Poor old house

Our house has been having a hard time lately, poor old house. I don't blame it, it's cold here, if I was a house I'd move somewhere warm.

For a few weeks our furnace was broken, luckily we have two, which is weird because our house is pretty small. Anyway, the living room was nice and warm, and the bedroom was frigid. I'm pretty sure the chapstick by my bed was frozen. And just our luck, when we plugged in the space heater we lost power to half the house.

A few days later my computer died :( I don't think it would be so bad except that macs are too pretty to die.

Good news is the house is all Christmasy! Zach hung lights outside, and they're perfect :) We have stockings above the fireplace, and Zach wrapped all the presents.

We went to a holiday block party last Friday. Everyone is super nice, but I'm afraid I won't remember all their names. We were the youngest by far :) but there was one couple who was pretty close to our age, and they were new to the block too. I baked an apple pie to bring (Zach did the hardest part, peeling all the apples.....and helping me figure out how to turn on the food processor). I tried a new pie crust recipe....and LOVED it. Ok I have to stop talking about the pie because now I want to eat some.

I made us a mini pie because I didn't want to wait to try the big one :)

My charlie is cute, but not as cute as this one:

Christmasy

I got to be crafty last night :) Making a wreath is easy and fun, and highly recommend it. And it gave me an excuse to use the hot glue gun, my favorite thing ever. This one still needs some tweaking still I think, but overall I was very happy with it (I just have to find a good place to hide it till after Thanksgiving, charlie keeps trying to eat it). And I have an extra wreath that I get to decorate with the extra decorations...now I just have to find someone to give it to :)

I had to force myself to leave Michael's the other day, it just smelled so good in there I wanted to eat it. I discovered the source, cinnamon scented pine cones. They are now in bowls and vases all over the house :) mmmm cozy.

In other news, we now have curtains and no longer live in a fishbowl, yay! But our heater is broken, and it's unbearably cold in half the house.

Look! Snow is fun!

Especially when you have a backyard full of it!

FYI

My painting blog http://sharon-williams.blogspot.com/ is now http://sharonschock.blogspot.com/

because it's much less generic :)

The Wedding

I don't think I could have asked for a better wedding day. It was everything I wished and hoped it would be. Well I guess I wish I hadn't almost set the church on fire, and hadn't spilled hot wax on two of our guests, I wish the organist had peripheral vision, and that we hadn't killed any poor animal on the way to the reception.... but those are minor details.

I guess I should start at the beginning of the day. We woke up early and made the condo bridesmaid central. Since Emilee is amazing we had a new hair girl who was great, I liked her so much and she did such a good job. The makeup girl never showed up, which was weird....and we still don't know why. But I think I had more fun doing my own makeup anyway, and Crystal taught me to how to have super lashes.

We drove to the church and finished getting ready in the bride room at the church... with only minor hiccups.

The ceremony started and I was standing outside with my dad, wishing I could watch the wedding too, I don't know why I thought I would be omnipresent on my wedding day! My dad practiced lifting my veil while we were waiting... just to make sure he did it right. Then the doors opened for us to come in... way way before the actual bride processional song. My dad apparently has terrible stage fright and practically ran me down the aisle, then forgot about the veil completely. Maybe he'll be calmer for my sister's wedding :)

My mom tells me we got compliments on our kiss, which kind of cracks me up

The ceremony seemed to last only 2 minutes, it was all over so fast. We took pictures, then headed to the reception. Zach swears that he was chasing me while I was running from him to talk to people. I thought we were talking together! We were very excited about the food, we were SO hungry. And my grandma said she just loved the music, which pretty much was the goal. Then it was time for toasts, which I was a little nervous about, mostly because I would be nervous having to give a toast. But Jim's was great, and so was Emilee's, and I found out my sister had hers written out but ab libbed according to how the crowd responded, which I think is great. 







Then it was time for our first dance, Zach's grandma said it made the whole trip worth it. I had so much fun even though my bustle died pretty much at the beginning, but Zach did such a good job not stepping on it. I'm so glad he's my forever dance partner.







One of my favorite parts of the day was the dancing (and my feet paid for it later :) but I remembered once again that I must know all the greatest people in the world because I don't think there's a group of people that are more fun than the ones I left in California, or who left for other states. I don't like to think about it, it makes me sad that I can't hang out with them all the time, and that I don't get to see my family very much either. Thankfully a few of them are in Colorado :) and maybe we can convince Mother Chandler to come here too!



My ipod DJ wasn't as awkward as I thought it was going to be, and the 12 hours spent picking music for it seemed to be worth it :)
I'm so happy with how everything went. And I'm SO glad Montana is awesome, I love our pictures and I can't wait to see the rest of them.

