Another one Bites the Dust

So another month has quickly disappeared!  Christmas shopping madness is fully underway.  We're mostly done, with just a few odds and ends to get still.  Now the packages are rolling in like crazy.  I'm still having everything delivered to my parents' house.  So today I picked up five boxes and I'll be going over later to pick up about 5 or 6 more.  Then the rest will straggle in next week but that should be the bulk of them.  Two weeks from tomorrow, we leave for our honeymoon.  Crazy how time flies!  Today was my day off work so I got a couple errands done this morning, started working on my name change.  Then I was a waste of life for the rest of the day.  As in, two hour nap sort of waste of life.  Now I'm waiting for the husband to come home and probably will be wrapping the other presents that come in today.  We've mostly settled in and I would like to unpack the rest of the kitchen things tonight.  This is our weekend of NOTHING.  We have weight watchers in the morning, but otherwise it should be a relaxing weekend.  I need to pick out a few recipes to try this weekend and get some groceries.  I'm thinking I'll make a 2 week menu to give us enough to eat until we leave and then restock food when we get back.  Although maybe not even then since it's the week of insanity once we get back (birthday, Christmas, my friend's wedding weekend), so that may be a week of sandwiches and going out.

Thirty days

Wow it has been a while since I sat down and blogged.  Sorry about that.  Today is the 2 month marker of tim and my wedding...we haven't killed each other yet so we must be okay!  We've also been in this new apartment for a month now.  We still have several boxes packed but are slowly nesting.  I'm definitely thinking with our next move that I want to hire some movers to load up our stuff.  I'm totally ok with packing it all but my muscles still haven't gotten over moving week.

But I digress.  The new place is so great.  Our favorite oddball perks include a free use Flavia machine (like a Keurig but with packets instead of the k-cups) and a 24 hour gym.  Tim's personal favorite thing is the valet trash service.  It is pretty cool...Sunday through Thursday night we just have to put our trash outside the door by 8 PM and by 9 PM its taken away!  Neat but wow I would never pay for that silliness.  Speaking of which, I should probably get it out the door soon, before I forget again.

It's the thirty day marker to the Honeymoon.  I'm glad that we waited a little bit before taking it, it will be such a nice break after the craziness of the last few months.  Once it's over, we have my MoH's wedding and then no plans after that!

This past weekend we cooked a lot.  We made Chicken and Dumplings in the crockpot and then the hubs made a small vat of French Dip in the crockpot Monday.  The Au Jus wasn't quite right so that's a recipe that I may have to rework before sharing.  The Chicken and Dumplings (highly altered from the original) recipe will be posted here soon.  I do want to have another go at it and make it more soupy (not so...chicken pot pie sort of consistency) and lighten it up a smidgeon.

Thankfully, today was my last day of work for the week.  My brain is kaput.  Tomorrow is finally my post-wedding hair chop.  I'm so excited to get rid of my stale hair cut.  I go between 2 main styles...SHORT and LONG.  Short has a lot of layers and is kinda funky and long is a layer about shoulder length and the other is however long my hair is.  My hair person wants to do something drastic with lots of layers that isn't long or short.  I don't quite understand it myself so pictures to come!  Then I have a meeting with the old landlord to get the deposit back (yay extra money) and dinner with Tim's mom in the evening.  Saturday we have Weight Watchers in the morning and an afternoon Turkey Trot walk.  Just a little jealousy here...Life has been crazy lately (hence the not posting much lately) so my diet and exercise are all out of whack.  I haven't gained a ton...3ish pounds, but I'm so stinking close to my goal that its making me be in a funk.  Tim on the other hand has lost 11 pounds since we got marriage.  Soooo not right.  I'm having him put chips up really high in the pantry for me now.  It's nice being married to someone a few inches taller than me for stuff like this...versus my constantly jumping up and down on a step stool to do the same thing.

