- trying to remember to keep taking deep breaths
- realizing the hugeness that is our project to write our own vows
- irrationally afraid that I’ll break my arm in the next 11 days
- looking forward to visiting Grandmother tomorrow (she said she has something for me for the wedding; what could it be?)
- belatedly (too latedly) wondering if I should have planned to get myself a sweater or wrap or bolero or something
- grinning when I realize I can actually start to picture everything coming together
- still amazed at how no big deal it was to apply for our marriage license today
- kind of tired of driving all over the county to find the random things we need
- marveling at the fact that we can say “our wedding is next week”
- figuring it’s probably time to write the lists of what we need to bring to the brewery for the reception (and what I need to pack to bring to the hotel for the rehearsal and the wedding itself)
- hoping I can handle being the temporary guardian of several important “something old” and “something borrowed”s.
- living in fear of the day the ten day forecast becomes available
- feeling a lot calmer than I thought I would at this stage in the game
- secretly trying on my wedding band in the evenings
- trying to get used to my new name but feeling silly practicing my soon-to-be signature
- gathering photos for my makeup and hair trials on Friday
- anticipating a weekend of crafts and diy projects
- really just in disbelief and amazement that this is all really happening.
Currents
This week was kind of a roller coaster. I should probably get used to it. The university is deserted, so being back at work is strange; frozen tumbleweeds tumbling down streets… and yet I’m here and stressing about some work projects that are overdue. I didn’t write a Wedding Wednesday post this week because it was hard to come up with a specific topic. Mostly because we’re in crunch time now; my mom described it as feeling like you’re being squeezed with every day that ticks off the countdown, because the to do list stays the same and the time is just shriiiiinking.
We have had our master to do list, but it turns out that rewriting and re-prioritizing it helped IMMENSELY. As did writing three other to do lists (things to buy, things to design/print at home, prints to order) and more focused lists (like “guest book assembly”). At this stage in the game, when every person I see is all “Aren’t you so! excited!!!????” and I’m awkwardly mumbling, “yeah uhh well yes? except there’s so much left to dooooo, there’s no time to be excited yet”, it seems that I need to have every single thing written down. If it’s not all written out in my notebook, I start to feel panicked. So, I’m writing and rewriting the same lists.
We are getting things done, though, and truly, the things that remain are not huge (other than the seating chart/place cards, which we can’t do until we have our final meeting – this afternoon – at the brewery. That whole non-traditional “who wants a ballroom with round tables for 10 centered around a square dance floor, anyway? The brewery’s layout is so unique!” scoff doesn’t feel as cool when you’re fielding endless questions from the florist about how long/wide the tables are, when you don’t even know how MANY we’ll need, let alone how many people will be at each one or how long they will be). Lots of little, fussy projects, like buying a unity candle, making menu cards, designing and assembling the guest book and table numbers, figuring out what my something blue is….
In other news, it has been SO cold and windy this week. My hair sticks up straight with static thanks to the fake fur hood on my winter coat, my hands are insanely dry (but I found hand lotion that I really like, for once) and the world’s supply of rock salt is in our parking lot. I may have had to turn in my hipster membership club card, but the sweater uggs I got for Christmas are SO cozy and I don’t care. All I want to do is convince Dan to eat burritos every night (but that might conflict a bit with my final dress fitting in less than a week). I just want to try to keep away from the edge of “not actually holding it together” and stay right here, where I feel edgy but not crazed. So I’m going to gaze happily at my bright red shellac manicure and the hot pink post-it heart I stuck to our wedding day on my Stendig calendar, think about the wedding idea Dan told me last night that would really rock, allow myself lots of diet coke, let myself to put down the to do lists and relax sometimes, and hope for the best.
