And so the Wedding Blogging Begins...

Well. Today is 3 months. 3 Months until the BIG day... 92 days to go.

I do feel like we have a handle on all the details... for the most part. LOL

OMG. And yesterday- my shoes came in. I swear these are THE most AMAZING shoes I have ever owned in my LIFE. Sigh. They are SO effin' wonderful. :D :D :D :D


Last week I put together all of our favor boxes. Chris helped :) There are 200 of them. Let's just say it took a little longer than I originally thought it would. And 200 sure looks like more than 200. haha. But I think they will be good. Any ideas on what to put in them? So far we've considered Halloween Oreos, Halloween M&Ms... etc.

Last night we actually nailed down a TON of details. Bridal shower date is set, Bachelor & Bachelorette plans have been laid, and a few other loose ends have been tied. It felt sooo good to get some stuff figured out.

Today I need to call our Pastor, the woman doing our groom's & sheet cake, and call the travel agent for a quote.

Oh- and Kriska- I have sheet music for you and Ross. :)

Until next time...

The future Mrs. Black :)

The countdown is on..

Well. We are under the 6 month mark! And on top of that it's already the 11th of May- it feels like May is already gone! And that makes me excited because that means our wedding is closer and closer! :D

Work has been good. Sometimes it's really hard for me to get up and go everyday, but it will be nice once my paychecks are consistent (I've only got one paycheck so far lol). One thing I'm not looking forward to is working weekends. We will be alternating weekends starting this weekend. This is kind of bittersweet for me. I just got a job and was SO excited to be working the week and to have the weekend off. BUT now- since I'm more 'trained', the weekends will begin. So this means I will have Friday this week off, work all day Saturday, 1-5 on Sunday and have Monday morning off and I'll have to be at work at 2. Sure it sounds nice- but that's just less and less time to spend with Chris and Paige. Guh.

On top of that I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to do the Via Christi Walkfest at River Fest on Saturday. Bleh. I guess I'll have to do it next year :(

Let's see what else. LoL

Went to the bridal shop about a week and a half ago- all the girls got fitted for their dresses and Paige picked out and tried on her flower girl dress. My favorite was her favorite too- that girl has great taste ;o) Also picked up my dress too!! So it's completely paid for and is currently in my old bedroom at my mom's house. That's a great feeling. Just the fact that it's not at the store anymore! AhhH! We got our engagement pics taken last week too. I am so impatient when it comes to things like this- I'm SO excited to see them! I've been checking my email everyday LOL! I think they will be great- our photographer is AMazing! Once we get those back I can finish up our Save the Dates and get those sent out. After that basically we'll just have to meet with the florist again to finalize what we want. Then it's payment plans to the florist, baker, and photographer. And a waiting game until we address invites. Other than a few odds and ends things to buy (garter, shoes, Chris' tie....) we are good to go! Which makes me really happy because I won't have to stress the day of- or even the week of! And that was actually my plan all along! Woot!

Wellll- I think that's it for now! It's been crazy around here between jobs, kiddos, wedding stuff, and friends!

Until next time,

~The Future Mrs.Black :)

An Empty House

Well. The past 4 days have been a little crazy. As I said before, I've been babysitting a friend's little girl this week. Her and her brothers went to their mom's house since there is no school today or Monday, so I'm going it alone today! It's a little creepy how quiet my house feels today... ;)

I did sleep in a bit, which was weird because I've been waking up a touch before 6 all week long. But, sleeping until 9 wasn't a bad idea... I feel SO rested today! :) Although, since I did sleep until 9, I feel like I've wasted away my entire day-lol. That's what waking up early will do to ya'.

Went yesterday to take my "drug test" for the job I'm hoping to get at the Apartment Complex. I know for a fact that I'm drug-free (unless they're counting caffine :) ), so now I'm just playing a waiting game to hear back from them. I decided that today (or Monday) may be my last day of "freedom", so I thought I'd give the house a deep cleaning. Get my "spring cleaning" out of the way so it's done and ready for summer. Well, I did the kitchen and living room floors, and dusted the living room and then hit a bit of a brick wall. Where has my motivation gone?! Oh, that's right. I walked into the room with the laptop in it. Lol. So I'm taking a break and decided I'd blog while I'm sitting here.

There's not a whole lot of stuff going on right now, other than Chris working his new job and me staying home playing a waiting game for mine. I'm trying to be productive while I'm here though. I hate feeling like I just sat on my butt all day long while Chris was literally doing manual labor out in the sun all day (He's got a nasty sun-burnt neck to show for it too!). The dishes never fail me, and there is always laundry creeping up on me too. I figured that today would be a good day to not only finish the rest of the house, but to work out in my garden too since it just rained last night. I finished mowing yesterday and spotted a few weeds that could use a sudden uprooting. Hehehe... darned weeds.

And I think that's it for now!

I suppose I'll drag myself back to cleaning... My list of "To-Do's" isn't getting shorter as I sit here :)

Happy Friday!

