My Weekend in a Nutshell...

On Saturday, we had a meeting with a chair cover company. She was delightful, organized, and knowledgeable. However, when we received the quote on our requirements, the pricing was ridiculously more than we had budgeted for or could fathom spending on chair covers. So we have had to pass!

After that, we headed to Guildford Mall. I received a $50 Sears card from the in-laws for Christmas, so I combined that with a $100 Visa card that Aaron gave me when he closed down his other bank account and bought myself a new espresso maker! It's wonderful, fairy easy (although Aaron is the only one that uses it to make my coffees), and makes a killer head of foam!!!
On Sunday, I went for a walk with my WW ladies, while Aaron headed to the gym and to return some games. When he got home, he handed me a gift card to my favorite store, H & M so I can buy myself something pretty to wear for our Valentine's Day dinner out in February.

Sunday evening, I made us my "famous" broccoli cheddar soup, with a prawn and tomato salad, and tried to make pretzels for the first time. The pretzels tasted good, but they were a little heavy! :)

Other than that, our weekend pretty much consisted of this:

I hope you all had a great weekend!

What To Wear?

I need to start researching some possible outfits for all of the fun occassions that will start happening soon - showers, stagette, rehearsal, etc.

Here are a few options that I like so far...

Wine of the Month...

Last night while sweating on the eliptical and daydreaming about the weekend, I decided that I wanted to introduce something new to our weekend. Actually, we tried this a few years ago, but it didn't last. I decided that every 15th of the month we'd invest in a bottle of wine from one country and see if we could gather some information about wines we enjoy to stock our wine bar for parties we'll have as the wedding approaches.

Because January is "chilly" I decided we'd start with "Chile"! Get it? :) I'm a corn-ball, I know!

So for myself, because I'm a white wine drinker, especially of the fruitier varieties, I started with the Cono Sur Gewurtzraminer.

For Aaron, I decided on a Dona Dominga Cabernet Sauvingnon. I mostly chose this one because the label said that it had won some awards for the best winery in Chile. I figured it couldn't hurt!


I decided that Friday nights would be our wine night, and because we rarely finish a bottle each in a night, we could enjoy a glass the next evening as well.

I'll update on our findings each Monday morning.

Next month we'll be trying February "France"... cause French is the language of love, and it's Valentine's Day month. Okay... I'll try to stop being so cheesy now, except that we'll be serving it with brie, and that's cheesy... okay, that's the last one.

My New Gym...

I joined a new gym just after New Year's. No, it wasn't a resolution. It was more a case of not wanting to die of second-hand smoke. You see, my old gym was located in the same building as a pub, and in order to get to the gym, you had to walk by the pub entrance. And what do older folk that enjoy a few drinks at 4:30 in the afternoon like to do between their beers or rum and cokes? Smoke. They enjoy their smokes. And in BC, you can't smoke indoors, so these patrons would take their habits to the outside entrance, and I would walk through a cloud of tobacco on my way to bettering my health. It seemed contridictory to me.

So I joined a new gym. It's new and spacious and beautiful and full of toned and buff people. It's someplace I never thought I'd be. I love how clean it is. I love how large it is. I love that it has a women's only section, and 108 cardio machines, all with their own tvs and Ipod hookups. I love that the people who work there honestly make me feel like they want me to succeed! I don't like myself sometimes when I find myself staring at a hard-bodied beautiful women in Lululemon pants, working out her perfect butt and toned arms, wishing and hoping that I looked like her instead of my giggly, wiggly, round self. But in general, I love my new surroundings and my routine after work. Do I want to trudge up there in the snow, taking off my boots and putting on capri pants, NO! But do I feel great afterwards - HECK YA!

Anyways, the point of this post isn't to smack you in the face with my holier-than-thou attitude of working out regularly, but to tell you that I met a girl at the gym (one of the customer service workers) who just got engaged and is planning her wedding on a shoe-string budget (get it, she works at a gym, with runners - never mind) and it got me thinking about what is important to some people when planning their wedding. Something in me just shifted a bit.

I had been obssessing over people not calling me back or not showing enough interest in my little wedding world... but talking to K got me thinking that this wedding isn't so much about everyone else - it's about what Aaron and I want... to spend the rest of our lives together. And I can't wait to marry him. Yes, the details are important, and yes, I won't give up trying to achieve the perfect wedding for us, but I just need to focus more on what Aaron and I have, and less what we want.

Now off to the gym I go!

I made it...

It's not complete, but I made my own necklace.

Basically, I made 3 strings of pearls, and fastened it together. The little jewel that you see on the side there is a ring that my Nana owned. I didn't have a broach that I loved, so I just cut the ring part off! There were fake pearls in the setting that were peeling, so I popped them out and hot glued my owl pearls in the setting. I then strung the wire from the 3 strands through the holes, and kept beading it. It took me over an hour and a half to complete, constantly shooing Aaron out of the area of the living room so he wouldn't see my wedding accessories. I was honestly trying to do something completely different that I couldn't get to work, so this is what I ended up with.

I don't love it yet... it needs some attention and some tweaking, but I think in the end it will be lovely!

The above is a horrible Blackberry picture of me in my headpiece and necklace that I took at David's on Friday when I picked up my dress and tried the whole outfit on. My mom couldn't work the camera on my phone no matter how many times I showed her, so this is a self-portrait. Obviously I'm not going to reveal my dress yet, but you kind of get an idea. Right? :)

A little bling...

I'm still on the search for my bridal jewellery. I found something on Etsy (seller MissGlory) that would be perfect:

However, I can't afford the $115 price tag! I bought some glass pearl beads this weekend at Michael's in an attempt to possibly make them myself, but not sure how to do this crochet look. I might just suck it up and buy it since it's perfect, but I'd rather save the money and put my own personal touch to my bridal look.

What do you think? Should I attempt it or splurge? I'm trying to DIY everything myself (including all the jewellery!). So conflicted!!!

Our Wedding Year...

That's right... 309 days to go!!! We've been engaged now for 14 months, but because we were engaged in 2010 and we're getting married in 2012, it feels like it was forever ago that Aaron was down on one knee and I said YES! Now that we're finally in our wedding year, everything seems so final.

When things happen now, I think "Wow, that's the last (blank) that I'll spend as a single woman." This was our last Christmas before we're husband and wife, last New Year's Eve, last traditional NY Day dinner with my family and friends, last birthday. Upcoming will be the last Valentine's Day we spend as singles, last anniversary before we cancel it and celebrate our wedding anniversary, last presents that I buy for my boyfriend or fiance. As of November 10th, we'll be having all new firsts... turning 32 as a married lady, our first married Christmas where we get "married" ornaments, and the first gifts I get to buy my Husband!

I'm so excited to marry him, and he's finally started to get excited as well. He's thinking of honeymoon locations and researching them! He's listing me as his wife under emergency contacts (okay, to be fair I was "wife" because he couldn't spell "fiance" but still!!), and he sometimes just looks and me and giggles and says "We're getting married!". It's really sweet, and I'm counting down the next 309 days until it's official!