Large donation

Jake and I got together with my biological father and his girlfriend yesterday for dinner. His g/f called me earlier in the day to remind me that it was Jim's birthday, so Jake and I stopped and got him a card and a gift card to Coldstone. I felt like I owed him at least a card after all that he has bought me/done for me since he's been in my life. I wanted to get him a gift, also, but I don't really know what all he's into, so I figured that ice cream is usually a safe bet, so we went with that.

His g/f, Jill, just had a "home reception" for her daughter, who recently got married in Iowa. So, she's in "wedding mode" and was asking me a bunch of questions about Jake and my wedding. We ended up staying out there longer than I had planned because I figured Jake would be tired after having worked all day, but we were having a good time, so the time just flew by.

Before Jim had to turn in for the night, he took me aside (in the kitchen) and handed me an envelope of money and told me that it was for Jake and me to put toward the wedding or honeymoon. We opened up the envelope when we got home and there was a sizable amount of money in there...enough that it makes me feel guilty for accepting it.

We really do appreciate the donation, but it sorta makes me feel bad that he gave us THAT much. I really hope that he does come to the wedding so that he can enjoy the experience with us, since he's helping pay for it now. I know he still feels awkward around my mom, but hopefully he can get passed that, at least for one day.

Zumba

I was watching an infomercial on Zumba today and I have to say that it actually looks pretty fun and like something I would like to try. Unfortunately, I have issues with committing to exercises and feel like if I spend the money on the DVDs, it will all be wasted when I lose interest in it about a week later.

Has anyone had any experience with Zumba? I'm curious to know if it worked for any "real life people".

Does my subconscious hate me?

I think it might because I've been finding bruises on my arms lately and don't remember what they're from, so I think my subconscious might be making me beat myself up in my sleep. ;p

Motivation

I was over visiting with our neighbors (Jake's cousin and her husband) and they're purging a lot of their extra stuff and getting rid of things they don't need. I was helping sort stuff into the "keep", "toss" and "donate" piles and it made me realize that that process needs to be repeated in my apartment. I have totes and totes of extra crap that's taking up our limited space and I honestly don't know what's in most of them anymore.

So, my plan is to go through at least one tote every weekend and try to cut back on my excess crap. And then next, I'll have to "crack the whip" on Jake and make him go through his stuff. ;p

News flash

There are only 515 days until Jake and my wedding! I still think that 500+ days is a really long time, but I can't believe how fast the time has flown by since we picked our date!

The number of days between now and the BIG DAY keeps dwindling down and I feel so unprepared. Even though we have started looking at ceremony/reception locations, we don't have anything picked out yet (mostly because we've only actually looked at one venue so far and it didn't seem big enough to hold our guests). A lot of the ladies on the wedding board that I'm on for the month of October in 2012 have their venues picked out, as well has having their photographers, DJs and cake-bakers.

All I really have so far is my dress... Hopefully we'll be able to "kick it into high gear" this fall and really get things done!

Amazing Cakes

I've been watching a couple of episodes of "Amazing Cakes" today and I can't help but think "Sure, those cakes are cool looking, but fondant tastes disgusting and I wouldn't trade one of my Dad's cakes for 10 of the cakes on the show!"

Unfortunately, Dad's not around to make his cakes anymore... The more I think about this, the more I feel like I should try my hand at cake decorating. Sure, I'll never be as good as Dad because he could literally draw anything on his cakes and I'm not an artist, at all. But there are some cake decorating techniques that I think I could learn to make decent cakes.

I've always thought it would be cool to make my kids' birthday cakes and stuff like that. I just wish that I had a reason to practice my skills (or lack thereof) now.

Laundry day

I'm over at my mom's doing laundry right now. I'm almost finished with it, thankfully. I really would like to have my own washer and dryer, especially since it's getting warmer outside and I sweat my butt off toting all of my crap down to my car and then from my car into mom's, etc. Unfortunately, adding a washer and dryer would also increase our electric bill (but not water since water's included in our rent :D). So, I plan to see how much the bill goes up with us running our ACs and then maybe we can determine whether we can afford the additional money to run our dryer.

I really, really hope that we can because, even though I don't mind spending most of the day on Sundays over at Mom's, it's really a pain to have to lug everything over here and I would rather just be able to throw a load in the laundry whenever I needed to and not have to worry about having to wait until I have enough to "make it worth while" to take over to Mom's house.

So, I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed that the bill is low enough that I can justify purchasing a used washer and taking Mom's extra dryer over to the apartment so that I can do laundry as needed. :)

Pirates 4

Last night, my friend, Katy, paid for Jake and me to go see Pirates 4 in 3D! She felt bad because she didn't get us a card or anything for our engagement party a couple of months ago, and also because she never did anything for Christmas presents this past year. I was totally not worried about it, but she offered and I knew that Jake wouldn't turn her down, lol!

So, last night, we went and saw the movie. It was Jake's first time seeing a 3D movie in theaters. I have to say that it was really good, though I was left with some unanswered questions at the end. I'm hoping that these questions will be answered in the next movie, though I'm guessing that they won't be.

