A Bit of Bragging

I am so proud of my man. He has so much integrity in everything he does. If he's going to set his hand to something, he does it right! With his job, hobbies, interests, and relationships he puts his all into it and takes pride in doing the right thing the right way.
He just picked up the violin and I am loving seeing him research and follow the lesson book he has. Jingle Bells and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star have never made me happier. :)
I sure do love that guy.

Wedding update

Dress purchased!
Off it goes to the tailor for some major surgery!

Wedding Update

I was in a friend's wedding last week and put this Emergency Kit together. There's a few things I want to add for my wedding but this was rather spur of the moment so I think I did quite well. I put it all in a little bin with a handle for easy transport.

A few items were asked for and I was happy to have it all in my little kit! It feels great to be prepared.

Here is my Emergency Kit Ingredients list:

Sewing kit

Buttons

Fasteners (snaps and hook & eyes)

Safety pins

Body tape/double stick tape

Stapler

Febreeze

Static guard

Tide pen

Deodorant
Feminine products
Mouthwash
Floss
Listerine pocket pack
Tylenol or other pain killer
Alka-seltzer or Tums

Baby powder

Blister pads
Clear band aids
Hydrogen Peroxide
Makeup wipes
Hand wipes
Lint roller
Nail file
Nail clippers

Tweezers

Q-tips

Not shown:

Stick on instant hemming tape

Clear nail polish (for runs in stockings)
White chalk (for marks on dress)
Tissues
Hairspray
Hand mirror
Nail polish- the color you're wearing
Matches


Update:
We booked our honeymoon flight last night!!! We're that much closer!
And I have an appointment after work today at a Bridal Salon. We'll see!

Love, Caitlin soon-to-be married

Another week of outfits

Because its fun!

Inspired by men's fashion

Mixing patterns

Vintage inspired

FALL!

Layer up

Color mixing



Black out



A Week In Outfits

I'm always seeking new motivation and inspiration for putting outfits together. Pinterest definitely helps a lot with that. My newest source for fashion inspiration is Coast to Coast Challenge. They post challenges for every Tuesday and Thursday to help you look at your wardrobe in new and creative ways. People post their takes on the challenge on Instagram and it is a lot of fun to see what other girls around the country and internationally are doing with clothes!

Here is a weeks worth of my Coast To Coast Challenges:

Mixing Patterns

Bows

Red, White, and Blue

Plaid

Middle part and statement jewelry

Top button and bright lips

Tights

Wedding Update

Wedding dress shopping threatens to be scary and exhausting. I honestly haven't tried on all that many dresses but my preferences have changed several times through the process already.
I wish I had a picture in my mind of my dream dress for something to go off of. What type of dress is 'me'? I'm finding I'm a pretty casual person so relating to a formal dress is strange and a little difficult.
I know there is a dress out there that is:
a) in my price range
b) makes me feel pretty and special
c) is comfortable
d) I can dance in

I hope I find it soon! I have a couple of leads... I don't want to be shopping like this for much longer!

Wedding Update

More on wedding.

My last 2 wedding posts were pretty bipolar. One stating relief as having so much time, the next lamenting the time I have. Such is the emotional journey of planning a wedding. Emotional spells aside, it has been a great process so far. Mainly due the the AMAZING and talented people that are in my life!

So far my talented friends that have offered their services include:
Catering
Cake baking
Graphic Design

Calligraphy

Event Coordination
Videography
Engagement Photography
Live Music
And these people are not ametures! Most of them do these things for a living!
I am going to have some major thanks to express whan this is all done.

Most recently, I made my selections for the artisan cheese plates we will be serving. I found a great asset in igourmet.com. This article from Real Simple on The Perfect Cheese Platter helped me a lot as well with deciding how much cheese I'll need to get based on the number of guests and what else is being served.

My cheesy selections include:

Garlic Beemster (a favorite of mine & Stevens for going on picnics):

Cow. Holland. Similar to Gouda - mild, semi soft

Chèvre (one of my favorites):

Goat. France. Creamy, mild, and spreadable

Borgonzola (A blue for Steven):

Cow. Canada by way of Italy. Blue cheese. Rind is soft and creamy (similar to Brie) with Italian Gorgonzola mold veins

Manchego (I met Manchego while working in fine dining)

Sheep. Spain. Zesty and hard but not dry

Irish Cheddar (Irish cheddar is the best cheddar if you ask me)

Cow. Ireland. Strong, biting cheddar, smooth consistency

Wisconsin Colby (represent America!)

