Me+a Craft Store=Trouble

So, I stopped into Buffalo Stamps and stuff with my Gram today. She's the queen of card making. We were just looking around for some stamps and fall-ish paper for our halloween cards. I showed her the embossing folders for the Sizzix machine I'd been looking at. Ok droooling over. After showing her all the cool stuff she could do, she went around picking out paper. Next thing I know, she bought it!!! She's just like me, no self control when it comes to all things paper. We picked up a Tinker Bell embossing folder for now just to play with. I also grabbed a really good corner rounder from Fiskars.

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I round 99% of my cards corners now. After getting through my projects for my bridesmaids, my thumb was killing me! so I figured with Thanksgiving & Christmas coming, now would be the time to invest in something to make my life just a little easier. I also found a cute punch out border on some baby paper that they had that I loved, but alas, they did not have it. Good thing we went to AC Moore because they had it there! Woo Hoo!!

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Today was a very productive craft shopping day! What new tools have you picked up lately?

Something Old

I wanted to be B.L.I.N.G.E.D. out on my wedding day. Even if it wasn't real, I wanted to be sparkly. So I did some peaking around and there are so many choices. You can either go the simple route or something completely outrageous. I got an email from The Knot that they were partnering up with a company called Adorn Brides. This company rents jewelry out to you for your wedding day! How cool is that?! And some of the stuff they have, won't break the bank. You recieve your piece 2 days before your event, and have to send it back the 1st business day after your event using the packaging and prepaid label they send you. It's also INSURED while you have it! There is a deposit required of 5% of the retail value of the piece as well. They have so many pieces to choose from!

You can have something elegant and simple like the Coleman Pendant which is a .53 TCW white diamond for $100

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You can get super fancy and get the 14.02 TCW yellow & white diamond Crestwood Necklace for a cool $1900.00. *Swoon*

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You can also rent them in bridal sets of necklaces' and matching earrings. They also have bling for your bridesmaids! Well, the other day, my grandmother asked me to clean my Bobcias' (polish for Grandmother) wedding set for her. This gets tricky but my Bobcia was my grandmothers' step-grandmother; my great-great grandmother. We pulled out all of her jewelry to get to the rings and that is when I saw them, the most unlikely piece of jewelry I would ever think about wearing because I thought they were so cliche. Pearls. Now, they are not real, but they are a very pale pink and they are perfect! (the next 2 pics were take by me)

My little camera doesn't do them the justice the deserve! The clasp defiantly has to be replaced as you can see in the last picture. My friend Jen, who is also helping me make the jewelry for my girls, will also be restringing these for me and replacing the clasp. The necklace is just too long and hopefully with some of the length she takes off, I can have her knock out my earrings too! Grandma gave them to me so they are now mine and I was given permission to take them apart and use them for the wedding! I'm so excited she showed these to me because it takes care of my jewelry and my something old.

Were you given jewelry that belonged to someone in your family to wear on your wedding day? Did you have one thing in mind and completely switch after finding something else?

The menu is checked off the list!

Our menu is set! We decided to stop by the Holiday Inn to schedule a time for us to put our menu together. Low and behold, they have a new events coordinator since they hadn't had one for awhile! He was so wonderful and asked us if we had time, we could do it right now. Score! The first coordinator we were working with left shortly after booking the space back in December 2008. He also informed us that in between our first lady and him, there had been 2 more people hired and left!! He has made all of my stress MELT away. He caught my polish last name with the quickness and I think I caught his polish accent just as fast! I almost said jak sei masz which sounds like yock-sha-maash, it means "how do you do?" in Polish, but it's one of the few words I do know in polish that isn't offensive and didn't want to look silly. My Bobcia (great-great grandmother on my mothers side) was off the boat polish and used colorful language at times that I picked up as a child and it was hard for my family to explain to me why I wasn't allowed to say those things in public!

So we sat down with him and talked about what we were looking for and what we wanted. We finally made the choice to have the sit down dinner. You ma recall, I was having issues deciding between sit down and buffet here. Yes, it will cause a few issues with my mock up invitations, but no worries. It will also be giving me the oportunity to place cute little animals on the escort cards! I'm picturing a blue fish, a pink cow, and hmmmmm, I'll have to do some thinking on the pasta. So, what are we having!? Well, we'll be starting with just a green salad,

Italian Wedding Soup

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Then guests have their choice of:

London Boil

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or Pasta Primevera

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Or Davids choice, Bake Sole Mornay stuffed with Crab meat!

