Thursday, June 30, 2011

Winning!

Guess who just won Katy Perry tickets to her concert this Sunday?!


It'll be my first ever concert - I've never liked an artist well enough to spend 100$+ on tickets.

You wouldn't think Keith would want to go, right?
Wrong.

He campaigned hard. I think he just wants to see pyrotechnics shoot out of Katy's boobs.
Naturally. ;)

(Special thanks goes to Magpie Jewellery who hosted the contest on twitter).

Monday, June 27, 2011

Almost there

Remember this post, when I said I wanted to be around the 220 mark by early July?

Well.

Awwh yeah, baby.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

I must say...I have great taste.

I did not want a registry.

At all.

It was a long, hard fight I fought until today.

Today, I relaxed, let go of the bridal-guilt, didn't look too closely at the price tag, and thought:
'oooh, that rose bowl looks so cute and omgwant. i will love it and hug it and call it my precious every day'
'i've been wanting those balloon wine glasses by mikasa since I first saw them'
'gosh these 400 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets are soooooofffft'
'i can see myself serving Christmas dinner for the rest of my life to my family with this china pattern'

All in all, we ended up with roughly 108 gifts. This amount includes when we requested more than one of the same item, like 8 place settings of that fancy-ass china I mentioned earlier (the store recommended twelve. TWELVE. As if. Eight is all I could stomach).

We have a good mix of price points - A LOT of our gifts are in the 25-50$ or 50-75$ range. We have five gifts over 200$ - and three of those I do NOT expect to actually receive. We put them on our registry because we desperately need them, and we have a year after the wedding to complete our registry, with 10% off (okay, so the 46" LCD flat screen isn't quite a 'desperate need', but if it arrives in our house, then I can get rid of the ugly fake wood humongous wall unit that currently dominates the living room and has our current TV residing inside it. With Keith's blessing. HALLELUJAH!)

The other two items were a couch with a pull-out bed (we live in a one-bedroom apartment; the pull-out bed is a necessity) and a love seat in the same colour (gray!). The sectional we have right now is beyond finished. It's ten years old, and an ugly purple red velvet, and just...it's gross, okay? I've been begging Keith to replace it with absolutely no success for the last year. (Actually, that's a lie. I hated them from the beginning). And today, I succeeded. I'm getting new couches, folks. New, pretty couches that weren't picked up from the curb, or passed along for free, or here when I moved in. New couches that reflect my taste, style and design aesthetic. Sigh. Right now I don't care if I'm seen as being greedy for putting a couch and loveseat on my registry - I don't expect my guests to buy them for me. They're just there so I have an extra year and 10% off when I go purchase them.

Anyway. I got off track. Wanna see some of the absolutely gorgeous things I Keith and I spent hours discussing, comparing, and selecting with the vision of still using them 30 years from now?
Larabee Dot Rose Bowl by Kate Spade

Five piece place settings: Platinum Wave by Noritake
4.5 quart cobalt blue stoneware baking dish, by Le Creuset

Set of 4: Balloon wine goblets, Cheers by Mikasa

Four piece place settings: Ikat by Vera Wang

Flatware, set of five; Aquarius by Oneida.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The rest of the outfit....part two


Ah. The veil. The single most defining piece of attire a bride can wear.

Let me preface this by saying - I have not found ANYTHING, EVER, to be more overpriced for what it is. (except, maybe, a KitchenAid mixer. Like, really now).

200$ for a piece of tulle?
What are you smoking?

I just couldn't justify that kind of cost. And while I love the look of a birdcage veil, I'm not sassy or stylish enough to carry it off. Plus, our wedding is a bit more of a formal affair than I personally think a birdcage veil calls for.

So I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't be wearing a veil. Plenty of brides look amazing without one, and I knew I would look absolutely beautiful whether or not a piece of tulle was attached to my head. Plus, I reasoned to myself, I'm wearing a three-quarter sleeve length lace bolero (oh? I haven't told you about that? later, I promise). I didn't want anything to detract from it, so layering a long veil over it was definitely out.

Flash forward to this Saturday. I was really bored and poking around weddingbee, when I read Mrs. Star's journey. And stopped dead when I saw her veil.
Excuse me while I go pick up my jaw from the floor.
It's perfect.

It's not too long. It's not a birdcage. It's short and sweet and just bridal and formal enough for my sensibilities.

I've never seen a veil that length, ever. I don't even know what it's called; all I know is IwantitgottahaveitpleasebewithinwhatIcanspendohplease.

