Blah Blah Blah

So all these life changes (house, wedding, etc) are definitely taking a toll on me...I feel so blah! Since I have nothing interesting to write about, I stole this from Ashley:

1.Your ex is on the side of the road, on fire. What do you do?
Probably call the fire department. I don't hold grudges.

2.Your best friend tells you she's pregnant. What is your reaction? Well I would tell her since her wedding is only 26 days away, it's not horrible news. She can totally hide a tiny tummy.

3.When was the last time you wanted to punch someone in their face? Hmmm...

4. Congratulations! You just had a son. What's his name? Noah, Jackson or Henry.

5. Congratulations! You just had a daughter. What's her name? Lily or Reese.

6.What are you craving right now? Chocolate. As usual.

7.What was the last thing you cried about? Our offer on the house we love getting rejected. And then I cried again when we went out to look at some more "options" and found nothing but crappy unlive-able houses.

8.When you buy something and your change is a penny, do you keep it? No.

9. What color is your tissue box? We're out of tissues.

10.Do you have a ceiling fan in your room, and if so, is there dust on that fan? No fan in our room. But I did just dust the fan in the kitchen.

11.What was the last voice mail you received about? From my best friend C in Florida, giving me some crazy gossip!!

12 .Scariest thing you've experienced in the last year? Hmm I have no idea.

13.Have you ever had a garage sale? I've never had one myself, but I have sold some stuff when my parents were having one.

14.What is the last beverage you had? Chai Tea with breakfast.

15.Are you happy right now? Yes, definitely! 2009 is such an exciting year!

16.Who came over last? All the girls for K's bachelorette party last weekend!

17.Do you drink energy drinks? No, never. Unless you count Diet Coke.

18.Have your brothers or sisters ever told you that you were adopted? I'm an only child, so no. However, since I look absolutely nothing like my parents, I've had complete strangers ask me if I was adopted.

19.Dark or light jeans? Dark.

20.What was the last movie you watched at home? Twilight.

21.What is in your pocket? My pants don't have pockets.

22.Who introduced you to your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband? My friend R during kickball.

23.Where do you hurt? No where.

24.What is your favorite aisle at Wal-Mart? I like the seasonal aisle...in the summer, I love the aisle with all the cups and fun stuff!

25.When is your birthday? October 26th

26.What are you going to do after this? I have an appointment at 11:30 with my bride for this weekend.

27.Who was the last person you went shopping with? I went shopping alone yesterday and bought absolutely nothing! I did order some stuff online this morning from J.Crew though!

28.What about your favorite dessert? Chocolate cake or ice cream. or both, at the same time.

29.Do you have the same name as one of your relatives? Nope, I'm named after my mom's best friend.

30.Do you like pickles? Love them!

31.Is someone in love with you? Yes, I'm pretty sure!

32.What color is your couch? Green tweed

33.Has anyone ever mistaken you for a family member? um no. I literally couldn't look less like my family. Both my parents have dark brown hair and very tan skin. I'm as pale as you can get and blonde. They are also both super tall and I'm only 5'4". It's very weird.

34.Does someone like you right now? Yep.

35.Do you know anyone in jail/prison? No.

36. Who was the last person to send you a text message? My best friend C, to follow up on our gossipy conversation.

37. How many hours did you sleep for last night? 8.

38. Do you swear at your parents? Umm yes, I have a horrible cussing problem. I get it from my mom!

39. Do you think someone is thinking about you right now? I have no idea.

40. What is the last thing you spent money on? Stamps.

41. Name one thing no one can ever take away from you? ????

42. What is the last thing you ate that had onions in it? Roasted Vegetable Risotto I made for dinner last night. And I'm eating again for lunch today.

43.Crunchy or Puffy Cheetos? Crunchy, I hate puffy ones.

45.Have you ever blocked someone on Facebook before? I don't think so.

46.Do you wear a name tag at work? Yes, on Saturdays during the wedding.

47.What color is your iPod? White

48.What is your favorite key chain on your keys? The only thing I have on my keys is a monogrammed key fob thingy. It's pink and green plaid. I can't wait to get a new one with my new monogram in September!

49.Say you were given a pregnancy test right now. Would you pass or fail? I'm definitely not pregnant. That's a scary thought!

50.What were you doing at midnight last night? Sleeping.

On a Happier Note...

Jake and I are getting engagement pictures taken next Sunday! Yes, I realize we've been engaged since November and our wedding is less than 5 months away. I have a good photographer friend through work (who isn't shooting our wedding) who offered to do them for us and she convinced me that I may regret not having them done later on. She's giving them to us as a gift, so how could I refuse??

Anyways, I've been really struggling in finding something to wear. I REALLY wanted to wear a dress, but I am super worried that it will be cold that morning. We're doing them in early April at 9am. Outside. Yeah. So I didn't want to stand there and freeze my butt off and have the pictures come out weird. I finally talked myself out of the dress and realized I could still look cute in jeans.

