The longest award post ever

Laura aka Miss Mojito from With This Ring I Thee Blog awarded me the Happy 101 Blog Award today! Thanks, girl! I just started reading her blog and it's fantastic. Ch-ch-check it out!

So I have to tell you 10 things that make me happy and pass it on to a few of my favorite bloggers. So here goes!

1. Joshie Poo! That's my totally embarrassing nickname for him. Sorry babe!

2. My boys, Joey and Tyler. They came into our lives back in April and I can't imagine life without them. Every day they bring me so much joy and make me laugh til I cry. These pictures are from their first night with us.

3. Glee! The show is totally fun. It somehow always manages to put a tear in my eye and a smile on my face at the same time. I seriously *long* to be a good singer and good LAWD the singers on this show are just spectacular. Their cover of Queen's "Somebody to Love" is other-worldly. Enjoy!

4. My Mom!! Hands down, she's the best. She's really looking forward to the wedding and loves her soon-to-be son-in-law! Ps, hello shiny face! Holy crap...

5. Summatime!! More specifically, our summer vacation in the OBX, North Carolina. I spend the majority of my time there at the pool and sometimes it needs a good cleaning!

6. Fabulous eye make up. Random, huh? I just really love eye make up, the more dramatic the better. If I could pull off any of these looks I'd be a happy woman.

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7. My gal pals. I'm surrounded by an amazing group of women who have shaped who I am today. This is totally just an excuse to show off :) If I missed anyone, my bad. Love you all!

 

 

 

8. My supa-dupa-fly bomb-ass Followers! Without you I wouldn't have the will to keep blogging. Thanks for your comments, your support, your encouragement, and your awesomeness!

9. Drag Queens. I mean, really. Does this one even NEED an explanation? They're FABULOUS! I think this might go hand in hand with my love of dramatic eye make up.

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10. LOLcats/I Can Has Cheezburger. This site is freaking hilarious!! I seriously laugh SO hard when I look at their pictures. I wish my cats would do funny things so I could submit them. Here are a few of my favorites, courtesy of the ICHC website.

Wow....this took me really long to write. Now I would like to pass this award to the following lovely ladies (believe me, it was so hard to choose!):

Buhdoop

Random Reflections of a Perfectionist

Lucky in Love

Edited to add: Whoopsie! That video is huuuuge! That was my first time embedding a video. My bad :(

Ring P0rn

Ok, I think I've made you wait long enough. Jeana from My Dream Ring commented on my teaser post that either we eloped or bought our rings. Well, I can assure you that we absolutely did NOT elope, but we absolutely DID buy our wedding bands! Here are a few pictures to satisfy your appetite:

 

 

 

Here is a sneak peak of something I'm going to blog about soon!

The fabulous Gasser Fine Jewelers (where Josh purchased my e-ring) invited us to their open house last weekend where they were offering 25% off of almost all of their inventory. SCORE! Ain't no shame in buying your rings on sale, girls. In the end, we were able to save about $600! That is a nice chunk of change, wouldn't you say? Luckily both of our rings fit right out of the case so there was no wait time! It took him just a few minutes to find one that he loved. Boys are so simple! 

Josh's ring is palladium, which I guess is part of the platinum family. Here is the Wiki if you're interested. It is so strange seeing him with a ring. Josh doesn't wear any jewelry, so seeing him with left-hand bling is going to be a bit of an adjustment.

My wedding ring is the match to my e-ring. I love it more than I could possibly ever say. It looks so freaking perfect with my e-ring...omg I can hardly STAND it. Don't tell Josh, but when he's at work I'll slip mine on for a few minutes and just stare.

Were you able to score any major deals during wedding planning?

I gots mah hurr did!

*Warning* Picture-heavy post, mostly of my silly mug. Enjoy!

I love love LOVE my future sister-in-law, Brianna (aka Bree/Breeze/Breezy). Seriously, she's the bomb dot com and I will sing her praises as long as I live. As I've mentioned before she's a hair stylist and has got some mayjah skills. I showed her my inspiration pictures (which you'll remember from this post) and after giving me a fabulous blow-out (with just a round brush!), we got to work. Please remember this was just the first trial and she did these very loose. Plus my hair was freshly washed with zero product in it. At our next trial (I get unlimited trials because I'm family. Lucky me!) she'll make everything tighter.

This was the first style we tried to recreate:

And this is how it turned out:

 

Although I loved the inspiration photo, neither of us were really feeling the look on me. Actually that first picture looks pretty good, but in person it just didn't feel right.

Here is the next picture I showed her.

As you'll see in the picture, she didn't pin back my bangs. Instead, she decided to figure out what was going on in the back and create something based on that. Here is what she came up with:

 

 

 

 

This is the style we're going to work on perfecting during my next trial. I'll explain why at the end of the post.

And finally, here is the 3rd picture I showed her:

This is what Bree created:

Pretty cute, right? Ultimately, however, we decided that this wasn't quite right for me either. She did all of these styles in about an hour and I was so impressed. We got a really good idea of what looks good on me versus what doesn't look so good. I can't wait until the next time we can play!

OH! And the BEST thing that came out of this trial was that Breeze told me I can cut my hair! Apparently I have more than enough hair to work with and that if I wanted to, I could cut off an inch. And INCH?! That's a lot in curly hair world and will make my hair look so much better. Oh, I can't wait to cut it!

