blank...

as in - wedding planning. my mind is blanking out on any wedding planning currently. i think it'll get back into the routine as soon as halloween is over. the past couple of weeks have been absolute chaos, and i'm not really sure why. i guess it's just hard to live an hour fm just about (not all!) everything that you consider familiar - friends, fiancee, places you like to frequent.

so when i get a chance to catch up with any of my friends that i haven't seen in forever, i'm game! so the past couple of weeks (since last monday) have included: (warning! lots of unhealthy food involved...not good!)

• skipping carpool many days,
• dinner at applebees one night catching up on the past year (we canNOT wait that long next time, laura!),
• dinner with fabulous fruit tea and desserts with the future in-laws,
• ordering a david's bridal dress for engagement pics (i know, i know - way too early! but i LOVE the dress!!) picture, anyone? granted the one they had at the store was WAY too big, but this is a picture of it (it's better than the pic i took of the dress in the magazine!)

• dinner at logan's with one of my friends who is also a fellow engage-ee (i'm going to be one of her bridesmaids!!) discussing wedding plans
• dinner at capt d's with my park bff jackie to discuss halloween plans and then went to see vampire's assistant (totally recommend it!) and then for pumpkin lattes afterward (if you don't like coffee, i do NOT recommend)
• hanging with thomas just doing nothing and absolutely loving it
• seeing a real life bayonet that should have been used during wwII
• purchasing stuff to create a homemade halloween 'witch' costume
• slumber party at my MOH's house just hanging out and eating homemade pizza! yum!
• eating lunch yesterday with an old old navy friend and her new hubby at crack baby
• dinner tonight with one of tom's greatest friends and his wife
• dinner and a little shopping with my newfound friend (she was tom's friend first) natalia! :)
• treat day at work on thursday - must remember COOKIES!!
• halloween at the group camp setup on friday after work
• saturday - HALLOWEEN at montgomery bell!! it's free! bring everyone...starts at 6 o'clock!

so, hopefully after ALL of this, things will be semi-back to normal and i can resume wedding planning! and not running myself ragged! :) but i'm so blessed to have such great friends that i can keep up with - granted it's not usually on a very normal basis - but that's what makes it so much fun!

so, hopefully after reading all of this, you'll understand why i haven't been posting EVERYday! ;)

halloween

ok, so ready for a post that is non-wedding related?
yeah, me neither...haha!

but it must be done! for the past couple of days i haven't really done any more wedding planning-ish stuff, so other things must be discussed! i'm sitting here listening to the wedding singer soundtrack thinking about wedding songs, but should be worrying about other things.
journey 'don't stop believin' or quietdrive 'time after time'? opinions?

this saturday, for halloween, i'm helping my great friend jackie at montgomery bell with her witch house that all of the community is invited. i know there are going to be a lot of the cabins decorated as haunted houses, and also stuff for the smaller ones as well. :) should be a LOT of fun! we did it a couple of years ago, and it was definitely a blast.

i love it when others dress up for halloween, but i, myself, can never seem to come up with anything quite creative enough! as crafty as i am, you would think that i could pull something off. i've NEVER been able to do this... maybe it was fm growing up always spending halloween at our church and dressing up as either a hobo or a cat every year because that's what my mom could do with her eyeliner...who knows. you would think as crafty as i am, i could! jeez! one year, i will...i promise...maybe. haha!

353 days...

...aka WAY TOO LONG!

anyways, back to the subject at hand:
many of my friends, recent and older, have gotten married in the past and as i watch them grow in their relationships with their husbands/wives, it makes me realize how much i can't wait for a year to go by!

i'm not stressed or worried about it even because i know they we have a place ready to go and that my pastor will be there, so as long as we can get ahold of a marriage certificate, we're good to go! :) although i really want all of our my family and friends there, of course! i just can't wait to start our life together...tom, i hope you're reading this!

it's really hard to only see each other on saturdays and sundays and on rare occasions we get to eat dinner together during the week. i can't wait until we have our own place where i can just look forward to coming home and just being. right now, without the wedding planning involved, i come home and try to plan out a schedule so that i get to catch up with my nearest and dearest friends, see tom on a semi-regular basis, and still make time to keep up with laundry...OH, how i abhor laundry! and the higher the pile goes, the more i don't want to do it. and after going, going, going all day, i just don't want to do it.