Sunny with the High of 88!!?

What an Absolutely BEAUTIFUL day! Sheesh. Every window in our house is open. I love it.

Time for a quick update. Chris got a job!! Yesss!! He's working for Miller paving company- but he's working with his buddy laying gas lines. Basically they are out in holes all day long and playing and digging in the dirt. Today is his 2nd day and he said he really likes it. The hours are "normal". 7am-5pm. At least starting next week we'll be getting a paycheck every Friday. Which will be nice because we are down to about $13.00. That's checking and savings combined. Guh. And I still have to get at least $5.00 in gas today. So we'll go ahead and make that $8.00 for our available funds. sigh. On a lighter note, though, Chris called me today around 11:15 and said that he had a minor emergency. He had bent over to pick something up off the ground and he SPLIT the whole butt out of his jeans!! LOL!! So I had to go take him some jeans. Haha. Hahhhahhaa!! ;)

This week I've been watching Dirk's (Chris' best friend) daughter, Dakota. She's 5. It's fun, but a little stressful because I have to be up at 6 when Dirk comes to get Chris for work & to drop Koda off. Then she's here with me until they get off... They usually get home between 5 & 6. Just depends on how busy they were. So I've baby-sat for, well, it will be 36 hours in the past 3 days. LOL! I feel like a mom. And actually it makes me really excited to be a (hopefully stay at home) mom. :D I've been doing a ton of cleaning, inside and out- and I even tried mowing today. The mower and I had a fight, though, and the damn mower won. :(

I finally got rid of the GIANT piano that was taking up too much space in our spare bedroom. My friend Abbie gave me a desk that she didn't want anymore. So now I have an office :) I'm loving it!

Well- I think that's it for today! Hopefully I'll be updating more frequently! :)

Have a happy, sunny Wednesday!

Grown up hours...

I'm quite behind on this blog ordeal. :( I've got pictures I need to post, updates to make and new goals to set.

First I'll start with the pictures... :)

Here are a couple of the "bumpy" blanket that I made for Billy. Turned out good, (well in pictures at least) and Chris seemed to like it :)

Also, there's a pic of the "mangyle" vest.... although I've done a lot more than what is shown in this particular picture. That's just the last time I took pictures of it.

And then there's just a fun artsy-ish pic of one night when I was teaching Abbie to knit. We had hot chocolate in fun vintage tea cups :)

So that's the knitting update. Still not done with Kamdyn's blanket. Still not done with the vest. Yeah.

On a lighter note, however, I got a new job. It's very very VERY part time. We are talking 12-16 hours a week right now. It's working in the Child center at the church where Chris and I are attending small group. I'm actually pretty dang excited! I start tomorrow :) Chris also starts at Spirit sometime this week. His start date was a little delayed, but we are going downtown to get things sorted out tomorrow. So hopefully that all goes smoothly.

In the meantime I'm still looking for something to fill in the gaps since the Church job is so part time. I'm hoping that my friend Abbie can talk the latchkey coordinator into letting me come back to Emerson. I used to work there but quit for a "full-time" job so I would have it when I graduated. Then I got laid off a year ago. Guh. You try to make a good decision and then it backfires. Ah well. That's life. I did quit buffalo though. I couldn't be there anymore. Especially if Chris wasn't working there anymore. He keeps me sane there. Or, kept rather. lol.

So now we are day people. We'll work days and have nights and weekends off. Actually, tonight was our first night eating dinner at a 'normal' time. We ate at 7! I know it sounds normal to everyone else, but we have been working nights together since we met. So about a year and a half now. And I'm pretty excited that we'll be in bed in about an hour too. Ohhh the grown up life. I'm quite excited to start living it! :)

I think that's pretty much everything for now. Wedding plans are coming along and we are finally starting to get our finances in order too. Hopefully with these new jobs (and hours) we can finish paying off our debts and start saving for our honeymoon!

Woo!

Only 242 days to go...

Blog Drought.

Well. Compared to how much I blogged a couple weeks ago, I've been in a blog drought! I've been knitting like a crazy person. Finally got started on Kamdyn's surprise something :D, and as of about an hour ago I have finished Billy's Baby Blanket! I even took pictures to upload... but the camera cord is MIA.

All things considered I think it looks okay for my very first blanket of all time. I originally started with a free Lion brand pattern. The blanket works on double point round needles and in the diagonal. It was a great pattern, nice and simple and I felt like it wasn't going to take WEEKS to complete. Well. I started out- and everything was fine. Then I ran out of yarn. Which normally wouldn't be a problem, however, I bought this particular yarn about 2 years ago at Wal-mart, on Oooober clearance. So I even tried finding it online and there was none. None on eBay, none on the brand website, none anywhere. So. I took the whole thing out (I was 1/2 way done), and decided to do squares just like the original pattern only mini-sized and then stitch them together like a knitted quilt. Great idea at first.

