You Know the Drill...5 Months to Go!

It seems Jimmy and I can only get our act together once a month to actually post on this thing. As usual, it does not mean that we aren't doing anything wedding-related. It usually just means we aren't doing wedding-related things that we want to announce to the world yet. And by "world" I mean "handful of people who read this blog." :)

So what has happened in the past month? The biggest change is that I am back to work (only for 2 weeks so far, but still). It's been harder to keep up with my wifery while working but I have managed to maintain my "exercise" routine which I am pleased about. Jimmy has been working a lot lately (in fact, he is at work right now as I type this) so we haven't seen each other that much lately. We also traveled to Pittsburgh at the end of April for Lauren and Mike's lovely wedding and got to visit Fallingwater in the process.
We had a great time at the wedding and just a great weekend in general. I especially enjoyed hanging out with the rest of the Schenectady contingent and discussing my hometown. Perfect way to spend the weekend before I returned to the working world.

We've got a lot of stuff in the works right now for the wedding and are really excited about all of it but the majority of "planning" is done, thankfully.

I know I like looking at other people's gift registries, so if you're into that kind of thing you can find links to those on the side of the blog or via this link: Gift Registries. I'm trying to find shoes for the wedding, we're going to look at wedding bands later this month and then we've got to figure out invites. It should be a fun, tho hectic, summer and then the wedding is right around the corner.

Eeek!

(Almost) 6 Months!

I seriously cannot believe that it is almost 6 months away! Everything has gone by so quickly and the summer usually flies by in a normal year so at this pace, it will be September by the time I realize any time has elapsed.

I know we have not updated in a while. I apologize. We will be better about it. Soon enough there will be exciting pictures to post, events to discuss, people to give shout-outs to...it'll be great. The bridesmaids are starting to order their dresses, Jimmy is starting to work on his clothes and I'm trying to track down a perfect pair of shoes. (Comfort is as important to me as having heels and being cute, so it's generally a little difficult for me to find shoes. Probably heels + cute will win out, but still).

My newest wedding/marriage-related obsession is husband/wife teams. It's not that I have become obsessed with Johnny Cash/June Carter Cash necessarily, or even Sonny/Cher but just the idea of it in general. I've always had this idea that owning a small business or being part of a family business of some kind would be, basically, amazing. (Maybe it was from my summer at Perreca's, who knows). But I figure being a husband/wife team of something is just the beginning of realizing that dream. So I have lots of suggestions for Jimmy of teams we can be and will list a few here with their pros and cons.

1. Crafty Husband/Wife Team
Since I already run a shop with Anna on Etsy, I figure a normal progression could be opening a shop with Jimmy as well. We could work from home plus

Pros: I'm already pretty crafty and I know of lots of husband/wife teams on Etsy so we'd be in good company. Also, Jimmy does help me occasionally with design/cutting of owls out of felt for some of my projects already.

Cons: $, plus Jimmy has a year-round job that he really likes. (Psh, who works ALL year? Am I right?)

2. Webby Husband/Wife Team
I sort of am enamored with the idea of webisodes or being an "internet sensation," if you will. I figure Jimmy can edit them and we can both work on production of them and write them together.

Pros: When Jessie, Christina and I put together Georgia Peach, Jimmy was right there with us. Basically, we've done it once, we can do it 100 more times.

Cons: $, pressure to become an internet sensation might get the best of us/me.

3.Wordy Husband/Wife Team
Okay, hear me out. So we really enjoy doing crossword puzzles together & tho we aren't THE BEST at it, I think we could get better. So then I think we go on the road doing crossword puzzles and generally being amusing.

Pros: I certainly like talking to groups of people so maybe that can be incorporated as well.

Cons: $, this isn't a real job.

4. Normal-y Husband/Wife Team
Keeping things the way they are, except maybe I find a job that is year-round. Jimmy edits, I organize things, hopefully get to speak to large groups of people and do my crafting in my spare time.

Pros: We've been doing it this way for 4 years and it's been working out nicely. We get to create our own identities and do what we really enjoy and still get to be a team.

Cons: None, really. It's working out already.

Did I Really Need a "Pitch"?

A few months before we were engaged, I was told that I would be a good wife because I am extremely organized. (Which is definitely true). I was told that my organizational skills should be the basis of my "pitch" for wifehood. Obviously I don't think I needed to pitch my "qualifications" to Jimmy or anything, but I do (for better or worse) pride myself in my ability to organize (and possibly obsess over) lots of things.

This weekend we contacted a bunch of Etsy sellers for various secret elements of the wedding (maybe monkey butlers, who knows) but also for boutonnieres for the guys.