anyways, back to the point, i keep looking to that day where we get to just come home to each other on a daily basis instead of jumping through hoops to try and see each other. i greatly admire those who have long distance relationships and make them work! i live 40 miles fm tom, and sometimes it feels like a different world.

ok, off my soapbox for the evening...it's time to finish watching top chef and go to bed!!
by the way, i <3 tom colicchio!
(so i leave you with a picture of my favorite judge EVER)

the wishing wall!

don't you just love it?! i do!!

it's definitely something i can say that i've never seen at a wedding!

yet again, let me say that i <3 uncommongoods.com - they have the neatest stuff!

one, two, three, BREAK!

ok, so i'm going to try my hardest to take a break fm all of the crazy wedding planning madness long enough to enjoy my weekend! :) tom is planning on coming down on saturday where eating somewhere really good and potentially watching a couple of movies (one of them being one of my absolute favs - the usual suspects!) but that means we still have tonight and tomorrow to get some stuff accomplished, right? yeah...so i might just take a break tonight too. ;)

sara (my moh and sister) and i are ordering pizza and watching thursday night tv - which is my favorite night to watch. it kind of stresses me out because there's SO much to see. ha! fringe, flashforward, the office, grey's, private practice, csi...good lord, there's way too much. the dvr at our house even gets stressed out!

speaking of tv and the office, even if you are NOT a fan, you should watch jim and pam's wedding. i haven't seen it more than once, but i really want to. it was GREAT!! so much better than i expected and such a throwback to the comedy of the way the show used to be. watch it!! i even got tom to watch it and he admitted that it was cute...

ok, i promise i will post pictures of the massive wishing wall soon! maybe even in a little bit.

OH!! totally forgot, i did have a convo with an etsy seller for a customized guestbook. it's really really cute. and i need to post that too...ok you twisted my arm :) it'll most likely be a dark grey cover and have grey and yellow accents throughout the book - i love that you can put pics in it as well!
opinions?

ok, well the pizza's here, so i'm off to eat then watch tv!
until tomorrow!! :)

so excited!!

for two (main) reasons...

1) my wishing wall is at my front door! already! i can't wait to rip open the box and see what it looks like. i might even take pictures of it to put up here! :)

2) my homemade invites. they're going to work!!!!!! i printed out a rough draft of the wording to see if they would fit in with my pattern, and it looks so good (if i do say so myself). i've got to find some cool fonts to use, but overall it's going to be awesome. i can't decide if i want to post a picture or just keep it a suprise, but i know everyone will love them. or even if they don't, i do (and tom and our parents and my friends that i've shown it to), and that's what matters! :) now i'm just anxious to get it right and get to work...any volunteers to help? ha! we have 180ish invites, rsvps, and programs to work on...whoohoo! <---- THIS is why we are starting now. it really means a lot to be able to put my crafty-ish-ness to work and be able to do something special (+15 other projects...haha!) that everyone will be able to see/keep.

i just want to say that i love my friends and family for dealing with my picture sending madness the past couple of days...especially my BM's because they will have to put up with about 11.5 months more of it! :)

third time's the charm?

ok, so here's the latest result of operation stencil:

i LOVE it!

i just hope i can recreate it about 200 more times perfectly...

it took me 3 tries to get it to look like this. i didn't really realize that acrylic paint had a lot of water in it. so i have to remember to use the paint very sparingly. but with this being the end result, i think i can handle it...

other opinions?

oh, and i ordered the wishing wall today!!! and it's already been shipped!

i <3 uncommongoods.com

operation stencil continues...

ok, so i wasn't really all that happy with the outcome of the stencil that i made the other day. yes, it took me forever, but i really don't like it enough to take the time to include it on 200ish invitations. so the search continued...

well i found another idea that i really liked and decided to try (actually i found 2, but one turned out to be an epic failure). as soon as i completed cutting it out and then used the only ink that i had bought that i actually liked - the way it went on the brush not the actual color (the pepto bismo pink), abra cadabra, i was in LOVE with it...

so what do you think?

