Bridal Shower and Baby (Visit)

This weekend featured a quickie trip down to LA, for a few fun little things.  Makes me glad that home isn't too far away :)


I got to visit my old friend Myles and meet his awesome wife Laurel and their brand new baby, who is now officially 3 weeks old.

The baby is skeptical of my double chin.
Don't worry, Fenton, it's just because of
the face I'm making.
Photo courtesy of Myles' Blog

I also had a super wonderful bridal shower, thrown by two of my oldest friends.

Alyssa, me, and Colette. Friends for like, 16 years.
No big deal.

We played a game where they had (secretly, previously) asked Will to answer 20 questions, and then I had to guess what his answers were, The Newlywed Game style.  :)  I am pleased to say that I got almost all of them correct - even the ones that contained qualifiers or secondary answers, like "he would probably say this, but it's actually that".  BOOYA!  After 7 years, I guess I know him pretty well.  See also: I'm awesome.



Colette and Alyssa, thank you for an awesome, awesome* shower.  It was just perfect.

Family and friends, enjoying a delicious lunch :)

Oh, and Alyssa made cupcakes.
She's good.

*the word awesome is used gratuitously in this blog post.

Defying Gravity

Like most brides, I bought a lovely dress that I absolutely adore, but that needed to be altered just a bit.  It's so common, I bet bridal gown manufacturers purposefully make them so that they'll need to be altered.  They probably have a deal going with the seamstresses.  Just kidding; I'm not that much of a conspiracy theorist.  But seriously, I don't know many brides who can wear their dress as-is when it arrives.  I was prepared to go in and put my dress under the knife seam ripper.

I happen to love my seamstress.  She lives in a house up in the hills with a beautiful view, and together, we have deconstructed bits of my dress and reconstructed them so that A) the skirt is not a big puffball, B) there isn't a train, and C) the dress actually stays put.  Or as I like to call it, defying gravity.

Not sure if you're aware, but even with a bit of boning, strapless dresses don't uh, stay put.  Not if you have a little bit of, uh, an hourglass shape?  (I can't vouch for other body types, as I never wore strapless anythings when I was a pre-pubescent stick figure, and have had zero success in my post-pubescent hourglassness)  So we've been getting creative.  Adding "waist belt" elastics, additional boning, and finally last night, a "waist cinchy sort of belt/corset piece of stretchy but tight fabric thing". And we seem to have found a solution.  It's very exciting, raising my arms and feeling like the dress stays in place, even when I lower my arms again!  Now she just has to finalize the hem (don't want to finish a hem before you figure out where the dress is going to sit on your body), let out the back a little (you let it out so there's more fabric to tighten it back up without squishing/pinching your back fat), take in the sides of the bodice a tad, tack on the sash, and complete the finishing for the top of the bodice!  Easy peasy in 2 weeks, right?   Ann is awesome.  Have faith in her.  I do.

Second part of the story...This is a picture of me, in our office/guestroom (someday), holding a giant bag of tulle.  This bag of tulle is all the tulle that is no longer in my wedding dress.  We removed a lot of tulle.  Four layers, to be exact.

Now I have a giant bag of tulle, and if I don't think of something to do with it, I'll just give it back to Ann, since she will surely need it someday to insert into the dress of a bride looking for a poofier dress than I.

Of course, I could make myself a tutu (or as my grandpa would say, a three-three).  Swan Lake in my backyard, anyone?  No?  Yeah.  I don't really need a tutu.  Could be used for a great Halloween costume at some point, or I'm sure Reed could find something to do with it...but the reality is that I probably will not find a reason to use it.  Though the cheap Jew in me is all, "But I paid for this tulle! It's part of my dress! I bought it! It's mine!",  I do kind of like the idea of bits of my dress going to good use, helping some other bride who wants a fluffier skirt.  

What would YOU do with a bag full of tulle?

Who Cares About Chairs?

