This photo shows the pink cameo that was my mothers'.

This photo shows a mustard seed pendant that was my grandmothers'.

I used a lace scarf of my mom's to bridge the top of the bouquet to the handle.

I finished the handle with an ivory ribbon and corsage pins.  They're a little loose and I might have to re-do that before the actual wedding.  I'm going to try real hard to leave it alone unless I find something I absolutely have to have or if I'm presented with an idea that I have to try.  The handle is a little skinny which I'm undecided about.  It took almost no time to put that part together so if I get a good idea on that front I might five it a try.  

This is the most recent pic.  I took everything off and painted the foam and put everything back on but with a little more wisdom.  I'm still working on finishing the bottom.  That's the next step.  I'm much closer now to a finished product that I like.  There are still a few foam spots that of course only I see so I'm going to get some gold glue paint and glue a few more gold buttons to the foam and then I'm done fiddling with it.

I've made a few more decisions regarding my dress.  all I need now is someone to marry us and a photographer.  and then I have to decide on the reception...way more difficult.

"Thinking very often resembles napping, but the intent is different."

These are the most recent pictures where the bouquet is almost done.  I think the one thing I have learned, although I like the overall look, is that I have to do the whole thing over again.  You can still see a lot of the foam and yet there is no room for more stuff, and it's HEAVY so adding more isn't ideal.  I'm going to write the two dollars down to experience and buy a new foam dome.  hehe.  foam dome.  anyway, I like it and i know it can be better so I'm really excited about it.  I'm going to use all the things I've learned and do a bit more pre-planning on the foam core like painting or covering it so I won't have to focus on covering it with shinies.

"we come from a long line of army deserters and nasty drunks"

my week of vacation is almost over.  it's been a week of cooking and gardening and a lot of cleaning.  A lot more cleaning than a vacation usually warrants but it takes a gosh darn lot of work to keep a house clean when you're in it all day.  The dishes have been unbelievable.  I've been cooking kind of a lot.  We started picking potatoes and i made pickles and we canned a ridiculous ton of beets and we're still picking and cooking beans every day.  I thought I would get tired of green beans every day but so far I haven't.  i'd much rather cook and eat them than pick them maybe that's the key.

no, these are different pictures can't you tell!!!

I received a package of gold flotsam in the mail yesterday so I added to my bouquet.  this package was all buttons.  cheap plastic buttons but shiny and better than green foam.  I have one more package of quality pins and brooches coming hopefully this week and I might be able to either cover the plastic or eliminate it completely.  I definitely like the texture better with the additions, there seems to be more fullness.

Matt asked me how many i was making.  I think he doesn't realize it's a bouquet and not a centerpiece or maybe he's just a boy and he's blocking it all out.  hard call.

brooch bouquet update

Here is a terrible picture of how far I've gotten.  I have a lot of work to do on it and I think I probably should've painted the foam first.  I ordered two lots of gold and pearl flotsam to fill in the gaps which are kind of huge.  I hadn't really intended to do it this large but it's completely impossible without the foam.  unless of course you have skills.  I don't have skills so I bought some foam and some floral tape and wire and stem wire and probably I should buy some glue.  and paint.  and maybe real flowers.  let me know what you think?

"I don't know if i should give bullets to a woman with a pimple"

it is thursday.  I am in the middle of my vacation and I have accomplished almost nothing on my list.  Is that a good sign for a vacation or a bad one?  We've been reading a lot and making brownies and then eating them so it's all good.  Yesterday I started looking for some post cards I might want to use for my wedding some way and I opened every box I own.  I didn't find them, I found three bags of things to give away to goodwill and cleaned out a lot of space for beets.  31 quarts of beets, 12 pints of pickles, 28 quarts of beans.  It will come as a surprise to no one that i see green beans and beets when i close my eyes.

I did find those postcards.  They were exactly two feet from me in a box that i thought i checked already.  I guess it was so cathartic to donate all that other stuff that I'm just relieved to find the cards.  Now I have to figure out how to use them.  I have two hundred or so 1970's vintage postcards of acadia.  I was thinking of glueing baby envelopes with notes in them martha stewart style or maybe having a stamp made I just have to decide if they're response cards or announcements or save the dates or what.

