health & fitness.... & badges.

I've gone a bit exercise mad lately...
I'm still on holidays until mid next week, so that's part of it, trying to get as much in as I can before school starts, riding 'the high' of exercise endorphins, and hoping they'll motivate me to keep going once I'm exhausted from teaching...
And I'm sore- I'm sore and I know my body is asking for a break, but I'm kind of hooked. For once, I'm feeling leaner, looking like I can see muscles in my arms start to appear, doing complicated side-planks with relatively little difficulty, upping my weights in pump classes, doing two classes in a row and walking away fatigued but 'lean'.... Previously, going to the gym every day or other day wouldn't really yield results, so it'd be hard to keep going, so it's really nice to be seeing changes. I've lost a couple of kilos, too, in the last couple of months (I'm not in any rush, and I'm not adhering to any 'wedding weight', and realistically, if I loose another 2-3kg I'll be pretty happy in any case, so it's not like I'm racing to loose 10kg and am going to be bitterly disappointed and eat away my disappointment), and clothes that hadn't been fitting are fitting again - that's super exciting.
But this is where I need to be careful. Because I push myself, I like to be on-top, to get everything right, to be the best, and then I break, and have to stop for a week instead of a day. I just know that even with one day's rest, I find getting out to exercise again the next day is hard for me- I need to ride the wave while I'm on it.

In other news- I've picked my wedding dress!!! It's this one.  Nic knows he's not allowed to click there. For some reason they picked a photo of the model with her leg in a weird position and it makes her look chunky.. or the dress looks chunky or SOMETHING. But it's gorgeous, and simple, and me, and perfect for a garden ceremony, then running around the zoo taking photos. And it's not -too- expensive, comparatively to the cost of gowns in this country.

I also... may have ordered badges.
Yes, ok, this is frivolous (and I basically yelled at my Mum about how hiring a limo was stupid and a waste of money and I'd rather go in my Man of Awesome's Skoda for all I care, a car is just a car), but it's also cool. I figure, people who help out with wedding things/shop for shoes with me/help assemble flowers/just generally look after us, get a badge. eg. Jenny will be shopping for shoes with me. She's not a bridesmaid, and I'm sure she'd like to be, so she can have a badge. Yay! Also my Dad & his partner? Team bride badge. Nic's Dad? Team groom. Right? I think it's fun.
Look, here they are! Sadly enough, the dog on the team bride one is an ACTUAL SILHOUETTE of our dog.
Yes.
I'm not entirely sure is this is lame, or cool.
Possibly lame.
But you can't really get much more 'custom made' than that, can you!?

budget... really?

I decided, for fun, that I'd fill in the budget tool on the weddingwire website....
I reckon it's the Australia thing but once again, I think we're being ripped off, here.
eg. Weddingwire estimates you'll spend $140 on an officient.
Bah-bow. The average price for a celebrant here is about $800.

Oh, ok, wedding dress? $600, it says, including alterations.
You'd be lucky to get the alterations for $600, nevermind the dress.
Photographer? $900.
Nope, cheapest I've seen is $2,500.

Is this thing just way underestimating, or are our prices here seriously over the top???

diy till the cows come home

I saw my Mum (and puppy!) yesterday and talked wedding. My Mum tends to flip-flop between being mildy interested, and completely disinterested in everything ranging from my entire life, to just the wedding, so it's always a difficult call as to whether she'll be engaged or not.
Anyway, yesterday, this is what she said:
"I'd really like to be involved in your wedding"
I nearly fell of my chair. She said it in a sincere way, not because I'd been rambling on and on about DIY that, and 'we'll be making this'.
Next thing I know, we get home and book in a dress-looking-date next week. No procrastination, she wants to get right down to business.
Ah, ok, Mum. This is what I wanted, to be fair, but it's really, really tough to trust that she's not just going to drop off the planet and be completely nonchalant about it again come next week.
We'll see.


I made a list yesterday of all the DIY projects we've decided to do. And thinking about them, I think we're doing them for mostly the right reasons (eg. because we want to, because no shop could make what we want... and occasionally because to buy/have made what we want would be too expensive to be justified ($1,000 minimum spend on flowers? I think not)).
Here's how it looks, and how it's going so far:

A list of projects we’ve decided to take on:

Invitations, RSVP cards, Info cards - printed, addressed
-> also, envelope inners, return address stamp, tied with twine, ribbon or belly band???

Status: Created in photoshop, need to be printed somehow/somewhere.
Streamer background
-> dyed streamers
-> white lace
->free standing structure

Status: Started! Waiting on dyes to arrive from the UK, need to get more fabric and begin making the structure. This is a high-priority project.
Yay flags
-> approx 50. Calico w/ iron on transfer? Or painted stencil? 

Status: Not happening, yet.
Animal place holders
-> wooden animals? Dates written on in silver?
-> Mouths carved.
-> Names printed and cut from cardstock. 

