I'm home! It's wonderful. I love my family oh so much! And I miss them when I'm away at school. I was convinced that when all my homework was over and done with, I'd have tons more time, more than I'd know what to do with, in fact!

False. I do not have any more time. However, I'm not sure where it disappeared to.

Probably the same place my other sock went. Home is like that.

I got home May 1st and started work on May 3rd. I figured that after 5, I would be free to focus on all the wedding-related tasks that are vying for my attention. Instead, I come home tired, and just want to chill with the rest of my family. Unfortunately, chilling with the fam in front of an NCIS turns into an NCIS marathon...and next thing you know it's 11:00 and Dave's calling. And I accomplished nothing. Except 3 rows on my super cute lace knit hat.

Basically I've accomplished nothing.

Now I've been home for 3 weeks. I got our invitations sent out the first week. Actually, there was a minor fiasco that went along with invitation sending, wanna hear it? I knew you did!

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably know that I designed our invitations myself. In case you missed them, here's a link to the post about the invitations and RSVP's, and here's the thank you cards.

Naturally, if I'm going to put that much work into my stationary, I'm not going to neglect the packaging! I planned on designing a cute envelope design when I got home and printing all the addresses on in a super-cute font to match the invites.

Unfortunately, when I got home, my computer crashed 3 or 4 times, and in the process of being fixed, became a vegetable (the operating system was removed, and the new one didn't work. Thankfully, it works now!). So, I lost my precious Adobe programs and had to design my envelopes in Microsoft Word. Not exactly the best graphics program.

When I finally got the graphics arranged in a passable manner, I tried to print our addresses. Unfortunately, I forgot that our printer is possessed by a paper-eating demon, which proceeded to eat several of my envelopes. By now it's about 11:30 pm, the day after I wanted them sent out.

I had just resigned myself to handwriting all 130+ addresses by myself, when dad saw me and felt sorry for me. So, he volunteered to print them at work for me the following day. I set up the documents as best as I could at that late hour, and sent them with him.

The next day, I received several calls from my family, trying to reach me. I finally call my dad back, and he explains to me that he didn't realize that the proper font wasn't installed before he started printing. He had printed about half the envelopes in some large, sans-serif font. Did I want him to continue?

I took a few cleansing breaths, and explained how to download the proper font, so that at least some of my envelopes could be saved. But, as was the habit of this particular project, it didn't work. His computer wouldn't let him unzip the file, so we were stuck with the large Ariel-style font. I told him to go ahead and print them.

So, at this point, we had 6 envelopes printed in the right font, about 20 that I had handwritten, and about 100 printed with this alien font. Mom and I stuffed and stamped them, and we sent them out the next day on our way to Virginia for my cousin's wedding.

After a whirlwind 3-day trip to Virginia (an 11 hour drive, one way), we came home, and I went back to work. The first few days, I was so beat after work that I couldn't do much more than sit on my bum when I got home. I slowly started recovering, and started realizing that I was getting married in 5 weeks, and still had more tasks to do than I could imagine.

That weekend, my Dad's side of the family threw me a bridal shower! It was lots of fun. My grandmas from both sides came, as well as all my aunts on that side, and most of my female cousins. The house was all decorated in pink and green (the colors of our  wedding!), right down to the ham salad sandwiches! I tell you what, when my Aunt Mary Jane throws a party, she throws it right!

Thankfully, they didn't deliberately try to embarrass me. However, the second game we played, "Bridal Jenga," got a little embarrassing. A lot embarrassing. They-talked-about-sex-in-front-of-my-grandmas embarrassing. Apparently the game, which was a regular Jenga game with questions written on about half the blocks, was made by one of my cousins for a bridal shower for a college friend a number of years ago. Some of these questions would have been awkward in that setting, but not the end of the world. However, when your grandma pulls the block that says, "Name two places (outside the bedroom) that you would like to have sex," and you and your grandma both are supposed to answer it...yikes!

I plead the fifth.

Overall, it was really fun! Showers are, by nature, rather awkward, what with getting all those gifts and such, but I had fun. And it was nice to see so much of the family again. I've missed a lot of family events being off at school.

