diy, life with baby

Extra Fresh Baby Food (Fail)

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Before I even start, I should mention that yesterday I successfully transferred a sleeping baby from stroller to crib. I tweeted that I had used up my awesomeness for the day. I really did; there was no more awesomeness to be found.

I decided to try my hand at making baby food. I got tired of waiting for nice fresh produce and decided to go frozen, which I have read that in some instances can have even more nutrients than fresh (depending on how long the fresh has been transported and held). We bought frozen carrots, peas, peaches and blueberries. I was particularly excited about the blueberries since I have not seen them by themselves with the baby food. (To be clear, we did end up going to the farmers market and there were fresh blueberries there, but we had already purchased them frozen, strike one)

So yesterday was peas and blueberries. I used my fancy dancy mixer and I was so excited I forgot to take any photos of the blueberries. Except here, at the end. Pureed blueberry! I know it looks like juice, but we’ll thicken it with cereal before we feed it to him.

I was so floored with my success, I quickly rinsed and readied the supplies for the peas and took some photos to share with you. Here’s my set up. Mixer with food strainer attachment, plus bowls.

Step 1, dump some peas in the top.

Step 2, turn it on and watch pea poop come out one end and pea soup come out the other.

Step 3, put pea poop back in the top to strain through one more time.

WAIT WAIT WAIT. Did anyone see I forgot a step? Please tell me that I am not the only one!

This is super basic– the mixer makes this whole baby-food-making super easy. It wasn’t difficult at all. And yet, somehow I again missed a vital step. Have you guessed it yet?

That’s right… I forgot to cook the peas. Mmmm tasty uncooked peas. I didn’t realize this though until after I was all done. Seriously. (At least, I try to console myself, I realized it before I tried to feed it to him)

This is what uncooked pureed peas look like.

It’s only $1, Brian tells me (his eyes were smirking at me). Only a dooooollar. But that defeats the purpose of making my own baby food. It’s supposed to be cheeeaper.

I immediately Google search: “Pureed uncooked peas for baby food”. But the results are all telling me the same thing. Not an answer, just instructions for before you start. Steam those peas before you puree them. But it’s too late! I wail.

For the blueberries, I was careful. I did my research. Blueberries can be pureed both fresh or stewed. Stewed is even more watery, fresh can be a little harder to stomach for babies with delicate systems. But I got cocky. If I can do blueberries, I can surely do peas.

So, here I am. Uncooked pureed peas in the freezer since it’s taking up space on my fancy perfect cube ice trays with the blueberries. I suppose I will be throwing it out and trying again. Or, since Jameson doesn’t really like peas, we can just pretend this never happened and forget about peas. Forever.


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diy, general life, life with baby

Digital Scrapbook: Sneak Peak!

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Today, I have finally started working on Jameson’s scrapbook. It’s a digital scrapbook and it’s gonna be huge. But no bigger than 60 pages (30 front/back), because that’s what the book I’m making allows. Or… maybe I’ll just make two? We’ll see how it goes.

So far I have done birth, family introductions, Christmas, Jameson’s photo shoot, one week, and his first bath and walk!

Last names were removed in the layouts for privacy reasons, but the images are all true to what it will look like once printed. I’m pretty pleased with how its turning out, though I am not sure where I will find the time to catch up to where I should be.

Next up:

  • Jameson’s weekly photo shoots, which I did until he was 10 weeks old. I think I’ll roll that into 2 pages
  • Jameson’s monthly photo shoot, 1 page for each month
  • Great-grandpa’s 90th birthday party… and more!

Today, Jameson went to daycare while I had off work so that I could work on this without interruption. We did pick him up early, and then his Aunt Melissa came to babysit him while Brian and I went with the neighbors for dinner at Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland. It was a hike, but so worth it. I had their butternut squash ravioli, and since we were at a brewery, I had some beer as well. I hear that some beer increases milk supply…? haha.

If I have time over this holiday weekend I’ll continue working on the scrapbook but the blog will be on a short hiatus until Tuesday. Don’t worry though, I’ll have some good stuff lined up for next week! Have a great 4th of July everyone.

