More Yes!

I have my first client! A friend from high school is getting married this year on a budget (know a little bit about that!) and in Atlanta, so she's enlisted me to help! I'll be providing my services at a lower price, but a) she's a friend and b) you gotta start somewhere, right?

Now if you'll pardon me, I'm going to go dance off in to the night :)

Day of Killing (and eating) Turkeys

This Thanksgiving is out of the norm. Which is saying something since last Thanksgiving we had Taco Mac with Emily, the year before turkey with Suzy, and the year before that (the first year Jeremy and I knew each other) I served slightly overcooked chicken breast in a semi-debacled Amy and Meg hosted Thanksgiving. I guess I'm used to Thanksgiving with Family (in caps) being a little more formal. We bust out the good china and put on our best-- if you don't use your good stuff for holidays, when will you ever use it?!

Right now I'm in Indiana with Jeremy's family, and it tugs at my heartstrings because I was so looking forward to finally spending a Thanksgiving with my mom, but Jeremy hadn't been up here in over a year so I told him we'd come. Plus, we're kind of hoping that one of us will land something that will prohibit travel in the days after the wedding. You know, like a job!

It's been nice seeing Josh and Sarah, though, they're so sweet, and they're in the middle of renovating this house they just moved in to. They're renting it, but it was Sarah's grandmother's house and needs a LOT of work! After failed attempts at peeling layer after layer after layer (and possibly more) of wallpaper off the walls (of which I had no part because I was in the middle of wedding details and I was scarred by the process when we lived on Westchester), we all decided it would be best to do some creative renovating and skip the pain and suffering of having to use dark magic to remove this wall paper. That cuts out a lot of the work for tomorrow, which means we will get to see Swiggett since she's just over in Bloomington!!!

I'm so very very close to finishing these bridesmaids bags, and now I just have to find a few things to put in them. Emily's helping me out, and I'm going to get a couple of other travel-sized things, plus I've been looking at all these awesome vintage brooches on eBay that are going for like $1 each! If the price stays under $1.50, I'm going to get each of them a brooch and they can keep it, pin it on their bag, or put it in their hair (which is what I'm doing with mine). I found this bracelet which matches an old necklace of my Granny's that mom has now, so that's going to be mom's present, and then this pin which might be an interesting addition to the fascinator I'm conning Meg in to helping me with, and these earrings which are very similar to the 1928 earrings I wanted! It would be really great if I could get them at or under my max bid of $7, because that would mean I'd saved something like $60 for very similar earrings! I'm bidding on a couple of other things right now (not that I super need to spend the money, but it's all told under $25) that will either go for the wedding or to the brooch collection that I am TOTALLY starting-- thank you for the inspiration Madeleine Albright! (side note: I'm totally hoping that I can talk Jeremy in to Moto GP tickets next fall for when the exhibit is in Indianapolis since apparently we don't get it in Atlanta-- que ridiculo!)

Plus, if I have some luck getting $1 brooches off of eBay, I can use them to decorate little bags, which I can totally sew with ease and put up on my etsy store (in spite of the fact that it's not doing a whole lot for me at the moment...) for sale. I need to start looking in to sewing laptop cases like I've seen in boutiques-- they sell them for like $50 and they would totally only take like $10 to make!

I've gotten a lot of my food budgeting done for the wedding, and thankfully Vicki is saving me big time by donating three trays (!) of Chick Fil A nuggets! I'm going to do the sushi still, it's the one thing I'm dying to have and I won't cut it out, I even cut the beer out of the budget just so I could have it.

We did get bad news, though. Valerie and Matt's court date got changed, so they won't even be bringing Ana over and going to Ethiopia without her. Jeremy's very sad about it, he misses her so much, and I'm sad because we'd made it in December so they could be there. :\ Such is life, I suppose. Pictures will be a little more difficult with Violet as flower girl, but they do have the absolute perfect dress, and with Julian as our ring bearer, Michael as a groomsman, and Meg an honorary bridesmaid... it's really quite fitting that Violet should join the party!

PS, our wedding has gotten quite out of hand! Apparently we have too much family!

I'll close this super long post now with my little Thanksgiving peace:

I am thankful for my friends and my family. This year has been extremely hard and there's no way I could have made it without them! Let me introduce you:

My mom, my brother Casey, and (of course) Jeremy

Vivi! Violet (9mos) Kavanaugh, our flower girl!

Michael, Violet and Julian's dad, and a groomsman

Meg, Nan, Violet, Della, and Iggy-- they're actually related, but have taken us in anyway!

Meg is an honorary bridesmaid of sorts

Meg, we are both goofy. She is also Julian and Violet's mother.

Sarah and Caq

Julian, our ring bearer, at his 3rd birthday last spring

These people are our family, though we may not all be related, and I am SO thankful for them!

