But I have recently discovered Grooveshark.com and it is awesome! If you have not heard of it here is a little update. It is a site like Pandora where you can play music for free almost all day with little interruption. But with Grooveshark.com you can pick the music you want and listen to it for free. This is key for me at my work because of the loud hacking lady (who yes is still making that noise). So the best part of this stire is you can pick the exact music you want to listen to. I have recently gotten really bored with my Pandora stations and this is a great option.
I am currently trying to pick music for a playlist for my wedding. And this has been helpful to eliminate music or add things I may not have thought of. They give you ideas for similar artists and popular songs. It is just a great site that I thought I would let you all know about!
It has been a long time since we have all gotten together. So much has happed since our last big get together. The Jones' are married and our favorite "enginerd" has a happy home! Engagements and wedding planning, house hunting and beer drinking as well! So many things to celebrate!
I know we are all very busy ladies so I thought I would put it out there that I would like to put together a Blogger happy hour. I was thinking April 28th or 29th. Is anyone interested? If so let me know what day is best and what part of town is best. I am going to put it out there that The Domain is the best for me but that does not really matter if it is not best for the rest of us! Bring other bloggers we may not know yet and friends who might be interested in having a drink with a fun group of girls!
Here is to hoping people read my blog and want to go to happy hour! :)
Friday - WF and I had our movie night. We watched "The Blind Side" which was really great and very moving. While watching this I made our team uniforms for the aleymics the next day. I had had a bottle of wine so things may have gotten a bit sloppy at the end.
Saturday - We got up early finished the t-shirts took our dog for a long walk and had a hearty chick fil-a meal to help get my stomoch ready for the massive amount of drinking I was about to do. We then headed to the Aleymics in all of our glory. For detailed pictures please take a look at Kelly's blog. We were super silly and had a blast playing lots of fun games. I have to say my friends are pretty awesome to be able to coordinate something like this. There were opening ceremonies, many winter themed games, lots of beer and a HUGE ass slip-n-slide. All so much fun. Like Kelly said in her blog sometimes you have to let loose and make an ass out of yourself. I did appreciate her telling my opponent I was prego, he seemed to be very scared to hit me!
So in case the pictures did not accurately portray us we were "Team America - FUCK YEA". My t-shirts even had fuck yeah written out there in all it's glory. WF went to get cash at the store and I am pretty sure some parents were offended. Just in case you have not heard our inspirational theme song here it is for you in all its glory:
I can't wait for the next summer Aleymics! We won gold at the last summer games so I am hoping we can make it a repeat for the summer events. It is going to be a blast and I know you will want to join us.
Sunday - I woke up sore as hell. The slip-n-slide was a hard core ab workout. WF took a nap right after waking up, cus we are that lazy. We then grocery shopped and watched movies the rest of the day. It was a great end to a super fun weekend.
Last night I went to a sale at Unbridled just to see what they had. Well I got a steal and ended up walking out with my veil! I have been having a really hard time finding just what I wanted to wear and I can't believe I bought it without over analyzing everything about it.
I ended up going with a 28 inch rough cut "grace" draped veil. Get this my veil cost me a total of $43 buckaroos!!!!! It will fall to my shoulder blades and will not take away from my dress at all. I am super excited about that because the back of my dress is the focal point of my dress! I just need to figure out where on my head I will place it now but I will work that out next month with my hairdresser.
So with that I have almost my whole look now. I have the dress, the shoes, the bra and panties (I think) and now the veil. All I need to get is a flower clip for my hair after the ceremony and then maybe some jewelry. Things are coming together!
Went to WW last night and had a great meeting. I am only down .2 pounds but hey I will take that after my lack of working out and over eating this weekend. WF and I have been trying to encourage each other to keep moving and eating healthy but when you are at Alamo Draft House for dinner all that crap goes out the window.
I consumed a bucket of beer, potato skins with sour cream, goat cheese salad (which I only had because I then could justify having the following) a malt Oreo milkshake with whipped cream. A-W-E-S-O-M-E. Seriously I think that one meal caused me to revers a months work of WW efforts. But it is ok because I still lost. I guess that is the bright side. And I totally think it was worth it to have a super fun date night.
On the other hand I have been within .5 pounds of my freaking official goal weight for lifetime for about 6 months. It is time to make this shit happen don't you think? So this week I WILL eat healthy and I WILL work out and I WILL make goal on Tuesday at my meeting dammit.
Unless of course I get distracted at the Ale-ymics (of which I will blog about later this week to tell you about the awesomeness that is going to happen this weekend) this weekend by all the shiny beer cans and queso...
