We're Moving

Hey all!  Steve and I are packing up and getting ready to move. 

 source

As you may or may not know the owner of the condo we've been living in for the last 14 months is short selling the home.  The new owners have no intention of renting the house out so we're moving.  At first I was really upset about this, I mean I hate packing and moving.  But it's ended up being a really good thing for us.  We're moving out of a small 900 sq ft 2 bed 2 bath, horrbily designed upstairs condo that needed a lot of work the owner wasn't willing to do.  The home we're moving into is 1132 sq ft 2 stories, 2 bed 2.5 bath with an attached 2 car garage and laundry in the garage.  It's a huge step up for us, not to mention the areas a bit nicer than where we are now, it's all homes as compared to the apartments that surround us now.  I also feel like we'll be able to have people over since all the living areas and such aren't right on top of each other.  Now, I'm looking to paint the house, but we haven't decided what colors we're gonna do as of right now.  So it looks like we'll be painting after we move in.  Because of this I would love to use a paint with no VOC's if at all possible.  I was trying to find a good paint, and had kind of given up, but then I happend on this blog.  She's awesome, and she's having this giveaway!  It's a perfect start to make the new house our home!

I suck

Ok, I know, I know, I suck.  I haven't posted in almost 2 months, but with the wedding and honeymoon and all that I got distracted.

So the wedding was awesome!  I would not recomend my coordinator to anyone however.  There was one point at which we were lined up ready to go down the aisle and not only did she yell at my wedding party about smoking, but the caterer spilled some marinara sauce on the upper level of the cabin deck right in front of us and everytime they tried to wipe it up more spilled down, she did nothing.  I had to ask them to stop wiping until we walked through.  But it was a beautiful day, and I am so glad I am spending the rest of my life with my best friend.  Now for some wedding porn, like I know you all are looking for:



Steve and his best lady Janice waiting for the entrence of the bride.  That's Mike, Janice's brother, in the back ground, he was our officiant.Steve got teary eyed as I walked down the aisle.

 
That's our awesome photographer Leah Lee in the background.
 



 

Ok so this is a lot of the wedding party right after Grace, the flower girl and Mike's daughter, and Richard, my cousin the ring bearer, entered.  My maid of honor Lauren is in red and my sister Susan is in purple, you can kind of see Amanda in blue there too.
 



 

 

My sister doing her reading from Corelli's Mandolin.

 
Matt, brother of Mike and Janice and uncle to Grace, doing his reading from Oh The Places You'll Go! You can also see Jeremy in this pic.
 Our first Kiss. 

 
Our Exit.



 
Some of my family coming up the aisle after pictures, that's my Momma in the front with her head bent.

 
The whole wedding party!

 
Lauren giving her toast.

 Janice giving her toast.

 
Us toasting.

 
Steve giving his toast, he got teary eyed again
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My Dad giving his toast.




 
My Godfather Tom giving his toast, made everyone cry.





 
 



 

 
Our first Dance, we danced to I'm Your's by Jason Mraz.








 
My cousin Zach sang the processional,  Such Great Heights and then I'll Follow You Into The Dark at the reception.  It was awesome.

So that's the wedding, more later.

Makin Me Happy!

I was having kind of a crappy day today, then I saw this bracelet give-away! Just seeing this bracelet makes me happy!


How stinking cute, right? Here's the blog post: http://talesofaretromodernhousewife.blogspot.com/2009/10/celebrating-150-followers-with-giveaway.html?showComment=1254929298662#c7933033757883244589. Take a look at the whole blog it's too cute!

...

Wedding stuff is starting to get me in a weird mood. But not a bad mood, or a cold feet kind of mood, just super sentimental. I am fully sure that Steve is the most wonderful man I've ever met and I'm also totally sure that I made the best decision I've ever made in deciding to spend the rest of my life with him. I just watched P.S. I Love You, Steve's at his bachelor party tonight, which means stupid girly movies for me and a cold bed to sleep in. But even so I'm glad he's getting to spend a night with the guys. But back to the subject of the movie, I don't know what I'll ever do if Steve dies before I do. There was a line in the movie that the Mom says, it's something like, "I know what it feels like to walk into a room and not feel like you exist until he touches your hand, or smiles at you, or makes a joke, even if it's at your expense." I never thought I'd be that girl. I never thought I'd be the girl who didn't feel whole without a man at her side. But here I am 3 weeks before my wedding and I can't imagine a day spent without him. Why does he put up with all my nerosis and my need to nest? Why does he seem to be the only man in the world that has ever fully understood me, more than I understand myself sometimes? If I never believed in soul mates before I met Steve, I'd believe in them now. I remember telling a friend in high school that I wanted to find a man who would love all the parts of me, not just the singer, or the seamstress or the mom, but everything, I've found all that in Steve. I love everything about him, I love that he gets so upset when people try to screw other people over. I love that he loves his son more than life itself and has taught me to love him more than anything I've ever loved in my life. I love that he has a favorite football team and doesn't watch any of the games until they make the play-offs. I love that he challenges me to be more and that he tries to be more everyday. I love that everyday at work I get an I love you text from him.

