Our Wedding Part 2 - The Rehersal

The day before the wedding was crazy but also lots of fun. My bridesmaides were amazing troopers who helped decorate the Carriage House for MANY hours.

gettin' a little bit crazy from all the work!

After a long day of decorating, it was time to reherse. The boys and my dad showed up and we went through how everything was going to play out. It was good times. And... a red cardinal showed up right at the end of the rehersal. (Those of you who don't know - red cardinals remind my family of my mom...so it was almost like she was stopping by for a visit. It was a very nice moment.)

After the rehersal was our VERY fancy rehersal dinner of pizza and beer.  What can I say, we're classy folks here!  Then it was time to give the bridal party their presents.  I gave my girls matching earrings and a necklace that I made for each of them as well as a mirror with a little funny saying that reminded me of them.  The boys....well, they got nerf guns.  They loved them!  While they were shooting up the hall that the girls and I had spend over 10 hours decorating...not so much.  But I do agree that they were pretty kick ass gifts for those guys!

Our Wedding Part 1 - It all has to start somewhere...

I figured I should write a bit about our wedding on here...so I think this will be a multi-post event. Here it goes....

How did we meet?


As we are both self proclaimed nerds, it's only fitting that we met via the internet. Thank you match.com!

Our first date was at an Afghan restaurant in Baltimore called The Helmand. I was about 5 minutes early and waited at the bar for Sean to arrive. He came in a few minutes later and walked up to me with a big smile on his face and said, "I'm sorry I'm late." I replied with some snarky remark about him being a whole 8 minutes late and not to let it happen again. Sean said that my smarty pants attitude made him instantly at ease. We ended up staying at the restaurant for over 2 hours talking about silly cat stories, work, family, and everything else under the sun. He had me laughing so hard I had tears literally streaming down my face. The rest, as they say, is history. Many dates and MANY laughs later we are here, starting our future together!

This picture is from our 4th date (day trip to Cape May!)

Dating:


I swear, I have never had more fun in my life than I have with Sean. He makes me laugh with his silliness and we never fight. It has been a fantastic ride and I'm so happy I get to spend the rest of my life with him!

Totally soaked after getting rained out of a Jason Mraz concert.

The Proposal:

It couldn't have been more perfect. Last summer we rented a house in Cape May (my absolute favorite place in the world) and a bunch of our friends came to stay with us. It was such a great time! Unfortunately for Sean, with all the people around it was very difficult to get me alone. Finally, we had one day where we would be at the beach for a few hours by ourselves. We were sitting in our beach chairs, enjoying the beautiful weather...and Sean starting being really sweet. He's normally very nice to me, but at this particular moment he was being especially endearing. I remember thinking to myself "this would be the perfect time for him to propose....but there's no way that's going to happen." Little did I know that is exactly what he had on his mind. A few minutes later he pulled a box out of the beach bag and opened it up and asked me to marry him. Unfortunately my first reaction was to say "shut up" about 10 times....and he finally had to ask "does that mean yes?." I said "of course" and hugged and kissed him, and then I proclaimed "we're getting married!!" It was an amazing and truly memorable moment.

He proposed to me right on the beach in Cape May....full circle!

 

The day we found Oliver's Carriage House where we got married! I mean seriously, do you see why I love this man?

A Letter to my Teenage Self

Inspired by Debb at Hand Pecked Designs who participated in Cassie Boorn's 20-SOMETHING SELF LETTERS, I decided to write a few words of wisdom to my former self.  Man I wish someone would have told me some of these things - could have saved a lot of grief.  However, I don't live with many regrets and all of my life experiences have molded who I am today so...who knows.

Dear Jenniejen, Smurfarave, Fer, Jen, et.al:

Below is a list of things that I think you really should consider as you continue down the road of life.  Some are simple tips, others are more monumental.  Do with them what you will...

- That bull hoop nose ring that you think is super cute…um, it’s not. One day you’re going to want to hide those pictures of you looking like an idiot from your in-laws!

- You really should take some photography classes. It’s really hard to learn on your own and you have a great resource available to you. In fact, take all the art classes you can fit into your schedule. Sure they aren’t in your major but they are valuable to create a fulfilling life. Even if you suck at art – LEARN!