Friday night I went home, cleaned a bit and had movie night with WF. I decided to be proactive and switched out our closets from winter to summer items. I thought it was time, except God hates me and it ended up being 40 all weekend. PERFECT. We watched "Did you hear about the Morgans?" it was cute but not to die for. Just what you expect from that kind of movie.
Saturday I was a bride on a mission. I needed shoes and a corset bra with a low back for my wedding dress fitting coming up. Next weekend we are pretty busy so I thought I would just take care of it now. Well after going to Victoria's Secret and being blown away by the fact that they do not have ANY practical bridal corset type things I headed to the new Dillards in the Domain. It was super nice and I highly recommend the place. I found the perfect bra after trying on about 10. The lady helping me was so nice. I then went to DSW to find the perfect pair of shoes. I had success! They are ivory peep toes with a small ruffle embellishment on the toe strap. They are about two and a half inches high so I should not be crippled by the end of the night. I can't find a picture on the internet of them but they are Nina's and only $55 bucks! Can't beat that really.
Saturday night I had date night with WF. We went to Master Pancake Theater at the Alamo, Goldfinger addition. I love James Bond and it was a wonderful (and very fitting) date night for us both.
Sunday WF beat the crap out of our friends and family 30% coupon at Old Navy. I got almost $300 bucks worth of stuff for $180. NICE. I will be returning about half of it today though, as I went a bit too nuts. I did get some good finds for the honeymoon including 2 pairs of shorts! I have not had shorts in like 15 years, no kidding! WF even got some new shorts and flip flops in preparation for the honeymoon as well. I then headed home relaxed while watching a few movies and cooking dinner.
I had a very productive weekend! Hope you all had a great one too!
So for those of you that do not know I moved to the Lone Star State from Philadelphia about 5 years ago. I went to Temple University in Philadelphia and I loved it. I met some great friends and in general loved living in the big city.
Well my Temple Owls will be taking on Cornell in the NCAA tournament today and I am very pumped. The last few years our basketball program has been really crappy and I am looking forward to the possibility of making in at least to the second round this year. It is great for my school but most of all it is great because I will finally have something to gloat about to all of my friends who went to UT!
I happily go to all the watch parties and wear burnt orange. I in fact have more UT stuff in my closet than I do Temple. It is shameful I know, but this year UT lost in the first round (sorry longhorns) and so I might be able to say my school is better than UT in at least one thing!
So go Owls I will be routing for you today. And if they win today I will be making my friends here in Texas wear Cherry and White on Sunday as they cheer us on! :)
UPDATE: Well we lost. That is what I get for running my mouth. At least we still have the cheese steak going for us! Go Owls anyway!
Shoes from JCrew that are far to expensive for me. I love you anyway. You are the perfect shade of blue (click the link below for the right color blue) with the most perfect peep to design. I want to wear you for my wedding, but just can not justify the rediculousness of your price tag. I must move on. I must find another...
Click Here to get the right picture. I. Love. These. Shoes. I will always remember you dear sweet shoes.
I sent off the signed contract and check for our ceremony musicians. We have hired Musical Discovery Chamber Players. A duo of violin and cello will be playing our ceremony on the big day. They have been super easy to work with and I am really excited to have real strings playing while I walk down the isle. I figure it is timeless and classy. They are even withing budget whoot whoot! Here they are playing Cannon in D:
I will be coming down to the isle to Cannon in D and the rest will be a surprise! :)
This weekend was beautiful here in Austin. I was able to spend most of the weekend outside enjoying it as much as I could. Friday I came home and tackled my kitchen pantry. It had been almost a year now since I had cleaned it out and reorganized the whole thing. It was amazing how much stuff I was able to throw away. I then cleaned the whole kitchen. I know I am the loser that spent Friday night cleaning my kitchen but whatever I had a good time accomplishing something that I normally hate to do.
Saturday I did more cleaning, worked out outside, walked my dog, grocery shopped and all of the usual. Then we headed to an engagement party fro a friend of WF. It was all the way out in Johnson city. Let me tell you I was totally nervous as it was out on a ranch and I was totally out of my element. We arrived a bit late but were able to get sangria in my hands before the fact that there were cows walking by me made me too nervous. The home that this was held at was absolutely stunning and if I am ever "ranch-y" that is the way I am going to do it.
