The Knot, The Nest, The Egg...

I'm sure there are many couples out there that get married and don't have to listen to their families bug them about kids constantly. We are NOT one of those couples. I'm 35 and Mr. Calioc is 33, so according to our families we need to start now. I want to enjoy at least one year of marriage without pregnancy; seriously, we were only together for 2 1/2 years before getting married. At first it was a fairly constant struggle trying to explain my pov; my husband didn't care either way -- we could start now or wait a year. But, both of our families kept bugging us to start now, until...

We live in a nice, but very small, condo in Irvine with a downstairs neighbor that smokes. Every time I walk up the steps I smell his smoke, every time he does laundry I smell his smoke, and whenever we run the AC I smell his smoke. Mr. Calioc smells it too, and so does our cat.

So, Mr. Calioc did some research on pregnancy and 2nd hand smoke; he also did research on ways to prevent the smoke from getting into our condo. Here is what he learned:

• Legally, there is nothing we can do because we live in condos and not apartments.
• We can replace our filter, but that will only make it smell better, it doesn't actually remove any of the harmful smoke.
• We can buy an "air purification" system, but it is generally believed by "experts" that these purifications systems only make the air smell better and only get rid of larger particles that cause allergies, but not small smoke particles.


• I am technically a "high risk" pregnancy because of my age, and therefore I need to be more careful (though I am very healthy, so age is not so much an issue).


• Second hand smoke can directly effect the fetus and has been linked to birth defects and low birth weight.

So, what do we do? We move! Yes, we have pushed up our timeline to buy a house. The plan is to start looking this May so we can buy before the end of summer. I can go off the pill as soon as we go into escrow, or maybe even sooner. I (knock on wood) don't expect to get prego right away (I was a runner for many years with lots of low weight related female issues), so we need some time to try. Our "ideal" time to get prego is August because I am a teacher and it would be great to take my leave during the end of the school year and have all summer to get used to being a mommy.

Okay, sorry so long. This is a topic that will come up again!

~ Calioc

New Year's Resolutions

This is a personal thing I am doing, but I'd love to see what other newlyweds are planning for their resolution(s). I know that "experts" say it is better to have one resolution to focus on, but I'm not going to listen to their advice. I've been successful at resolutions in the past; my secret? Writing them down on post-it notes and sticking the notes on my bathroom mirror so I have to stare at it every morning. If you do it for 21 days it can become a habit. Good luck to all that are making resolutions this year; now here are mine.

1. I am going to start running/jogging again. My initial goal is twice a week, and hopefully I can increase that over time.
2. I'm giving up all food and drinks in which I do not understand the ingredients -- if I can't make it, I won't eat/drink it.

The rest of these are more goals than they are resolutions, and some of them I set well before the new year came upon us, but I thought it might do me some good to write them down as well.

3. We are going to buy house by the end of summer.
4. We are going to start (trying for) a family as soon as that house is in escrow.
5. I am going to finish my master's program and project (even if it kills me!)
6. I am going to update my blog on a regular basis.

Okay, that's it for now. I'm sure I will think of more later and add them. So, what's your new years resolution(s)?

~ Calioc

Happy happy, joy joy!

I am done with this semester of my master's program. I turned in the first 3 chapters of my master's project, and I am still alive! Thank you to everyone that encouraged me when I was depressed and convinced I would never finish. I only have 2 semesters left and the hardest part is done!!!!!
I should have more time to blog now, unless the holidays take over. I will say that I'm very happy that Christmas shopping will be easy this year -- wedding pics for everyone! I'm in love with mpix.com -- way better than shutterfly, photoworks, or mypublisher! I made the mistake of ordering albums for our parents using mypublisher and we are very disappointed in the quality. We used them instead of mpix to save money, but I really don't think it was worth it.
Professional quality prints at mpix start at 19cents each and 5x7's are 99cents each. Well worth it!

bye for now!

Makes me sad...

My husband sent this video to me. We are both teaching compassion in our classes this week. I used the news video to help get my students on the emotional level needed to write about compassion. Thought I'd share it with you.

