Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Moving, kind of
While I wait for the CD of our wedding photos to finish off this blog with a few wedding posts, I've started a new blog over at The Bee Hive. Skip on over there for some fabulous news and lots of eye candy!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
I do...but First You do This and You do That
As I mentioned earlier, I wished I had one more day before the wedding. I would have made more wedding wands, downloaded more music, and made a more organized list for our coordinator, Abbie.... Well, maybe not a more organized list for Abbie, because the woman rocked! Holy cow, she was awesome!!
Abbie is bridesmaid C's younger, very organized, very professional sister. We spoke several times leading up to the wedding, but not in any great length. She showed up to the rehearsal with a clipboard in hand and downloaded my entire vision in under an hour, all while bossing around our family and friends and generally running the tightest ship to sail through the meeting house. She's available to boss your friends and family around too. And wow, she rocks.
She had the wedding party lined up just as the manifesto dictated
and lead us through our processional and recessional several times.
S and I practiced our I dos, or in S's case our "we'll see." It was at about this point when we realized that we were not (ahem, I) going to have enough time to write our own vows. So we nixed them.
After a quick run through of swords with no swords
we were off for the feast, featuring lobsters and a dinghy full of beers.
We celebrated for hours, S's dad toasted us, we toasted them, we gave our wedding party gifts and the night went on and on. In a separate post I'll have to go back and find photos of all the goodies I made for the girls. Somewhere I have photos of the sail bags, clutches, gold and crystal earrings, and flip flops that I made!
We stopped at our local bar, Gritty's, where we met more guests and had a few drinks. After about an hour S and I split up for the night. I went home, took a sleeping pill and wrote an email to Abbie outlining everything that was left to do in the morning before the big event. I set my alarm for 8am and turned off the light at mid-night.
Abbie is bridesmaid C's younger, very organized, very professional sister. We spoke several times leading up to the wedding, but not in any great length. She showed up to the rehearsal with a clipboard in hand and downloaded my entire vision in under an hour, all while bossing around our family and friends and generally running the tightest ship to sail through the meeting house. She's available to boss your friends and family around too. And wow, she rocks.
She had the wedding party lined up just as the manifesto dictated
and lead us through our processional and recessional several times.S and I practiced our I dos, or in S's case our "we'll see." It was at about this point when we realized that we were not (ahem, I) going to have enough time to write our own vows. So we nixed them.
After a quick run through of swords with no swords
we were off for the feast, featuring lobsters and a dinghy full of beers.
We celebrated for hours, S's dad toasted us, we toasted them, we gave our wedding party gifts and the night went on and on. In a separate post I'll have to go back and find photos of all the goodies I made for the girls. Somewhere I have photos of the sail bags, clutches, gold and crystal earrings, and flip flops that I made!We stopped at our local bar, Gritty's, where we met more guests and had a few drinks. After about an hour S and I split up for the night. I went home, took a sleeping pill and wrote an email to Abbie outlining everything that was left to do in the morning before the big event. I set my alarm for 8am and turned off the light at mid-night.
Setting Up is Hard to Do (Alone)
Hosting a wedding at home is a lot of work. Hosting a wedding at home when you're as into little details as I am is insane. It took insane amounts of work by a lot of friends and family to pull off our shindig, but it was so worth it.
We worked non-stop for several weeks leading up to the wedding. Then during the last week, when I was free from work and S was in Maine, things really came together. I keep saying that I wish we had one more day before the wedding so I could have done...well I have no idea what I would have done. The manifesto was 20 pages long and we all stuck to it like glue. The whole thing rocked.
Earlier in the week S and I set up the bathroom tent and hung hard-wired lanterns.
He also mowed acres and acres of lawn, which was quite exhausting, as you can see:
Lexi was everywhere during the set up and the wedding. I thought she would be sitting on her tuffet in the house of on the porch, but she stuck like glue through everything. She even oversaw the assembly of the big tent:
Once the tent was up we needed to hang the several hundred paper lanterns that I bought. My mom had cut 4 foot lengths of ribbon for each lanterns and S and I had attached them to the metal frames earlier in the week. Thankfully for us lantern hanging day also happened to be the day S's parents and several friends arrived in town. Little did we know that their help would be a total life saver.
While Clint and I assembled the lanterns
S and his dad figured out the best way to hang them in the tent with fishing line.
Then they got to work.
Bridesmaid A, mom and I had pedicure appointments at 3pm so we had to leave. I tried to protest, but mom insisted that I go and let the boys do the work.
