What I Learned on Election Day 2014 (this post has very little to do with the election)

Normally, I enjoy days off from work.  Yesterday was not one of those days, (okay it wasn't all bad and I did get to sleep in), but rather than directly whine about it, I will share a "Top 10" list with you.  And since yesterday was Election Day I will add two bonus comments about politics--so my top 10 is really a top 12...Fear not, I will be back on the wedding blog train in a few days. 

What I Learned On Election Day 2014 (in no significant order)


12.  Election Day brings out the best, worst, and funniest on some people's Facebook posts.

11.    Politicians will still call you and bother you even right after you get home from voting.

10.   Apparently, my non-existent sense of direction exists sometimes!

9.  When you put a pot of water on the stove to boil and then run upstairs to "quickly" print something, do not forget that said water is still on stove when your printer does not behave as the water will completely boil away and you will wonder what that strange burning smell is.

8.  Mcjob is a real word (my not knowing this may have contributed to us living up to our trivia team name of "We Suck at Trivia" last night, it may have been our worst game yet.)

7.  You are NOT allowed to bring a bottle of water into the Social Security Office.

6.  If you do bring a bottle of water in to the SS office, you will be asked to leave and come back without your water.  When you return, you will not know where to check in and be too scared to ask for help since you just got in trouble for having water--seriously, people, water?  Water?  Really?  I had a sore throat!  I'm almost afraid to ask why they don't want you to bring in water as it's probably something scary or ridiculous.

5.  The SS office should more clearly label the kiosk where you need to check in. 

4.  You ARE allowed to bring a bottle of water into the DMV, but if you've just been to the SS office, you may think this is not allowed and thus out of fear you may leave your bottle of water at home and then sit at the DMV thirsty for over an hour.

3.  You should NOT forget your book at home when going to the DMV as there is only so much time one can spend playing Words with Friends, reading e-mails, and checking Facebook on your  phone. 

2.  You should NOT go to the DMV when you are hungry.  If you do go to the DMV when you are hungry, do NOT schedule an appointment for two hours after you arrive at the DMV because you will NOT have time to eat lunch and get to your appointment on time so you will have to wait until after 4:00 to eat lunch.  (Eating lunch at 4:00 will mean you don't eat dinner until close to 9:00, which is getting too close to bed time and may result in you not feeling good.  On the other hand, even though politics annoys you at times, you may stay up too late watching election results come in because you are a bit dorky).

(This post reminds me of a Laura Numeroff book [You know If you do x then y will happen, which will then make z happen, etc. etc.)]) 

1.  I love my husband, but if I did it all over again, I'm not sure I would go through with this whole name change thing.   I think I would just keep my maiden name.      

Ahh the (dreaded) Seating Chart

In the weeks and months leading up to the wedding, people constantly asked me how wedding plans were going (usually good) and "Are you stressed?"  For the most part, I was not too stressed.  Yes, not having a priest was a bit stressful (but a bit comical too) and not getting reply cards back on time was a bit stressful, but the first thing I freaked out about was losing our florist (and that all turned out fine in the end).  Actually, that's not entirely true, we were a "bit" stressed about the total cost of everything, but that was on-going and we didn't so much freak out about that as know we were going to be cutting it close with what we saved and what we needed.  Once the flower situation was resolved, I didn't stress again too much until it came time to do the seating chart.  We were supposed to put 8-10 people at a table.  Some tables were so easy. We had one family that comprised 10 people so that was easy.  But most tables were not quite so easy.  Person A could not sit with person B for legitimate reasons.  Person C could not sit near person D for legitimate reasons.  Person E could not sit with Person F for not so legitimate reasons, but I'm a bit of a people pleaser so I was determined to make it work.  Person G did not want to sit with Person H.  And I wasn't sure about Person I sitting near Person J.  You get the idea. At one point my fiancé said, just let people sit where ever they want, don't do a seating chart.  Once we finally separated the people that needed to be separated and granted a few special requests (this took about three drafts), we thought all was peachy...Then we showed it to our parents. 
My parents had a few minor concerns, but they were easy fixes.  My husband's parents had bigger changes to make.  So we made them. And then at the last minute one of their relatives was unable to make the wedding so we had to redo the chart again.  Life was finally looking peachy, when we realized we had a table of 6 and two tables of 7, we figured one table of 7 might be doable, but if we were supposed to have 8-10 to a table, we probably should have most of the tables within that range.  So back to the map AGAIN.  It took some finagling and we had a couple of people who were invited that didn't really know anyone so we did the best we could to sit them with people who we thought had things in common with them, but we're not perfect.  Most people seemed content in the end and those that weren't were at least polite enough not to complain to our faces.  :)  Let's just say I was glad to finally hand in the seating chart. 

