Is This Love

I hope all of you had a better first day of Spring than me, as I spent the day with snot draining out of my nose, tears pouring out of my eyes, and a head all plugged up. That cold stuff is going around and I was hit. Big time. After sleeping for 15 hours, then doing some planning for my sister's wedding, searching online for the missing Malaysian airplane, and working on some knitting orders, I feel a little less runny, (still stuffed) but at least I'm back to work. It was nice to see everyone else having a happy First-Day-Of-Spring in the warm (45 degree) sunshine, and I loved that my cousin posted this video...

After Chase's and my first kiss, this is what we walked down the aisle to as a married couple (live, of course). I love reminiscing about our wedding. And my cousin rocks. Nuff said.

Year of Nuptials

I love am absolutely obsessed with weddings. Everything wedding related. From the detailing on the tablecloths, to the cups the guests drink out of. I would compare weddings to every holiday combined with my birthday (which should be a holiday), the first day I get to put my swimsuit on in the summer, and a baby smiling at me. There's so much emotion, happiness, love, tears, joy... ugh. So good. And I guess you could say that I love to dance. Since it's kind of definitely inappropriate to go to a club at the age I'm at, and downtown Minneapolis scares the ba-jeebies out of me, weddings (and my car and living room) are a place to let loose and shake my groove thang.


 

I honestly was not expecting to ever be a bridesmaid in any of my friend's weddings, since I feel like the older I get, the more difficult it is to align schedules to see each other (but then I realize they aren't planning parties without me... they actually don't have time to see me, too)



One of my best friends/roommates from the first college I went to (Eau Claire, WI) asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding just a couple of weeks before Chase proposed to me.  I was pretty stunned when she asked me. Stunned and stoked and honored and so, so happy.

She announced her wedding date to be June 28, 2014.

THEN, another one of my besties had a diamond ring plopped on her hand over the fourth of July, and asked me to be a bridesmaid in HER wedding TOOO!!!


 
Her wedding is June 27, 2014. And in case you missed the first date, this is the day before the other wedding.

October 27th happened and my younger sister's boyfriend decided he needed to up his game, and he popped the question. On Thanksgiving weekend, I was asked to plan my sister's wedding for her be the maid of honor! 




Fortunately, this wedding is August 1, 2014..

Between the weddings Chase and I are in.. that puts 2014 totals at:

2 wedding receptions (for destination weddings)

3 wedding showers

4 bachelor/bachelorette parties

5 weddings

Call me crazy. But don't call me this summer (at least spare me in June). Cause when I'm not celebrating a nuptial, I'll be in a coma.




With this being my first (and most likely only) maid of honor experience, I'd say things are looking good so far..

I have managed to leave one of the bridesmaids out of the bachelorette planning facebook group message for almost a month. Don't worry, I've heard she is up to speed on everything now.

I am the only one to have not ordered a dress yet for my sister's wedding, even to try on and sample. I blame this on the fact that the maid of honor dress I desperately need want is $415 and the bride herself said "no." How rude.

I am persistently begging Chelsey to let me wear my wedding dress, so I can get one more day out of it. And secretly I want to be like Pippa Middleton. 

I have informed the bridesmaids that "i'm thinking this party will be very grown-sexy. When Chelsey looks at it, I want her heart to be filled with love sprinkles. Jeffrey is the light to her bug. (thank you, Catherine Giudici).

I have already had nightmares of me not having my maid-of-honor speech ready, and of the bride running out of her own wedding. I thought those nightmares only happened during your own wedding..oof-da.



Cheers to all the love-fests in 2014!

5-Day Countdown

And the countdown begins. Five days until the new Cricut Explore is able to be in my hands. Who wants to help a girl out and be my best friend? I'll hug you for one whole minute. But if we're not to that point in our relationship yet, I'll make you glitter shirts.

Please don't make me be this guy (pre-Explore)...

Froze Up

Well we survived our first crisis.

Last Friday I came home to frozen pipes, which stayed frozen for six more days. Yup. We had no water for one entire week.

Living without water definitely puts a few things into perspective. Life gets pretty smelly and everything about living in a house becomes more difficult. I clean our house with Norwex and water - so the cleaning was on a halt. Dishes were out of the question and paper plates became our best friend. And we had to come up with a flushing system - number one stays until we can't handle the smell, and number two gets flushed right away ... obviously we weren't inviting any one over to be our guest during the past week. It actually got to the point where I was 'planning' when I would drink water at work, so I could use the toilet there and then not have to use it at our house (too much information? sorry.. that's what this blog is all about). Luckily we were offered many showers to use. I have a feeling we had a good funk going on.

Now.. I hate complaining. Because we did have electricity, we had food in our fridge, our house stayed heated, and we had a bed to sleep in. People kept saying there's no way they would have put up with no water, and they would have called the city instantly - but I felt guilty complaining. Maybe it's because I hear weekly about the hundreds of kids who live in my hometown, having to sleep on the floor every night. Or the same families not having a fridge, or food, or a home.

By no means were we attempting to see how long we could last in those water-less conditions. But I was brought down to a level where I really don't realize some of the basic things that I have, until it's gone.

With our landlord living just a few houses down the hill from us, we were able to fill up big buckets of water to flush our toilet with. And in their words, "we were just like Jack and Jill fetching our water at the top of bottom of the hill."

People. Do you even know how great that real, flowing-out-of-the-faucet, H2O actually is? Think about it. It automatically fills our toilets. {sigh} So wonderful. I guess the only downside is that I have no excuse as to why our house still isn't cleaned. Don't judge me.