Here’s the song for the week, “Love of the Light” by Mumford and Sons, obviously because of the “to have and to hold” bit. The video itself is pretty fantastic, once you figure out the twist.
so love the one you hold
and I’ll be your gold
to have and to hold
Project Life: the end of 2012
Guys, deciding to just start Project Life way back in June was the best decision ever. I’m so glad that I stuck with it, and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to look back at the year, to show the album to friends and family, and to finally have an easy way to save all this stuff I’d be saving anyway. I’ve printed more photos this year (at home!) than ever before, and it’s just great. Here are my last two weeks of the year, using more of the pieces from Kelly Purkey‘s December kit:
Week 31 was actually only four days, but I knew I’d want to document them pretty fully.
(don’t mind the hearts; working on a craft project that is meant to be a gift and don’t want to spoil it yet).
I used the vellum envelope in Kelly’s kit to include some gift tags, wrapping paper scraps, and ribbon. It probably contributes to this binder overflowing, but I don’t care.
And finally, week 32, which had more Christmas celebrations, New Years, and our bachelor and bachelorette parties:
Here’s a look at the end page:
I had the D&E and bokeh photo printed from months ago, and just never used them, and they fit pretty perfectly here. The & is cut from a Crate & Barrel bag I’ve been saving. I printed up the other two cards using Photoshop, just as a quick and easy summary of the year (even though the album starts in June).
I never actually posted a photo of my title page:
because the top “Summer 2012” was the only thing there until this week. The Love this Life card was a freebie from Becky Higgins’s blog, and the badges are from Ormolu.
I may have squeezed just a tad more into one binder than was necessary, but I love love LOVE this project and I really can’t wait for 2013!
So This is the New Year
Somehow, 2012 was both awesome and difficult. It will forever go down as the year we got engaged and planned our wedding, the year my sister and Dan’s sister got married, the year of the hurricane, the year I went back to my old job. Big Change and Life Events together manage to be super exciting and super stressful at the same time, and it has been hard, sometimes, to focus on the fun parts instead of being weighed down by the nitty gritty details and compromises and maybe you can’t always have it the way you wants, and no you can’t know everything in advance.
So 2012 was crazy and exactly what I expected and yet not what I expected at all. It was kind of exhausting, to be honest. I’m not really all that sad to see it go, mostly because I really, really can’t wait for the things that 2013 has in store.
Starting the year off by marrying Dan is so impossible to conceptualize and wait wait I need more time and also I can’t WAIT for it to be here.
I felt compelled this year for the first time ever to jump on the “one little word” bandwagon. At the end of an exhausting year, having an intention for this new year feels important to me. I signed up for Ali Edwards’s One Little Word class, and I’m really looking forward to it. I chose moment for 2013 – to remind me to pause, to be in the moment, to really savor the momentous things 2013 has in store. It has been too easy this past year to let myself focus on the stress, on the tired, on the “when will my time be mine again?”. I know that things may not ACTUALLY slow down for us this year, with house hunting and who knows what else on our horizon, but I’m looking forward to figuring out what our new normal will be. And to making an effort to enjoy all of the big and little moments 2013 may bring.
Happy, happy new year, dudes.
Books: 2012
- Secrets to a Healthy Metabolism by Barbara Emmerich
- Dreamland Social Club by Tara Altebrando
- The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern*
- Divergent by Veronica Roth
- The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
- Sarah’s Key by Tatiana deRosnay*
- Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse*
- Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
- Twilight by Stephenie Meyer*
- New Moon by Stephenie Meyer*
- Digital Fortress by Dan Brown*
- Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer*
- An Off Year by Claire Zulkey
- Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer*
- At Home by Bill Bryson*
- Birthright by Nora Roberts
- The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach*
- 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson
- My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
- Every Day by David Leviathan
Well. Let’s just start off by saying I didn’t even come CLOSE to hitting my goal of reading 45 books (and three classics) during 2012. I know that reading almost two books a month is a perfectly acceptable amount of reading to do in a year. Especially a year in which I had a two+ hour daily commute for 8 months, and oh yeah that whole planning a wedding business. (Having a tv in the bedroom during 2012 also really cut into my before-bed reading time.) In the 8 years that I’ve been keeping track of my reading each year here on the blog, I’ve read 23 books, 24 books, 51 books, 44 books, 40 books, 57(!) books, 52 books, and 21 books. My average, then, is 39, but I’ve read a total of 312 books since the beginning of 2005. In these 8 years, I’ve read the Harry Potter series and the Game of Thrones series all the way through twice each (and I actually thought those numbers would be higher, to be honest).