Click here to view the CNN News Video of Polly the Kitten.

It makes you wonder about some people. Why? Many of my students related it to the symbolisim of the mockingbird in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Is this depression?

I'm not exactly sure how to go about writing this, so I'm just going to write. I think I'm depressed. Well, maybe depressed is too strong of a word. I have nothing to be depressed about. I am happily married, I have a great job that (so far) has not been affected by the economy, and I now have two families that love me.

Yet, my usually energetic, take on the world, I can do anything attitude is failing me. I'm tired all the time, I've cancelled on two parties this month, and I spent my 4 day weekend doing nothing. This is not like me. Ugh. I know that some of it may stem from the dislike of my master's program that seems to be growing; but that can't be all of it.

Have you ever felt like this? I feel like I am always the most responsible person -- the one that gets things done, the one everyone trusts; but I don't want to be that person right now. I want it to be okay for me to flake, for me to crawl into bed and let everything fall apart without feeling guilty. But I can't.

I talked to my mom about it a little, but my issues always seem so trivial after talking to her. She always mentions my brother... now that could be its very own blog. My brother.

My brother was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder when he was 22 years old; he is now 33. He is currently living in a dual diagnosis group home and is attending outpaitent care 5 days a week. He's trying to get a job at Starbuck's and interviews this week. They agreed to interview him knowing that he has a felony on his record and lives in a group home -- kudos to them.

I really don't know where this post is going. I think I just needed to write without a set purpose. I cancelled my personal training appointment tonight and I've already decided not to go to my master's classes tomorrow night. On Sunday I'm going to my parent's house. I'm hoping that makes me feel better. Ugh. Bleh. Thanks for reading, sorry for not being my usually happy self.

Calioc

I can't believe I'm done!

Yes... I actually finished writing all of my thank you's! It only took me 3 months :-)

It felt so good writing that last note; like a huge weight is off of my shoulders. Now, I need to start working on Christmas cards. Yup, we are going to use a wedding picture for the Christmas card. I also need to start working on creating our wedding album. I think we are going to use mpix.com to create the album. I have a friend who is a pro photographer that is going to help me design it. We purchased a digital only package from our wedding photographer, so I have to purchase any albums or pics separatly. Which, by the way, is great because it turns out that I don't like our photographer! I did some VERY TASTEFUL boudoir photos for my husband's wedding present, and I really wish I had used her as my wedding photographer, but I had already signed a contract with the guy that did our engagement photos. C'est la vie.

I am going to try to update more regularly -- all of the mundane and crazy details of married life. If anyone ever has any ideas about what you want to know or hear about - just post a comment! Now that I've joined the married club I am sure I will have a different audience, or maybe those of us that have been following eachothers wedding blogs will continue to follow our married blogs.

The dress dilemma is still on... I'll keep ya updated.

Bye for now, Calioc

What to do with the dress?

First off, my dress has no garment bag -- it is just hanging in my closet like any other dress. The no garmet bag thing is a fairly long story that I wrote about earlier. I have two major stains on my dress: 1) the train and bottom of the dress is pretty much grey and black from dragging on the floor 2) I did spray tanning before the wedding, so some of it rubbed off on the dress -- mostly on the inside of the dress, but a little at the armpits.

So, the issue is -- what to do with the dress? The dress with alterations and tax ran me about $750.00. It will cost me about $200 to get it properly cleaned. According to Weddingbee, one of the best places for dress cleaning is Wed Clean. I've called around, and their prices are within range of everyone else.

If I keep the dress, I need to get it cleaned. If I sell the dress, I need to get it cleaned. Places like the Goodwill won't take the donation unless the dress is cleaned. Most places that sell dresses online charge a posting fee (about $25.00).

I could keep it and not clean it -- but why? I could just throw it away -- but OUCH! I mean, I've never paid this kind of money for a dress before and it just seems wrong to throw it out.

What should I do? I'm very conflicted by this. If I had an overwhealming feeling to keep the dress for sentiment or possibly my daughter, then this wouldn't really be an issue. But I don't feel that way, but I also don't feel like I should just get rid of it either.

