Good Lord....

I want to apologize severly on my lack of blogginess (i just made that up! hehe) I have been soo darn busy the past two months, I've barely have had time to breathe!!! AAACCCKK!! Anyways, sooo I'll try to give ya'll a quick run down of what all has been going on!!

1. The week after Thanksgiving I got a second job at Macys, to which as of right now I am still working, but trying to quit, but no one will answer the damn phone!!! =) That is seriously what has taken up my precious time and energy, but the weekly pocket change pay checks are always nice! =)

2. Brandon and I got a apartment!!! Well duplex really!! It is super cute and I will absolutely post pics!!! I moved in the week of New Years, and we just love it. He officially moves in after we are married, but of course he has his WWII museum all fixed and everything!

3. Christmas was an absolute blur!! It was a fantastic one though!!! Santa brought me the most beautiful Empire Red Kitchenaid Mixer I have ever seen!! I really cried when I saw and screamed too!! I named her Rita after Rita Hayworth!!

4. FI and I purchased our first firearm. He went to a gunshow and bought a .45 calibur. It's quite HUGE for a pistol, but that is what he wanted, and so now we have protection for us, you just never know what could happen. And no we don't live in a ghetto or anything, hehe. I'm wanting to get this cute little .38 something or other that is silver and has pink pearl hand grips. Of course, I only want it cause it's precious, but whatever =)

5. The wedding is coming around!! The invites were sent out The second week of January I think? lol and of course we still have some stragglers that we are getting out. We have so far invited 408!!! OMG!! WTH!! But alot are out of town, so who knows, we shall see.

6. I had my bridal shower this past weekend!! It was absolutely wonderful!!! My hostesses were amazing and put everything together soo nicely for me!! I loved it!! There were a few things that could've gone better, i.e. the grooms mother and sister could've stayed longer than 25, minutes, but other than that it was great!!! We got soo much stuff!! I'll post pics of that too in a bit!

7. My dress is finally getting there. I took it to have a corset put in and bustle and have her add my moms veil to mine for my blusher. I absolutely LOVE IT!!!! It's still at the alterations place cause she had to take some boning out of the bodice because it was sticking up, but other than that it's perfect!!!

8. Brandon and I took our e-pics back in December. We took them on the Battleship Texas!! We had a blast doing it and we love our pics!! Lol Will also post those in a bit too!!

9. My wedding check list is finally dwindling. I have made soo many checks it's not even funny!! I guess I need to regroup and come up with a new list! My mom's friend Debbie has been staying at my parents house every monday night so she doesn't have to drive over an hour to go to work the next day and she has been helping us out tremendously!!! I'm wanting to get as much done now so that the last week I can relax and not worry about a thing!!!

Well I think that is all for now for my recap. I'll repost again with some pics of stuff for everyone to see!!!!

Corsets, bustles, nutcrackers and more!

Ohh my this weekend was pretty darn fun!!! We didn't do a whole lot WR but what we did that was WR, I feel like are big things to me!! =)

Friday night, FI and I just relaxed and chilled out. The week at work had been a hard one for me and I was just exhausted. (My co-worker was out all week so I was doing both of our jobs and I was TOTALLY stressed out. I had gotten my performance review and it was a VERY good one. My boss told me that most people don't score as high as I did after just a year!! YAY ME!!! )

Friday night we just relaxed, watch a movie and ate some wonderful beef stew that FI's dad had made. I was good though and didn't eat any cornbread!! =) OH, I also spoke with my photog about when to do Bridals and e-pics. They said we still haev PLENTY of time for both, which was a totally relief to me. The place that FI and I originally wanted to do e-pics had been damaged severely during the hurricane, but they are making progress as to getting it back on it's feet. They are hoping to re-open in a few weeks. My photog really wants to do our pics down there, so I just need to call and see when they are going to be back up and running and we'll go from there!! =) We'll just do my bridals whenever hopefully the weather is still good, hopefully before the end of december, january weather down here is nasty.