Even though there are good reasons, I can’t also say that I’m not disappointed in my reading this year. Almost half of the books were audiobooks, and it’s not like I’m proud to have finally read all of the Twilight books (even if they kept me engaged during my long commutes for many, many weeks). The best books of the year were by FAR Night Circus and Divergent, which I’d recommend so highly. I really loved the Art of Fielding, too, and Gone Girl was good if a little … bleak for my taste.
Still, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have a reading goal for 2013. I definitely want to get back to reading like a fiend, even if it’ll take a little adjusting. My goal is to get back up to my average, and read 39 books. I will read at least one classic that’s new to me, and at least 5 novels meant for adults (as opposed to YA, and mass market fiction like Nora Roberts definitely doesn’t count). Here’s to the new year, and lots of new books!
In Previous Years…
Books Read in 2011
Books Read in 2010
Books Read in 2009
Books Read in 2008
Books Read in 2007
Books Read in 2006
Books Read in 2005
Project Life: December
With much of the Project Life/internet scrapbooking world being all about December Daily albums, I have been pondering how to document December for a while. In the end, I decided to just stick with what was working (namely, a week at a time in my Project Life album). I couldn’t resist one of Kelly Purkey‘s December kits, though, and I’m so glad I didn’t. I have had so much fun incorporating the parts of the kit into the first few weeks of December. Even though I know I won’t use everything in the kit this year, it has been kind of liberating to have a kit and just… USE it. (I tend to hoard my favorite supplies, rather than using them; see also: how I’m still using the last few pages from the summer minibook kit I bought from Elise‘s shop way back when I started this album in June!)
Week 27 was a big week because it included my bridal shower.
It was so strange to be the subject of such a surprise. And to say that I couldn’t wait to see the invitation is an understatement – how cool are they? I totally love them and obviously saved a spot of honor in the album for it.
The view of the full page – photos of me and my bridesmaids (my sister and Dan’s two sisters), and me and my mom and future mother in law. (Hey Jodi and Kasia, your cards fit perfectly into the slots too :))
Week 28 was the first week I dove into Kelly’s kit; it was nice to stick with the papers from the kit and just add in photos and embellishments. (It also has me really looking forward to working from a core kit for 2013, too.)
Gold isn’t usually a color I gravitate toward, but the gold overlays and gold glitter tape I bought on a whim sure are nice.
Week 29 included the benefit for members of our family who lost everything in the hurricane, a big holiday party at work, and lots of journaling.
Not to mention a bokeh-tastic trip to Triumph.
I printed two of the bokeh shots I liked best 5×7 and used an extra insert; I just couldn’t choose which ones to eliminate and therefore included them all. I had to stick another Triumph coaster in there, too.
Week 30 was a pretty low key week, but it featured some big wedding planning bits: the cake tasting and our meeting with the DJ.
I used an insert to include the Christmas card that Grandmother sent us; her handwriting is amazing and it was important to me to have this in there. (Although I wish I could put all of the cards we got this year in the album somehow; maybe if I wasn’t trying to squeeze 7 months into one album it would be easier.)
I divided the last days of December into two “weeks” for my album, so two more weeks to go and then 2012 is a wrap. I can’t tell you how glad I am I just jumped in with Project Life. What an awesome thing.
