new adventures

As I sit here typing I can't help but notice all the paint that I still have on my nail polish, the calluses caused from the paint rollers, and the fact that I can barely sit down without my quads burning....all thanks to my weekend of painting our house :) As of today, we have half of the master bedroom and the bathroom left to do and then it's move in time for me! I was sitting on my couch catching up on my reality TV last night thinking of all the packing that I will have to embark on coming up here....then all the unpacking that I will have after.....the overwhelming realization has now arrived not just because of moving but because in just a mere 48 days I will be a married woman.


Some changes have occured, we are no longer going to Fiji...long story there but we are now going to Maui :) I am very excited because of many things:

A) I have never been and always wanted to go.
B) I now get to swim with dolphins. This is something that I have always wanted to do :)
C) I don't have to worry about not liking the food, because in Fiji, I kinda did worry about not liking it...I kept that one to myself but I am sure Nick thought about it at least once.
D) I get to pack more than 33 pounds now....not even kidding this should be at the top of my list because anyone who knows me knows that I do not pack light.....
E) The flight is a lot shorter now and anyone who knows Nick knows that he HATES flying...his flight went from 16 hours to just a tiny 5 hours.

I get to pick up my dress this Saturday!!!! :) There was a HUGE dramastical incident that happened last week...another long story short, after 4 phone calls to the bridal boutique, the dress maker Headquarters in Atlanta, the flagship store in Beverly Hills, and 2 conversations to the owner of the bridal boutique...the delivery date for my dress that once was in July...then they moved it to mid-late August, then to freaking LATE September, is now set for August 28th. I will be able to rest better once I have it in my hands because this has been one. horrible. experience. ever.

And the newest of the news....


I was talking to my best friend, Alison on the phone this morning and we were talking about something that I just love doing and that would love to do for the rest of my life....and it hit me...I now have a "plan" and can't wait to start working on it. I will blog more about it later but I am really excited!

Until then, I will leave you all with some pictures from my bridal shower :)

Shower...

Tomorrow is my bridal shower.
Tomorrow is my bridal shower.
Tomorrow is my bridal shower.

I think that if I keep telling myself that my bridal shower is tomorrow it will hit me. And I keep proving myself wrong. It hasn't hit me.

I am very excited to see everyone...very touched and blessed that my very best friend is, as I type, driving down here from San Jose to host my bridal shower in her parent's BEAUTIFUL home. Then driving right back up there so she can be at work on Monday. My sister and her 3 week old drove down here late last night to be here and that is just enough to make my heart smile. In fact, I am choking up right now thinking about. Gosh I'm lame. My wonderful bridesmaids are plotting behind my back and organizing this event and carefully not telling me because they know that I hate secrets when people make it clear that there is something that is a secret....does that make sense?

Anyways, I am very blessed to have these women in my life and there will be post real soon recapping the fun event.



Stay tuned!

We're Big Kids Now

This past weekend, Nick and I really tackled a major landscaping job...We took down some ugly bushes, put a flag up, and planted, my favorite....Flowers in the window box! I will post more later once we are done with all the big stuff.

After 4 days of painting we have officially completed the living/dining room, kitchen, and 3/4ths of the guest bedroom. Next up? the hallway, bathroom, and master bedroom.

Then it's moving in time! YAY!

The Paper Goods

Now that I have sent out all the invitations, I can show them to you guys! I didn't want anyone to get a peek at them prior to my trip to the post office...

All along I had planned to do my own invitations which I knew would be an easy task but very time consuming. I started designing them back in November when we got engaged and keeping with the theme of the wedding...rustic simple elegance was the look I was going for. I wanted to incorporate orange into it seeing as that was the main color of the wedding but I also wanted it to have the simpleness while maintaining an elegant feel. I hope that I kept with that in the end result.

For those of you who do want to design their own invitations, I would suggest to start early. I would say I put about 40 hours + in the design part alone, mostly because I am a perfectionist and I would design, close the program and come back to it a little later and redo what I had done before. I had 3 seperate pieces to work on: the invitations, the RSVP cards, and the "more info" cards. Once I was set on the invitation design it was fairly easy to finish the rest.

I ordered my envelopes from Cards and Pockets which I found to be reasonable in price and their quality of paper was amazing. I will say in hindsight I should have ordered samples of the colors because I made the mistake by ordering the wrong color of gold the first time. But they were easy to return and I just bought the other color that I was looking at....it turned out to be exactly what I was going for. I used the 18K gold color and then the Sparkling Merlot for the RSVP cards.

The next step was inputing all the addresses in an excel spreadsheet which I have mentioned in previous posts. I then addressed all the envelopes, which I had done about a month before cutting, stuffing, and stamping the envelopes . Doing that made everything a lot easier by the way. Like I said, start early and take your time with all the stuff. I don't think I really stressed at all because I did that.

The paper that I chose for the invitations was actually sketch pad paper...it was fairly inexpensive and really gave the old antique-ish rustic feel in the end. Because it is sketching paper, it was bigger than the standard 8.5 x 11 paper. I had to cut it all done (which took tons of time) and then once I printed out the invites, I had to cut again. I would say that this took up the majority of the time.

Everything was printed and ready to go so at that point, I was ready to assemble. I had my stamps, the envelopes, each part of the invites and a lot of DVR to catch up on :)

By the way, a little word of advice to all my fellow brides. In your spreadsheet, make a column where you number each guest. Then on the back side of your RSVP envelopes, number them so that way if you have guests who forget to put their names on the cards, you will be able to indicate who is coming. This also took up some time but I think it is worth it.

**Notice the polar bear stamps? Not my favorite.....

Onto the post office I go! (there was a man outside talking on his phone, and I am pretty sure he thought I was a weirdo for taking this picture. I wanted to tell him it was for blogging purposes, however, I have a feeling, he wouldn't understand).

**Confession: I gave the lady my box of envelopes and got super emotional...this probably doesn't surprise those who know me, but it caught me off guard.**

So my box that was once full of 100 envelopes all the sudden became this:

By the way, i managed to do all this and still only have to pay $0.44 for the stamps! YAY!