I've posted about my new favorite computer program: Adobe Lightroom. I LOVE this program. It can take a "meh" picture and turn it into a masterpiece. Now, if only I could afford a really nice camera.... So, I just thought I'd share some of the fun I've been having with Lightroom recently. Some amateur attempts at photo editing... enjoy!
My James Before:
And... After:
My Isabella Before:
And... After:
Can you believe Isabella is already a year old? That picture is from her first birthday party. She was a cutie!
The picture of James is from picking pumpkins this year - he's already three!
"So how's married life?" I love that question, because then I get to dwell on the fact that I'm married for a few minutes out of my day! I'm sure the question will get old, but for now I'm going to bask in all of my newlywed glory.
The Good. If I said everything about being married is good, I would be a liar, and I don't like lying. I'm not going to sugarcoat things and say that marriage life is all rainbows and puppies. It definitely has its ups and downs. Sometimes its more down than up, but mostly its more up than down. I have to remember to cherish these times because they don't last forever. But, all in all, I LOVE being married. I love taking care of my own house. Cleaning, doing laundry, its all so fulfilling! I'm sure it will get old after a while, but knowing that I'm doing my job as a wife is such an awesome feeling. I also love the freedom we have. We are accountable to each other now. We go where we want when we want and our only real responsibility is our babies! Don't get me wrong, we definitely try and spend time with out families on a regular basis, but for me, never having lived away from home, I feel very liberated! I love not having so say goodbye to Rob every night, going to bed with him, waking up next to him. It's all so wonderful! So I could go on and on with all of this sappy stuff that your are probably ready to vomit at, but I'm gonna move on...
The Bad. Ah... the bad. Did I ever mention how when I said my vows, I wasn't just agreeing to marry Rob, but all of his lovely friends too? Yes, I sometimes feel like the housekeeper for a frat house. Okay, a very tame frat house, but a house full of boys nonetheless. It's fun, sometimes. Others, it can be slightly annoying. Rob and I have had many a discussion regarding "us" time. But, marriage is a learning experience. We have to work hard on it and we are perfecting it every day.
Then, there's the business. Rob is definitely the entreprenurial type. He is desperately searching for a way out of the 9-5 business world. Can you blame him? Who doesn't wish they didn't have to wake up to an alarm and report to a boss everyday? Rob has wanted to start his own business since I've known him. So this summer has been a roller coaster of business meetings, loan applications, and me sitting on the edge of my seat with butterflies in my stomach at the thought of the bank putting a lein on my beloved house. Is scared a good word? I think so. Rob won't rest until he's tried. Whether he succeeds (please, God, let him succeed) or fails, I'll be standing here next to him.
The Ugly. They grow them big out here. Spiders that is. From here on out I will refer to these disgusting eight-legged creatures as just that creatures. Because, I can't stand to even look at the word. It grosses me out. I've mentioned before my ridiculous fear for creatures. If I get surprised by one, I'll hyperventilate. So, living here has been a bit trying. Our house was built in a subdivision that used to be a farm field. Our house is somewhat alone over here in the new part and there is still a lot of open land. All of this land allows for unprecedented growth of creatures. They are large. Disgustingly large. Frightenlingly large. Rob stepped on a wolf creature outside our garage that was about the size of the palm of my hand. Luckily we have a pest shield system that seems to work well and we haven't found any inside yet. But, apparently Satan has discovered this little weakness of mine and is taunting me with it. I don't like it. I don't like it at all.
The Cute! So, let's end this on a high note, shall we? Another thing I love about being married? My family. My own little family. Me, Rob, and the kids. My babies. They're the best! I love them and they have been awesome! Remember my post on them peeing in the house. I've discovered a solution that works. I pick up their food and water! They've only pooped in the house once or twice since then and haven't peed! Squee! My life is now perfect! Just look at Dudley, who can deny a face like that?
My beautiful niece was baptised yesterday. I wanted to share some pictures!
This is my attempt at making some of her pictures look better in Adobe Lightroom. I've shown you some pictures I played with in here before, but I was really excited to see what I could do with Isabella.
Some of them are the best in quality, but I tried!
