When Did This Turn Into a Wedding Blog?

The following seems to be the story of my life (and therefore maybe I should start paying attention to it):

When I wrap my head around doing something, there's no turning back. Eventually it takes over my entire life as I research for hours on end in hopes of finding that perfect thing. For instance, when I decided it was time to get out of our *ahem* pieceofshit apartment and move. We literally spent every waking moment for weeks trying to find our next living quarters. It had to be perfect! No mistakes this time! And what if our perfect apartment was taken by somebody else in the 2 seconds that I was away from Craigslist?! Not gonna happen!

So what happened? One day, Tom and I were driving to his parents house - a route we take everyday - when we saw a For Rent sign. We followed the sign to the perfect house, for the perfect price, and now here we sit. All of that time endlessly pouring over newspapers and ads, and it ended up being so simple.

Once again, I have begun my obsessive search for all things perfect for our wedding. I started with the where. A couple dozen emails to hotels, golf clubs, botanical gardens...it was already overwhelming.

And, once again, the answer was right under my nose.

Helllllllooooo Lauren?! You're stepdad is the CFO of a spectacular hotel! With spectacular areas for weddings!

48 hours later, we have the Gazebo and reception room reserved in my name. (Now I can officially freak out about this wedding thing really happening.)

Reception room

Another shot

 

Ceremony gazebo

Bottom line? It's a nicer place than we had ever expected to have for our cheapy little wedding. All made possible because the general manager of the hotel loves me (or so I'd like to think). We have no food and beverage minimum for the reception, no rental fee for the gazebo (that's $500 right there), and all of our decorative linens will be rented to us at cost. How much more perfect does it get?

So now I continue to deliberate over the theme. I'm not exactly sure how that answer will find its way to me, but maybe if I sit back and let it happen, I won't be disappointed.

The Options are Endless

My indecisiveness has already become ever-present in this wedding planning thing.

Here's the problem:

We're trying to pick our "theme", which would also help us decide our colors and make picking out some invitations a bit easier. I'm already stuck on this, but there are so many options that I love. I've managed to narrow it down to two.

The Great Outdoors
We're having an outdoor ceremony, so naturally (ha.ha.ha.) one of the themes would play off of that setting. Everything would be very "earthy" and summery, and we would probably incorporate pheasant feathers to pay tribute to Tom's family.

Some of the inspiration:

Classic Elegance

I'm a huge fan of damask, s having a wedding themed around that would also be completely amazing to me. With accents of lime green, it would still have a summery feel, but would have a bit more of a elegant vibe than the outdoor theme. In some ways, I like that. In others, I feel it may be a bit more than we're looking for. 

Here's the imagery for this theme:

And don't even get me started on ceremony/reception venues. Eek!

Christmas Eve!

I feel like I was just freaking out at Target before Halloween had even arrived, finding the Christmas displays that were already up to be a bit, um...absurd. "But Christmas is so far away!"

Well, whadya know - Christmas Eve is among us and it hasn't felt like it's been that long.

Why does our tree look so skinny in this picture??

The roads were completely empty as I drove into work this morning. Yes, you heard me right, I had to work today. Luckily it was only a 1/2 day, and we're still in training so it required no real "work" to be done. Even better: I'm getting paid as I type this.

Aiden slept over at his Grams and Gramps last night, and we have a family event starting at 6 o'clock, so Tom and I are completely free to do whatever we want on this day-before-Christmas. First on the list? Cleaning! Much to Tom's dismay, of course, but he still pitched in (and this is why I love the man).

I think we'll spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing. =)

So Put Your Hands Up!

Just as I predicted, blogging has gone WAY on the back burner now that I'm a career woman with a one year old. And, I've added something else to my plate:

TOM & I ARE GETTING MARRIED!!

Yes, everyone (especially us) already knew this was going to happen, so it's not a huge shocker to anyone involved. I think the appropriate and most common response would probably be, "Finally..."


I haven't decided if this makes us officially engaged or not, because I'm still waiting for one of these things:

We're not really in a financial position to be shelling out for a shiny rock at this particular moment, so that venture is most likely on hold until tax return time. However, we decided we wanted to get married this year (meaning 2010) and before we knew it, a date was picked. And then my big mouth was announcing it on Facebook soon after.

