Hello half day!

Blogging from home on a Friday afternoon - yay! My boss let me take a half day after an absolutely crazy work week, including being at the office until almost midnight on Wednesday. Not even kidding. I so needed this afternoon to relax!

Tomorrow James and I are headed to Shane Co. (where he bought my engagement ring) to check out wedding rings! Here’s my engagement ring:

I think I want a simple, classic band to go with it for this look (courtesy of BlueNile.com)

But I’ll try out a few more blingy options just to see how I like it (this image from DiamondNet.com)

James doesn't know what he wants. Men!

New refrigerator

It all started Thursday night when I went to the freezer to get some ice for my ice water. The water in the ice cube tray spilled all over me!

James: Did you forget that you just filled those up?
Me: I didn't just fill them up! Obviously it was you!
James: I didn't fill them up!

We both investigated and found that everything in our freezer was melted! Yay!

Since then our food has been slowly rotting. This morning I threw out a bunch of food that was no longer salvageable. It was very sad!

Finally this afternoon a new (to us; I think they got it on Craigslist)  fridge was delivered. Our landlord decided to just replace it rather than repair it.

It's times like these it's kind of nice to be a renter. We're not responsible for expensive things like this. On the other hand, we would have fixed the problem as soon as we noticed it, rather than waiting almost 48 hours. I'd still rather be a homeowner, but I appreciate not paying for big expenses like this for the time being.

Thankful Thursday: Vacation

Today I’m thankful that Rose and I are finalizing plans for our European adventure! Please, ash cloud, go away in the next three weeks!! If that damn volcano doesn’t throw a wrench in our plans, here’s what my first half of June is going to be looking like:

Sunday – Tuesday: Dublin and Galway, Ireland

Wednesday – Saturday: Venice, Rome and Pompeii, Italy

Sunday – Thursday: Athens and Santorini, Greece

Friday: One last day in Ireland

I admit that I’m exhausted just from planning everything. But I can’t wait! So, so, so thankful for this opportunity!

Guitarist & Rehearsal Dinner

I never updated my blog about this: Last month we met with two guitarists for our wedding and decided to hire one.

I'm really proud of myself for finding someone under budget. I did a lot of research and contacted tons of guitarists and they were all quoting me way too much for just three hours of playing. I realize that they're talented professionals with expensive equipment, but we have a budget to stick to and I knew there were people out there who'd do it for less.

So, I decided to take things into my own hands and make the performers come to me. I posted an ad on Craigslist with our budget and exactly what we needed. We got over 20 responses, many of them from professionals with years of experience! And almost all of them were fine with the price we named ourselves. Take that, expensive guitarists!

We met with two guys in Santa Cruz, and if we didn't like either of them I had at least a dozen more in San Francisco and Oakland who would have worked too. It turned out that both were great and would have done a good job.

We also ate at two different Italian restaurants that we were thinking of to cater our rehearsal dinner and Kianti's was the clear winner. Yum!

Green thumb?

As has often happened in the springtime, I recently got excited to try and turn my thumb green by growing some fruits & veggies. The stores have such great sales and make gardening look easy!

It started a few weeks ago at Target... the $1 section had little packets of seeds, dirt and pots for tomatoes and basil, all for just $1. So I gave it a try... and look at my little seedlings!!

Tomato

Basil

Then at Walmart, I saw this:

For only $7! How could I pass that up?! Think of all the homegrown tomatoes we'll get from it, right? The seeds that came with this kit are... not doing so well. I planted them like 2 weeks ago and they're not sprouting at all!! I've been watering them and everything. I think I'll have to buy some more seeds :(

THEN, we moseyed on over to the garden section, where I decided I HAD to have a raspberry plant for only $5.

I planted it on the side of our yard where it's pretty sunny most of the day.

Let's see how long this green thumb thing lasts.

Fill in the blank Friday

Tonight's a fill in the blank kind of night, don't you think?

Thanks Lauren.

1. The first thing I do in the morning is pee, then put my hair up and brush my teeth.

2. Every night before bed I watch TV, snuggle, make sure my alarm is on, & tell James goodnight & I love you.

3. My favorite thing to do when I'm having a bad day is watch TV and drink wine.

4. Something that makes me cringe is watching Michael Scott on The Office.

5. Social situations are things I make myself attend. Sometimes I'd just rather lounge at home, but I know friend time is important. And I always have a great time.

6. I like to collect wine corks. I always put them in a drawer rather than in the trash, and I don't know why. Other than that I try not to collect anything because I really dislike clutter. That doesn't mean my house isn't cluttered... but I do my best to minimize it.

7. Weekends are for relaxing, grocery shopping, watching Law & Order reruns.

Handmade signs

I'd like to present my handmade, completely DIY, totally cute and helpful signs!

I did the first one with this script font (Freebooter dowloaded for free from dafont.com), but then thought it would be too hard to read. So I did the others in Fontleroy Brown, also free from dafont.com.

This one with our initials is my favorite!

Thank you Dad for cutting me pieces of wood for these signs! I painted them white and then tried freehanding the words... not pretty! It was much harder than I expected.

So instead, I found fonts I liked online and printed them very large - the sizes I wanted them to be on the signs. Then I put the paper over the wood and traced the border of each letter with permanent marker so that it bled though onto the sign.

Originally I was going to fill in the words with paint, but then I realized that I could do a much better job filling it in with sharpies.

Three will go near our wedding ceremony location and three will direct people to our reception location. We'll probably stake them into the ground, but that's not completely decided yet. I'm thrilled with how these turned out!

Wood = Free
Paint = $12
Markers = $2

Long time, no blog

Hello again! Sorry for my nearly three week absence. Work is a biatch at the moment, and will continue to be for the rest of the month. So, so many projects going on at once!!

James and I went to my hometown parents' new home in thier new town on Easter. I helped stood around a lot while Mom decorated the new house.

My brother, his girlfriend, and my grandma came over for Easter dinner. We all happened to be wearing green (all but Mom who went and found a green jacket so that she could be in this picture :)

Also, James has now entered the final six weeks of his Physical Therapy Assistant program (five left)! No more night classes, just 40 hours a week of working at a local hospital. Now we actually get to see each other after work - so nice! This externship will be over in May and shortly after that he'll take two licensing exams. Then he'll be a PTA!

We've also made some wedding planning progress, which I'll blog about a little later. I can tell you that I've now purchased ALL the paper and envelopes for our invitations that I'm going to make myself. Unfortunately for you, I'm not going to blog about them until our guests have received them in late July. Sorry, but I just can't spoil the surprise!

We went to happy hour, dinner, and barhopping with a big group of friends on Friday night. We had lots of fun! I don't have any pictures, but rest assured there were plenty of shenanigans to be had.

I'll leave you with a few recent photos.

Badass picture of James at Ocean View Park in Santa Cruz

Jack, Tom & James (Jack is the cat, Tom is the brother)

Easter (sans makeup :S)