After much searching online and at the mall, I decided jeans, a cute sweater and fun flats were the way to go. I really wanted something classic so that the pictures weren't dated by a super trendy outfit. Plus, I'm not really a "trendy" dresser anyways, and I want to look like myself, not someone trying to be trendy. So here's the outfit:


Engagement Photos - by KJH1026 on Polyvore.com

I like it because it's simple and classic. Jake is just wearing khakis, a button down and his boat shoes. I'll definitely post the pictures when they are ready!!

Bummer

We didn't get the house. We didn't even get a counter-offer. They lowest price that they are willing to go is $20,000 more than the highest price offer we could make with our budget. So that obviously won't work. 

Damn, and I thought this was a buyers market. 

Yeah, did I mention the house has been on the market for 22 months? Not that I'm bitter...

EEEK!

We're putting in an offer on a house tomorrow morning. I'm scared to death! I'm also trying not to get too excited because there is a good chance we will not get the house because it's over our budget and we're going to offer less than the asking price (not a LOT less, but definitely less). But the house has been on the market for 22 months (literally!!) and we know the woman who owns it is settling on her new house on Friday. So she's very motivated to sell at this point....who knows, maybe we'll get lucky!

So please keep your fingers crossed for us...hopefully we'll know by Friday if she accepts or counter-offers.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hope you are a having the luck of the Irish today!!

Napkin Love!

(image from Martha Stewart Weddings)

If you could be in love with a napkin, I would be in love with this one! I LOVE the cute bow napkin fold. Unfortunately, this won't work for our wedding because we're going to have menu cards tucked into the napkin, but I think this would be adorable for a wedding, set on a charger or base plate. Totally whimsical and preppy! Get the directions here: Martha Weddings

Happy Wednesday!

The Bar

So this is obviously a pretty important part of the wedding...it may be Jake's #1 priority! While I'm letting him and my parents deal with picking the types of liquor, beer and wines, I'm focused on making the bar fun, cute and pretty!!

The bar for our reception is up on a deck attached to the tent where we are having dinner. It's covered with an awning and it has the large glass christmas lights all around the edge of the awning (which I love - they add so much character!) So I want to hang yellow and green paper lanterns under the awning, just to give some color and fun...

(image from The Wedding Chat)

We are also butler passing mojitos during cocktail hour, as our signature drink, since we both LOVE them and they go well with our color scheme with all that fresh mint and limes!

I starting thinking about how I wanted to find or make some cute drink stirrers to put in the mojitos. I originally thought of doing ones with yellow ribbons tied onto them, like this:(image from Martha Stewart weddings)

I'm not planning on doing many (if any!) DIY projects because truthfully, I'm lazy and I'm way too busy with planning other people's weddings then trying to make a bunch of stuff. I fully respect brides who DIY their whole wedding, but that is just not me. So I scratched the ribbon idea because I couldn't see myself wanting to tie all those ribbons. That led me to these:

(image from The Knot)

I love these for several reasons -- 1. I can order these online for insanely cheap. 2. They require me to do nothing except click "submit order". 3. I wanted to bring in our date (09.05.09) in a FEW items without going overboard and I think this is just subtle enough.

SOLD! So now having the date on our stirrers, I focused on cocktail napkins. Let me tell you, there are SO many cocktail napkins out there, it makes my head hurt! Who knew!

I love these - super plain and simple with just our monogram and nothing else. I'm thinking we can do half yellow and half green with a navy monogram. Also, I'm not a huge fan of the super traditional wedding cocktail napkins with the scroll monogram and date below it. Again, no offense, that's just my personal style. So I think these will be perfect, they are classy and timeless! Plus, if we have some leftover after the wedding, we can definitely use them.

Having our monogram on the napkins and the date on the stirrers makes me happy!

Stationary Help!

So I need advice/suggestions. Jake and I had been receiving a few engagement gifts recently and I'm stumped with finding some good stationary/thank you notes that are appropriate and cute to send from both of us. Obviously I'll be getting some with our new monogram to send for the wedding thank you's, but I can't quite pull that off yet. All the stationary I have is all very pink, girly and most of it has my monogram on it. I have one set of very nice high end Crane cards, that are completely plain...nice, but semi-boring in my opinion. Jake has NO stationary. 

Does anyone have any good stationary suggestions (online stores, etc). I guess I'm looking for something pretty plain and neutral, but still cute. Is it stupid/tacky to get some that has both of our first names on it? Like at the top? Or should we just get something really plain? HELP!!

Not so cute...

First....


TODAY IS EXACTLY 6 MONTHS UNTIL THE WEDDING!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!! Don't know why this completely freaks me out and makes me think I'm very unorganized. I have to remind myself that I do have everything under control. The only big thing left is to FIND SOMEONE TO MARRY US!!! I'll have to do a seperate post about how we got REJECTED from the first pastor we asked (Jake's pastor he grew up with!!!) It actually wasn't anything about us, he just couldn't do it, but I still feel rejected!! Let the pastor search continue!