Derailed again.  Right.  Saturday we also need to get some groceries and if I don't have time Friday, stopping at the bank as well.  Sunday I have my dress fitting for my MoH's wedding and then a mulling wine tasting with some friends in the afternoon.  Then just 3 days of work and Turkey Day!!

Aaaand we're back!

I know its been a while so I figured I would make a quick update.  Tim and I have moved from the old apartment to the new one.  We're mostly unpacked now although there is definitely quite a bit to do around the apartment.  We haven't put up any pictures although we have finally put all our current furniture in their spaces.  We're waiting to catch up on all those lovely moving in expenses before we get new furniture but its really going to change the look of this place a ton!  Right now we're looking at a new couch, two nightstands, a corner desk for Tim, a tv stand, another dresser, possibly some side tables, a cabinet for games, lamps and eventually some chairs and barstools.  That's all.  Ha.

So in the week and a half that we've lived here, we have gotten higher speed internet, DirectTV and wow thats a change.  Way faster internet is amazing and well, we've certainly caught lots of Bravo tv specials...especially the RHOA and RHOBH.

Other than that, life is different but good.  Very busy settling in and then my MoH, Amanda's wedding is in December so we'll be doing all sorts of fun things with that!

Wedding Weekend Part 3: The Ceremony and Reception

So RIGHT before I walked into the church, my stomach was doing flip flops.  My corset felt too tight, my heart beat was insane I got out of the limo and was so nervous that I couldn't stop shaking.  Then it was time to walk down the aisle.  I was ok for the first few seconds.

Aaaand by the time that I got to the end of the aisle, I looked more like this....

Yes, that is me, the oh so bleary eyed mess.  I could not get myself to stop crying.  It was all just going so quickly and obviously a little more overwhelming than I had expected.  Fortunately by the first reading or so, Tim's mother's phone rang and it knocked me out of my crying immediately.  The rest of the ceremony went perfectly.  After my initial boo hooing, it was all good.  The priest cried, we hugged, we kissed...

And then we were super excited to head to the reception!

See?  No more tears.  So we left the church and then headed to the back waiting area until the guests had left so we could take pictures.  While we were back there, the priest thought he was super hilarious and brought out 3 little girls and told me to designate which ones would be brides and which would be nuns.  I seriously hope the videographer caught this.  I'm not sure who was more horrified...them or me.  It was just SO wrong!!  I decided that it would be best to say brides...not that there's anything wrong with nuns but seriously, you could give a kid a complex with something like that.  Pictures went well until we went outside and realized that the limo driver had totally left with all our bags/phones etc.  I was livid.  Slight segue...I have never written such a horrifying review for a company ever.  Not only did that happen but the customer service was actually even worse.  But anyhow back to happier things.

So after wrapping up at the church we got to the reception.  It went so fast that I still can't believe it.  We had the first dance, ate amazing food, had the most epic cupcake tower ever, all the decorations that we spent so much time on were gorgeous and we had an amazing getaway car.  We hardly danced, missed saying hello to a bunch of guests, had a cupcake thief before the cake was cut, some slight wedding party drama and had a song skip and had to pick a replacement for the bouquet toss.  And yet, it was all still wonderful.  There were so many friends and relatives we hadn't seen in a long time (some we had never met), loud bad singing and some pretty fantastically awful dance moves.  I would say it was a huge success.

Wedding Weekend Part 1: The Rehearsal

Since I'm taking a little bit of a blog hiatus while we unpack our new apartment, I'll be posting the details of our wedding.  I'll be back soon!

While its still fresh in my mind, I thought I would start blogging about our wedding.  It would be a crazy long read if I did it all at once and I'm pretty sure that I'll take several days to type it all out.  I'm not sure how I'll break the weekend up and it will cover basically everything that went down.  I'll won't air anyone else's dirty laundry for sure but I will say that having one of Tim's groomsmen on his side and 2 girls that dated him on my side was probably not one of our brightest moves.  That's basically all that's worth saying about that.  Moving on....