- Other than the photography classes, don’t do anything different! Have fun, goof off, and graduate. After you get your degree, nobody cares what your GPA is.

- You have to work your way up the corporate ladder. Don’t get discouraged when you get a job paying $10 an hour answering phones at a radio station. It’s a stepping stone to better things.

- When your parents bring you with them on a 3 week trip to Europe – don’t be a shitty assed teenager who is more concerned with being cool and rolling her eyes. Soak it in. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and your parents are frickin’ awesome to even consider taking you on such an amazing trip! (Really wish someone had said this to me! I am such an ass!)

- Don’t waste your time dating loser guys. Remember this – people don’t change. Sure, they evolve and grow…but they don’t CHANGE. If he’s a jerk now….he’s going to be a jerk in 2 years. If he is unmotivated and a mooch now, it’s not going to change. The sooner you learn this the less time you’ll spend digging yourself out of the hole they’ve created. (People did say this to me…I guess some things you have to learn by living, unfortunately).

- Spend as much time with your mom as possible. She won’t be around too much longer. Soak up her knowledge and love.

- While you're soaking up your mom's love, look to see if her pinkies are too short too! (this one still kills me! None of my siblings have it…where did it come from? Why are my pinkies so short?! And why did I not notice until I was 23 years old? No wonder I sucked at Piano!)


- You are NOT as cool as you think you are.

- Keep on dancing all night long. One day you will be too tired and part of the corporate cog to be able to stay up and party like that. Partying like that is for the young – enjoy it!

- Don’t buy that house. It isn’t worth it and will be a financial pain in your butt! When people tell you that it’s a good investment – don’t believe them! Renting is fine!

- Enjoy being a carefree student. While it’s nice to be a “grown-up” where you make your own rules and whatnot – it’s really awesome to be taken care of and supported. To wake up at 1pm on a weekday in the summer with nothing to do but lounge.

- Live it up! All of it!

P.S. Yes, that's right, that's your new last name. Isn't it sweet?  You will get married.  And he will be fantastic!  Yay you!!

Zeus Playing with the iPad

By popular demand (ok it was just handpecked that requested it)....here is the video of my fat, lazy cat playing with my iPad.  He looks like he can barely contain his excitement.  Seriously, he may be very nonchalant about it but if you turn the volume up you can hear him purring like a motor. 

So excited!!!

I have lots to be excited about these days. In no particular order they are:

We got our iPads this week and holy crap its awesome! I am actually writing this post from it - curled up on the couch with my cat. Its so light (the iPad not the 14.8 pound cat!) I can't wait to discover all the cool things it can do. I can say that this is the first test at tying for real on it and so far it's not bad. A few times I have had to back up and fix things - but that happens when I type anyway! Haha. I promise. I will post a video of Zeus playing with it soon. He's pretty lazy though so i don't know how entertaining it will be :)

This weekend is a huge bead show at the fairgrounds and i can not wait! I hope to get some unique beads and other supples so i can continue making jewelry for my store. I have only had 2 sales so far but hey...it's a start, right? I told the hubbs that I am going friday after work and then again on Sunday. Cause I'm a dork. He agrees. Hah

And to make the weekend super fantastic we are finishing it up with us both getting massages. Get this - at my old job SEVEN YEARS AGO one of the departments I helped create marketing materials for gave me an our massage gift certificate for an xmas gift. Cool, right? Anyway-I promptly lost the certificate and boo hooed but figured it was gone. Not so! After 3 moves I found it, called the salon to check if there was an expiration because it says 2003 on it...and they said it's still good!! Can you believe it?? I am so excited! We got massages on our honeymoon and now I'm hooked! I can't wait!

So that's all my excitement! I know this is a pretty boring post but I figured I need to keep writing on here so that I don't drop it like the 5 other blogs I tried to start and promptly forgot about. So there you have it. My ramblings.

I promise a more exciting post next time...complete with cat iPad video!

My Etsy shop is Up!!!

I have excellent news! My dreams of opening my own etsy shop have come true! I have been working very hard at designing, photographing, and describing my jewelry and finally got to the point where I can list some things.  There are currently only a few items listed - but I will have more going up each day! It just takes a while to get all the pieces together - making the jewelry is only one small part of the process.  I want to put my pieces out there in a way that makes them desirable, you know?  That means taking about 50 pictures of each one, cropping them, adding my shop name...etc.  Anyway, that's not very exciting to read about...but I thought I'd share a bit of the "behind the scenes" of what it's like to open your own online store.

