The Wedding, Part Two

In Which Everyone Gets Dressed Up
And I Get All Sentimental Over $30 Worth Of Satin

(read part one)

Even as I was standing in David's Bridal admiring myself in the dress I was about to buy, I was thinking about how my girls would be dressed for the wedding.

I had to keep in mind their individuality.  Thea and Faith, especially, have very different styles.  I wanted each girl to be dressed in her own way, in something that made her feel happy, but still have all three of them complement each other and me.  My green sash planted the seed that grew into the idea we went with -- each girl would pick her own white dress, and then would wear a colored sash with it in her favorite color:  Blue for Thea, pink for Faith, and purple for Holly.

I figured it would not be easy to find dresses to each of their likings, but actually it did not prove too difficult for Faith.  At Burlington Coat Factory she tried on a total of four dresses, and the fourth was the winner.

This was not the dress we picked (it is hanging on the wall behind her),
but doesn't Faith look adorable in this one?

Thea, however, was every bit as difficult as I expected.  We traversed the entire mall (and Arundel Mills is pretty big) and she didn't even find anything worthy of trying on.

In the meantime, Dan searched online for a shirt to wear (smart guy).  He already owned a pair of white linen pants which were perfectly beachy and yet dressy.  He wanted a similarly classy looking Hawaiian shirt.  Originally he thought he might get a blue one, but as the idea of the girls' colored sashes fleshed out, he didn't want to take the chance of clashing with one of them or of this whole thing ending up a mish-mash of color.  Eventually he found a black shirt with a white flower print down one side at HulaOut.com that was perfect.

Here we are on Valentine's Day, still smiling.  Look what a good sport Dan was as I obsessed over every detail of our attire, and he finished his part after an hour or so browsing the internet on his laptop while in bed.
Wait.... who is the good sport here?

Thea's dress search took us to Marley Station Mall one Sunday afternoon where we spent what seemed like four hours in Vivace Bridal while Thea tried on what seemed to be fifty prom-type dresses.  Most were too fancy, too sexy/trashy (in my mom opinion), or too expensive, but we finally came to an agreement on one.  It had detachable spaghetti straps, which Thea did not want to wear, but I was adamant she would not go strapless.  It also had black piping along the folds of the skirt, but I gave in on that since Dan was wearing black.

Modeling the dress at home.  Notice how Thea has strategically arranged her hair
to give the illusion that her dress is indeed strapless.

Luckily Holly was just excited to wear a fancy white dress and couldn't care less where it came from, so a friend from church gave us a flower girl dress her daughter had worn in a wedding years ago.  It was slightly large on Holly, but I fixed that by shortening and re-sewing the straps.

Off to Joann Fabric to get the material for the girls' sashes.  Dan and I picked vividly colored satin and got about three times the amount of each that I actually ended up needing.  Then I spent the next couple of weeks measuring, sewing, ironing, and cursing.  Each sash needed to be a different length and width.  I foolishly decided Thea's and Faith's should be pleated to really look like they went with their dresses.  Keep in mind that I had not done any real sewing in approximately twenty years.  Not going to lie -- there was cursing.

But the result... just as I had imagined.

I mean, look!  I bought the green sash from David's Bridal, but I made the other three.  You can tell they were done by an amateur when you see the way the satin puckered under my needle, and how the pleat sizes are uneven, but I'm still pretty darn proud of them.  They were custom made to be perfect for each girl in each dress.

Sorry, not done bragging about these sashes yet.  :)  The piece de resistance comes next.  This idea was born while I stood there on the platform at David's admiring myself in the mirror and thinking the preliminary thoughts of each girl somehow having her own color.  What I really wanted was a way to tie it all together -- a way to symbolize that in this new marriage, along with me would come a little bit of each of them.

So, with some of the leftover satin from each of the three sashes, I made flowers.  This was time-consuming but not very difficult at all, after I looked over a few tutorials on the internet.  For each flower I cut out 12 to 15 circles of varying sizes.  Using a candle, I just barely melted the circumference of each circle.  This would keep the satin from fraying, and also curled the fabric just enough to give it a very petal-like texture.  Then I held the center of each circle over the candle just until it puckered.