I came to an interesting and sobering conclusion during the trial: you must trust the pros. Bree has been telling me all along that I should look like myself on my wedding day and I continually said "No no, I don't care about that. I'll feel like myself no matter what." What can I say, I'm a know-it-all. Well, um, I was wrong. Totally wrong. I'm used to seeing my hair with a ton of texture. Also, I'm used to seeing myself with BIG hair. I love volume and I love to have my hair high up on my head. Basically, I belong in New Jersey.*

Anyway, I realized that with the first and third style, there just wasn't enough texture for me. You can't really tell from the picture, but the 2nd style is textured on top as opposed to smooth like the other two. I finally *got* it. Yes, I do want to look like myself on my wedding day, and "myself" includes big, curly hair. So ladies, trust the professionals. They get paid for a reason.

Did you eat a big slice of humble pie at any point during your wedding planning?

*Please don't email or comment about how I'm stereotyping NJ. My grandma is from there and she loves her some big-ass hair, too.

I Loved Our Cake Tasting & Why Inspiration Photos Lie

First let me just say that I *adore* our baker and all of the people who work at Wild Flour Bakery. Everyone we met the other day was so helpful and energetic and NICE. I really appreciate nice people, especially during the craziness of wedding planning. For the most part, all of our vendors have been a pleasure to work with and I know they are doing their very best to make our wedding day as close to perfect as it can get.

Next, let me say that *holycrap* the people over at Wild Flour know how to make a freakin' cake! They gave us seven flavors to try and all 7 were pretty damn amazing. Plus! The pieces they gave us to take home to try were enormous. So enormous, in fact, that Josh, myself, my mom, and my grandma were all able to sample them. Take a look at these bad boys!

We were also given 6 flavors of icings and fillings to try. I sort of died because they were all SO GOOD.

During our tasting, however, we learned something very interesting that I would like to pass along to all of you: inspiration photos are crap. Apparently all of the cakes in the pictures (remember those?) I brought in are tiny. We're estimating 180-200 people at our wedding. The cakes in the pictures I brought in feed MUCH less than that. My advice? Find cakes from weddings that you KNOW had as many people as you're expecting. That way you will not be met with the disappointment that I was.

Luckily we were still able to come up with a design that matched my vision AND will feed all of our guests. I'm going to keep the cake flavors and design a secret until after the wedding. Gotta leave some things a surprise, right?

What was your cake tasting like?

Such a Tease

Just a sneak peak of what Josh and I did this weekend. Full post with better (closer) pics coming soon!

The Bane of My Existence: Hair

BM Bree (aka FSIL) is in town this weekend! YAY! If you'll remember from my post about the BM hair drama (update coming soon), I mentioned that Bree is doing my hair for the wedding. She is a very talented stylist and I wouldn't want anyone else touching my hair on my wedding day. Since she's here for a few days she agreed to do a hair trial with me. Basically I need to know if I can keep my hair at the length it's at now, or if I should grow it another inch or so. I'm really hoping she'll tell me she can work with the length it's at now because I *haaaaate* having long hair. As a reminder, this is the hair she has to work with:

Recent pic of me and Josh. He's Mr. Smiles as always.

Here are a few pictures I plan on showing her for inspiration. I've divided them into 3 categories: Volume, Off the Face, and Height on Top but Sleeker. And yes, I'm very aware that I'm a freak. I wave my freak flag high and proud.

Volume:

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Mariska Hargitay is so amazingly beautiful. 

 

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Off the Face:

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Not quite sure where I found this one

Height on Top but Sleeker:

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I'm not looking to recreate any of these looks exactly, but hopefully these pictures will help her create something fabulous. Pictures will be posted next week!

Did you go overboard on hair inspiration photos or did you let your stylist run wild?

STD Saga (thankfully, burning pee-free!)

Haha I crack myself up with that title. Clearly I'm 13 again. Anyway...

Our save-the-dates should be in the hot little hands of most of our guests by now, so it's finally time to reveal them!

I searched many many MANY websites for many many MANY hours for inspiration. From the beginning I knew I wanted to use one of our engagement pictures. Exactly *how* I wanted to use them was still up in the air. Did I want to do a postcard? Did I want to create a film strip? Make them myself or use a template? Should I use one picture or more than one? So.Many.Decisions.

But then I remembered a post from Mrs. Cheese detailing her STDs. They were simple, to the point, and pretty darn perfect.

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I even commented on her post with this:

"It's so nice to see something simple yet completely fabulous. I've gone back and forth over what I want to do for STDs and I think I want to go your route. Easy-peasy!"

Her STDs obviously stuck in my head for a reason, so I decided to create some super simple STDs a la Cheese. Once I figure out the concept I began the design process. Josh installed an illegal copy of Photoshop on my computer about a year ago (shhh don't tell anyone) and I took a graphics class in college, so I've got the basics of Photoshop mastered. And by "basics" I mean I can create a text box and move it where I need it.

After many drafts, here are the two STDs I created.

I couldn't pick which one I liked better, and neither could Josh. So, we sent out both! I uploaded the files on the Walgreens photo website, and ordered 130 (65 of each) 4x6 prints.The total came to $19.50. Not too shabby!

We ended up buying A LOT of envelopes. We decided to print the addresses on our home computer, but we have a pretty sucky printer that messed up many of the envelopes. I think in total we spent about (omg just totaled this) $26.82 in envelopes. These were so expensive because we didn't have the option of buying *just* envelopes, so we have a plethora of 5x7 cards now, as well.

Postage was a little crazy, too. We bought 7 books of "Forever" stamps which totaled $61.60 (gah! Holy crap!) We ended up sending out 112 STDs.

The total for the supplies and postage was $107.92.

The *Grand Total* per STD is :::drumroll please::: $.96

Not too shabby, huh? By the way, I've greatly minimized the crappy bs of the printer situation. We actually got to the point where buying a brand new ($150) printer seemed like a good idea. For a more accurate portrayal of printer troubles, mosey on over to my friend Katie's blog, Random Reflections of a Perfectionist. Very funny.

Was your save-the-date process a saga or a storybook?