I wanted to make a post about my shower a couple of weeks ago so, even though it's a little late, here you go!
This was thrown by my awesome future mother-in-law, Ginger, Rob's Aunt Nina, and his Aunt Mari. They did such a great job, I was just so overwhelmed! I really wish I wasn't so sick! Hopefully I covered it up well...
Me and the girls, from left to right: Me, Valerie, Katie (and baby!), Sam, and Ashley
My beautiful cake, courtesy of Aunt Mari
The Loot... ;o)
Our new rug!
Dishes! Woo-hoo! No more styrofoam!
One beloved pot. I also got a skillet. I'm currently coveting the set on our registry...
An afghan lovingly made my mom. :o)
Me and the moms!
And of course, the real star of the show... Isabella! She is being held by aunt Deanna here...
And, since this post is somewhat wedding related... mom and I exposed our green thumbs today and made the flower pots to decorate the front entrance of the church today. I think they turned out gorgeous!
Yes, as many of you know, we experienced an earthquake this morning. I awoke to the shaking this morning at about 4:30 when a stuffed animal on a shelf above my bed fell on my head. Let me tell you it was a very strange sensation. The house was literally shaking back and forth as if someone put it on rollers and was jostling it. It wasn't very strong, but it made some things in my room rattle and woke most of the family from a dead sleep.
Let me tell you, though this was a scary thing. The first thing that popped into my head, after the initial "Is this an earthquake?" reaction was my beloved new house. I was thinking, "This is it. This is the beginning of the big earthquake on the New Madrid they've been talking about for 50 years. Oh goodness, if something happens to my house I have to fork out 15% of what it's insured for as a deductible. We can't afford that! Where are we going to live? Okay, Stephanie, just calm down. Pray." 45 minutes later I made it back to sleep and was relieved this morning when I found out the epicenter was in Illinois and it wasn't the "Big One" scientists have been predicting for ages now. Phew!
Now I can officially say I know what an earthquake feels like. Strange, very strange indeed.
Oh, and the etc. part of the title of this post is just that I FINALLY ordered my garter from The Gartermaker. It will be mint green with a lavender bow. I'm very excited to see it!
This past week has been crazy! I'm going to go through it step by step, so prepare yourself for a gigantic post!
Going back to last Saturday... Rob and I's wonderful friends Chris and Samantha got married! It was beautiful! The wedding was at St. Peter Church in St. Charles and the reception was at the Foundry Art Center, definitely a cool place. I'll let the pictures do the talking, though...
Sam's SIX flowergirls and FOUR ringbearers! There was a lot of cuteness walking down that aisle!
Sam with Jenn (left) and Lisa (right) her bridesmaids
Cutting the cake!
Beautiful bouquets! There was a red rose in each of their bouquets in memory of our dear friend Meghan who died in a car accident last year.
Rob and I with Chris and Sam
Sunday I got to see another good friend again. I hadn't seen her in almost a year and she's pregnant! Well, she must be, considering it was her baby shower. It was adorable. She's a bit of a country girl and it was a camping theme with camouflage and even a fake campfire. It was so much fun! She is adorable too. Just makes me all the more jealous of pregnant ladies! I'm definitely not having kids for a long time though, so don't get any ideas!
Last week started the race to get my homework done. I'm wanting to finish all of my "pre-assigned" stuff for school so I don't have to think about it anymore. I didn't do too bad, but I had a LOT to do, so I was good and didn't blog while I was doing homework. It was tough though!