We dropped some guest bags at hotels on our way to the nail salon. I can't believe how many guests bags I made! Even more shocking is how few were left over.
The guys were less than happy that they were abandoned, but I was PSYCHED when I came back and saw all the lanterns hanging beautifully (and securely) in the tent!
No rest for the weary though. As I walked around the tent bridesmaids C, S, and S arrived to help make favors, while S and his parents went out for a last supper before the last supper.
The girls and I set up shop
and bridesmaid S, a former Williams-Sonoma shop girl, perfected the design.
We worked for hours until we had enough s'mores to feed a small Navy.
After the girls left I worked into the night putting names on escort cards and songs lists on the backs of our table name cards. At 11pm I checked my email and was shocked to find that the etsy vendor who was supposed to make 100 ribbon wands would not longer be making them for us. 11pm Thursday, before a Saturday wedding. The real kicker was that the week before she emailed me to say they were almost complete. Perhaps more important, our programs had a cutesy little poem at the end of them about waving ribbon wands. What's a ribbon wand you ask? EXACTLY. Who the hell knows what a ribbon wand is?! If they were missing anyone who read the program was going to know they were missing. B*tch. In the morning I cried about it for a hot second on the phone to bridesmaid A and then set out to finish up other projects.
Our flower arranger, Lori, arrived
and set out arranging the flowers we processed earlier in the week.
I ordered our flowers from fifty-flowers.com and from flowersandfreshness.com. I highly recommend both companies. The service and quality was fabulous.
And of course, Lori's work was awesome.
Just after Lori arrived to make our bouquets, bridesmaid A pulled in the driveway. She took the day off from work, stopped at JoAnn's Fabric, bought some dowels and was wielding a hot glue gun in her hand...at 8:30 in the morning. "I'm here to make ribbon wands," she proclaimed. I have no photos, I was in a funk, so you'll just have to believe me that she sat there cutting dowels, sanding them and gluing navy ribbon in place for hours.
While Lori worked on flowers, Amy painstakingly created ribbon wands, and I wiped tears from my eyes and stuck names on escort cards, S and dad made the bonfire in the back field.
I'm not sure how it happened, but at some point the time to prepare ran out and I was rushed off to shower before our rehearsal.
We worked non-stop for several weeks leading up to the wedding. Then during the last week, when I was free from work and S was in Maine, things really came together. I keep saying that I wish we had one more day before the wedding so I could have done...well I have no idea what I would have done. The manifesto was 20 pages long and we all stuck to it like glue. The whole thing rocked.
Earlier in the week S and I set up the bathroom tent and hung hard-wired lanterns.
He also mowed acres and acres of lawn, which was quite exhausting, as you can see:
Lexi was everywhere during the set up and the wedding. I thought she would be sitting on her tuffet in the house of on the porch, but she stuck like glue through everything. She even oversaw the assembly of the big tent:
Once the tent was up we needed to hang the several hundred paper lanterns that I bought. My mom had cut 4 foot lengths of ribbon for each lanterns and S and I had attached them to the metal frames earlier in the week. Thankfully for us lantern hanging day also happened to be the day S's parents and several friends arrived in town. Little did we know that their help would be a total life saver.While Clint and I assembled the lanterns
S and his dad figured out the best way to hang them in the tent with fishing line.
Then they got to work.
Bridesmaid A, mom and I had pedicure appointments at 3pm so we had to leave. I tried to protest, but mom insisted that I go and let the boys do the work.We dropped some guest bags at hotels on our way to the nail salon. I can't believe how many guests bags I made! Even more shocking is how few were left over.
The guys were less than happy that they were abandoned, but I was PSYCHED when I came back and saw all the lanterns hanging beautifully (and securely) in the tent!
No rest for the weary though. As I walked around the tent bridesmaids C, S, and S arrived to help make favors, while S and his parents went out for a last supper before the last supper.The girls and I set up shop
and bridesmaid S, a former Williams-Sonoma shop girl, perfected the design.
We worked for hours until we had enough s'mores to feed a small Navy.
After the girls left I worked into the night putting names on escort cards and songs lists on the backs of our table name cards. At 11pm I checked my email and was shocked to find that the etsy vendor who was supposed to make 100 ribbon wands would not longer be making them for us. 11pm Thursday, before a Saturday wedding. The real kicker was that the week before she emailed me to say they were almost complete. Perhaps more important, our programs had a cutesy little poem at the end of them about waving ribbon wands. What's a ribbon wand you ask? EXACTLY. Who the hell knows what a ribbon wand is?! If they were missing anyone who read the program was going to know they were missing. B*tch. In the morning I cried about it for a hot second on the phone to bridesmaid A and then set out to finish up other projects.Our flower arranger, Lori, arrived
and set out arranging the flowers we processed earlier in the week.