Ah, the great chair debate. I don't understand how the WIC (that's Wedding Industrial Complex, for anyone not in the crazy wedding planning phase of life) worked it's weird WIC magic and made it so brides would freak out about chairs (read the comments; they're full of smart ladies, this one in particular), but uh...hi.  I am an otherwise perfectly sane human being, and I am a bride who has freaked out about chairs.  Twice.

First it was the reception seating.  Our venue provides these perfectly fine, albeit somewhat conference-center-esque, chairs.  For free.  They mentioned that we could rent chair covers to match the linens if we want to, and that a lot of people do that to make it all look nicer or whatever.  Sure, sounds easy enough.  But, uh, chair covers? They don't come cheap, yo.  That's a minimum of $4 per chair, $5 if you include a chair sash - or just $1 if you only want a sash, but uh, that would look odd. Why tie a ribbon around a normal chair? It would just call attention to the fact that we didn't get chair covers, I think.  And that all just seemed silly.

I took this picture when we checked out the venue.
Chairs are fine. They're just chairs.

We thought back to weddings we'd been to, and couldn't remember what kind of chairs were in the reception room. I had to look at pictures of the wedding I'd been to barely a month before to remember what kind of chairs they'd used (I looked - they used fancy chairs, that we were being quoted like, $7.95 per chair for. Yikes!).  So I finally said, "Screw it.  Nobody is going to care if we don't get fancy linen covers for the chairs.  Besides, they kind of coordinate with the carpet (which we also don't love, but who's gonna be staring at the carpet)? And also, who cares about chairs?"

So, no on spending $400-500 on chair covers.  Yay!  Ah, but the Saga of the Seating was not over yet!

We had planned to rent wooden benches for the ceremony, which is going to be outside (hopefully in the snow, fingers crossed, though the forecast does not look good).  Ideally, it would look like this:

So woodsy! So wintery! So quaint!

But alas, renting enough benches for our guests (even assuming some choose to stand on the deck above) would cost us around $500.  And now that there may not even be snow, it seems silly to rent wooden benches, just because they look cute.  We can't even rent the ones pictured above (they don't have enough, and they are being super flaky), so we'd be renting slightly less cute ones anyway.  Harumph.  Bridal whine.  But I'm over it.

You know why?  Because the venue provides perfectly fine white folding chairs, for free, that we can use, for free, and they looked perfectly fine when we saw the venue the first time, when there was no snow, and hell, I'm sure the white chairs would look fine in the white snow if the weather cooperates.

With a view like this,
who cares what kind of chairs you're sitting on?

Why did I get it into my head that white folding chairs would just be awful?  That it was just laughably silly for us to use white chairs?  That of course we were going to rent benches, because duh, we could. They were available, and look how cute they look in the pictures! And obviously, they're cute, and it's easy, and we are doing it!  Without even questioning whether we needed to (ha! it's our wedding! we can do what we want!) or really cared about it (very important) in the first place.  Personally, I'd rather take that $500 and use it towards the honeymoon.  Or saving for a down payment on a house.  Or anything other than benches that people will sit on for 15 minutes.  Even if they do look really cute.

We have been emailing back and forth for the better part of a week, trying to figure out what company to rent the benches from, and how many benches to rent, and what's going to happen if we don't have enough benches, and well, it just all feels very silly to me right now.  I just want to get married to my best friend, and have a fun party with our family and friends.  No matter what they're sitting on.

Le Politics

We are catching up on about a week's worth of Colbert and Stewart, and I've finally started catching up with The New Yorker, and, well, I'm not living under a rock right now.  So of course, my head is spinning with all the ridiculousness that is the Republican Primaries.

I'm not going to go into why I think these Republican candidates are all major jokers, but I am going to list out some bullet points. Questions, statements, notions, whathaveyou...things that just blow my mind.  Oh, and I'm not going back to edit, because what's the point of a rant if you go back and edit afterwards?