Sunday our wonderful dog got us up at 7 am. Instead of sleeping in we decided to be productive. We headed out to play tennis and then take a walk. Both of us need to get in shape and we want to try to do things together to encourage each other. We then headed to Kerby Lane where I was tempted to say eff it and eat all the french toast, Kerby queso and mimosas I could handle. But I instead went with egg whites, fruit and whole wheat toast ( I did manage to sneak in a mimosa though). We headed home to be huge dorks and sorted out some of WF's thousands of comic books. He is selling them to complete his collection of X-Men. I know. Anyway we then headed out to run some more errands and took advantage of day light savings by walking up to the frozen yogurt shop by our house with the pup.
All in all it was a great weekend, and I don't ever want to go back to work. BLAH. Hope you all were able to enjoy your weekends!
We booked our DJ today. We went with a company called Gobo Entertainment. Sandy from the JB and Sandy morning show used them for his wedding. They offered me a 30% discount for having a Sunday wedding and threw in a digital gobo machine for the dance floor. SWEET! I have my choice of four DJ's and will be interviewing them about 6 weeks out from the wedding. So I will let you know who I choose.
For those of you who don't know a gobo machine will let us have our monogram on the dance floor like so:
I am pretty pumped about this choice and feel we got a great deal. I am hoping they listen to my prefernces and I dont have to "Philly" on someones ass if they start to play sonds from my ever growing NO WAY IN HELL play list!
This week I am beginning again. I have been on Weight Watchers for a year this week! I have lost about 20 pounds. I am getting married in less than six months and it is time yet again for me to get my butt in gear. I have begun actively counting my points and tracking my activity. I am looking into joining a gym, but I am not totally sold on not just being able to do what I need to do at my apartment gym and walking my dog. I would like to loose 6 pounds in 6 months. That is TOTALLY doable. So I am also going to be working on other parts of my health as well.
My goal is to do more strength training to tone and lean out my body. I am going to drink less, see this post, I clearly need to work on that. I am going to try and set up a skin regimen to clear up and even out my skin tone. I am also going to try to cut out soda again. This is something I did last year and I could feel the difference. Slowly I have picked up the habit again and I think it is time to kick that habit once and for all.
So to help with holding me accountable for my actions I am going to attempt to post my goals and successes here. Hopefully knowing that all of you are out there judging me will (I hope) keep me in line. Goals for this week:
1) To walk my dog three times for at least 45 minutes to an hour.
2) Weigh in next week at -.5 pounds. I know it does not seem like a lot but gosh these last 5 pounds are killing me.
Check in with me and ask me how I am doing. I need the help!
Yeah that is right, I booked my honeymoon! I will soon be laying on the beach and drinking too much gin in a huge straw hat and heals. I will be fabulous. Where will I be so fabulous you ask? Check this out:
Puerto Vallarta Palace Resort - Concierge Level BITCHES! I am super excited about our trip. 6 days of doing nothing but eating and drinking and maybe some swimming, but mostly eating. I cant wait!
This weekend was nothing short of a drunken mess of fun. It was a blast the will not be soon repeated as I was reminded that I am getting to old for this shit. While my WF was at his bachelor party skiing in Breckenridge my girlfriends and I decided not to miss out on some good old fashioned girl time.
Friday - Kelly, Janet and I had a movie night at my house. I cooked a weight watchers meal that was to die for and we polished off three bottles of wine while watching Sex and the City. Was totally hammered while talking to the girls about all things fashion, boys and wedding. Absolutely perfect.
Saturday - Got up with Janet and went for a walk around Town Lake with the pups. Had a good workout and headed home to go shopping with Kelly. We checked out the new part of the Domain and were successful in feeling like a celebrity while drinking our Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Went home took a little nap and got sexy for a night out on the town. We headed out for dinner then went dancing. Ended up at Oil Can Harry's for some ass shaking with the wonderful gay men of Austin. Pretty sure I made an ass out of myself but still worked it. Got home passed out while chatting with Janet and snuggling my dog. Here are the girls:
Sunday - Woke up and make Janet and I some Weight Watchers strawberry French toast. Got her home and then came home to do laundry and hide all evidence of a drunken rage from the night before. WF got home. We snuggled and watched the Oscars while eating left overs. He yelled at the TV about winners and losers I was reminded of hoe much I love him.
I found out about this a long time ago, but since very few of my current readers would know about Yo Gaba Gaba I did not post about it. But since I was talking about him yesterday I thought it would be fitting I post this. Is it odd that I find Brad Pitt even hotter dressed up as DJ Lance Rock?
Now what I want is Brad Pitt dressed up as DJ Lance Rock to DJ at our wedding. That would be freaking awesome no?