Second....

DC Prep (love her blog!!) gave me this fun award!

I have to list some not so cute things about myself...hehe.

• I have the world's worst potty mouth. It's really bad and very unlady like, but I can't stop! Most of the time I don't even realize I'm cussing. Every New Years, my resolution is to try and stop, but it never works! Hopefully by the time we have kids, I can clean up my mouth or else our kids are going to be cussing in kindergarden!
  
• I have a very un-cute night time routine. Most nights I sleep in my old retainers (gotta keep my teeth perfect!), put a ton of night cream, eye cream and cover any pimples and then put my glasses on. YIKES! I guess if Jake still wants to marry me after seeing me get ready for bed, it's true love!
  
• I can devour an entire jumbo bag of M&M's in one sitting...and it isn't pretty!
  
• I can also eat an entire pizza by myself in one sitting. Jake didn't believe me the first time I told him I had "pizza issues". I don't know what comes over me when I start eating pizza, but it's like I can't stop. Literally because of this "problem" that I have, we only eat pizza like 3 times a year. Wow, I can't believe I just admitted that. Maybe there's an obese person trapped in my body!
  
• Sometimes (ok, a lot of the time), I won't shower on Mondays (my day off) and spend the entire day in sweatpants. Totally not cute.
  
• My worst habit is picking at my cuticles. My nails usually look SO not cute. I promised Jake after we got engaged I would stop because I want my hands to look good to show off my ring and for the wedding. Not gonna lie, I haven't really been keeping this promise!
  
• At night after work, I change into sweatpants (obviously I'm a huge fan) and run around the house making up stupid songs while Jake and I cook dinner and I sing them at the top of my lungs. It's extremely nerdy, but I literally do it every day. Jake calls it my annoying time of the day, because the songs are usually about him (but I know he's secretly laughing).
  
• While I am extremely organized and super anal about cleaning, the only area of my life that is totally unorganized is my shoes!! I literally just throw all my shoes into the bottom of the closet and they are so messy...I hate this and I wish I could keep them organized. I try and organize them weekly, but they always turn into a huge pile within a few days. Not cute.

It feels good to get those not cute habits off my chest! :-) Happy Thursday!

Eeeek!

So I feel like I have been super M.I.A. from blogging the past few weeks...so sorry! Life is getting a bit crazy around here with wedding planning, my bff's wedding next month and recently Jake and I started looking at houses! So that's mainly where my brain is right now. House hunting is HARD! And scary! And overwhelming. And basically every other emotion there is. I feel like we spend all our evening scouring websites and the newspapers and then we spend all weekend going to look at houses. Well not really, but it seriously feels that way.

Our lease is up June 15th so ideally we'd like to find something in the spring to move into so we don't have to renew our lease. Hopefully the timing can work out that way. Plus that gives us a few months to get settled before the wedding. So it would actually be pretty perfect.

Home prices and the market are definitely in our favor right now, so that helps. We haven't found too many that we LOVE, but definitely some strong contenders. We did look at one house that I was seriously ready to move into the next day, and literally not 3 hours after we went to the open house, it got like 5 other contracts on it. Oh well.

Jake is in real estate and he's obviously working as our agent, which is very helpful. He explains everything I don't understand and we'll be able to use his commission as part of our down payment. Score!

So I promise I will be back once all this house craziness dies down!

Bridal Shower Recap

The bridal shower we hosted for my BFF K yesterday was a huge success! We decorated and set up all weekend and I spent most of Friday evening baking. It all paid off because everyone (especially K) was really impressed and seemed to have so much fun. There was about 50 people there, but we didn't run out of food (which was my biggest fear). K got SO many presents, everyone was so generous. My towel cake was definitely a hit! 

Ok, onto the pictures. I didn't get to take too many during the shower because I was so busy running around, but I did get a few of the decor we took before everyone got there. Because the shower had so many people, we rented the clubhouse in K's neighborhood so we would have enough space. 

Looking into the clubhouse from the front door. All pink and brown!

Jake was great and came to help us hang all the paper lanterns since we couldn't reach. I think they came out so cute and added so much to the room!

The super cute brown polka dotted table cloths we found that we based the whole shower around! 

The Bar - yum mimosas!

K's chair for present opening 

Part of the dessert table - you can see the chocolate covered strawberry tree I made. It came out pretty cute and was really easy to make!

Me, K and L - the bridesmaids and the bride!

K with her bow bouquet at the end of the present opening. 

I'm not going to lie though, I'm pretty happy the shower and all the planning is over! We have quite a bit of snow here in MD, so I'm happily recovering on the couch in my PJ's and watching the snow fall today! Happy Snow Day!