A few wedding things done

I think I'm finally getting used to being overwhelmed and probably just need to be used to it for the next 2 months! This week I've been to 3 different Michael's stores to buy paper for our invitations and finally just resulted to buying some really large pieces of it and then went to Artmart tonight and used their enormous paper cutter to make it the size I want. So, now tomorrow we can take our invite file and paper to the printer and get these invites going! I had my first dress fitting last night with the seamstress. On Monday I had bought some Spanx (underwear that goes from your chest to mid-thigh to streamline and control everything) since my weightloss is not going too well...and dustin has complained like every night this week that i can't possibly wear these and they are hideous. But the reviews are so good on them and says it can make you look like a size smaller, so thought they were worth a try. So I have them on with my dress and the seamstress tells me that I look larger in my dress than what I really am...just what you want to hear standing in THE dress! My goal is not to look larger! So she recommended not wearing the spanx cause she thought they were adding to me looking heavier, so it did look better once i took the Spanx off. So am I like the only person where the Spanx did the reverse?!?! Overall my dress fit really well and basically could wear it with no alterations (except adding the bussle). I was able to remove ONE to-do item from the fridge this week, but hopefully this weekend will be productive and I am really close to being able to remove some more items. Dustin has really stepped up and been doing a lot this week, so maybe my idea of having all these tasks on the fridge has worked so he is aware of all that is outstanding!

OVERWHELMED!

So my title of this post sums it all up in that one word! Of course work has picked up and I'm really busy the whole day there, then I come home and feel like I seriously have 500 wedding tasks I need to do. I made sticky notes of all the items that I could think of that we have to do and then put them on the refridgerator-- I figure that way we are constantly looking at them and dustin can easily see what needs to be done. They are arranged with the most urgent ones at the top down to the least important or ones that can wait. We'll then remove the stickys as we complete the item....so hopefully we have a clear fridge by the wedding! I actually felt a little better after doing this and didn't seem as bad as what I thought if you just do a few things each week, but some items are super big!

I leave tonight to go to chicago for a friends bachelorette party, so hopefully that will give me a little relaxation! I made some more undies and think they look real cute. If I ever lose my job I'll just iron-on bling for a living I think.

Engagement pics

Now that it looks like I'm able to upload pictures again, I gotta share some from our engagement shoot that our friend did! I can't wait to get them all back, but don't want her to rush cause she is busy with her own wedding on top of other things...don't know how people do all that! So like most things related to the wedding Dustin didn't really understand why we were doing these pictures or want to do them. I kept asking what he was going to wear on the day of it...I even bought him some new jeans but he didn't like because they were "too dark" (long live the stonewash for dustin!), so those gotta be returned. So I think Stephanie (our photographer) about died when she asked what we were going to wear for the 2nd outfit and dustin didn't know and was just going to pick something out spur of the moment. She and her fiancee had engagement pics a few weeks ago and said they went to the mall like 4 times to get their outfits. I swear dustin doesn't realize how lucky he is that I put up with his laid-back style! Like any normal person would have thought about what they were going to wear, made sure it was clean, made sure it was ironed, etc. But it all worked out for him just fine!

So we started out in dressier clothes and shot a bunch in the alley behind our building and then some just around our block and building. We then changed into more casual clothes and went over to the new city garden and just some other areas of downtown.

This one cracks me up cause I think she told us to each go sit at an end, so dustin plops down and crosses his arms like he's mad...so then that was the pose we did...then did some more lovey-dovey ones. As much as he didn't really want to do this, I think he really liked striking up poses!

This one I probably all screwed up, but I was playing around with the color on this one (and am too lazy to go pull the original one Stephanie did from the email)...but we love this shot and is on washington right in front of our building.

This was our casual outfit and we actually were done and just walking back to the car and realized there was no one on the street and she had the arch in the background, so snapped this!

Wedding Party Attire...for the moment

So I was feeling a little overwhelmed with all we have to do...and the lack of things dustin is crossing off his list. So tonight I went to Men's Wearhouse online and played around with some tux options and showed dustin and he knew right away what he liked and didn't like. So he picked this out all on his own out of the choices I gave him, but I really like it. Now we just need to go to MW to get things setup and see the fabrics in person and then hopefully this is completely off the list! Here is what it looks like the wedding party is wearing:

Stupid Computer

So we've had pc issues lately, so I guess I can blame my lack of postings on that! Something has been up that it just runs really slow at times and is impossible to do anything...then we got a horrible virus that we could not get rid of, so finally tonight we were able to restore it back to a few weeks ago. Of course though I had done a ton of work on our wedding invites over the last week, so then I had to make sure to pull all that off cause we were going to lose the files. Just been a huge pain! So I'll recap what has happened lately, but unfortunately I don't have any pictures now to go with this.

My wedding dress came in! So Melissa and I went to look at it and so I could try it on-- all looked good and fit pretty darn well. I go for my first fitting for the alterations in a little over a week, so I'm trying to be SUPER good about exercises and eating good. I signed up for workout classes at work over the lunch hour, so I'm trying to do those at least 3 times a week and then still go to the gym after work as often as possible. The bridesmaid dresses just came in today, so we'll go soon to make sure those all look okay too! Melissa and I also went cake tasting and I put down a deposit, but just gotta make my decisions on what it looks like and the flavors. We were definitely surprised at the one we liked the best-- it was chocolate cake with this fudge filling....yum!