The meaning of an engagement is just that you have a plan to get married, correct? It's not truly about the ring. So does that mean we're engaged?

It's all just so complicated. And Tom and I almost NEVER do things the "right" way. It's just our style. =)

Nevertheless, our big date is August 28th, 2010. Let the planning begin!

In the meantime....

Workday Birthday

I promise I'm alive! Which also means,


I made it through my first week of work!

My 21st birthday was conveniently placed right in the middle of the work week. I can't say the day itself was particularily exciting. The lovely people that I'm training with joined me for some lunch, and then my dad and his English lady friend, Heather, took Tom, Aiden and I out for a delicious dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Heather came to Wisconsin specifically for my birthday, and it was by far the biggest treat I've had in a LONG time. I ordered one froofy, girly, blended drink and called it a night with the 'I'm Legal!' celebration.

For what it's worth, it was one of the better drinks I've ever had...

Tom and I came home and opened my present from him/his mom. I am now the proud owner of one of these:

Which means I can now grab a Wii Fit and hopefully look as good as this lady while playing it:

 

Unfortunately for Tom and me, we were too pooped to even open the stupid box, much less play anything. I think I was in bed shortly after 9 o'clock. On my 21st birthday. I know, I'm pretty hardcore. Too bad I wouldn't have it any other way.

Career Woman

Aiden's first birthday party was a raving success (and with the amount of toys he got, I'm sure he would agree). Our cozy little house was stuffed to the max with people ranging from friends, to family, to friends of the family. I'm so happy that everyone came out to celebrate with us!

I've been so busy with other things that I haven't had time to finish going through all of the pictures yet. When I do, they'll definitely be posted here. But I'm not planning to half-ass it.

So these other things....
I scored an interview at M&I Bank for Monday. The position was for a Call Center Representative/Personal Banker. I thought it was a pretty good sign that I even got a call for an interview, so I walked in relatively confident in myself. I interviewed with someone in HR before being sent to another building to interview with the manager of the call center. I then interviewed with a third person before finally being allowed to go home (and pee!) two hours later. I was told I would hear back within a few days, but they called and offered the job by 4pm that day. Job starts December 8th.

*Cue panic mode*

Finding childcare in the matter of a week? An impossible task, I thought. Tom and I scrambled to figure out how we could handle next week without needing daycare and I raced off to all sorts of daycare facilities to conduct my interviews. I even begged our pediatrician for some recommendations while we were at Aiden's 12 month check-up.

[Aiden's stats are officially as follows: HUGE head, average weight, relatively tall, but perfect in every way]

We picked out a brand new daycare that has video monitoring for parents to log into during the day and check on their child, but it's pretty far out of the way. If we go with an actual daycare center, the drive is the least of my worries.

BUT, as usual, I decided to second-guess myself. I looked on Craigslist and noticed an ad for a nanny in the area. I priced out what it would be to have her watch Aiden in our home, and sure enough, it's about the same as daycare. So now I'm thinking: do I go for the nanny? I'll spare you the boring pro's and con's list, but there really isn't a perfect situation in my opinion. I've been getting a lot of advice on the topic, and nobody seems to agree on one over the other. (Why can't anybody ever make this stuff easy for me?)

And so now I figure, if I'm considering two options, what's throwing one more option in there? Let's consider an in-home daycare, too.

I went from having my decision made to being back at square one.



No matter what we choose for Aiden, I can guarantee that life is about to get relatively crazy.

To Hell and Back

If you ever tell someone "Go to hell" in the future, just know that you're sending them to Chicago, IL.

My plans for a fun-filled evening driving to the city, grabbing some dinner at a fun restaurant, and just enjoying our time, well - they went to complete shit.

Our drive started off fine. We listened to my CD of Nsync Christmas songs, made fun of the guy who was driving on the highway with a seatbelt hanging out of his car door, and planned our evening of fun. Once we neared Chicago-land, though, the fun officially stopped when we sat like this...:

...for at least an hour. We were at Exit 33 and needed to get to Exit 41. No big deal, right? Wrong.  We actually got off early because, using my handy dandy GPS system on my iPhone, I found that we could take a different route that didn't involve an interstate. Unfortunately for us, my genius plan backfired because that road was just as busy and had stop lights.