Status: Given up on plastic animals for now. Need to go to the market and look at their cheap imported-from-China wooden animals. Wondering if people should just take their animals home as favours. When I told Mum about our favours idea, she said: "What, is it like a lolly bag?" and had no idea that favours existed. Ah, how things have changed.
Favors
-> Paper bags
-> Animal stamp, thankyou stamp, name/date stamp?
-> Tea (in air-sealed/plastic bag?)
->Tied with twine. 

Status: Not started
Guestbook
-> several yellow streamers
-> Black fabric pens (do these exist?)

Status: Not started
Programs
-> How/what? Vistaprint? How are they going to be interesting? 

Status: Don't know enough of the day-of schedule yet to make these, and need a brain-wave of how to make them nice.
Flowers
-> Bouquet x 1
-> Centrepieces x 12ish?
-> Real or fake?
-> Flower boxes

Status: Made enquiries about flower boxes. Nothing else yet.
Centerpieces:
-> words, painted.
-> mason jars
->table animal pictures.

Status: Words acquired. Need to be painted. Have a slowly growing collection of mason jars.
Seating chart? (some kind of zoo map...!!!)

Status: Emailed brother who is a wiz with photoshop to see if this will be easy for him to make.

Photobooth
->Props!

Status: Yeah, not yet.
Menus
-> Painted and stuck books. 

Status: Lower priority, have a small collection of cooking books to use, but need to finalise the menu before doing too much with these.
Ring pillow book:
-> Book with centre cut, ribbon, painted or covered.

Status: This isn't a hugely high priority, so, we'll see. We have plenty of op-shop (thrift shop?) books so we can paint and use one of those.

In the meantime, we've booked appointments to meet with 3 celebrants over the next week or two. I found it a really weird experience to be choosing celebrants. You go to a website, right, look at photos of people, and try and decide who you'd like to look at, if they have a website, etc. It's shopping for people. It weirds me out.

We know who we want as our photographers but they said they don't book more than 8 months out, so I'm holding out from hassling them, hoping they hold true to their word and don't book our date before March (8 months before the wedding).

streamers!! pt.1

Before we begin: anybody around here use a Mac and have iLife11? Specifically iPhoto? Does it make anybody else want to rip their brains out with a fork? Mine seems to be having issues importing 10 photos.
10.
I mean, one of the main features of a photo program has to be the ability to get photos from point a to point b (program), right?
If you can't do that properly, you're in serious trouble, my friend.
In fact, it's at the point where, as I'm importing my 10 photos, I might as well go have a long shower, take a nap, or go for a jog because everything else is freezing.

Anyhoo. According to the Interwebs I'm not the only one having issues, so I suppose that makes it less frustrating.
On to wedding-y-related stuff.
Over here, we've kicked into high-mode DIY.
We have a lot of projects coming up, so we might as well ride the enthusiasm while we still have it!
This was our project this weekend, resulting in blue and green stained hands when we went to the gym.

Streamer background! So, at the moment it's just the dyed cotton streamers, and probably about 1/3 of the total we'll end up making. But it was sort of our test-run, and I think they turned out beautifully! We want to hang them from a dowel or rail, and maybe use some yellow streamers as our 'guest-book', for people to write on with fabric pens, and then we can add those ones to the other and have a beautiful bright wall hanging. We're both super excited about this project. We imagine them behind us during the ceremony, then moved inside to cover the dark weird wall in the reception room... plus, if we have to go indoors due to the weather, we can use this behind us so it's not like we're just having our ceremony in the entry-way of our reception room. I think we'll be making some darker ones, and possibly having some cream/white ones in there, too.
Super excited.

Also, along with the invite (which I've changed a little since I uploaded it here), I now have RSVP and information cards to go along with it. Can you guess the colour theme?

(our surnames are not Antelopes nor Frog, but they fit)

(tempted to move the 'What's to eat?' question up, turn it sideways, and have it coming out of the tiger's mouth, there... but then the other ones would probably have to go wonky, too)

 Plus we also bought 6 wooden word signs (I'm a literacy student/English teacher. I looooove words. I love words on signs. Oooh, and these are caligraphy signs too. Pretty!) which we're going to paint white, maybe with a pearlescent finish? Or maybe just shiny white? Or something else. I don't know yet. The words are, from memory: love, joy, forever, imagine, laugh and dream. They'll be going on the tables somewhere. Possibly on books (words leaping out of pages! Yeah!) or between, or something or other. Not sure yet.

But it's all super exciting. Apparently at some point in the next couple of months I'm meant to book a florist (if we go down that route). How does one go about booking a florist???

too old for this...