Last Friday I went to the Drunken Fish for the first time with Chris and Sam and Jennifer. It was so good to get together with them and talk about her wedding and mine coming up! I'm so jealous right now! I want to be married.... Sigh... soon enough! So the Drunken Fish was not at all what I expected. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but for some reason I was disappointed. The food was pretty good. I didn't get Sushi since I've yet to bring myself to try it, but I got a beef noodle bowl which was fabulous. I have to say, though, I found the restaurant to be a little dirty in general - hidden by the low lighting. It was small and I had a hard time understanding our waitress, but they served Pepsi, which made me pretty happy... :o)
On Saturday I continued the race to finish the homework before going to the City Museum for Ryan's birthday. This was a definitely fun, but I have my reservations. So this place is supposed to be a big playground for adults (well, kids too) right? Cool, I can't remember what Tumble Drum was like, time to relive my inner kiddo. Enter me, ready to play. So, I'm feeling pretty brave, going up really high and crawling through tubes I'm way to big for while my knees are crying and decide to follow the crowd. Big mistake. They all decide to go into a tunnel to which we have no idea where it leads, nor what comes after the "descent." After the "descent" is a VERY dark, VERY narrow, VERY short tunnel that was NEVER ENDING. I'm not really a claustrophobic and not really afraid of the dark, I mean I tend to concentrate more on spiders in the dark, small places than the places being small and dark. Not this place. It was terrifying. Well, take a look for yourself: this is lit up by a flash, imagine it pitch black. Yeah, not cool at all. Especially when the floor decided to go up and make the dark, small tunnel even smaller. Yeah, wow. Warning for future visitors - don't descend the thing that looks like a well. Its super scary. But I'll share some other fun pictures from the night as well...
Eric serenading Ryan on the piano...
Denny and Rob with the creepy mask...
The gigantic kaleidescope
Here it is. THE HOLE. Yeah, imagine it pitch black, totally not cool.
Ryan the birthday boy and his girlfriend Stephanie, they are so cute!
On Sunday I had a shower! But, first let me backtrack to Saturday night after the City Museum. Cue barfing. Yup, all night. Good old mother nature decided to bestow upon me the gift of the stomach flu the night before the shower I've been looking forward to for weeks. Come Sunday morning I was feeling a little weak and slightly nauseas, but I forced down some applesauce and put on a happy face before heading to the shower. Once at the shower, I was okay. I didn't get to enjoy the lunch at Java G's but I got a lot of awesome gifts and got to see some family I hadn't seen in a while! Say a little prayer for Rob's Aunt Billie though. She passed out when the shower was ending and hit her head on a table. We had to call and ambulance and it was definitely a scary moment. From what I understand she is doing fine now, but they are running tests to figure out why it happened.
So concludes my week of chaos... now we are two months from the wedding! Let the two months of chaos begin! I have a bunch of stuff to do still, but everything is coming together now and I can't wait! By the way, I'm still working on the house...
For my wedding addicted readers, or, my recovering wedding addicted readers, I thought I'd make a post about the progress with the wedding. After sitting idle for quite a while with wedding stuff, it's kind of exciting that I've finally reached a point where I am a little more active in the wedding planning process. Why? Because I'm almost two months away!! 10 weeks! Time flies so fast. I can't believe that I've been engaged for a year and a half. But, through it all, I still can't wait for it to be here!
Saturday, my lovely friend Sam is getting married which is making it all the more real for me. I'm so happy too that mother nature has decided to give the world some relief from her incessant goal of recreating the flood that only Noah survived to give her the perfect spring day. 65 degrees and sunny! Woo-hoo! Who could have asked for a better day? I'll definitely be back with pictures of this event next week!
Back to my wedding... I mailed out invitations today! But, this seemingly joyous experience has been marred forever by the US Post Office's decision to charge me for the extra 0.1 oz. that my invitations weigh. That's right, remember my earlier post showing a picture of my lovely invitations with their nice purple stamps sitting so pleasantly in the corner? Yup, they are now accompanied by a lovely 17 cent stamp showing the most beautiful, and majestic, of animals. A ram. Yes, you heard me right, a ram. See for yourself...
Now, don't get me wrong. I think I've been pretty good about not flipping out about stuff with the wedding. I mean, I was fully prepared to buy the American flag stamps because I thought the pretty purple ones cost more. But, I'll admit that after all the work I put into the invites and how perfect they looked when I was finished, I was thoroughly disappointed when they weighed in at 1.1 oz requiring me to fork out another 17 cents a piece on ugly stamps to ruin my perfect invitations. Regardless, I'm so happy to have crossed this milestone! Invitations are out! Let's hope the RSVP's start rolling in! And for those of you near and dear to me reading this, yes, I need a response from you even if you think I know you're coming! I already have my mom and dad's, yes, I have a respond card from those I live with, that means I need one from you too!