I ordered our flowers from fifty-flowers.com and from flowersandfreshness.com. I highly recommend both companies. The service and quality was fabulous.
And of course, Lori's work was awesome.
Just after Lori arrived to make our bouquets, bridesmaid A pulled in the driveway. She took the day off from work, stopped at JoAnn's Fabric, bought some dowels and was wielding a hot glue gun in her hand...at 8:30 in the morning. "I'm here to make ribbon wands," she proclaimed. I have no photos, I was in a funk, so you'll just have to believe me that she sat there cutting dowels, sanding them and gluing navy ribbon in place for hours.
While Lori worked on flowers, Amy painstakingly created ribbon wands, and I wiped tears from my eyes and stuck names on escort cards, S and dad made the bonfire in the back field.
I'm not sure how it happened, but at some point the time to prepare ran out and I was rushed off to shower before our rehearsal.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
All Moved Out
We're all moved out of Pensacola and safely in the DC area. So now we can continue the house hunt in person and I can spend some time updating the blog.
In the meantime here's a shot of the Hungarian movers and our moving truck:
Their dog la pinta who was very well behaved:
They had all our stuff out by Thursday afternoon and on Friday after work S and I packed our cars and said our final goodbyes.
I'm pretty sad to leave our first home.
We drove 5.5 hours Friday night to Jacksonville where we stayed with very kind friends who took us in on only a few hours notice. My car was parked behind locked gates so I didn't have to unpack my roof-top sherpackgo.
We got a reasonable start on Saturday after a nice breakfast and made excellent time, only stopping twice in 11 hours for gas.
When we finally arrived at our temporary home on Sunday we were greeted by a passing cruise ship in the front yard.
It's pretty nice here!
But I am eager to have our own place soon.
Up next, wedding recaps!
In the meantime here's a shot of the Hungarian movers and our moving truck:
Their dog la pinta who was very well behaved:
They had all our stuff out by Thursday afternoon and on Friday after work S and I packed our cars and said our final goodbyes.
I'm pretty sad to leave our first home.
We drove 5.5 hours Friday night to Jacksonville where we stayed with very kind friends who took us in on only a few hours notice. My car was parked behind locked gates so I didn't have to unpack my roof-top sherpackgo.
We got a reasonable start on Saturday after a nice breakfast and made excellent time, only stopping twice in 11 hours for gas.
When we finally arrived at our temporary home on Sunday we were greeted by a passing cruise ship in the front yard.
It's pretty nice here!
But I am eager to have our own place soon.
Up next, wedding recaps!
Friday, September 11, 2009
Bears!!!!!
The ranger greeted us by saying, "we have a bear problem and it's been getting worse over the past few weeks."
Woah Nellie he was not kidding! The first night we were woken three times by crying baby bears running through the camp sites. I had no idea baby bears cry so much like little puppies. The second day I was standing in my underwear ankle deep in the coldest brook ever after a challenging hike up the knife edge when a baby bear comes bounding down the trail. My first thought was "what kind of black dog is that." I quickly realized it was a very curious baby black bear. I wrapped myself up and begged S to hurry up so we could get out of there before it's mother showed up. Unfortunately, after 10 miles with the camera handly, we didn't have it at the swimming hole with us.
The baby bears came back crying through the campground during the night on our second night, but after seeing how small they were I was a lot less scared of them. I had the camera poised for a morning shot, but we were packed up and on the road before they made their morning breakfast scraps rounds.
Woah Nellie he was not kidding! The first night we were woken three times by crying baby bears running through the camp sites. I had no idea baby bears cry so much like little puppies. The second day I was standing in my underwear ankle deep in the coldest brook ever after a challenging hike up the knife edge when a baby bear comes bounding down the trail. My first thought was "what kind of black dog is that." I quickly realized it was a very curious baby black bear. I wrapped myself up and begged S to hurry up so we could get out of there before it's mother showed up. Unfortunately, after 10 miles with the camera handly, we didn't have it at the swimming hole with us.
The baby bears came back crying through the campground during the night on our second night, but after seeing how small they were I was a lot less scared of them. I had the camera poised for a morning shot, but we were packed up and on the road before they made their morning breakfast scraps rounds.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Off to the Woods
There's really no denying it, we're car-to-site campers.
