I didn’t get to do a Scrapbook Saturday post last week. Honestly, I don’t even know what happened to my day last weekend. I think I was just lazy and not on the computer much on Saturday, so I was going to do it Sunday, and then didn’t get the chance to then because we were at my grandmother’s a good portion of the morning/afternoon. But anyway, here’s my page for this week:
I have definitely been more motivated this week, in the crafting department anyway. I haven’t finished a whole lot of anything yet, but I’ve at least been working on things a little, which is certainly a lot more than other weeks recently! So, here are some of my accomplishments this week so far:
I booked our vacation to Ocean City, MD last night. We are going to get away and relax for my hubby's 30th birthday! We’ve never been there before, and I’m extremely excited to go. We have been on a couple overnight stays or weekend getaways (2 actually – NYC overnight for our 1 year wedding anniversary, and Baltimore for a weekend in Nov. 2007) since our honeymoon, but no real extended vacation since then. We’re not big ocean swimmers or anything, but it will be nice to just relax on the beach with books, take walks along the ocean, and just have nothing real to worry about for a whole 5 days.
I bought metallic silver spray paint. I had started to decorate a wedding themed photo frame over a year ago. The idea was to paint it silver, then use white ribbons, stencil some white words, and throw in some of the double heart charms I bought for a few projects from my own wedding somewhere on there too. I bought a better frame than my Snowflake Photo Frame, sanded it all down, and began painting it with silver acrylic paint. I can’t even remember how many coats I was up to with the acrylic paint, and it still isn’t smooth or consistent enough for my likings. I thought the spray paint would work better, but I was a little nervous about the silver part – the acrylic looked nice, and I was afraid the spray paint would look tacky. So, this week, I sprayed over the frame with the new paint. I like the silver look, but it’s still not quite smooth enough for me in some areas, so I’m going to have to re-sand and re-paint. I was going to do that today, but I prefer to do it in my garage with the door open, and it was extremely rainy, then extremely humid today, so I didn’t think the paint would dry very well. Hoping to get to that tomorrow.
I made myself a new earring/necklace set! I had some beads I bought a while back that I hadn’t done anything with yet, and I was finally motivated to create something with them today. It’s my favorite set so far! :) I’m calling it “Blue Beach”. It’s made from 2 different sized white shell beads and round light sapphire shell beads. My birthday on Saturday motivated me to create it, because I want to wear it that day and feel pretty. :) The upcoming beachy vacation was also a good kick in the butt too – I like to take all my pretty clothes and jewelry with me on vacation, it makes me feel even better. Here it is:
I found this new way of photographing my jewelry from looking at other people’s online shops and blogs, and I am so much happier with the result of my pictures this time. I even had the perfect dishes for this particular set! (Sandbar from Pfaltzgraf) This specific set is mine for keeping, but as long as the beads are still available, I will definitely be adding it to my Artfire site! So, guess what that means? Craft store, here I come!
I’m hoping to be able to at least finish all the silver painting on the frame tomorrow now, and work on some sachets for a friend who requested I help her make them for Christmas gifts. I haven’t tackled them yet because my very old and decrepit free sewing machine that I got from my parents started to give me trouble last time I used it. I almost broke the needle a couple times because the tension has decided to turn on me and not loosen up, so I may now need to take my grandmother up on her offer of giving me her old sewing machine, which is certainly in better condition than the one sitting here collecting dust now. Hopefully I will at least be able to start on them this week yet – I also have to make some jewelry that my other grandmother requested for a birthday gift for her friend (yet another excuse for a craft store trip!).
It might not seem like much to some of you crafters out there, but the rate I’ve been going lately, these are huge accomplishments for me!
So, I have a long to-do list this week, and all of it is stuff I really want to do (not like cleaning or other chores), and sometimes I get the motivation to do this stuff, but I don’t know where to begin, or I feel really scattered with it. This is my frazzled excitement.