BTW- I had several comments about the no Micheal Jackson thing. I think I must rethink my ban on king of pop but honestly he kinda creeps me out. Maybe on my wedding day I wont give a crap and the music will overwhelm me to bust out the WHOLE thriller dance in my wedding dress. Yea, that might happen.
For those of you unfortunate ladies out there who do not know who DJ Lance Rock I shall introduce you! DJ Lance rock is a character from the children's show "Yo Gaba Gaba". He is the magical DJ that turns stuffed animals into real living and dancing things. It is awesome and my two year old niece freaking loves herself some "Yo Gaba Gaba".
So you must be asking yourself why the hell I am talking about DJ Lance Rock. It is because I have decided I would like him to DJ at our wedding. All the other fools I have found are trying to butt rape me with costsand stupid questions. I have found a deal or two and am currently trying to book our DJ by the end of this week. I will let you know how that goes.
In the mean time I have had to come up with a list of DO NOT PLAY (notice the capitals mean business) music and then music I do like. It is funny I always thought this would be easy to describe. I like big band, standards, good dance music a little bit of top 40 mixed in with classic 90s music. How hard is that right? Well apparently this is not specific enough for Mr. DJ man who needs me to give him a play by play. This is why I wanted to go with an iPod in the first place dammit. So then we go to the infamous DO NOT PLAY list. Did you have one? Do you have recommendations for this? So far this was part of my latest email to one of the DJ candidates:
"No group, conga or circle dancing, chicken dance, electric slide, no line dancing at all in fact! Basically no tacking wedding songs, I know they have their place but not at our wedding. This list is a pretty good do not play list for me as well:
"Amazed" -- Lonestar
"YMCA" -- Village People "Mambo #5" -- Lou Bega "Respect" -- Aretha Franklin "Ice Ice Baby" -- Vanilla Ice "Macarena" -- Los Del Rio Any Eminem "Can't Get No Satisfaction" -- Rolling Stones "Proud Mary" -- CCR "U Can't Touch This" -- MC Hammer Any Michael Jackson "Good Riddance" -- Green Day "Hey There Delilah" -- Plain White Ts
What else should I add to my DO NOT PLAY? Do you have any music description selections that you could give me? It is hard to say what you like.
Sometimes a girl just have to give into the fancy panties. This weekend I had some returns to make at Nordstrom and with the money I got back I was told I must buy something pretty and feminine by my mother. So with that I bought four new pairs of Hankey Pankies, a new bra and my first piece of bridal lingerie. It was super weird shopping in the bridal section as it was my first time looking for what I wanted. I found what I think was cute but I could still sleep in.
As mentioned I got a new bra. I had not been fitted for a bra since well junior year. I did not know it but I was wearing the totally wrong size bra. The girl sizing me laughed at me when she saw my bra. If you have not done this you should get sized. I think a lot of woman hate wearing bras because they are not wearing the right size. My new bra was $40 on sale at Nordies and totally worth every penny. I feel great!
I wanted to sound super hard core to emphasis the fact that I am getting back into bride mode. I am getting married in 6 freaking months! I cant believe it, in six months I will be walking down the isle. So with my well deserved break in wedding planning complete I am back in full force.
First off I/we have changed my bridesmaid dresses. With the help of my sister and countless hours of looking at inspirational photos I have decided to go with JCrew chocolate brown dresses in silk taffeta. Here are some pictures of some of the options the girls can choose from:
(All from JCrew.com)
I like the idea of the girls being able to pick out the dress they want to wear and being able to pick what works best for their body. I also liked that these dress have to potential to be worn at a lot more occasions. The look much less "bridesmaid-y". Everyone seems to be on board and I am really happy that they are OK with the change. I am hoping they will all be able to get them on sale or at least free shipping in the next six months.
Moving on from there WF is leaving for is bachelor party this weekend. They are going skiing and I am really happy that he is super excited to go. We have spent a lot of time at REI getting him all the stuff he needs. The guys are planning to be on the mountain for a good three days. I hope they have a great time and don't get into too much trouble. If I know these guys though they will take great care of WF!
After he gets back number one priority is going to be booking the honeymoon. Every time we sit down to do it we don't get it done. We MUST at least book our flights but I am hoping to get it all done by the end of this month. I get all stressed because we are going to try to used points from our credit card to buy one of the tickets. I have never done that before so I worry I am not getting a good deal.
Are you happy the bride is back? Look forward to many fun do it yourself projects, planning thoughts, rants and raves over the next few months!