Luckily for us, just as we were nearing Jenna's house, we saw this awesome sign:

If you can't quite make that out, it says SENIOR CITIZENS. Whhhaaa????!!?! They get their own signs??? I was rolling with laughter.

We broke into Jenna's house We got Jenna's neighborly friend to let us into the house and rescue our cake, and then asked for some good eating advice. "No, don't go to downtown Chicago, there's awesome places like TWO blocks up! Everything you could want!"

So we head two blocks up, and actually manage to find our way to this magical location. Great, right? Well, I have no idea where all these amazing restaurants are that he was talking about (probably the opposite direction than we turned), because we didn't find any. In attempt to turn around, we actually just went far out of the way, and gave up on the whole "two blocks away" idea. Then we spotted a cute little diner place that we decided to try. Problem? They claimed parking was on a certain street but I would have died before I found that street, and been re-incarnated before I was able to GET to the street.

We were both officially fed up with being lost, one way streets, and the traffic, so we decided to ditch the eating in Chicago thing and head for home.

I'll spare the story, but it took longer to get to the freeway than it took to get from the freeway. Then, we passed the entrance ramp to get on, turned around, and found that there was no way to get on from that direction. So we waited in ANOTHER traffic line once we turned around a mile away.

::sigh::

We ended up eating from a drive-thru once we got close to home.

The good news? The cake is here, in one piece, and it looks awesome.

Tom and I will be avoiding Chicago at all costs until we've recovered from our horrible experience.

A La Carte

I've finally figured out (and even purchased) our munchies for Aiden's party on Saturday. Huge relief!

Here's what I'm serving up (keep in mind that I'm a complete newbie to this whole entertaining/throwin a party scene):

Mini-weenies - they may not look appetizing but they're spectacular

Pretty plentiful menu considering I originally started with absolutely no ideas.

Now, on to the millions of other things that need to be accomplished before Saturday.

Scrambling

Upcoming Events:

• Road trip to Chicago tomorrow! Aiden's staying home with his grandma while we break into Jenna's house and steal his cake (which is amazing, I might add).
  
  
• Thanksgiving Day - we get the honor of dog-sitting for my parents while they go on a quick vacay. Also, our new, retired, neighbors have chosen this day to move in. Who does that?
  
  
• My dad flies in on Friday morning, so Aiden and I will be off to airport bright and early. Some delicious breakfast might be on the agenda, too.
  
  
• Saturday, November 28th. My baby turns a year old! The festivities start at 3pm. For the record, I do not have any sort of a "menu" planned out, I'm a terrible hostess, and I'm sort of panicking.
  

At least I have the cake....almost...

Adopt This Dog! (But you must be exactly 26, have blue hair, and drive a convertible)

I have to say it:

No WONDER there are so many freaking dogs in rescue shelters and humane society's and wherever else. No WONDER people bite the bullet and head off to the pet store to get their new puppy, even though they know it'll be supporting a puppy mill. These stupid rescue places make it impossible to adopt from them.

I've probably contacted 20-30 shelters by now and I have yet to be offered a single dog to adopt. The process is quite lengthy, and that in itself is enough to scare most people off. Who wants to fill out multiple page applications, schedule a home visit, and wait for a "match" just to get a dog? But I was okay with that! I figured it would be worth it to know that I was giving a dog a home that would otherwise be living a miserable life. And I get that these people care about the dogs and want them to go to the best homes, so they have to have certain procedures to make sure of that. But how is it that out of all of those emails and phone calls, I still don't have a single dog to choose from?

One place says that they won't adopt to anyone who doesn't have a fenced in yard. That would mean that all renters without a fenced in yard would be unable to adopt. Including us. Stupid? I think so. Leashes work wonderfully.

Other places say they won't adopt to families with children under 8 or 10. While I sort of understand this, I don't think that every single dog they come in contact with would be bad with young children.

Then there's the places that refuse to do much of anything because Don't you understand, we have lives too! Okay, then why are you running a rescue shelter? If you can't process applications in a timely manner or help people out who want to adopt these animals, what's the point? They'll never get adopted then.

One place received my application for a dog, emailed me to say that someone would be calling to set up a home visit, and then never spoke to me again.

It's been the most frustrating experience I've had in quite awhile. The fact that I'm willing to go through their semi-ridiculous process to adopt a dog should be a huge clue that I'm probably a decent person. We're a loving family, and we want to give a dog a home. I don't understand where the problem is.