Advice?

happily ever after

Hello everyone in blog land! I've been MIA with work and worrying about life, so I haven't had much of a chance to even read the blogs let alone update my own. It has been over two months now and people keep asking me if I feel different now that I'm married. The answer is no. I feel exactly the same. Maybe it is because we lived together for over a year before saying "I do", but there isn't this big "OMG we're married" -- it just feels normal; right; the way it is supposed to be. There were a few big moments:

• Opening our joint checking account and putting eachothers names on things
• Getting my new SS card and Driver's License
• Preparing to buy a house together

And... now everyone is talking about kids. I'm 35 and I'm not getting any younger (so they tell me). We've talked about starting right away, but have decided to wait at least a year before trying. Our parents, actually it is mostly his parents and grandpa, are pushing for us to start sooner. His parents even offered for us to move in with them so we could buy a house sooner and get started sooner! Ugh. Never!!

I am also in the middle of working on my master's degree, which isn't really going very well. Because of all the wedding stress over the summer I ended up getting an incomplete in one of my classes, and I have until December to complete the last paper and get it turned in. I'm also having a hell of a time with my master's project. I just can't get into it. Whatever had me motivated to start my master's in the beginning is no longer there.

I've sent out one wave of thank you cards (For gifts we recieved prior to the wedding itself), but the rest are sitting in my living room staring me down. I thought I would be all excited about writing them, but honestly now it feels more like a chore. I'd rather do the dishes than write thank you's. Isn't that horrible???

Okay, so if anyone is reading this, what should I post about next? I'm pretty sure I never finished my wedding day story, or should I post about the honeymoon? What do you want to read???

The Wedding Day

I'll be honest with you, my wedding day memory isn't as crystal clear as my wedding pictures. Everything happened so fast; like the entire day was on fast forward. In the morning I had my cup of tea as we waited for Dionna (the make-up and hair artist) to arrive. It was not as stressful as I had expected in the morning because we planned our time out really well; Dionna was scheduled to arrive at 7am and we needed to be at the UCLA Faculty Center at 2:00 pm (the W is only 1 block away from the UCLA Faculty Center). We all got are hair and make-up done on time; include my mom and mother-in-law. I also finished making me veil (I will save the details on this for another post)!

**

The only issue that I know of (remember, my wedding day coordinator Elaine dealt with all of the real issues that day) was that my photographer seemed to just not listen to me the whole day. First, he didn't set up the pre-wedding pictures in the location we had discussed. Elaine had to argue with him until he finally moved to the original location, but once he was there he didn't use it the way we had discussed. I'm still a little upset about this. Overall the pre-wedding pics turned out nice, but we should not have had to argue with him about it. The other issue with the photographer was at the end of the night. I only paid for him to be there until 9:15pm, but instead of just leaving at that time he decided to try to talk me into paying him more to stay later. Even after I told him to leave, he kept bugging me -- mind you at this point I'm not in the mood to make decisions. Elaine talked to him, and he decided to stay without the extra pay. Weird. The reason why I didn't really care is because one of my friends, Carolyn Love, is an amature photographer and she had her cameras there. Carolyn took all of the "getting ready" pics. Either way, it all ended up working out. I will admit that I do love most of my posed photos, but I am not super happy with my candids.

**

Once we got to the faculty center, the girls all got dressed. It was actually a lot of fun! My friend Carolyn Love took pictures of us getting ready. Once we were all ready we took our wedding party pictures and some family pictures. We also did a staged photo of Daryl and I seeing eachother for the first time. That was actually kind of fun. I hid behind a tree while the photographer posed Daryl, and then I snuck up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.

Then there was the ceremony, which I must say was amazing. I will write about that later. Goodnight!

Pro Wedding Pics are Here!

I know it has been awhile since my last post. I've been crazy busy with work and school. I got my professional wedding pics over the weekend! There are almost 400 of them, so I picked some of my favorites and posted them on a wedding pictures site. If you are interested in seeing our wedding and honeymoon pics go to http://singhiphotos.shutterfly.com/ The tabs to go between the different sets of pictures is at the top. To view an entire album, simply double click on any picture in the album.