Saturday my mom and I were going to the alterations lady in Houston. I have unfortunately gained some weight and decided that I needed to put a corset in my dress so that I would be able to fit ok into my dress on the day of. My mom was pissed at first at this decision, well mainly because I had gained weight but whatever. So mom and I went. I put my dress on and I tried it on with a petticoat I had ordered that had 3 hoops in it (i had gotten it because I wanted my skirt to be really full) well it ended up being WAY to full and so we took it off. I'm just going to stick with my original one I had gotten when we got the dress.

One thing that rocked was that the lady was actually able to zip me up in my dress!! I was sooo excited!!!! My mom hadn't been able to earlier in the week ( i think she was being to careful) but the lady (dana) didn't ahve any problems!!! THis made me happy. Well I was glad that she was able to do that BUT the bodice didn't lay flat, it was kinda bunched up in the back and the front was kinda wrinkly. So she gave me two options, either she can let it out OR she can put the corset which she'll also have to take the bodice in too. We decided to go with her putting the corset in and taking the bodice in. I figured this would be the safest thing to. The corset cost $95 and taking the bodice in cost $85.

We also are getting her to do my bustle. My train is FOREVER long and it's going to take 10-12 pickups for her to bustle my train, but it looks OH SOO PRETTY!!! =) I LOVE IT!! And she does the color coding ribbons which will be soo easy to do!!!

This isn't my dress, but (I THINK) this is what my bustle is going to look like!!!

She will also be taking a piece from my mothers veil and adding it to my veil so that it will be my blusher. I'm really excited about this and it means soo much to me. I talked to FI and he wants to lift my veil, so that is settled to!! I think it's cool that the same veil that my dad lifted over my mom will be the same way FI will lift over me!! =)

After the alterations lady, we headed to Sams. We wanted to check out prices of candy for our candy buffet. They had some really good prices for the bulk stuff and I know we will be getting some of the candy from there for sure!! We also looked at cheesecakes which we will be having at our RD. We decided to get 3 plain and then have different kinds of toppings that you can put on it (blueberry, strawberry, cherry, chocolate) mmm it will be good!!!

After Sams, FI met us and picked me up and we headed to the nutcracker market at Reliant. OMG, I was in Christmas decoration HEAVEN!!!! Soooo many many things, that I had a hard time containing myself. Christmas is my most fav time of year, I LOVE decorating, I LOVE the smells, I LOVE christmas trees and just the whole ambiance of it, just makes me sooo happy!!! Well this place ahd everything. Booths were EVERYWHERE!!! We didn't get to see nearly everything we wanted but we did get a few things. I've become very big on personalized stuff for us so we got a Christmas plate that you can write on with a dry erase marker and you can whatever you want to on it. We got a cheese plate thats christmasy that has an S on it. We got a white cup towel with and embroidered S on it. We also got some other things like a sign to hang that says "Keep Christ in Christmas" and a big metal christmas tree that you put a pillar candle at the bottom of. They had this company there called Paul Michael and they had some fantastic prices on stuff. I sooo could've bought more but the wallet didn't allow that. But thats ok, I believe we are set for christmas when we finally get to have it at our OWN place!!! =)

After the nutcracker market we went and had mexican food, then went home and watched National Treasure 2!

Sunday, FI and I went to church. They had the little toddler kids sing a song and they were precious!! i wish I had taken my camera because they were just too cute!!! This couple that sat next to us had their new born baby in church with them, and they were just holding her and loving on her. It's moments like that when I get teary eyed and makes me want to have kids NOW!! =)

After church we went to Kohls and registered. I was pretty impressed with the selection of stuff there. It only took us an hour, I think becuase we weren't debating everything this time like we had before and we just kinda went nutz with the scanner!! OH well, it was fuN!!! =) But now I've gotta go and take some stuff off our other registry because we liked some stuff better at Kohls that at BBB.

