth. I do miss that part of wedding planning, honestly. I wish we could do lots more of these kinds of things, together in person, but I guess we'll save that for our 5 year vow renewal.



P.S. I promise a post about R&R is coming soon!

One year ago today....

...Seth proposed :) I still remember the day very clearly. We've been engaged for exactly one year, and we have spent a total of 17 days together in that year. I wrote this post back in July on the 7 month anniversary of our engagement, but it's better suited for today :)

It's also Wedding Wednesday and I have a small list of wedding related things for us to do when he's home on leave:

• Cake tasting
• Picking out and hopefully finalizing our invitations
• Talking to my sister about our flower arrangements, bouquets and boutineers (she is doing all of them with her boyfriend!!! I just have to buy her a book on how to do the boutineers)
• Maybe talk about music
• Maybe he'll want to see the location in person
• We'll be starting the vanilla extract wedding favors
  

I feel like I've got a lot of the major wedding things taken care of and now we have lots of little tedious things to figure out and do. Oh! We need to find someone to marry us!! I think that may be pretty critical.

Is it January yet??!?!?! Is it July yet?!?

I'm a Gemini!

So I've signed up for daily horoscopes (regular and love horoscopes), which are waiting in my inbox when I check my email. I'm a gemini, have I ever mentioned that? I am a TOTAL gemini and I love it. I'll do a post about that one day. But for now, I'm talking about today's horoscope.

My regular daily horoscope for today says:

A powerful desire for intimacy with a significant other could drive you today, Stacy. If you're currently involved, you'll probably want to schedule a romantic evening together. If you aren't involved, you could well consider ways to expand your social life so as to enable you to meet potential mates. You could also try reading a few books on the subject, but in order to gain from this you must remain objective - and today, that could take some effort!

My daily love horoscope for today says:

The day's planetary energy may not help in making this the best time for a romantic evening out. You will not be feeling in the greatest of moods, and could find it difficult to whip up any kind of enthusiasm for what is to come. It may be better if you plan this for another time, when you will find it easier to rediscover the joy you naturally share.

So one horoscope says that I "probably want to schedule a romantic evening together." But then my love horoscope says "the day's planetary energy may not help in making this the best time for a romantic evening out." Hmmmmm....

No matter which horoscope I abide by today, I won't be getting that romantic evening, nor will I have a bad romantic evening because it's physically not possible. Thanks, Deployment.

However, SETH WILL BE HOME NEXT MONTH!!! And we can have 2 weeks of romantic evenings then! Do you know how long I've waited to say that?! Forever, basically. Actually it's been a whole year since I've been able to say that.

On a side note....I cut open a pomegranate last night (I LOVE pomegranates!!) and I got all the little seed pod things out. I have no idea what they're called. Anyways, my fingers and cuticles are all yellow now. It looks like I have jaundice. Just on my hands only. I wonder why my hands are all yellow when pomegranates are so red? I think I stained everything in my kitchen last night. Juice was squirting everywhere. Oh well, the taste is worth it :)

And by the way, if you're a Gemini, I would love to know. :)

Hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday! Oh, it's Wednesday! I'm supposed to do a wedding post. I might do that later today. Wait, no I won't because I don't have any new news regarding the wedding. Other than I've gotten a lot of compliments on our save the dates and people are excited for it. :)

Wedding Wednesday

I am happy to say that our save the dates are FINALLY at the print shop!!! I get to pick them up tomorrow afternoon. I'll address them this weekend and then put them in the mail early next week! (I'm sending one to Seth too, for HIM. He still asks me what day we're getting married. At first, it was the 8th, and most recently he thought it was the 14th. We'll get to the 16th, I'm sure of that).

I did the mmyself...I don't know if that's good or bad, but I did a very simple post card style card. Here they are...don't judge!!!

Front:
Back:

The picture on the back is from the day we got engaged...about an hour before he popped the question. :)

Wedding Wednesday

Holy crap I didn't even realize it was Wednesday. Well, I knew it was Wednesday, but I was thinking about what I'd write about for Wedding Wednesday's post for tomorrow, but then I realized that tomorrow is actually Thursday and Veteran's Day, and I'll be doing my Veteran's day post then....so today is my wedding post.

Anyyyyyways. I don't have much of an update. I have more addresses gathered and entered, and I'm sicking my dad on the task of re-creating our save the date in Word. I'm not good with measurements and meeting post office measurements for our postcard and my dad likes that crap, so I'm asking him to do it. We'll get that accomplished this weekend, I'll take them to the printer next week, and we'll mail them out after that.

I have a serious love obsession with TheKnot.com It's a free wedding website and I have used it sooo much and it's kept my ass on track! It also has a daily countdown...and we have 248 days till our wedding!!

Wedding Wednesday

I feel like I've made a significant amount of progress in the wedding department this last week. I met with my future in-laws over the weekend and we finalized the guest list. They had three additions, so I proposed them to Seth and he agreed. So I emailed his mom back to get their addresses. Yesterday I went to a printing shop in our town to check things out. We're I'm doing a simple post card for the save the date. I have it mostly done, I just have to finalize it. So I went to this print shop yesterday with my dad and we asked all the right questions. I created it in MS Publisher but now I have to re-create it in Word to meet postcard mailing standards. Luckily, my dad has a postcard template for work, so he's emailing me that, and then I just have to transfer over our pictures and wording, send Seth the proof, get his approval, take it all to the print shop, print the mailing labels and pop them in the mail. Easy, right? Nov. 15 is my personal deadline. This will be about 15 days after my original deadline...it could be worse, I guess.

I also want to re-take the picture of me on it, because it's old. It's a picture of me when I dressed up in Seth's uniform when he was home on leave from Iraq in 2008. So it's an old picture. I didn't tell him I did that at the time...I thought I might get in trouble...so I didn't tell him until we were half a world apart again. Then he wanted to see the pictures, and thankfully he liked them. I do have a not so lovey pimple on my cheek so I'm waiting for that to clear up before I re-take my picture. You all wanted to know that, I know.

I wish there was more that I could be doing right now. I suppose I could be creating little recipe cards for the wedding favors. That would mean though that I would have to keep track of them, and keep them in tip top condition until next July. I'll wait for this.

So we have a total of 126 people on the guest list (don't freak out, babe, it'll be OK. We won't really have that many). But I'm expecting something more like 70 because we have a ton of people invited from out of town/state/country. :)