Enjoy!

Excitement the Day Before

We've been married for 21 days now; we've been back from our honeymoon for two weeks, and today is the first chance I've had to write a post! I'm going to write several posts on the wedding and honeymoon so I can break it up a bit. I'm going to write about the good and the bad -- so for those of you who want to keep your rose colored wedding glasses on, I will warn you before I post the bad side by putting that section in between ** symbols.

Overall: the wedding and reception were absoloutly amazing -- beyond anything I had imagined while planning. The honeymoon was perfect -- I am so glad we decided to do an all inclusive. I highly recommend the UCLA Faculty center for weddings and receptions and I also highly recommend going to Sandals Ocho Rios for your honeymoon!

Day 1: Settling in and the Rehearsal
UCLA is just far enough away from the OC that we had to get a hotel room the night before the wedding. My bridesmaids and I decided to get a 2 bedroom suite at the W rather than getting separate rooms. The plan was to check into the W in Westwood at 2:00pm (the check in time we were given when I made the reservation), go up to the room, unpack, relax a bit, and then go get our nails done at 3:30. The rehearsal was scheduled for 6:00pm, so this would give us plenty of time to get ready for the rehearsal.

**
So, we arrived at the hotel around 2:30 pm and first there was a problem with my credit card. When I travel I don't carry all of my credit cards with me, so since we were going to Jamaica for the honeymoon I didn't think it was necessary to bring everything in my wallet, so I cleaned it out. I only brought one credit card with me, one with $1000 available on it - just enough to cover our $650 hotel room. So I gave the guy my card when we checked in and he said it was declined. I was shocked, so I asked him how much he was running it for. He told me that they run it for double the expected cost at the end --so he ran it for $1400! I explained to him that when I travel I don't bring my big cards with me, so I only brought one that would cover the cost of the room and a few incidentals. He told me (three of my bm's were with me: Lisa, Meghann, and Nicolle) that I would need to put the $1400 down or I could not have the room. Then he proceeded to tell me that "the large suites are generally reserved for their high end clientel". Seriously, was the insult really necessary? After a bit of arguing with him, and me asking twice to speak to his manager (which he never let me do), I finally gave him my visa check card, so they could take the $1400 out of my checking account while we stayed, and then I could pay the balance on my cc. He threw out a few other insults while he was at it; one about how he has never rented out a suite for only one night, another telling us that we would have to sign a form promising not to "trash" the place or have more than 4 people at a time in the room, and another reminding us that there could be no noise after 10 pm. Seriously, how old did he think we were? I am pretty sure he decided that we were not the "proper clientel" for the W and decided to treat us like trash. After all of that he proceeded to tell us that the room was not ready and that we would have to come back at 4:00! So, we left our stuff with the bell hop and went off to get our nails done.
**

I love getting mani-pedi's! It was a lot of fun to sit there with my bm's and be pampered and to relax after the bs at the W. We were looking forward to getting to our room and getting ready for the rehearsal. So, we get back to the hotel and get our room keys. The bellhop said he would deliver our bags to the room, so we only carried up what we needed to get ready. We went up to our room, and it was big and beautiful but...

**
It wasn't the room I had requested. It was a smaller room than the one I had put a deposit on. I specificaly requested the two bedroom suite with a separate sitting room so the make-up artist would have a place to work on the day of the wedding. I was told that would not be a problem since I made my reservation 6 months in advance. At this point I was frustrated and just wanted to get ready for the rehearsal - so Nicolle and I started getting ready. Lisa and Meghann (I had 4 bm's but Kara met us at the hotel later) decided that they would try to take care of the room situation. In the meantime, our bags were delivered -- but 4 of them were missing! This part is really long, so I'm not going to get into the details, but the short of it is that while I'm getting ready my bm's told me that we would be changing room right then and there. So, I threw on a robe and they took me to the new correct room and they took care of making sure all of our luggage got to the new room.
So, we continued getting ready in the new room. Then I get a call from Elaine (my day of coordinator) saying that the rehearsal would have to start a little late because the ceremony area was being used. This was good news because we were running late due to the room changes. As we were almost ready to leave, the bellhop brings up 3 of the 4 "lost" bags and then tells us that they can't give us the 4th bag because there are wine bottles in it and they don't allow guests to bring their own alcohol. What? Who are they to look inside our bags? I wasn't the one to deal with this - Lisa got on the phone to deal with it (she is a travel agent and she used her status to get things done!). Eventually they delivered the 4th bag to our room and they told Lisa that they were going to give me a $100 room credit.
**

