Wedding Rehearsal

Saturday night before our wedding, we all went up to do our wedding rehearsal. Now I don't know why I totally took them at face value but we were told it would take 15 minutes tops, especially since another wedding was going on at the same time. Thinking that, I made the rehearsal dinner reservations at a restaurant about 45 minutes away leaving ourselves only about a 30 minute buffer. The rehearsal itself did not take only 15 minutes, more like 45. But it was worth it. The wedding planner we had in charge of our wedding (and the rehearsal) was absolutely amazing and I appreciated her thoroughness. My mom had been taking as many pictures as possible over the past several days so right before we were about to start our second run-through, I thought to get her down there. Charlie, as practical as ever, didn't want to waste any time (as much as my mom would have loved to have been involved) so the husband and father of one of my bridesmaids and flower girls happened to be on hand and took some pictures for us. Again, it was very fortunate since it gave us all practice posing for the photographer the next day.

On the day of the wedding, Charlie was brought to the ceremony by a horse drawn carriage, which dropped him off at the side stairs and he entered under this arch.


Next, the wedding party entered down a trail directly behind the ceremony location and in between the bride and groom's entrances. Finally, my day escorted me down a long stone staircase from where the reception would later be held and up the aisle to Charlie.


You can see a peek of the staircase and the wedding planner in the background.


Yes I do realize we look more like Christmas than autumn but it was one of the only nicer dresses I have that still fit and, what can I say, the man loves his red. :)

Again, I withheld pictures of the wedding party because I'm too lazy to ask them if it's ok to put them on the internet. I'll have to for the actual wedding photos though because everyone was just too damn pretty for me not to share.

Disneyland Bachelor/Bachelorette Party

Since neither Charlie or I are big drinkers and so many of our friends are shared friends, we decided long ago that a day at Disneyland would be the perfect way to celebrate our wedding with our friends. At first it was just going to be us and the wedding party but then we decided to open it up to a few more friends since they wanted to be able to hang out with us and that was most likely the only way they'd get a decent amount of time with us, including at the wedding. A couple of my bridesmaids weren't able to make it (very sad) but we did have about 10 or 12 people show up. One of my bridesmaids, Heather, had also planned on going to Disneyland while they were out there for the wedding wanted to go with her family since it was her 4 year old's first time there (totally understandable). Luckily they decided to go that same day so we were able to see them (Heather and her family) a little bit and feel like they were there with us. At one point, I was starting to slow down and Charlie and I wanted to make sure our friends got to ride some of the faster rides so they all split off from us to ride Space Mountain and Matterhorn. We were thinking of riding something ourselves but ended up meeting up with Heather and hung out with all of them for a bit instead.


That day the park was closing surprisingly early and we didn't know why until we got there. Disneyland has an after hours costume party several days during the month of October so the park was filled with people in Halloween costumes all day and we got to see a sneak peak of it all as we were leaving. (Of course this picture does not show any of the cool costumes and we were too busy having fun to stop and take stalker-ish pictures of strangers.)


When I found out I was pregnant in May/June, I was really bummed at the thought that we might have to cancel and change our party plans. Charlie is a saint though (more on that in another post) and looked up exactly what rides I would not be able to ride (most of my favorites of course) and it was only seven so the party went on as planned. Some of our friends got there early and rode the rides they knew I wouldn't be able to just so I wouldn't have to wait around for them later. Charlie's best man did have one demand: that Charlie ride Indiana Jones with him or he would no longer be his friend. :) I teased at first saying "Well, you're just going to have to lose a friend," since Charlie had already told me he wouldn't ride any of those rides either. (He has good survival instincts.) Anyway, at one point we were over that way so they all decided to ride Indy--literally all of them--leaving me to fend for myself. Pirates of the Caribbean is right there so I rode that again and got to sit in the front row all by myself (awesome!) then I went off to buy my Bride Mickey ears hat. The plan from the get-go was for us to wear the bride and groom hats but the entire park was sold out of the groom hats. I pouted a bit until a friend suggested buying another hat and having "Groom" embroidered on it. Charlie liked that idea and was going to get some pirate ears but the entire park was sold out of that hat too! So I wore my hat (as you can see above) and we made a plan to go back on our 1 year anniversary without the baby so I can ride all the other rides I love so much and we can get his hat and both wear them.