That night (Saturday), Dave came up to visit with Wes and his new bride, Shele. They were up for around 24 hours, to visit their grandparents who are home from the mission field for about a month. I spent all day Sunday with Dave, and got home late that night. Monday I was back at work.

Weekends here are NOT relaxing. Just saying.

This week, I decided that doing wedding planning in the evenings wasn't going to work, so I told my boss that I needed Friday's off, starting immediately. I worked Monday through Wednesday this week, then stayed home sick/played hooky with my bestest buddy yesterday. (I was actually sick, she played hooky. And we ate mint oreos and watched the best movie ever made: Anne of Green Gables).

Today I contacted several people in an attempt to chase down information I need for planning this big shindig we have coming up in less than a month.

Oh yeah, did I mention that? This week Wednesday was the one-month mark. Freak out time!! Ahh!! So much to do, and no time to do it!!

So, right now my biggest things to tackle are the cake (with me being out of the state for school, the cake got overlooked until it was too late and all the bakers in the area are booked full for June, so we're gonna make it ourselves), flowers (we're making our own bouquets using silk flowers, but I haven't decided yet what they should look like), ceremony decorations (which, by the way, I could still use suggestions for!), ceremony music, reception layout/decor, makeup, photography, music, hairstylists, shoes (which I don't have yet! eep!), and probably about 100 other things that I'm forgetting.

Oy vey. Buckle up kids, this should be fun!

And to think, at the end of this, I'll be a wife. That totally hasn't sunk in yet. Not sure it will for another year or so. That's about when I'll wake up when I finally get the chance to stop.

Wow...this week's been absolutely crazy! I had the school paper to layout over the weekend, and have been playing catch-up in my classes all week. Actually, I'm still catching up. I shouldn't be here. Shhh...don't tell!

But I simply had the urge to tell whomever cares to listen about something wedding related today.

You know, when I started blogging about planning my wedding, I did so mainly because I knew that if a friend of mine were planning her wedding, I'd love to know what's going on in her planning process! I love juicy details about fun stuff like this. This was also my thought process behind posting pictures of (almost) every wedding gown I tried on, and those were a hit! (I say "almost," because the very last time I went in, it was on a whim, and I didn't have a camera with me. Sad day, my friends.) Here's a link to those, just in case you missed them: And the Bride Wore...

Anyway, because I've been so busy, wedding stuff has unfortunately been placed on the back burner. I'd so much rather plan my wedding than do my homework, but what cand you do? I haven't accomplished anything significant or interesting in the past few days, but still want to talk about it, because it's fun! So I thought I could instead show you some of the things that have been on my mind lately.

Dave and I have been trying to finalize our registry lately, but as I said before, I over think things like this. You don't even want to know how many times I have changed the colors of our kitchen towels, or the number of salt shakers I have looked at. But this overthinking is not all negative. I am enjoying the process of picking and choosing many of the elements of our future home together, making sure it will represent us!

For example, this little treasure is adorable! Totally fun, and something that is just weird (and, OK, childish) enough that it would make perfect sense to find it my our future home.

However, I cannot justify spending (or asking someone to spend) $37.99 on salt and pepper shakers! But it made my day just to see them. Seriously. You can't look at those monkeys and not smile!

Another thing I have realized through all this overthinking is that I want everything to be perfect (which should be obvious...as I am a perfectionist...hence the overthinking...). I want to know going in that everything I have works together, and that instead of trying to find things that "work," I can have a theme and find things that "go." For example, the kitchen towels that I spent so much time mulling over? The reason for that was that I decided I wanted a kitchen with subtle pink accents (not a grandma kitchen, but enough that it looks like me!). I figured it couldn't be too hard to find pink towels to match this:

But pink things aparently only exist in October (Breast Cancer Awareness Month), and on Valentines Day. This is very sad news for a pink lover like me! So, we decided to get pretty green towels for now, and I can add other pink accents as we go along.

So that's what's been on my mind lately! Hope it entertains you and/or tides you over until I get something wedding-related done!

When Dave and I went registering a few weeks ago, I got totally stressed out. We spent way too long in the store, and I way over-thought things, and then changed everything online that night anyway!

And we only got through the kitchen. Correction: mostly through the kitchen. We didn't even register for everything we needed for that one room.