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This is a huge weight off our shoulders not that it's done. I am so happy to be able to check this off my list! It was also Morgans' first day of Pre-K and I needed a good distraction from her passing the milestone from daycare to Pre-K. We still need to make a decision about the kiddie menu since it was something I'd forgotten to mention to him while we were there.

How did it feel when you got to scratch a big need to-do off your list?

Will you be my bridesmaid?

When we picked our first date, I ran around asking all of my BFF's to be in my wedding party. I originally had 1 MOH, 3 BM's, & 2 Jr BM's. When we decided we had to postpone our date, they were all very supportive and promised to be there for me when we set our new date. This is why I love them all!

These girls and I try to go out @ least once a month for dinner to TGIFridays, with the exception of my sister BM#1 who lives in MO. :( We all started going out to dinner together and BM Tracey and I had become very good friends with Bonnie who we met at work. After we had set the new date, we came to the conclusion, well I did mostly, that adding Bonnie to the wedding party was only natural. So this time around, I decided to make a little project out of it! I have to apologize in advance, the pictures I originally took while I was making them are MIA. I had to borrow Tracey's so you will have to excuse the ripped envelope. We all went to dinner one night and I passed them out, Bonnie had no idea it was coming so it was a surprise for her!

Here's the envelope. I used black card stock and printed each girls name in black using Carmilla which I got here. Recognize it? Yes I am a Twilight junkie and Yes that is Edwards handwriting. The black showed up just enough for me to be able to use a white pen and rewrite the name out. I stuck a little clear crystal on each name as well. The pink strip was actually put there because the paper I used was pink metallic and I LOVE it and wanted to use it everywhere I could! My obsession with this paper inspired the wedding colors and my invitations. That strip goes all the way to the back of the envelope.

I used the same concept here and used the initial of my first name to seal the envelope.

Next I cut out long rectangular pieces of white, brown, and metallic pink card stock for the backing. I cut out smaller squares of white and the metallic again. I told you I love this paper! I printed each girls name on white card stock and used the Carmilla for the names. Next, I adhered the name flower, pink smaller square and white smaller together and punched holes in the corners after I'd rounded them. I then put the longer pink, brown, and white together. I used brown because at that time, we were still going with brown. To line up the holes to put the brads through, I put the already punched smaller square on top of the larger rectangle, and then punched through the existing holes on the top layers. The brands are the only thing holding the pieces together so I wanted to make sure they were lined up nicely.

I added a little poem on white card stock and glued a looped ribbon to the back, then placed a piece of brown card stock to the back so you couldn't see it. All the girls loved them and Bonnie gave me a very enthusiastic yes after I gave her the card. If I can find my original pictures, I promise to post them with a physical step by step, or I might just remake one of the cards, just to have an excuse to use the metallic pink again!

How did you ask your bridal party to stand up in your wedding, and did you make any additions later on?

***all photos by me

Chicken is not on the guest list....

I am a huge food fan. My favorite food combo; pizza and wings & football. My favorite food of all time, chicken wings. Morgan's also happens to carry chicken on her list of favorite foods. Due to being sick, I missed the annual Buffalo Wing Festival.

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I love this festival! You get to can try tons of different types of wings and sauces from all over. It is SO much fun!! Don't feel too bad for me, Dave brought home wings for dinner that night when he got off work, see why I want to keep him.

It's not just chicken wings I love. I love all chicken. Baked, Grilled, Bar-B-Qued. Chicken however, is not on our menu. Chicken is probably one of the most popular dishes you can have at a wedding, how could we not have it!? Well, there is a reasonable, yet bizarre answer to that question. My Aunt, who I am very close with, is allergic to poultry. Yep, it's the craziest thing. She developed it later in life, in her 20's, so she knows what it tastes like, she just can't have it. Doctors can't explain it, it's just like a peanut allergy but with poultry. The smell of cooking chicken bothers her and ingesting it is a trip to the hospital. I remember one time at Thanksgiving, her future MIL joined us and brought the gravy. Now, we have ham and beef on holidays, if you wanted turkey, you'd drop by a friends house who was sympathetic to our situation and they'd hook you up. Anyway, I digress. So at this meal I was probably 10 or 11, and all of a sudden, my Aunts face was swollen and her hands were starting to swell. She carries an epinephrine syringe for just this purpose and I'm not sure who got it for her, but she was on the ground finally breathing and then off to the ER. Her FMIL thought it was the meat she couldn't have, she thought making turkey gravy would be ok.