of course the colors will be different, and i'm trying those out tonight - tom took me out to lunch and like the fabulous fiancee he is, drove me over to michaels to check out the colors. side note: let me just say that i love him so much, and even though i know he doesn't really like all of these wedding decision-making issues that i put him through, so far he has persevered and hopes to continue to. ha! ok, back to the issues at hand: i found some fabulous yellows that i'm hoping to try out tonight and post a picture tomorrow of what it should actually look like. in my head it looks absolutely fabulous, but usually when that happens, it doesn't work out so well in real life...

more to come, fo sho! :)

progress!

hello, blog world...i'm back!
so i haven't really had much of a chance to post anything this week...usually this happens at work, but this week has been awfully crazy, but guess what?! training is OVER!! anyone who knows me knows that i've gone through 5 weeks of training at work for a new job, but now it's OVER! yess! i cannot tell you about my excitement... some of my dearest friends heard me exclaim it pretty loud over dinner though as we went out to celebrate two things: a) training being over and (more importantly) b) it was tom and my's -1 wedding anniversary (silly, i know, but i got him a card and a kit-kat anyways!) i can't wait til this time next year...the leaves look awesome outside. the weather was not so great yesterday, but i guess that's ok...here's to hoping it'll be beautiful next year!

so, as far as wedding plans go:
-i've finished the stencil...here is the finished product of the actual cutout:

-here's the test run of the stamp. i really like it, but i hate the stamp ink that i bought. i think i'm actually going to try paint this time...we'll see. i'm going to go to michael's on monday and try something new...hello, coupons! what do you think? i really really need opinions...

-my wishing wall that i was going to order this week (see below if you haven't seen the post on it yet) is on backorder...along with my t-shirt scarf that i wanted. nooooooooo! :(
-we decided we're going to have the rehearsal at 4:30 friday evening...that's a step in the right direction too, right?
-there are a couple other things that are a current work in progress...

the official countdown has now begun... :)

invite update...

i'm going to go check out michaels in the morning to see what i can find in terms of stencils and ink and get some price ideas...

i'm thinking some kind of flower (zinnas, maybe?) and some sort of monogram for the envelope.

will definitely post what i find.
maybe even pictures! ;)

invitation ideas...

so far this blog has been just a place to bounce ideas around. i have a lot going on in my head, and i talk about them frequently, but if i don't write them down somewhere, they'll be forgotten faster than i can remember what i was even thinking about. and since i type MUCH faster than i write...well, ya know. :)

so we went to christmas cottage this weekend, and i ran across a booth that this one lady had with stencils. ok, let me back up. i always liked the thought of maybe creating my own invitations (yes, i know...VERY time consuming) using some kind of stamp. well, i just don't want them to look cheap if the ink isn't correctly balanced or i can't get them correctly centered - stupid stuff like that makes me nervous. ha! anyways, this really nice woman had these stencils, using the same ink that you would for a stamp. any color, of course. and with this stencil she took a paintbrush, dabbed it on the ink pad, and then filled in the stencil. they were so cute!! i'm thinking about giving it a try. i know that i could get the ink fm michaels or somewhere of the sort, and i could potentially order the stencils online if they don't have those too. it's worth a try, right? i guess i'd better get started now if that's what i want to do because goodness knows how long it will actually take to get them done, but also how much money i could save in the process. which with the budget we're trying to be on then any money saved is a good thing! even just to do a monogram or a heart on the envelope would be cute, i think. we will see! more to come when i actually put some of these ideas into practice...

on another note, i had a absolutely fabulous, well needed weekend. first, i found out one of my dickson girls is pregnant, so congrats!!! and it was great getting to hang out with my dc ladies friday night. long overdue and tons of fun. and then last night tom took me out to dinner at the fabulous mere bulles in brentwood. it was so nice to just get out and enjoy being together. we definitely don't get to do that often enough with full-time jobs, carpools, opposite schedules, and busy lives. today has involved lots of wedding contemplations, episodes of the first season of fringe with my sister, and just enjoying life.

to do:
-get MORE supplies for stenciling project
-cut tissue paper sometime soon for test project
-find cheap yellow plates to make stepping stones for the ceremony (anyone have any they want to get rid of?)
-figure out a list of stuff i need to start working on!

until next time.