My morning on September 14th was relatively well plotted out.  I was going to leisurely go to look at the wedding flowers after 10, go to the hall to set up for the reception around noon and then shower/relax until our rehearsal at 5 (getting there a few minutes early).  So I started off my morning with a walk, a nice cup of coffee, catching up on some tv shows and got a call from the caterer a little before 10.  She started by asking how I was doing, whether I was freaking out or calm.  Then came the words that no bride wants to hear..."We're having a little problem...." so I raced down to the hall and with the help of the caterer and her assistant literally rearranged the entire hall and rotated the entire layout 90 degrees so we could have a nice large dance floor instead of a 3 foot wide dance...aisle (no really, I'm not exaggerating.  I don't think that my dress would have even fit in that space let alone multiple people).  Then my mom and I sped off to look at the flowers (simple and gorgeous) and ran back to my apartment to meet my maid of honor A, her fiance J and Tim at my apartment to gather up all the decorations, favors, menus, alcohol and rock back to the hall.  We cranked out set up in about 2 hours, checked in at the hotel, ran out to Chick fil A, showered changed and went to the rehearsal at the church.  And waited.  And waited.

Did I mention that we waited?  

Yeah about half an hour after our rehearsal should have started, we found out the priest was stuck in traffic about 20 minutes away.  So once we got it going it went really well.  I totally freaked Tim a little bit towards the end when the priest said "You may now kiss the bride" I decided that it would be fantastic to lean over and whisper "Don't do it!"  Tim froze.  He had such a panicked deer in the headlights look that I could not get over it.  We wrapped up the rehearsal and had a fantastic dinner where Tim's stepmother said that she had the best crabcakes she's had in her life.

Afterwards, matron of honor M went home with her husband, Tim's sister K (also one of my bridesmaids) went home and the rest of the girls went to my hotel room to hang out.  We stayed up until after midnight gossiping, steaming dresses, a speedy run back to my apartment when I realized that I had forgotten my something old/borrowed/blue at home.  I was somewhere between crazy exhausted and super wired about the wedding by the time it was all over with.

The table set up once we were done...before the final touches were added by the caterer and decorator.

FIVE

Well last night we FINALLY got some news on the apartment.  Actually more than just news.  WE SIGNED THE LEASE and we're moving in on Monday!!  I can't wait to finally move in 5 days.  So last night after dinner, Tim went to class and I started working on boxing up the kitchen.  Last night's boxes included the majority of the bakeware and a lot of the pantry food.  I thought that we had been making good progress on packing up the apartment until I realized just how much there still is to do!  To top it off, we are down to about 5 boxes.  I hope my boss is in today because he has quite a few moving boxes that he's been holding onto for me (since his move this summer).  Otherwise, I do believe that we've just about hit that fun part of moving where you start shoving everything into whatever bags and oddball containers that you can find!  We do have the majority of the books, wedding things and about half the kitchen packed up.  Today I'm hoping to tackle the bathroom and anything left on the bookshelves.  It is a full work week for me (Tim too) but next week I took Monday off and am already scheduled off for Friday so that will help SO much.  We bought our new bed over the weekend...I'm still freaking out a little about having had to get financing on the bed.  Its my first debt ever other than what bit I have on my credit card each month (that gets paid off in full every month)...honestly I didn't think that I would need any financing until I was ready to buy a house.  But that's life for you!  So we've had an oddball cold snap lately.  Monday the high was 46....BRRRRR.  Yesterday was in the low 50s, today's high is 71.  The rest of the week is supposed to be back and forth between the 60s and 70s.  I guess it really is fall now.

And a Happy Hour it Was

Last week my friend at work asked if I wanted to grab a drink after work. As silly as it sounds, I was SO excited that my life has finally slowed down enough that I could actually say yes. So we decided to go to a local pub, however that was soooo crowded that even the neighboring businesses and streets had full parking lots. Don't get me wrong, that place is fantastic but being in a small over crowded place after a long work day is SO not my scene. So we decided to go across the street to a cute little cafe. I had a mango martini (which from what I saw looked like equal parts of mango nectar and mango vodka) and ordered an AMAZING cheese platter.