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diy, general life

Mmmmozzarella Cheese Making

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I know this is nothing new; there are all kinds of sites out there with directions on how to make your own cheese. But I bought a kit from Urban Cheesecraft a few years ago for Brian for Christmas, and this is the first time I’ve documented our process. I thought it was about time!


The basic ingredients for making mozzarella is:

Milk
Vegetable Rennet Tablets
Citric Acid
Cheese Salt

Pretty sure you can buy all that separately, but the kit is only $22, and I’m telling you, it’s worth it. The instruction book alone is probably worth that price. It addressed all my questions and concerns and offers advice. Brian and I have made mozzarella with just the cheese salt, and also added herbs on occasion. We’ve been impressed with it almost every time (the time we wildly experimented with salt amounts didn’t turn out to our liking).

 

First you need a glass of wine.

Well, I needed a glass of wine. Brian was doing all the hard work while I took pictures.

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diy, general life

Digital Scrapbooking: The Hows, Whys and Wherefores

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I’ve mentioned a few times that I am planning a digital scrapbook of Jameson’s first year. I used to “regular” scrapbook (regular? hardcopy? real?) but anyway, I just… lost interest. I burned myself out when I made a birth to 18 years scrapbook for my brother’s graduation, even with some help from my cousin. I have two scrapbooks that are started and will probably remain unfinished.

So why digital scrapbooking when I could just slap some photos into a photobook and call it done?

  • I always loved the look of scrapbooks, they’re so charming
  • I feel like it lends more meaning to the photos when you spend more time on it after you take them
  • Descriptions are beautiful rather than informational (a date can be done in digital chipboard to really pop and stand out, rather than just being a caption below the photo)
  • A chance to be creative! of course.

Digital scrapbooking seems pretty simple. You only need some basic Photoshop or other graphic program skills. Oh, and some photos.

  1. Get a program. You can go free, like GIMP. Or you can go expensive like full Photoshop CS. Or land somewhere in the middle with Corel Paintshop Pro or Photoshop Elements. Key here is the ability to work in layers so you can easily move around your photos “on top” of digital paper or other fun digital pieces.
  2. Get some digital paper, or make your own. Because I’m not about to make my own digital scrapbook paper, stickers or alphabets, I browsed around and found some free stuff. Searching “free digital scrapbook paper” will pop up all kinds of stuff. When we say digital paper, we really just mean images that look like paper.
  3. Get some fun fonts. Again, searching “free fonts” should give you call kinds of inspiration.
  4. Take a little tutorial on your graphics program of choice, once you understand layers and what dimensions your program is in (inches or pixels–it’s probably easier to work in inches while you do your scrapbook) you should be good to go!
  5. Once you’ve got a handle on the program, make a decision about what size you want your digital scrapbook to be. Most digital papers come square, so 12x12in or 10x10in are good sizes. You can get these printed individually as sheets (see some options here and here) or in a photobook (see my photobook post).
  6. Make your first page. Create a new image in your size, ie., 12x12in. Select your paper and place it on layer 1. Then you want to bring in your photos in other layers. You can resize your photos to fit your pages. Add some text in a fun font.
  7. Is this too boring? You can find other elements for your pages too. If you were searching digital papers, you probably saw all kinds of other things to add to your pages. Faux flowers, “stickers”, chipboard shapes, edges… Again you can get a lot of great stuff for free.

Here are a few of my favorite sites. One in particular is running a sale right now, I love their stuff. They are not free, but to me they have great quality, and remember the nice thing about digital scrapbooking is that everything can be used over and over and over.

So here I am, after all that research and accumulation of digital scrapbooking paper and elements, 5 months in and nothing to show for it. Time is flying! Time to get started…

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diy, life with baby

We’re Winners in my Mind

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Well we didn’t win! Overall, I was pretty disappointed in the Baby’s Best Friend contest. They had a lot of technical difficulties with voting which eventually made them have to choose a winner alternatively, basically through the editorial team voting. We made the finalists, but didn’t win (I actually kind of felt one of the photos was taken really poorly, so I am surprised by that particular pick). Oh well! We’re still winners in my mind 🙂

I spent today learning more about Lightroom, so assuming I have time in the coming weeks, expect some higher quality photos from me with better skin tone. I spent a while reading about skin tone and downloading some free pre-sets to help my photo editing.