I would totally recommend this movie to pretty much anyone! It was different from the first 3 movies because it lacked the Will/Elizabeth element, but after 3 movies of that, I was totally okay with that! ;p

Glee

So, this show is supposed to be based in Lima, OH, which is a city that I live close to. I haven't really seen anything in the show that I recognize as being from Lima. This is part of the reason that I didn't really want to watch the show in the beginning. I figured that it wouldn't really do anything to showcase Lima, OH (not that Lima is super exciting or anything, but I thought that they must have had some reason for picking that city to base the show in).

However, every time I watch an episode, I find myself being drawn more and more into the show. I've even started watching the first season on Netflix because I missed it on TV. I'm not a total "Gleek" yet, but I really, really like the show (except Rachael annoying the crap out of me all the time, but I suppose that's what her character is supposed to do).

Two can play that game...

I'm considering "firing" my coworker as my wedding photographer because of some stuff that went down at work the other day. It wasn't really as big of a deal as it seemed that day, but I'm still considering not having her take the pictures at my wedding. Why should I do her a favor and pay her to do that after what happened?

Sorry about all the vague-ness, but I really don't want to get into details about what happened, I just wanted to share the whole "you pissed me off so now I'm thinking about cutting you out of my wedding" thing. I've been thinking over the past few months that it seems like a lot of the photographs that she takes are the same poses over and over, so I was kinda, sorta wanting to go with another photographer, anyways. This may just be the fuel in the fire of that decision.

New purchase

I was at the store today and saw that the beverage dispensers that I wanted to get for the wedding were $3 cheaper than the last time I had looked at them. Normally I'd hold off and see if they'd go down even more, but since there weren't a whole lot of them left, I went ahead and grabbed the 2 that I needed. This is what they look like, though the spout is a little different http://www.walmart.com/ip/Better-Homes-and-Gardens-Beverage-Dispenser-Clear/16517673.

I need to put some water in them and make sure that the spouts work like they're supposed to while I have the option to exchange them if they do not. As long as everything works okay, they'll probably be packed away in a wedding tote until I need them. Perhaps I will get them out a couple of months before I need them and take them for a "test drive". :)

Baby baptism

Today I went to a baby baptism and the party that followed the church service. It seemed like EVERYONE had a kid or was pregnant! It kinda makes me want to have a child of my own (even though I know that we're not in the best financial situation right now). But part of me thinks "if all of these teenagers that are now getting pregnant everywhere you turn can handled raising a baby, why can't I?"

It's really important to me to be married before I have children because I want to do things "in the right order" and not the reverse order that many people my age have been following. I want to be a family, where everyone has the same last name. It's not that I'm afraid of what people will say if I have a child out of wedlock, because I really couldn't care less about their opinions, but it's just always been in my "life plan" to have the wedding and then the kids.

I wish that there was a way to move the wedding closer so that I could start try to have a baby sooner, but I know that's a selfish wish and that I need to just hush up and be patient. It's just hard to do so when I see people every day that are pregnant, not to mention the fact that I work with infants at work, and it makes my heart ache for a baby of my own...

Trying something new

So, I've decided to make pizza burgers for dinner tonight. From the way the recipe sounds, it's going to be somewhat like a sloppy joe, but with pizza sauce instead of sloppy joe sauce, and then you melt mozzarella cheese on top of it. I really hope that it turns out well! I'll probably cheat and buy fries at the store and throw them in the oven to go along with the burgers. I don't feel like putting in the effort to make them from scratch today. Oh yeah, and we have IBC Root Beer to go along with dinner tonight!

Wedding Ideas

Okay, I know that I still have over a year and 5 months before my wedding, but I'm still kinda obsessed with visiting theknot.com and checking out wedding ideas and checking my wedding month board to see what other brides sharing my wedding month are doing or have done already.

I was looking at an article on the site about wedding bouquet ideas, and one of the ideas suggested adding flowers that mean/meant something to the people you care about. For example, you could include a flower that your grandmother had in her wedding bouquet, or pick a flower that means something special to your parents, etc.

I really like the idea of incorporating a flower from my grandmother's bouquet into mine. I was always really close to my grandma, so that would mean a lot to me. I'm also considering wrapping a cameo necklace (which I got out of her jewelry box after she passed away) around the stems of my bouquet. It's nothing special or antique; it's just an Avon necklace that has the white cameo of a lady on the pendant. What's neat about this one, though, is that the background is a pretty orange color, instead of the traditional dark blue that you see with most other cameo necklaces.

Since it does have orange on it, it will tie in really well with my wedding color scheme (dark purple/eggplant and burnt orange, along with a bunch of other fall shades), but I think I would use it even if it clashed horribly, because it was hers.

I think I also would like to have an honorary bouquet made up for family members that have passed away and cannot be physically present at the wedding. I do intend to have a memory candle there, as well, but I'm thinking that a memory arrangement/bouquet would be nice.

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In other wedding planning news: I actually got Jake out to the VFW hall to check out their rental hall to see if it would suit our needs. It seems small to me, even though they say it can hold up to 180 people. I just can't envision how we would fit 150-180 people in there, plus a DJ booth, plus a dance floor, plus a head table, plus food tables. I think that we need to keep "shopping around" to see what else Wapak has to offer.