Seriously that good. Not much is new this past week. It's been a busy work week and the weekend just sped right by.  Still no word on the official move in date...we did get an email saying that we're  still on track for the 15th but our lease signing hasn't been scheduled yet.  I'm glad that I didn't use more leave than I did for the wedding so I can take a day or two for the move (or several half days).

Our wedding pictures came back and they are just so amazing. I can't rave about Sandi enough. When Tim and I had first been engaged and were setting up the wedding budget, we went through all of the things that were really important to us. For me it was the pictures because at the end of the day, that's all that is left.  Here's a sneak peek...

They're all gorgeous and fantastic.  Sandi did such a phenomenal job.  I'll post more once I release the photo link and when I blog about the wedding (slowly coming along).  Such a lovely day.

Tonight I'm a lone wolf (oooow-wooooooo).  Tim's in class, its raining pretty heavily and until we have word on the apartment, we're a little stuck on packing.  I cooked a quick dinner earlier but now I think I'm going to use the evening to relax and watch some tv shows online.  I think Tim and I are both looking forward to actually being able to watch tv...on the television.  When it airs.  Just a few weeks more until cable at the new place!  For now, its back to Bones only a week late.

Wedding Weekend Part 2: Wedding Preparation

Around 6:00 Saturday morning, all hope of sleeping had stopped for this girl.  I woke up, slowly got myself together and stumbled downstairs for breakfast.  For what its worth, I have to say that my stay at Country Inn and Suites was amazing and I will definitely make a point to stay at one whenever I can.  The breakfast was seriously restaurant quality.  Anywhere that gives me a phenomenal free breakfast has a special place in my heart.  Not to mention that the room was spectacular, the staff was really helpful, I could keep going on but I'll stop.  Because this post is not about a review for the hotel.

So onward.  Breakfast.  Awesome.  It was all carbs and sugar.  Eggs that I haven't seen prepared tend to scare me so no protein (minus some bacon) but I had a banana, a small apple danish, homefries, orange juice and coffee.  I figured I probably would be too nervous to eat later so I chowed down.  The girls slowly gathered together and by 9 AM we were all at the salon getting primped and pretty.

My hair woman, Amanda is seriously the best thing that ever happened to my hair.  She gets that when I say half an inch, I mean half an inch.  Although frequently she tells me that I don't want what I think I want and when she's done making her argument for what I really want, my hair gets done HER way.  This day was no different.  I wanted my hair BIG because it photographs rather tight (amazing for the girl who normally has a fro).  Every time that I thought my hair was a little off or lopsided, she would just smile and say she knew and had a giant chunk of hair come from nowhere to fill it in.  She's also giving me my post wedding chop but thats another story for another time.  She also told Matron of Honor M to "not ruin her masterpiece" and how to easily remove my veil.  It seriously lost only one bobby pin the whole night and had 2 little escape curls throughout the day.

After hair, I sat with Carmen who did an amazing job on my makeup.  The five girls in my bridal party all had their makeup and hair done too so when I wrapped up, I took 3 with me while the other 2 had their final touches done.  Let me tell you, for this stress monster, I was cool as a cucumber when we were getting ready.  Seriously.  No nerves.  All awesome.  I got dressed with no issue, was more curious about what everyone else was doing than focusing on the wedding, had a really great prep photo session with the photographer and it was all smooth sailing.  When Sandi finished shooting (amazing amazing A-MAZ-ING photographer btw), the parents left and the girls and I waited for the fun to begin.  The limo showed up about 40 minutes before the wedding, we all hustled into the limo and just waited since the church was only 5 minutes away.  That's when the nervousness set in.  I won't go into detail but my nerves mess with my stomach which involved completely escaping my dress (about half an hour of unlacing and re-lacing) and we got to the church about 3 minutes after the processional was supposed to start.