Okay.. I need to take a break now. I will finish this post later (8/30/08).

Time to continue...(8/31/08)
We arrived at the rehearsal around 6:30 and everyone else was already there. Apparently Daryl thought for a just a moment that I had gotten cold feet! Elaine made sure the rehearsal went well and it was actually a lot of fun. My dad was very nervous and had a hard time walking at a slow pace, but eventually he got it.

After the rehearsal we did the dinner. It was in the same location as the wedding, but in a different banquet room. They had it decorated beautifully and the food was amazing!

I could ramble on about it forever, so I'm just going to give you the highlights. The best thing about it was having all of our family there, because we knew that on the wedding day we would not be able to spend time with them. Daryl's parents had a bottle of Dom that they had been saving for a special occasion, so we broke that out at the rehearsal - it tasted like honey!
His mom also made blue and gold cookies shaped like flowers that were used to decorate the center of the tables -- they tasted great.

The food was excellent, so it was a good precursor to what would happen the next day. For me the biggest highlight of the night was surprising my grandma with a birthday cake and gifts -- it was her 90th birthday on 08.08.08; the night of the rehearsal. She was so happy and shocked!

When the night was over I had a special gift for Daryl that I gave him and told him not to open until he was alone. We had already exchanged our gifts to eachother the day before - I got him a Citizen Eco Watch and he got me diamond earrings. The rehearsal coudn't have been any more perfect than it was.

Okay, I will post separately about the wedding and honeymoon. Bye for now!

Update 09.01.08

**

So, the girls all go back to the hotel room to have our slumber party. Which would have been perfect except that I noticed that my dress was hanging outside of its garment bag and I decided that I wanted to get everything ready for the next day. At this point we realized that the garment bag was missing! Somehow as everything was being transferred from the other room, the garment bag got lost. Apparently, no one thought to put the dress in the bag before transporting it. I made the mistake of assuming that the hotel had made this mistake and I yelled "how stupid are they carrying a wedding dress 4 floors in an elevator without putting it in the garment bag!" When all of a sudden my moh starts crying -- how was I supposed to know that she was the one that did it? Anyway, this caused some drama, which eventually worked itself out with a long bubble bath, a long talk, and some champagne. In the meantime, the W hotel is still looking for the garment bag which was left in the room (btw -- this was not one of those plastic cheapy garment bags, it was a nice fabric one with a special pocket for the veil). The following morning my wedding coordinator, Elaine, brought me her garment bag to borrow for the day -- we had to transport the dress from the hotel to the wedding site where I would be getting dressed.

**

Okay -- I will finish this in a new post!

Wedding Pics...

I only have a few that are worth posting... who knows how long it will take to get the professional

ones!

I will say that every thing turned out even more beautiful than I ever imagined! :-)

Just a tease...

No time to post for awhile, but here are a few honeymoon pics for fun!

Bye Bye for Now

Tomorrow is my bridesmaids brunch and spa day, Friday is the rehearsal, and Saturday is the wedding. I really can't wrap my head around it all. I have moments when it hits me, like my minor freak-out Monday at the dentists office, but mostly it doesn't yet seem real. I'm sure it will all seem very real soon.

So, this is my last post until I return from the honeymoon! Ocho Rios here we come!

Thanks for everyone's encouragment, advice, and comments. You have all made this journey much easier and more interesting.