Cake for Everyone!

YES!!

The maker of this cake...

...is going to be whipping up another fine creation for Aiden and our guests to indulge in on his birthday.

Aiden, Tom and I will be road trippin' to the windy city to pick up the cake. Aiden will get to meet little miss B, which is reason enough for him to suffer through the car ride.

What an adventure it will be!


Here's a teaser on what's involved with this cake:

Can you tell I'm totally pumped?

Miracle on Felix Street

The living room has been TRANSFORMED! We have a couch again, and even some decorations up. It's not done yet, but compared to this morning it's done a complete 180.

Let me remind you of what it looked like a little while ago....

Quite a hodge-podge of boring-ness.


Now, feast your eyes on this.....

Much improved! The area rug isn't staying, we need some window treatments, and more wall decor, but hey - this is quite a drastic change for one day! Cost? $300. I cheated a bit though, because the couch was free. But two chairs and a gigantic painting for $300 is pretty impressive.

And, I'm going to go even furtherby saying that the pictures don't do our new room justice.

I'm so happy it finally came together!!!

Living Room Fiasco

This is the current view of my living room. There's a few problems with it, and it's bothering me:

1. It's empty. We've been without any furniture for about 3 days now.
2. It's not quite going in the direction I want it to go. The carpet? All wrong. The picture above the fireplace? Donation from my mom, and it's nice, but not really what I want for the space.
3. The lack of any decorations.

"Why has your living room been empty for 3 days?" one might ask.

Well, to begin with, I finally got rid of our couch after massively reducing the price. To put that disappointment into perspective, we bought that couch less than a year ago for about $1200. I sold it for $600. We went back to the place where we purchased it and saw a sale price of $1500. Need I say more?

So, with a measly $600 to work with, we've been running all over town trying to find a new couch that isn't a POS, isn't ugly, is comfortable, and fits the style I'm aiming for. So far we've found absolutely nothing that fits that criteria. This is what we HAVE found, though:

It's comfortable, looks good, and it's well within our budget. Problem: it's kind of straying far away from the "calm" and "soothing" look that I was hoping for.

The website also shows it in this Grain color, which would be wonderful!

Except that, in the store, it's a completely different couch. How annoying is that? The arms aren't the same, the cushions aren't the same - nothing is the same! Even the color is different.

Then there's this brown guy. If you buy the sofa, you get the matching chair for $75. All of that would still be within our budget.

Problem: Not a fan of how it looks. It's a pretty blah couch.

So then, we get to this sucker.

Beautiful? Yes. It comes in a very light tan, or even a light blue that might actually look pretty nice with our wall color. Problem: $300 over budget not including tax.


Our last option comes down to a couch that my parents own. It used to be my couch, back when I lived with them and had my own sitting room. It's by far the cheapest option (possibly free?) and would allow us to buy some cool chairs and still have money leftover.

This is the best picture I have of it. Problem: it's very aqua and our living room walls are very blue. The potential for having those two colors clash is very high. And I'm pretty positive that Tom would kill me if I suggested re-painting the living room.



So, since I seem to be hitting a dead-end no matter what, we continue to sit here, couchless. I mentioned to Tom that we could just skip the couch altogether and live like the Chinese. but he didn't really seem to be a fan of that idea.

It's 11:30 - Do you know where your Mommy is?

I went out tonight! All by myself. No boyfriend, no baby. And I didn't even feel guilty (but that's probably because Aiden was already in bed when I left).

My ex-coworkers (as I so lovingly call them) had a Lia Sophia party tonight. I don't really have the money to be shelling out on jewelry right now, but I had a pretty good time socializing. I'm not sure how they managed it, but the Delafield branch of Waukesha State Bank is made up ENTIRELY of a bunch of weirdos who somehow come together into quite the love/hate relationship. There's a large part of me that misses my "work family".

As I drove home (slightly buzzed after my ONE wine cooler because I never drink anymore), radio on 'Top Hits', all alone, I found myself thinking Oh yeah! THIS is what it felt like to be young and somewhat carefree. Yes, I'm not even 21 and I feel old. I mean, what 21 year old is amazed that they've stayed awake past 10 o'clock at night?