Rant: begin

• If you don't want to have an abortion, don't have an abortion.  Don't force someone to have a child they don't want, whether she was abused, raped, or otherwise unable to give her consent OR she just didn't want to have a child.  Women are simply not running out to get abortions right and left because that's more convenient than using contraception.  Making abortion illegal will not stop abortions; it will just stop abortions from happening safely, putting more women in harm's way.  So shut up about it already.  I don't care about your religious beliefs.  You certainly don't care about mine.  So get out of my body.
• If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married.  If you believe that two men or two women in a loving, consensual relationship are doing more harm to "The Institution of Marriage" or "Family Values" than a man who is on his third wife after cheating on the first two while they were ill (ahemnewtgingrichahem) or a woman who marries a clueless basketball player because she's afraid her sisters are more grown up than she is, spends a quajillion dollars on a very public wedding for her TV show, and then divorces the poor sucker a couple months later (kimkardashianyouareadisgracetothenamekimbutsomehowistillpayattentiontoyou)...well, then you're an idiot.  It's fine to believe that your God doesn't believe in gay marriage.  It's fine to privately believe it's wrong (you'll be close-minded and on the wrong side of history, but you are entitled to your beliefs).  It is not fine to treat people like second-class citizens because of their sexual preferences.  It is not fine to pretend that someone else's happy, loving marriage in any way devalues your own. 
• Just in general, keep your religious beliefs out of politics. It drives me batty when politicians are favored because they let God guide them through their decisions.  Hello! Last time I checked, we had a separation of Church and State, and we are a country made up of people with many different religious beliefs!  Since when does the Christian God get to make decisions for the rest of us?  I want a leader that does not make decisions for this country based on his or her religious beliefs, but on his or her rational, logical decision-making skills, and actual knowledge of politics and foreign affairs.  Weird, I know.
• On that note, I don't want people in positions of power in areas about which they know nothing.  See this clip from The Daily Show if you don't know what I'm talking about.  Too lazy?  Ok.  How about how the fine gentlemen in charge of internet legislation having no idea how the internet works?  How about old white men claiming to be the best experts in women's reproductive issues? 

Those are my main gripes for now.  Political rant over.  For now...

Wrappin' it Up

I have a very sad situation right now when it comes to gift wrap organization (ok, there's a sentence that will bore away a fair amount of readers).

In 2009, I bought this super awesome gift wrap organizer.  Hooray!  Organized!  So handy!  In that blog post, I said I was going to tuck it under the couch or bed, but that it was temporarily standing in the closet.  Well, it stayed there.  Forever.  And into our next apartment too.  And into this one.  This bag is not one made for standing in the closet, folks, and when you factor in the fact that I overstuffed it, well, it's not doing so well.

So neat and so tidy! This lasted for like...a month.

It was starting to lose it around the recent holidays, and now it's just a saggy mess, falling apart, leaning against the wall in the living room.  I also still have two plastic boxes of bows, tissue and gift bags in one closet (which, uh, are also stored in the gift wrap holder), and a small box just of ribbon in another closet (which uh, are also stored in the gift wrap holder)...things are just not organized.  I want to start over with sturdy, clear plastic, and actually sort things into appropriate boxes, instead of this "everything is everywhere" situation.

I would take a picture, but it's just not worth it.  Instead, I'll post some inspiration pictures I found online.  Photos all courtesy of Google Images, mostly (if not all) from The Container Store I think.

Classic. I like it, except I think
I want to keep more than just
wrapping paper in it, and this one
isn't quite conducive for that.
I don't have this many rolls of
paper, either. Sooooo

This is basically the dream, but I think I have too much
to fit in this container like this. It's also for under the bed,
which I don't want to do for a number of reasons, including
#1 There are two plastic containers under the bed already
#2 I don't want to keep gift wrap in the bedroom.

I like the idea of hanging it in the big closet in the
living/dining area, but I'm worried that the wrapping
paper will eventually bust through the velcro at the
top (that's basically what happened with my current
container - too many rolls, heavy rolls, weak velcro,
big mess for Kim) or that the hanger will eventually
give out under the weight.

If I only had a dedicated space for something this big...
...cause wow. Super awesome.

Uh, hello? Yes please.  Someday...

I know a couple of you out there have figured out some clever (or at least functional?) ways to store gift wrap...so open up!  Share your secrets with me!  Please?