I am also thankful for Jeremy, he is such an amazing friend and fiance, and I'm so thrilled I'm going to spend the rest of my life with him. We push each other and try each other every day, and I'm so glad we're together.

I'm also thankful for what I have. It may not be much, but it is something. I have a roof over my head, I have an awesome family (there are STILL a ton of people I'm missing in that family thing above!), I'm not going hungry, and I have some semblance of employment. Things could definitely be worse.

Here's to the coming year, to more things for which to be thankful, and finishing up this wedding majigger!

ciao for now folks,

M

First Dance ;)

I don't know that the church is set up for this sort of thing (we're not going to be able to fit in to the Solarium), so we're probably going to do something like this for the entrance at the Solarium.

Fooooooood is expensive

So I went to Whole Foods last week and found out they do sushi platters now! And they're reasonably priced, too! The only problem is that I keep adding more food and it keeps getting more and more expensive... my budget hasn't taken a complete nosedive yet since I only spent $100 on the dress (budgeted $300) and we'll get Jeremy's tux for free (budgeted $150) but still... Maybe I'll get lucky and find some of the veggies and stuff on sale that week. I'm also looking at doing breakfast for the wedding party on Sunday before everyone leaves, so we'll see.

I'm in Memphis for Rhodes' graduation tomorrow-- I can't believe Valisa and Caroline are graduating! It seems like just yesterday Caroline was a senior in high school! I'm really excited about the presents I got for them, and Caro will be able to take hers to France this fall when she goes to teach. All these people living abroad, what am I going to do?!

Last night, I got in and went to dinner with Sophia-- we went to Bosco's and split a few things and only spent about $15 each! (Bosco's, for those of you who aren't familiar, is frickin' expensive. You know, the type of place with $10 appetizers) Then, on our way out, we ran in to some people we knew from Rhodes and talked to them for a while, and then went and got a beer with Ashley and her friend Ryan. I came home later than I intended, but it was a really good night and once I finally got to sleep, I slept pretty well. I thought I was coming down with something, but so far it hasn't caught up with me so I'm hoping I caught it in time.

Tomorrow is graduation and whatever Caro and V want to do after their families head back to Jersey and Texas, and then probably hanging out with Brunner and Wayne tomorrow night. I don't really have much planned for Sunday, then driving back on Monday... I need to leave early as I forgot to put work shoes in the back of my car so I could just go straight in. Oh, wells.

Ciao for now!

A "Productive" Day

Got Analia's presents shipped off, so I'm very excited about that-- I hope everything fits and they look as absolutely adorable as I think they will! I bet that blue dress in particular is going to be cute as a button.

I also finally sat down with mom's computer and hooked up the printer and all that sort of thing, did up the save-the-dates, and got them all printed out!! I printed out about 20 extra since new addresses keep showing up-- I had the names on the original guest list but never got addresses to go with them, and since I won't be using these postcards for anything else in particular I'll just print them all up.

Watched all my shows, talked to Jeremy for a while, ate some Cheez-Its and am now fighting the urge to make red garlic curry at 2a and watching Angel. We'll see if Jon remembers to bring me the boxed set or not, I'm betting not. I'll remind him at the staff meeting tomorrow since we apparently decided to start those up again and I missed the memo... hopefully I haven't scheduled too much on Saturdays-- I know they're not mandatory in the strictest sense of the word, but they're not horrible meetings, and I like my coworkers and Jill, and I get to learn a little bit more about what I'm doing. However, since I don't work Saturday nights, 4p on a Saturday isn't the most inconvenient time, but it's not the most convenient time either... ah, well, c'est la vie.

Off to bed with me so that I can get up and finish off my save-the-dates and figure out how much postage I need to buy... that's the kicker, the darn postage!

Deep Breaths

I wish I could fly off to Phuket with Valerie this weekend, I could use a step back from everything! I'm really stressed because I haven't been making much at work and I have this whole paying for the wedding thing, not to mention the lots of tiny things that are stressing me out about the wedding thing, and trying to pay the rest of my bills... it's really stressful. I try to take deep breaths, but sometimes it gets overwhelming. I'm also a little bit irritated that since the economy is down, nobody's stocking the inventory they usually do which means that my brilliant plan to get lots of fun decorations from Valentine's Day clearance was severely thwarted!

To escape, I'm turning to making cards and thinking about going back on the citalopram to help me manage and be able to take a step back and look objectively at things. I'm going to start a new budget as of Monday that's a little different than the one I've been working on (which assumes a certain amount of income every month) and instead put away money for the things I know I'm going to have to pay-- $100 for prescriptions, $70 for the phone, $30 for gas (since I don't really go much of anywhere), $30 towards the wedding (I'm trying to put in at least $10 a week), and then at the end of the month I'll split the rest amongst my bills and send off checks. I'm hoping that will help me relax a little bit, and maybe end up with a few extra bucks here and there for all these babies that are popping up! In the next three or four months, Krystal, Meg, Kimberly, and someone else (gah, why can't I remember!) are all having babies!