Sorry for the rant, like I said, I'm a bit sentimental lately.

Ready for the wedding to be over!

It's not so much that I'm sick of wedding planning, I mean there's a little of that, but that's not the majority of it. It's more that I'm sick of having the wedding stuff on top of other of life's little fun things that get thrown in: a job I hate (with people that make my job about 15 times harder), football season for the munchkin, looking for a new home, losing the home we thought we'd be in for years.

So we called the owner of our condo a couple weeks ago to see if we could renew the lease for another year and she says, "Oh, I meant to call you, my rate is about to adjust, so I'm just going to let it go into forclosure." Lovely, don't call us to tell us that, don't worry about the people who have made their home there. I'm a little frustrated that we are going to have to look for another condo, yet again. I mean it's one thing when you're ready to move, but to be forced out is another deal entirely.

On a happier note, I'm totally enjoying being a football momma (well step momma, but you know). We had a game on Saturday, we were beat, but even still, the kids are really starting to play well and munchkin is super-cute with his football uniform. I am getting a little sick of people not understanding that I think of Chris as mine and regardless of whether or not I birthed him he's my little munchkin and always will be.

I have my bachelorette weekend coming up and I'm really looking forward to it, but not sure about what to expect. I'll keep you all updated. Also, I'm doing my hair trials this week for the wedding so I'll post pics of that when it comes up.

I Bought A Wedding Dress

So, you all know I was planning on making my wedding dress. Well, my Mom decided that I really needed to get the experience of trying on wedding dresses. We went down to Mon Cherie Bridal in Costa Mesa and I tried on anything that my wedding dress consultant brought me. Well there was one dress I kind of liked and we only had a couple to go. The second to last dress was super cute and Marilyn Monroe-y, but it would have meant all of my tidle-bitties hanging out. So we get to the last dress, which I hated on the hanger by the way, and I was convinced it was going to look like crap. Now, keep in mind that there is just over 3 months before the wedding, so we were going to have to pay a rush fee if the dress I chose didn't fit well. So I put on the dress, she zipped it up, and it. was. perfect. I love this dress, I didn't want to take it off. It is made of silk taffeta so it's super light and it's gorgeous. It also had all the things I didn't want, a train, beading, lace and pearls. So enough with the talk here's the pics:



So there you have it, I also ordered the bird cage veil and the flower you can kind of see in these pictures.

Marseilles Dress SHABBY APPLE GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Ok so I know I haven't blogged in a super long time, but I had to post about this new blog I found, Grosgrain, she has super cute stuff and she's doing a give away for a super cute dress that I just had to post for a chance to win. More blogging later, but go look at this blog it's too cute:


Marseilles Dress SHABBY APPLE GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Those Blah Days

I've been having a lot of blah days lately. You'd think the fact that I'm getting married to my best friend in less than 5 months would have me in an overall better mood. But with my job and the economy I've just felt kind of melancholy lately. I feel like after doing a million favors for people at work they are never returned and I am treated as though I'm the one causing all the problems. Take last week for example, my parents took off work and I was in charge of the office. My Mom had this lady who works part time for us come in, which you would think would be a great asset, but she is the most co-dependent not self assured person I have ever met, and she's over 60, you'd think she'd have over come this by now. But some of my stuff fell through the cracks because she was constantly asking me about things and I was having to help her through her days. I don't know, I just feel like I can do no right, so why stay at this job any longer than I have to? I realize I work for family and this is the way it goes sometimes, but I just didn't see my life being like this at my age. I mean I literally have to make myself get out of bed everyday because I know that I'm going to get crap all day at work. Not to mention I can't even talk about my political views half the time because I work with a bunch of super conservative Christians and anything having to do with anything that may go against their beliefs is wrong and should be banned. I just feel like I'm the only one in this office held responsible for my actions and I'm rather sick of it.

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while, but I didn't want you all to feel like this was a ranting blog, so I've avoided blogging all together. I'll post another blog later today with more knitting/wedding content. I promise, not so much bitching next time.