Back to the Drill

Today was my first day of a normal 44 hour week in...I honestly can't remember how long.  Tim was off today and being the awesome husband he is, he texted me around lunch time asking what I wanted for lunch.  So he made me a sandwich (even weighed my meat and everything for tracking) and me, being the awesome wife that I am, decided that in reply to opening the apartment door and his greeting of "Hi, honey!" that it would be an awesome idea to say "Where's my sammich woman?!"  It went over about as well as expected.  I will give him credit though...he made my lunch, did some shopping and wrote his schedule on my dry erase board so I don't have to ask him a million times when he's going to be home.

I'm having a huge mental conflict about moving.  I think I had this the last time I moved too.  I know the finances will work themselves out (hardcore budgeter here) but right now I'm just so concerned.  I'm kind of notorious about living within my means.  Always.  Knock on wood, other than whatever I haven't paid off from last month yet, I don't have any debts or credit card interest.  Tim just has his truck loan which we're hoping that he can pay off in the next month.  Its just scary joining finances... especially since he owns his own business and his pay is not set and consistent like mine.  Let's just say it doesn't make me long for my freelancing again to say the least!  So a heavy duty spending month for us next month!  We have:

-October rent due for this apartment 10/1 (literally put the check in the mail tonight)
-mid-October rent (about half) due approx 10/15 (final move in date TBD)
-new rent (full) due 11/1
-3 truck payments for Tim
-credit card balances due by 10/20
-a new bed for the new apartment (squeezing 2 adults in a full bed has definitely not been pretty)

Plus all the other fun odds and ends that come with a move.  November I'm co-hosting a bachelorette party (probably in Atlantic City) and then December brings lots of Christmas shopping and the honeymoon.  Not to mention MY BIRTHDAY (I don't think I'll ever be one of those women that's too old to love her birthday).  So I will be very thankful when January comes around and we can finally start building our savings back up.  I'm hoping that we can get some new furniture for the new place too...I think all we'll need will be bar stools, a couch (maybe chairs too) and the bed as far as big pieces of furniture.  Bookcases and those sorts of things are much easier to get wherever without a ton of thought (I'm not worried about super nice expensive pieces until we're in a house and not moving things every other year).

I guess this girl should probably get to bed since there's another 9 hour day waiting for me in...nope, not even going to count the hours.  Its too tragic.  Good night world!

Sunday Wine Down

Its officially been a week since Tim moved in.  In that time we've moved him in, unpacked and started repacking.  Right now about 90% of the wedding presents are packaged up, the first of our moving boxes have been packed.  We made a $400 shopping trip at Walmart the other day (crazy right?!) to get a few odds and ends for the apartment plus finally restocking the fridge.  To say the least, we won't be hungry at least for a week or two.  Tonight Tim cooked the chicken that I marinated a few nights ago, I cut up and repackaged some chicken for the freezer for future dinners and am now enjoying catching up on Necessary Roughness and enjoying a glass of Pinot Noir.  Tim on the other hand appears to be watching a video game play through with a giant panda.  I'm not even going to pretend that I understand...

So pinot noir.  Good stuff.  I tend to be more of a whites girl myself, but we had a few bottles leftover from the wedding so I thought it would be nice to work on this wine while working on winding down tonight.  I can say that it was AWFUL with my balsamic vinegar couscous...seriously like licking black pepper (Tim said black pepper and mud so yeah...not good).  On the other hand, we had a left over s'more cookies from the wedding...pinot noir and chocolate are apparently amazing together.  It was good with a graham cracker too.  If I hadn't used up all my calories today (even including my walk), I would totally attempt it with some of my rum & raisin goat cheese but maybe I'll do that tomorrow. There's just enough for another small glass or two left in the bottle so we'll see how I feel at the end of the day.  I am kind of regretting not having taken a bit of a longer walk now to have tried it today.  Just kidding.  I realized my brain and stomach were not on the same page and the stomach would not be happy until it tried it....AMAZING.  So the Ropiteau Pinot Noir and the Goat's Milk Rum Raisin is to die for!  Oh and for what its worth the Rich & Buttery Brie was fantastic too but definitely not what I want with this wine.