Wedding Favor Preparations a.k.a. the reason some people think I'm crazy :)

Are you impressed?  I blogged last week and I'm blogging again this week.  Think I can go three for three?  You'll just have to check back next week and see.  Let's talk wedding favors a.k.a. the reason some people thought I was crazy.  My fiancé and I were having a hard time trying to decide what to do for wedding favors.  We wanted to do something people would like or actually use, but we didn't want to spend a fortune.  My fiancé liked the idea of having his face on a piece of chocolate--I was like you mean on the wrapper and he said no, on the actual chocolate.  I couldn't so much find that, but it was an "interesting" idea. 
I bake a lot so I thought what if I baked something for a favor?  But it would have to be something I could freeze because I didn't want to be baking for possibly 200 people two days before the wedding.  After some pondering, I decided to make mini loaves of bread.  I made:  apple, banana, blueberry, cinnamon, pumpkin, and zucchini.  Pumpkin made the most in one batch so I made a few more pumpkins than other flavors, but otherwise, it was about 22-30 loaves of each flavor. I made a bunch 4th of July weekend (you know because what else would you do in a kitchen without air conditioning on a 90 degree day, but stand in front of an oven set at 350 degrees for 4 hours) and made more over the next few weeks.  Often times I doubled the recipe and I could get 10-16 loaves out of a batch.  The bad thing about baking ahead of time was that I was running out of room.  I had company one night and forgot to warn them not to open the freezer--they were greeted by a mountain of bread and I was greeted by a look of shock and comments like, what the heck.  It was a good conversation piece.  And eventually, I did run out of room in the freezer--I needed to save a little from for actual food so I had to bring 20 loaves to my parents' freezer--in the picture you can't see it, but freezer door was filled too.

Two days before the wedding, when I emptied the freezer, my fiancé was like, wow, our freezer looks huge now that it's so empty.  Anyway, since my fiancé did want chocolate and we couldn't find chocolate he could put his face on, I ordered mini chocolates and put our picture on the wrapper.  We also bought Hershey Kisses and Peanut butter cups and stickers with our last initial on them so everyone got a mini loaf of bread, 2 Hershey kisses, 2 peanut butter cups, and one other mini chocolate.  You see baking 175ish loaves of bread was not enough, I had to also make mini chocolates that said thank you and individually wrap all of those (I wrapped and labeled all the bread too), and put the stickers on the kisses, and cups.  We'll save assembling the favors for another blog post.  In the end a few of my friends did think I was crazy, BUT they also said they really enjoyed the favors so I guess sometimes my crazy ideas work out just well thank you. 

Reply Cards

I wonder if I still have any blog followers out there since it's been a month since I've posted anything.  I had to go back an reread my last few posts since it's been so long.  I should just take a September hiatus from blogging every year since I never do a good job blogging in September because work is so busy.  Maybe I can be like the tv shows and do blog reruns or something ha ha.  I know work is a lousy excuse, but it's true.  My friends with September birthdays always get their cards late (sorry!).  And my once clean house is suddenly filled with clutter.  It gets better by October, but at times in Sept, Oct feels a long ways away.  Anyway, I'm HOPING to be a better blogger this month.  For now, it's back to wedding talk.  Today, let's talk about reply cards.  We asked our guests to RSVP to our wedding by June 30th. I sent three invitations to foreign countries and told them they could save a stamp and just e-mail me their RSVP.  In this day and age, I find it strange that you cannot put stamps for foreign countries on your reply cards.  I felt bad that they would have to pay for postage.  One friend e-mailed me and the other two people mailed their cards back.  I tell you this because my cousin who lives in what some would call the middle of nowhere had to drive a half hour to the post office to buy a US stamp and mail me a reply (and she wrote a nice note).  She managed to do this and get the card sent back to the US ON TIME.  Meanwhile, some other guests of ours who live quite close could not do the same.  I gave them a few days after the deadline and then started asking for replies. One had a legitimate reason for not replying yet, another plain ol' forgot (she was forgiven as she is a good friend and usually reliable), and another in her words is always late (she was forgiven too), and one seems to have really gotten lost in the mail, but others just hadn't gotten around to it.  I understand for some people it depends on work, baby-sitters, etc., but we did send our save the dates out 9 months before the wedding so it's not like they didn't know about it.  And the reply cards have stamps on them so really all you have to do is check yes or no and then if you checked yes, please check chicken, beef, vegetarian.  My friend Joanne told me that after she got married she always RSVPed to weddings right away.  I think in the future I will do that too.  (I think I always reply to weddings on time, but sometime I do it closer to the deadline.)  On the due date, we were still missing replies from 30 people!  We did eventually hear from everyone, which some married people have told me was not the case for their wedding--I was like what did you do?  Did you order them a meal or not?  I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that.  And while two people canceled, they did so BEFORE the final counts were due so we were fortunate to have all the yesses actually show up to our wedding because I have heard that does not often  happen.  We are fortunate to have such good friends and family.  Anyway, back to the reply cards, I have been to many weddings so I always check the boxes and mail the card back.  I didn't know that some people write notes on the reply card.  We got some "can't waits," a sarcastic comment from my brother (that is normal), a nice note about my shower, and a funny sweet note about how one of my friends in her words "squealed like a little pig" when she got the invitation.  I think I may have to save them for the scrapbook, which is going about as well as the blogging is right now.  Oh, well, I have a week off in December ha ha          