Which witch is which?

So I'm wanting to make the Buttercup Bag by Rae but I can't decide on a color scheme. Here's my two choices:


These are the outside choices:



So what do you guys think?

FYI, Steve likes the skull choice.

The Big Read

I was reading Tess' blog this morning and she had posted this. I was sad to see that most people have only read a handful of these, but then I come from a reading family. So without further adieu, the list.

The Big Read (http://www.neabigread.org/) said that, on average, adults have only read six books on this list. So … copy this list, remove my yeses and nos, and add your comments (favourable or otherwise) about the ones you have read. Don’t forget to include a total.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - Yep
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien – Yep, the entire trilogy infact
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - Yep
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – All, and listened to the audio books, both British and American versions
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - Yep
6 The Bible - Yep
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - Yep
8 1984 - George Orwell - Yep
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - Nope
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - Yep, to see if any of Dickens' stuff was to my liking, it's not
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - Yep, one of my favorites
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy – Nope
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller – Yep
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – Yep, my Mom had it in the house when I was a kid and I read through it in Jr. High.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - Nope
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - Yep, had it read to me as a child and then read it on my own when I was older
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - Nope
18 The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - Yep
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - Yep
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot- Nope
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - Nope
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - Yep, also thought it was over rated
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens- Nope
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - Started it, never finished
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - Yep
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - Nope
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Nope
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - Yep
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - Yep
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - Yep
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - Yep, see previous comment about Dickens
33 The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - Yep
34 Emma - Jane Austen - Nope
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - Nope
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - Yep
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - Nope
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres- Nope
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - Yep
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne – Yep
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -Nope, pretty sure I was supposed to in High School though
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - Yep
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Nope
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - Nope
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - Nope
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - Yep
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - Nope
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - Yep
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - Yep
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - Nope
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - Nope
52 Dune - Frank Herbert- Yep
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - Nope
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - Yep
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - Nope
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - Nope
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - Yep, first I read of Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - Yep
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon - Nope
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Nope
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck – Nope
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - Nope
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt - Nope
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold – Yes, hated this book
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - Nope
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - Nope
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - Nope
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - Nope
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - Nope
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Nope, want to though, Steve seems to like it
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - Yep
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - Yep
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - Yep
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - Nope
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - Yep
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - Nope
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - Nope
78 Germinal - Emile Zola - Nope
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - Nope
80 Possession - AS Byatt- Nope
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - Yep
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - Nope
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -Nope
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - Nope
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - Nope
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - Nope
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - Yep
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - Yep
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Yep, at my grandparents when I was young
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton – Nope
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - Nope
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupe – Yep
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - Nope
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - Nope
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - Nope
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - Nope
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - Nope

98 Hamlet – Shakespeare – Yep

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - Yep
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -Yep

I've read 46, but now I want to finish the list.

8 Months to Go

Hey all, it hit me just now, I only have 8 months until the wedding. We still have a lot of decisions to make and a lot of things to do. But, we got the Save the Dates today and I couldn't be happier with them. They are so us.


So those will be going out in a couple of weeks as soon as I can get everyone's mailing addresses nailed down. I am so excited and this wedding is feeling more and more real as the days go by. I can't believe that I'm going to be lucky enough to get to spend the rest of my life with my best friend.

Crappy Day

Today is just kind of a shit day. My favorite radio station Free FM 97.1 goes off the air at 5 today, no more Frosty, Heidi & Frank. Work was crap and I found out that the stupid tax increase got approved yesterday. Steve and I have to go to some lame ass thing for his work tonight. Basically I just want to beat the crap out of someone. I don't know why, I'm not really a violent person, but the fact that I'm going to end up working until at least 5 today and I have little to look forward to tonight makes me want to punch someone in the face. I've never punched anyone in the face, ever. I think I need to get out and go to a punk concert so I can take out some of my aggressions in the mosh pit. I mean really what else are they for? I just can't seem to shake my pissed off mood today. People I work with are increasingly stupid and I'd like to just quit as I hate my job, but I can't because no one can get work right now, so how am I supposed to assume that I would get work outside of this job. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I'd like to just move to the middle of no where and talk to no one outside of Steve. Sorry for the attitude, just a crap week. That's all, I'll post again when I'm in a better mood, I wore a super cute hat, but I can't get in the right frame of mind to post about it.

