Piles

Anyone who has planned a wedding knows...there's a lot of Stuff involved. Over the past few weeks especially, I've been making small purchases each week so I don't get hit with a huge credit card bill all at once when the wedding is closer.

The side effect of that is that I have to store all of these purchases until the wedding day. Most of the items building in my piles are gifts of one sort or another, envelopes and stamps for invitations, and paper for wedding programs. Which I guess means, that I'll be giving most of these items away when the time comes.

Is there such thing as post-wedding depression? If there is, I'm pretty sure I'll have it when I get home from the honeymoon and find these piles gone...

I certainly enjoy amassing these items for the time being. I get that little pitter-patter in my heart every time a package comes to the door. So, for now, I will enjoy the piles and purchasing each and every one of them.

Weekend Tasks

So I don't know what you all do with your weekends, but for us it tends to be a time to get things done that we just don't have the energy to do during the week. Usually we're pretty good with keeping up with things like laundry and the dishes, but the bigger stuff waits until those days that start with "S."

This week, our big issue was the Fridge! We've been having trouble for the past 3-4 weeks with it not staying cold, and all the yummy food that I plan to cook/have for leftover-lunches, is going bad before we get a chance to eat/cook them. And you know how much I love to cook, so that was not acceptable.

This weekend we decided it was finally time to dig in deep.

We started the morning by taking everything out of the freezer, putting it into a cooler, removing the ice maker from the wall, and pulling off the back panel. It wasn't easy in such an awkward space, but Mr. Man made it happen.

Through trial and error we discovered that it wasn't a leak in the ice maker, it wasn't a problem with the cooling coils...we discovered a fan that wasn't turning! That created a serious circulation issue, so cold air wasn't making it out from behind that back panel.

With the problem discovered, we pulled a part number, and ordered a new one online. Hopefully our awesome powers of deduction came to the right conclusion and when the new fan motor arrives in a few days we will once again have frozen eggos and cold milk!

Hopefully your weekends were successful in your own ways.

Cooking Extravaganza

A couple months ago, I went home to visit with the folks and ended up making dinner for us all. This is definitely my favorite go-to meal that always comes out well, so I figured it couldn't go wrong as a crowd pleaser either.

The next time I went home to visit, my vegetarian aunt was also visiting (making a table out of a window frame of course) so mom had to show up my cooking :) lol, just kidding mom.

We heard about an Apple-Cucumber soup at a restaurant and decided to emulate and get a recipe for it for dinner the following night. The soup was so different, but it came out really really yummy.

The most recent cooking coup took place here in our very own kitchen in Boston. I stumbled upon 6 recipe cards for $0.50 at Job Lot, and one of them was a Chinese steak dish. I followed the recipe to make the orange sauce with ginger, and the spinach wilted very nicely into the bed of white rice. Using the leftover orange to decorate the beautiful platter that a friend gave me for Christmas, this meal was full of flavors that I couldn't believe I put together.


Thank you to the Folks for letting me cook, and to Mom & Aunt from being adventurous and to my Man for trying all of the random recipes I put on the table in front of him. :)

Aunty-Crafter

This is how it all started...

Actually, it started at the Swap Shop earlier that morning when my mom, aunt, and I found these discarded window frames just waiting for us. We picked up 3 of them, and only Aunt managed to successfully transform hers. And what a job she did too!

Dad of course helped out by running the tool show and hooking up the compressor to the nail gun. He also of course gets major points for having extra Ballasters lying around which could be transformed into legs...



From idea to actuality in less than 48 hours is quite impressive, and I'm loving it! I'm quite jealous of this in fact, and I can't wait to see what she does with it in the NYC apartment that this table will now call home.

Four simple holes drilled in the frame, Ballasters cut down to size, inserted with a little wood glue, and then a serious cleaning and we have one amazing table!

One more crafter in the family now! We are proud!

The Gallery Wall update

A Gallery Wall is something that's going to evolve over time. That's the nature of it and I'm excited for it and it's progression.

Right now though, I think I'd say ours in the "growth" stage, and not yet at "evolution." Because now, if we have something we'd like to add to the wall, we add it without having to replace anything else, because there's still room for it to grow on the wall.

The first new addition to the wall is that top frame with the major glare in this photo. That used to be a silver frame that I used my new black paint to convert.

The picture in that frame is of me and my dad on a Father's Day fishing trip. I had hooked a Huge fish!! I had to get help pulling the rod because the fish was so powerful that I couldn't do it on my own. Just as the fish jumped out of the water and let us get a look at his massive size dad and I went to pull back on the rod, and the line snapped!!! Mom happened to snap a photo right at that moment, and our faces are in full shock in this photo.

The other new addition is below that one, and slightly to the right. This feature is my tribute to my Man and his Irish roots. I framed a picture of Guinness for him, and I'm pretty sure he'll love me forever for it :)

We're both on the wall and it will evolve with us!

Project Alert

There's nothing that gives me as much instant gratification pleasure as good project. Something that is simple, not too expensive, and start-to-finish doesn't take too long.

This week, I've been amassing items that will be a part of our wedding come June. But there's still 4 months until that day (thank goodness, I have too much to do for it to be any closer yet!). So my dilemma is, what do I do with all of that stuff until then?

I saw a nice big basket at a store a couple weeks ago, but my Man took a page out my own book and talked me out of spending the $25 for a large basket. So yesterday I put my crafting hat on. I had this big box sitting around from an order of items from the engagement party back in November. I measured the space where I knew I wanted to put this project when it was done, and low and behold my box was too tall.

So I brought out the trusty Leatherman knife and trimmed the flaps of the box down, and then taped them up to get the most height out of it.

With my box now the right height, I got out my fabric. I had stopped at JoAnn Fabric on my way home from work and luckily my 1 1/4 yards was just the right size. I chose a fabric with a little bit of texture that matched the living room where it was going to live, but not too much pattern that it would look busy, because the whole point of this project is to hide the clutter.

My next step was to get out my trusty clips (seriously I use these things for everything, from bundling wires to keeping bags of chips closed, they're worth the $4 at Staples) and start wrapping my box.

Once I had it all wrapped and the fabric trimmed I got out my mighty-mend glue and glued the flaps and the overlapped corners. It wasn't perfect by any means, but I ended up with a well covered box that fit perfectly in the spot I wanted it in to hide all the schtuff that I'll be accumulating over the next 4 months.

I call this a project success!

This is Life

I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth, I promise.

I was merely swallowed by the wedding planning Faerie for a couple of weeks. We've had some changes and some planning bursts, but after 2 weeks of insane planning and about 1000 phone calls, and finally some decision making, I'm thrilled with how everything is coming together.

I'm also thankful for a mom who's been a great sounding board and source of ideas. And most of all a fiance who has put up with all of these changes and my stress level.

And his patience is what makes me love him, even when he does this.....

Yes, that used to be our ice-cream scoop!