Zonked

Today was a long, busy day for the Hamiltons.  We kicked off the day going to a Weight Watcher's meeting (just 2 pounds from goal and I managed to stay in my healthy range that last week before the wedding and lost an additional 1.4 lbs).  Then we grabbed breakfast at Wawa and began making our way North.  Tim stopped for a quick appointment and then we kept trucking to pick up my Matron of Honor dress for my friend A's wedding in December.  We grabbed an AMAZING pizza at Bertucci's and then did some quick shopping and drove the 2 hours back home.  Some days I really miss living in a true suburban area and don't like living in such a rural place.  It was just so nice to be able to walk down a row of stores and get everything that we needed (plus a few things that we didn't).  After all that (almost 10 hours since leaving the apartment), I ended up taking about a 20 minute cat nap and could still probably call it a night.  Tomorrow should be a nice relaxing day.  I don't think we have anything planned except for packing up boxes.  We're just about at the 3 week countdown although its a little unnerving that I've given my landlord my notice but haven't gotten the official move in date.  Even if our move in date is pushed back a few days, we'll be fine because I left us a 15 day buffer with the landlord (if we can move earlier, its just that much more time to make sure this place is really cleaned up and to get back as much of the deposit as possible).  I can't believe that I'm moving again.  By the time that I'm out, I will have lived here for a year and a half.  We're not sure that we'll stay at the next place for more than a year but we'll have to take it as it goes.  I swear every time I get a bruise or knock something over from it being so cramped in this apartment, my mantra is "2 bedrooms....1295 square feet....3 weeks...I can do this."

So Thursday Tim came to work to meet quite a few of the coworkers.  For an office known for pulling pranks, I was a little bit concerned when they said that they had a "special surprise for us."  It truly was a very special surprise though.  We had registered for a few oddball items during our wedding registry process...some were ungodly things to dream about...including a $400 wine bar.  Now I'm sure you just read that and went "No way, you got a $400 wine bar?!"  NOPE!  They pulled funds together and got me a custom made wine bar that is almost identical to the one that we registered for, except made with solid wood throughout instead of chipboard.  It was so sweet and unexpected.  It will be perfect to house all our leftover wedding wine and the awesome decanter that my friend C gave us for our wedding.

Two bedrooms.  1295 square feet.  3 weeks.

A new start

I've attempted blogging several times and to be honest I'm not sure this time will be any different.  I do miss keeping sort of a log as to how things are going and sort of a record to look back on.

This is truly a new start for so many reasons.  I just got married this past weekend to my amazing husband Tim.  We're a little old school so despite the fact that we dated for 5 years, we've never lived together.  We're almost a week into living together and although its been a little bit of an adjustment, I feel like its going pretty well considering that we're living in my 1 bedroom 700some square foot apartment.  Next month we will be moving into a 1295 square foot apartment *cue the Alleluia choir* with two bedrooms, a bigger kitchen and a HUGE balcony.  We really can't wait.

So the title of this blog...where to begin.  I'm not the world's most fit (or unfit) person.  I tend to yoyo between hardcore eating well and working out to being a bit of a couch potato.  Tim and I are big wine drinkers and while not much makes me WANT to exercise, if I know that there's wine as a possibility (or something I really want to eat) I will definitely take a massive walk to counteract the calories.  So this is it...my little blog.  I won't guarantee posting regularly or even what I'll be posting about.  I do hope that I am able to keep up with it and generally keep a good record of our going ons as well as projects around the apartment.