I'm a Bachelorette

Ok, so last night's bachelorette party was awesome, and I want to publicly thank (in counter-clockwise order, starting with the lower right corner of the photo) Nicole, Danielle, Katherine, Rachel, Emika, Andrea, Reed, Paula, Dana and CC.  Because this group of ladies is awesome.

I mean, seriously. They're rad.
So is Cafe Sport in San Francisco.
If you like Italian food, go here now.

I don't have photos of the decorated hotel suite or the crafts, or my ridiculously rad headbands, or the thousands of nail polish bottles (or champagne bottles) or goody bags, or any of the other stuff they put together, but I know other people were taking pictures (I was just being a bachelorette).  When the pictures go public (but uh, not all of them, ok guys?) I'll share them here.  Let me just say that these ladies went all out and it was so lovely and I love them all.  It was a super, super fun evening and night, and I honestly have some of the best friends ever.  Oh, and we got a pseudo-strip show because the folks in the apartments across from our hotel room did not think it necessary to close their blinds. Good times, folks.  Good times.

Next weekend, I'm flying down to LA for my bridal shower, where I'll get to celebrate with a whole other group of amazing ladies.  I am seriously one lucky bride, y'all.  I've never felt so showered with love, and it's a little overwhelming, but I think I'm getting used to it  ;)

This week: more crafts, more knitting, and hopefully some home-organization!

Bonus Crafting Post! Guest Books!

Earlier today I promised you a bonus crafting post...and like I said, I don't like to make promises I can't keep!

Inspired by this pin on Pinterest, I decided that we should have one small guestbook on each table, rather than one big guestbook in the entry/lounge area.  I love the idea of having a special book to open on each anniversary for the next twelve years, a little memory of the wedding for the first twelve years of our marriage (twelve tables, twelve books, twelve years, and whoa just realized, getting married in 2012...ooooh spooky?).  We're going to provide a stack of card stock and pens at each table so guests can write messages to us and put them in the books.  

Some of the books - Andrea came over and helped me trace
the numbers from a stencil and color them in with silver
Sharpie.  It actually went a lot faster than we had
anticipated, and they turned out really well!

I decided to go one step further though...the books I bought are art portfolio display albums (yay acid free!), and we're going to put a disposable camera on each table so people can take pictures to go with their notes - we'll print the photos after the wedding, and have friends help us insert them into the right places in the albums (so we don't read the messages until the appropriate anniversary, of course!).  It should be really fun to look back on the photos people took of themselves as the years go by, a nice balance of unprofessional/silly/lower-quality photos to have in addition to the undoubtedly gorgeous ones Em and Aaron (her husband and co-shooter) will be taking (which will go in the fancy shmancy wedding album I'm making from Photobook America, thankyougroupon).

Aly found these "classy" black disposable cameras that
turned out to be cheaper than the standard yellow or
green ones anyway! Score!

We might print labels or photos to go in the spines of the albums, so that when they're standing on our shelf, we can easily grab the one we want.  You can kind of see the empty spines in the picture at the top - the paper included for the label was such a bright white that it seemed a little jarring.  Looks better without.  Maybe I'll just write on the plastic with Sharpie to mark the books if we don't think of a good idea for a photo/label insert.  Maybe we'll print little labels with the art from the invitations.  We'll see!

All that's left to do is print up the little signs to explain to people what to do and gather the pens and cardstock :)

PS ooh! idea! We'll also take a picture of us on each anniversary, print it, and put it in the book that year.  oh, I am a genius.)

Wedding Knitstuff, Part...One?

I promised a post about knitwear, and ye shall receive a post about knitwear!  I don't make promises I can't keep...I promise!

And now, it is my pleasure to present to you...The Completed (so far) Knitwear for the Wedding!  (yeah, the title could use some work)

Beautiful, beautiful hand/wrist warmers,
for the bridesmaids,
knitted and embroidered by Reed.
In the background, you can see the
bouquets and bouttonieres :)

I messed with the contrast because it really
shows off Reed's embroidery. 

