Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Inspiration...
Call me unoriginal, but this time of year is definitely my favorite. The chilly breezes, golden and red leaves and the buzz of the coming holidays always make me feel nostalgic and inspired. So inspired, in fact, that I have made a decision... I think I'm going to try to make most of my Christmas gifts this year. I've found so many inspirations and ideas from so many resources this year, and I think it would definitely make the first Christmas in our new home a memorable (even more so than it would already be) one! Perhaps part of this inspiration stems from the cooking craze that I've been under lately. Since we moved into the new house, I haven't been able to cook enough. If I'm not cooking, I'm thinking about recipes or looking for them!! Cooking has a calming, centering effect in me, and I love the feeling I get from making something delicious that brightens someones day. This year, I'll be hosting Thanksgiving at our new home for my mom, brother, grandmother, grandfather and (hopefully) my dad. Thanksgiving has always been a really special time in our family, a time that has the same family love and involvement that Christmas has, but with a toned-down sense of stress, drama and expectation. This is why Thanksgiving has always rivaled Christmas as my favorite holiday. Spending time in a warm, cozy house with people that I love dearly, laughing, cooking, sharing memories and stories from the year, drinking wine and watching holiday movies has been my picture of perfection ever since I can remember. I have definitely inherited the cooking gene from both sides of my family and I am really, really looking forward to taking this important step (hosting a major holiday) in J and I's new life together. Thinking of the things that I'd like to do in preparation for the coming holidays has me feeling crafty, creative, imaginative and sentimental, which is making me antsy to get started on my holiday crafts and baking! I certainly don't want this gorgeous time of the year to be over, but can't it just be the holidays already?? :) I'm so anxious to get started on the "fun stuff" projects for Thanksgiving and Christmas that I'm basically ready to start writing and addressing my Christmas cards!! Is that pathetic, or what?? Haha :)
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Seattle, sweet Seattle...
Hello all!!
J and I made it back from the beautiful Seattle on Sunday night around 12:30 a.m. (or is that Monday morning??). We had a wonderful trip!
We departed from Boise around 5:00 a.m. and got to Seattle in the early afternoon (it was about an 8 hour drive).
We headed to J's cousin's house first, who we'd be staying with for the weekend. Soon after, his cousin led us to the bus stop, where we caught the 43 to downtown Seattle. We walked to Pikes Place Market, got some dinner at a place called Tap House (it has 160 beers on tap!!) and went shopping for a bit. Afterwards, we met up with his cousin's roommates for a beer at a hole in the wall called the Attic not far from the house.
The next day, we had the snowmobiling expo to go to in Puyallup. The drive was about an hour long, and when we got there we spent about 2.5 hours walking around the expo, picking up parts and accessories for J's snowmobile. We headed back to Seattle, and were pleasantly surprised when we found it bright, sunny and mildly warm.
Apparently, this is not a typical occurrence in Seattle! So we took a nap and then decided to take advantage of the nice weather. Again, we hopped on the 43 and headed downtown. It was wonderful to wander such an amazing city alone with J. We shopped and walked, and walked some more. We saw a march that was made up of literally thousands of people (I'd never seen anything like it!!).
Thanks to the nice weather, the sunset was absolutely breathtaking. We found a little spot to lean off of the back of Pikes Place Market to watch the red sun sink into the bay.
Then we found a restaurant that had a nice view inside of the Market and treated ourselves to some very fresh seafood.
After dinner, we picked up some delicious coffee at the very first Starbucks ever (I'm a corny tourist and demand that we see the typical tourist sights where ever we go hahaha), and walked back to the bus stop to catch our bus back to his cousin's. When we made it back to the house, we picked up the car and headed for the Space Needle.
This was definitely one of my absolute favorite parts of the entire trip. It was really, really incredible. We headed to the top of the Space Needle and walked around the top of it, staring out into the lights of Seattle and the dark bay, huddling against the freezing wind. We sat at a table against the windows inside talking about all of the places we'd love to visit and before I knew it, 2 hours had gone by. I was reminded of the hours we'd spent talking on our dates at the beginning of our relationship and I realized how important experiences like this are to J and I's relationship. Experiencing new things and making new memories together always strengthens our relationship, and in that moment I felt indescribably grateful for the wonderful man I'm about to marry. The Space Needle was the end of the night for us, and we headed back to the house, cuddled up and watched episodes of Friends on my laptop. The next day, we decided a hearty breakfast was in order before we hit the road... We found an IHOP on our phones and decided that it didn't look like a very difficult drive, maybe 10 minutes, so we hopped in the car and started driving. It took around 3 minutes for us to discover that the highway we needed to take to the restaurant was closed for the weekend, and we proceeded to get lost in Seattle for about an hour. We finally made it, and then ended up waiting for the person that we were carpooling with for another hour and a half after we were done eating. It was around 3:00 p.m. before we finally got on the road!
