Food and Drinks, Friends, Life

Backyard Shenanigans

For the 4th, J and I went to our friend F’s house for a BBQ. There was some amazing food, BBQ Chicken, Hot dogs, Coleslaw, Orzo salad , Brownies, Guacamole and this spicy potato salad. I am determined to get that recipe, even though F says  its a family recipe. I didn’t really take too many pics as J had the camera the whole night and I let him be photographer.

Here are a few I like:

Mmmm…Delicious and Spicy Bloody Mary

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Is it Durham or Singapore? What is DS’s crime?  most importantly why is he enjoying it?

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Some public S&M? hmm….what does this pic say about my upcoming marriage?

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Lighting a roman candle? or pointing out UFO’s?

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*Photos byJ and Y*

Wedding

90 Days

I am officially freaking out now! I am getting married in 90 days, 3 months, one quarter. I can’t deal with this. I looked at the Knot Checklist today of things I should have crossed off and I have only crossed of 42 items they expected me to have 138 items crossed off the list. Deep breaths….its gonna be okay….right?

I have broken down my to do list for this month into 3 categories:

Urgent

Find and book caterer

Convince J to apply for passport ASAP

Order Invitations and start addressing them

Less Urgent

Convince J to inform his groomsmen on their attire

Start writing our ceremony and vows with officiant

Figure out hair , makeup, accessories for self

If it happens it happens….

Videographer

Decorations

Florists

Wedding

DIY v Generic

So according to all the wedding sites, I need tostart focussing on invitations . I am so torn about this , because I love every kind of paper item imaginable. Take me to a scrapbook, stationary, or even a book store and its heaven for me. But since we are doing two weddings and in the interest of sticking within a budget, I have chosen to cut down on invitation spending. I also felt justified in scrimping in this area becasue other than our immediate family and few close friends, the invites are going to end up in the trash anyway. So this means I have two options

1) DIY Invites. Design our invites on photoshop and then hire a local printer or Kinkos to print them out for us. This would be my preffered method of doing it except I’m not as photoshop savvy as I’d like to be and I wonder if the costs of buying paper and printing at Kinko’s will end up being more expensive in the long run, in terms of time and sanity. I have already decided I’m going to DIY programs, so DIYing invites seems too much work. Plus, J is not in favor of DIY invites.

2) Buy a more “generic” invite from an online retailer. It will be a little more expensive but it will take away a lot of the planning burden off of me. Also J is in favor of pre made invites because he feels it will look way nicer than anything we come up with on our own. It does have some negatives, like I will have to spend hours finding invites that do not have hearts, doves, butterflies, flowers, bells, kissing children, angels….yadayadayada. Its hard to find budget friendly premade invites that are funky and cool and most of the ones i like are in the $200 range. And most importantly, I hate white 😦

As I continue the search this week, I will post a few that appeal to me.

Life

Nerd Chic

I got new glasses last week and they are a huge improvement over my old dorky ones. I actually look forward to wearing them and I have even been switching it up just for fun lately. Here are some pics

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Life

Pirates

It has been rather stressful in these parts lately. J and I have been entertaining a lot and it has worn us down. Thu night we had a going away party for my friend JE and her family and sat night we just had some people over for a game of scrabble and drinking.  Sunday , J and I went to see Pirates of the Carribean and I have to say that for a 3 hour movie , it is still surprisingly well paced. I didn’t find myself bored , or distracted even once and thats a huge feat. Even movies , I love often can’t hold my interest in the middle. My one complaint is that they didnt’ have enough Jack Sparrow, but of course thats my Johnny Depp crush speaking.  Also loved some of Keira Knightley’s vintage “oriental” outfits, very colorful and cute. I want the green /red hat she wears in one scene, but i have no idea where I would wear it.

 I am excited for the 4th of July this year, I am going to a bbq at a friend’s house and it doesn’t get anymore all american than that.

Friends, Life

A True Blue Friend

Last Saturday J and I went out to Franklin street with my friend JE and her boyfriend. It was a bittersweet night, because we had a really fun time and stayed up and about till almost 5 in the morning but it was sad because this is one of the last times we’ll be able to hang out like this. JE and her family is moving to Nashville in 2 weeks and it really hit me hard that night. Throughout my time in NC, JE has been one of my closest girlfriends. We call each other when we ar mad at our significant others and we have a Thursday Night= Girls Night rule . After she is gone, I wont’ be able to do those things. I know, we’ll still be close and I’ll call her and we’ll stay in touch, but it won’t be the same. We definitely bring out the silly, girly, side of each other.

A story that illustrates is what happened saturday night. We went to one of JE and my favorite bars- The Blue Horn Lounge on Franklin Street. The reason we love this bar is because it is tiny and has a very old school feel to it and most importantly it has a spectacular bathroom. First of all the bathroom is nearly half the size of the bar and it is bathed in blue light. It is also decorated really nicely with mosaic tiles and cool iron fixtures. This saturday, when we were obviously drunk JE and I went to the infamous bathroom, while our boys waited at the bar and had a 20 minute photo shoot. People and our boys were banging on the door and we were giggling like crazy and by the time we came out everyone was giving us really strange looks. But we didnt’ care, out bathroom photoshoot was really fun, with the both of us pretending we were on ANTM and trying to figure out our best angles and poses. Unfortunately the blue light didn’t come through in the photos. When we came out our Boys had left the bar to stand outside cuz they are just dumb boys and rolled their eyes at us. Silly boys!

Anyway, all good things must come to an end and it seems like our silly days are over at least until I see her in october for the wedding. I guess my brief stint as a bathroom model is over:(

Scrapbooking

A Layla Story

This weekend I decided to start a themed album project. Its going to be a 8×8 album of the Laylster. I made a Title page for it on Sunday. Since it was my first 8×8 layout, I made some really big mistakes and somehow barely managed to salvage it. I also made some changes to the Title, from Layla to A Layla Story. But the pics had already been taken and uploaded and I was too lazy to take another one.  Also the Laylster’s cuteness makes everything look good. Right? right?

I give this Layout a low C

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Food and Drinks

Infusion Photos

J and I tried to experiment with a recipe we found online last week. The recipe didn’t turn out very well and is not worth sharing, however , since we infused vodka with chilli and tomatoes, it made for a very pleasing visual. Here are two photos at different stages of the infusion.

Infusing the chillies

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Infusing the Tomatoes

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Scrapbooking

Blog Roll

So because I occasionally blog about scrapbooking I had my blog added to a Scrapbooking Blog Roll. This makes me nervous because I feel like I have all this pressure to make my posts good but I’m also super excited.

So in the spirit of that here’s a scrapbooking post. During lunch today, I went to Big Lots. I had read on the different scrapbooking forums that you could find really good deals on albums and embellishments and paper. And the forums were right, they had tons of designer stuff for one dollar.

I bought a transparency,  two metal tags,  and a sheet of rub ons for a dollar each. One postbound album for $5.00 and a 30 sheet sheet of printed paper for $3.00.

 It was worth fighting the lunch hour traffic.

Wedding

Its Official!!!!

J just booked our tickets. We are getting married in UT. Yipeee. We will be in UT from Sep 27 to Oct 8.  I have missed SLC so much! I can’t believe I am  finally going back and to get married too! We also got a really awesome deal on the tickets thanks to my favorite activity at work – slacking off and searching the internet.