That's one of the things I have to decide on soon.  one of the many things.  I'm supposed to be working on my brooch bouquet this week and i have been actually.  I have a feeling this is going to be one of those projects where I go through a whole lot of supplies and eventually i'll figure out the right way to do it.  I'm still full of enthusiasm and in one of my boxes I found a cameo brooch that was my mothers so I'm trying to work that in without damaging it.  wish me luck on that one.

brooch bouquets

Here are a few samples.  Mine will probably not be that big unless i break the budget and buy a lot more pins.  I love the colorful ones but at the moment I'm attracted to only gold and pearls so probably the last on the right will look most like my finished product...at least in theory.

I have to pick up some floral wire and get blooming!

"Just because this is never going to work, there's no need to be negative."

Yesterday I got out of work a bit early and instead of rushing home to my doggies I took twenty minutes for myself at the antique store and bought vintage brooches and earrings to make my bouquet.  the tutorial says you need 60 pieces but I'm going to see how 20 works because I'm cheap.  If I can't do it under budget I'll sell all the pieces and get the adorable paper flowers on etsy.  I'm also thinking of doing pretty ribbon and cheaper pearl pins to fill in the difference but i guess we'll have to wait and see how that works.

I have a vacation coming up next week and as Rebecca reminded me I have 1000 projects to work on.  This bridal bouquet is not the most important but I also don't want to leave it till the last minute.  I'm putting a lot of time on what i'll be wearing and not much else.  I still need to find a photographer and someone to you know actually marry us, but obviously the homemade brooch bouquet is more important.

"You really need that much butter?" Screw you, frying pan."

this morning we picked blackberries.  I hope we beat the bears to the rest of them but for this morning we have enough to make muffins.  it's been a lot of work keeping up with the garden this year.  we have so many sugar snap peas to cook that i'm seriously losing my enthusiasm for them but there are still more! More! More!  I'm going to be canning tomatoes for my whole vacation because they are all going to ripen at exactly the same time and there are at least a hundred.  i know, poor me, but my vacation is shaping up to be a house wife extravaganza and not all that relaxing.

"have you seen my drawer of inappropriate starches"

A few weeks ago I set myself a very small goal of doing some pilates every single day.  Initially the goal was to do some pilates every day until my wedding, and then until my reception.  Really I need to do some pilates every day forever but that seems more possible when I break it down.  I don't always have time to do the whole regimen and I haven't expanded my pilates repertoire the way I once did, learning new challenging routines.  My real goal isn't to lose a hundred pounds, it's to keep my rotator cuff strong and stretched and to never have it seize up in pain again.  The shoulder thing has happened at least three times this year which is a truly unacceptable number, it takes weeks and weeks of pain and zero accomplishments to get over it and I'm committing myself to preventing that for a whole year because there is just too much to do.

I'm actually pretty happy with my weight and such right now.  my real priority is to stay loose and strong.  garden work has been kicking my ass this year along with the other ways I've been neglecting myself lately.  I found that I fit into a jean skirt I didn't think I could wear and a size medium t-shirt I had thought should go to goodwill so I'm pleased with the overall direction.  I've known a few brides who did nutri system or south beach for months before their weddings but we're not planning the kind of wedding that involves hundreds of people staring at you so the pressure is a bit different.  I'd love to be trim in all my photos but hell, if I ever get genuinely thin we'll just take more pictures and have a parade or something...can't live your life waiting to be thinner.