After Kohls, we went to Conns too look at some furniture and a tv. The furniture that we had seen in the ad and online did NOT look anything like what was pictured. It was cheap looking which bummed us out. OH well. We did find a table and chairs that we REALLY REALLY like and it's only $300, so that's a possibility. We also found a tv that we like and may get, it will be our christmas and wedding gift to ourselves if we do get it, cause it's pretty expensive. It's a 50" plasma HDTV. It's soooo nice and somethign I never would've thought of us getting, but of course we do need a tv and why not??!!! but we shall see if we get it or not. Of course FI is like yeah lets get it and i'm like a nervous wreck like OMG thats alot of money. We are hoping that the day after thanksgiving they will have a HUGE sale and maybe we could get it then =)

Well that was our weekend in a nutshell. I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!!! =)

Can't sleep

I couldn't sleep last night for the life of me!! I kept thinking of all this stuff for the wedding I've got to do, then I started thinking about little stuff about the wedding that was worrying me. Like I was thinking about when we are leaving the church and getting into our little get away car, is there any lighting out there for people to see us?? Our Ceremony is at 4 and that will be like 20-25 minutes and then take pictures, reception is up stairs at church, that will be like an hour-an hour and a half, and then we'll be leaving like 630ish or so?? not sure, but It will probably be dark by then, cause the time will still be like it is now, and it's getting darker at 530ish or so.

So many little petty things I keep thinking of. I need to do some DIY stuff so I can just be done with it!!! =) I started working on wording for the invites. I'm not wanting to do the typical stuff, I wanted like a cute little phrase before it and then go from there. but we'll see. I can't fit much on our invites, well according to our template I can't. OH well. I'll figure something out.

OH! The first weekend of November, I went BM dress shopping with 3 of the girls!!! SOoo excited cause they all tried on and picked out their dresses!! Two are being bought off the rack (put on lay away) and just one needs to be ordered!!! YAY!!! Here's the dresses they picked out:

This is FI's sisters dress

This is my SIL Ashley (bros wife) and FI's niece Ryan's dress.

Fi's niece Drew, this is her dress

These are my shoes!! Ordered them from Davids Bridal in Champagne, the style is Chloe which is awesome since that's FI's familys dog name!!! =)

Another thing that has happened, that I do not think I have written about is that my Aunt and Uncle have generously offered to pay for our Rehearsal Dinner!!! When they told us, I was THRILLED beyond belief!!! I couldn't believe it!!! So now we are planning that. We are just doing something simple. It will be catered and will be at the Community Center down the street from FI's house. It's a whole lot cheaper for us to do it this way than having it at a restaraunt in town. We found some really cute tableware and stuff to use, and we've already thought about what to do for the invites too!!! My mom even ordered some little party favor cars (they look like old time cars) and we are going to put candy in them!!

We will have italian food catered from an italian restaraunt in town, and they have the BEST food!! =) I just hope that everyone likes it!! I'll be nervous cause I'm pretty sure we are supposed to say something at the dinner. I may even be crying too, who knows!! =)

My aunt's sister does embroidery, so my mom is going to order some hankies offline and get her to do them for free!! Just have to buy the thread and that's all!!

I guess another thing I've been thinking about alot is Christmas. It is FAST approaching!!! I can't believe it!!! I'm trying to convince FI that for he and I, instead of buying individual gifts, for us to put our money together and get a flat screen tv. We are going to have to get something cause when they switch over to whatever it is in February, we wont' be able to use either TV we have, but hopefully we can get the box for those too.

This weekend I am hoping that FI and I can go finish registering (i'm thinking Sears and maybe Kohls or Macys). I may have to bribe him with Mexican food but that's fine. Just as long as we can get that done!!! =) I wish there was more than one Crate in Barrel in town(just in Houston), I love that store and I would register there, but since there isn't one that is located close to people, we will refrain =( I wish (and this sounds absolutely horrible and bratty of me) that we were having my shower or getting married before christmas, so that we could register for christmas decorating stuff!!! haha i'm kinda kidding about that =) I wouldn't though, and I doubt the FI would let me!!!