One thing I learned today was a feature of Lightroom 3 which is “Skin Softening” on the adjustment brushes of the Develop tab. I used it on our most recent creative photo today for April Fools! Jameson thought he would play an April Fools joke on Sasha. Luckily, we caught him before his plans went awry.

The alternative to this April Fools picture was putting him on a turkey plate 🙂 I didn’t think he’d lay still for that!

Today I got the supplies to make his Easter basket. I am hopefully going to photograph him in it this year. He won’t be getting any gifts cause he’s too young to appreciate them (we asked the Easter bunny to skip our house this year), but I’ll take some fun pictures of him anyway. I’m going to do the same project that mine and my siblings Easter baskets were made from! I had a hard time finding supplies, since they’re discontinuing the loopy chenille, so what I could find, I bought a few of (you know, for future children so they all can match. I’m obsessive)

Jameson’s is going to be mint green with white inner ears. I found a medium brown wicker basket which I think will work nice. If it doesn’t work out… well, I always have mine from when I was growing up! It’s yellow and will work for Easter photos!

The other day, Jameson started reaching out to grab Brian’s nose! I even got a few pictures of it, which hopefully I’ll have time to edit and post tomorrow. Have a nice weekend!

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diy, general life, life with baby

Last Day as a SAHM

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The acronym means Stay At Home Mom. Today is my last day of relative freedom (relative because of course there’s a little baby who needs me all the time :)) Today we are dropping Jameson off at daycare in the afternoon while Brian and I go up to Cleveland for lunch at Melt for a super unhealthy but tasty extravagant grilled cheese sandwhich. I’m pumped! Then after I will get my hair done and a manicure. So after they cut my hair they’ll straighten it, which will make getting ready for work pretty easy for a couple days til I wash it again.

Jameson had his first day of daycare yesterday, for a half day in the morning. We took some pictures of course, cause it was like the first day of school lol! Brian was all dressed up for work (he didn’t take off work yesterday, so it was a real trial run) and Jameson was spiffy in his favorite outfit, jeans and rock ‘n roll t-shirt. I’ll post the pics soon. It was a lot of work getting him ready, but some of that was because of me. I will have to get up a little earlier to make it in time for work. Also I was trying to get my pump ready to go, since I intended to pump in the car since I would be out all day til I picked up Jameson. I didn’t end up pumping, but getting all that ready was a pain.

The ladies at daycare said that he did great, that he a very easy going baby (which of course I already knew). I told them he does tend to get fussy in the afternoon, so we’ll see how he does today since he’s going to spend the afternoon there. He ate all his bottles and enjoyed watching all the activity. I know, because when I stopped in at 11, he barely noticed me, he was so intent on watching everything since it was all new. I think that’s the most activity he’s ever been around, and I think he’ll probably really enjoy it. There’s one other small baby there, and maybe one other that’s not too far off from his age. The other really small baby is 3 and a half months old but she only weighs 8 pounds! The ladies told me the the doctor has told her mother to add formula to her milk because she’s not gaining enough weight (they call that “failure to thrive”). And I thought Jameson was small for his age!

While Jameson was at daycare, I went shopping. I found the most ADORABLE outfit ever from Target. It’s a onesie, a jacket and pants all covered in elephants! The onesie says “mommy’s peanut” on it. I lovvve elephant outfits. I almost bought this outfit too, but I couldn’t spend all that money on him. I thought it would make a cute Easter outfit, but I think I have some other clothes that will fit. We still have almost two months before Easter and who knows what size he’ll actually be in! He’s still in 0-3 most of the time, but the sleep ‘n plays are starting to get too short on him, so we may have to move those up sooner rather than later.

I then went to Hobby Lobby where I found the coolest frames ever! For Christmas this past year, I made Brian a perpetual calendar with no days of the week. Anyway, I used a flip photo thing from Kohls as the base, but these are even better since they’ll hang. I bought all they had, which was just two, so maybe I’ll make one for myself too. I also bought a few frames to put on my desk at work. Then I went to the dentist, which was fine (still no cavities, yay!) but I found out I have the “remnants” of pregnancy gingivitis. Ew. So to clear it all up I need to be extra diligent about brushing and flossing.