I assembled each flower by hot gluing the circles together, with a dab of glue in each center.  To the top and final circle or two I gave an extra pinch to give it a little more shape.

Beautiful!

I pinned these three flowers, representing my three girls, to my green sash.  It turned out just as lovely as I had imagined, and the meaning behind it was priceless to me, no matter who else noticed.

OK, I think I'm done bragging about the sashes now.  But never fear, there is more nuttiness to come, because wanting to be all unique and sh** AND being a cheapskate always equals going overboard in, yes, a Martha Stewart way.

All this and more in The Wedding, Part Three!

(How many of these egotistical "parts" will there be, you ask?
AS MANY AS I DECIDE THERE WILL BE.)

The Wedding, Part One

In Which We Systematically Destroy
Every Original Wedding Idea We Had

Becky and Dan, summer 2010, in the happy early days well before considering marriage.

So.  Dan and I got engaged last year.  See the ring?  Opals -- my birthstone.

We originally thought we'd have a fall wedding last year, but it didn't work out that way.  Circumstances, yada yada yada, and after a while it seemed like maybe we'd just be engaged forever.  Then in February everything just dropped into place and the wedding was a go.  I still wanted a fall wedding, but October of this year was a long way from February and we were tired of waiting.  Plus we really wanted to have a real family vacation to start off our new lives together, so we decided to get married at the beginning of the girls' spring break and then take a week's vacation with them.

Here we are a few days after we picked our wedding weekend.  Yeah it's not the most flattering picture of me, but see we're still happy?  :)

Our original plan was to get married in Baltimore and then go to Florida for vacation.  We thought we'd have a small ceremony at the Maryland Zoo.  Did you know that you can have an "animal ambassador" attend your zoo wedding?  Like.... a PENGUIN?

Zoo Penguin Wedding Photo by Sweet Pea Photography -- I am jealous!

How cool is that?  We decided that absolutely we were going to have a penguin at our zoo wedding!  Unfortunately, the zoo was doing renovations on the main wedding venue that would not be finished until May, and they were reluctant to schedule us an outdoor wedding at the end of March without the indoor venue as a backup.

So we sadly scrapped our plans for a zoo wedding and decided the heck with it, we would just get married while we were down in Florida.  On the beach!  At sunset!  Why not!

Now to find a dress.  I had plans for an informal white dress, something flowy, simple, a little bohemian.  I found several online that I considered ordering, but I needed to know my exact size, so Dan and I went to David's Bridal to get me fitted.  Of course they brought out a bunch of dresses they wanted me to try on.  And I did -- because it's kind of fun.  :)

Enh... not really what I had in mind...  Plus the dress lady kept sticking
veils on me even though I said I wasn't going to wear one.

WHEW this is tight.  Makes my back view look shapely though!

Liked the idea of a halter, just not this one.

The dress lady loved this birdcage veil which she said was so
retro and fashionable.  I did not. 

But then I put on THIS dress, that I grabbed off the clearance rack because I loved the fabric -- bright white shantung taffeta, crisp like cotton instead of shiny or floaty like everything else I had put on.  The dress lady zipped me into it.  It fit perfectly, straight off the rack, and I stared at myself and said, "Wow."  She later told me that I said "Wow" seven times, and she knew we had a winner.

I loved the idea of a colorful sash, as I had planned on adding some burst of color to whatever dress I was going to order off the internet.  I liked the blue sash a lot, but green is my favorite color so I asked to try the green one, even though it looked dull on the hanger.  And... It was good.

Look -- even with messy hair and no makeup, this dress made me feel gorgeous.

The shape, the fabric, the brightness, and, oh yes, the clearance price.  It was certainly not the informal, breezy dress I had planned on.  It was a big and poofy ball gown.  And I LOVED IT.

Stay tuned for the The Wedding, Part 2 -- In Which I Go All Martha Stewart On This Wedding's A--

Catching Up

I have a lot I could be talking about here, but my desire to do things "in order" always makes me fall behind, whether that be in watching TV shows (which I've pretty much stopped altogether), in my gardening, and in my picture posting and journal writing.