The next day, two of my bridesmaids and one of my flower girls and I went out for a relaxing morning of manicures and pedicures. I had never had a pedicure before and oh my zombies! I'm just waiting for the excuse to go get another one. That little massage they do to your feet and calves....absolute heaven! Especially since I was swelling up pretty good at this point from all the standing I did on Thursday putting the favors together and all the walking around the day before at Disneyland. My mom and Susan were there visiting and keeping us company and took quite a few pictures for us. Since I don't have their permission and don't want to offend anyone, I'm not going to post those pictures. I will show you a picture of my manicure (and you can see the ring Susan gave me). I went with something classic and traditional but added my own bit of flair. I had the same thing done to my toes and yes I do have a picture but you don't need to see my swollen toesies.

Yay! I'm not just talking to myself!

So I had some requests for wedding photos. We're still waiting for the professional ones and those will be posted as soon as we get them. In the mean time, I can share some pictures about the wedding. Today, I'm going to show you some pictures from the Wedding Advent Calendar my mom and her best friend put together for me. They decided they wanted to help get me excited about the wedding so I wasn't just stressing out about it and I could start to look forward to the good part of getting married: the actual being married part. Yeah, I know, I have the coolest Mom and "Aunt" on the planet. You can be jealous now. :)

Susan is amazing at putting together scrapbooks and such so she volunteered to put the "calendar" part together.



My mom has recently gotten into stamping and has always enjoyed wrapping. She hand stamped all the packages (basically created her own wrapping paper) and the tags. The messages were her hints about the gifts. For example, the paper around the cookbook she sent me had key and heart stamps implying that what was inside (cooking) is the key to a man's heart. Cute, right? I thought so. Once I figured that out, I started trying to guess but failed miserably every time. Well, except once. I did figure out one gift.







I so loved this idea and felt like my mom was actually there to help get me through the final stages of my wedding even though she lives half a continent away. I'm not sure if this will work with sons but I know for sure I want to do this for my potential daughter at least. I never did get around to taking pictures of the gifts after I opened them. Those both Mom and Susan got for me. Some of them are just fun little things that reminded them of me and others had significant meaning behind them. The one that probably meant the most to me was a sapphire ring Susan gave me from a shared departed loved one. The note she sent with it was so sweet, it made me cry and I made sure I was wearing it the day of my wedding. Unfortunately my fingers have swelled and I currently cannot wear that ring or my wedding ring but they're both tucked away safe and sound waiting for Bump to come out and join us.

Up next, pictures from the Bachelor/Bachelorette Party at Disneyland!

Update: Mom, I do still plan on sending you all these pictures so don't worry about saving them to your computer.

Finally an update with pictures!!!

I finally, finally uploaded pictures to my computer, sorted, labeled, etc. so I can post some pictures of fun things from this last month. First of all, the image above is of the first snow of the season. This view is out our front door looking at the tree in our neighbors' yard. I like to think of it as our local Charlie Brown Christmas tree since it's so small and wimpy with such big ornaments. I love it! We got hit with a much bigger storm over Christmas weekend but alas, I was feeling too lazy to take pictures of that storm.

Speaking of Christmas, I know I teased you all with talk of completing Norberta. Well, she was completed and given away on Saturday. I think she was a big hit as far as things go with 6 month olds.


And as you can see, she enjoys being right up front in the thick of things, ready for a new adventure and as much excitement as possible.


I think living with a baby who also has a 4 year old sister will keep Norberta on her toes. :)

Christmas at our house was good. I was up way too late on Christmas Eve trying to get things finished. Norberta took longer than expected. I tried desperately to finish the scarf I am knitting for my mother in law, but as you can probably tell by my use of "am knitting," that didn't happen. So here are some work in process photos for you all to enjoy.

And a detail picture so you can see the diagonal ribbing pattern better.