I stopped to see Jameson then who pretty much ignored me and then went over to get a free shirt from Ann Taylor Loft. They sent me a “we miss you” coupon for free $20 with a $20 minimum purchase. So I bought a $20 shirt, which was free. Score! Then I stopped by Little Tikes with Jameson to show him off to friends and co-workers. They all think he looks like Brian 🙂 It was a very good day.

In other Jameson news, he hasn’t poo’d since Friday late afternoon/evening. He’s usually an every other day kind of guy, so I was getting concerned, but now I’ve read up on the inter web that sometimes they can go up to week without going. He’s very unlikely to be constipated since he’s exclusively breastfed. Thought last night we thought for sure he was going to go since he was fussing a bit, turns out he was just overtired!! I think maybe we’ll have to move up his bed time. Now that he’s getting used to this schedule of getting up earlier, he’s usually fussing by 8 o’clock. As much as I love him up til 9, it’s not a happy time for him if we’re forcing him to be up and he’s tired. So 8 may become the new bedtime. I’m going to wait til after DST starts though and see how he does, since for a little while 9 o’clock may feel like 8 to him. He’s still doing really well at only getting up once, and I’ve eliminated the extra feedings in the evening and he’s still sleeping well. He always gets a feeding right before bed, but no forcing extras in between. I think this is probably as good as it’ll get until he’s either on formula or starting solids.

The plan is right now to start weaning him to formula (which, knowing him, the easy going and easy bottle feeding baby that he is, he won’t even notice), sometime in his 6th month. Brian is going to San Diego for a conference around our anniversary, so there’s talk of me going for a couple days too, and it would be great to be done breastfeeding by then. I already feel guilty about, lol. It may be a little rough, we’ll see how things go. Plus I do really like losing the weight so easy! I broke into the 130’s for the first time in a couple years earlier this week. Another week or so and I should be a solid 139, which would feel really great.

Picture time! Last week I took some fun photos of Jameson and Sasha. She is really good with him. We spent some time on the floor on Sunday together, me in between Sasha and Jameson. I think she would lick him all over like a newborn puppy if we let her, haha. We’re still super careful since she doesn’t know her own strength, even around us, but she’s doing really good. I posted one of the photos up on “Baby’s First Year” a website part of Babble.com as part of their babies best friends contest. Voting starts on March 16th, so I’ll be posting a link to vote then!

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diy, general life, house

Crafty Fun and Updates

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It’s been a long time again — and it’s just flown by. Work has been very hectic. We’re in the middle of upgrading to a new site and everything has been revamped– the look and feel and the software and backend hardware. The time frame is just painful so I’ve worked a few weekends (fairly short hours, not too bad) and evenings. Although, not as much now as it was just a month or so ago. It’s getting to crunch time though and we’re all feeling the pressure.

In other news, Brian and I are getting the house ready to sell. We recently got the basement waterproofed and the one room has nice white plastic walls now and is pretty much empty. Looks so much better! Also got the driveway re-sealed.

I’ve also been working on some new crafts. In September, I learned how to use my sewing machine and made pillow cases for the pillows on the couch, which look really nice. I have a pattern to make a cool bird mobile, which I’m keeping in my back pocked for that someday. Also, I started making some more jewelry. Recall I made the necklaces and earrings the girls wore for the wedding. I took a class with my co-worker Joni and now am setting up shop! I have three on there, with another ready to go. I’ve got some materials to make a light box which will allow me to take better pictures of my jewelry, so I’m waiting to put the fourth up there for when I have that done. So I haven’t sold anything yet, but that’s okay… I’m enjoying myself tremendously and I kind of want to have a good number up there and have a “grand opening” sale. Here’s my shop: http://www.artfire.com/users/hilaryrose

Soon Brian and I will combine computer rooms and computers, and get rid of my desktop that I’ve had for 5-6 or so years. It’s getting cranky. Then we’ll turn the other spare room into a second bedroom for house selling. We want to put the house up by February. I’m sooo ready to move!

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diy, wedding

Photos and Stuff from the Wedding!