While we were on the road back to Boise, I worked on wedding stuff and was able to finish our official guest list. We're at 174 guests at the moment!! I think that that is a decent number of guests, and I'm excited to start on another project for the wedding!!
J and I made it back from the beautiful Seattle on Sunday night around 12:30 a.m. (or is that Monday morning??). We had a wonderful trip!
We departed from Boise around 5:00 a.m. and got to Seattle in the early afternoon (it was about an 8 hour drive).
We headed to J's cousin's house first, who we'd be staying with for the weekend. Soon after, his cousin led us to the bus stop, where we caught the 43 to downtown Seattle. We walked to Pikes Place Market, got some dinner at a place called Tap House (it has 160 beers on tap!!) and went shopping for a bit. Afterwards, we met up with his cousin's roommates for a beer at a hole in the wall called the Attic not far from the house.
The next day, we had the snowmobiling expo to go to in Puyallup. The drive was about an hour long, and when we got there we spent about 2.5 hours walking around the expo, picking up parts and accessories for J's snowmobile. We headed back to Seattle, and were pleasantly surprised when we found it bright, sunny and mildly warm.
Apparently, this is not a typical occurrence in Seattle! So we took a nap and then decided to take advantage of the nice weather. Again, we hopped on the 43 and headed downtown. It was wonderful to wander such an amazing city alone with J. We shopped and walked, and walked some more. We saw a march that was made up of literally thousands of people (I'd never seen anything like it!!).
Thanks to the nice weather, the sunset was absolutely breathtaking. We found a little spot to lean off of the back of Pikes Place Market to watch the red sun sink into the bay.
Then we found a restaurant that had a nice view inside of the Market and treated ourselves to some very fresh seafood.
After dinner, we picked up some delicious coffee at the very first Starbucks ever (I'm a corny tourist and demand that we see the typical tourist sights where ever we go hahaha), and walked back to the bus stop to catch our bus back to his cousin's. When we made it back to the house, we picked up the car and headed for the Space Needle.
This was definitely one of my absolute favorite parts of the entire trip. It was really, really incredible. We headed to the top of the Space Needle and walked around the top of it, staring out into the lights of Seattle and the dark bay, huddling against the freezing wind. We sat at a table against the windows inside talking about all of the places we'd love to visit and before I knew it, 2 hours had gone by. I was reminded of the hours we'd spent talking on our dates at the beginning of our relationship and I realized how important experiences like this are to J and I's relationship. Experiencing new things and making new memories together always strengthens our relationship, and in that moment I felt indescribably grateful for the wonderful man I'm about to marry. The Space Needle was the end of the night for us, and we headed back to the house, cuddled up and watched episodes of Friends on my laptop. The next day, we decided a hearty breakfast was in order before we hit the road... We found an IHOP on our phones and decided that it didn't look like a very difficult drive, maybe 10 minutes, so we hopped in the car and started driving. It took around 3 minutes for us to discover that the highway we needed to take to the restaurant was closed for the weekend, and we proceeded to get lost in Seattle for about an hour. We finally made it, and then ended up waiting for the person that we were carpooling with for another hour and a half after we were done eating. It was around 3:00 p.m. before we finally got on the road!
While we were on the road back to Boise, I worked on wedding stuff and was able to finish our official guest list. We're at 174 guests at the moment!! I think that that is a decent number of guests, and I'm excited to start on another project for the wedding!!
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Mexico!!
Hello lovely readers :) Hope the past two weeks have treated you all very well. I'm disappointed in myself for not updating sooner, but to be honest I've simply been far too busy.
Not this past Friday, but the Friday before (Oct. 1) my office moved. There's only so much preparation that you can do for a situation like that, most of which is physical. You can pack, you can label, you can organize and clean, but in the end it's still going to be stressful as hell. And it was. We started at about 8:30 in the morning. J and I left the new site around 12:30, after I had basically unpacked my entire office and most of the moving had been finished. It was a shit show to say the least. Extremely busy, hectic and disorganized. Unfortunately for all of us, our office is filled with very strong, opinionated personalities, and as I predicted, they clashed during the move. Stress was high and patience was low, but luckily, we survived.
J and I spent the rest of the day talking about wedding stuff and decided to research a potential caterer. We ate at the Ono Cafe here in Boise, ID. They advertise themselves as a "hawaiian" restaurant, but their fabulous chef can make food to suit all different types of palates that will satiate even the pickiest eater. Friday is their buffet day, so we got to sample all of their most popular dishes. We were immediately in love. Their pork and chicken melt in your mouth, with their own unique blends of spices that are complimented by the other menu items. They even make their own salad dressing, both of which were tested and approved by J and I . :) Granted this is the only place that we've researched as a potential caterer, but taking into account the variety of dishes they can provide and their more than reasonable fees, we may have found the one on the first try!! A giant thanks goes to my very good friend and coordinator, Q, who recommended us to this culinary haven!
