A Few Wedding Pics

Our photographer, Dorothy Dean, posted a few preview photos of our wedding to Facebook. Since some of my family and friends read my blog, but are not on Facebook, I thought I would repost them here so you all could see them too.





The wedding itself was fantastic. Doug and I have said several times that we cannot think of anything we would have changed about the day. We had a little rain in the morning, but it stopped completely once it was time for Dad to walk me down to the beach, and only got sunny from there. The entertainment was more than we expected, and better too.

More photos to come, probably in a few weeks once the photographer has had time to go through them all. She took over 400. Plus, there are photos other people took, and they said they would share too.

Pictures of the New Place

I have managed to get my computer set up, which means a few photos. These were taken before much was moved in. At this point we only had a few boxes in the place.


Bathroom


Bedroom, with A/C unit and black out curtains


Living room. The open door goes to the storage section.


Kitchen. Think it looks tiny? It is tiny!


Second bedroom. To be used as an office/craft room/gear room (for all the outdoor gear). Right now it is being used to store all the boxes we moved in. They are slowly being unpacked, but we will need to get more furniture before that can be accomplished, unless we want to stack everything on the floor.

Moved, Sort Of

This weekend Doug and I moved into our own place. The move happened quickly: we signed the lease on Friday, and by Sunday all of our things were packed and moved. And we just started looking a week ago.

However, that does mean that as of yet, very little is unpacked. We did get to sleep in our bed last night, with clean sheets, and we did find clean clothes to put on this morning to go to work in. I even managed to find the peanut butter for a sandwich.

What we found is nice, and not too small if you take Hawaii standards into consideration. On the mainland this place would be called small, if not tiny, but we are just starting out, and this will be our first place. Better than the bedroom we were renting in someone else's house. It has two bedrooms, a living room, bathroom and a kitchenette. One of the rooms will be used as an office/craft/gear room. Some space in the living room will be used for the kitchen. Most of all, it will be nice to have a bedroom, not an all-in-one room.

I know you're probably wondering why I'm bothering to write a blog at this point, but I'm pretty excited about having our own place and wanted to write about it. I'd post pictures, but they are in my phone, and flickr won't open. I would be unpacking/setting up my own computer, but I am still at school waiting for Doug, so it'll have to wait another hour or so. Somethings will have to stay packed until we find furniture, but that will just spread out the "Christmas" feeling I get when I unpack.

Pictures to come when I get my own computer set up.

SomethingStore Delivers

Really, I should have posted this nearly a week ago. My item from The Something Store arrived last Friday, but finding the camera and the time to snap a couple of pictures didn't happen til today. I was surprised that it came so quickly. The item shipped from New York, so I thought it would be weeks of waiting. But it was less than a week. So here it is, the 'something' from The Something Store:

Its a leather travel wallet, made by Samsonite.



There are three snap-able compartments, and it is really nicely made. Sadly though, I have no use for such a thing. I don't even use a wallet as it is, just a card holder to hold the necessities since my old version of wallet was starting to rip holes in my pants.

But: I'm having a birthday party in a couple of weeks, and I think this will be one of the prizes for a game. So long as a girl wins the prize... Doug doesn't think any of the boys coming to my party would be excited about this.

Now that I have done this, I think I might do it again sometime. Even though I got something that will be gifted, it was fun to buy something, and then wait before I knew what it was. Plus, the price was right for that kind of fun.

Time for Change

I was never really happy with the dots background, but of the choices offered when I started my blog, I found it to be the best. I started noticing that a friend's blog always had changing backgrounds, and then today noticed the link. Not sure I'll stick to this background, but for now I like it better than the dots.

I should have known that it was possible to change my background from those offered by google. I follow lots of blogs on blogspot. Perhaps I just didn't care enough any other time I logged in.

SomethingStore

Through some random searching in the internets, I found a store called The Something Store. It took about 3 seconds for curiosity to get the better of me, but I still did the "responsible thing" and read through all their pages and customer reviews (well, not all the reviews, just enough to decide it was okay to give in). And now: my order from The Something Store has been placed. If it is something kind of silly, it'll make a great gag gift for that someone special. Or maybe it'll be something really cool. Either way, I'll let you know when it arrives.

Even though I have no idea what is coming, this little bit of retail therapy has slightly brightened my day.

Engagement Photos

Here are a few of the pictures we took for our engagement photos. These aren't all of them, they aren't even all the ones I like. Just the first 15 I uploaded, not in any particular order.

