4 Days and Counting

It's really rather incredible to be honest...I'm not sure how time has gone by so fast. I have today, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday left. I leave so early on Sunday morning that it hardly counts as being a day. So here I am...four days left at home in the US. Yikes! It's crazy to think that next week I'll be in Mexico taking classes and living with my "new" family.

The last few days have been a blur of getting ready. I was really rather unprepared, but things are starting to get more under control. I spent most of Monday dealing with Michigan State University's Office of Financial Aid. In general, summer financial aid refunds aren't processed until 10 days before classes start. Well, Friday was the 10 day mark and I still had heard nothing about when I would be receiving my refund. Talk about having me sweating with worry! I had already had to defer paying for the program and I still had no idea when I would be getting the money!! Monday came around and I was finally tired of waiting to get an e-mail back, I called the office and talked directly to someone there. Of course there had to be a hitch though...one of my loans hadn't been released yet. So I had to call someone else, who of course wasn't there, and leave a message. By the time that 3 pm came around I was sick of waiting for them to call me back and ended up just driving over to campus to see if I could get it to work out in person. Lo and behold by the time I got there everything was already worked out and I just had to pick up the check and race to the bank to get it deposited, get a cashiers check to pay my bill, and get it in the mail. Whew! At least that major hurdle got tackled. It's pretty hard to go on a trip without the money that you were expecting.

Tuesday started off with a Dr's appointment. I needed to make sure that I had enough of my prescriptions on hand to last the 2 months plus extra written prescriptions to prove that they were mine. She also suggested that I get a Hepatitis A shot just to be safe since Mexico and Central America are known to have produce infected with the disease (just what I wanted to hear...). Then I went home and worked on figuring out what I still needed to get for the trip....and oh boy was it quite a list!! I was looking through all of the suggested items to take and I was really surprised by how much I still needed to get. After Nathan got out of work at 5 we started tackling my ridiculously long (and expensive) list. We managed to pause long enough to eat dinner at Outback and managed to make it home by 11. Haha...yep, we were shopping for at least 5 hours and we hadn't found everything that we needed!!

This morning we went to the bank again and tackled the rest of the shopping list before Nathan went into work for an evening shift. There are only 2 or 3 things left that I need to pick up so I'm feeling pretty good about that at least. I have no idea how I'm going to pack for 2 months with just 1 checked bag, 1 carry on, and my personal item. It's a mystery that I'll fill you all in on once I figure it out myself! The next four days are guaranteed going to be crazy busy and a little bittersweet. Even though I'm setting off on an adventure that I'm sure I'll enjoy, I'm sad to be leaving my home and fiancé.

DIY Project Wine Glass Lamps

We have settled on another DIY project for the wedding. Just having candles on the tables seemed too plain, so I've been looking around at other ideas to make our table lighting more personal and interesting. The winning idea was a candle holder that was a lamp made from a wine glass and a paper shade. I found the original idea and template here. We immediately went to the Dollar Tree and purchased 20 wine glasses for $1 each. They are actually rather nice wine glasses. Large and solid.

In retrospect, we should have made a sample shade and tried it on the wine glasses instead of buying the wine glasses first. Our lovely large wine glasses were just TOO big for the template provided on the website. So we either had to find a way to make it work or scrap the project all together since I wasn't willing to pay more than a dollar per glass. Of course we ended up altering the patterns!!

It was WAY more difficult than I thought it would be to make the pattern work. I should have just taken it to a printing shop and had them enlarge it, but instead I played around with my home printer for a couple of hours. In the end I managed to make the pattern work, but it was beyond frustrating. My printer only wanted to print the picture in standard picture sizes, it needed to be bigger than what would fit on a standard sheet of paper so it had to be printed on two sheets, and I'm not particularly familiar with any photo editing software. Luckily I finally managed to figure it out though! Here is what our final template ended up looking like.

I later put this template onto cardstock to make it more durable. Then proceeded to cut out a few lampshades  of vellum to test it out. Here is what our first tea light candle lamps looked like.

Sorry for the poor picture quality; these were taken on my phone. As you can see, the size is almost perfect. I do wish that I could have made the pattern a little bigger so that less of the wine glass showed, but I think that they look pretty nice. As you can see, we punched out cherry blossoms along the bottom of the lamp shade to add some personality. Hopefully our guests will be impressed with this creative little idea....I definitely think that they are rather cute myself!