The last two weeks have also consisted Halloween costume planning, vacation planning and honeymoon planning. J and I are trying to figure out what we're going to be for Halloween. We can't decide between being an old-West bartender and a saloon girl or a Prohibitionist gangster and a flapper girl. So we're debating on that. Additionally, we're planning a weekend vacation to Seattle for this weekend, which we are both very excited about!! I've never been to Seattle, and J has never been on his own and hasn't been for a really long time, so we're really looking forward to exploring the city together. We're definitely planning on visiting the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, the original Starbucks and hopefully the Fremont Troll. I'm definitely planning on sampling some Washington wine and excellent fresh seafood. We got the idea for the trip from a friend of J's. There's a snowmobiling expo going on in a smaller town just outside of Seattle that this friend is going to, and he asked us if we'd like to go and carpool with him. This works out well for us because it saves us on gas money, and we leaped on the opportunity. J also has a cousin that lives in Seattle that said that we could crash with him, which saves us a ton of money on lodging!! We can't wait to get out of town together and experience some new things together!
And that brings us to the honeymoon plans - finally! J's father and his partner, S, have been generous enough to offer to provide us with lodging for our honeymoon! S has a contract with a timeshare company, and has offered us a 7-day stay in either Maui or Mexico. After a short discussion, we both decided that Mexico was where we really wanted to be. The condo is in San Jose del Cabo, the quieter of the two Cabo's. :) It's about 20 miles away from Cabo San Lucas. The condo resort that we'll be staying at has a ton of amenities to offer, and with all of the public transportation, getting to Cabo San Lucas for some additional adventures will be a piece of cake! We can't wait to fly off on our Mexican adventure!! I simply could not thank J's dad and S enough for their very generous contribution to our honeymoon!! We're planning on leaving for our honeymoon on the Monday following our wedding. The reasons for this are that we have a lot of out-of-town family coming to Boise for the wedding, and we'd like to get to spend the entire wedding weekend after the wedding (on a Friday) relaxing and unwinding and visiting with our families, having our post-wedding brunch and opening our gifts with our families. :) Another reason is that J and I are going to need some time to relax and re-group after the insanity of the wedding and before flying away for an entire week. It just seemed like a much safer plan for us, and would provide us with a little more time to make sure that we have everything together for the honeymoon rather than rushing off from the wedding or the morning after the wedding, and possibly forgetting something! Having our lodging taken care of my J's dad and S, in addition to the fact that we'll be paying for our round-trip tickets with J's points that are linked to his credit card (we're estimating that it won't cost us anything!!) means that we can save up to have funds to really experience the shopping, eating and adventures that Mexico has to offer us. I can't wait for our honeymoon!! It's going to be so exciting and romantic!!
Other than that, the wedding planning and homemaking continues as usual :) My next update will probably come after our Seattle trip, to share the adventures (and possibly pictures?) from that trip. Speaking of Seattle... I checked the weather report for next weekend in Seattle and it's supposed to be in the mid-50's with an 80% chance of rain. After discovering this information, J and I decided that an umbrella would be a valuable item to have in advance, so I went to find one today. I wanted a shorter one that I could put in my bag and carry with me while we're walking around the city, but the only one that WalMart had was leopard print. Something deep inside me told me that J would simply refuse to carry a leopard print umbrella in Seattle (hahaha) so I decided to check Walgreen's. I found one that was the right length in a teal/aquamarine color that I think J will find acceptable but isn't the typical boring black that I can't stand, but I was shocked to find that it was $13.50!! Who knew umbrellas were so expensive?? I was really surprised. I suppose that umbrellas are an example of those products you don't buy until you really need them, and at that point the manufacturers can charge pretty much whatever the hell they want because you really do need it and so they know you'll pay it. In this case the truth was expensive, but I bit the bullet and swiped my card. I'm sure I won't regret it when I don't have to stand in the cold rain in Seattle. :)
Have a wonderful week!! :)
Not this past Friday, but the Friday before (Oct. 1) my office moved. There's only so much preparation that you can do for a situation like that, most of which is physical. You can pack, you can label, you can organize and clean, but in the end it's still going to be stressful as hell. And it was. We started at about 8:30 in the morning. J and I left the new site around 12:30, after I had basically unpacked my entire office and most of the moving had been finished. It was a shit show to say the least. Extremely busy, hectic and disorganized. Unfortunately for all of us, our office is filled with very strong, opinionated personalities, and as I predicted, they clashed during the move. Stress was high and patience was low, but luckily, we survived.