The jeep is fully loaded for two nights of camping. S has no less than 5 pairs of pants. However, in his defense, my parents were throwing clothes on his packing pile this morning after they saw his Navy issued cotton thermals. Cotton thermals? Now that's an oxymoron. We also stopped at dicks and came out with a couple pairs of zip off pants.
Looks like we're ready for our longest forced march yet. Happy honeymoon, darlin'.
The jeep is fully loaded for two nights of camping. S has no less than 5 pairs of pants. However, in his defense, my parents were throwing clothes on his packing pile this morning after they saw his Navy issued cotton thermals. Cotton thermals? Now that's an oxymoron. We also stopped at dicks and came out with a couple pairs of zip off pants.
Looks like we're ready for our longest forced march yet. Happy honeymoon, darlin'.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Returns...An Unexpected Gift
We drank more liquor than 130 people should ever be able to consume (well done flounder). But when then cloud lifted and our hazy heads cleared we had well over a thousand dollars worth of beer and wine to return today (ahem, not going to mention how much we spent last week, in addition to the booze from S's students). When the credit reciept printed it was like a little unexpected gift. Maybe we'll have a little left over from the budget to go towards the new house :)
Welcome to the Navy, Ma'am
It's official, I'm a Navy wife now. I have my ID card and I'm enrolled in tri-care. I peppered the nice woman in the medical building with dozens of medical questions. Conclusion is that between my current coverage and supplemental tri-care I'm about as covered as I can get and I can still see any doctor I darn well please. Being married to S has even more perks than I thought!
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Saturday, September 5, 2009
On My Way
I'm en route to the church! No photos to post, just driving in the land yatch, wearing my gorgeous earrings from S. I'm psyched and not nervous at all...yet :)
Setting Out Light with Lexi
I drove the Jeep with Lexi and the lanterns around the yard today as mom and dad set out the lanterns. Lex knows something big is happening because she's alternating between sticking like glue and hiding in my closet.
Nails are Did
Mom, A, and I got our nails did:
While S, his dad and some really good and generous friends hung all the lanterns.
I am so grateful for their help. Now today A and I are on our way to the salon while bro and W's husband hang the throwies.
While S, his dad and some really good and generous friends hung all the lanterns.
I am so grateful for their help. Now today A and I are on our way to the salon while bro and W's husband hang the throwies.
Present Time
I gave S his wedding gift a day early. After the amount of work he's done repeating, "it will all be worth it" was starting to fall on deaf ears. I hope this makes it worth it :)
Friday, September 4, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Tree Trunks
I wrapped several tree trunks with mini lights today. There are a few more to finish in the AM, but we ran the cables out for the first batch. They look fabulous and throw a ton of light.
At the end of the drive where 5 paper lanterns will be hung:
At the end of the drive where 5 paper lanterns will be hung:
Corn Hole!
Brother came home this weekend and built four corn hole thingys with the wood S and I bought at Home Depot. The wood purchase was nearly a disaster after I forced S to put his bags in the cab of the truck, much against his will. But, the corn hole games a fabulous and built to my perfectionist standards. Bro is quite the craftsman and like me knows that any job worth doing is worth doing right.
Corn hole, fun for all ages:
And rather than leave the holes white, S decided they need contrast trim. Problem is, I'm the painting pro in our fledgling family. So after a full day AND after making dinner for everyone, I taped and painted trim as S watched and chatted at me.
I'll have to give them another coat in the am with a roller then apply a few coats of clear gloss coat. Because I don't have enough to do already....
Corn hole, fun for all ages:
And rather than leave the holes white, S decided they need contrast trim. Problem is, I'm the painting pro in our fledgling family. So after a full day AND after making dinner for everyone, I taped and painted trim as S watched and chatted at me.
I'll have to give them another coat in the am with a roller then apply a few coats of clear gloss coat. Because I don't have enough to do already....
Alerting the Neighbors
My mom wrote a letter to all our neighbors, I baked cookies for them, and today Lexi and I delivered the goods.
First Batch of Flowers
The first batch of flowers arrived today. Freesia take longer to open than the other flowers so we had them delivered today instead of Thursday with the rest of the flowers. 200 stems do not take up a lot of space. I am super impressed with fifty-flowers.com!
I cut the ends and removed all the leaves:
Here they are!
I cut the ends and removed all the leaves:
Here they are!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
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