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Photos by Dale Kincaid, (c) Somewhere in Time Photography

The church was Church in the Valley in Peninsula, Ohio. It’s an adorable non-denominational church who let us bring in our own pastor, I loved it. There was a day-of coordinator lady, which is not the same lady that I worked with when booking, it was a different lady who worked with us specifically the day before and the day of I found out. She was FANTASTIC, I can’t say enough about her. She put on the bouts for the gents and made sure everything ran perfect, cued everyone and did all the little things.

Ceremony programs, with our rings. I enlisted help putting them together with ladies at work. I didn’t have the music in them because we didn’t meet with the organist until just a week beforehand, after I printed the programs. The organist was decent. She did mix up the mother and the girls entry song, but it didn’t matter really. She came with the church, they have an electric baby grand.

The top of the program is vellum which I was excited to find really reasonable in a packet of 50 sheets at Jo-Ann’s. Had to mention it haha.

Putting my new earrings in. I like mirror photos. I loved where we got ready, it was a little room upstairs and then we took the elevator to the basement and came up at the rear of the church.

My groom, Brian, getting serious.

All the groomsmen got gear cufflinks which I think they were pretty psyched about. I got the ladies nice bags with their jewelry, and then different things for a nice personal touch. I also paid for part of their hair or nails, whichever they wanted to use the money for. We had nails done the day before, and hair and make up for some of us that morning at Solaire in Hudson. It was nice getting it done all at the same place.

All my ladies. I was pretty pumped there was a rocking chair where we were getting ready, it really calmed me down.

Flowers were done by Petals at Ivy Hill, Joanne works out of her home. I didn’t see her that day at all but she delivered beautiful fresh flowers on time! We did intense color for me, and paler versions for the ladies. Colors were coral, yellow and green. I did ivy in my bouquet in honor of my mother. You can put the ivy in water and it will grow roots, which I think is pretty cool. My mom still has her plant from when she got married.

PRELUDE
  • Ushers seat the guests (Prelude music)Grandparents of the Bride & Groom are seated
  • Parents of the Bride & Groom are seated – ended up being Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring because she mixed them up, oh well!
  • The Minister and Groom and Groomsmen enter from the side.
PROCESSIONAL:
  • The Bridal party enters and proceeds to the front (Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, but she accidentally did Ode to Joy)
  • Music begins for the Bride’s entrance (Trumpet Tune)
  • The Bride and her father enter and are met by the Groom. Father remains standing by Bride until Giving of the Bride.

WELCOME

CHARGE

Congregation seated

DECLARATION OF INTENT

GIVING OF THE BRIDE

PRAYER

SCRIPTURE READING
Song of Solomon 2:10-13; 8:6-7

MESSAGE
Included a reading from the Velveteen Rabbit, which I put on the back of the programs too.

SECOND READING
The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Chapter 21, The Little Prince Befriends the Fox

PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOWS

VOWS
I, (name), take you, (name), to be my friend, my lover, and my (husband/wife). I will be yours in times of plenty and in times of want, in times of sickness and in times of health, in times of joy and in times of sorrow, in times of failure and in times of triumph. I promise to cherish and respect you, to care and protect you, to comfort and encourage you, and stay with you, for all eternity.

EXCHANGING OF THE RINGS

LOVE LETTER & WINE BOX CEREMONY
Brian and Hilary have written love letters to each other to be sealed with a bottle of wine in a box. The Minister will present the box and elaborate on the meaning of the ceremony and seal the box with the first nail; Brian and Hilary will follow nailing the box shut. The box will be displayed in a place of honor and will be opened on their fifth wedding anniversary. There is only one other reason the box should be opened before the anniversary. If there should come a time when Brian and Hilary hit a bumpy road in their relationship, before they give up or make any irrational decisions, open the Wine Box. Even if they are not seeing eye-to-eye at that very moment, it will remind them of all the reasons they choose this person as their partner and all the things that helped shape the life they’ve created together.

THANK YOU TO OUR MOTHERS
Marriage is a coming together of two lives, and a celebration of the love of two people. But it is more. The love that you feel for one another is the flowering of a seed your mothers planted in your hearts many years ago. Their love for you has brought them great happiness and great challenges, and their love did not diminish as they met these challenges. That is the great lesson you can bring into your marriage. As you embrace one another in your love, so too do you embrace the families which have been brought together on this happy occasion. As a token of your gratitude for your families, I would like to ask you to offer these symbols of eternal love, these roses, to your mothers.