Speaking of my gardening, it's moving along.  I put five broccoli plants into the ground, although one appears to be dead.  None of my peppers sprouted, and none of my cauliflowers did either.  I will have to buy seedlings at the nursery if I want those.  But I do have lettuce growing, and potatoes, and about 12 tomato plants that will be transplanted into the garden later this month.  I also have four or five more crops that are scheduled to be planted over the coming weeks.

The blackberry "bush" (it's really not bushy at all) looks good.  The strawberry patch has been pretty much wiped out, though, by weeds, digging, mowing, and nobody caring for it.  My rosebushes look better than ever, after I pruned them for the first time this winter.  The azaleas are right in the middle of blooming and are beautiful.  I got a bunch of pink tulips come up unexpectedly.  And the hydrangeas are looking great -- I hope to actually have all three bloom this year.

So there, I caught up on journaling about my garden, but I still have not talked about the kids in school, the funny things Holly has been saying, what books I'm reading, the music I'm listening to, or the pets.  And there's also the little matter of this:

Yeah... I'll tell you all about that.  :)  Soon!

February In Pictures

You don't want to read pages about the boring stuff we've been doing since the last time I posted., so here are a lot of pictures to make the boring stories a little easier to bear.

Here is Holly on the way back from a trip to Urgent Care to have two stitches put in her forehead.  While jumping on a mattress at a friend's house, she ran her head into the corner of a bunk bed.  The cleaning and stitching was a traumatic experience for her AND for Mom... but a lollipop and the promise of ice cream helped to put this slightly forced smile onto her face.

We used a really cool idea I saw on Pinterest to make these Valentines for Holly to give out.  I took a picture of her holding out her fist toward the camera, then added some text and graphics to it using Picnik, an online photo editor that can do techy editing as well as fun editing.  (It was my first time using Picnik, and I thought it was cool, but I hear the site is closing down in April.  So then I heard of iPiccy, and it's really cool too.)   We uploaded the finished photo to Walgreens and printed out 40 or so, then used a razor to make a slice at the top and bottom of her fist.  We slid in a Dum-dum, and, voila!  So cute!

It turned out so good, Faith wanted to do it, too.  Hers turned out just as awesome!

A week after the stitches went in, they came out.  The removal was a little painful too, but Holly was brave, and a popsicle and then lunch with Mom made everything better.  Then she got to go to school and show off her war wound to her friends.

I planted the first seeds of the year, broccoli.  I am using SproutRobot to tell me when to plant each of my crops.  It tells when to start seeds indoors, when to expect them to sprout, and when to transplant outside, all based on my zip code.  I'm putting a lot of faith in this thing so I hope it works.  You can't tell real well from this picture, but I made the seedling pots out of some newspaper and masking tape.  Then I stuck them into this handy greenhouse (formerly a zippered bag that a sheet set came in).  It worked excellently.

Emily continues to act spoiled and be spoiled.

Check out my cute baby broccoli plants!  They sprouted over a week earlier than they were "supposed" to. The most difficult thing was choosing which of the three sprouts in each pot to keep, and which to thin out.  It felt like planticide.

The girls went to an awesome birthday party at Pump It Up.  Two rooms full of inflatable bouncy play equipment, and to make it even more fun, most of the time the lights were off and only some black lights and disco lights were on.  Add glow necklaces and bracelets and some loud pop music, and it was a blast, even for grownups.  Here, you can see that Holly came down the inflatable slide so fast that she bounced right off the bottom of it.

An hour of bouncing + getting sugared up with birthday cake + past bedtime = goofy fun.

I hope I don't lose all gardening cred for this, but I could not resist this potato growing pot I found at Walmart.  It even came with the three seed potatoes.  I saw (again on Pinterest) a DIY potato growing tower made of wire fencing, straw and compost, and I thought it looked really cool, but I am already extending myself a bit far with all these other things I'm trying to grow this year.  I have gotten overly ambitious and then failed in a grandiose manner in past years, so I don't want to go TOO far.  So I'll grow potatoes this year (hopefully) in this handy pot and then try the hippier way another year.