Next. I had my first dress fitting last week! It went awesome! While I was there, I picked up several of the bridesmaids dresses and saw the flowergirl dresses! They look awesome! The wedding will be gorgeous. Check out this post and this post to see the dresses...
Today, I discussed the ceremony music with Russell. This is something that has kind of sat in the back of my head for a long time. Much to the disappointment of my dear mom, who dreamed of me walking down the aisle to the Bridal March... I don't think that's what we'll be using. I'm not sure but here's what I've got it narrowed down to for the day. For before the ceremony while the guests are finding seats, I'll be playing a selection of songs from my all time favorite movie, Pride & Prejudice.
If you haven't seen this movie, see it. And, while you're watching it, listen to the music! It is gorgeous!!! For the processional I've got it narrowed down to three:
I think all would be awesome. We'll see what Rob says....
The recessional will be a surprise though!
Finally, Rob and I have to set up our pre-marital "counseling" with our pastor. I'm kinda nervous about this. Obviously, I have no idea what to expect. I hate not knowing what to expect. I suppose it must be done though...
I'll leave you with some wedding related funnies tonight...
I love babies! So, this post is devoted to all of the babies in my life, furry and not so furry :o)
The second (human) love of my life: James. I've decided this will be the hardest part of getting married. James lives with my family right now and the thought of moving out, not being able to give him a hug and a kiss every day and telling him goodnight is horrifying. I will get through this, but nonetheless, he's my the reason for my love of being an aunt.
Isabella is very quickly making her own little home in my heart right next to James. At five months old she weighs in at a whopping 18 pounds of pure adorable chunky beautifulness. How can you deny this face? How can you deny that pudge? Ahhh...
And as for furry babies? We have plenty of that kind of cuteness to go around too!
Ahhh... I love my babies.
And, just because I have so many cute pictures to share, here are a few more:
James is currently potty training so he must entertain himself while waiting... don't worry, it's clean.
This is James in his tux for the wedding! Is he not adorable? He runs around the house saying, "I handsome." I love it.
And, last but certainly not least, a little sneak peak at the post to come...
I just married the love of my life Rob! I'm figuring out what it means to be a wife and homeowner as we just moved into our newly-built first house. I'm trying my best to make it look like a home. I think I've been pretty successful... I love to spend time with my puppies, Oliver and Dudley and I love doting on my adorable nephew, James and niece, Isabella. I'm a full time student in the process of getting a bachelor's in education and am in love with life!
Me and the girls, from left to right: Me, Valerie, Katie (and baby!), Sam, and Ashley
My beautiful cake, courtesy of Aunt Mari
The Loot... ;o)
Our new rug!
Dishes! Woo-hoo! No more styrofoam!
One beloved pot. I also got a skillet. I'm currently coveting the set on our registry...
An afghan lovingly made my mom. :o)
Me and the moms!
And of course, the real star of the show... Isabella! She is being held by aunt Deanna here...
Sam's SIX flowergirls and FOUR ringbearers! There was a lot of cuteness walking down that aisle!
Sam with Jenn (left) and Lisa (right) her bridesmaids
Cutting the cake!
Beautiful bouquets! There was a red rose in each of their bouquets in memory of our dear friend Meghan who died in a car accident last year.
Rob and I with Chris and Sam
Eric serenading Ryan on the piano...
Denny and Rob with the creepy mask...
The gigantic kaleidescope
Here it is. THE HOLE. Yeah, imagine it pitch black, totally not cool.
Ryan the birthday boy and his girlfriend Stephanie, they are so cute!
If you haven't seen this movie, see it. And, while you're watching it, listen to the music! It is gorgeous!!! For the processional I've got it narrowed down to three:
Isabella is very quickly making her own little home in my heart right next to James. At five months old she weighs in at a whopping 18 pounds of pure adorable chunky beautifulness. How can you deny this face? How can you deny that pudge? Ahhh...
And as for furry babies? We have plenty of that kind of cuteness to go around too!
Ahhh... I love my babies.
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