You will also notice that there is now a listing in the right column that shows some of the items I have listed in my shop.  If you see something you like - feel free to click.  It will bring you to my store.  Pretty sweet!!

I'm so very excited! Who knows if anyone will buy my things (I hope so!!) But anyway...here is the link to my store in case you'd like to check it out.  If you have any suggestions on how I could improve it - please let me know! (But be kind...it's my new baby!)

It's with a bursting squeel of excitement that I introduce...

  Joies - Simple & Sweet Jewelry
 www.etsy.com/shop/joies

Horray!!

makin' stuff

I am so incredibly happy these days. Not only am I married to a totally kick-ass dude – BUT I no longer have any wedding related crafts that I’m racing the clock to finish. I have moved my creative energy to my newest and ever-evolving crafty passion of making jewelry. I have been having so much fun learning new techniques and using better materials to create higher quality pieces. I feel that I’m at a point where I can actually sell my items on etsy. I’ve been working on photographing my pieces and getting my shop policies and layout in order. I’ve started writing my product descriptions and deciding on prices…and I think I’m going to launch the site this weekend. In the meantime, here are some teaser pictures of my latest work.

 

 

 

Our Honeymoon in Jamaica

Ok so I’m going to write these posts all out of order, because I want to share things but I just don’t have all the pictures yet….so I’m going to write about the honeymoon before I write about the wedding. I will tell you this – our wedding was magical! It was the most amazing day and everything came together better than I could have possibly dreamed of. And the best part about it is…now I am married to an amazing and incredible man and I feel so very lucky! (ok now that you’re all probably barfing at your desks….I’ll share some tidbits of the honeymoon.)

We went to Jamaica…which I like to refer to as Paradise. OMG it is beautiful there. The crystal clear water, the beautiful beaches, the trees and flowers…sigh. I want to be back there now! We stayed at the Sandal’s Dunn’s River Villagio resort. Loved it!

We spent about 90% of our time lounging on the beach. Can you blame us???

We also spent time in the pool (drinking fruity drinks at the swim up bar.

The only excursion we did off the resort was the catamaran cruise to Dunn’s River falls and snorkeling. We had so much fun climbing up the falls!

The cruise was awesome too! There were these hammock type things you could lay on while the boat was moving – and water would splash up and cool you off!

About half way back to the resort, we stopped for some snorkeling. It was raining, but it was still really cool. And hey, we were already wet so…

Our last night there we had dinner by the pool. Look at my “bronze god” of a hubby. He liked to tease me because he seemed to get tanner than me (however I had a cold while I was there and spent a whole day in bed so…not really my fault!)

That night, we went swimming – it was so warm!

Then we fed our kitties. Meet Tinkles and Jasper. We would steal food off the buffet during the day and feed them each night. They were so sweet!

Well, that’s the short story about our honeymoon. We had so much fun relaxing and enjoying each others company. A lot of silliness happened along the way – but you know…that’s just how we do!

I want to go back....

Bird-Themed Table Numbers

Disclaimer: This post was written before the wedding...BUT I didn't want to give anything away to those who actually attended the event.  Therefore, these tidbits have all been saved for posting.  This post was written on April 18th.  Enjoy...

One of the biggest pieces of my wedding vision were the table numbers.  I had been planning these for months and spent countless hours looking for the perfect little birdies and choosing colors for the numbers and what type of moss I wanted.  Biscuit's dad cut the wood bases for us and then it was time to assemble.  I recruited Biscuit and Kris to come over and help - and it was a great time.  We got out our glue guns, bags of moss, packs of birdies and got to crafting.  Here are the results.  I LOVE THEM!

* This part of the post was written after the wedding. This part was written on June 9, 2010.*

I can not tell you how happy I was with how everything turned out! The table numbers MADE the tables, just like I thought they would!  And the flowers and table cloths and everything came together - just how I envisioned it!  YAY! I still don't have the professional photos - but I wanted to start sharing all of the crafts.  I'll be sure to post the highlights of the professional shots when I get them at the end of the month.