Currents
photo by Liesl from Photo Pink; picmonkey-ed to death by me
Big stuff today, folks: the wedding is officially a month away. ONE MONTH. How is that even POSSIBLE? I can’t really believe it. A month is such a short amount of time, and it’s just so strange and exciting and strange. I think I’ve mentioned that I work at a university, and the idea that when classes are back in session for the Spring semester, I’ll be married is one of the happiest, weirdest, craziest things that keeps running through my head. We’re in good shape, although last night (as we were leaving our final meeting with our DJ), Dan said “can’t we just be married already? I feel like we’ve been planning and planning forEVER and the fact that we still have another month of it feels like too much.” I can’t say I disagree…. But to say I’m not over the moon excited (as much as I’m overwhelmed and over-using the word weird to describe how I feel about the imminence of getting married) would be a total lie. I can’t fucking wait.
I have the week between Christmas and New Years off, and I’m obviously looking forward to it. Starting a new job in the middle of planning a wedding has meant very few days off and many, many weekends and evenings booked up, so some time off is very much needed. Even if most of the days will be busy with celebrating and family (and a few wedding things, too). Christmas is one of my favorite things, and I can’t wait to wear my giant red snowflake sweater, paint my nails glittery, and hang out with my families.
There are still things I want to do more of before the holiday season is over, namely:
- drink holiday tea (Tazo’s Joy and Harney & Sons White Christmas) out of my giant hand painted Christmas mug
- eat pancakes (since we can’t make it to Grandmother’s Christmas Eve pancake breakfast this year)
- listen to more Christmas music (It’s not embarrassing to say that I need to listen to John Denver & the Muppets every year before it feels like Christmas, right?
- Wrap the presents (my favorite part)
- Test out our new holiday jammies
- Watch as many James Bond movies as possible.
This weekend, we’re hoping to see the Hobbit (I can’t believe I haven’t seen it yet; I saw all three Lord of the Rings movies in the theater on opening night!) and get ready for Christmas. Maybe I’ll get to squeeze some crafting in there, too.
I leave you with arguably my favorite non-traditional Christmas song (because let’s face it, Bing Crosby is where it’s at), “Christmas” by Blues Traveler. I downloaded it in college during one of my collecting all the Christmas music I could download fests, and the lyrics get me every year. It’s obscure and no one other than me knows it, let alone loves it as much as me, but the spirit of “peace on earth to everyone and an abundance to everyone you’re with” regardless of what you’re celebrating really hits home for me. And, okay, also this part:
I wish a one horse open sleigh
would come carry me away
but I’ve been waiting here all day
and one just hasn’t come my way
Wedding Wednesday: The Invitations
I’m about to reveal a real shocker here, guys. There were two things about wedding planning that had me really, truly jazzed (when many parts frightened or intimidated me, especially way back in the beginning – like finding a venue or a dress, balancing not-totally-the-same religious feelings…): a color scheme and paper goods. You never would have guessed, right? I knew it.
I spent all kinds of time browsing minted.com and weddingpaperdivas.com, opening ones I liked into new tabs in my browser until I had so many tabs open the browser started to protest. The invitations had to come after the color scheme, or perhaps they would help us figure out a color scheme? Dan had a limit to the browsing at this point; he was more than happy to help me narrow it down from four or five choices to one, but he had ZERO interest in flipping through pages and pages of invitation styles. The really modern, nonweddingy invitations jumped out at me, of course – chalkboard style, bright bold colors, non swirly scripts. Dan’s mom surprised me early on by saying her invitation prediction was for something simple, non-frilly, and graphic. (She was totally right and I hadn’t even started looking at that point.) My mom objected to a few of the really modern ones, because as she rightly pointed out, they really didn’t look like wedding invitations at all. I never really considered printing them or designing them myself; I knew that would turn me into a bridezilla more than anything else. I suppose I didn’t need to be making these decisions so early in the process, but since we knew early that we were aiming for January 2013, we wanted to send out save the dates relatively quickly, and I really, really wanted to make sure I could find a save the date that coordinated with the eventual invitations.