So far, I’ve at least started a few things. As you can see, I added yet another new page to this blog – Photography. There’s only four photos in it right now, but I definitely plan on adding more as I continue to watermark them. There’s just a lot I want to add, so it will take me some time, but at least I have four to share with you so far. Go peek at them, you know you’ve been waiting for it! ;) Well, I know you haven’t really been, but I hope you enjoy them anyway. :)
I got my time and abilities sheet from my church a while back. This is the sheet where you sign up for all the stuff you want to volunteer for. I never fill mine out and send it back, especially considering I lived in NJ for 3 years, and the church is in PA (but they were still sending me stuff in NJ!). I haven’t been to church at all since, let me think…my wedding day! That was 3 years ago, and wasn’t even a church service. I’m surprised they still send me stuff and haven’t ex-communicated me yet, lol. But all kidding aside, I’m not an extremely religious person. I do believe in God and Heaven and all that, but I don’t necessarily feel you have to go to a church every week, and give all your money to them (after all – God isn’t the one needing my money) in order to have your beliefs. I apologize if I offended anyone here. To each his own. This time, however, instead of just throwing the form away, something made me look it over. Now I’m thinking of signing up for a couple things. I love working with kids – they are looking for vacation Bible school helpers (and I even just told my hubby the other night how much I used to like Bible school). And who ever knew my church has or is starting a dance group?! Obviously I love dance, I’m even trying to start my own dance business (which I offered classes to the church’s preschool, but was sadly declined), so definite check mark on that one! However, in typical fashion of me, I am late in returning it. So now I have to write a note to add to it apologizing for my tardiness, and find out what that dance stuff is all about. Really? Dance group in a church? It also got me thinking maybe I should go to church more often, especially if I’m volunteering. I’m not a morning person though, and I am not a fan of the long, drawn out services on a Sunday morning, so I’m thinking of attending some of the Saturday evening services. Maybe I’ll go with my Grandmom. Anyway, I filled out the sheet, now I just need to write the note, send it back, and see where to go from there.
We have new members to Thunderbolts, and I have been working with them a little. I have been wanting to work on a routine or at least help out and collaborate with another instructor on one, and I mentioned this to the director. I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes in the group, since they’ve been around all this time, and I went away for 3 years. But last night I got asked to get together with one of the instructors to work on the new routine. YAY! :D So I’m excited about that. I even stayed up way too late last night listening to music and trying to find some good ideas with that twirling ear of mine.
I am thinking about starting a “Scrapbook Saturday” post on here. It might not be every single week, since some Saturdays get busy with other activities. I have a TON of scrapbooking stuff to work on from the wedding, bridal shower, honeymoon, etc., that I bought but then never got around to completing. It’s still all here, and all of those events were 3 years ago! It’s about time I get to it, and I thought some motivation might be to do a post on here. I would plan to create at least one page (more if the creativity and time allows), and post it on here every Saturday (or every possible Saturday). So, hopefully I’ll get started on that this week and you’ll see something by Saturday night (or “Scrapbook Sunday” if I only work on it Saturday and finish late).
So those are a few of the major things I’ve been thinking about, trying to start, or need to work on. But those things, along with a never-ending to-do list of other things, makes me feel all frazzled. I just don’t know where to begin, or I want to work on 3 different things at the same time because I’m excited to, and I get all “aaaahhhhh!”. Ever feel like this? I’m sure all you moms have…
So, I said today would be a very special post – today I am celebrating 3 years of marriage to my soul mate! :) I thought for today’s post I would reflect on how I met my hubby and my wedding day.
I met my hubby online, thanks to my best friend at the time. My family finally got connected to the internet the summer between my junior and senior year in high school, and she was helping me learn my way around the interwebs when she decided I should talk to this guy she talked to from NJ. We began talking online, daily, and really started to like each other just from conversation. We decided to meet in person the summer between my high school graduation and first year in college (talking online almost daily for a year now), so his whole family decided to take their week long vacation here in PA, we met face to face for the first time, and became a long distance couple by the end of the week (July 21st to be exact)! We made a long distance relationship work for 6 1/2 years, when he proposed the day after Christmas in 2005. We moved in together into an apartment in central NJ in August of 2006, and got married on June 16th, 2007. Three years later, we now own a house back in my old hometown area in PA.