I knit one square and then was so excited, I forgot to count my stitches before I began the decrease. So on the next 4 or so I just counted what I thoughtit was. I was wrong. So I had some with 24-25 stitches at the widest point and some with 27. A couple stitches doesn't sound like a lot- but man. It ended up making a difference in inches! Not. Good. :(

So I just figured I'd do the rest at 27 and just hope that I could stretch the others out and it would just have to work. Well, it worked... except now it's kinda bunchy and ruffly where I wanted it to be flat. I tried doing a crochet border in 2 rounds to make the corners less curly. That helped the corners, but in the middle it's not flat like I was hoping it would be. Like I said before, it's not so bad for my first ever blanket- and Billy is only 3 weeks old so I know he won't judge as long as it's warm :) And warm it is! I don't think his mom and dad will mind too much either- home made gifts are always better, even if they are bumpy and rufflyish.

So I have pictures that I will just have to upload when I find our camera cord. :o|

I did get started on Kamdyn's gift too- hopefully now that I have Billy's blanket out of the way I can get rockin' on her gift :D

Then it's back to scarves for awhile. I've got 4 that I really need to get finished before the end of February. Or asap, rather. Chris' vest will have to be put on hold. :(

I did get a call back on a job though- It's for Enterprise. I have a friend who works there so hopefully she's pulling all the strings she can :) I'm waiting on another call either Wednesday or Thursday to let me know when the interviewing process can begin. So cross those fingers!

Also- we went to the Coliseum on Saturday to help pack up food to be sent to Haiti, and Chris ran into an old manager of his. He's now working at Koch Industries and is the Executive Chef and he offered Chris a job! So we are waiting to hear back on that as well. It would be during the days so he would have nights and weekends free! Finally- real jobs for the both of us! Pray everything works out for the best, I know I sure am!!

I think that's all the updating for now! Time for lunch and off to work...

N

Knitting group take 1. Epic Fail.

Welp. Tonight was supposed to be the first meeting of the knitting group I'm... starting. (I was going to put 'creating', but that just didn't sound right... hence the "..." for a 'pause'... :P) BUT- a few people cancelled... one is about to pop out a little cutie pa-tootie (code for baby), one is still in Florida, and a couple other misc. conflicts. I'm not mad or anything, but a tad sad**. (L.O.L- that rhymed! Wicked bad too... lol (again)). I was SO excited to get together with a few girlys that are actually good friends. Ones I talk to on a regular basis, and who have always and will always be there for me. And visa versa. I even asked Chris if he'd hang out in the bedroom with the puppies so the girls and I could confabulate and knit in the living room (it'd be a little silly- 6-8 girls in our bedroom trying to find a corner of the bed to sit on just comfortable enough to knit... and that's not even thinking of the ones who are trying to meander their way through the laundry (though it's all clean...) on the floor to pop a squat...), and he said that he'd even take a couple movies in the bedroom- just in case we got caught in conversation and went over the alloted time I had told him we'd be.

Anywho- I was excited to work on knitting-ness. I shall, however, knit tonight in the wonderful company of my fiance and our 2 boogers of puppies. :D

On another note- we are pretty big fans of GSN (Game Show Network- for those who don't watch TV like us ;o) )... and in the afternoons they have GSN live- which basically consists of the hosts taking callers during the commercial breaks of the game shows and hosting games for them to play to win cash, prizes, trips, or this new thing- Oodles. Now. We had heard all about these afore mentioned "oodles", but weren't quite sure what they were or how they worked. So what did I do? Got online- naturally, of course. Well Oodles are kind of like fake money. They even have their own "dollar sign", (or Oodle sign, if you will) and you can use them to enter into sweepstakes or buy things from the Oodle store. We are trying to save up to get a Big Screen TV. Yes. One of the things in the Oodle store is a 52" Sony LCD Flat screen TV. I think this would look absolutely AMAZING hanging in our living room! :D

So they have trivia you can answer to earn Oodles and games you can play to earn Oodles and Oodles of Oodles stuff etc. Needless to say, we've only been playing for about the past 3 days and we already have about 1200 Oodles. The TV is 425,000 Oodles. So while we aren't all that close right now- we are well on our way!! :D


**This little rhyme reminds me of something funny I said the other day. (Well- I think it was FUNNNNY so I decided to share, since this is MY blog and all and I can write about whatever I want :P) We were at work and we had just finished closing and Chris and I were standing waiting for the other server and bartender. I was looking at him, and on the back/side of his ear was a little blonde hair. It was just above the lobe, and it was sticking out (kinda far, lol) and it looked kind of like a little wing!! I said, "Babe! You've got a little hair sticking out the backish/side of your ear! It looks like a little Wing!! You've got an EAR WING!! Get it!? Ear Wing.... Earring... Earwing... Earring!!! HAAAhhahahaa!" And I immediately started laughing! I don't think he thought it was all that funny- but I was cracking up!

Phew. Just thinking of it makes me giggle... :D Good stuff.

Ummmmmm I think that's it for today!

Off to knit...

:o)