An Extraordinary Saturday: First Look

We got in trouble for kissing.

An Extraordinary Saturday: Pull Harder, Mom

Great, we have bulletproof hair.  But did the dress zip? 

An Extraordinary Saturday: Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Moving on to the actual wedding day, my hair makes me look like a Flock of Seagulls roadie and the barn decorating crew discovers that the chair covers are missing. 

(Posting forwarding links is really just for my amusement at this point, right?)

An Extraordinary Saturday: Rain and a Rickrolled Rehearsal

The recaps continue over there wtih rain and a rickrolled rehearsal.

An Extraordinary Saturday: DIY Florals

I hate to do this, but it's too labor-intensive to post recaps both here and there.  There was easier for me... so I hope you don't mind too much clicking over for the first installment of recaps, a dry and fact-filled tale of DIY floral arranging.

coming soon!

Today the mail brought me these!  Beautifully packaged sets of discs from Bow Tie Photography.  You know what that means... recaps!

This is going to be fun.   Anything in particular you want to know about?

Ordinary Saturdays

Blogfriends, it's time.  The eventual wedding is over.  Time to move on.  Within a few weeks I will have pictures to illustrate my wedding stories, which may be where I leave some of you.  For the few of you interested in life after wedding, it starts with a wedding-day story.

I mentioned before that DJ and I wrote letters to each other, to be kept secret and read at the ceremony by friends of ours.  Our officiant kept his homily a surprise as well.  We, along with many well-wishing cards, referenced the same idea.  We all fixed on the same thought, a theme that came first from DJ's proposal.  Ring in hand, he said that loved our ordinary Saturdays, and asked me to spend mine with him.

So, of course.  Ordinary Saturdays.  The next chapter in my bad-neighboring, bacon-eating, project-starting, fun-running, recipe-ignoring life.  See you there?

gifts for the ladies

The wedding is over and the gifts have been given, now I can talk about them! Deciding on gifts for the bridesmaids was both fun and nervewracking. I was afraid the gifts would seem self-serving, since they were very wedding-related. DJ kept telling me it would be fine, but I kept worrying about it.
Each girl got a hatbox, tied with satin ribbon. Inside the hatbox was a pair of earrings, a monogrammed pocket mirror, and a clutch purse lined in green silk. The clutches were handmade by me; which could be sweet or not, depending on how you see it.
Fortunately they all liked their gifts - at least enough to wear the earrings and carry the clutches for the wedding.

For the purses, I used this tutorial and purse frames from Etsy. The most difficult parts were testing the pattern (twice! use cheap fabric first!) and gluing the fabric to the frame (buy at least one extra frame and don't rush yourself.)

My mom's gift was sentimental. She had inherited a pearl ring from her mother (my Grandma Julia), which she loved and wore frequently. Several years ago it went missing when she moved, and since then she's said many times how sad she was to have lost it.

The potential cuteness of replacing it was irresistible - recovering something you thought you'd lost for good - so I went antiquing, and hunted down a very similar ring of the same era. It came to me boxless, so I threaded it on a ribbon in a small box full of moss, along with a note explaining the lost and found idea. My mom loved it, and it's even the right size. Perfect.

How did you choose gifts for your bridesmaids? Were you nervous about it?

the honeymoon is over

After the wedding, DJ and I dropped our dog at his parents' house and drove to Michigan.
We napped. We watched movies. We ate pie from a farmstand. We screwed up the zoom on the camera. I went for one single pathetic three mile run up and down the main road past our B&B.
We went antiquing. I bought a silverplate champagne bucket. DJ held tiny things in his enormous hands to make me laugh.

We spent an afternoon in St. Joseph, and killed an hour reading over hot chocolate.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant that was a resort in the 1930's, now tucked quietly in a residential neighborhood along the lakeshore. It was delicious.

We also went wine tasting. I didn't know that Michigan had vineyards, but it does. Trivia: it's on the same latitude as Washington State, and roughly the same as the south of France. Different soil and weather, of course - but lots of grapes.

DJ's aunt and uncle gave us a stellar wedding gift. They arranged for our B&B to pack a picnic basket (with wine!) and deliver gift certificates to three nearby wineries.

This aunt and uncle actually got married at Round Barn several years ago. They no longer host weddings, but they have excellent wine, and recently also vodka and beer. (Try the cocoa stout. Trust me.)

On our last day we had an amazing lunch at Tabor Hill's restaurant.

We ordered polenta fries with truffled aioli, and a lobster-scallop "cigar" with a sweet/spicy dipping sauce. Those were just the appetizers, then we had lunch!

We finally figured out the camera zoom.

So now we're newlyweds. Newlyweds with two cases of Michigan wine in the guest bedroom. That ought to get us through the first few days weeks months.

kitchen logic

If you want to make buttermilk ice cream, you will have a dozen leftover egg whites. So then you'll decide to make angel food cake, which is oversold as a fat-free dessert. Of course you will start thinking that cake would be delicious with buttermilk ice cream.

Also, you might not own a tube pan (nor really want a tube pan) and decide it might be fine to try a silicone bundt pan instead. Inadvisable. We may be having angel food french toast for breakfast tomorrow.