Last Tuesday was the all-star game here in St. Louis. We walked around downtown for a bit to try and experience it, but it was hot out and there wasn't just much to do. So we headed over to J Bucks and met my aunt and uncle there who were just hanging out while their kids were at the game. Then on Wednesday, Dustin's brother and sister-in-law had their baby-- Liam-- he was all healthy and cute as could be! Last night we shot some engagement pics, which was quite amusing. Our friend Stephanie had offered to do them for us and she sent us a preview of a few pics and they look really good! I think the whole time dustin and I just felt a little ridiculous acting so lovey-dovey, but hopefully it gives us at least a handful of cool shots. Maybe our blank walls can start to get filled with some pics now!

Well hopefully I'll find some time this week to get my pics and stuff back uploaded to the computer and back in the swing of things! Since the wedding is getting closer I'm going to try to be better about keeping this updated with all the craziness of planning!

Toronto Trip

Well, I've got my pics uploaded to my pc from our trip, but still need to do some editing on them. I think I may try to put together a cute video or something on my Mac cause I have lots of pictures and will hopefully get some more from other people. I'll go through a quick synopsis of the trip:

Wednesday: We left after work. I did TONS of research to try and find a hotel for us to stop at and was having issues finding a decent place. I'm very picky about hotels and basically don't like anything that has a floral bedspread cause just gives me the heebie geebies and that it's not clean. So I found a Hampton Inn that had great reviews, so decided we'd drive to that and made a reservation there. We were almost there and I can see what looks like a fire up ahead on the interstate so I tell dustin to slow down some. As we get closer we realize there is a car pulled over on the right in full flames...only the frame is left and just blazing up a storm. The emergengy vehicles are arriving as we approach. So I'm telling Dustin to just stay back and I don't think we should pass it cause might explode or something, but he just keeps going by. So I think- this will make a great pic for my blog, I'll at least get a picture of this if he's going to go right past it. So I have my camera and Mr. Genius says- i'll roll down your window so you get a better picture. So next thing I know my window is going down and you feel the heat rush in from the fire. Then, just as I hit the button to take the picture a loud BOOM goes off like an explosion, exactly what I was afraid of! So I jumped a mile and ended up taking a picture of my door as shown below. So then we get to the town with the hotel and see it on the right side of the interstate so dustin exits right....onto a TOLL toad and the next exit to turn around isn't for 16 MILES! So it is already midnight and we are tired and now we've just created an extra 30 minutes of driving. Man, that was not pleasant!

Thursday: Got up and drove the rest of the way. Our hotel was really nice that we checked into. Then we went to Dustin's uncle's house for a bbq/rehearsal dinner for his cousin's wedding. The weather was awesome and it was fun meeting all the relatives and friends.

Friday: We walked around downtown with his family and then that night Dustin and I went to this Distillery District which seemed like a part of downtown they are revitazling the old buildings into restuarants, art galleries, shops, etc. It was very cool area and our meal was awesome! We ate at this italian place because they didn't have a wait and we didn't really want italian since we can get good italian in st louis, but this was fabulous! Dustin had egg noodle pasta with mushrooms and truffle sauce. Then it had quail on top, which I had never seen...looked just like chicken, but wasn't brave enough to try that! I had some spinach and gorgonzola gnocchi which was delicious.

This pic was from earlier in the day, we stopped along the lake and Keanan had some french fries and ketchup...although he didn't seem to fond of the fries. Instead, he'd just dip his whole hand into the ketchup and eat that!

This was where we ate dinner:

This was the restaurant I REALLY wanted to eat at, but was like an hour wait and dustin didn't want to wait. They had all these comfy cabana-things outside.

Saturday: We walked around the beaches with his family and Keanan played for a bit on the playground. Then we went to the wedding that night, which was a great time-- good food and good music! Keanan got this ice cream sundae for his dessert at the wedding and it was hilarious watching him eat this.

Sunday: We just hung out at dustin's aunts house to watch his cousin open their gifts. Then we went to watch his other cousin play softball for a bit. Then dustin and I went to dinner at a greek restaurant, which was good, but not as good as our meal friday night!

RIP MJ

It's been almost 2 weeks, but the big news around the county, or really the world, is that Michael Jackson passed away-- suspected of drug overdose. Today they had a service in LA at the Staples Center for him where many celebrities spoke and performed. I was able to Tivo most of it, but it cut off before the whole thing ended. By far the most emotional part was when his daughter, Paris, spoke and was obvious that he was a great father and treated those kids well. Dustin was like 4 years old or really young when Thriller was popular and supposedly would just have MTV on and wait until thriller would come on...then he'd get on his rocking horse and just go crazy riding it. He went to visit relatives in Canada and was so crazed over MJ that he had a little leather outfit and glove and insisted that he wear it on the airplane home! We have some pics of him, so I need to dig those up and add to this post. The funny part about seeing the pic was that it's a big old snow glove, not the diamond white glove! I guess what do you expect for Canada though! Until I can scrounge up that old pic, here's a recent one of Dustin with his idol at an 80s party we were at.

Mini-vacation!

Off to canada! We are going to see Dustin's family and attend his cousin's wedding. It is in Toronto, which I've been to already and done the touristy things, so I'm not sure what we'll do on this trip yet. So probably another week with no postings, but maybe I'll have some downtime to blog. We are driving, which I love roadtrips...but I think dustin is dreading. I'm having to give up my New Kids on the Block ticket for tonight though, so that is a real downer. I'm thinking I'll just have to rock out in the car to my own NKOTB concert...dustin will love that! Hope he's ready to be hangin tough!