It Felt Like Christmas

Okay, I confess, I'm being wicked lazy with this blog.  I'm tired and have a few things to do, but I feel guilty about not blogging for a while so this'll be a short one.  After the shower, for quite a few days I kept coming home and finding a box at the door.  It was like Christmas! I was like a kid on Christmas.  I was so excited!
I'm not sure the recycling people loved me with all the boxes that came out.  I have to wonder about some of the stores' packaging policies.  We got a few small (size wise) gifts in really big boxes.  Wouldn't it make sure sense to send them in smaller boxes?  I'm sure there's a method to their madness, I just don't know what it is--hence why I am probably not a good packer, which you can hear more about in another blog, when I finally get to packing to come home from the honeymoon.  At the rate I'm going, I should get to that around the time of my one year anniversary.  I'll try to do better, but September is one of my busy months at work so it may take me a while. 

Finding Space

As you may remember from the last blog, I have generous friends and family members (as does my fiancé--now husband--can't get used to saying that) so I received quite a few gifts at my bridal shower.  It took three cars to get everything home--mine, my Mom's, and my Mom's friend's.  Getting home was actually kind of comical.  My fiancé took my car and filled it up so there was no room for me so I went with my mom.  Someone also made me take balloons home so I had to hold those so my mom could see to drive, which meant I couldn't see a thing.  Anyway, we got everything home, chatted for a bit, and then I set to work rearranging my kitchen and bathroom so I could fit my fabulous new gifts.  Apparently, I am a slow worker because by 10:00 I still had a lot left to do and I hadn't done a thing to get ready for work the next day.  I finally stopped, got my stuff ready to go back to work the next day (paperwork, made lunch, etc.) and eventually went to bed.  I took that Friday off from work because I had a personal day left to use that was soon going to expire.  It was nice to sleep in, but truth be told I spent some of the day catching up on work paperwork (um, aren't you NOT supposed to do work on your day off?).  The rest of the time, I did manage to get most of my stuff put away and I made a huge dent on my thank you notes.   I'd like to tell you I finished writing them all that day, but that would be a lie.  It took a few more days. 

Bridal Shower

So as I was getting ready to blog about some of the latest in "wedding land," I realized I never blogged about my bridal shower.  So here it goes...My bridal shower was a little over a month ago and it was fabulous.  Actually, I should rephrase that, my showerS were a little over a month ago and THEY were fabulous.  My co-workers threw me a shower too.  I got some nice gifts, delicious cake, and several people wore purple since that is my wedding color.  One of the organizers even wore purple gloves to cut the cake!  Who knew! 

 

My non-work shower was also wonderful and a little overwhelming.  I knew the date (my schedule is a little crazy so I had to know when it was), but not all the details.  My fiancé drove me over and we walked in and all of a sudden people realized we were there and started clapping.  It was funny because I could hear some of their voices as I was walking up the stairs, but they didn't see me right away.  I didn't really know what to do so I started to walk around to all the tables and say hi to everyone and thank them for coming.  Goodness knows I've helped throw many showers, but it was strange to be on the other side.  I had so much fun though.  I normally don't like being in the center of attention, but I embraced it and enjoyed myself.  After some mingling, a funny trivia game with questions about my fiancé and me that people had to answer, and some delicious food, it was time to open presents.  OMG, I cannot believe how generous people are.  It took me days to find spots for everything (that's a whole other blog in itself).  I could not believe how much stuff I got.  We had quite a few things on our registries and well, let's just say we received most of them (and then some).  Oh, and did I mention that when they cut into the cake, it was purple inside?  :)