06/365 Self Portrait and a Hand-knit

I figured I'd do another Self Portrait today, I think I'll do one a week or so during this year. Today I wore my hair up and my neck gets super cold when it's not covered so I figured I'd wear the scarf I knit for my Chicago trip last spring. It's made out of Noro Silk Garden in a 1x1 rib and alternating balls every other row. I love it, but I wish I'd used 4 balls instead of 3, the sales lady at Strands and Stitches in Laguna Beach talked me out of it. Don't get me wrong it's a great length for California, but when I was in Chicago it wasn't quite long enough to wrap around my face and my neck and tuck into my jacket. But it's still one of my faves! Notice my cheeks are rosy from the freezing 50 degree weather.

05/365 Valentines

I think the idea of needing to get the person you love a big extravagant gift on Valentine's Day is way too contrived, but a cute card and an extra kiss to acknowledge the fact that you are in love is wonderful. I also like being a big 8 year old and giving cards to everyone for random holidays, I'm a gift giver, it's my thing. So this year I made little Valentine's for everyone in my office, the best part? I totally forgot to sign them before I sealed the envelopes, but I figure it's a small enough office I don't think anyone'll be confused.


Have I mentioned how much I love Target for having awesome little DIY kits?

04/365 Coffee

I love coffee, I've loved coffee since I was a kid. I love espresso. I love the experience of drinking coffee. I think coffee is a lifestyle. I know I've posted on here about my coffee love before, but I thought I'd share that my favorite coffee place is Kean followed closely by Pete's. My normal drink is a non-fat, sugar free, vanilla latte, iced or hot depending on the temperature. So for my 4th day of pictures I figured I'd post about my pseudo- obsession with coffee.


So what's your favorite coffee place and what's your drink of choice?

03/365 Bread

So in an effort to save money and be more of a 1950's housewife, I made bread. I made bread and it was good. It wasn't like a rock, it wasn't all gooey, it tasted good and was cheap! I love this idea, I'm going to try to make bread every week, that way Steve has something home baked in his lunch every day! Sorry that the pics were after the bread had already been sliced, so it's not the whole loaf, but it was yummy:



That's my awesome Wustof cutting board that came with my awesome knife for Christmas from my parents this year.

02/365 Cake Toppers

Yesterday when we were whoopie pie tasting, we went antiquing afterwards, we found the cutest salt and pepper shakers that are now our back up wedding cake toppers. They are before and after:


I love them, they crack me up, we'll see if we can find our other choice for toppers!

Project 365

I've decided to join Project 365, you know taking a picture a day for a full year. I think it'll be fun during the year of planning our wedding. So here it is the first day:

This is what I wore to go whoopie pie tasting today, and let me tell you, they were wonderful! I can't wait to serve them at the wedding.

I found the pattern for my Wedding Dress

Ok, I'm pretty sure the title says it all, but here it is:

I found it because lovely 50's Gal posted a pic of the pattern as something to make. Go read her blog, it's a really interesting experiment that she's doing. I love reading it and I love her even more now that she helped me find my wedding dress, for the record it's going to be the shorter version. I'm planning on making it in a peacock blue silk shantung, but not until late this summer, as I want to lose some weight before I get to that point.

I love this idea for a Save the Date Card:
Makes me want to steal it!

Zane's Birthday

There are times in my life when I am immensely glad that I don't have siblings, and there are times when I know I missed out on so majorly awesome times. Friday night was one of the times I felt both. We went over to my cousin's for my youngest nephew's birthday, it was a really fun time, they made him a giant hamburger for dinner, which goes along with Steve's wish for a meatloaf cake for his birthday, more on that next month.


So that was followed by lots of conversation in which I found out that my cousin JoQueta thinks that because of all the economic stuff going on that we are all going to have to move to the family farm in Oklahoma and live off of alternative fuel sources, also a whole seperate post. But then, it was time to do the cake and Zane's 4 older siblings were sweet enough to get him a tiny pink cake as a joke to try and make him cry, sweet right? Well then Zoie, thinking that her sweet youngest brother wouldn't retaliate smashed his face into the cake.
Well Zane being super crafty decided it would piss his sister off more to get it in her hair.

She was none to happy.

The real cake was a cookies and cream ice cream cake and was super!

I am happy to report that Jim was good enough to keep the demon dog outside the whole night and none of us were attacked. Although he did ask if he could let the dog in at one point to which my Dad replied, "Don't you dare let him in, I'll kill that f***ing dog." Which is weird to hear from my father the owner of 2 dogs and a cat and the former dog shows man. Tells you how evil this freaking dog is, half Rottweiler and half Chow, not a good mix, especially if you don't train it.