While Reed was working on the hand/wrist warmers (and
a bunch of other stuff), I knit 6 scarves.  Yes, six.
Did you know that scarves take a long time to make?
I am about 3 months behind on The New Yorker now, but
I'm pleased with the way they came out!
Each one has a different stitch pattern, length, width, and
ratio of yellow to gray.  Coordinated but not matchy matchy.

So far so good, eh?  Reed's working on my hand/wrist warmers now, and is starting the dads' ties this weekend.  I'm about halfway done with the first mom cowl/neck warmer, and starting to think about whether I want something knit in my hair (decorative bobby pins? headband? hmmm) as well.

And that's the knitting update for ya!  Up next: a bonus wedding craft post!  I know you can't wait!

This is Happening, Guys

Ok, so we're T-22 days to the wedding (WHAT? CRAZY! also: 22 is my favorite number), and shit's getting real.  Sorry for the language, but it is.

The dudes' scarves are done (minus weaving in the ends on 3 of them, but that'll get done while I watch 30 Rock tonight), the ladies' wristwarmer glove things are done (thanks, Reed!), I just started the moms' cowl neckwarmer scarf things, and Reed's about to start the dads' ties.  I'll do some knitwear posts soon, cause why not?

Bouquets are done, boutonnieres are scheduled, and I've been ordering supplies from SaveOnCrafts like it's my job (my night job).  I've had three dress fittings, and am going again tomorrow morning (we're currently trying to solve a physics problem related to getting the dress not to fall down. seamstress says: solvable!) with my sisters.  I've tried on the dress with my boots, my blue glittery TOMS, and my cardigan.  And various strings of pearls.  And a scarf.  And one of the bridesmaids' pairs of gloves.  I'm all set, yo.


This weekend is the bachelorette party, planned by my sisters and close friends.  I am happily out of the loop, knowing only that I'm meeting them tomorrow at a hotel in Union Square.  I thought I'd share this dream I had recently...clearly some manifestation about my desire to control everything (even though I really am excited about this surprise weekend, I swear!).  Also, I had just watched something about vampires, so maybe that's where it came from.

In my dream, we had rented a cabin somewhere for the bachelorette party, and my sisters had hired Twilight-themed strippers, who came stalking up through the woods like vampires. We freaked them out and sent them away, but one came back and he was the stripper and it was super awkward...but I was really really drunk, so it wasn't horrible I guess?  Later, we were mostly sobered up, and we were opening presents (what, was this a bridal shower all of a sudden?) and this super drunk chick came stumbling up to the house wanting to get in.  Eventually, we let her in, and I think we became friends?

Dreams are weird, and this wedding is coming up!  Stay tuned for (hopefully) more posts on crafting and such as I finish up projects (with massive help from friends).

Skating Tenaya

Not ones to miss out on a once in a lifetime (or even a once in 30 years) opportunity, we drove to Tenaya Lake in Yosemite twice in the last two weeks. As you can see from the slideshow...awesome.

The slideshow contains photos and videos; if you can't view a video for some reason (looks like videos might not work in the slideshow), just check out my Skating Tenaya album on PicasaWeb.

Will's teammate Chris posted these photos and videos, in case my slideshow wasn't enough for ya :)

Crafternoon: Wedding-Style

Today was a big day in weddingstuff, and craftstuff in particular.  In fact, I'm even adding a new label for this post (partially in hopes that it will push me to craft more often).  Today, my crafty girlfriends and I made the bouquets for the wedding.  "But Kim! Won't the flowers die?"  A-ha!  No!  We are awesome!  Magical, in fact!

Ok, not magical.  But we did get all fancy with the flowers, using wooden flowers and dried filler, (inspired by Brit's post on her bouquet, here) which actually feels more appropriate for our winter wedding in Tahoe than fresh flowers would.  They turned out beautifully, and we had a ton of fun (right?) assembling them.  Rather than bore you with big long explanations, I'll just tell you with pictures :)

First, we used hot glue guns to glue wire stems to the wooden
flowers, poking holes in them to get them to stick better.
(Thanks to Brit for the hole-poking tip! Worked great!)