PRONOUNCEMENT

BENEDICTION
And now to Brian, Hilary, and all present:
The LORD bless you and keep you
The LORD make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you;
The LORD life up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.

PRESENTATION
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Brian T—

RECESSIONAL
Wedding Joy

We did the love letter and wine box ceremony and gave roses to our mothers instead of doing the unity candle.

Kiss the bride! A good friend of ours from work is also a pastor and did our ceremony. It made a nice personal touch.

We got to pull our own church bell!!!

All the ladies and gents.

We took photos of us at Everett Road Covered Bridge, same place we had engagement photos taken. Beautiful all seasons!

Okay I won’t do too many of these but I loved all the shots we got. Our photographer was Dale Kincaid, Somewhere in Time Photography, and not only were the photos we got wonderful, he came out to the rehearsal the day before to see the church and introduced himself to everyone. He made a point of memorizing people’s names and got all the family shots. He also has a lot of experience shooting photos in the Cuyahoga National Park, so these outdoor shots were just perfect.

Reception hall was Acker-Moore Banquet Hall (VFW). It’s a beautiful new place, we were really happy with it. We got the liquor from them and catering was Totally Cooked. Everyone RAVED about the food, especially the shells and cheese.

The cake was really good, by Judy’s Sweet Sensations, although I was a little less than thrilled about the look of it. Funny, cause normally it’s the other way around in that it looks pretty and tastes bad, so I would rather have it this way. We didn’t have a cake knife set so the caterer put one together for us haha. Little things didn’t matter at all that day.

Gives you another nice photo of the hall. I made my own toss bouquet but the girl who caught it was the guest of another girl I invited, who I didn’t know at all so that was kind of disappointing.

One more. Not everyone likes the chicken dance, but I do 🙂 DJ was Johnny V DJ. He was wonderful, played everything we asked for and got the crowd moving. He did switch our bouquet toss/garter toss music accidentally but that’s okay, again, nothing mattered at all that day.

6-6:30    Guest Arrival
6:30    Wedding Party Arrival
6:40    Grand Entrance Bridal Party “Icky Thump”; Bride & Groom “Supermassive Black Hole” by Muse
6:50    Blessing by Pastor Jason
6:55    Toasts made by Maid of Honor, Holly & Best Man JP
7:00    Dinner buffet style
7:45    Cake Cutting
8:00    First Dance “Rose of my Heart” by Johnny Cash
8:05    Father Daughter Dance “Forever Young” by Rod Stewart
8:10    Mother Son Dance “In My Life” by Beatles
8:15    Wedding Party Dance “Thank You” by Led Zeppelin; parents joined in midway
8:20-8:40    Open Dancing
8:40    Bouquet Toss “Electric Feel” by MGMT
8:45    Garter Toss “Que Onda Guero” by Beck (he switched these though)
8:50    Dollar Dance “Money” by Pink Floyd
9:00-9:30    Open Dancing
9:30    Last Dance “Love You ‘Till The End” by The Pogues
Except it was much later than 9:30 by that time, more like 11 or whatever. Time just flew by.

We honeymooned at the Majestic Colonial, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. It was wonderfu! The people were great and the food was tasty. Love love love the all inclusive, you don’t have to worry about anything. The beaches here were the best I have ever seen, too.

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28 Days to Go

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Less than a month to go, it’s a little scary (not because I’m scared but because of all the STUFF there is left to go). Here’s a short list:

