Saturday, January 22, 2011

DIY Project for the Day

We went over to the mo-in-law's house this morning and realized that she had quite a bit of fabric left over from the table runners she made us for the wedding.  By the way, have I mentioned how handy it is having a mo-in-law who is an amazing seamstress?!  Rather than renting fancier linens or spending more on centerpieces, I bought some fabric I love at the Online Fabric Store and mo-in-law sewed them into simple fabric runners for our wedding tables.  Super handy.

Anyways, we realized we had some extra fabric so I decided to use some of it to cover the cork board we'd planned to use for our escort cards.  This created a brand new DIY project for me and rather than thinking about it and planning, I did it right when we got home.  Thankfully, I didn't destroy anything so I can show you how I did it and my finished product.

All you need is:


A cork board/bulletin board, we bought ours at Target.  You're probably supposed to use one without a frame, but that's for people who plan ahead, not me!


Some fabric, ours is by Amy Butler and it's called Optic.  I looove it.  It's the perfect colors for our wedding and it's just modern enough for us.  If anyone wants a table runner in this pattern when the wedding is over...we have 3 extra!

A stapler, scissors, and a ruler.

You place the fabric face down on a hard surface, or if you're fancy like me, the floor.  Place the bulletin board face down on top of the fabric.  Measure your fabric so there is about a 1.5" border around the bulletin board and cut off any excess fabric.  We had some ratty edges on our fabric so I made sure to use that part for this project since it's not going to show.


Pull one edge of the fabric really tight and staple it to the bulletin board.  Make sure you pull it really tight so it doesn't cause wrinkles.  Do this all the way around the board.


That's it!  If you use a plain piece of cork board without a frame, you can then put a cute frame around the board, but I'm going to leave mine the way it is.  


I found some really cute yellow quilting pins at Walmart that I'm going to use to pin the escort cards to our board.  Bonus for the mo-in-law, she gets 100 yellow quilting pins after the wedding.



**Update:  the finished product at the wedding, I decided to use funny or embarrassing pictures of each guest instead of traditional escort cards. This is seriously my favorite thing I made for the wedding and it was a huge hit.


Monday, January 10, 2011

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Things That Inspire Me

Not in general.

Just for the wedding.

I've got quite the one-track mind lately.






Sunday, January 2, 2011

2010

I cannot believe another year is over!  2010 really flew by for me.  I've been sitting here trying to look back and remember what all happened last year and it's really just a blur.  Here are some of the greatest hits that I can remember from 2010:

1)  Moving into our house and making it into our home.  We bought the house in 2009, but didn't move in and start making it ours until the very beginning of 2010.  Decorating and making this place homey with Mike was a great experience and no matter where we move, I'm always going to love this crazy yellow house so much.



2)  Getting engaged!  Mike and I have been talking about marriage since we first started dating, so I thought getting officially engaged wouldn't be a big deal for us.  When it actually happened though, I couldn't have been happier and it's a day I'll remember forever!  Also, if you haven't noticed...I'm a little obsessed with my ring...



3)  Getting a job.  Five months of unemployment was not awesome.  As evidenced by my rambling first couple of blogs on here.  A month off work is great.  Five is not.  Obviously I'm not super psyched to be a 27 year old college grad who is still a receptionist, but it sure as hell beats being a 27 year old college grad with no job!  Also, I get to wear this snazzy shirt to work once a week.  Jealous?



4)  Getting to see dad.  Since my dad moved to the East Coast, I haven't gotten to see him super often what with both of our schedules and the cost of air travel.  In 2010, I got to see him twice which was really awesome.  The best part was that he got to come stay in Ridgecrest, see our house, and meet Mike's family.  Mike even got an opportunity alone with him to ask his blessing to propose which I'm sure meant a lot to my dad.  I also got to see him with some more of his family when we laid my aunt to rest.  It was really sad, but I was happy to get to be there with my dad's crazy siblings while we broke the law, cried, and laughed together.



5)  Game night with the Way's.  There are few things I love in this world as much as my sister and her best friends the Way's.  Since we moved back to R/C, we don't get to see either of them much so their once a year game nights are always really special and fun for us.  Add to that some wine tasting and a sighting of two of our favorite Top Chef contestants and this year was better than ever!



6) Trip to Vegas.  While we couldn't hang with our crazy friends since, as everyone so lovingly likes to remind us, we are old and lame, Mike and I ended up having an amazing time together.  Trips like this one where we end up spending a lot of time alone, just wandering around and entertaining ourselves really makes us realize how perfect we are for each other and how happy we make each other.  Coming out on top because of how much we won on penny and nickel slots helped too!


7)  Vanessa was here!  I never get to see one of my best friends Vanessa because she lives so far away so having her home this summer was great.  Just getting to sit at her parent's house with her, Kristin, and a huge glass of wine, were some of my best times this year.


Typical

Okay, I'm sick of typing and Mike just gave the dogs baths so they are both wigging out and running around like maniacs so I'll just put the rest of the great things about 2010 in pictures.  Happy New Year!



Being Laura's date to a wedding

The Comic Book Twins coming to visit


Visiting Brian & Denae and falling in love with little Colby


Hiking!