Toys For Tots 2009

Doug and I did the Toys For Tots ride again this year. Here are some of the pics we got:
The bike getting dressed up for the ride:
Twisting up some garland...
We made Mark decorate his bike too
Application of garland
Yes, Mark is confused. I don't think he has had much experience with garland yet...
All ready to go
Sharka (co-pilot) gets red antlers
A sea of bikes, just like last year
It goes on...
and on...
In every direction
Wearing my antlers when we wait for the bikes to get rolling
Toys tied to the back of the bike
It's just a kid! On a kid sized chopper!
This is the only time of year that it is acceptable for tough biker dudes to have cute stuffed animals attached to their bikes
Or a Santa
Side cars rock.
A friend from Doug's school with her husband
Antlers on helmet, and I'm ready to go
Doug and Mark, looking tough
Bikes as far as you can see ahead
Saw this guy waiting to cross the street - the first time I have ever seen a pizza delivery guy on a skateboard
And bikes as far as you can see behind you
The same model as Doug's bike, only in blue.
We had a fun ride this year. Somehow I managed to forget about sunscreen, but only got a little pink. Maybe I am finally getting used to the Hawaiian sun.

Next picture post: Engagement photos! We went and did them yesterday with Dorothy. I didn't think it would be very fun, but it turned out to be. She said they would be ready in a week, so we should be getting a disc next Monday at knitting group. I'm so excited to see how they turned out.

Where Does the Time Go?

I look at the last time I posted and I wonder where all the time in between went. I'm staying plenty busy, which would seem to give me more to write about. Perhaps I forget my friendly internet soapbox, where I can stand proudly and show off all I have done. Or maybe I am always in such a hurry to get started on a new project that I forget to post pictures of the last project that was finished (and gifted as the last few have been). Silly really, I live 2,500 miles from my nearest relatives, and I bet they think I am horrible about calling. Mostly because I am horrible about calling. I always think I'll do it this weekend when the time difference won't matter, and then I find myself at 7:30 local time Sunday evening without a phone call made.

Even though I've managed to sit in front of the computer long enough to get something written, pictures will have to wait. I'm at school, which means no camera. And it is likely that there aren't photos in it anyway of the projects I have been working on. But I will fill you all in a little bit.

The wedding dress is one step further in production: I finally bought the fabric that it will be made out of. Turns out Doug was HUGE help in the fabric store. I was worried he would be slightly annoyed at spending part of our time on the mainland at JoAnn's, but he didn't seem to mind it all that much. I had inspiration walking past some lace on a bolt while looking for white linen. I imagined building the dress with a lace overlay to give the dress some texture, and also more of a wedding feel for those who have a hard time with the idea of a wedding dress built out of natural fibers. I stayed on my search for the right white fabric, but kept the lace at the back of my mind. After finding the right white (which turned out to be high quality cotton muslin) I went back to the lace isle and showed Doug what I had in mind by laying the lace over the white. He agreed: it did look nice. But he didn't think it looked quite right. Thus began our search through the lace isle, pulling out every white lace to lay over the bolt of white. I wasn't looking all that seriously, thinking I would buy the one I had found first, but Doug kept looking until he found the perfect lace to use as an overlay. And he was right, the one he eventually picked was the best one.

*Side note: Doug doesn't like the way the real story sounds. He thinks it makes him sound like a sissy. So, in his version, he beat up 3 ninjas that were out to get little old ladies shopping for quilt fabric, saved an infant from the back of the store where a 4th ninja had started a fire for distraction, and the right lace appeared when he randomly grabbed a bolt of fabric to tie up the 4 ninjas, thus saving the day. The end*

So now I have the muslin and the lace. Both are in the bag I brought them home in, needing to be washed before I do anything else. We've only been back just over a week though, and I still need to buy thread and a zipper. Then experimentation will begin. So far I have a pattern for the skirt part of the dress, but I am struggling with the bust part. I know what I want, but the patterns I have are for something else. Time to put my skills to the test and make a pattern. All new territory for me. Should be fun.

I've also been going strong on the knitting. Working on hats that I can't go into much detail on yet, a pair of socks that are over half way done, and my favorite project right now is a cabled sweater that I am making with my friend Red's homespun. Hopefully I have enough yarn for that, but just in case I have already been thinking about putting on a collar instead of a hood, and possibly making short sleeves. I'll just have to wait and see how much yarn remains when I finish the body. And in the event that I have leftovers when the pattern is complete: pockets!

Think this will be a good place to stop. Don't want to make the post too long. And I'll have to dig around for the camera so I can put up some new pics.