Halloween fill in the blank Friday

From the little things we do.

1. My Halloween plans this year will include handing out candy to trick or treaters. We always get lots of cute kids at our house! Every year we run out of candy, so I bought extra this time. I hope I did, anyway... it's so hard to estimate.

2. My most memorable Halloween costume was Wilma Flintstone (2006)! I loved that costume because I made it myself.

3. For Halloween this year I'm going to be nothing. On Saturday we're going to a wedding, and I'm happy I have an excuse not to go to a party, because I'm not really into it.

4. I've always wanted to dress up as something really pretty like a ballerina. I also want to be Lois Griffin [from Family Guy] but James refuses to be Peter so it won't work!

Oh I just got an excellent idea! Maybe I can get him to do it when we have a baby and dress him/her as Stewie! That would be much better ;)

5. Halloween free association!  Candy, trick or treating, pumpkins, Fall.

6. The worst thing about Halloween is that there's too much candy around and it doesn't leave until January.

7. The best thing about Halloween is that there's too much candy around and it doesn't leave until January. Also, adorable kid costumes!

Legally Mrs. K

I've finally gone through the process of going to the Social Security office, then the DMV to legally change my name to Chardonnay Maiden Married. Both were amazingly simple - I was out of each office within 15 minutes (make a DMV appointment, don't just show up)! Now I just have to notify...

• Bank/credit card
• Student loans
• Car/renter's insurance
• Health insurance
• Employer
• Utilities
• Cell phone

Anything else I've forgotten?

To be honest, I'm still not even close to being used to my new name. I think it will help once all my mail, etc. starts calling me that. I also just ordered new business cards, so that will be exciting!

Sorry I can't seem to think of anything exciting to post lately. Wedding day recaps are coming soon though... our CD is in the mail as of today!

Fill in the blank Friday

I am going major shopping tomorrow. I'm hoping to pick up some Christmas decor, shoes, work clothes, birthday gifts, Halloween candy and more. It's a bit overwhelming.

I wish that the work week was 4 days, and the weekends were 3.

I like being married to my husband.

I can cook. I've been making some delicious dinners lately! I need to be taking pictures and blogging the recipes.

I hope I start going to the gym again.

I think that I'm so over our house. I want a new one and am obsessed with online house hunting.

I was having too much fun hanging out with my sister last night to watch Jersey Shore. Maybe Sunday will be DVR catch up day.

Brought to you by the little things we do

No, it is not to early to be talking about this

I happened to see this blog today. It has templates for paper snowflakes that you can cut out and hang in your window, like so:



I'm totally making these this year! One side of our house faces the street and our office, kitchen and laundry room windows are all visible, so they're going in all 3 of them.

Only one more month until I can put them up!

Our honeymoon

The days following our wedding were laid back and so relaxing! And that's exactly what we were hoping for. We just wanted time to spend together without appointments or sights to see.

It was so great to spend those days alone with my new husband. I love having a husband!

Monday: Long walk along the ocean and lots of hanging out at home.

I think you have to take this picture on your honeymoon, right?

Also on Monday this raccoon fell in our trash can and couldn't get out. James knocked it over so that he could, but not before taking a picture and being hissed at!

Tuesday: Breakfast at Zachary's downtown. Walking and playing around Seabright State Beach.

 

James is pointing to the lighthouse where we got married, across the Monterey Bay.

Our lighthouse is over my shoulder here too.

In the evening we were supposed to go sailing on a boat called the Chardonnay, but they cancelled it :(

Not enough people booked, so instead we went to a nice dinner at Shadowbrook. We've already decided we just have to come back for our anniversary to go sailing!

Wednesday: Packed up the car and headed home. Huge thank you to my mother in law for letting us borrow her SUV... no way would we have fit even half of this crap (wedding stuff, gifts, supplies for the week, clothing...) in either of our cars!

That baby was packed to the brim.

Professional pictures

We don't have our CD of pictures yet, but our photographer posted a lovely slideshow on her webiste here. I got a little teary-eyed when I first saw it!

I think this one from our first dance may be my favorite. The ring on my husband's finger, the lights in the background, the almost-kiss... ahhh

When we do get the CD, there will be a huge amount of recaps 'round these parts. Yipee!!

