Jun 23, 2010 Posted on Jun 23, 2010 in awesomeness | 9 comments

A Love Letter from the DMV

One year ago today we got engaged on our rooftop in downtown Los Angeles, and spent the day celebrating with champagne, sunshine, and friends.

Today I’m sitting at the DMV waiting to change my name, and thinking about our wedding day, which once seemed FOREVERandadayaway, but is really happening in just a few short months now. Yowza! Yippee! Yikes! Mostly yippee though!

It’s been a crazy year of living, thinking, and planning.  A year of thoughtful transition and (sometimes) difficult conversation as we plan this wedding, and more importantly, as we plan our life together. A good, joyful, hard year.

We’ve lived and planned a wedding on one income, raised a special needs puppy, moved to a house with a (potential) veggie garden, started new jobs, quit said jobs when they failed to EVER pay for four months of work, nearly foiling our wedding plans (LA residents beware: Mendocino Farms doesn’t pay their employees) and somehow managed not to kill each other. Although we’ve come close a few times.

And that’s okay too.

Because I’ve learned that arguments aren’t about winning. Sometimes they are about our egos, our insecurities, or just our bad day.  You can let them go, or even be the one to apologize without being the loser.

And I’ve learned to say yes. Yes to this relationship. Yes to things that are important to C, even when they aren’t initially important to me. Yes to making those things important to me too.  And I want to move into our married life together saying yes to each other and making the things that matter to each of us a priority for us both. yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes!

And I’ve realized that most of my favorite moments with C aren’t big or complicated. I truly hope that our wedding, our marriage, and our life together reflect that perfect simplicity.

Here’s a look at our last year as single(ish) ladies:

Engagement Day ‘09:

PRIDE ‘09:

AT HOME w/CAT TAIL:

HAPPY:

AND ALL GLAMMED UP (FOR OUR RIGHTS!):

source

And here’s to looking far far into the future. Like FOREVERandaday far.

I love you baby. I think you’re awesome. And I’m over being engaged. Let’s get married already, mkay?

Any other loooooong engagements out there? Are you savoring the moments or are you ready to move on to married life already too?

Jun 19, 2010 Posted on Jun 19, 2010 in paper goods | 7 comments

I’m Collecting Vintage Stamps…

…and that can only mean one (or maybe two things):

1. I’m becoming an even bigger nerd than I already am.
2. I’m finally attempting to get the ball rolling on our invitations

I’ll let you decide which it is, but I ain’t gonna lie- it’s a draw here in the Awesome house.  I am also designing the suite, creating custom artwork that (cross my fingers) our guests will actually keep, and figuring out the cheapest, most awesome way to assemble these puppies.

It’s a lot. And it’s kindofallconsuming, hence my light posting lately. Still I couldn’t resist dropping by to share a few of my amazing stamps with you. Please join me in totally geeking out, and don’t worry, I won’t blame you if you totally stop reading and run out to start a stamp collection stat!

LOVE:

BIRDIES:

THE REBELLIOUS SIXTIES:

Say what? OMG! These nearly blew my mind. MLK, Woodstock, The Beatles,  a “Jackie O” Barbie, and the peace sign all in one place?!!!! And the text is priceless! New words: hippie, workaholic, scam, skateboard

And now it’s back to the drawing board lovelies. Literally. That’d be me on the couch with my sketch pad and two snoozing dogs on the floor at my feet. Sigh. Gotta love Saturdays. And of course I promise to send more frequent updates from the trenches of invitation warfare! But don’t worry, I’m winning this battle.

xoxo

Jun 16, 2010 Posted on Jun 16, 2010 in bling | 10 comments

(Golden) Birds of Feather…

I swear I’m not completely bling obsessed (shrugs) even though this is (hangs head) another post about jewelry. This is not a post about just any old jewelry though, this is the story of C’s super magical wedding ring, and the roundabout, but in the end, oh-so-simple way we ended up finding it. So pull up a chair and pop open a beer (or is it too early for that still?) Anyhoo I’m pretty sure it’s noon somewhere in the world…

Now you may remember that C declared pretty early on that she had always pictured a plain yellow gold band. After a bit of research, we determined that it’s super hard to find a really pretty, slightly vintage (or even just vintage looking) plain gold band. If you want a little bit of character and a hand-hewn quality, then it’s really tough. Or really expensive.

And so while we waited for my super fantastic daisy ring to arrive, we scoured etsy, ebay, everyvintagejewelrysiteimaginable and then some more places in search of the perfect ring. For a quick minute there I was winning a hundred year old Tiffany’s ring on ebay. Then a more saavy bidder swooped in (or had a computer do it for them- damn cowards) and outbid me by $1.99. Grrr! No really- I need to get on that auto-bidding business, but of course I digress…

The hunt continued.

We considered the suggestion that we use the inverse of my daisy ring for C’s ring. But we weren’t really committed to matching rings.  And we couldn’t decide who would get the inverse, because, um, we’re both yellow gold freaks. (told ya it was true love) So that was out.