Baby shopping will be totally therapeutic, the clothes are so adorable and two of the babies are boys and one's (Cy) father does ATC for the Marines and the other's (Peanut for now) mom used to be a First Officer at XJT and this afternoon at Target I found some little cammo socks and onesies and bibs with airplanes and jets on them. I also found the perfect blanket for Vera (Meg's baby girl), it's totally 60's and Meg will love it. I had to keep myself from buying all the totally adorable little print dresses on clearance for Analia-- they'd be perfect for Singapore and would look SO cute on her! And they had them in toddler sizes since we won't see them until Christmas and shipping anything over an ounce (aka, a letter) is just insane! If they go down under $5 each, I may still pick up a couple to keep around-- being kid's clothes, they don't take up much space, and Valerie's said that trying to buy kid's clothing over there is expensive and not very cute. There were even some little oshkosh twill capris which would be good since it rains a lot and wet hems are no fun!

Yes, we have concluded that I just need to have my own little girl so I can dress her up and not have to worry about spoiling other people's children...

Anyway, I need to go move my car so that dad can park in the morning and then hit the hay! He didn't realize he was going to have to have his eyes dialated (hello, they have to look at a busted vein in your retina-- what about that makes you think you'll be able to drive afterwards?) so I'm taking him in the morning and he's taking me for breakfast afterwards.

Ciao!

Oh, right, the organizing...

Now I just have to organize all my stuff in the new house... we're trying to figure out the heat because it's doing some strange stuff. Mine and Casey's side of the house is always hot, but Mom and David's side is always cold, which explains the thermostat wars we've been having the last couple nights. We think we're going to get a digital (programmable, hopefully) thermostat to put in so we know exactly what the temperature is-- right now, it's one of those tap the lever just so kinds that you can't really get any accuracy on.

I'm in a little better mood going in to this next week, but still anxious. I feel like my days are an exercise in futility at work, I just don't make that much money. If I make enough to do something to my car and do gas down to Savannah and have an extra $15, I may go to the brandy tasting. I may go anyway since dad's going and it's a nice neutral place for us to spend time and not worry about anyone getting bent out of shape. It's also nice to spend time with Jill, my boss, who rocks my world-- for the vodka tasting we got a free glass of our Prosecco (my FAVORITE of our new wines) which totally made my night! Emily might also get to go, so that would be fun. I need at least one night a week out, but I also can't afford to spend the money. I'll do Savannah this weekend (and may have to miss the staff meeting-- I mean, how often do I get to go to Savannah? Hint: Last time, I was wearing a green Girl Scouts uniform!), then Daytona at the beginning of March, and I need to get to Memphis hopefully by the end of March or April, but definitely in May for graduation-- All my babies are graduating! I can't believe my last little sis and my grand little are seniors!

I don't have any major expenses for the wedding coming up in the near future, but I need to be careful about making sure I save since there's going to be about $2k paid out between October and December. We've kind of come to the conclusion that I'll put my money towards paying down my bills and paying for the wedding, Jan and Marc are giving us some money that we'll use partially to pay for postage (insanely expensive, I tell you what!) and then put the rest in a high-interest savings account for our Singapore/Thailand/Japan honeymoon! Jeremy's money in savings will go towards paying for moving and a deposit on where we live, and then we'll combine our debts and try to pay them all off in the first 8 months after school. This should be utterly feasible with the exception of the student loans which could be done with in two years. Ambitious goals, but we really don't want to end up in debt. It might mean we won't have the fanciest place to live and we'll have to hold on to our dinky old cars, but we want to make sure we can pay for prenatal care when we have kids, give them a good house and get safe cars to drive them around in.

As for the wedding itself, I know TJ's (Trader Joe's) will give me a good price on the wine (sorry kids, no Nobul at the reception!) and there's a great place my friend Julie hooked me up with that will give me a phenomenal price on the beer (since I want to do all local brews- whooo Sweetwater!!) and I've been to weddings without a champagne toast before so I'm not sure it's necessary, and it would save us a couple, maybe a few hundred. I'm doing all the gifts for bridesmaids, family, and groomsmen by hand, and the parts that aren't by hand are either inexpensive or I can get a deal on them with Jill's distributor contacts. I got a Martha Stewart Weddings last night and I'm not that big of a fan; I liked the bit on bows, gave me some cute decorating ideas, and I did find a cool candy site, but everything was so expensive! Come on, this is supposed to be Wal-Mart's chic DIY queen! I think I'm just going to take it back to CVS and see what the other magazines look like. I also found a bunch of silver ornaments that my mom has packed away that are really cute and simple, so I've already got decoration! Next up, white tulle! HEY, DILL! WHAT TIME IS IT?!