Cow. USA. Mild, similar to a young cheddar but more elastic 

Wedding idea of the day:

Write your own vows

Source: oncewed.com via Caitlin on Pinterest

The last 2 days of wear

I've been having fun with the frametastic app on my NEW IPHONE 4S (Pardon me as I do a victory dance for finally joining the world of iPhone users) taking outfit shots.
Here are the last couple days:

Violets are blue and peacocks too!



Could it really be fall??



Wanderlust

I've got an itch! I want to travel somewhere. Pack up and go. Europe? Australia? South America? The Mediterranean? Who cares! Let's go!

Fly me away to where I haven't been.


Hiking and Äscher cliff restaurant
Wasserauen

Wedding Planning Blues

There's something to be said for having a short amount of time to plan your wedding. You don't have time to second guess yourself! I feel like I have second and third guessed myself into a state of confusion.
What am I doing and why!?
I see the draw of elopement and courthouse and destination weddings.
There's so much politics and decisions! I need to simplify.

Wedding Update

I must say, I am glad that I have another 8 months to plan my wedding! These last couple of months have afforded me very little time to plan.
In the midst of packing & moving me and my mom, wardrobing a cast of about 75 for a huge production at work, attempting to maintain my regular office workload, staying involved with family that lives halfway across the nation (not to mention the family that lives locally!), trying to stay connected with friends, and cultivating my (relatively) new relationship with my fiance, we have at least managed to nail down our venue (hooray!), get close to finalizing our guest list, interview a photographer,  contacted Mr. & Mrs. Smith to put down a deposit for our honeymoon, dialogue with my dad about budget, select a design for our save-the-dates, and create a wedding planning website.

We had talked about the perfect wedding location. Steven contacted the owner and we got permission to use it free of charge! Our wedding will be in an airplane hanger in a private airport. It's large anough to have our ceremony and reception set up at the same time. The only transition needed will be to move the chairs from the ceremony area to the tables in the reception area. And it is absolutely what I wanted. A blank slate that we can do what we want with. To add to it, my finace and I get to fly away after the reception!

I AM IN LOVE (of course with the man I am marrying :) but also) with the photographer that I talked to. Their pictures are perfect. I swoon at the sight of them. (check them out here)
Unfortunately they are out of our budget range so the search continues. I am trusting God that we will get connected with just the right photographer. That it will be a win/win for both of us.

I created a website through Google Sites to stay connected with the wonderful people that are involved with planning my wedding. As busy as I have been I wanted a place to have all of my concept photos and information for them to refer to. Especially my sisters who currently reside in Boston.
I used the project wiki template and altered the pages to fit with my needs.
Here is a screen shot of my homepage:

Click to enlarge

I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out. :)


Wedding Idea of the Day:

Wedding Snap App so all guest's iphone/android pics will go to an online wedding album

  

Source: bellethemagazine.com via Caitlin on Pinterest

High Tea Blueberry Mini Muffins (Gluten Free)

I have had several of my girlfriends offer to help with wedding plans so I had them over for high tea on Sunday to fill them in on my plans and let them know the upcoming opportunities to help.
Most of us were too hot to have any tea since we're up to 100 degree weather here in TX so we sipped ginger ale and iced cucumber water and snacked on cucumber sandwiches and mini muffins.
The muffins were quite a hit! I altered this recipe from The Chic Brûlée to make it Gluten free and they turned out wonderful!

Here's what I did:

High Tea Blueberry Mini Muffins
Gluten Free

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened
¾ cup sugar plus 1 Tbls. (I used Sugar In The Raw)
2 eggs
½ cup milk (I used goat milk with a dollup of heavy cream)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups GF flour*
      1 cup brown rice flour
      2/3 cup millet flour
      1/3 cup tapioca starch
      1 ½ tsp Xanthan Gum
1 Tbls. baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen

*Note: I ground the millet flour myself in the coffee grinder. 1/2 cup of millet grains will make approx 2/3 cup flour. I ground it & put it in a 1 cup measure and filled the cup the rest of the way with the tapioca starch for the 2nd cup of flour.

Directions:
• Cream the butter and  3/4 cup sugar
• Add the eggs, one at a time
• Add the dry ingredients, alternating with the ½ cup milk
• Fold in the blueberries
• Fill greased mini muffin tins (I greased mine with a silicone basting brush dipped in coconut oil)
• Sprinkle tops with remaining 1Tbls. sugar before baking (or more if you like sugary tops)
*Bake at 350 degrees F for about 15 min, or until golden brown, and when tops spring back when lightly tapped (I checked & rotated every 5 min because I wasn't sure how long they would take since the original recipe was for full sized muffins)

If you don't need to make these Gluten Free, I suggest you try the original recipe on The Chic Brûlée. They look great!