Update on Wedding Centerpieces

So our centerpieces are coming along rather well. We have one complete mock-up put together and a bunch of flowers completely finished that are just waiting to be put on branches. We have definitely come quite a ways from our first flowers.

As you can see, these flowers look a lot better than the ones in the first post about this project and they are completed (these ones have centers).

Like I said, we have one complete set of branches done. However, we are still trying to figure out what the best vase would be. I am partial to the simplicity of a cylindrical vase. Most of them come in diameters that are just too wide though. We would have to make a lot of branches to fill them. So far we have tried two vases. Here's what they look like:

I am personally partial to the vase that is frosted white. We found it at Target for only $3 (I would post a link, but it doesn't appear to be on their website). I like the look of the white vase better. It's still a little wider than we'd like, but it looks pretty good so far.

Now we just have to make 10 or so more of these guys and we'll be done with this project. Haha...I don't even want to think about how many flowers that would actually equate to. I'll leave this post with a picture of Nathan folding flowers...I am so lucky to have a fiancé who actively participates in these sorts of projects!

Wedding Website

As soon as we realized that people did wedding websites, Nathan and I knew that we wanted one. We are both rather tech savvy people and really loved the idea of having a website dedicated to us and our wedding. So, it was just the simple matter of finding which website to use. Haha...simple? Yeah right. 

There are a shockingly large number of wedding website providers. Now, if we had just made a website with the first provider we found and not looked any further we probably would have still been happy with a free site. However, the more we looked...the more features we realized we wanted. In the end, our list of requirements looked a lot like this:

• Unlimited Storage: a lot of the free websites had great features but only 50 or 100 mb worth of storage. I don't know about anyone else, but a lot of my pictures are 3-4 mb each, so that just wasn't going to cut it. We wanted to be able to have real photo albums on our site.
• An RSVP Function: While we will obviously still be sending out formal invitations with cards for people to return, we wanted people to have the option of doing it online instead. It will make our life a lot easier to keep track of people on the computers rather than sorting through and endless supply of paper responses. Surely some of our relatives won't have the slightest clue about how to even access the site, but it was still something we wanted to have available.
• Gift Registry: Most websites (free or paid) did have this page available, however, I still consider it a must have. It is considered rather impolite to put that sort of information directly on an invitation. So it was really hard to decide how to let people know where we will be registered. This way the information is just included as part of the wide variety of other things on our wedding website. It's not rude to include a website that happens to have registry information on an invitation or save the date...which is rather silly when you think about it, but that's just the way it is I suppose.
• Custom Domain Name: This wasn't even something that I had thought about before I began researching websites in earnest. Lots of websites offer this feature for an additional fee. The more we thought about it, the more that we decided it was worth paying for...a short/simple domain name clearly makes more sense when you think about printing save the date cards and invitations. It looks better and will actually fit (always a plus).

So, with these key features in mind...we started to seriously look around. I must have looked at 20 or more websites that allowed you to create your own website. Just when I thought that I had found "the one," I'd realize that it had limited storage space even after you paid to upgrade it or that there was no easy way to get a custom domain name. The biggest problem was finding a website with unlimited storage space that didn't cost over $100 to have the website up and running for a year. 

FINALLY, after browsing websites for hours on end, I came across Forever Wedding Websites. It had all of the features that we wanted and would only cost $60 for a whole year. While that might seem like quite a bit compared to the free options, it's important to remember that the wedding website was very important to us and that we really wanted unlimited storage and a custom domain name. Both of which would cost money no matter where we wanted the site from. It also didn't hurt that they had a cherry blossom theme available. 

Right now we are still using the 7 day free trial to make sure that it is EXACTLY what we want. Last night we had some technical difficulties with it and I was ready to throw in the towel. It is not super easy to update the site compared to others that I tried...but I have learned that it is doable. I think that this will end up being our final site. Once we spend some time working with it, I'm sure it will turn out beautifully. So far it's very attractive...the only complaint that I have is that there isn't an easy preview option. Instead you have to open up the site to see how it looks. Other than that though it has been going well. Now I just have to think about how to describe myself, our story, the day he proposed, our wedding party......you get the point! We still don't have all the details set yet, such as time and place...so our website will be incomplete for a little while yet. However, it's exciting to have it started!!!

