Wedding Prep Weekend Extravaganza!

So this weekend was crammed full of wedding prep! On Friday night my maid of honor came out and took me for mani-pedis! It was super super nice, even if we did almost get 'shanked' on our way out! It wasn't in the nicest part of town...

The next morning I had my second dress fitting, it went really well. The bustle is awesome and she's taking it in just a smidge more, so I'll have 1 more fitting before I'm all done.

After lunch my mom and I went to the salon for hair and makeup tests. They totally NAILED the look I was going for, I was thrilled. My mom still isn't satisfied with hers, so we're still figuring that out. Before we left they took my hair down and styled it down so that it would look fab and not ruin the surprise for my bachelorette party!

We had an absolute ball. We had a limo and went to dinner, a chocolate party, wine tasting and VIP'd at a club! I will never forget how awesome that was, I seriously have some of the best friends on the planet! The next day we went to breakfast, and then I went home to celebrate some family birthdays with surf 'n turf!

What a weekend, now it's back to regular life!

We interrupt your regular blog schedule...

I just wanted to take a moment to apologise for our rather sporadic updates the last couple weeks. We are now 1 month out from our wedding! Eeeek! Needless to say that means we've had a million demands on our time, so posting has become a little tricky to keep up with.

Rest assured single reader,  I have a new post in the works and I'm sure we'll be back to a more predictable schedule once the madness ends.

By the way, I'm always on the fence about this, would anyone actually be interested in reading posts about our wedding plans? I tend to keep them away from here because I know some people get sick of hearing about weddings, etc. Let me know in the comments!

Landscaping MAGIC

Ok, so maybe it's not magic, but it's still pretty awesome if I do say so myself.

We've finally made progress on the front yard! I decided the weather was perfect for planting, so I went to Home Depot (sigh~* I do enjoy that store...) and made a tree-style decision! I got us a little 5 food Cleveland Pear. She's purty, and supposedly will grow fast! My first trip to HD last weekend resulted in this:

That's 50 bucks worth of fun right there.
1 Tree
2 Potted Mums (the ones I got from Meijer just never took right, I don't think they were good quality)
1 jug of Preen ~ for the winning of the weed war
4 New house numbers!

50 bucks of home improvement stuff can go a long way! After I got home Brian and I stood in front of the house for a good hour hemming and hawing over where to put the tree and what else we should do right now, because even after we planted the tree and put out the new mums it was still going to look fairly hideous. So the decision was made to mulch.

In fall??? Yes, in the fall. We'll spread more in the spring, but will be worth it so that I don't have to cringe when I look at our raggedy dirt clod farm. Also it's on sale right now, since it's fall. So back to HD we went...

Of course though, mulch was not all that caught our eye. Oh no. They had my hearts desire hidden amongst the junipers and shrubberies... a dwarf burning bush! I have always known I wanted these, I love burning bushes like mad, but the regular kind get so huge! But I didn't think a big-box store like home depot would carry that variety for some reason. Needless to say we bought it. Then we had to get it home....

Yeah, that's the ticket! Don't worry, we were gentle. I think it was still a little peeved though, because it did try to eat Brian on the drive home...

He survived, and the trauma is nothing a few decades of therapy won't fix.

So after we got the mulch and my new bush friend home, we stood in the yard and moved stuff around for another hour, then got to work. We knew we had to put the tree at least 10 feet from the house, and surprisingly, the dead spot in the middle of the yard was exactly that! It used to have a tree in it, which was a stump when we moved in. Then we had the tree people grind it away, so it was just an empty dirt pile.

We got them planted and I spent that evening and some of the next day spreading mulch. We also planted the new mums, got the fall wreath out, and Brian went up to the eave to figure out why one of our shutters is pushing away from the wall. It's bees. It's always bees for me. He hit them with some 'anti bee' stuff and soon he'll knock the nest down so we can realign the shutter.


First, a reminder of what it looked like when we moved in:

Then all summer it looked like this:

So embarrassing... And without further ado:

Ta da! The tree is right on the edge there...

There it is, and that's the bush as well! I'm actually pretty amazed at how much better it all looks with a little mulch and a couple starting plants. Yeah, we know the yard itself isn't there yet, but one thing at a time people! Also, here's a closer view of the festive front door:

I will be adding to the festive-nature of the front door, but Brian won't let me yet, he thinks it's still too early.

One last thing, I am liking the view out our lower level window now!

That hosta better watch its step, it's the only one that survived from the previous owners. The others didn't know their place...

I love thrift stores.

Last weekend before the football game (yay football! Oh how I've missed you.) I went to this awesome place in Ann Arbor called Treasure Mart. It's part thrift store, part antique shop. They have a ton of stuff and the level of quality tends to be much higher then your average thrift store, they're hours are pretty short though so it can be hard to get a trip in.

I went to poke around, there are a few things I'm looking for like nightstands, chairs for the lower level, etc. but also it's a really fun place to browse. Actually I found my favorite geisha doll there doing just that. This time I struck gold! Literally!

As you probably guessed from the last post that included that lovely renaissance faire photo I am hugely into historic fashion. ( man I am so many different types of geek I shock myself sometimes...) One thing within that that I think is cool are fashion prints. Old ones. I found this pair of prints in vintage frames on top of a pile of crap:

The prints feature one woman from about 1580 (left) and the other is from about 1865, these are estimates of course, but I'm judging by what they are wearing. They are matted with velvet ribbon, and in the gaudiest frames I've ever seen... they're perfect! I'm not sure when they were printed, but I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm going to hang them in my studio by my sewing machine. With the orange walls and ultra modern equipment I think they will contrast nicely! I am not ruling out painting the frames, but for now I like them as-is.

This also reminds me, I have a fashion catalog from the 1940's. I think it's Macy's but I'll have to check. I've got to figure out something cool to do with that as well.

Happy Autumn Everyone!

So Labor Day has come and gone, and you know what that means? I can put up the fall stuff and nobody can give me a hard time about it! Such a wonderful time of year... I've already put up our fall wreath on the front door!

We did use every moment of the long weekend, let me break it down for you (because I know you're soooo excited about it)

Friday: Took an hour long walk around the neighborhood, then came back and made Noodle Meat Stuff (yuuuummm) and watched a movie.

Saturday: Brian had to work, so our friend Sanjeev and I went downtown and watched the opening football weekend craziness! I also went to the antique and thrift store downtown and found a few treasures that I will detail in a subsequent post. Then we came back home to watch the Wolverines thrash UConn. Fun was had by all.

Sunday: My family joined us at Brian's family's lake house! It was great to get everybody together, and we got to play around on the water, even though it was cold.

Monday: I geeked it up at the Michigan Renaissance Festival! I wore this dress:

It's my favorite :) And yup I made it cause I'm a huge dork. It rained and got very muddy, so hopefully I can fix that...

And last night my family got together for Brian's 25th birthday! He didn't know the entire horde would be there, so it was a very fun surprise.

So now hopefully life will return to normal (and I can get back on the healthy-eating bandwagon, yikes!) and I can keep moving on the piles of projects we have lying around!