I don't want cut flowers for the wedding so the boutonnieres are all either dried things and different textures of fabric, etc which is perfect. I'm then going to try to make coordinating fabric bouquets (with Anna's assistance, of course) which I'm pretty excited about. And then everyone gets a keepsake! Everybody wins. Here's what ours will be based off but with our specific color choices:

Brown and Green Rustic Boutonniere
by
PixelandHank

So cute! (yes, Jimmy was involved in the selections of these. Don't worry.)

I also, (perhaps obsessively) made an Excel grid of the other elements of the wedding that we need to make arrangements for or make ourselves, etc. It's very color-coded and it's full of formulas and I'm definitely more excited about in than Jimmy is but I think he still appreciates the work that went into it.

Jimmy's working on the music almost exclusively which is good for me because it seems so daunting at this point. I mostly search for things we've decided we want and present Jimmy with the ones I like best. Then we pick from there. It's a very involved process and I'm sort of grateful for the huge rain storm this weekend so we could stay in and figure everything out.

Soon I'm making Jimmy talk about our honeymoon plans on here (hint: It's not as icy as its name suggests and it's greener than its neighbor's name suggests the neighbor is...wait. I think I lost it somewhere. Anyway, it's Iceland).

Keeping the House

Since 2008, I've been in a situation of unemployment for the beginning of the year (always looking for work, mind you) so over that time I end up taking over the majority of the household chores like laundry and doing the dishes. I always do some normal household things too, like go through all my clothes or clean out and organize the linen closet. But I also do weird things like become obsessive about how the remotes are stored on the coffee table or find something stuck next to the fridge so end up pulling the fridge from the wall, vacuuming behind it and then rearranging all of the magnets and other things on it (which I may or may not have done tonight).

The rest of today was pretty standard, tho.

I spent today doing the laundry in a completely empty laundry room (which was amazing) while watching TV with Jordan (she's from Millionaire for people who don't know her) and seeing huge chunks of snow fall from the sky. It was a very nice, relaxing day but definitely puts my unemployment in the spotlight.

I'm glad to be able to do all these things and definitely glad to have something to focus all my organizational energy on while without a job. Even not thinking about the wedding planning (which would definitely be harder to do if we were both working), it's been useful for me to be home because Jimmy just had surgery on his shoulder (don't worry, he is fine) and is in a sling for a month.

Here he is enjoying his hospital attire pre-surgery:
So I'm doing the dishes and laundry all by myself and keeping the apartment clean while home alone all day, no biggie. What pushed me over-the-top into serious "wifery" is my newest obsession with sewing. Right now, only aprons, but I hope to have other projects soon.

I've had a sewing machine for over a year (thanks Grammy & Grampy!) and hadn't gotten up the courage to actually try something until recently. I've since sewn 3 aprons (only 1 to keep) and just cannot get enough of it. Now, I usually spend my days knitting or cross-stitching, so sewing is probably a natural third activity to take on, but it's still fun and new to me.

It makes sense to me. I'm always doing craft projects and I'm always doing household chores so why not do a craft project I can use while doing household chores? I even wore my apron (which is black gingham and red trim) while cooking banana pancakes on Valentine's Day. Perfect.

We're coming up on 7 months away and it already seems like everything is going by so quickly! But it's definitely coming together and we're getting really excited. So all is good.

Just gotta get Jimmy out of his sling so he can help carry groceries again.

Julia Child/Meryl Streep Might Make Me a Better Wife

And Julie Powell/Amy Adams Might Make Me a Better Blogger.

How's that for a tie-in?

In real wedding business, we're working on hotel accommodations for the wedding and starting to think about all the other little things now that the location and date is settled. While I basically find everything about this process fun and exciting, mostly I just want to think about people's clothing, pictures that can be taken and presents I can give people in the wedding party. When we have settled info, I'll post it here and maybe after the Save the Dates go out more people will be reading this to get info. Or to make fun of me. Whichever.

So, obviously I'm watching Julie and Julia and as a result, have suddenly been overcome by the desire to learn how to cook (and maybe blog a bit). Maybe it's that I love food and it's never made sense that I had no interest in cooking, maybe it's that I'm getting married this year, maybe it's that Jimmy is usually home much later than we should be eating dinner or maybe it's those pearls and the ability to look elegant while cooking that I am into. Who knows. So maybe I'll try to find something to learn to cook and make a goal of it.

No, I will not be blogging about my cooking adventures or going through all the recipes in a cook book. That's just crazy.

Here's hoping Meryl rubbed off on me...