J and I spent the rest of the day talking about wedding stuff and decided to research a potential caterer. We ate at the Ono Cafe here in Boise, ID. They advertise themselves as a "hawaiian" restaurant, but their fabulous chef can make food to suit all different types of palates that will satiate even the pickiest eater. Friday is their buffet day, so we got to sample all of their most popular dishes. We were immediately in love. Their pork and chicken melt in your mouth, with their own unique blends of spices that are complimented by the other menu items. They even make their own salad dressing, both of which were tested and approved by J and I . :) Granted this is the only place that we've researched as a potential caterer, but taking into account the variety of dishes they can provide and their more than reasonable fees, we may have found the one on the first try!! A giant thanks goes to my very good friend and coordinator, Q, who recommended us to this culinary haven!
The last two weeks have also consisted Halloween costume planning, vacation planning and honeymoon planning. J and I are trying to figure out what we're going to be for Halloween. We can't decide between being an old-West bartender and a saloon girl or a Prohibitionist gangster and a flapper girl. So we're debating on that. Additionally, we're planning a weekend vacation to Seattle for this weekend, which we are both very excited about!! I've never been to Seattle, and J has never been on his own and hasn't been for a really long time, so we're really looking forward to exploring the city together. We're definitely planning on visiting the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, the original Starbucks and hopefully the Fremont Troll. I'm definitely planning on sampling some Washington wine and excellent fresh seafood. We got the idea for the trip from a friend of J's. There's a snowmobiling expo going on in a smaller town just outside of Seattle that this friend is going to, and he asked us if we'd like to go and carpool with him. This works out well for us because it saves us on gas money, and we leaped on the opportunity. J also has a cousin that lives in Seattle that said that we could crash with him, which saves us a ton of money on lodging!! We can't wait to get out of town together and experience some new things together!
And that brings us to the honeymoon plans - finally! J's father and his partner, S, have been generous enough to offer to provide us with lodging for our honeymoon! S has a contract with a timeshare company, and has offered us a 7-day stay in either Maui or Mexico. After a short discussion, we both decided that Mexico was where we really wanted to be. The condo is in San Jose del Cabo, the quieter of the two Cabo's. :) It's about 20 miles away from Cabo San Lucas. The condo resort that we'll be staying at has a ton of amenities to offer, and with all of the public transportation, getting to Cabo San Lucas for some additional adventures will be a piece of cake! We can't wait to fly off on our Mexican adventure!! I simply could not thank J's dad and S enough for their very generous contribution to our honeymoon!! We're planning on leaving for our honeymoon on the Monday following our wedding. The reasons for this are that we have a lot of out-of-town family coming to Boise for the wedding, and we'd like to get to spend the entire wedding weekend after the wedding (on a Friday) relaxing and unwinding and visiting with our families, having our post-wedding brunch and opening our gifts with our families. :) Another reason is that J and I are going to need some time to relax and re-group after the insanity of the wedding and before flying away for an entire week. It just seemed like a much safer plan for us, and would provide us with a little more time to make sure that we have everything together for the honeymoon rather than rushing off from the wedding or the morning after the wedding, and possibly forgetting something! Having our lodging taken care of my J's dad and S, in addition to the fact that we'll be paying for our round-trip tickets with J's points that are linked to his credit card (we're estimating that it won't cost us anything!!) means that we can save up to have funds to really experience the shopping, eating and adventures that Mexico has to offer us. I can't wait for our honeymoon!! It's going to be so exciting and romantic!!
Other than that, the wedding planning and homemaking continues as usual :) My next update will probably come after our Seattle trip, to share the adventures (and possibly pictures?) from that trip. Speaking of Seattle... I checked the weather report for next weekend in Seattle and it's supposed to be in the mid-50's with an 80% chance of rain. After discovering this information, J and I decided that an umbrella would be a valuable item to have in advance, so I went to find one today. I wanted a shorter one that I could put in my bag and carry with me while we're walking around the city, but the only one that WalMart had was leopard print. Something deep inside me told me that J would simply refuse to carry a leopard print umbrella in Seattle (hahaha) so I decided to check Walgreen's. I found one that was the right length in a teal/aquamarine color that I think J will find acceptable but isn't the typical boring black that I can't stand, but I was shocked to find that it was $13.50!! Who knew umbrellas were so expensive?? I was really surprised. I suppose that umbrellas are an example of those products you don't buy until you really need them, and at that point the manufacturers can charge pretty much whatever the hell they want because you really do need it and so they know you'll pay it. In this case the truth was expensive, but I bit the bullet and swiped my card. I'm sure I won't regret it when I don't have to stand in the cold rain in Seattle. :)
Have a wonderful week!! :)
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