The Rehearsal

If only you could practice all your important days....

I loved our rehearsal dinner, Zach did such a good job picking out a restaurant and it was perfect...the music even matched my wedding theme (I'm certain that I'm the only one that noticed that...but I'm happy about it).

I was most excited about the rehearsal because then I got I to give out the wedding party/parents gifts. I've been excited about that part for months, mostly because my bridal party was amazing and I don't like to wait to thank people :) ... and because tiffany boxes are fun, and so are tiffany keys!















But by far the best part of the night was Zach's toast, which took me by surprise and almost made me cry. It would have made me cry but I was smiling so hard that it would have been impossible.







And I even got to go swing dancing after, even though the rec center was under construction...lame. But I still had so much fun because I've missed SB swing dancing a lot...and now Zach's a good dancer! so that made it even better.

Wedding prep

I'm glad I went out to Carp a week before the wedding, I thought we would have time to relax, go to the beach, and get a few last minute wedding things done. Didn't really turn out that way, I think we ran errands all day every day. And we crafted well into the night, my fingers were sore from tying ribbons and the whole punch bruised my hand. Luckily Emilee was around to help fold programs and to force my mom to make seating chart decisions :) and to sold my own seating dilema!

The thing I was most worried about, getting the marriage licence, turned out to be the easiest thing in the world. I think we were at the courthouse for like 15 minutes and we were done. And the courthouse is beautiful so I'm kind of sad we didn't have to be there longer. 

Shirt fail

I was browsing the Forever 21 website the other day and found this little gem, which they boast is "exclusively ours!"

Now why would I bother buying a shirt with a bra attached to the outside? Why wouldn't I just put my bra on the outside of a shirt I already own? Luckily I never want to do either of those things.

Bridal shower weekend!

So last weekend I flew out to California for my amazing bridal shower. Amazing because my bridesmaids went above and beyond what I ever would have expected. My sister and Crystal spent like 9 hours one Sunday putting together party favors, decorations, and thinking of games to play. Emilee was in charge of food ...as well as my honorary bridesmaid Lindsey :) who was chef for the day, and AMAZING at it (like making her own fig jam and rosemary garlic ciabatta bread the night before). I

don't remember what it is she's cutting in this picture, but it's not paper, like I thought it was. Emilee made her deviled eggs, which I don't want to talk about because then I'll start craving them.

Lindsey being amazing!


so much food!

After the shower Emilee, Shana, Crystal, Lindsey, and I drove up to Santa Barbara for the second half of bridal weekend. Apparently the premade tiara and veil wasn't good enough for Emilee and Lindsey so they sewed this one together for me to wear :) And Emilee made buttons for us all to wear :) customized for each of us.

I had to open underwear and such things in the restaurant, with everyone looking at my lobster telephone! But it was fun anyway :)

And then we got to sleep in my old apartment, I miss that blue couch, best couch ever! But then we had to leave early in the morning to meet with the hair/makeup people.....but that's a story for a different post.

umm, seriously?

Let me relate to you what happened to me in the Mimi's Cafe bathroom last Sunday.

I was just about to start washing my hands when I saw the door to the bathroom open slightly then close again, then open a little further then close again, then open and a head pop through and it close again. So I go open the door for whoever is struggling with this... and behind it are two morbidly obese women, one is holding the other one's life support....so they're connected and they can't really walk. So I hold the door open while they slowly walk through it. They get about 2 feet away from me and I hear this, from the first one "my gosh! she was small" and then the other one (in the snobbiest voice I've ever heard) "well ya, what do you expect? she probably only eats once a year" then continued muttering that I couldn't understand.

ummm.

I wanted to be like "hi, I can hear you! I'm still right here!"

but instead I finished washing my hands and went back to my table and ate garlic fries.

paint paint paint

Painting normal walls is significantly easier than painting fake wood paneling. Last weekend Zach and I finished the family room, making the green wall much much greener. And I never have my camera with me anymore, so this terrible phone picture will have to do...no the wall isn't horrible yellow green, at least it wasn't when I left...

We also painted the bedroom. So much easier than the family room, now I like painting again. It's the best blue! and will be cuter with my sheer white curtains and you know, furniture.

I'm really excited to put up the before and after pictures...once the rooms are a little more complete. I'm hoping that we have completely ungrandmafied it.

Other things to note! Look how adorable my kitchen utensils are! They go pretty well with our dishwasher, and our stove-car.