So, my New Years Resolution (oh yeah, I'm going there): Get out more! And force Tom to get out more, too. We need to stop acting like a bunch of 40 year olds and have some fun.

In the meantime, it's wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy past my bedtime and I have a little boy to take care of in the morning.

Not So Happy Days

A phone call from my parents late last night informed me that our very loved dog, Bijou, had been put to sleep. He had been crying 24/7 for the last month, so after much discussion with the vet they felt the best option was to put him down.

We're all missing him terribly. It's amazing how much a pet becomes part of the family.

Our precious Bijou

This was when he first met his new little sister, Zoey

 

 

They were best friends. I'm sure Zoey is completely lost right now.

We love you Bijou!

P.S.

I forced Tom to stop at the pet store last night so I could take a look at the puppies. I thought maybe if we fell in love with one I could talk him into leaving with it.

He had me pretty excited - I asked him if we could visit with one and he agreed. I figured I had him at that point. There's no way he could visit with it and not want to take it home.

So we visited with a little Pomeranian/Bichon mix for quite awhile. She gave us all kisses and was GREAT with Aiden. I fell in love, and Tom liked her a lot too. The catch? $629.99. For a freaking pet store puppy. Tom was able to rationally say that we needed to talk about it together and look at our finances. So out we walked, me sulking.

She's still on my mind. She looked almost exactly like this:

Fluffy little girl with a great personality.

::sigh::

Money sucks.

Job Hunt

I'm searching for a job. Not only because we could really use the money (Christmas is right around the corner, afterall) but also because I'm just not cut out to be a stay-at-home-mom on a full-time status. I need to go out and make use of my brain, and not by figuring out which store is selling Aiden's diapers for the cheapest amount.

I've applied for mostly no-brainer jobs, though. Target and Babies R Us were first on the list. They aren't my first choice in the grand scheme of things, but if they end up being my only options, I'll take them. We really need the money.

Top choice? A job at Rogers Memorial Hospital. I've applied to be a Residential Counselor on either the Child/Adolescent Unit or the Eating Disorders Unit. It would be AWESOME to put on my resume, especially after I finish my Human Services degree. Most places want experience, so this would allow me to get my foot in the door.

Alternative top choice? I applied at a bank. Yes, I probably am crazy, but should I really let my experience go to waste? It pays more than minimum wage and I actually can't do the job in my sleep (for the most part...) so it went onto my list of options.

I did get one call back today. It wasn't technically from any of the places I applied for. The application went to Babies R Us, but Toys R Us is apparently more interested in me. I need to figure out if I really want to take such a basic job, though. Yes, I DO believe I have more to offer than being a cashier at a toy store. Make me management and I might re-consider....

__________________________________________________________

Also in recent news, I had an appointment with a therapist today. I took my chances and scheduled to see a female. Nothing against ladies, but I have continually had poor experiences with them as a therapists. The fact that she knew some DBT and was willing to work with personality disorders made me give her a chance, though. Mistake? Yes. She was nice, but just so....eh. She kind of had a habit of rambling on about different personal stories that she thought I wanted to hear. She seemed more interested in being my girly friend than getting down to business. At one point I wanted to say,
"Listen lady. I'm not here for a dose of girl talk. I don't care about the fact that you got a puppy in January when it was -3 degrees out. Let's do some work and get on with life."

So the search continues, even though I know it's heading nowhere fast. Nobody in this lame state knows anything about DBT or BPD. And nobody knows how to tolerate me. It's quite a hopeless mess.

Oh Happy Days!

Aiden got his first birthday present in the mail yesterday! Well, actually, his grandma Patti came home with a $20 bill in an envelope for him from family in Florida, but he got his first real gift yesterday.

Up until about a week ago he was still riding in his infant carrier when traveling with daddy. Was he way above the height and weight restrictions? Yes. Did I feel like a horrible mother for allowing him to go in anywhere in that car? Pretty much.

But Grandpa Alan to the rescue!! We received a much needed Combi Coccoro on our front step yesterday. It was chosen due to it's extreme compact-ness, which was a must with Tom's itty bitty Pontiac. We learned our lesson with buying clunker car seats - Tom and I have to ride with our knees up to our chests in my car because Aiden's seat takes up the whole car.

