Heeyyy Jude...

I have never been a big Jude Law fan. When he first came on the scene and all my girlfriends were in looooove, I just didn't see the appeal. He's skinny. He's always kind of a pansy in the movies I have seen him in. He cheated on his real-life wife with a nanny (right? didn't follow that too closely b/c dur, didn't like him much).

And then I saw The Holiday. I didn't see it when it first came out for whatever reason, but it's cycling through HBO or Starz or Showtime and I caught it last weekend. Twice.

Holy lord, he was SMOKIN' in that movie! I don't think I can call myself an official Jude Law fan, but I would definitely watch The Holiday again (and again, and again...) for him.

California Love

Tomorrow, SK and I jet off to California with my parents and brother to join the rest of my mom's side of the family in a small town on the central coast, just north of Santa Barbara. That's right folks, I'm talking about Lompoc. The town made famous by Vin Diesel's incorrect pronunciation of it's name in the first Fast/Furious movie. The clod.

I was born in Lompoc and lived there until I was 5, when we headed south. I spent the next 10 years of my life in Highland, another small, relatively unknown California town. We road-tripped up to Lompoc as often as my parents could go, and even when I hit those awful teenage years where nothing is cool and everything sucks, I still loved going to see my grandparents and aunts and uncles up north.

You can fall in love at first sight with a place as with a person. ~Alec Waugh

Every year over the last weekend of June, is the Lompoc Valley Flower Festival. It's a carnival/fair games/food/live music fest all held in the park in the middle of town. There is a parade on Saturday morning, and yeah, it's about as small-time as it sounds. But we all love it and I haven't been in 10 years, so I am stoked. Also, this will be the first year my brother and I are able to get into the elusive Beer Tent that we've seen our parents and aunts and uncles stumble out of so many times before. Hell yes.

How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you - you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences - like rags and shreds of your very life. ~Katherine Mansfield

There is nothing quite so pleasant as going home again. ~Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

Bedroom Makeover

When we moved into our house 2 years ago, the first thing we did was paint. You can read all about that HERE, if you care to. We painted just about every room except our master bedroom. We figured no one else ever saw it and we were ok with the color at the time, so no reason to tear that room up too. 2 years later, and I am not ok with the color anymore.

Our room is huge. We have a king bed, 2 dressers, and Bella's kennel in there and there is STILL tons of room. The color right now is a beigey-brown, and it's just depressing. We have energy-saving screens on our windows and combined with the fact that our bedroom windows face north means our room is darker than I would like during the day. The wall color sucks any light that does make it in right out again, so I know I want to go lighter. Also, in a spontaneous burst of energy last year, I painted our master bathroom robin's egg blue and bright white so our brown room just doesn't GO.

I received a free sample of Glidden paint last year in a silvery grey color, and I am thinking I would love to put that color on our walls. Possibly paint the wall behind the headboard of our bed a bright white with some cool art hung up, or even a navy blue. I get that navy directly conflicts with my statement above about wanting to go light, but I think that with a majority of light walls, one bold accent wall wouldn't be too much. Also, we registered for white and grey bedding, so I think navy would be a good compliment to our crisp new sheets and comforter.

Here are some photos I have found of rooms I am dying over. Love them all.








Anyone ever painted a room grey?

After all, I DID get rid of the hiking boots

Like I mentioned here, I cleaned out my side of the closet on Sunday. SK still needs to work on his, but being that he has nothing to do for the next 8 weeks but watch 3 World Cup games a day, I am confident he will get it done before July 10.

Before Sunday, my side of the closet was terrible - a horrid mess of too-small, t00-old clothes and shoes that were literally collecting dust on the floor because when was the last time I wore them? Right - never. So I tossed at least 8 pairs of zapatos into the garage sale pile and now my side of the closet floor is open and clean and organized.

And distractingly bare.

I went into the closet this morning to get ready for work and my eyes immediately were drawn to the wide expanse of open, empty floor. If you know me, you know that (much to SK's chagrin) I haaaaate white space. I hate big open areas. I have this crazy desire to fill space and add STUFF in. It's an urge I am trying to curb, which is why I cleaned the closet so thoroughly and why I am focused on a bedroom redo next.

However...

Some new shoes to take up a little room on the empty floor couldn't hurt, right?

I love these! I am 5'2" and SK is 5'8" so we are not a tall people and I rarely wear heels when we go out, but I have been searching for a great pair of nude platform heels for a loooong time and I am kind of obsessed with these.

These too. They look a little more white than I would like, but I am guessing they would be more nude in person. I love peep-toes.

Oh dear. I seriously need these. The heel doesn't look too tall, and I could totally wear them with shorts and a cute top. They look nothing like any shoes currently in my closet, which means I NEED THEM.

Ok, so I mentioned above that I am height-challenged. I know I should probably wear something with a little bit of a heel to lengthen my legs and whatever, but I am so into flat shoes, it's ridiculous. I love them. Also, I love green, so there ya go.