The day after our wedding

We decided to share our first married day with our families. Every single guest had to travel to Santa Cruz from out of town... the closest was about a half hour, the farthest was the East Coast. Most were more like 3 or 4 hours.

We really wanted to have another get-together to thank our friends and family for giving up their whole weekend to celebrate with us. So, we hosted a BBQ at our rental house. It was very laid back and several people helped with food, which we so appreciated!

About half of our wedding guests joined us at the BBQ. We just got to hang out and visit with everyone. It was really fun!

Everyone left around 4 p.m. and by that time I was so exhausted from the last 3 days' events! We relaxed, read our guestbook and opened our wedding gifts for the rest of the evening.

The day before our wedding (Part 2)

See the day before our wedding (part 1) here.

Here are a few pictures from before our rehearsal. My mother in law's coworkers threw her a "mother of the groom" shower and gave her this tiara and sash!

The whole group headed over to our ceremony location at 4:40 for the rehearsal. We met the officiant, day of coordinator, and James' sister's family (her two daughters were our flower girl and ceremony reader).

We ran through everything and it was completely surreal. I choked up a bit but didn't actually cry. It was windy but otherwise perfect.

My bride outfit from the bachelorette party made a reappearance!

After the rehearsal we went back to our rental house for dinner: Lasagna and pizza from Kianti's, salad and red velvet cake. Oh, and plenty of wine!

 

The food was delicious, but more importantly, everyone had a great time. Most of our relatives were meeting for the first time, and everyone blended and got along so well. I couldn't ask for a better night!

We nontraditionally stayed together the night before the wedding, and it was great to talk about everything and share our excitement for the following day...

Bridal shower #2

Yes, I am already married... but I still got one last wedding celebration this weekend! The ladies at my mom's church in my hometown offered to throw a bridal shower for me. It was just weeks before the wedding at the time, and we didn't have time to fit it in before.

So yesterday it was! The pastor's wife graciously hosted a beautiful shower in her home. There were almost 20 women there, many of whom have known me since I was born.

We played a few games, ate delicious cake and I received many generous and appreciated gifts! The cake even looked a lot like our wedding cake, although Zora didn't even realize it when she bought it.

Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera so I don't have any pictures to share :(

The day before our wedding (Part 1)

The day before our wedding was the BEST day before our wedding I could have asked for! It was fantastic! In the morning James (who wasn't sick any longer :) and I went for a walk along the ocean. Again. Love love love it!

We picked up the flowers at our coordinator's house at 11 a.m. The one thing I would have changed about this day was that I would have picked them up about 9 a.m. It was fine though.

We got them home and started preparing the flowers, and my parents and maid of honor showed up soon after to help.

We took all the flowers out of the boxes they came in, and put them in buckets, ice chests and trash cans with water (whatever we could find)!

My other sister and her husband came a little later, and the whole family helped assemble flowers. It was so great! The flowers turned out absolutely beautiful. I'm so happy we did them ourselves. It would have been twice the cost, or more, for a florist to do so much.

After the flowers were in buckets, we had to take the leaves off every. single. stem. Plus dethorn the roses.

  

We made two bouquets,

Plus a whole bunch of centerpieces. I actually don't know how many. I think about 40? The way our tables were set up, we didn't need an exact number. Just a bunch!

James and I delivered the finished flowers to our coordinator's house. As soon as we got home I took a shower and got ready for the rehearsal at 5 p.m., and James' parents also arrived around that time.

Part 2 coming soon, as I patiently wait for pictures of our rehearsal from my sister ;)

Two days before our wedding

On Thursday I woke up about 6 a.m., too excited to sleep any longer (this happened every day that week, really). We went out to breakfast at Cafe Brasil, where we both tried Brazilian dishes.

After breakfast we went to CVS and got my sick groom lots of cough medicine, then Costco to stock up on food for the week! We got tons of stuff for us, plus food for our BBQ on Sunday.

We had lunch back at home and relaxed on our lovely hammock for a while, and in the afternoon I had an appointment at Nails 2 Envy for a mani/pedi. Not perfect, but a nice job (American manicure on hands and feet... I took this picture later at the beach).

We had Woodstock's Pizza delivered for dinner, and walked down to Natural Bridges State Beach.

At night we hot tubbed again!