Bistro Chairs!

Hello, again, dear blog! It's been a while. Between Austin's accident, starting a new job, basically life turning upside down, and redefining for myself what this blog means to me, it's been a while! Thanks to my friends who've been asking where I've been. Let's get back on this bandwagon again, eh?

I had a vision a while ago of some cute chairs. This was especially inspired by Erica's post about the chairs they put in their new house in Charleston. So when I found these chairs for just $14 each, I knew it was time. They are an adorable wrought iron pattern that reminds me of flowers.




Obligatory mid-step photo shots, with the chairs in the yard, drying, waiting to be painted.



After round one of painting. I may have gotten in trouble w/ the hubs for the blue paint stain I left on the yard, that lasted for a few weeks, for this stunt...



Drumroll, please!! The final product! Complete with a lovely flower pot that Dominic gave us as a "fence warming" present. But it goes so beautiful out front instead!



Next post.. that fence I just mentioned.

Coming soon...

EMPLOYMENT!

I got a job!!!!! Yay!!! My last day at my current job is this Friday. I'm taking Monday off, and then starting on Tuesday!!

Also, who is the person from Troy, Michigan, who keeps looking at my blog? Who are you?

more wedding reflection via a HUGE THANK YOU!

The final step in our wedding process - the photography re-do's - has finally come to an end, and I feel like I am finally ready to reflect on the entire experience. This post is all about the people who worked behind the scenes to make this wedding possible. With our wedding being so incredibly DIY-heavy, there is no way that we could have achieved the look, feel, atmosphere, etc that we did without the help of family and friends. No. Way. Without. Them (You).

So I'd like to try and name everyone by name - even though all of 7 people are subscribed to this blog - to try and acknowledge publicly the work that was done. I'll just keep it to first names, to honor privacy.

Having the last step completed (photos part 2 completed) allows us to look back and see the big picture of how everything came together. Maybe once I get the professional photos back, I'll do one more post about this with names and photos of what they helped do/make. For now, it'll just be words.

Austin and I would like to thank everyone who made our wedding possible! More specifically, we mean...

[In chronological order]
Heather (co-worker) for telling me I had to pick a color scheme, and for helping me talk through the initial parts of the wedding imagery. "Mood boards" was a regular term used in our discussions!

Mom (Connie) for helping me glue and sew the Save the Date's; for sporadically sending us the pretty Wedding postage stamps; for supporting me with all of the stress about anything that came up; for paying for a boatload of the weekend's festivities; for managing family stuff so I didn't have to; for passing out the women's flowers for our wedding; for paying for the amazing cupcakes at my bachelorette party; for all of the secret behind-the-scenes stuff that I don't even know about; and for everything else I forgot! You (and Austin) were my rock throughout this and I am forever grateful.

Kasha for tediously cutting out those envelope liners for the Save the Date's; for spending multiple evenings designing and cutting out the pinwheels; for coming to every event I asked you to be a part of and not complaining once; for throwing me a fabulous weekend party; for truly being the best sister I could ever ask for; and of course, for admitting publicly during your speech that you really did copy me with your AOL screen name in middle school.

Lara C. for also dropping everything to help! You put up well with my non-formalities, like forgetting to give you your bridesmaid gift (I still haven't done that, have I? Darnit!) and my semi-direction for what needed to happen. Thank you for prioritizing events for our wedding, like driving all the way to Lynchburg for a party where you didn't know very many people, and always being available. Austin and I are both honored to have you as a part of our wedding. (And thank you for yesterday when you dropped everything to help out with photos, which I'm sure was very tedious and I know it got into your previous plans!) Thank you also to Lara and Liam for throwing us an awesome Stock the Bar party! It was SO MUCH fun, and I can't wait to make all the margaritas from the mixes we got at the party. We are lucky to have good friends like you two.

Pam (Mom's friend) for throwing me an awesome bridal shower! That was so cool, and really nice, and made me feel like a queen. My momma is very fortunate to have you as a friend, and I appreciate all that you did for me (and us)!

Reid for helping me with all of the digital design-related needs. Your assistance with the placement of both the Save the Dates and the Invitations, your behind-the-scenes know-how of how to get cool fonts, and how to make sure I have both "cool" and "hot" colors in a poster were invaluable. And we couldn't have pulled off the "Leaf your Thumprint" tree without you!!! I am honored to call you my younger brother.

Dad (David) for helping paint the cupcake tree, for breaking those crayons, for navigating a varied and confusing payment schedule, for being in charge of the men's flowers for the wedding; for abiding by all of my random requests, and for being the sweetest man I've ever met.