So, not only is chicken off the menu, just to be 100% sure there is no contamination, they are making my Aunt her own plate. As of now we are having a buffet, but the catering done at the hotel is done by the restaurant and we don't want to take any chances. Thats the only part of the menu we have so far. We haven't gone in for our meeting about the food yet so we still have the option of doing a sit down. The price is the same, I'm just not sure I want to stick people with food they might not like.

Do you have any food you're not having at the wedding. Are you having trouble deciding between a sit down and buffet?

I Dream of Weddings

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My first dream started out perfect. Everything went as planned early on in the day. We got to the church, and my dress was hanging up in the coat room. The church is packed, I can see David waiting for me at the end of the aisle, and we're supposed to start in about 5 minutes.

One of my BM's turn to me and says, so what are you going to do with your hair? You have't even dried it yet........Fantastic, I forgot to book my hair appointment. I'm not sure why it took me until 5 minutes to the ceremony to figure it out.

My second bad dream started just like the first. Everything was picture perfect, until I had to put my dress on. Yep, I'd forgotten to buy a dress. The last one I had, we had no transportation, and someone I was close to was getting married the day after me, copied everything I did and one up-ed me. I'm pretty sure that my dreams of our wedding, terrifying or not, are because of the stress of planning, and maybe my late night snacks have something to do with it. I've decided to reorganize all of my electronic files and all of my paper files into a binder so I don't take a chance of missing anything important at the wedding.

Have you had any nightmares or dreams about your wedding while your in the midst of planning?

iDress

I am the anti-bride when it comes to wedding dresses. I'm not very comfortable wearing a dress and never really have been. I'm not sure if it's the tom boy in me or just my comfort zone. I have gone dress shopping 2 times. The 1st time I went, was right after we set our 2009 date. I tried on I think 3 dresses, fell in love with the last one, wrote the number down and left. I didn't need to order it right away since there was a lot of time before I had to make my final decision and I wanted my mom to see the pictures we took first since she's in NJ. Now, this is the only picture I could find from this trip, my friend Susie used her cell phone and gave it a fuzy edging, sorry about the quality but, I can tell by my posture and the fact I'm smiling, I was in love with this dress. I remember I felt like a million bucks wearing this.

*my photo*

Well, about a month ago, I was online and found the same dress, for HALF OFF!!! I couldn't believe it! I checked for my size online, they didn't have it. BOO! I had to stop in there anyway to pick up some color swatches so I decided to go right after work. I brought along friend J with me since she wanted to look @ the swatches. She's helping me make my girls jewelry for the wedding. While I was in there, I nonchalantly asked the girl @ the front desk while I was paying for my swatches, if they had my size in that style and what the price was. She asked one of the ladies who helps the brides if she could check for me and off she disappeared into the rows of white poofy dresses. Within minutes, out of the corner of my eye, I see her walking back towards us, with a big bag full of dress. She immediately told me to come with her. Here's a picture of it spread out and steamed.

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She told me that this was my dress, but in cream, it's been discontinued, and was half price and she wanted me to try it on. I was so excited and got right into the dressing room. I put the dress on, and looking down @ myself, everything looked the same. I stepped out into

the mirrors and got a good look at myself. This did not look or feel like the dress I'd tried on last year.

It was the right dress, and it was a beautiful dress, but I felt horrible in it. I mulled around the dressing room for a bit and decided to plunk my deposit down. I decided to sleep on it and see how I felt in the morning since I have 3 days to change my mind for a full refund. I work up, still knowing it was not the one. I went back into the store and told them I didn't want the dress and got a refund. I'm glad I just placed it on "hold" before making an irrational decision that I would be regretting now. I didn't have a camera or my phone the second time around. I'm having some real issues getting motivated to get out and find a dress. I don't know if it's because I don't wear dresses or if it's physiological.  I do know that if I don't LOVE the dress, I won't be buying it and thats that. It's hard enough putting dresses on so until I put one on that sings to me, I'll keep on looking.

Anyone else second guess themselves while buying your dress? Any advice for me with my dress complex?