Our supplies, spread out in various vases.

Don't forget the most important crafternoon supply: wine!
And an awesome team of can-do ladies:
Emika, Andrea, Rachel and Reed

Emika and Andrea, assembling small bunches of flowers,
later to be bundled together to create my bouquet.
Many small bunches put together = one lovely bouquet!
(note: while Brit did 3-4 bunches of 10, we did
several bunches of 4-5, and then added more flowers
and filler around the outside as needed to make it bigger)

Reed works on a boutonniere.
Pinecone, mini flower, knit flower "poof".
And yes, it says "wire cutters" on her hand,
a reminder to me to buy them at Michael's.

Emika, with a few nearly-finished
bridesmaid bouquets. Tiny and adorable!
All that's left is to wrap the stems with yarn!

I based my supply list on Brit's list: Natural Cedar Roses, Sola Shell Flowers, and Sola Roses, but my preserved Caspia arrived smelling rather fishy.  No, literally, it smelled like rotten fish.  Fast forward to this morning, when we found some fantastic replacements at Michael's -- white Caspia-looking stuff, some ivory Caspia-looking stuff with dried thistles and paper-thin flowers, and these crazy things that kind of looked like pussy willow, but with tiny papery roses instead of pussy willow puffs.  The little roses looked very similar to the Sola Shells, and worked perfectly in the bridesmaids' bouquets and the boutonnieres.

A finished boutonniere.
Freaking adorable.

Bridesmaid bouquets and two boutonnieres.

And ta-da! My finished bouquet!
My stem is wrapped in silvery gray ribbon,
and I'll be winding yarn around it
to tie my wooden ring to the stem.

I'm really pleased with the way they came out, and I love that they'll last for years and years to come!  

And as for the rest of our wedding-crafting?  Reed's going to make the remaining 4 boutonnieres (oh shoot, I think it's actually 8 more.  Forgot about boutonnieres for the parents), finish my hand warmers and start on the dads' ties.  I have to finish Will's scarf and make the neck warmers/cowls for the moms, maybe make my dad's tie if I can, and stencil the numbering on the guest books (one for each table, more on that later).  And soak the labels off some jars.  And buy some more jars/candles, probably.  And...something else I'm forgetting?  Good thing we have almost 4 weeks to go!

Comfort Isn't A Crime (or Liz Lemon is Awesome so Shut Up)

Conversation from last night while watching 30 Rock:

Me: Throw some glasses on me, and I am Liz Lemon.
Will: That's not a good thing, Kim.
Me: But look at her outfit! We dress very similarly.
Will: That's not a good thing, Kim.
Me: But she dresses so cute! I love what she's wearing!
Will: ...that's the point, Kim.

Evidence (probably more convincing if you know me in real life):

If it was colder in SF, I'd be wearing this.
I am wearing a very similar hat today though.

I wore this when I went as LL for Halloween.
It was an outfit made of clothes from my closet.

I don't have that exact hat, but I have one
that is very similar.
And one that looks like a penguin.
And I want her scarf.

Pretty sure I've worn this exact thing.

Please don't tell me anything but "You're totally right! She always looks cute, even when she's in her frumpy gray TGS sweatshirt, and I bet you look equally as cute in your frumpy gray DISQUS sweatshirt! Or in the cardigans and tshirts you wear almost every day!  Just like Liz!"

I honestly love it when my coworkers laugh and tell me I am having a Liz Lemon moment, because I find her to be charmingly awkward and also hilarious.  So what if I identify with Liz Lemon?  She is awesome.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Let's Get Productive!

Today's a big day in wedding-prep land!  We're going to look at suits for Will in a couple hours, and I'm picking up my dress AND having my first fitting!  It's the first time I'll get to try on my dress, the actual one (not the sample, I mean), and I get to wear it twice today!  Can't wait!  Eee!  I'll have two of my bridesmaids with me, and afterwards we will probably do a little shopping for the one who still hasn't found her dress.

Also on the agenda is (finally) unpacking from the holidays.  Want a list?  Ok, I'll give you a list!  So glad you asked!

