New Life and New Blog

After more than a year of planning, I'm finally married!

And now that I'm married, I have a new name, a (some what) new life, and thus, a new blog to showcase our adventures as newlyweds!  Check us out HERE! 

Curling

After watching women's curling at the Olympics, we were excited to try it ourselves.  Seattle's Granite Curling Club has an Open House a few times a year where the public is allowed to come in and try curling with a small lesson.  I discovered that curling is MUCH more difficult than it looks - you have to think about what your legs are doing, how hard you're pushing yourself forward, how you're holding the rock to give it a certain spin, AND not falling over!  Well, I'm not a very coordinated person, so it was an interesting experience. :) 

 Sorry it's a bit blurry - it was hard to get a good picture in this room with all the lights and shiny ice.

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Overall, we had a great time.  There were A LOT of people there, so we didn't get as much practice time as we would have liked, but it was a great experience...and we can always go to another open house next year!

Bridesmaid Dresses

Who knew picking out a bridesmaid dress that all my wonderful ladies and I would like could be such a difficult task?!

We (and by we, I mean the lovely and wonderful Megan and Sarah) tried on MANY dresses.  They are such amazing friends - they tried on every dress I pulled off the rack.  I had an idea of what I was looking for - something not TOO bridesmaid-y, , something that had the possibility of adding a sash to the waist, and something they might actually have a chance of wearing again.

Along our dress journey, we discovered we wanted something satin (the fabric seemed more appropriate for a church wedding) with a bit of ruching.  Out of ALL the dresses the girls tried on, all 4 girls and myself liked the kelly green dress the best!  I love the sweetheart neckline!  Of course, we won't be getting it in kelly green...we have ordered it in black. 

My mom reacted with shock and horror when I told her I wanted black bridesmaid dresses.  A black dress just seems classier and MUCH less bridesmaid-y to me...it's also not as uncommon as it used to be.  After seeing some other weddings (mostly recently Bachelor Jason's wedding), she has come around to the idea of a black dress.  We're compromising by adding a blue sash to the dress...it should look very cute and add a nice pop of color.

So, what do you think?

Honeymoon!

I've been busy working on lots of wedding things, one of which was booking our honeymoon!  Scott and I decided we wanted to go some place warm that we would likely never go again.  We were told the Carribean and Mexico were VERY hot and humid in July and August, so we voted not to go anywhere in that region.  We loved the look of Bora-Bora, but with plane tickets at $5,000 for the two of us, that was out of the question!  We decided to hit up AAA to get some advice.  Our helpful agent, Yvette, suggested Fiji, "a poor man's Bora-Bora" as she described it.
After meeting with Yvette, we spent a month or so exploring our options and decided that we liked the resorts she had suggested the best, and we discovered that she was able to get us a much better price than we could on our own!  So we went back to Yvette and booked! :)

We will be staying at a small, adult only island resort called Matamanoa.  The island is part of the Mamanuca Islands (to the left of the main island, Viti Levu). 

We had 2 travel options for getting to the island - a catamaran or a helicopter.  While the helicopter was relatively expensive, we decided to splurge and go for it on our trip to the island.  However, we were informed that they have a strict 30 lb baggage limit.  Scott assures me I can do it, but for an overpacker like myself, this is a rather stressful idea!  Oh well, I'll have to make it work! :) 

The island looks absolutely beautiful! 

We'll be staying in one of those beach front bures for 5 nights! 

Then we'll head back to the main land for 2 nights to get a little more of the town feel of Fiji.  We'll be staying at the Sofitel Resort in Nadi.  Isn't it gorgeous?!

We are so excited to go and relax in the warmth of the Fijian sunshine!

Olympics 2010!

This past weekend, Scott and I took a trip up to Vancouver, BC for the Winter Olympics!  We joined some friends of ours in Vancouver for exploring and fun.  We spent Saturday exploring downtown and waiting in A LOT of lines.

This is part of the Olympic Village - notice the flags of each country on the building they are staying in. 

 

 We waited in so many lines it's ridiculous.  This was us waiting in line for the Sky Train to go into downtown.

On Sunday, we all went to a Women's curling match!  There were 4 games going at once, one of which was US vs. Canada (they kicked our butts!).

 

 Later that day, we headed downtown to see the Olympic Torch.  Again, we had to wait in line for about an hour...but it was fun to see it up close.

We felt so lucky to be a partake in the Olympic events.  We'll likely never get to go to the Olympics again, so this was a once in a life time experience! :)

Valentine Crafts!

I've never been a HUGE fan of Valentine's Day...especially before I met Scott. :)  I'm definitely not into the commercialism of the holiday - I'm not interested in roses or chocolates in heart shaped boxes (I'm definitely into chocolate, just not in a heart shaped box).  This year I've started following A LOT of craft blogs and was so inspired to decorate for the holiday.  Here are two projects I've squeezed in between house projects and wedding planning...

LOVE Sign

For the L, I used some fabric I already had and bought some spray adhesive.  One thing I learned about spray adhesive is that it is VERY hard to get off your fingers and it doesn't dry right away, so your fingers can stay tacky for a long time.

I painted the O pink and then used a hot glue gun to glue on pink and red buttons.
I used my new Cricut (thank you Costco for having an AMAZING sale!) to cut out hearts and used the spray adhesive to glue them on to the V.  The spray adhesive didn't work to stick them around the corners...they've been falling off.  So I need to get some Mod Podge to stick the pieces back on.
For the E, I painted it pink then used some spray adhesive to stick pink glitter to the letter.

Candy Heart Frame

 

In looking at many different blogs, I saw a lot of people using candy hearts for crafting.  So I bought a cheap wood frame at JoAnns, painted it pink and used a hot glue gun to stick the candies to the frame.  I bought a large bag of candy hearts and had a hard time finding enough "good" ones to use...clearly there is no quality control before the candies are bagged, many didn't even have any writing on them.

Engagement Pictures!

The wedding photographer Scott and I booked was pretty busy this fall, so we scheduled our engagement session for the spring. However, we still wanted a professional looking picture to use on our save the dates and not one of our typical self-taken photos. Our friend, Joshua Schumacher, is an amazing photographer in the process of starting up his own photography business! We asked him to take a few photos of us. Well, a few photos turned into a complete photo shoot and Josh got some great pics - which I'm sure wasn't easy with how un-photogenic we can be! :) Neither of us could figure out how to "look like you love each other", we ended up looking like we were in pain, haha! :)

Here are some of our favorites:



We are so grateful to Josh and absolutely LOVE the photos! If you're interested, Josh does family pictures, wedding pictures, senior pictures, you name it - he is amazing! :)