And then one day I started thinking about what made me choose Adzia to make my daisy ring way back in the beginning. I know I blabbered on about how lovely and awesome and wonderful her correspondence was (and it was!) but what had made me choose her from among the many talented etsy jewelers who responded to my initial alchemy post?

Hmmm. A light went on somewhere in my fuzzy little bride brain as I realized that I must have liked, I mean really liked, something in her store. And so I simply followed my own link and there it was: a beautiful gold feather ring. It seemed like the perfect combo of yellow gold and beautiful detail. And C is crazy for birds. Like tattooed crazy. So I showed her the feather ring, and she was sold. And that was it.

And I’ve gotta say Adzia came through like a champ once again. First, my daisy ring arrived with a companion- a silver sample of the feather ring, because we had expressed concern that it might be too wide.  And it was. So then Adzia created a custom made narrow(er) gold feather band just for C! And it arrived a few days ago. And it’s fan-freakin-tastic!

Check it:

I LOVE that both our rings were created by the same super amazing artist but I can’t believe it took me so long to figure out that Adzia was the answer to our (second) ring dilemma. (hangs head again) Silly me!

Have you ever spent tons of time and energy hunting for something that was right under your nose?

Jun 5, 2010 Posted on Jun 5, 2010 in bling | 7 comments

Bright Bright Baubles

At Barney’s the other day I saw them. My perfect wedding earrings. Yup. I didn’t even know such a thing existed, but there they were. Cool, vintage, colorful and just wonderful. Kinda like these:

                     source

For the record these are not the exact ones that caught my eye at Barney’s (damn flash sites!) but some similar ones from the same todiefor jeweler, Larkspur and Hawk.

Anyhoo I noted the brand and hopped in the elevator. By the time I got to my car I had convinced myself that they could probably be my wedding treat to myself. I figured they were probably a few hundred bucks . Sure they’d be a splurge, but they were awesome.

Yeah. I looked them up. It never bodes well when something doesn’t even have a price listed… So I called Barney’s and was told they were around $1800! Say whaaaaa?

They are not diamonds people. They ARE hand-cut matched white topaz. And they are set in 22k gold. And they are beautiful little pieces of art. And they are still completely and totally out of my league. Yes, I am just whining because I can’t afford them. Not even a little bit.

Enter Etsy. Music Swells. I swoon. Or something like that.

It took a little searching but I found some nearly identical earrings on etsy. Well, better than identical actually. I found some awesome, colorful, tear-drop shaped vintage glass, super fantastic bling bling earrings to rock on our wedding day. On a dime too.

                     source

Pretty pretty right?

Screech. Only problem? As some of you may know I kinda have a thing for yellow gold. No really. You can read about it here and here. So these earrings would be damn near perfect if only they were yellow gold.

Kinda like this:

                     source

Why yes, those are MY wedding earrings newly plated in yellow gold and a freakin’ fantastic example of just how effing awesome etsy sellers BeyondtheRockz really are.

Seriously. Al & Caroline were super quick to respond, super nice and they plated my earrings for a mere $10! I could not be happier. So go check ‘em out, but promise not to buy everylastpieceofamazingvintageglass that they have squirreled away because I might want to do earrings for my bridesmaids hear?

What kind of jewelry are you wearing for your wedding day? Anyone else going for bright bright baubles?

May 29, 2010 Posted on May 29, 2010 in truck food, yummers | 14 comments

Ice Cream + Cookies

Some wedding decisions should be easy.

This is one of those decisions.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t debate it for months, get lured in by all the pretty dessert tables around the blogosphere, and turn C’s desire to cut the cake into the need for a full blown cake table extravaganza.

Then last week she mentioned that cutting the cake wasn’t really very important to her. And just like that our paramount wedding dessert decision was made.

Cool Haus Ice Cream Sandwiches. Custom-made for our guests and nestled in an edible wrapper with a logo/graphic (cue chorus of angels) of our choice. Rad right?

Here’s how it all works. Cool Haus rolls up with 5 cookie choices and 7 ice cream choices, and our tipsy guests get to gorge themselves on all-they-can-eat custom-made ice cream sammies. YUMTASTIC.

The Cookies: chocolate, chocolate chip, ginger, oatmeal raisin, snickerdoodle, brioche

The Ice Cream: blood orange, brown butter with candied bacon, chocolate chipotle, cinnamon, coffee toffee, dirty mint chip, meyer lemon, vanilla bean, lambrusco, baked apple, sea salt caramel, mascarpone, balsamic fig, red velvet, pistachio w/black truffles, foie gras

And the Ice Cream Sammie Porn:

Oh! And the best part- when I said they roll up, I wasn’t kidding! Cool Haus shows up and serves your guests in this adorable converted mail cart:

Now we just have to decide which flavors to offer our guests from their oh so drool inducing choices! Which flavors sound the best to you? Which combo would you choose?