House Hunting Trip

This week, Bryan and I went to Colorado Springs to find a place to live and finalize our wedding plans. Menus are planned (hope ya'll like chicken, beef or bass- all done in a fru-fru, fancy way), cake is designed (two tier square cake, strawberries and cream on the bottom and chocolate raspberry on the top, our initials on the side, and fresh flowers on the top), flower arrangements picked out. And we just signed the lease to our first (rented) house!

This is the rental website photo and it's hard to see the color of the house (yellow). The house costs $225 LESS per month to rent than our current 1 bedroom apartment in Pasadena and has two EXTRA bedrooms! There's also a little washer and dryer (a luxury!), a gas range, a cute backyard with a separate dog run, and a 1 car garage in the back. It's a block away from a park and about a mile from grocery stores/restuarants/etc. It's 30 minutes from my job but that's because Shriever AFB is out in the boonies. Every room is painted a very different color (dark red living room, bright yellow kitchen, blue bedroom, taupe hallways, etc) and it's cute as a button. Yay! I'll have the new address printed on the wedding programs!

Choregraphy

Yes, our first dance is now officially choreographed. We're officially through the looking glass now!

Simply Stunning

A friend made me a ring pillow. She e-mailed me today to say it was ready. She thought the ring pillow didn't turn out great so she said she wouldn't be offended if I didn't use it. Holy cow, this pillow came out amazing!



The top is a lace doily that she handknit using crochet thread and needles not much thicker than toothpicks.



The doily was whipped stitch to a silk pillow she sewed together. Whipped stitched so the doily could be removed after the wedding and kept forever. There are no words to describe how beautiful this pillow turned out. This is a friend that I've knitted with for a few years now and looking at this pillow made me think of so many memories of us knitting together. It is truly an amazing gift. Thank you so much.

Brauhaus

My veil is scheduled to arrive tomorrow and I'll try to take a picture of the whole ensemble for ya'll. In the meanwhile, check out my eyebrows!

I just got them done at a new salon called Brauhaus in Pasadena. After a couple of eyebrow mishaps several years ago where I would leave the salon without my skin intact, I started doing my own brows. It was a pretty good system- I saved a ton of money and I never ripped any skin off. But my brows were starting to become asymmetric and losing their arches. I googled brow waxing and found this salon in Pasadena that just does waxing and makeup. And wow! I can't tell you how pleased I am with the results. The stylist tinted, she waxed, she plucked, she trimmed, she applied brow gel and makeup afterwards. They are so much more symmetric and the perfect thickness. We have a game plan to make them better next appointment. Have you had one of those beauty experiences where the results just blow your mind??

Sorry for the delay

I know a few of you are interested in seeing the dress. I did get it and it's perfect: right color, right size (well, slightly too big and too long). I tried taking pictures of it when I got it with my camera's auto-timer but they didn't come out the best. It's really hard to press the shutter button then run twelve feet away and try to pose when you are wearing an enormous dress. I'm not meeting my seamstress until May 15th (yes, she assures me it will be completed by June 12th at the latest) so I'll try to drag a friend over to take some pictures or try the auto-timer thing again in the meanwhile.

And actually, I have a confession to make. The reason that the wedding blog posts have been few and far between is that I've been really, really stressed out. I finally got the OK from my boss yesterday to defend my thesis on June 11th. Until yesterday, I was in PhD limbo. Do I have to keep doing more experiments? Would I graduate before my wedding? If not, what am I going to do about my job start date? And what about moving to Colorado??

Coupled to that stress, I've had a string of recent disappointments in my grad school career. I'm having a lot of trouble trying to get a paper published on my project that was my pride and joy. I did a ton of work on another project and there's been drama on where I would end up on that paper's author list. I caught my boss on an extremely bad day and he sent me a scathing e-mail that highlighted his disappointment in my research accomplishments.

Bryan has tried to be supportive but he has been given a lot more responsibility at work and has been extremely busy. Now that I've been given permission to finish up in June, I feel that a huge weight has been lifted. But there's so much work to be done. Half of my thesis still needs to be written (~75 more pages) and proofread by the end of May. I have to run around campus and get various people to sign a bunch of paperwork. I have to prepare an hour long seminar on my thesis and be prepared for the tough questions. And on top of that, I have the wedding and moving stuff. Dress fittings, hair appointments, dentist appointments, finalizing menus and cake design, two more dance lessons, printing wedding programs, packing all of our crap, filling out forms for my new job. I feel like I'm at the end of a looong rollercoaster ride going down the biggest hill of my life.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant. I ordered a veil this morning and once it comes in, I will try to take pictures of the whole ensemble. Thanks for reading and thanks to those who have been so supportive!