As of now, and this will hold if we're living in Georgia, Jeremy's going to bake the cake, and I'm going to make some of Paula Deen's sausage balls and get my bridal party to chop cheese like there's no tomorrow! I think between Costco and the Farmer's Market I can throw a darn good party!

Anyway, it's bedtime. I'm trying to get to bed by 2/230a at the latest. I would like to work my way down to 1a, then to midnight. I'm thinking about getting a second job part time and need to get myself on some kind of regular sleep schedule! Hopefully, I can keep myself busy catching up on my teevee on Hulu (they're running this season of Battlestar Galactica!! Geek alert!!), running through my queue on Netflix, and organizing all the boxes that need to be unpacked!!

A little something

So I'm seriously considering starting up my own custom cards business. I hand make most of my special events cards and while Christmas got a little out of hand this year (as I custom-tailored each card for each family), almost all of the cards usually end up pretty sharp and darned cute, I think. I don't have the capability to do anything super fancy, but I can do some nice, hand-made cards and get the envelopes to go with them from like PaperDirect (if I need special colors) or something. I could sell them on Etsy and possibly market them to some of the boutiques in Decatur-- have some stock designs and then offer custom type stuff on a website? Plus, the materials aren't that expensive and since I only work part-time, my time isn't all that valuable...

I don't know, what do you guys think? I know there are lots of you who come by, but nobody ever says anything! Well, with the exception of Em who left a note last night :)

Things are going along here, I ordered my save-the-dates tonight and I'm really excited! Hopefully I'll have them out in the next week and a half/two weeks. The template that I ordered ($3 to save myself hours of screwing around with layout in Microsoft Word? Hells yeah!) is downloadable, so I can go ahead and figure out fonts and layouts and all that sort of thing before the actual paper gets here so I'll just print 'em out and address them on slow nights at work, maybe have Em over to help with the rest.

Work hasn't been too bad, and I have my car back which is a huge weight off my shoulders, so now I have to replace the Mass Air Flow sensor and plug the exhaust leak, which will hopefully get done by mid to late February so I can drive down and see Jeremy! He's also talking about coming up here for Valentine's day weekend, which would be really sweet. I have to work Valentine's night, but there's a good chance the dishwasher won't show up, so maybe he can make himself useful during that time and do some dishes... hey, it'd be an extra $30-50!

I'm finally exhausted enough to fall asleep without tossing and turning (not that I wasn't exhausted when I got home, but mom was still packing so I ended up waking up a little bit which was awful), so I'm going to hit the hay and try to prepare for the whirlwind of packing tomorrow morning...

Boredom strikes again...

The last week or so has been a little crazy and a little boring all at once. I had a fever for the first time in years, which was strange, and I didn't realize it for a few hours. Last night at work was a little slow, and we had the rudest most ill-behaved people in I've seen yet. They barely tipped me 10% because they were ticked that we didn't have more specials and I wouldn't let them take an open bottle of wine with them. I've been asked several times about whether we do cork and carry (meaning, if you start a bottle and don't finish it, you can take it with you) and the answer is no.

These two argued with me about it, they kept insisting City of Decatur had passed the law (where it frankly doesn't make sense to me that they would, we're not a "walk around with an open container of alcohol kind of place) and that they'd been doing it everywhere else, and got totally bent out of shape when I told them that it wasn't our policy and the City of Decatur hadn't notified us, I couldn't double check with anyone because there was nobody to double check with, we'd just had a staff meeting and we would have been notified, and no, we wouldn't make more money, because we have a retail license to sell bottles of wine to take home and they were welcome to do that if they liked.

Then, they left, finally. And left one of the hallway doors wide open, which made the hall even colder than it was before and forced up the heating. I was really ticked off. This was the same woman (the cheap Tara Reid knockoff) who ordered six bruschettas to go when they were on special, and who tried to order more of the specials to go another time over the phone and got irritated when we wouldn't let her take them out. I really hope they never come back again. They spent $50 and tipped me $6. Jerks.

One of the knitting clubs was back last night, though, and I always enjoy them-- one of them just found out she's about six weeks pregnant which is really exciting. Even the new one who came off a little rude warmed up and was really sweet by the end of the night. I think next Monday, Megan and her crew should be back-- they're the crazy fun ones.

Speaking of work, it's time to head out. I'm not expecting much from a Tuesday night, so if we don't have anyone in I'm going to start designing the surprise I'm making for my bridesmaids and Ana.