The House

So, the parents and I have done some painting, John and I have moved all of our furniture in, and we've also unloaded a ton of stuff on Bridging, Inc.  And now the house is spic and span so I took some pictures before the law school pile of papers and laptops spread back out over everything.

Here is the living room looking into the dining room before:

And the living room after:

...and the dining room:

 Then, there was the kitchen.  The... purple (?) color that used to cover the entire room before....

and the lovely neutral now :)

The bedroom sans furniture:
And the bedroom with furniture:

We still need to paint over the bedroom walls.  Believe it or not, it's all paneling.  Some of the panels have been painted blue while some of the walls are still the original pattern.  I think this is going to be a spring break project to make the room one color, probably another neutral but darker than the rest of the house.

We also have an office, but it's still the disaster room of the house.  You can't clean up the law school out of your life entirely!

Bridesmaid Dresses

All of the lovely ladies in the wedding party have picked their bridesmaid dresses!  All that's left is to put in the order and get any alterations.

The dresses are Alfred Angelo and are all going to be the color eggplant.

I'm very excited!  I think all three look great together :)  Thoughts or comments on shoes?  Black?  Silver?  Dyed to match (bleh!)?

Next up: finalizing the guest list and sending save the dates!

New Couch!

We got our new couch delivered today!

I'm not sure the photo does it justice, but thanks to Mary Jo at HOM Furniture, we picked out a couch yesterday.  It's a really subtle, brown herringbone and looks fantastic in person.  It even came with the feather pillows- white with a very small brown spotted pattern.  We love love love it and it is officially our first grown-up purchase together.

The only down side to the couch is that it makes everything else in the room look really tiny and really old.  I guess we're going to have to work on slowly adding pieces to get the whole room looking good.  Next on the list is some new curtains and curtain rods!  Sometime I'll do an update of the rooms with all our furniture moved in :)

Progress!

Wedding plans are moving along nicely.  Save the date cards are going to be done via email.  The DJ is booked (now to pick the major songs...), the florist is done, we may (fingers crossed!) have an officiant, and about half of the invitations have been purchased.

The florist is a lovely woman who makes really beautiful bouquets:
http://floralsbyclaire.com/

The bridesmaids are going to have white football mums bunched together in a tight, dome-like bouquet.  Moms and Grandmas will have wrist corsages with white button mums.  My bouquet will be white roses, white button mums, and pale blue hydrangeas.  No flowers for the groom or groomsmen (that would be John's contribution).

The invitations are really great because they match the deep purple from the bridesmaid dresses.  The whole invitation set comes with the invite card, envelopes, response card, response envelopes, and a pretty little ribbon to tie around the invitation.  Each pack comes with 40 sets, so we still need to pick up a few more, but they're really high quality for a really low price.  If you can believe it, they're from Michaels!  On sale when we bought them, but we were only able to get about half as many as we need.  So, worst case scenario, we grab their weekly coupons to get a few more in the next week.


Things are coming together!  Suggestions on songs for the procession, recession, and reception are welcome.

Registration Station

I've registered for classes and I've registered to vote, but registering for wedding gifts is so so so much better.

Yesterday, instead of tackling our long to-do lists, John and I decided to go to Macy's and register for our wedding.  This led to Williams Sonoma, which led to Target.  We spent hours registering, and the rest of our to-do lists suffered, but it was well worth it!

We started at Macy's where our new best friend, Nancy, helped get us started.  Scanner in hand we went around the store with our list and zapped what we thought we wanted.  Surprisingly, we had a hard time getting our list up past 14 items.  Even later that night while we were editing our lists online (I added a boat load of Fiestaware serving items- the main reason we chose Macy's), we ended up deleting just about as many items as we added.  However, we were better scanners at the other two stores, with each registry list getting longer than the previous one.

Williams Sonoma basically became a cookbook registry list.  They all looked so amazing!  I mean, The Art of the Cookie?  Come on, who wouldn't want that?  Target was where we got into our groove, zapping items left and right.  Target was also where we completely ran out of steam.  Nancy had advised us to stop when we got cranky, and I could feel my inner toddler coming out to demand nap time and a snack.  So we called it quits and drove home feeling like we had spent thousands of dollars.  There's still a lot to be added, but we have a good start!

New Digs in the New Year

After making it safely stateside and a whirlwind of holiday gatherings (MN, MO, MN again), John and I packed our respective belongings into lots and lots of boxes and moved into the house we are now officially renting.

It is a fantastic house- three floors, four bedrooms, two bathrooms- but it took a lot of work before we could get in.  Most of this work was done by my parents while I was still abroad, but I did help with the painting which is an on going project as of yet.  The living room was chocolate brown, the dining room was a deep burgundy, the kitchen a dark periwinkle, and the bedroom a combination of a patterned paneling and paneling painted a greenish blue.  All is now a nice neutral beige in varying hues except the bedroom, which is near the top of our list of things to do.

Other things already accomplished: towel rod installed in the bathroom, shower doors removed (by Dad) and a shower rod put up instead, patched holes in the kitchen (again, Dad), cleaned the carpet (thanks, Dad), nearly completed unpacking, and thrown a successful small new year's eve gathering.

Things left to do: (obviously) paint the bedroom, organize the office (we have an office!), transition to efficient lighting, landscaping, finish the fence in the backyard... and the list goes on.

In other news, I have yet to do anything more for wedding planning than book the venue and get my bridesmaids.  Someday I'm going to go dress shopping, but for now I'm going to revel in our new house!

Leaving On a Jet Plane...

I am officially departing tomorrow morning, bright and early, from my dorm.  I have managed to finish all of my final papers and Ulysses.  I've also had one last order of fish and chips, a Bulmers, banoffi pie, and one last Guinness.

I am so excited to be going home, but I've decided that my adventure isn't going to end when I leave the Emerald Isle.  I figure that with a final semester of law school, moving into a house, the great job hunt, and planning a wedding, I'll have quite a few more adventures to write about.  So, stay tuned...

Cheers!