Laura P for being my running partner/therapist throughout this process. Your listening skills, your encouragement to exercise, your crafting abilities, your insight on building the website, and your assistance in designing the big picture of the wedding's DIY's details are much appreciated. Beforehand, you helped with Friday evening craft activities, as well as taking charge of getting the Cupcake tree together. Day-of, you and Rob got the party started by dancing, and kept track of all of our gifts, and returned them all to our house, and that was very important! So thank you! And to Rob as well!

Katie & Jasmine for being rockstars, and plowing through the frustrations of realizing how big of a task you had taken on, and getting it all done anyway. There was some confusion in the beginning and throughout the process as to what exactly would be happening, and you came out of it determined to complete the tasks. It was no easy feat. You began by spending an ENTIRE weekend with me, talking about annoyingly small wedding details, which I bet was an overwhelming couple of days, but was crucial in moving the wedding planning forward. After that weekend, you put up with multiple e-mails from me, sometimes I imagine 3-10 in a day, which was probably really confusing and time-consuming, but you emerged on the other end with beautiful decorations. I think the fact that people took the flowers and put them in their hair is a testament to both the skill and the work that you put in to helping the wedding. I am indebted to you two, and please know I will pound out wedding-related things you need help with in the future when you ask me! (And I put that on the internet, which we all know never really goes away, so you can hold me to it.) I also want to make sure that I mention that Katie and Jasmine helped w/ the rehearsal dinner decorations take-down, so from both me and the Peters family, we want to say thank you for that as well!

Misha for providing unmeasurable support throughout this process. Your sister was also getting married, and you were at an extremely busy and stressful time in your life, but you still were able to call me and calm me down when I needed a friend's ear. You were aware of exactly what goes into planning a DIY wedding, because you were going through it in your own family at the same time. Your assistance with helping Katie and Jasmine with the decorations, as well as your shuttle services throughout Northern Virginia and Richmond beforehand and the day-of were awesome! Thank you to Paul as well for helping out with everything beforehand. He was the silent DYSC girl of the weekend!

Rebecca for helping with the decorations and for listening throughout this process. I think your nails turned turquoise, blue, and silver from all that crayon-peeling, but Austin LOVED the crayons at the bottom of the glasses as he was putting them together! And also a shout-out to Gretchen for providing similar help, as well as to you both for coming to the bachelorette party. I'm glad we chose to have each other as friends.

Speaking of the cake, I'd like to give a shout out to Elizabeth, Sarah, Stephen, and Lara D for rocking at getting all of that together. [Lara, you get your own paragraph further down.] The four of you stored our cupcake stuff, picked up 150 cupcakes from the store, set them up at the station, and made it back to the ceremony in time. You took all of the alcohol back and brought it in our house. You busted your butts for us.

Julie & Pat for renting a huge van, for allowing us to call it the Party Bus and treat it as such, and for shuttling us and family members around this town for the whole weekend. We asked you if you would be willing to drive us around because we wanted a space with family where we could relax in between intense events, and you did not hesitate to help. I believe you had to shuffle some things around behind the scenes, and you kept us out of that, and we are thankful. I also haven't thanked you yet for purchasing the alcohol, picking up our stuff out of the dressing room, and for making sure to keep track of all of those little details that we would inevitably not be able to do ourselves. Best Aunt and Uncle team ever!

Suzanne & Dennis for understanding what a wedding is like, and for lending your support when possible. Austin and I were excited to ask you two to drive us to the airport to leave for our honeymoon. We were happy to work with you for the rehearsal dinner, and I am glad that all of our plans fused together well. Suzanne, if you ever want to go buy Jelly Belly's in bulk again, I'm there! We will just make sure to use their bags this time... hah! I am so happy to officially be a part of the family.

Christine for helping with the guestbook directions and for making sure envelopes were taped to gifts. It was so great to see you at the guestbook, helping people to figure out how to do the funny fingerprint thing, as we arrived! I'm glad that you were able to help.

Michelle (co-worker) for doing our hair! I was nervous about anyone touching my hair, or my bridesmaids' for that matter, and you did the job stunningly! You met with me on a regular basis to talk about it, we even practiced one day before the wedding. I really, really appreciate you and your two girls' help in getting all of our hair done.

Meghan & all of my Lynchburg girls for passing out directions to the Reception after the ceremony! Thank you also for contributing to throwing me a bombass bachelorette! Molly and Kelly especially drove from far, far distacnes! Laura (and Kelly, right?) had a nice little brush with the police on the way down, and Brittney took time out of a very hectic studying weekend to honor me and our friendship. There are many details that each woman was involved in planning and scheduling, but please forgive me because I do not know all of those. But I really appreciate them all!