But I absolutley love christmas time and decorating for it!! i cannot wait!!! FI and I bought a whole BUNCH of stuff after new years last year, all christmas decorating stuff and I can't wait to put it out!! I just wish we had our own place to put it out at =( oh well, thats ok, it'll still be fun!!!

Sorry this post is bouncing around from subject to subject, that's just how my mind has been lately, blah!!!!! But I will leave you with some vintage inspired christmas decorations!!

Halloween Fun!!

Well I know this is a little late, but I just had to show off the jack-o-lanterns the FI and I made for Halloween this year!!! They turned out soo good!! We had a blast doing them and both agreed that we would do this every year! (YAY for traditions!!) In conclusion, here are our first ever jack-o-lanterns that we did together!!!

All of our pumpkins together: FSIL Ashleys, FI's and minePumpkins on the porch!

This is Fi's pumpkin!! The dog on the right he did to look like Chloe =)
This is my pumpkin, ol snaggle tooth, and yeah i did use the stencils, there is no way in this world that I could do this on my own!! =)
This is Fi and Chloe! We dressed her up for Halloween!! She didn't care to much for the witch hat, but we thought it looked soo cute on!!
This is how Chloe begs when she wants some food =)

Happy Halloween!!!

FI and I aren't doing much today for the holiday except watching some ghost hunters and handing out candy the trick or treaters around the neighborhood. I hope we get alot this year, last year we didnt and that kinda sucked, but oh well. Last night we carved pumpkins, I'll post pics of that later tonight after we light it up!!! =) I was just going to post some pics i have about Halloween, ENJOY!! I thought this halloween wedding cake was quite interesting!!! =)

Who says dogs can't go trick or treating, huh???

Weddings and Airshows

This past weekend was SUPER busy!!!! My cousin Wendy got married and had a BEAUTIFUL wedding!!! Everything started Thursday night. My Nana came into town and my family (including Fi of course) and my uncle and aunt and two cousins and my Nana went to eat at Pappasitos. It was soooo good!!!! Fi had the juiciest thickest steak smothered in onions and peppers and cheese. It was sooooo darn good!!!

We had a great time getting to visit with everyone before the wedding!! It was great!!! This was also the first I had seen my Nana since July =( She lives 4 hours away, and we don't get to make it up to see her very often. Everytime I get to see her is a real treat!! =)

The next day, my mom, Nana, and me went with my aunt my cousin and her bridesmaids to get a manicure. We had a lot of fun just sitting and talking with one another. My cousin Wendy who got married, just moved out to Vegas back in May. She graduated from A&M with her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine....yes she is the prodigal child of the family =) Which is fine, i'm just as happy with my associates degree as I could be!! hehee

Anyways, that afternoon FI and I went to go get him shoes for the wedding and then he went and got a haircut. I had to get ready for the Rehearsal Dinner and get all schnazzied up =) We went to the rehearsal dinner at a local mexican restaraunt and it was sooo good!!! They had fajitas for everyone and they were super yummy!! =) Both sets of parents gave the couple lovely gifts. Her MIL gave them a quilt that she and her quilting friends had made and it was beautiful. They also recieved a crocheted blanket in A&M colors. The bride and groom also gave out presents to everyone. All of the ladies recieved a hanky with the bride and grooms name on it and their wedding date. They were sooo cute!! I'm soo glad that I got one!! =) Her aunt has an embroidery machine and so she is also going to embroidery some for me too!!! Here's a pic of FI and me at the RD!!

That night after the RD, FI went back to his house and I headed to my house to get to working on my cousins programs for the wedding and also the favors. With the help of a few bridesmaids and the dads and my nana, we finished assembling all 120 programs around 12:30!!! NOT GOING TO BE DOING THAT FOR OUR WEDDING!!!!! NO WAY!!! After that, I was wide awake, so I went to FI's played some Madden 09 with him and then went home and went to bed.

Saturday was wedding day. My mom and I both had hair appointments that morning. Her's at 10:30 and mine at 11. My mom hated how her hair turned, but I absolutely loved mine. I showed her a picture of Katherine Heigl from 27 dresses and she did exactly that!! i was sooo excited with how it turned out!!! And of course, I didn't take any 360 degree pics of it, oh well. It looked good.