NOTE: List updated as of 9:50pm

• Big Suitcase: full of gifts, clothes, miscellaneous stuff
• Three Boxes One box: full of gifts that didn't fit in our suitcases (parents had to ship)
• 3 Suitcases and 2 Duffels: will be empty and needing to go back in the closet
• Winter coats/ski clothes: need to be put in duffel and put back in closet
• Closet will need to be reorganized a little bit to make room for the suitcases
• 2 Boxes: Christmas/Chanukkah decor that needs to go back in said closet
• Dining room table: needs to be cleared
• Coffee Table: Covered in mail, needs to be filed/put away/recycled
• Recycling: needs to be taken out
• 1 box: wedding bouquet supplies -- unpacked; the dried Caspia smells like fish though, so that's a mystery that needs solving.

Bonus List!  Wedding Stuff I want to get done this weekend:

• Count scarves I've made, see if I have 1 or 2 more to make -- I have 1.5 more to make!
• Make a plan for dad's ties and mom's neckwarmers
• Make a plan for my handwarmers
• Find a dress for Katherine?
• Get Will's suit!
• Pick up my dress, go to my fitting!
• Sort through bouquet supplies to see what it all looks like -- as noted above...unpacked; the dried Caspia smells like fish though, so that's a mystery that needs solving.

I'm a little inspired by this post on The Hairpin...sometimes you need a little motivation!  I also want to get a bunch of laundry done (hey, Will, how would you like to do some laundry?) and organize the bedroom - there is a lot of stuff piled everywhere, and even a box I haven't unpacked from the move. In August. Oops.  Dang holidays!

I'm ready to rock though!  Do you have any Winter Cleaning plans this weekend?  Any events you're preparing for?  Tell me your tales of nesting and productivity!

It's that time again

Resolution City, here I come!

Every year, I write up some resolutions and check out the ones I wrote the year before to see how I did.  Usually, I realize that I forgot about some of them.  Perhaps I should write them somewhere other than the internet.

Last year's resolutions:

1. blog more often (uh, sort of nebulous, eh? I think I blogged a lot in 2011, so that's good I guess) - just counted. 131 in 2010, and 95 in 2011. so, uh, nope. but I feel like 2011 was a bigger blogging year, so maybe 2010's posts weren't as substantive or something. whatever.
2. give the ole blog a redesign (yeah, that never happened. hello, 2012, I'm coming for you! maybe?)
3. create an "about" page (yep, didn't do that either)
4. figure out why search is messed up on my blog (bet you can guess how that turned out)

I think I focused too much on my blog, and then didn't have (or didn't take) the time to actually do this stuff.  But that's ok, because I also resolved to let my blog be what it is without pressuring myself to do more.  Since, you know, I have a full time job and a life outside work and am planning a wedding and all...I think it's ok.  Not saving babies here.

Anyway, it's New Years Day, and I'm sitting on the couch after two weeks of travel, family, parties, illness, and some really awesome other stuff I'll tell you about in a non-resolution post when I get around to uploading my pictures.  (wow, nothing like a lazy blogger to excite you on New Years Day! whatever, sue me. no, don't do that. you wouldn't have a case anyway, so shut up. god, what am I talking about?)

This year, I want to...

1. keep the house tidy, and not have piles of stuff everywhere (I always make this resolution when I write them right after traveling and the house is a mess)
2. open the mail on the day it was received. or the day after. not the week after.
3. eat healthier, eat slower (I eat too much because I eat too fast, and although baguettes and salami and cheese are some of my favorite foods, I want to focus on leaner proteins and more veggies and such. wedding diet, whatever).  maybe lose 5-10 pounds?  ick, I hate myself for saying that, but yeah, I could stand to do it.
4. exercise more than twice a week.  preferably in some sort of class like the bar method or something.
5. try new things, at least one new thing per month (a recipe, a craft project, an activity, being assertive, etc.)

I think that's about it.  If I actually accomplish all this, I'll be an adventurous, responsible, healthy, fit person with a clean house (ha) - here's hoping!

Happy New Year, all!