So You Think You Can Dance with the Smith's


Adopting Demon Dog

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Because Calories Don't Count When It's a Holiday

I'm so impressed with my fiancé today that I thought I'd share with everyone the goodies we've been baking all weekend, (I use "we" loosely...it's mostly been him...he does not like to share kitchen space and also I'm kind of lazy).  The first one is Mike's favorite and the one that has me the most impressed because it included him making his own marshmallows from scratch.  It's hot chocolate on a stick found here.  Marshmallows are actually incredibly easy to make, but Mike is still amazed at how awesome his first try turned out.  We're still waiting for our fudge to set, but once we're all done, this is what the finished product should look like:



Now we just have to figure out how to give those to people without making a huge mess.

The second recipe we've done today that I can't wait to gorge myself on is peppermint bark found here.  This is what our finished product looks like so far:


One little note on this recipe, it says in the end to "break the bark into small irregular pieces."  That is way easier said than done.  We accomplished breaking it up by chopping at it with a huge knife, it doesn't just simply "break up."  Tastes delish though!

We're also making regular fudge from Mike's old timey recipe book that he loves so much and white chocolate macadamia nut cookies that we admittedly bought pre-made dough for.  But I think we should still get credit for baking them since I bought them from a client to help her son go to camp.  Good deed outweighs laziness right?

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Groomzilla

Now, you all know that I love my groom-to-be.  He's the ying to my yang, the calm to my crazy, the clean to my messy.  Usually he's the one telling me to pump my breaks and tone down the crazy.  I'm usually the one having massive amounts of mini-freakouts.  My, how the tide has turned.

Mike has been having a rough time picking out the suits for him and his boys to wear in our wedding.  Early on, he decided that he wanted to buy all 4 suits rather than renting tuxes or trying to rent suits.  He's a bit of a clothes horse, (he would call himself a dandy), so he's been scouring the internet and magazines for suits he likes and sending me link after link.  He finally decided on a store he loved thanks to one of the groomsmen Owen and we set a date to go check it out and HOPEFULLY leave with our hands full of pants and jackets.  After a three-way argument between Mike, the mo-in-law, and myself about whether or not Mike needed to call ahead and check on their stock, (Mike voted no and mo-in-law and I staunchly voted yes), Mike caved, called, and realized that they were NOT in stock at the closest location, (told-ya-so's abound), and we'd have to schlep to the downtown LA store.

Little-known, (?), fact about me...I hate driving on freeways.  I wasn't always like this, I used to be rational, but lately it scares the bejeesus shit out of me.  I get super paranoid and yell at Mike to slow down the entire drive.  It's incredibly unpleasant for me and my stress level and equally unpleasant for Mike since he'd rather sit and listen to Glee music and drive in peace.  So needless to say, the drive to LA was not a pleasant one.  We finally got there in one piece and found the store.  Zara was great.  Super cool clothes, hipster staff wearing fancy suits with duckman shoes, loved it.  The first suit Mike wanted was going out of stock and didn't have enough sizes so it was a no-go.  Our awesome hipster lady helper with her, I'm too cool to ever work a job where tattoos are not acceptable, peacock feather arm tattoo, ran her ass all over the store and called multiple locations to find us all the sizes we needed.  Mike loved the suit, big goofy grin loved it.  After over an hour in that hot ass store standing on my feet holding jackets and pants looking like the least hip and fattest chick in LA, we were leaving...suits in hand!

We had a great rest of the day, French restaurant, sandwich with an egg on top, British waitress with fake diamond on her tooth, event-less drive back.  Then we got home.  And the groomzilla freak-outs started.

Mike spur of the moment decided that the suits were too tight and started WIGGING out. Soothing voice did not work, hugs did not work, tough love did not work.  Normally, all Mike has to do to talk me down from a good wig-fest is to tell me to pump the breaks and then he walks away.  This did not work on groomzilla.  We finally called the mo-in-law and she temporary talked his crazy fest down.  Until about an hour later when the freak-out mutated into a pout-fest.  This continued until well into this afternoon when  he finally tried on the suit in question for mo-in-law who also happens to be master seamstress-in-law and they all decided that the suit was actually too tight and Mike has to return all of them and start over from scratch.

Dear God.

This happened around 1:00 this afternoon.  Since then, he's made me look up 3 separate suits online and we just ordered one for him to try on and send back if it doesn't fit.  He's also continuously all day stressed out about "ruining everything."  Who's the crazy one now?

The positive thing to have come out of this weekend long suit-gate is that Mike now admittedly understands me better since he has finally experienced the fun that is a mini freak-out and I get to act like the sane one for awhile.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Demon Dog

I've had some love/hate relationships before, but this one is currently taking the cake.  I love our dogs.  They're our furry children.  I would jump in front of a car for them, I would kill for them, I've stayed up nights for them.  Some days though, I want to kick them.  Christmas has been rough on me this year for many reasons, but Gizmo, my dear youngest furry child, decided to make it a little bit harder today.  I came home from work at lunch to a living room floor covered in ripped up wrapping paper and destroyed presents.  Awesome.  Instead of kicking Gizmo, (I currently have him locked outside so I don't), or complaining about him anymore, here are some pictures of my lovely demon dog.  Love him or hate him, he's pretty damn cute.