Lara D gets her own paragraph, because she was F-ing stellar for making this wedding work. I don't even know how I could list everything that she did. It would double the size of this entry. All I can say is that Lara, on the wedding day 5/21/11 and on the fake wedding day 7/10/11, was instrumental in everything coming together. She took care of everything I asked her to, everything others dropped the ball on, and anything she thought I might need help on that I hadn't thought of, or that I had forgotten about. I have no idea how I can ever make it up to you Lara, but please know that Austin and I talk about everything you did on a regular basis, and you are a rocktar. You are the secret grease that made our wedding go as well as it did, and for that, I am truly forever grateful. I have never seen someone so willing to identify what's needed and make it happen, regardless of how fun the task is. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And of course to Austin for being totally fabulous, for understanding all of the wedding-ness that needed to happen to make our (my) vision possible, for referring to me regularly since the wedding as "my smokin' hot wife," and for being the greatest person I've ever met. You truly make it all worth it.

OUTDOOR FURNITURE! finally!

Hello, to all 6 of my followers!

After a year of declaring I wanted patio furniture for our screened-in porch, Austin agreed that if I found a good deal, we could look into getting real patio furniture. So I spent a whole evening researching prices, types, etc. and we were set!

Here's what it looked like before, complete with a card table that used to house the kitty litter a little over a year ago (I say this because whenever I sat at that table, I thought about how there was kitty poo on it at one time):



Here's what I came home to a few days later, ready to be assembled by yours truly:


Davis, modeling the porch before assembly:


And after a few hours of hard work, calling neighbor Lara D'Antonio over to help scrunch sides of the chairs together, and a glass or two of "aren't we badass" wine, here is the finished product! We used the Catalina chairs and bench from World Market, with the St. Lucia table. The cushions/pillows are from Target (on clearance - I SCOURED the city for these to complete the set!)


Having relaxing porch furniture has GREATLY increased our quality of life. It inspired me to actually clean/organize the rest of the house. While Austin and I had been very excited to have a screened-in porch, prior to this, we rarely used it. This past weekend, Austin spent an entire day out on the porch listening to music and getting stuff done on the computer, as opposed to his usual weekend practice of TV-watching!

The porch was put together just in time for a huge thunderstorm/rainstorm we had this past weekend. When we lost power the evening of 7/3/11 for 3 hours, what were we to do? It was humid, raining profusely, and we had no electricity. THE PORCH! Candlelight! WINE! Eat all the ice cream before it goes bad! Perfect. Here's my cell phone pic memorializing the event.

A Pictoral Rendition of Shed "Renovation"

It's time for another house-related blog post. Last weekend, we finally finished the outside of our shed. Instead of my wordy narrative, I'm just going to post pictures in succession showing how it went... :) These photos are from February 2011 up until June 2011.


























AND... TA-DA...!!!


I helped with this a lot! I may not be in any photos, but I was hard at work as well! It's kind of hard to take photos of yourself painting with oil paint or hitting a nasty, old carport with a crowbar like at the batting range.

Next steps? Adding a privacy fence; buying either Colonial Red, Cobalt Blue, or Hunter Green metal roof for the top; prepping the soil around shed with topsoil; landscaping; and potentially painting the shed door a fun color! Phew! This is good for now.

Wedding: lessons learned

I have a feeling the post-wedding blog posts will be coming slowly over the next month or two. After a walk with a soon-to-be-engaged friend last night, and lots and lots of wedding talk, I realized there are a couple of lessons I learned from our wedding that could be helpful to others. Here are the ones one the front of my mind right now...

LESSONS LEARNED FROM PLANNING OUR WEDDING:
1. Make it about you two as a couple.
2. Don't let other people's drama stress you out.
3. Be clear about expectations from the beginning with those whom they may affect.
4. Weddings bring out unexpected aspects of people's personalities. This is normal. It does not mean your friendships will end.
5. There will be a disaster (or two). Know it will happen.
6. After you have delegated responsibilities, let it go. It will get done.
7. Everyone loves the bride... even people who don't know you.
8. EVERYTHING costs more than you originally plan for. Everything.


Now, because I am a detail-oriented person, I will explain more about these lessons and why I said them.

Make it about you two as a couple.
We made all of our decisions together. It was trying on us as a couple, but it made the entire day everything we wanted. Everything was special because everything encapsulated us as individuals and as a couple. A second rule to this one should be: Don't entertain traditions you don't feel necessary. For example, we did not throw the bouquet, get announced at the reception, or do the garter thing. They just weren't things that were important to us.