Write thank yous for work bridal shower
Rehearsal dinner (this is almost done I think, Brian’s taking care of it)
Thank you tags attached to favors
Pick up altered dress (should be soon, call to follow up next week)
Finish guest book table numbers Still need to write something to put up at the main entrance to explain this
Centerpieces! Clean mirrors for centerpieces
Finalize DJ stuff (we picked the song we’re going to dance to, but nothing else)
Finalize cake details (I need a topper, I think I’ll just use some teddy bears I got from work, and buy ribbon)
Finalize flower details
Finalize ceremony details
Finalize food
Finalize photographer details (must take photos, etc. and just touch base)
Create day-of timeline
Schedule make up and hair and other salon stuffs
Create ceremony programs
Finalize ceremony music (I need to call an old lady which is not on my list of fun things)
Seating arrangement (can’t do this until everyone or most have RSVPed which should be very soon)
Create placecards for seating
Buy gifts for parents, both sets
Buy gift for Brian
Brian get gift for Hilary (let’s just assume this will get done ;))
Finish bridesmaid/groomsmen gifts
Pay for all the shit (payment due dates are all coming up)

I put some stuff in that we finished because I wanted to feel good haha. I bought myself a pair of nice gold/pearl earrings for the wedding. My grandma is letting me borrow a real pearl necklace which will be my something borrowed. The earrings can be the something new–I didn’t want to wear fake pearls with real ones. I found some really pretty at a good price. My engagement ring and band are white gold and the rest of the jewelry for the wedding is yellow gold, but I don’t really think that matters.

Here’s what the guest book table numbers look like, I realized I didn’t have any pictures of them posted here. I’m pretty proud of them 🙂 I don’t know yet how many more I need to do so I’m holding off a little bit. I have 15 done. They’ll go on each of the tables with “prompts” and they replace a traditional guestbook.

The registry is still pretty well stocked, but I’m going to watch it closely as the day approaches. I can’t believe how much stuff I got for the shower, everyone was really generous! Brian’s sister coordinated it all, I really thought it turned out really nice. We had it at Boston Township Hall in Peninsula. There was a little kitchen and bathroom attached and the day was beautiful so we had all the huge windows open. Table cloths and confetti. It was just great. Various people brought food–Lisa’s husband JP made pasta salad she brought, Giant Eagle made the sandwiches, mom brought cake and little cream cheese roll things, people brought chips and pretzels, Brian’s mom had jello and jello shots! and brownies were made… oh my goodness. We didn’t really play any games except a bingo for what gifts I would get–it lasted a lot longer than I thought. It was supposed to start at 1, I think we got started at 1:30 and it went til 4:30-5. Hollie’s kids (the ones we go to the zoo with each year) had a blast with the balloons and a lot more of my friends showed up than I thought would. My mom and sister and grandma came, and my Aunt Carol. Friends from school, old Centerville friends, new friends, and Brian’s family. I helped clean up and then I got Brian and we drove to his parents house to hang with his grandma and Aunt Terry. It was so nice of them to come all that way, I know how tough it was to get his grandma here!!!

Then I had a surprise work shower, and that was a total surprise. I had absolutely no idea. They had it all decorated with table cloths and confetti and banner and balloons. (Banner is still hanging up outside my cube and one of the balloons is still inside my cube). April made a nice summer salad with lettuce, strawberries, walnut pieces and sweet dressing. We had pizza, brownies by Jill and cupcakes made by Leigh-Anne, of course. Joni and Leigh-Anne I think planned most of it, but everyone contributed; they got me a nice sewing machine!! So I took the one off my registry, this one is much nicer, I’m really excited. I bought a pattern for curtains yesterday since they were on sale for $1. I also bought some fabric to practice straight stitching on first. I took a class recently so I can do the basics, with a different machine, haha. I don’t know when I’ll be able to break mine out of the box since we’re doing all kinds of housework and wedding stuff still, but after that I’m planning on doing this. Oh so crafty!!!

All in all, things have been really good. I feel a little overwhelmed with wedding stuff and house work right now, so I’m avoiding what I can. Don’t worry, just like school it will all get done in time… 🙂

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diy, wedding

More Wedding Fun!

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Where did the time go? I didn’t post at all this month, I can’t believe it’s the end of February. Okay, so I have quite a few things almost done… like, invitations are almost done. There was some minor drama when I took them to the post office to weigh two of them and the guy told me that the bows I had put on them would cost 20 cents extra. 20 cents! 78 * 20 = $15.60 extra. On top of… 13 * .59 = 7.67 (that’s the ones that have actual mail in RSVP cards, there’s only 13 of them), 65 * .42 = 27.30… so I’m already paying $40 to mail something, no need to add $15 more.

