Wedding Wednesday +1: Stationary!!

I love stationary! I'm a big of rearranging things, and stationary gives me the chance to organize on paper, yay!




I was adament about not doing save the dates. Our wedding guest list is family and close friends, and I didn't think they really need one since I talk to them about the wedding a lot. Bless them. But one drama after another led to us having to do them. I ordered these beauties from Wedding Paper Divas:

Aren't they adorable?! I love them! And best of all, they have a STRIPE!!! You will begin to see stripes over and over again in these posts :)

Now, for the wedding invites. I looked all the "big" sites, but I couldn't find the right one. Then it hit me -- my friend Kyra over at Bliss Papers is absolutely fabulous at creating stationary for any occasion, and best of all, she works with her clients to create something completely original. We've been working for a bit on our invites, and they are getting close to final. I'll be sure to post a finished copy! Be sure to check out her site, and you can also follow along her projects with her blog as well.

Bad Blogger!

I apologize for the lack of updates!! Things have gotten crazy, both at work and at home, leaving me very little time for the finer things in life....laying around, watching TV, blogging, etc.

But, lucky you, I have a four hour conference call this morning AND can't open any Office document do to my 2007 install (wow, we are really with the times), so I'm hoping for LOTS of updates today.

Wedding Wednesday: Photography!

Our photographers for the wedding are John and Joslyn Crowe of Crowe's Eye Photography. They were our only good find out of a bridal show!! They were so sweet and nice, we just had to sit down with them. And once we checked out their work we were in love with them! Joslyn has been fabulous to work with, too--I would have been lost planning our wedding day timeline without her.

Right now, I'm working on a list of "must have" shots for the wedding. I've been checking out other photographer's blogs and saving pics that I love to show to Joslyn and John. Many of the pictures are copyrighted, so I can't post them on my blog, but I'd love to get a link to some of your favorite photography blogs for more ideas. Here are some of my favorites:

Erin Hession

Shelly Valentine

Bobbi and Mike

Bungalow Tour

So my camera is acting weird, hence my lack of posting. I'll try to make do with some pictures I have stored online. Here are some changes we made to the Bungalow when we moved in:

Living Room

<-- Before

After--->

(the red isn't this bright!)

Dining Room

<-- Before

After--->

(the red looks better here!)

Yes, we made painted over the red dining room and then made the living room red. Everyone thought I was crazy, but I like it like this!

Master Bedroom


<--- Before

After --->

This is my favorite place in the house :). It took forever to paint the stripes, but it was so worth it. I can't wait to finish this with some new curtains (these were originally in the dining room).

Summer cookin'

Andy and I have had a great day. We slept in, made pancakes, went the gym, took Eli on a long walk, and then fired up the grill for lunch. We broke in slider kit, and had the burgers with zucchini chips and watermelon with balsamic mint dressing. YUM!!

Zucchini Chips

2 medium zucchini, cut into 1/4 inch slices
1 egg

1/2 c panko bread crumbs

Salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 425. Beat egg and season with salt and pepper. Put panko bread crumbs in a separate bowl. Coat zucchini in egg, then press into bread crumbs. Place on a foil-lined baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray. Bake for 30-40 minutes, turning once, until golden brown. Sprinkle with salt. Serve with lemon garlic aioli and ketchup.

Payday Friday

Wahoo, it's payday Friday! Andy gets paid once a month, and I get paid on the 15th and 30th, so it's always a treat when the stars line up and the last workday of the month is a Friday and we both get paid.


We've been pretty good money managers throughout life, but we are about to get a lot better. We graduated college with zero credit card debt (notice I didn't say debt...our Sallie Mae bill is scary!) and we've always been big savers. However, as we prepare for family life with little ones (no, not yet!), we realize we need to be more proactive in our budgeting. We always made budgets, with way over-estimated expenditures for some categories and not enough for others. Clearly not the best. In the past, I would get freaked out about money, add up and categorize everything we spent in a month or two, and the proceed to shout useless things like "How can we go to the grocery store 35 times in a month?! That is more than once a day" and "I do not need to be the number one Target shopper in Indiana...we have got to stop spending so much money there!". But, when next month came, we'd do it all again. We did set a weekly Target budget and I've been good about that, but I realize that we can do better.



So, after hearing the success of several friends, we signed up for Mvelopes, a "proactive approach to spending management. It's basically the envelope budgeting system set up for a credit card and electronic bill pay society. And it is fabulous!! We've already done better about our dining out and grocery budget. And with our surprise expense of a trip to the emergency vet, we were able to identify which areas we could take money from to put in our pet envelope. There's all kinds of cool features I have yet to discover, like mobile access and net worth tracking (sounds fancy!). I really think this site will be able to help us spend less, save more, and help me be a little less neurotic about our spending. And less neuroses are better for everyone here at the Bungalow.

Present Picks: Father's Day

I absolutely love giving gifts. There's something so satisfying about thinking, researching, purchasing, and wrapping the perfect gift and then watching a loved one's face as the open it. I spend weeks, if not months, thinking about what to get someone. Then, once I purchase it, I have to go find the perfect coordinating wrapping paper. We do not paper bags here, unless things are a really awkward shape. And there is always, always a bow involved.

My older brother and my dad are the two hardest people to shop for. My brother is because he literally has everything and the only thing he wants is something big, so he always asks for gift cards. I hate giving gift cards...they seem so impersonal and unwelcoming and they aren't very much fun to wrap. My dad never seems to like anything he gets. He opens every gift and then goes, "Hmmm." It's not that he doesn't like it, he's just a man of few words. But he does return an astonishing amount of gifts.


But this year, I found the perfect gift for my brother's birthday and my dad for Father's Day. They both love to grill, so I got them this fabulous slider kit from Sur La Table, one of my favorite stores. How perfect is this?!? It contains a burger press, a bun cutter to make the buns just the right size, and a grill basket so the little burgers don't fall through the grill. And, it comes with a great price tag: $45!

Andy was with me when we picked these up at Sur, and he about died he was so excited. So we had to get one for him, too. Hopefully we'll get a chance to break it in this weekend!

I gave my brother his on Memorial Day weekend (his birthday present this year was not having to have a family party, LOL). He really liked it! He's excited to make sliders because he thinks my niece, who is 4, will really get a kick out of the "baby burgers." She definitely will!!

For those of you with dads, husbands, or other special men in your life...what are you getting them for Father's Day?