Study Abroad

  So I'm finally getting around to writing about my study abroad trip. In less than one month, June 13th to be exact, I will be on my way to study in Mexico. I will be living in the city of Guanajuato, Mexico. As you can see from the map below, it is located in Central Mexico. It is a little over 200 miles northwest of Mexico City. It is a rather ideal location to be traveling to right now as far as Mexico is concerned. It is quite a distance away from all of the border violence and it is not too close to Mexico City either.

Guanajuato is a culturally and historically rich city. The roots of Mexico's independence can be traced to Guanajuato and the silver mines in that region have always been rather famous. Much of the architecture in the city comes from the Colonial era and the Spanish influence is very strong. The city is also famous for it's small winding alleys and roads as well as its underground tunnels. 

On a more personal note. I will be part of the CIC Study Abroad Program in Mexico. The program specific information can be found by going to the last link and looking through the website. We will be staying with Mexican families in their homes and I will also be taking 6 credits worth of classes. I could have taken nine, but at this point in time in my college career, I don't think there's any reason to try to do too much. I'd really like to be able to enjoy the adventure a little and not have to worry too much about classes. 

Not sure what else to say at the moment. I am really utterly unprepared for the whole experience and not entirely sure that I'm excited about it...but it's something that I need to do and I'm sure that I'll have lots of great memories when it's over. I think the excitement will start to set in within the next couple of weeks and it should start feeling real soon. After all, I have a lot of preparing to do before I leave!!

Engagement Photos!!!

Nathan and I made the long 8 hour trip to Iron Mountain this past weekend to have our engagement photos taken. I had already bought 2 new dresses for the occasion and we spent an hour or so on Thursday night picking out some more casual outfits that "matched" as well. We left bright and early on Friday morning. Nathan's parents were also in the Upper Peninsula on vacation and wanted to meet my parents while they were there, so we had to arrive on time for dinner!

Let's just say that the weather left a lot to be desired! It was raining in Lansing (where we live now) when we left, which is never a great omen for a long car trip. By the time we reached Iron Mountain, the rain had turned into snow. Yes...seriously...SNOW! Only in Michigan can it be 75 degrees out all week and snow several days later in May.

At this point in time we were getting rather worried. After all, our wardrobe for our outdoor photo shoot consisted of mostly spring dresses and t-shirts. We kept hoping and praying that the snow wouldn't stick, but when we woke up on Saturday morning (the day of our photo shoot) and saw the ground covered in snow, we knew we were in trouble! Luckily for us, our fantastic photographer Caroline of Creative Photos by Caroline was fantastically flexible about the whole thing and rescheduled for Sunday morning, even though it was Mother's Day. We were so unbelievably grateful!!

Sunday came around and the snow had all melted. The temperature hovered around the low to mid 50s, but we were so happy that it didn't even feel that cold! Caroline took our photos at Piers Gorge, the same place that we got engaged at one month ago. It was really meaningful for us and we are looking forward to being able to see the photos later on this week. For now, here are the sneak peeks that she posted on her facebook fanpage.

Wedding Centerpiece Project

So, rather than talk about any of the things that I planned to. I've decided to write about a DIY project that I'm really excited about!




I've been in love with cherry blossoms for about a year now. They are incredibly beautiful, meaningful flowers. For example, in China they often symbolize feminine beauty, purity, and love. In Japan, they are said to represent the transient nature of life. Either way, they are amazingly beautiful flowers and Nathan (my fiancé) and I have decided to incorporate them into our wedding.

Unfortunately, the sakura tree only blossoms for a couple of weeks a year. Thus, the chance of being able to have actual cherry blossoms in our floral arrangements is pretty slim. Even if we did have our wedding during the right time of year, it would be very, very pricey to buy enough of the flowers to serve as centerpieces. Due to this, I was searching for an alternate way to incorporate cherry blossoms and found this fantastic DIY project.



These centerpieces are made of origami flowers glued onto dried willow branches. I think they are absolutely gorgeous! They will also serve as a very personal touch to our wedding. Instructions for how to make these unique centerpieces can be found here.

Today was our first attempts at making the flowers and, overall, they turned out pretty well. Here is a picture of the first flowers that we made tonight.



They are comparable to the flowers from the instructions at step 26. We've gotten a little better at making them since we first started and I'm pretty excited about this project. It actually seems like something that we will be able to do and make look great. I will post about our progress again as soon as we have a mock-up available. I hope everyone likes the idea. I'm sure that our guests will be impressed!