After I got my hair did, I had to go run a few errands, then I went home to get ready. I had to be up at the church at 3. My job for the ceremony was to light the candles that were in the windows and to pass out programs and to meet and greet people. I also got to check out the beautiful flowers arrangements at the altar. The flowers in them were just stunning!!! THey were soo huge and deep in color. Here's a far away view of them:

The picture is crappy and I apologize for that. The flowers were 3 different types of rose. The big deep red ones had been grown to where it looked like the petals were folded back and they were HUGE!!! THe florist had also put some hydrangea in there, and I was extactic to see the colors of the hydrange, light blues with purple on the ends of the petals!!! SOo beautiful!!! I just adore flowers and seeing them like this just amazed me.

Well the wedding went off without a hitch. I cried, FI made notes about what he liked and didn't like, and FI and my brother wore almost the exact same thing. The photographers called them the DOuble mint twins, it was the joke of the evening =)

Here's some pics of me and FI and my fam from the evening:

I know you can't see them well, but I'm wearing the cutest red satin shoes ever!!!

I got them at Target, and they even have a little bow on top by the peep toe!!!

I decided to kinda keep my theme (just for myself) kinda 40s. They hair was pretty much from that time,

and so I wore the pearls and of course the red lipstick which also helped with my shoes, since my

red purse situation did not work out so well for me =(

(I bought a purse on ebay, thinking it was red, it ended up being burgandy)

After the ceremony was over, of course we all took family photos with the photogs, who were hilarious. I wish we could've had them for my wedding, but they were waaaaay over our budget. After the photos FI and I took the flowers from the ceremony out to the reception. One bad thing about having a reception thats far away from the ceremony, it just takes a long time, and when we got out there, alot of the guests had already arrived and we were carrying in the flowers (they probably didnt care, but oh well, it just kinda bothered me, I would've rather the flowers had been there already before the guest arrived, but it happens alot i'm sure and I know it will happen at mine! )

Anyways, the reception was decorated beautifully. All the tables either had a hight floral centerpiece or alot of candles on a mirror. THe lighting was low, and it made it very romantic. My cousin and her husband had choreographed a song, i'm not sure what kind of dance it was, something slow, a waltz kinda like, but not a waltz, it was very pretty and I of course cried!!!

The dinner was absolutely DELISH!!! THey had garden salad, glazed carrots, green beans that had been cooked with bacon(they were soooooooo good) and then smoked chicken with bacon wrapped around it and stuffed with broccoli cheese rice casserole. OMG it was soooo GOOD!!!!

Here's a few pics from the reception:

Me and my DADDY!!!! I heart him!!! He's my friggin hero!!! =)

This is me and my cousin Cathy. She is Wendys sister and she was also maid of honor too.

Me and the FI. I had just dragged him out to dance (he's not a big dancer, hehe)

Me and my Mommy and my sweet sweet Nana!!!

(go ahead and say, "you look like your mom!", hehe)

This is my favorite one of us that night

Well after the reception and we blew bubbles at the newly weds (which the FI has now decided he likes), we helped pick up stuff that needed to be taken to my aunt and uncles house. We also got all of the centerpieces (floral) and the head table flowers (which were the altar decorations at the ceremony) and loaded them up in the car, my aunt wanted to take them back to the church in the morning so that they could be used. We got to keep one of the centerpieces and it was just georgous, heres some pics:

Sunday was a big day for the FI and I. It was the annual Wings Over Houston Airshow!!! This is like the biggest thing that happens once a year that FI looks forward to everyyear. He's soo cute too, he's like a little kid at the candy store. It was a perfect day too for the airshow. The sky was blue, not a cloud in the sky, and the temp was around 70, just perfect!!!

We got to see all the old warbirds that we just absolutley LOVE!!! They did their heritage flights and we even got to see FI's fav warbird, the P-38 Lightning named "Glacier Girl" fly. I've never seen a P-38 fly and it was absolutley AMAZING!!!! It's a twin tail, two engine plane and it sooo bad ass!!!! I was in awe as I watched it do it's thing in the sky. I LOVED IT!!!