Wedding Idea of the Day:
Airplane garland from old books

Source: stylemepretty.com via Caitlin on Pinterest

The Adventurer....

In setting a wedding budget, it is paramount to first decide priorities. What are we willing to splurge on? What is non-negotiable? What can we cut costs on?

Until the last couple of weeks, my ideas were just a disconnected jumble. My whole thrust was saving money in every way possible (which really isn't all that fun if you ask me). Where's an inexpensive venue? Where can we go for a honeymoon that will be nice and low-cost?
Ah the Honeymoon. This was quite the pickle. We talked about staying in the US to keep airfair costs down. Staying in a boutique hotel somewhere like Seattle that is beautiful but low-key. Nothing really seemed to fit. We had some fair ideas but nothing that got us excited.
The whole time I had been feasting my eyes on images of resorts in the Maldives, South America, Greece, etc. just thinking 'if only...'
When I came upon a certain boutique villa hotel on the island of Santorini, I was stuck. I couldn't think anymore of our cost cutting honeymoon alternatives.
Beautiful Aenaon Villas: a series of sugar cubes descending contrastingly down the mountain between Imerovigli and Oia with stunning views of the Aegean Sea, caldera, volcano, and sunsets galore. Only seven villas, each with a white cloud of a bed and private veranda.
My darling was similarly smitten with the place, leaving us with a decision.

The decision was made: Our #1 priority for our wedding will be the honeymoon.

I've rolled up my sleeves with renewed enthusiasm and vision to plan the ultimate, low cost, DIY, upcycled/recycled wedding that will leave the majority of our wedding monies for our Greek boutique honeymoon.

Life of adventure, here we come!

Behind the title:

My mother and I were discussing the men that me and my sisters are involved with, each of them fitting perfectly with the kind of lifestyle that my mom and I picture working best for each of us. They really do fit who we are: My older sister with The Entrepreneur, my younger with The Prince. It was easy for me to fit my sister's men to their roles/titles but I was stumped when it came to me and my darling. I left the conversation to climb into bed for the night still wondering when my mom texted me: "I like it. The Entrepreneur, The Adventurer, and The Prince." And that is exactly so.

Wedding Idea of the Day:

Send paper airplanes made of old charts and maps sailing as the Bride and Groom make their exit (instead of rice or seeds)

Source: occasionsbylisa.blogspot.com via Caitlin on Pinterest

Pitching in

In researching costs for my wedding and trying to create a budget, I have been thinking alot about what a girl at my Chiropractor's office told me last week.
When the topic of wedding plans came up she asked me, "So how do white people do it? Mexicans have sponsors for each part of the wedding. Someone will sponsor flowers, someone catering, someone honeymoon, [etc]..."
How wonderful to have this (perspectively) huge expenditure be carried for you by your community.
Facing so many high cost items (invitations, postage, venues, dresses, rentals, airfare, hotel...) has already proved to be VERY daunting. Especially not knowing how much help we are going to get from our parents. It's my own fault for not knowing. I haven't asked. It feels like a touchy subject.
I read in The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Perfect Wedding that the FIRST THING you do when you are engaged is to sit down with your parents and find out how much they expect to contribute and begin setting a budget.
Welll.... maybe my perplexing pickle is due to my divided family. I was raised by my mom and am still in fairly close contact with my dad. Is it still my dad's responsibility to cover the wedding costs according to tradition? Does the responsibility fall to my very hard working but currently scantily employed single mother? Does the unshouldered burden default to my fiance's parents? Is the full load of the cost to fall to me and my fiance?
These things I do not know.
These things I have kept to myself.
These things I have been too uncomfortable to ask.
That is my difficulty in setting a budget.

I keep thinking that if my community was divying out and sponsoring costs, this planning experience would be substantially more pleasant.

And yet... as a testament to the wonderful company I keep, a girlfriend approached me and asked if I would do her the honor of accepting her help with the flowers for the ceremony and reception. I enthusiastically accepted her assistance and later discovered that she also means to cover the entire cost of florals. I will not be able to express to her the great relief she has bestowed upon me and the humble thanks that is owed to her.

So maybe there is a community out there for me after all.