The colors were the cornerstone, though, and this was really hard for me. Jodi and I pinned a whole bunch of red and aqua wedding ideas, but I just wasn’t sure. My favorite color is orange, and Dan really wasn’t too keen on that. (My sister has been terrified for YEARS that I’d make her wear an orange bridesmaid dress; I love the color but would totally not do that to her.) The tough part for me was that the bold, bright colors I love (like orange and aqua) don’t really work for a winter wedding, and if you don’t have the color represented in the bridesmaid dresses, then you’d figure it should appear in the flowers, and aqua flowers just don’t… exist. Orange would be great for a fall wedding, orange and deep red… but it just didn’t fit. And I just don’t really love the soft, muted colors that go along with most people’s idea of winter. When I’m talking colors, I’m talking bold, bright and vivid, for better or worse.
I was browsing the invitations all the time, and kept coming back to the idea of stripes. How can we incorporate stripes in a classy way? And then the universe sort of solved both problems for me, in the shape of a save the date with bold colors and black and white stripes. I sent it to my mom with a few other favorites and labeled it “the really crazy one” and to my utter shock, she loved the crazy one the best.
We ordered samples of a few of our favorites, including a few of the really elegant winter scenes, which Dan really liked. Seeing the save the date and its matching invitation, thank you card, rsvp card, and enclosure card sealed the deal, though, for all of us. The other contenders just didn’t have the right “Elizabeth and Dan” vibe – and the stripes (the design is called “Bold Geometry”) and crazy school bus yellow just felt so perfect. It felt like everything made sense, all of a sudden. Black and white is classy, the pop of yellow could appear in small ways, like the flowers, but black bridesmaid dresses for a winter wedding seemed elegant and simple and so fitting. (Even if telling people your colors are black and white stripes and yellow elicits some strange looks. But in the dark winter you need bright yellow even more than usual!)
I LOVE that the save the date had matching invitations and enclosures. We had a bit of a panic attack when we set about ordering the invitations, though, as they no longer appeared when searching the site, or browsing by any method. I could only access a few of the pieces by going through my four-month-old browser history to find the direct link to each individual card. It would have pissed me off SO MUCH if we couldn’t have all of the pieces that matched. I mean, the whole wedding was planned around this design, now all of a sudden the invitation is unavailable? You’ve got to be kidding. (It turned out that the design was being discontinued; I could still order it and customize it, but they were phasing it out in a way that made it hard to find. Thank goodness for never-cleared browser history, is all I’m saying.)
We weren’t going to go with the pockets at first, but it did make things seem more put together. Dan and my dad stared me down when I told them my plan to tie the pockets closed with black and white baker’s twine; even my mom and sister were hesitant (“no one notices these details but you, Elizabeth”) but I insisted and I’m so glad.
Calligraphy was something that I really wanted to do from the beginning but that seemed like an unnecessary indulgence. We ended up finding an insane coupon for the invitations, and then it seemed more within reach. Calligraphy can be EXTREMELY expensive, so I was really excited that we were able to find someone who could fit us in who wasn’t also charging $4 an envelope. We went with Rachel Carl, who hand addressed almost all of our invitations, and who also made us a coordinating return address stamp that we could use for return addresses on invitations and thank yous, but also for the rsvp cards. I absolutely LOVE how they turned out. It was worth every penny and I don’t regret it at all.
So here’s the whole invitation together:
Seeing them in person for the first time was definitely one of those Holy. Shit. moments. Our full names, our parents’ names, our wedding date. We’re actually getting MARRIED and that is so awesome. And I think our invitations are pretty awesome, too.
Engagement Photos!
We had our engagement photo session in New York City with Liesl from Photo Pink back in November, and we were both SO nervous. (Or, okay. I was nervous, and Dan was not 100% looking forward to an afternoon of getting his picture taken.) We stopped at Stout for a few beers before we met up with Liesl near the High Line, and that really helped. (Should I not advertise the beers part? hehe). We were originally going to do this photo session on the boardwalk in Asbury Park (well-documented as one of my very favorite places EVER), but since we’d booked it for two weeks after Sandy hit, it really didn’t seem like the best idea. (I still haven’t been to the boardwalk and I’m kind of afraid to go to see what state it’s in now.)