These looked like a cute idea when I saw them initially, but blown up huge like this, I might be reconsidering... Even though I don't own any, I am kind of obsessed with cowboy boots.

I wonder how much SK would freak the F out if I brought any of these home... I think I might test him ;)

all shoes from Aldo or Forever21

Binge and Purge

That is what I feel like with regard to our house right now. We received so many amazing gifts for the wedding - UPS had our house address memorized - and we have a whole bedroom full of appliances and dishes and towels and sheets. A gift binge, if you will. In order to do organize and put them all away, we need to get down to business and purge our home of all the now unnecessary stuff. BFF Chandra and I have decided that we will have a joint garage sale on July 10/11 to get all the junk out.

So, feeling weirdly motivated yesterday, I got to work. Where did I start, you ask? Our master bedroom closet.

Huh? Because clearly the new blender and wine glasses and dishes will find a home there! Right...

In all fairness, our closet was a WRECK. The last time I even kinda went through my clothes to get rid of any of them was over 3 years ago, when SK and I first moved in together. I had shoes in there I have never worn - hiking boots? Pretty sure I didn't buy those for myself because A) they were fugly and also B) I don't fucking hike. I had clothes in there that I hadn't worn since 2004 that soooo don't fit me anymore, so out those went as well. I now have a whole half of one of our guest closets full of hanging clothes to be sold and bags of jeans, skirts and shoes to put out. I got rid of purses and belts and scarves, too. Anything we don't sell will be handed over to Goodwill or the Purple Heart.

I should have taken before and after photos, but really, do you care that much about what my closet looks like? There is nothing cute about it, nothing unique or boutiquey, but now it's CLEAN and ORGANIZED and SK about fainted when he walked into the room yesterday afternoon and declared that were we not already married, he would have proposed to me on the spot.

Besides, now that I have some empty hangers, I can start filling them in with these little gems:







all clothes via Forever21

My whole family is going to California next week (yeee!!!) and I am rationalizing that I need some new stuff for the trip. Not a ton, just some cute tops and possibly a dress or 2. Also, a new hoodie, which, OHMYGOD, a hoodie in June?! I am freaking out and am so so so in love with the central coast it's retarded.

Married!

I am not the kind of girl who has always dreamed of what my wedding day would be like. I haven't fantasized about the perfect dress, or the way my hair would look, or what flowers I would hold. I never imagined what it would feel like to walk down the aisle on my dad's arm, looking into the eyes of the man I would spend the rest of my life with.

Barf. Not me. Not the chick I am.

Until I met SK - and, let's be honest, actually not until we had been dating a while...I'm not a love-at-first-sight believer, either - I didn't think I wanted to be married EVER. I didn't see the point (breaking stereotypes! fighting generalizations about women! roar or something!!) and while I grew up in a loving home not touched by divorce, I had many friends who had not and it seemed to be too easy of an out. Also, Sex and the City made me feel like it would be just amazingly bad ass to be single forever.

Shut up, bitches - you know you went there a time or two, also.

So I think thats why, based on all prior knowledge of me, when SK and I returned home from Jamaica after being engaged for 4 days with our whole wedding planned out, my parent's heads exploded a little.

SK and I pretty much have the same mind when it comes to our idea of a good party, which is what we wanted our wedding day to be - the biggest party we had ever thrown. We knew we wanted it outside, we wanted food that tasted home-cooked, and we wanted the beer and wine to be flowing. We wanted to invite all of our friends and family, so our guest list topped out at about 370 people, 250ish of which we really expected to show. We also knew we didn't want to break the bank.

We got crazy HOOKED UP in so many areas, I am still amazed. Check it out:

Venue - FREE
Photographer - FREE
Flowers - FREE

Whaaaaat's that you say?? Yep. FREE.

I will do a post on all of that soon because trust me, I know how incredibly lucky we were. I am still waiting on the final tally, but I am pretty certain we pulled this whole thing off for under $10,000. And yeah - about 250 people were there.

Here are some of my favorite photos of the day

Just married

My parents

My in-laws!

Our niece, Ryan Irene - flower girl

Bridesmaids and Ryan

First dance - You Are The Best Thing, by Ray Lamontagne

Dance with my dad - Forever Young, by Rod Stewart

Garter...

Wedding cupcakes in lieu of cake


All my best girls

Planning it all ourselves gave us a level of freedom I couldn't have done this without. We got crap for some of our choices -

"You're not having a wedding cake??"
"Your bridesmaids are all going to be in WHITE?!?"
"No speeches??"
"Your dress is so plain!!"

But we stood our ground and planned the wedding WE wanted. Seriously, if I could give anyone advice for planning a wedding, that would be it - plan YOUR wedding, not everyone else's idea of your wedding.

It's been 6 weeks and I haven't once thought back to the day and said to myself, "wow, I wish that would have gone differently," and that to me means it was a success. That, and the fact that SK and I don't yet want to rip each other's eyeballs out ;)