So I switched the ribbon to kind of band–it’s glued together so that it will slide off the invitation. I’m hoping it doesn’t look tacky to glue ribbon together like that but if people are just sliding it off and getting rid of it, it should be fine, right? I keep debating about putting some kind of paper over the ribbon edges so people don’t see it. Hmmm…

Anyway, here’s pictures of the invites before I decided not to do the bows… In one of those pictures you’ll see some colored edges on the inserts; I’m not actually going to do that anymore due to the time involvement, that was just a sample. I heat embossed in the center of the invites, that gold swirly flowery design. I also embossed the outside of the paper–a different kind of embossing that creates a raised design in paper. You can see it if you look closely, the paper is patterned. That was a pain in the neck (literally) and I spent months on that, no joke. The rest of the invite process has been pretty painless.

Invitations 1

Invitations 2

Invitations 3

So I am really excited that that is almost done. I even have enough of that salmon colored paper left to do wedding programs with it, so that’s pretty exciting!

In other news, we met with our pastor, Jason, who was my old boss (and also worked with Brian so he knows us both really well). It was different meeting with him in that context, but he gave us a paper with a sample ceremony so we’ll be tweaking that. I thought a little about ceremony music, we have an organist that comes with the church. About a month before the wedding I’ll probably have to call her, I’m not looking forward to that because she’s older and I don’t know, I just don’t like calling people as it is. Anyway, I’ll probably be pretty traditional and stick with what she knows.

I found a florist, finally!!! I had gotten quotes from 4 different places… for the flowers I had wanted, they all wanted like $800, and one of them took a month to get me a quote and that was the only one I had requested carnations in some of them just to see if the price would come down. It went down to the $560 but that wasn’t the flowers I really wanted. So this lady did my cousin’s wedding and has actually worked with Stacey outside of her wedding on a couple occasions, and also she works out of her home so she doesn’t have the same overhead that florist shops do. She is over my budget (my original budget for fresh flowers for all the people flowers was an outrageously low $200, that was before I realized it wasn’t realistic; I then raised it to $500); she came in at around $650 when all is said and done but I get the flowers I wanted. Roses and hydrangea, to match my fake centerpieces of course! Her name, should you want it, is Joanne with Petals at Ivy Hill.

Our cake lady also works out of her home; we went to 3 places to try cakes. Our cake will be square and two-tiered with scrollwork that doesn’t cost extra and maybe a ribbon around the tier. The rest will be sheet cakes. Judy’s Sweet Sensations is what she’s called. I really like her and she’s really knows her stuff and had lots of inspiration pictures for us to look at though in the end I went with a picture I found online. This lady is the lowest, but again over budget. My budget was just unrealistic, I guess. I’m really afraid that we’re going to be way out of budget for the DJ… we’re over by a couple thousand dollars already, I don’t want to make this ridiculous. We don’t have our DJ yet, that’s next on my list.

I firmly believe that I’ve gotten a really good deal on a lot of things and I’m making a lot of stuff. Those invites have cost a fraction of pre-made ones, and so have the centerpieces. But let’s face it, I don’t have to have a DJ and I don’t have to have fresh flowers and various other things, so I’m starting to feel a little guilty about the cost. My parents have dedicated a certain amount, and that won’t change; Brian’s parents are paying for the alcohol and will do one other contribution. The rest, all that over budget-ness, will be paid by Brian and I.

We’re booking our honeymoon this weekend, and a part of me is almost more excited for that than the wedding, haha! The honeymoon will be in Punta Cana, Domincan Republic, and will be at the Majestic Colonial. We looked at Iberostar since that’s where we stayed in Mexico and we had such a great experience; but the hotel pictures looked the same as Mexico! I wanted a different look and feel; the Colonial is super classy looking. It will be all inclusive; the rooms have room service and a jacuzzi and we’re looking at either the ground floor which has direct access to the pool, or the third or fourth floors which have private balconies with jacuzzis outside too! Both are unbelievable options and I’ve left it to Brian to decide. It will be for 9 days. I’m so excited, I can’t wait!

So that was super long. I’ll have to post another day about non-wedding stuff, haha 🙂

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