Dan was digging a trench in which to lay a pipe for my repaired gutter, and behind some weeds he found this fellow.  Possibly due to the chill in the air, or possibly due to the lump in his body that suggested he had just eaten something, this snake didn't try to escape from Dan's hand.  He did flick his tongue many times in displeasure.  At least I assume it was displeasure.  Really I have no way at all of knowing what this snake likes and doesn't like.  Hopefully he likes his new home in the even weedier alleyway behind my house.

Last but not least:  Thea and Faith each won a ribbon and a trophy today at the Pathfinder Pinewood Derby.  Thea's racecar came in second for her church's group in the Teen level, and Faith's car came in second in the Junior level.  Then, Thea's show car, which was decorated like a banana split, took third place Best In Show for the whole conference.  Faith's show car, a forest, took third place Most Unusual for the conference.

From the mess to the masses

You probably weren't wondering what I am listening to these days but I'm going to tell you anyway.  It's "Lisztomania" by Phoenix, which was a big favorite of mine about two years ago.  I liked the original a lot, I liked the version that the kids from New York's PS22 Chorus did, and now I can't quit listening to this "Alex Metric Remix:"

It's super dancey, isn't it?  I am a little disturbed by the video footage of the chickens, but I understand it is from the 1992 movie "Baraka," which I had never heard of but which plenty of people on the internet say changed their lives.  So now it's on my list of movies to see.

Little off subject there.  As I was saying, super dancey, isn't it?

I have almost finished the baby hat I am crocheting, and then I have to plop it on my friend's baby's head and see if it fits!  I've also started crocheting a basic wrap sweater for myself.  I have been using Pinterest for a little while now, and it has this way of making you feel like you could be a super crafter if you only had the time, hence the crocheting.  I also have been pinning favorite music over there if you want to have a listen.

As for my reading progress, I was enjoying "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" so much, and then somehow I just quit reading for like two weeks.  I don't really know what happened.  I need to pick it back up again, because I have a ton of other books on the shelf that I need to get to this year as well.

Here's a gratuitous picture of Holly wearing her new Old Navy Valentine's dress:

Yes, it was taken with my phone using the "Retro Camera" app, which those of us who don't use Instagram, due to owning Android phones, use.  I guess it's a little bit hipster of me, but it sure is cute, isn't it?

untitled in January

We had a rare 60-degree January day today.  It started off with a thunderstorm, even.  If all winter was like this, aside from one or two snow days that keep me home from work, I would never have what they call "the winter doldrums" and what I call "gahhhh life sucks!!!!"

Following up from last week, my haircut experience went well.  I'm pleased with how it turned out, although it does require a little more styling, "encouragement," shall we say, since I've got long bangs now.  Bangs have traditionally been a problem for me.  They just don't behave like bangs should.  (In high school I used a curling iron to make them into a big pouf, like Charlie Brown's sister Sally, that I don't think was EVER stylish.)  The bangs I have now are meant to be swept to the side, which means the hair dryer and/or the curling iron have to be briefly applied.

Here is the before

And here is the after

When I look at pictures of myself I always think I need to wear lipstick.  But when I look at myself in the mirror with lipstick on, I think I look ridiculous.

Thea enjoyed skiing last week.  Faith didn't enjoy it as much but she still had a fun trip and said she's willing to give it another try sometime.

I took up crocheting again last month, basically for the first time since I was in high school.  I've been easing back in with simple stuff like potholders/coasters

and granny squares.

The granny squares were from this pattern and the coasters from this one.  I do a couple of granny squares a week, and I figure at some point I'll have enough to sew them together and make a blanket.  Neato!  Now I'm ready to tackle a real project -- a little hat for my friend's baby.

New pictures, from our trip to Six Flags America (back in August, yes I'm behind on posting pictures), are up here.  Enjoy!

Slumber party

I'm having a slumber party tonight with my favorite five-year-old.

We watched "Tangled", played a princess matching game (I lost three games in a row), and now she's zonked out in my bed. Tomorrow we will probably use her free birthday meal certificate at Bob Evans.

I just talked to Thea and Faith on Oovoo.  They are in Pennsylvania with two friends and Dan (who is earning so many brownie points this weekend).  Tomorrow morning bright and early they'll be heading to Jack Frost for their first time skiing.