Don't let other people's drama stress you out.
This is a tough one. There are sooo many decisions to be made, sooo many things going on at once, so many plates to juggle, so many appointments, so many people you are relying on. Whether the drama is a parent obsessing about their outfit when they should be helping with your dress, someone insisting on inviting people that neither you nor your fiance feel need to be at the wedding, mid-divorce parents who can't seem to act normally in front of each other, or friends who complain about every step of the role they had agreed many times to participate in, you can't let it get to you. You have to be coordinate the catering meetings, the photographer's needs, the people who are going to not do their role b/c they feel sick the day before, the bridesmaid who is nervous about her outfit, getting a replacement for the guestbook that arrived in the mail a week before the wedding damaged, the grandmother who is flying across the country and wants to make sure she packs the correct clothing, etc etc.

Be clear about expectations from the beginning with those they affect.
A HUGE lesson! Because our wedding was non-traditional in a variety of ways, there was a lot of "communicating expectations" that we had to do. I had to explain to my father (and mother) that we wanted to walk down the aisle together. For a little while, we thought both of us would change our names, so we had to warm Austin's family to the idea that his name could change (it didn't in the end). For my friends that are more traditional and could have been hoping for some extravagant bachelorette party or all of the wedding details being just like they want for themselves, I gave a heads up that we would have no fresh flowers at our wedding, and that I wanted my special party to be low-key. The biggest of this was regarding family members and attendees. We had many, many talks with parents about how many and which guests they were able to invite. It was difficult to stick to the expectations we set in the beginning, and there were a handful of tears, but in the end it worked out.

People will behave in unexpected ways, just because it involves a wedding.
This makes sense on many levels. We're talking about a day of celebration that our culture covets as the epitome of a little girl's dream day. (Can you tell I wasn't raised that way?) I was told by a few friends who had recently been married that they were surprised to have friends whose actions did not seem favorable toward the wedding, and that it was people they considered really good friends. In all of these cases, these people apologized later, citing jealousy as the reason for their behavior. Knowing this was potentially coming was helpful, but it was still shocking when I encountered this myself. Hopefully those concerns will get resolved eventually.

There will be a disaster. Expect it.
The saddest reality of them all. For weeks afterward, I told people that our day was perfect, and that all of the drama/disasters were beforehand. I felt so accomplished that somehow, we avoided the dreaded, inevitable disaster day-of. And then I got a phone call from the photographer, saying that the digital card had a malfunction and we lost all of our getting ready, family, and before ceremony photos. They are wonderful people, and I know it's not something they could have prevented, but it's SO SAD. I attribute not freaking out or getting really anxious about this news to a) I had just been to a Mexican Happy Hour and b) we were overdue for a real disaster.

After you have delegated responsibilities, Let it go. It will get done.
This lesson was the biggest life-saver of them all. I spent a lot of time making sure everyone had the information they needed to do what they needed to do, and then I didn't worry about it anymore. For example, who cares if the decorations weren't completed until 2 days before the wedding? My ladies had promised to get them done, and they would be done. No point in me freaking out. And they were beautiful!

Everyone loves the bride, even people you don't expect.
People smiled at me in the halls at work who I don't even talk to. Every doctor, dentist, etc appointment I had wanted to talk about the wedding. Ex-co-workers asked me if they would be invited. (Another lesson: people who ask if they are invited... don't feel bad about not inviting them.) On the day of, little girls walked by and said, "Look! A bride! She's so pretty, Mommy!" It was fun to be the center of attention, but I'm also glad it's over.

Everything will go over budget.
Literally everything. Weddings are such a ridiculous industry. It's out of control. For example, they charged us more for the cupcakes than they charge anyone making a special order. They said it was because it was a wedding, and because our order would be their top priority, and we would be guaranteed the top service. However, I got a phone call on the wedding day telling me the cupcakes wouldn't be ready by the time we had established with the shop (15-30 minutes delay). However, since I had delegated this responsibility already, I did not worry about it. In hindsight, I could have told him I wanted that extra money back that he made me pay, b/c our cupcakes were not the first ready of the day, like he had insisted to me. But our friends were in charge of that, and I didn't need to worry about it anymore. They would get those cupcakes to the reception and set up.

And that's it for now!

what's that SMELL?

For the past few days, we have come home from work to find our house smelling a little bit funky. When we ran the dishwasher last night, it leaked onto the kitchen floor. I thought the two were separate problems, but went to put something in the bottom rack of the dishwasher today on my lunch break and realized they are probably connected!

There is standing water in the dishwasher. Welcome back, home-owner disasters. This is #2 of what will most likely be many more home-owner issues to come. Thank goodness for Google search and eHow websites. I found instructions here and will hopefully work on this tonight. We'll see how it goes!