I was afraid we’d look awkward, or feel awkward, or smile too big or not know how to stand or act. But Liesl was awesome at getting us to chill out; we laughed a LOT that day and I think the laughter and general happy comes through in the photos we’ve seen so far.
Liesl kept telling us to, you know, act like we were just chillin on a stoop in the West Village, and we’d giggle about how that’s totally what we normally do on a Saturday afternoon. But these photos look like us being ourselves which is the whole POINT.
I love them. I can’t wait to see more. I’m so excited for Photo Pink to be there on our wedding day, too.
Wedding Wednesday: My Bridal Shower!
I have to be honest: bridal showers aren’t always my favorite things, and when I first got engaged, my shower was probably on the list of things I was sort of dreading, rather than the things I was looking forward to. Showers just never seem very “me” somehow; the idea of being the center of attention, and people giving me so many gifts, and games and applause and hugs… it just seemed so overwhelming.
Planning my sister’s shower this spring really helped snap me out of that kind of thinking, though. Being the guest of honor at a shower is VERY different from being a guest at a shower. It was so hard for me to remember that instead of knowing a handful of people in attendance, at MY shower, the room would be full of ladies who I know well and love and WANT to be surrounded by. The center of attention part was a little overwhelming (you can see my face getting redder and redder as the photos progress!), but it was overwhelmingly GOOD to be in a room full of so many people I like so much.
I knew what day the shower would be on (December 1), and I had a guess as to the location, but that’s all I knew. Dan was remarkably silent on the topic, which is impressive given how much I tend to badger him when he’s trying to keep a secret. (It’s a lot. Sorry, Dan.) I knew what time we had to leave, but not how long it would be until we got there; that morning I was a wreck. When we got to the restaurant and rounded the corner, I caught the first glimpse of my sister’s pretty hair and okay, I was still pretty nervous and agitated… but I kept noticing who was there and thinking “aww, I’m so happy X is here!” with each face I saw. (There were a few very close friends and family members who weren’t able to come; this isn’t to say that I didn’t miss them and wish they were there – because they’re awesome, of course.)
I think one of the coolest things (even cooler because it was something I was anxious about ahead of time) was seeing how these people from different parts of my life interact with each other. Logically, if I think all of these people separately are awesome, and they think I’m awesome, why wouldn’t they ALSO get along with each other? And yet, when you’re talking about internet friends and Dan’s sisters and my sister and my cousins and former coworkers and college friends and wives and fiances of Dan’s friends who are now my friends… what if it was silent and awkward and each person only talked to the one other person in attendance they knew before? But I was – and still am – so, so jazzed to see them all at the self-described Cool Kids’ Table, laughing and breaking into the centerpieces for cheese balls and having an awesome time together. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy. Just like seeing Dan’s sisters and my sister get along. Worlds mashed together, people, and it was so cool.
The details of the day were also crafty and bright and simple – which is exactly how I’d describe myself anyway, so nice. They framed recent pictures of me and Dan (downloaded from my own flickr page, I might add, hehe), made a bunch of tissue paper flowers (like I made for our apartment; now I have way more!) But the coolest were the centerpieces. I think Lindsey said she got the idea from Martha Stewart – each centerpiece was a vase filled with a selection of my favorite snacks, tied with a bow, and then filled with a selection of super pretty flowers. As I said hello at each table, I couldn’t help saying “wait – is that centerpiece full of Swedish fish?!”. They color-coded them too: lemon heads, butterscotch candies, cheese balls, strawberry hard candies, mint m&ms (green), weird blue candy, skittles and Mike&Ikes for a rainbow…. so awesome.
It was such a happy day, and I loved seeing everyone together. I got some amazingly thoughtful gifts, and I just feel so lucky to have such awesome ladies in my life.
I couldn’t narrow down the photos I wanted to share, and this post is already novel-length, I’ve put a few more photos behind the jump. 🙂 Continue reading
she likes stripes 