Our wedding day was beautiful and went smoothly. I ended up with the first dress I saw in a magazine.
I picked my colors based on hydrangeas, and the fact that I love the color periwinkle, as well as the blue and purple color combo. My bouquet turned out beautiful, full of white roses, purple lisianthus, and blue delphinium. 
Isn’t she adorable?!? Do you see the matching of our dresses? I loved it!
The church was kind of warm, since there was no AC and it was a beautifully hot day that day. Thankfully, no one passed out, and even though the ceremony seemed to take forever at the time, it was actually fairly short. We walked out of the church to a flurry of bubbles (rice was not allowed – but I didn’t really need to deal with pulling rice out of my hair and dress all day anyway). 
This one was tricky…we were precariously perched on those tree roots, with the water only a few inches away behind us!
The reception was Disney themed, since we love Disney and went there for our honeymoon (we did 4 days in the park, 3 days on the Disney Bahamian cruise, and one night/day at Universal Studios). The tables were given Disney names instead of numbers, and the name cards/favor cards had a clip art picture on it to match which table the guest was sitting at. The head table was “Magic Kingdom”, and other tables included “Mickey Mouse”, “Little Mermaid”, “Peter Pan”, “Jungle Book”, “Lion King”, “Finding Nemo”, “Pinocchio”, and more. Each table’s centerpiece was a mirror with a set of 3 different sized glass cylinders filled with water and a floating candle, surrounded by small votives. There was also a silver picture frame on each table, and instead of photos in them, I created a scrapbook style piece that used an appropriate piece of scrapbook paper as a background to match the stickers I found for each table theme. I arranged the stickers to almost look like a mini movie poster in each one. Sadly, I don’t have any pictures of any of these, at least not that I have found so far. We walked into the reception to Disney songs. My parents walked in to “Be Our Guest”, since they were paying for and hosting the party, his parents got “Bella Notte” from Lady and the Tramp because they are Italian and it’s the only Italian Disney song there is, the kids walked in to “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo”, my MOH and BM got “Never Had a Friend Like Me”, the other 2 “couples” entered with “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”, and hubby and I chose “You’ll Be In My Heart”. We danced our first dance to Michael Buble’s version of “For Once In My Life”. I choreographed a foxtrot style dance for us! :) 
(Can you find the hidden Mickey’s?)
Overall, it was a success with a lot of fun had by all, but I regret to say that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to and should have. Due to the heat and stress of the day, I was becoming dehydrated (by the time we went on our honeymoon, I spent the first 2 days drinking as much water as possible, and almost passed out from the heat and dehydration while waiting in line the the Backlot Tour ride in what’s now called Hollywood Studios – it got much better after that!), I felt sick when it came time to eat, so I didn’t eat much at all, and the only alcohol I had all day and night was the champagne in the limo and the champagne toast at the reception – I didn’t even get a sip from my fuzzy navel fountain I wanted sooo badly! I was also so worried about mingling and talking to each table to show our appreciation for them coming, that I didn’t really get to relax and have fun dancing. Especially since a few guests also didn’t really know how to make small talk and keep a conversation short! I did participate in a few dances, but I do look back on the reception part with some regrets and wishes. Maybe someday, in the far future, we can re-create a reception or vowel renewal or something, and I would definitely allow myself to enjoy it more….that’s my wish…who knows if it will ever come true… ;)
(I warned you there would be pictures and a long post! Thank you for reading the whole thing – you’ll get my thank you if you actually got to this part and made it through such a long post - and sharing a review of my special day!)
*Photos courtesy of Photography by McDonough*