The main act for the day was teh Thunderbirds. They were awesome!!! I was soo jealous that the lead solo pilot was a girl. I want to fly a plane soo bad!!! And seeing that a woman could fly like taht just encouraged me even more!!! Hopefully, before we have kids, FI and I can get our pilots license!!! All in all the day was PERFECT!!!! I will never ever forget it!!

Don't laugh at my visor, hehe The sun was in my eyes Channel 2 was giving them out free =)

All in all, the weekend was the best I had had in a long time but I was glad when the weekend was over. I've been exhausted all week trying to recooperate from it!!

The past two weeks

have sucked major ass hole!!!!!! Fi's mom went into the hospital on the 13. She was throwing up blood and they found a tear in her esophagus and a blood clot in her stomach. A few days later they found a huge varicose vein in her stomach, no bueno. I feel soo sorry for her. She's supposed to get released today to go home. She had a procedure yesterday where they put a shunt in to bypass the flow of blood to the varicose vein so that it will go down in size. I hope to god it works.

I've just super stressesd about that, and worrying about FI and how he's handling all of it. He doesn't talk about it and when I ask him he doesn't want to talk about it. So I just leave him be. I just think it's better to discuss it if something is bothering you, but apparently not him on this subject. ANy other thing, he'll tlak about but not this. One thing that worries me about him is that he doesn't tell his mom he loves her. She'll say it to the both us and I'll say it back, but he doesn't. I know he does, but I guess he's just not one to say it to his family. He says it to me all the time which I love,but I dont' know why it's soo hard for him to say it to them?? And I don't know if this is something that should bother or if it's something I should confront him about. He doesn't even give them hugs or anything he never has. His grandma told me he's been like that since he was little. I don't know why.

The wedding stuff is getting to me. I'm not doing boudoir pictures anymore which I'm really sad about. I just don't have that kind of money to spend when we need it for other stuff. Like rehearsal dinner, caterer, decorations, gifts for people, favors, invites, things like that. PLUS finding a place for us to live!!! UGGH a nightmare!!! I think we are just going to get an apartment in baytown and be done with it. Rent is sky high, but what can you do?? I woudl rather have a rent house, but they are sky high as well too. It friggin sux. THis economy sux, no one can buy houses so they have to rent which in turn allows the rentee's to put whatever type of pricetag they want to on the rental property!!! It's stupid and dumb.

FI and I did drive out to Liberty this past weekend, and we totally want to move there. It's the cutest little town that actually has a main street that surrounds the court house and then it also has the most adorbale homes ever!!!!! That's exactly what we want too!! it'll make my commute longer, but I don't care, i already drive 40 miles there and back, whats an extra 20?? Maybe by the time we move out there, I'll be working somewhere else anyways, who knows.

I'm sad I haven't barely been able to read any of my book I started a while back. I'm probably gonig to have to start over from the beginning so I can remember everything that I've already read.

I want to start on my DIY projects now. I want to get them finished and just be done with them. I think the reason I keep putting them off is because I keep thinking "oh i have time" blah blah whatever, stop procrastinating DAVIS AND JUST DO IT!!!! =) I'm a horrible procastinator, but God help me, I get my stuff done, even if it is last minute. but I don't want to be like that for the wedding. I want to have everything done so that I can enjoy it and not be stressed out about having to hurry and get stuff done!!!

I've got to get my happy butt back into a workout routine. I totally blame IKE for messing it up. I was doing sooo good!! Jogging like 3-4 times a week!!! I had even gotten up to 4.2 miles!!!! And FI was noticing and thats a HUGE plus to me!!! I have got to get back on it!! and it sux!! i'm stressing about how my dress may not fit, I am considering getting a corset put in the back so it'll be like that instead of zipped up. Maybe that iwll also help with the back fat issue too!! =)

Ok, i'm done =)