I miss the beach during summer in Colorado...a lot. But everytime I do it starts thunderstorming outside and makes me feel lots better. Zach seems to think that I'm weird for staring out the window at it until it passes....but how can you not?! it's amazing. It's also amazing that it can be sunny and warm and then I look out the window again and it's doing this:

SO much hail, and so much lighting, and SO much rain I could barely see the building next to mine, it felt like we were in a very tropical storm. Charlie is not a huge fan of these. It was even big enough to drive the drag queen out of the pool.... where he(she?) usually stays all day (and people come out to "show" him to their friends...like he's part of the circus, it's weird, maybe he likes the attention?)

On friday I leave for California! Hoorah!! The lineup:

Friday night: Girls sleepover!

Saturday afternoon: bridal shower

Saturday night: bachelorette party in SB

So excited!!

Church signs

I'm so happy because when I drive home from work in October I'll get to pass a church everyday... a church with really terrible quotes on their sign out front. I don't even know if they're quotes, they don't make sense, so I don't know where they are finding them. So far I've seen:

"Summer. A vacation from learning" why? are they happy about summer? or offended that kids stop learning, I can't tell.

"Have an awe-ful summer" - you know, it's a pun, from when everyone tells you to have an awful summer...oh wait, no one says that, huh?

The church is also called "Precious Blood"...I know what they mean, but if I didn't that would sound like the creepiest place ever! like maybe Sweeney Todd lives in their attic.

I don't like the ice cream truck because...

...the first several notes of the song that's played over and over and over sound just like the hymn "The Love of God"

"To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry"....

and then I have just two lines of a song stuck in my head, and it wasn't even playing!

DCFC!

Zach and I went to see Death Cab For Cutie last night, surprisingly that's what Zach wanted for his birthday, I didn't complain :) It was a really fun show, and the weather was perfect. I was glad that we got reserved seats, that made things easier. I saw faux Emilee, it was crazy! it's like this girl got up, put on an Emilee suit then went into Emilee's closet, put on her clothes, and then said "I don't work at Westmont, so I'm going to put hot pink stripes in my hair!" I think the real Emilee would have been a little jealous.

The show was great, but people watching was also entertaining....well actually in this case people watching was nauseating. I tried to capture the extreme awkwardness of the couple sitting in front of us but I think I would have needed a video camera to get the full effect. I'll try to explain: he wouldn't stop touching her hair...no that's not it...he wouldn't stop doing her hair for her, like kept pulling out her hair tie and handing it to him so he would redo her ponytail? then there was the massaging, I'm surprised they didn't pull out oils, then she decided to "dance" in front of him, while he used her butt as a drum...maybe it was so gross because I could see her crack half the night...or maybe it's because they seemed like a dating couple, but also like 7 year old siblings.

Then there was the lady next to me.... I'm going to say that Death Cab For Cutie is not the most rock out all over the place type of music. Most of the crowd seemed to agree with me, this lady did not. The only way I can think to describe it is by a Friends reference...that episode where they're dancing for the new years eve special, and Joey gets put with that flailing lady? That was this lady! Her legs were places they shouldn't be, she was shimmying, she was doing this toddler dance with her stomach? she kept hitting me with her butt? It was strange, even stranger when her boyfriend (obviously not a fan of the flail) started arguing with her about it! Which just made her flail harder. I tried to depict the scene, but alas, I'm not right handed, so my Paint skills are not great.

Zach's company party is this Saturday. It's at the zoo, and there is a Polynesian theme...Zach wants to go as a lion. I told him that's not Polynesian, and he said that theme was dumb, so he's going with "zoo" theme.

Monday

Yesterday was terrible... terrible because it sucks when the auto shop WAY overcharges you for simple repairs. I chose this shop because I had heard really good things about them... guess who's getting a low star review when I get my car back. grrr.

So to make myself feel better I went home and gave myself a pedicure... and almost got all the primer paint off my feet. Warning: Gripper primer does exactly what it says, it's almost impossible to get off. Unfortunately I didn't realize that before I got it all over myself...Zach was painting in his dress socks, so he didn't have this problem. But now our living room looks spectacular :) "Swiss Coffee" is so much better than "Wood Panel"

My favor boxes came in the mail. But without instructions, so I sat there folding it a hundred different ways before it finally made a box. I think I like how they turned out though!

Thanks to the best tape ever that I found! http://www.organize.com/home-chic-home-damask-packing-tape.html

Charlie was VERY happy that I was playing with boxes and ribbon, this is pretty much how he looked all night.

ps: Quotes for today:

"I love bad Mormons" - Kara

"I don't know how anyone couldn't like you Shana, you're so down to earth, even more than the Mormons" - Brittany (age 10)