I'm changing it slightly - I want it even shorter. Because I really don't want to layer anything over the back of the bolero, I'm thinking of having it fall right to the back of my neck, perhaps a little bit longer, but not much.

The second change is with the lace edging. With my dress and the bolero both having lace, I felt that having the lace edging on the veil would be a little much. So, instead, I'm going to play up the other feature my dress has: I want to have a very few, scattered crystals incorporated into the piece.

I immediately fired off an email to Isobel, of Frash_Bel, who's handling my wedding day jewelery (an amazing necklace that I cannot WAIT to show you!) as well as my bridesmaid's gifts as a (very!) small token of my gratitude for dealing with crazy bridal me over the last year. She, the amazeballs she is, also does veils. All her work is custom designed-and-made and, most importantly of all for a girl like me, she is ridiculously affordable.

I crossed my fingers. And repeated my mantra of IwantitgottahaveitpleasebewithinwhatIcanspendohplease.

The quote I got back?
Let's just say I am a very very happy girl.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

What a difference a year makes....

I looked like this at my college graduation in June 2010:
I hate that picture. I look so uncomfortable. So heavy. I look like I'm drowning in my own skin.

Just for fun, I threw on the exact same dress tonight when I realized it was pretty close to a year ago that the original photo was taken at my graduation from college:

Just look at me! What a difference!! Check out the length of the dress - where before I was lucky if it hit at the knee, now it's definitely at shin-length.

The scale says I haven't lost anything in months. Its so easy for me to look at that number (over and over and over again!) and get discouraged.

Then a picture like this comes along, and I notice that I finally - finally!! - have visible collarbones. Which, I assure you, I didn't have three months ago, even though I was at the same weight number as I am now.

Which really just goes to show you, this whole losing weight thing?
So much more than the sum of its parts.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Ten on Tuesday (Phones)

I've wanted to join in the last couple of weeks with this lovely meme. :) Thanks to Chelsea for hosting, and thanks to Krys at Eat This Soup for the questions!

1. What type of phone do you have? Do you like it?
I have the Blackberry Curve in Smokey Violet. I love it, except for the fact that the camera sucks, and it's about a year old, so the battery is starting to wear out.

2. How old were you when you got your first cell phone?
I was...20? 20 or 21.

3. How many cell phones have you owned since your first?
Um...let's see. Three? I had a basic silver flip one that was a pay-as-you-go, a Blackberry Pearl Flip (in PINK!!), and now this lovely Blackberry Curve in Smokey Violet. What can I say? I like my phones to have colour.

4. How much is your average monthly phone bill?
Well, my portion of the bill is about 46$. We just switched our plan - we used to have a Blackberry and a Samsung Gravity and paid, like 140$ per month. Now we have a family plan with three blackberries on it (Harry has a Blackberry Curve, and Keith has a Blackberry Bold) and pretty much pay the same amount, although Harry does give us 50$ for his portion.

5. When you were a kid/teenager, were you allowed to have a phone in your room?
Not in the slightest. I'm not even sure I was allowed to be on the phone in my room.

6. Do you like talking on the phone or do you despise it? Or somewhere in-between?
Eh. I'll call if necessary, mostly to find out information, or talk to my mom or Harry, but I don't really talk on the phone at all.

7. Do you text a lot? Is texting/talking while driving illegal where you live? Are you guilty of it anyway?
I text ALL THE TIME. I actually had to bump up my text amount from 1,000 to 1,200 because I kept going over. Now that Tat and Keith both have Blackberries, we BBM, which is practically free. YAY!
It's completely illegal. I may glance at my phone at a red light occasionally, or get the passenger to respond for me, but I never respond myself. It's just too distracting!

8. What sort of texting keyboard does your phone have? Touch screen, slide out, or something different? Do you care?
QWERTY keyboard; it's just a normal, regular keyboard. I love it, especially after my last two phones which had the old school 1=ABC 2=DEF type of keypad.

9. Look at the last call in your call log – who is it? What were they calling about? Who calls you the most?
It was a telemarketer or something, but the actual last call was to Harry, yesterday, at about 4:08pm. I think I was calling to tell him I was done at the dentist.

10. What is the longest phone call you can recall having?
Either my boyfriend in 10th grade or my mom. My mom can talk. Sweet Jay-sus.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

dad; update

Looks like Dad is going to be fine! We visited last night & he had both the IV and ng tube out and was sitting up and walking.

Today he called me & said that if he can keep down breakfast and lunch, he'll be discharged this evening.

One more hurdle....

Edited at 5:29pm:

Dad's home! Yay! So glad everything turned out okay & he didn't end up needing surgery.