"I'm a little preoccupied. I almost killed a man in the basement."

so far today matt has watched almost all of his farm vehicles break down and he's actually taking it quite well.  The dump truck lost an axle, the skidder is leaking fuel and something very bad happened to some welds on the back hoe...he parked the bulldozer for it's own protection and is finishing the foundation work with shovels because he just can't take anymore.  I'm having a much better morning.  I cleaned everything out of my cabinets, washed the shelves, and put it all back again.  it's one of those things that shouldn't feel productive but totally does because now i can open any door without spices and brown sugar falling down on me.

tonight i'm preparing my fourth meal in a row of snow peas.  I love them but it is getting a bit old.  i am very much wishing i had frozen them all the day i picked them which is apparently imperative in their preservation.  i think i'll risk it next time though because i'm so over snow peas there aren't even words.  it is kind of a prescription for healthy eating because stir fries aren't that bad for you if you keep the soy sauce down.  I'm also using up all my noodles from the chinese market.  there might well be an expiration date but since it's in chinese i've been ignoring it but it's probably better to use it all up.

things are going well enough with keeping those pounds off.  i haven't quite gotten down to 180 where i'd like to go but i haven't ballooned back up which is a huge relief.  i'm changing little things like sugar where i don't need it and less sweet baked good for matt's snacks.  instead of cookies and cupcakes i'm making muffins and soft pretzels.  still a calorie rich snack but we both feel better if the sugar content is just a little bit lower.

i'm getting nowhere on my wedding decisions.  I just can't make up my mind on anything.  matt and i are in a bit of a limbo because of some of things happening with his business.  it could be really awesome or really, really bad.  it might turn out for the best if everything is in my name and we're not married but it hasn't come to that yet so fingers crossed for awesome.

"Girls, girls, girls, don't fight; you're both pretty."

while i was home my sisters and i were talking about marriage and weddings obviously and my sister said something that really made sense of my childhood.  She said she never knew you were supposed to like the person you were married to.  maybe that is why i've never had the wedding fever so many women my age have had.  i had never really considered marriage until our relationship became such that it seemed the more practical thing to do, we have the partnership with or without the paper...the paper allows us to be there for each other officially and it means i don't have to get rental insurance in my own house and also the presents...  it never really occurred to me that i might have permanent scars in my brain where the big fat white wedding gene should be because of my parents but it makes total sense.  fortunately i like matt, i love him too but even more important i like him and i don't expect either of us to spend 40 years being passive aggressive and staying just for the money.

"When you think about it, shouldn't you be thanking us for making mistakes?"

My sister says that planning a wedding is one of the top five stressful life events, up there with losing a spouse and moving.  So that is the reason i haven't gotten anything done this weekend.  Actually the wedding stuff is pretty minimal in far as actually doing work, we just have a lot of decisions to make.  I just got distracted looking for farms to rent as wedding venues so we don't have to bust ass on our own by next summer.  It's hard to decide if we're more interested in being lazy or cheap.  Hard call.  Still a terrible excuse for not getting the dishes done.

"have you seen my drawer of inappropriate starches"

I've eaten like a ridiculous amount of chocolate today.  I couldn't muster enthusiasm for any of my chores so I ate chocolate instead.  Mostly lately that hasn't been a problem but today I'm just tired of traveling and being behind on my chores and i should be using today to catch up on said chores but i just can't.  which means i'll have to do it all tomorrow.  I was talking to my sister on the phone and she said that planning a wedding was one of the most stressful things you can ever do, up there with moving and losing a spouse.  That doesn't really seem like a reasonable excuse for my laziness and chocolate scoffing but i'll take it.  

"Actually I'm gonna wait until the bus stops and then I'll get off."

So when I told my dad we were going to get married he said "oh, ok" so I put it on facebook to get some positive feedback and give him an opportunity to see how to respond from other people.  I guess we'll see how that goes.  I guess it could be worse, he could have been really mad or something.  In that light I guess it's really positive that he was indifferent.  

Right now I'm supposed to be washing dishes but instead i wrote a big long thing about how matt's parents want us to share our garden with his brother for no good reason.  I guess they need the help but they have plenty of land and you know, dirt, so in theory if they were hungry they could like bust their own asses and plant a garden.  We plant a lot of food so we can have it all winter or sell it to feed the chickens.  We don't plant all those seeds so other people can have cable and nights out.  And you know, she throws away anything that's in her freezer too long and I didn't break my legs planting seeds so someone can throw away our food.  whoops, i did it again.  Matt's parents think we should grow a bigger garden so we can share.  no no no, I'm not killing myself forever for ungrateful assholes.  And that's why we aren't sharing our news with them just yet.  

