Hello? Anyone still here?

Wow. Has it really been 3 months? Seriously? Damn. I kinda suck at this.

Well... Hmmm... Now what?

I guess I should just jump right back in? Probably. Ned and I are trying to get moving again on the wedding stuff. We have 8 months to go and a lot to get done in that time.

In the last three months, we have done....nothing....absolutely nothing. Well, nothing really wedding related. We had an amazing engagement party, but other than that, nothing. We've just kinda put the wedding on the back burner. Not really a good idea if you ask me, but sometimes those things happen.

We had Ned's father here for a visit and during that time we celebrated our engagement with our amazing family and friends. Halloween came and went and I didn't really celebrate. That was followed by a wonderful Thanksgiving, again, with amazing family and friends. Really, it was one of the best Thanksgivings ever. At the beginning of December I took a week vacation down in Miami/Key West with Nadine who was visiting from Austria. We had an amazing time and she said yes when I asked her to be a bridesmaid. We both cried and it was a super sweet moment (followed by a lot of partying). Christmas seemed like a mad rush. I really didn't get much of anything done. If Ned hadn't taken over, I don't think anyone in the family would have gotten gifts. He really pulled everything together. And in the end, we celebrated the new year with Robyn and her husband, Pat, playing games and having a lot of laughs.

It was an amazing year. I only hope 2010 can live up to the legacy left by 2009. And with the wedding coming up, Im betting it can. It's going to be one beautiful day. I just hope it doesn't go by as fast as the engagement party did. The whole day/night was a blur. It was so much fun, but I felt like I didn't even get to talk to everyone or thank everyone for coming. I was busy in the kitchen with Robyn for most of the day and even a bit during the party. The food was so amazing and went so fast that we actually had to throw more together. (Good thing I had extras in the fridge just waiting to go.) But overall, it was such a beautiful time.

The engagement party was a cupcake theme with the phrase "Love is Sweet". I not only made sweet cupcakes, but yummy savory ones too! And with tons of help from Robyn, the food was a complete success. There were 4 different types of sweet cupcakes, including a vegan version of one- chocolate with white buttercream, lemon with lemon buttercream, lemon with raspberry buttercream and pumpkin with cream cheese frosting. And then 3 different types of savory cupcakes- mac n cheese, mexican cornbread and vegan shepherds pie. I kept the color scheme from the invites going with the decorations for the party. It turned out really beautiful and I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

Here are some photos either taken by Robyn, her husband or me:


My sister, my dad and me


Pumpkin with cream cheese frosting


Chocolate with buttercream frosting


The full spread


Me in the kitchen


Shepherds pie


Vegan pumpkin with tofutti cream cheese

And here is one beautiful photo of me and Ned by my lovely friend, Ericka Bailie-Byrne.


- Gan

Card reader? Whats a card reader?

"Why dont you just use the card reader?" he asked. Doh! The card reader! Why didnt I think of that? Thats how I get my photos off of my D50, of course it would work with my Coolpix too.

Before we left for Chicago, I was trying to find a way to get my photos of our engagement party invites off of my point-n-shoot. For the life of me, I could not figure out how to do it. For some reason when I plugged the cable from the cam into the laptop, the laptop wouldnt recognize it. The Eye-Fi card software is not loaded on this laptop either. I was getting so frustrated and finally decided to give up. Thats until my lovely Ned came home and suggested the most basic of ideas. I still did not get time to post the pictures before we left, but I would like to share them now.

Since Ned purchased my lovely engagement ring and my birthday necklace (that I wore for our engagement photos) from Tiffany & Co, I wanted to incorporate that beautiful blue color. I also decided on fuchsia and chocolate brown. I started out by going to the Paper Depot in Minneapolis (their website seems to be down) to get inspiration as I really wasnt quite sure what I wanted the invites to look like. I decided on a half sheet of Tiffany blue cardstock overlapped by a sparkly white paper and chocolate brown envelopes. After leaving the Paper Depot, I headed over to two craft stores to get the rest of the supplies, ribbon and a paper punch. (Im a sucker for ribbon when it comes to paper crafting projects. Remember the black ribbon on my bridesmaid cards?)

Ive been wanting to have a "cupcake" theme party now for awhile. I figured our engagement party would be the perfect time. My friend Andrea sent me an adorable font called "Fling" that became the starting point for our "Love Is Sweet" cupcake invitations. I even scored a cute cupcake paper punch at one of the craft stores.

After gathering all the supplies, this is what Ned and I put together:


Supplies and the mock up I made.





Close ups





Completed stack. You can kinda see how sparkly the white paper is here.



And the chocolate colored envelopes.

Now these might not look as professional as something Andrea can create, but then again, she is a professional. :-) Im really impressed with what Ned and I accomplished and Im glad we decided to work on this together.

(Sorry for the crappy photo editing on the pictures, but there are just some things I cant share with the internet and I was kinda in a hurry when working on these.)

We currently have 30+ affirmative RSVPs for our party this Saturday. Im excited, but also a bit stressed as there is so much that needs to be done before then. Im also trying to imagine 30+ people in our house at once! I have today and tomorrow off from work and need to get my butt off this computer and get stuff done.

- Gan

Next Post: How amazing my Maid of Honor is and the wonderful things she created for me!

Everyone loves a good party

Im so excited about our upcoming engagement party. The invites are already in the mail and Ive been working on decoration and food ideas. Unlike our wedding, our engagement party even has a theme! I wish I could post some of the ideas, but I don't want to ruin any surprises for our guests that happen to read this blog. Once guests start receiving the invites Ill at least be able to post those.

I think the main reason for all the excitement for me is that this will be the first time we are having an actual party at our new house. We bought our house in March and besides having family over for a bbqs, we haven't had a real party yet. This will be sort of a combined engagment party/housewarming party. A lot of our friends haven't even seen our new home yet.

I'm also very thrilled that Ned's father will be in town from California for our party. Well, he was already planning on coming to town to visit us, so we just scheduled the party during his trip. I think it's awesome that Ned will have someone from his family here. We spend a lot of time with my family since they live so close and I think sometimes he really misses his dad. We were out in California spending time with him in July and I could really see how close those two are.

In other news, I finally started uploading some photos from our trip to Austria. For now Ill leave you with a photo of me and Ned:


And a photo of me and my bridesmaid, Nadine, and our friend Nikki:


- Gan