And the truth is:

"Cast all your anxiety on Him, for He cares for you." I Peter 5:7

"Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37:4

Wedding Idea of the day:

Alternative guest book: Silhouettes and finger print ballons! Use whatever colors of ink you want. You can have peaple write their names in their finger prints too.





Source: flickr.com via Caitlin on Pinterest

All on Wedding

Wedding pin of the day:


Pinned here I love the look and feel of this barn! So simple and family.


Wedding idea of the day:
Buy vintage stamps for a stamp montage on invitations.
Champion Stamp is a good resource for stamps.

Image from Martha Stewart Weddings

I played around with floral and airplane stamps of different values and colors for some custom combos that make up 45¢ worth of postage and how much each combo will cost per envelope (This is assuming that my invitations are within the weight limit of regular 45¢ postage) I hope I can work this into my budget!! This is what I came up with:

Which one do you like the best?

My wedding update:
The first venue we visited was the Ashton Depot in downtown Fort Worth.


Pinned here



It is an old train station that was restored. We were disappointed by how little 'oldness' was left in the restoration. We don't feel that they kept the integrity of the original building and purpose.

Consensus: Amidst little things about it that we didn't think were right for our wedding, our decision was mainly beased on that it is too all inclusive for us. We are looking for a blank space with indoor/outdoor options that we can budget and DIY to our heart's content.
We have a great lead on a venue that I have been to before but has just expanded, adding another event space that looks like it could be just what I imagined! :) Hopefully we'll be able to visit it this weekend.

My research project right now is to find hors d'oeuvres that will represent the foods that we each like best. I like potatoes. He likes bacon bleu cheese burgers. We both love cheese.

Something else I've been mulling over, is how to cheeply get/build farmhouse tables for the reception...

Pinned here

Any ideas on that?

Sunburn

My 5yr old nephew got a MONSTER sunburn.
His parents are out of town and my mom is babysitting so I went over there on my way to work today to help her treat it.
It is very blistered and the whole area is very rough.
I learned a natural burn treatment from a friend of my sister. I call it Indri's Treatment. My sister lives in a girl's boarding house in Boston, Mass with girls from all over the world. One evening she had a votive candle go crazy on her desk and in her haste to blow it out had wax splash all over her face and eyelids. Indri, (who is from Indonesia) came to her aid gathering ingredients from the other girls and treated the burn. It was 3rd degree and blistering badly. After the treatment, prayer from me and my mom, and a night of sleep, my sister woke up to the skin on her face almost completely healed and softer than it ever has been.

This is what Indri did:
1) Applied an egg yolk to the burn and fanned until the egg had warmed up
2) wash off with cool water
3) Applied thin slices of cucumber and fanned until they became warm and removed
4) Applied plain greek yogurt with honey and fanned until the yogurt was warm
5) wash off with cool water
Then my sister applied some burn ointment from another housemate who is from Russia.

I scaled the treatment up to use on my nephew's entire torso and down his arms a little bit.
He doesn't like gross things touching him so he was unhappy with thought of those food ingredients being all over him (except he thought the cucumber was a little funny).


Applying Cucumber slices



He wanted a picture so he could see what he looked like with cucumbers all over him

 After 'Indri's treatment' I applied Burt's Bees After Sun Soother.
I rushed off to work after so I haven't seen how his burn has improved, but he seemed happier when I left.

Here is Indri and my sister:

Thank you Indri! :)

Update 5/7/12

The treatment worked great. My nephew was happy and playing all day (still couldn't wear a shirt but he didn't care). He slept deeply  through the night, whereas the night before the treatment his burn was too painful for him to lie down or even to lean forward on pillows so he sat up and slept fitfully and very little. The blisters started to drain and heal the next day and he didn't complain about pain at all. I was even able to give him a haircut which is laborious on a good day. :)

Shiny

click for larger image

I got my ring cleaned! It came back so much shinier!
We're thinking about leaving the wedding band on (they are sautered together) and adding our own wedding band but I'm not sure what will go well.
The Gemologist that looked at it when we took it to the jeweler said due to the age, wear, and number of times the ring has been worked on, it should not be worn all the time. With care though, it should last another 10-15 yrs with mostly continual wear. She recommended that we get a band that can be worn alone when I am doing something that I should not expose my engagement ring to so I don't ever have to go without a ring.

I like this band from Cathy Waterman but (even if money was no object) I'm not sure how well it would go with my ring. I don't want it to look out of place.
What do you think? Any suggestions?