"Yeah well, she's got two jobs. She's a pastry chef and a sniper."

I don't know how much I weigh.  not because it's like zen to let that shit go but because I can't bend my neck enough to see the numbers.  I'd love to know what the scale says but i'd also like to be able to bend my neck and move my arm and if i did pilates like a grown up i could.  Dr. internet diagnosed me with rotator cuff tendonitis which makes complete sense and the only way to avoid it is to keep the rotator cuff strong...you know...with exercise and stretching and I always screw it up.  Forever means forever not until i don't feel like it anymore.  I'm also going to get back in to the tracy anderson arm exercises because they are hard core with the lateral raises which are great for the rotator cuff.

If you haven't already, head over to rebecca's and check out her article for digital running, she's in the running for a column she'd be great for so go read and like it with the facebook tag if you love it!

another pound bites the dust!

I'm another pound down and I'm so thrilled.  I was really worried I'd be stuck at my plateau forever, gaining a little and fighting to get back down and and never really getting lower.  It's really frustrating and its so hard to ignore the fact that you aren't getting anywhere but you have to keep going on like it doesn't matter.  I don't know if it's the stress of the building or the wedding or whatever but I'm actually not finding it difficult at all to not eat everything in the house.  I also didn't bake any cookies or cakes this week which I'm sure helped with the incidental calories.

I've been working really hard on only eating when I'm hungry but it's definitely easier to cut the calories when there aren't cookies just hanging around.  one here and one there isn't the end of the world, but if its not part of a plan or a genuine desire...I just don't want to keep on eating stuff because it's there and not taking responsibility for that.  I feel really great the way things are going now and I don't want to jeopardize that feeling.

"your seed has no legal rights"

So, who wants to hear my wedding plans?  I can't do too much a. because it's way too early and b. because we haven't received a date or confirmation from our venue yet.  and c. we're also trying to build a house so we have a lot on our plates.

Our plan right now is to actually wed on the 7th anniversary of our first date.  This is in March and inconvenient to all so we'll have our private wedding and then in July we'll have our large family reception.  We're hoping to host the reception at a little visited part of the national park that has a large covered picnic area and a building we could use should the weather be truly awful.  The plan is to have lemonade and lawn games and sandwiches and cupcakes.  We'd like to put up volleyball nets and play kickball and hire an ice cream truck.  If it rains we're absolutely screwed because all I can think of is wii karaoke or one hundred sets of monopoly...better plan b ideas are very much welcome.

I'm looking at very casual white dresses and jewelry online and trying really hard not to think about losing weight by march.  I'm simply carrying on with what I'm doing diet and exercise wise and trying to keep up with my slow progress.  I don't want to get to that place where you're counting the weeks and the pounds and ordering a size 8 dress because you spent weeks doing fat math and avoiding reality.

"If her legs worked you'd like Bunty"

Last weekend we planted our garden and it's taken all week to get my legs back.  I did something so horrible to my hamstrings I don't even have words to describe it.  Old I guess, that's the word.  Thirty is kicking my ass.  It took an entire week to stretch the tight out of those muscles, literally because it's now Saturday and it still smarts just a little when I sit down.

Exercise and life in general has been on hold while I try to heal.  We've still been walking because if we don't the dogs walk around the house with picket signs but that's the limit of physical activity right now.  Which is a shame because it's finally beautiful here and we have a house to build and pounds to lose and a wedding to plan.  There is a lot of change going on here and not being able to walk is awful.  On one of our walks the dogs were barking and I thought it that's a bear I'm going to have to play dead because I'm halfway there.  I watched this show recently and the people were talking about their bodies betraying them and of course they all had television cancer but still it's mind blowing when you realize you can't even walk briskly away from the scary imaginary bear.