Thursday, April 25, 2013

Pink Decor No More

Oh my gosh. How close we are.

My dress fitting went well-ish. It's too big, way too big. Between ordering up stupidly and losing weight, the seamstress could barely even pin it there was so much extra fabric. So there's that. My next fitting is May 15th and Emily is going to come along for that since my bustle requires two sets of hands, so her and my mom will need to learn that. 

Our RSVP deadline is a week from today. We're still waiting on like 11 or 12 of those to come in, so about 25-30 people still left in limbo. And none came today, so I might start getting cranky if the last few don't come in soon. Once we have them all though, Rob, his mom, my mom, and myself are going to sit down and work out the seating chart together. Then, once we have seating arrangements made, Rob has kindly agreed to type up the place cards because he is amazing. 

I made our table number things. They came out cute for someone as crafting impaired as myself. 



A little sneak peak for you. Our decorations should come together well. 

I purchased all our favors which came in today, bought myself another different top to wear when getting ready (also came in today!), ordered some more stuff from vistaprint that I needed for welcome bags and favors, and whatever. Who knows. We still need to buy flower girl baskets, something for people to "throw" during the recessional, ties for the ushers. Once some money clears in my bank account I'm going to buy the stuff needed to make our card box and pay the florist in full, 

Also on our to do list at this point is applying for our marriage license and finalizing our music since we have our final DJ next weekend. Things we're currently waiting on from other people is the flowers, decorations, and centerpieces from my mom's friend Sharon who has kindly offered to put those together for us. And we're waiting to get our ceremony back from Daniel with the changes he planned to make to it. 

And, I'm still adding things to my to do list. Not sure how that's possible, but I am. I'm overwhelmed about stuff that's left and the very little amount of time left to do things. 

And on the house front, we finished our bathroom renovation! Plumber came out twice for a leak and it took a bit longer than expected, but it's done and we're ecstatic about how it came out. 







Goodbye pink plastic tile. I will see you in Hell. 




Between the bathroom and kitchen I'm pretty much a master tile worker now. Yup. Missed my calling. 


New floor! No more brown and yellow honeycomb pattern or rouge pink carpet tufts that refuse to come off the floor. So much pink. It's all gone now, thank goodness. And we got a slammin' deal on the floor. Word of advice to all home owners- remnant pile. Yessss!




Loooooove my new bathroom. Totally worth the work and money. A million times over. And, in case you forgot how awful the original was, here's a before and after shot.


And now, finally, the countdown.

We only have 37 days left. 37 days. That's five weeks and one day. That's one month and one week. Only 37 days. Holy crap. 



Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Shower of Love or Plumbing Fiasco?

So I haven't really updated because we aren't really doing much wedding related right now. Mostly just waiting for rsvp's to finish rolling in. After that we can do our seating chart and place cards, I can type up some variations of head and food counts for the venue and our baker. 

Our final meeting with our DJ is in two and half weeks. Then I'll start the final talks with our photographer. I've slowly begun to put together must have photo lists and family portrait lists. 

We've been pretty engrossed in house stuff lately. Here's a sneak peak of the crazy that is owning an 81 year old home.




Good riddance pink plastic tile. I will see you in Hell. Also, you can probably guess why there's a hole in our kitchen ceiling and bucket on a ladder. Our plumbing does this special thing where whenever it decides to completely crap out it waits until a Sunday night. So, that always makes things more fun. A house update will come eventually. 

We still have a bit to do for the wedding. Our hotel block gets released after today. I have my first dress fitting tomorrow. We have quite a bit left to buy including flower girl baskets, our card box that we need to make, something for people to "throw" at our during the recessional, favors, ties for the ushers, and I'm sure a million things I'm not thinking about. We need to go apply for our marriage license. 

I haven't been nervous or stressed about the wedding really at all except for a few stressed moments over one or two particular aspects. Like dress shopping, what a nightmare. But in general I can honestly say I have no idea how people stress themselves out so much. I have no idea why people need lists and more lists and lists for their lists. I still haven't figured out what other people put in planning binders other than what's in mine (contract copies, payment receipts, guest list with food choices). Really, what's in there..? 

But I will say, right now, I feel slightly overwhelmed. It's coming up so fast. I'm very grateful I made our rsvp deadline for a month out instead of two weeks out like normal people do. But on that same aside, that deadline is only two weeks away and if I want to focus on the things mentioned in the first paragraph as the last things I do after the deadline other than communicating with vendors, then I need to get cracking on everything else. Which is slightly nerve wracking. Fingers crossed all the house stuff is done by this weekend and we can go back to focusing on the wedding, because if I don't do something vaguely productive for it soon I might actually get legitimately stressed, and no one wants that. 

ALSO! I had my bridal shower last weekend!












My Girls! They did such an amazing job! It was wonderful, I loved seeing everyone and getting some time to spend with my loved ones. I can't even begin to thank them enough. I truly do have some amazing friends. 

Okay. Good. Only 46 days left. Yup, that's it. Yikes!


Thursday, April 4, 2013

A Much Needed Face Lift

I've been trying to hold out until we were completely finished, but alas, I'm impatient.

Remember when I redid our kitchen counter tops while Rob was away on business without consulting him? Well, he was skeptical at first, as I would have been as well. But then, it started to grow on him. And then, he did just started doing this



That's right. The sneaky sneaks who painted our house before we moved in painted over the existing laminate backsplash. Which explains why we couldn't figure out what material that part of the wall was. It too was the same repulsive shade of yellow as the counters. 


So once we had ruined our walls, we had no choice but to continue. So we went to Lowes and picked out some mosaic tile backsplash. It took multiple trips to Lowes to get it all figured out. We hoped the 12" tile sheet would fit perfect, but it was a smidge too big. But cutting off a row of tiles left too much space. So we had to get creative. We ended up buying a second type of tile and mixing them together into a pattern that perfectly the space. Way to go us. 




Ignore the fact that we did not do our dishes first. We know. But that's the end result. Two rows of the big tiles, two rows of the little tiles and on the sides where there isn't the top part of the counters, five rows of the big ones and two rows of small tiles. Came out really great, much better than anticipated and it was honestly quite easy. 

And now that we were on a roll, we went ahead and painted. And got rid of our make shift, rickety floor cabinet and replaced it with an awesome new hutch. Thennnn we went ahead and added two new upper cabinets over the stove. 







What we're still waiting on, and caused my hesitation to brag, is a beautiful slab of real butcher block. That white cart will replace the black one next to the fridge and a new lower cabinet with our pretty, pretty butcher block will go next to the stove. But apparently it takes like three weeks to ship. And, in case you don't remember what our kitchen looked like before...





Sooo, yeah, a much needed face lift.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled program; the wedding. I wrote our ceremony. Just need to make one or two small changes then send it off to Daniel. My bridal shower is on Saturday and I'm so excited. And my first dress fitting is on the 17th. Then all the big stuff is finally, totally done. Just details, head counts, seating chart, final vendor meetings and talks, and then, wedding time!

Only 58 days left. Less then two months. Wowza.