Bye bye for now.

Programs are Done!

Making the programs was a family affair. After printing them, I took everything down to my parents house and we put them together assembly line style. The best part about this was seeing my brother so happy to be involved. Here are the details:

• Cover: Stardream Quartz with aqua printing (I used my HP InkJet 932c)
  
• First layer: Vellum
  
• Middle layer: Copy paper (I cheated and made the copies at work, and used their paper cutter!)
  
• Ribbon from Jo-Anne's (50 cents a spool)

After looking at templates in Illustrator, Publisher, and MS Word, I ended up going with the Word template. I know that isn't very creative, but what I wanted was so simple.

I printed 100 programs for 120 guests and I've instructed my fh's sisters to hand one per couple or single. The Venn Diagram on the last page is printed on the Vellum. I think they look very pretty, but like my brother said, most will end up in the trash or on the floor of people's cars.

Table Names and Escort Cards Part II

The escort cards are done, well except for one person who called LAST NIGHT to say her husband will come with her. My moh did all of the handwriting on them for me.


We color coded the cards for the meals, but we also decided to add a stamp to the back with the meal choice. I found menu stamps at papersource.com and then used a Versa Magic Multi-Surface Chalk Ink Pad to stamp the escort cards (in Sea Breeze). I had tried other stamp pads, but they would just smear off of the Stardream surface.



The table names are schools where we have either been students or where we have worked (in some cases both). We are seating my side at tables with my fh's schools and his side at tables with my schools.


On the back of the table names we put our school picture and some interesting info about us from that time.


I found the daisy holders on ebay for cheap -- they are really seating card holders, but they work pretty well for holding up the table names.
We thought this would be a nice way to tie in our Education Theme without it being too cheesy!
~ The only project I have left to do is making my veil! I've finished our programs and I will blog about them later today!

Sweet Things

On Friday my moh and I spend the ENTIRE day making my wedding favors --white chocolate daisy suckers. They look and taste amazing! Instead of posting about the entire experience, I'm just going to post lots of pictures. Enjoy!





This is what 150 suckers in a box looks like!

Daisy Treats

I don't have time to blog tonight, but I wanted to show the world what me and my moh worked on all day today. More to come...

Making that hair Bling!

I was at the mall the other day and I saw these beautiful hair pins with crystals and beads. I thought they would look lovely with my curls and my dress. So, I asked the sales girl how much they were... I gasped... $35.00 each plus tax. I would need at least 6 of them... they were sooooo small...There was no way I could spend over $200 just for some hair bling. So, I decided that I could make my own hair bling!


First, I must give you some back ground information. One of my hobbies is making jewelry. I've been making it since about 1996 and I am pretty good, but it is an expensive hobby, it is hard on my eyes and finger-tips, and I never found a way to make any real money at it; so, it remains a hobby. I made my best friends wedding jewelry a few years ago, and I've made lots of bridal party jewelry. However, due to time restrictions I did not make my own bm's jewelry; instead, I found someone who makes a similar style to myself and I hired out! Okay, so I got a little off topic.

The point is that I have tons of swarovoski crystals and gold wire just sitting around my house. So here is what I managed to come up with:





9 crystal hair pins! I have no idea how much they cost me; the pins were left over from my hair trial, the crystals and gold wire I bought years ago and was just sitting around not being used. So, in a way they were free. I made 3 of the 9 pins with Pacific Opal crystals, which is the color I had my bridesmaids jewelry made of. This is a fun project that I did while watching TV, it was very relaxing and a bit theraputic as well!

Bustles, Buttons, and Beads

I got rid of the butt button! I decided to take a risk and fix the bustle on my dress myself. After perusing many websites on the topic of bustles, I figured that the simplicity of my dress would allow for a single point french bustle that would not require a professional seamstress to do (see image below on the right). First, I had to remove the butt button and the loop from the dress.

Though this was easy, I was not pleased with the black/grey residue it left behind. I tried using Oxiclean on the spots, but it only faded it and did not actually get rid of it. There are two things keeping me from crying about this A) from a distance the stain can not be seen B) I still have to take my dress to be cleaned and pressed before the wedding.