Now, before you go off thinking I'm a crazy lady, let me just say that the store we were in was quite small, and had an extremely limited selection. Which would actually make it easer for most women to decide.

Now you can call me a crazy lady.

Anyway, our excursion of several weeks ago is not my topic today. Today my topic is kitchen towels.

Mom sent me an email yesterday asking where I registered and specifically what color(s) I wanted in my kitchen. We had decided on awesome black and white dishes, but we tend to be pretty colorful people and mom needed a color for something. Unfortunately, the towels that the store we registered in were tan. Actually, they were called latte, which is a fancy word for expensive coffee and tan towels. Here's a picture:
So, this evening, Dave and I got on the internet and browsed the sites of the stores we are registering at, looking for exciting towels (to-be-weds are an odd group...for a month our idea of "quality time" was sitting in his cubicle after dinner and browsing for dishes on his computer).

I found these at Macy's, by Martha Stewart:They also come in a bright red. These I love. They are such a pretty color, and then Martha Stewart has a whole line of kitchen products, so I could accent with a blue spatula or bright mixing bowls, and have it all still match! I like matching. So we added them to our registry.

One big, ugly oozy problem: these towels (and the matching striped ones) are it! In the blue, there is no oven mit and no pot holder, and there are no wash cloths for neither blue nor red.

That's a problem. Then not everything will match!

So we unadded them to our registry, and continued to look elsewhere.

We ended up with the red version of the origional Latte towels. While they're not vibrant, Martha Stewart red, they still work, and have all the necessary pieces.

I just don't love them. Is that weird that I want to love my towels? I guess it's my house, and if I get to pick the way it look I really want to pick the way it looks! I don't want to settle for just OK.

Honestly, what I would love would be some light pink towels, to match my Kitchen Aid Mixer. I don't want a whole pink kitchen, but the stainless steel/chrome appliances we've already registered for as well as the black utensils and the black and white plates would look nice with a small amount of pink!

Two problems: one, I can't find pink anything anywhere. I don't want a pink toaster or refrigerator or anything, I'd settle for a pink towel set! Two, I promised Dave I wouldn't decorate his house in pink. But I think I can justify this one with the mixer color that he chose for me!

Any advice? We're currently registered at Bed Bath & Beyond and Macy's, an we're planning on registering at Target. Our kitchen badly needs color, and I don't know where to look!

I got one of these yesterday!! Well, kind of. Dave and I started our registry last night, and this is on it!

After talking about it for a long time, and looking at (at least) five different stores for dishes we liked, we finally picked up the gun and started registering!

Today we went to Bed, Bath &Beyond because we figured it would be a good place to start. The lady we talked to was very helpful in signing us up, then she took us around the store.

Oh. My. Goodness. It was overwhelming! All the pots and pans and dishcloths and measuring spoons and irons! Unfortunately, the way she started us out was not my style. She would walk up to a display and hand me two pans from two different collections and say, "Okay, which one feels better?" I would pick one and she'd write something down and then speed walk over to the next display, where she'd hand me two spoons and do the same drill. After we had circled the entire store, she handed us the registry gun and told us that what we had looked at was already on our registry, and to find whatever else we needed.

Now, I am the sort of person who likes to look at all the options and choose for myself, the long hard way. This is proven by the fact that Dave and I then spent two and a half hours in that store going over the rest of our registry, and didn't even get halfway done! We finished all the main kitchen things (we haven't yet registered for our dishes, the ones we like best are at Macy's), but didn't register for anything else really. We looked at bedding and such, but spent forever looking and didn't decide on what we liked best!

My mom is making us a beautiful quilt for our bed, so maybe next time we go home we can pick up a swatch of the colors so we have something to base our sheet color choices on. One thing we did notice at this particular store was that the selection was slim. This was a very small branch of BB&B, and as such there were very few styles and colors to choose from in any area. We will probably go to a bigger store in the future to finalize a few more things.

I was exhausted by the time we got done, and so ready to sit down! So we got Panera for dinner and came back to his house to go over everything. We went through and deleted duplicates and edited things that we had thought were different (for example, I thought we registered for stacking cookie racks, but we had accidentally gotten a regular one).

Today, looking back, I'd say we had a good time, got some good stuff done, and learned our registry style, which will be very helpful when we register again in the future!