It hasn't been installed in the car yet, but so far I give it rave reviews, especially for a 2nd "backup" carseat. It's so lightweight and small, yet Aiden still fits in it perfectly. The shoulder straps were extremely easy to re-thread for adjustment (the part I dreaded the most), and there's even a pocket in the back to keep the instruction manual. It doesn't seem like Combi skipped on any details with this one.
Oh, and did I mention it's super-cute?

In fact, I like it so much, it may even get used in my car, too!

(This is Aiden's goofy "I'm waiting for that stupid light to blind me" face)


So from a happy mommy and happy baby, Thank You Grandpa!!

No dog. For now, at least. Not because we don't want one. In fact, we were pretty much all set to drive to Oshkosh to pick up our new member of the family. Then we took a look-see at our fnances, and, well, that pretty much ended it all. If I want to have any hope of getting engaged sometime soon, a dog isn't really going to fit into our budget at the moment. Especially because our landlord wants a second security deposit on top of what we already paid them. I can assure you that if I had an extra $1000 it wouldn't be going towards that. ::sigh::

We sold a bunch of Aiden's baby paraphernalia. I'll admit it, I got a little emotional about his Jumperoo leaving and I'm having sellers remorse because of it. He was 3 months old when we first put him in that thing - we stacked a pile of books underneath his feet because they didn't touch the floor yet. Eventually he ended up spending hours a day in it. It was probably the only thing we bought that I actually feel was worth the money (in case you didnt know, baby stuff is WAY overpriced). I probably should have kept it for our next baby, but I just figured that by the time we have another one, I'll want the newest thing anyway. In 3 or 4 years that Jumperoo is going to be considered antique. Hopefully baby Sophia is enjoying it just as much as Aiden did.

In other news....er....wait....I have no other news! We're living pretty boring lives lately.

Dog Wars

There is no denying that Aiden loves dogs. He likes animals in general, but dogs have made his face light up since the day he was born (I'm serious!)

Now that we're relatively settled into our humble abode, we've begun to ask the question: Should we get a dog?

Up until...well...a few days ago maybe, I've been pretty anti-dog. Not because I don't like them, but because I'm not sure I want the responsibility right now. As seen with my parents, a dog can tie you down quite a bit. Paying for boarding when a vacation comes up, only being able to leave the house for a little bit because the dog needs to get let out, standing out in the freezing cold to let it do business, etc. I have my hands full with my troublemaker son, so a dog would be an interesting addition.

On the flip side, Tom and I are both dog people and we'd love to get one for Aiden to run around and play with. Plus, I freaked out about having a baby because I feared the responsibility, and now I would do anything for him. Maybe I'm just freaking out for no reason again.

We still have to get this approved with our landlords. I know they'll allow people to move in with dogs under 20 lbs, but will they be very thrilled if we purchase one while we're living here? Tom thinks our rent would increase, too.

Regardless, we have an appointment tomorrow to see some Bichon/Terrier mix puppies. I'm hoping they look like these cute little guys:

We went to a pet store today and fell in love with a Bichon/Yorkie mix that was a golden color, but they're trying to get $620 for her. Ouch!

Color is a basic human need…Like fire and water, A raw material, Indispensable to life.

This week is a big week. Why? Well, it's all because my grandmother decided to get married on Saturday, and she chose my parents house as the venue. What originally started as a casual fall wedding, has now evolved into a huge shindig that everybody (and then some...) is attending. Yes, even my brother and his girlfriend are flying in from Nowhere, Kansas tomorrow so they can delight in the party.

A trip to my house is first on the agenda for the week. Naturally this means that I need to kick it into high gear and get it "show-worthy." There was no way people would be coming to our house before I had the living room painted, so off we ran to Home Depot. After much deliberation (and about $25 spent purely on paint samples), we finally chose a color and embarked on our mission (see above the fireplace for a partial tasting of the samples).

9 hours later, and voila!



The 'before' shot (Aiden is an added bonus)



Our finished product, minus any decor



This project was only made possible with the ridiculously tall ladder and a trooper for a boyfriend. He stood on that ladder for hours in order to tape, paint the edges, and the roll the walls. (And no, he doesn't usually wear those ridiculous socks with shorts but apparently he thought he was being funny)



Now, I'd REALLY love to get the kitchen painted too, but I think Tom might have a heart attack if I bring that up. I guess we'll see....