I bought the supplies I would need for my bustle at JoAnnes:

• very fine bead needles (thinner than regular needles since the fabric is so fine)
  
• clear thread
  
• clear nylon snaps
  
• off white ribbon
  
• Stop Fray glue

The rest of the supplies I already had at home: Off-White thread, pins, swarovoski crystals, scissors, seam ripper.

After removing the button I cut a length of ribbon and sewed a snap on to it; I then sewed the other part of the snap to the underside of the dress on the lining (underneath where the original butt button was) and a small piece of ribbon above that to create a loop.

Then I took the ribbon with the snap attached and sewed it to the underside of the first layer of my dress -- in the same spot where the original loop was. By folding the fabric in half so the seams met, I was able to determine that this was the center of the fabric. I used the clear thread here and then added a crystal to the outside so it would be easier to find. Picture on the left is of the underside of the dress. Picture on the right is what it looks like from the outside -- the crystal does not photograph very well, but it can be seen and felt easily.

To bustle the dress: Lift the outer chiffon layer where the crystal is and bring up underneath itself to where the button and loop are on the dress lining. First snap the button, then pull the ribbon through the loop and tie. The first picture on the left shows what the loop and snap look like underneth the chiffon - if you look real close you can see the black residue. The other pictures are of the dress bustled.

Since I'm not wearing the dress, you can't see the whole effect -- but this is pretty much what it will look like. I used the Stop Fray on the ribbon and let it dry before testing the bustle. It took me about two hours to do this -- a little slow because I was so concerned about messing it up.

Let me know if you have any questions! I am not a seamstress, but thankfully I was in girlscouts for 10 years and I learned a little bit about sewing by hand and I learned that I can do anything if I put my mind to it!

My beautiful box...

My card box is done! I ordered a custom card box from Etsy seller SheaChicDesigns and received the email today that the box is finished. I sent her pictures of my flower arrangements and bm dresses, and then let her design it on her own.

Isn't it lovely! I can't wait to see it in person.

Now that summer school is done, I've been frantically completing all of the diy projects that I've been planning for the wedding. Time to stop talking and start working. I will post about them later in the week (hopefully tomorrow), but for now here is a list of what is in the works:

• Finish the Escort Cards
• Finish the Seating Chart
• Make the Table Name Cards
• Finish the Bustle on My Dress (I've decided to do it myself - gasp!)
• Make My Veil
• Make Crystal Hair Pins
• Design and Make Programs

In addition to all of this, I still have a gazillion phone calls to make. I have to order a wedding arbor (I thought I had found a place, but they've stop returning emails and phone calls). My aisle runner came in the mail today, so now I have to decided if I will leave it as is, or try to personalize it. Fh and I also need to do some shopping for the honeymoon.

Today we took our second dance lesson! It was so much fun; I can't wait to do it for everyone.

Okay, that is it for now. I will be posting lots of pics and other stuff throughout the week.

Escort Cards, Step One...

So, after rethinking my entire daisy sucker in a bucket idea, I've finally decided what I would like to do about escort cards. First, I decided that I would like the cards to be different colors to represent what the guest would be eating. Silver for Beef, Gold for Chicken, and White for Vegetarian.

Then I had to find a way to tie in my turquoise color and my daisy theme. I did this by having my student aid (gotta love free labor!) use a daisy punch on stardream card stock to create little daisies.

We then used Martha Stewarts glue pen to glue the daisies on to the upper corner of the card -- one on each side to give it a 3-D effect.

The next step... adding the guest names and table names. This was a simple project to do. I already had the daisy hole punch from work, the cards cost $2.25 in packages of 25 each from Paper Source, so I spent a total of about $14.00 on the cards, the lagoon stardream paper used for the daisies was 50 cents -- it was a sample sheet I purchased from Blue Dot. I spent about $4.00 on shipping, so in all the cards have cost me $18.00 so far. Stay tuned for "Escort Cards Part II".