Apologies for any blurriness and/or crummy lighting. It's after midnight here. The lighting sucks and I'm tired enough that my vision is blurring and I couldn't tell if it was my vision or the picture that was blurry. And why, you might ask, am I doing up so late? Well, it's my husband's birthday today and he's up late reading and I'm waiting for him to be ready for bed. I think I may need to go poke him a bit until he caves and puts the book away.

I think I have sufficiently caught you all up for the most part. I do realize I have yet to post wedding/honeymoon pictures but since I doubt anyone is reading this anyway, I think it's been long enough I might just let those ones go. Please let me know if you do read this and you do want to see some of those pictures. Otherwise, up next is the awesomeness of my husband and my love for nutcrackers. 'Til then, good night and sweet dreams. Hope your holidays were equally good and if I don't get back to you all before the new year, hope you all have a good and safe time celebrating.

WIPs and other holiday news

It might look as though I'm slacking over here not getting things done, but the lack of posts are really because I'm so busy. Now that's not to say I don't envy the wonderful bloggers I love so much who seem to have not only the time but the ability to make so many wonderful things and blog about them. There's no doubt I have the time but having the money to buy the supplies to make fun things is another questions entirely. And then the holidays come along and you need to keep certain things secret so it all gets complicated really quickly.

This is all to say, I do have some works in progress. The adorable Norberta from the other day is coming along nicely. I'm having some trouble with the spikes. The pattern called for making them incredibly long for some reason. I kept track of my rows as carefully as possible so I don't think it's my mistake. I sewed them on when the pattern called for it and kind of scrunched them up so there was no overhang but then they ended up being crooked, which was something I noticed once I started stuffing the body (and I didn't think to take pictures before ripping them back out). I pulled out the stitches to the point where it's now straight and even and now I'm finishing up sewing and stuffing the body. I will then attempt to re-sew the spikes back on and hope that this way will help me keep them down the middle. Some minor mistakes here and there are fine; they add charm. But something that big and noticeable I wasn't able to live with so out they came. I'll be sure to post pictures when I'm done, which needs to be by Saturday.

I have two more WIPs, which are more presents so pictures of those when they're finished. One needs to be done by Saturday but the other has no hope of being on time so I might even show WIP pictures!!

In other news, Charlie and I decided that it's more affordable to buy a house right now (assuming it's in decent condition and for the right price) than it is to rent so we've been scurrying around trying to get things in order to get the loan and trying to look at places at the same time. We've already been told by one Realtor that he can't show us the house until we have our pre-approval letter (which I think is complete bollocks) so now we're even more concerned with getting that whole process taken care of before even looking. I'm bummed because the looking part is the fun part in my opinion. I like trying to imagine my family in our first home. I naturally have nesting instincts so now that I'm getting closer to my due date, I'm a little worried that those instincts are going to take over completely and I'm going to turn into a nesting robot..."must decorate nursery, must make home for family".

Between house hunting and the holidays, our days are pretty booked. I hope you're all doing well and not stressing out too bad. Happy thoughts to Miss Danielle and her family. I'm so happy your little one is doing better and is home again! Hope you're all well enough to enjoy your holidays. I know you'll appreciate having the family all together again. Hugs!!

Happy mail day!!

I'm so excited about what arrived in the mail today!!! I totally splurged and bought myself an ornament embroidery kit with the supplies to make three different winter themed ornaments created by the fabulous Alicia Paulson.


This is the set I bought but she has two others you can get (which you all know I want as well for the full collection!!). You can also buy the PDFs of just the patterns instead of the whole kit.

Update: I just realized that the link I included for the ornament set is for the pattern only. I guess that means she's all sold out of the kits and only has the PDFs still available. Bummer but something is better than nothing.


Another winter project I'm about to start is making this sweet little thing for a sweet little 6 month old we know for Christmas. Miss Hazel's parents have a medieval themed nursery so a cute little dragon to scare away nightmares is just the thing I think and today the yarn came in the mail!! I'm sticking with the same color green but decided that lilac would be so much cuter for a little girl. I would take pictures and share the super cute (and so soft!) yarn with you but it's already dark out and therefore too dark in the house for proper pictures so hopefully the picture above will suffice for now.

Happy Monday evening everyone!!