On Friday night, some girls from Uni invited me to 'go dancing' with them at a club that plays 90s music. Nic was going to be away for the night so I thought I should actually be social and go.
So I did.
Oh Lord.
It's been a long time since I was in a place like this. Say maybe... five or six years. Well, look, not much as changed as far as I can tell, though it was... odd.
So, get this: girls dressed up in short dresses and huge heals. I saw one stick-thin girl cross the street in these massive heels and teeeeeeny tiny shorts, and I thought: why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we have to bear all, torture our feet, plaster our faces with chemicals, when the guy next to her was in jeans and a t-shirt?  I thought about this the other day when we were at the beach. It suddenly struck me: picture a middle-aged man, overweight, beer gut, at the beach. He'd be in shorts, right? Stomach hanging everywhere, hairy chest, arms, legs, back, pink as a lobster. And our reaction? Well, we wouldn't have one, would we? Because that's fine, and normal. Now! Picture a woman- middle-aged, overweight, in a bikini, pink as a lobster. For most of us, I'd imagine the reaction would be quite different. And if not for us, then probably for people on the beach. I know my mother would have a depreciating thing or two to say. That's not fair, right? What's up with the double standards?

Anyway. Back to the club. We're all dressed up and packed in to this dance floor. Most of the people there looked to be between 19 and 27, I guess, except for one older gentleman who went wild for 'Walking on Sunshine', arms flailing wildly in the air, expression of glee plastered on his face. The music being played at this club seemed to give otherwise sane and reasonable people an excuse to regress to highschool and sing 'Barbie Girl', 'Blue' (by Eiffel ...65?) and various SpiceGirls songs at the top of their lungs, hips jerking and occasionally trying to sexy-dance.
I'm sorry.
You cannot sexy dance to Wannabe.
And I think that was what confused me the most, was that a song came on, and I wanted to yell "LAME!!!" but that was the point, right? Don't get me wrong, it was fun (but too crowded. Dancing when someone else's back is pushed up against your back as they writhe back and forth isn't so hot), but my brain was having a hard time processing.

Might have to try and include some lame 90s (though to be fair, most of the songs our group knew where very late 90s to early 00s) in our wedding playlist.
And speaking of, I think we've decided on our 'walking down the aisle' (and I'm still not sure in what fashion we'll be doing that, yet), leaving the ceremony, and first or last dance music.
Yup, I'm making progress, y'all. This thing will be planned by April. Then it'll be down to all the DIY stuff we've foolhardily taken on.

puppy madness

I was about to write a long and whiney post about how my mother doesn't have any enthusiasm for my wedding, but stuff it.

My brother (22) still lives with her, and they're getting a puppy on Wednesday. My future sister-in-law-in-law just got a puppy, too.

I kind of want a puppy.
But we have no space.
And Mal has enough of a hard time competing with the kittens for attention as it is.
But loooooook.

The one that Mum and Dan are getting.

I'm surrounded!! I was quite taken with the two red ones there, though one of them might be deaf.

My expression pretty much sums it up.

new zealand

A two week trip anti-clockwise around the South Island of New Zealand, returning home on the evening when Christchurch had been hit by another earthquake. Unusually for me, I'm going to try and tell the story of this trip without words. Click on the link below to see all.

welcome the new year and all it brings

Hey!
It's 2012.
How did that happen?
This is a big year. The world is meant to end, right? I think subconsciously Nic and I have taken that onboard and are cramming so much stuff in, just to make it worthwhile.
The other day I designed our wedding invitations, more or less. Yes, there's still 7 or so months (um..) before we need to actually have them, and Lord knows I'm changeable (like it one day, hate it a month later), but I like Photoshop, and I like making stuff, and I liked making them so much that for a minute there I had a glimmer of being able to do it more than just for fun. Maybe I'll put them below the cut, you can let me know what you think. Then I just have to figure out how we go about getting them printed up. We'd both love letterpress but I don't know how much $$$$$$ that would be.

I'm filled with a sense of trepidation about the wedding, in some ways. Not about getting married to Nic, although it's a very final and 'definite' thing to do... more that... you know, you always read wedding posts about people whose family came together and laughed and had a great time, and it was a real celebration and community thing, right? I don't even mean in the lead-up to the wedding, I'm assuming I'll get no help there except from Nic... more on the actual day, particularly for smaller, intimate weddings....I think I have a vision of my mother (or even other members of my family), gloomy, judging, making snide remarks about the food, the fact that we're having butter chicken as one of our mains and a vegetarian gnocchi as the other (quelle horreur! untraditional food!), or that there isn't enough wine selection, or that we served people canapes instead of a sit-down entree, etc etc. All these things, even though she continues to go on and on about her spit-roast backyard wedding...
I just want people to have fun, and I think I'm going to kill myself by stressing out about whether they will or not.
And then there's the feeling that Nic and I have sort of 'hermitised' ourselves. Which is to say, we have two really close friends, and not a whole lot beyond that until we get to 'people we're friends with at work', and 'people we talk to sometimes when we say 'let's catch up!' and it never happens'... and again, those stories of a community of people, of friends being there for one another, helping out, sharing the joy... I can't see it, and it makes me sad. And maybe when it's needed it will come... I don't know.

I've had two wedding panic 'oh crap we forgot something vitally important and it's the day of the wedding!' dreams already. Yesterday I made a timeline. I think I feel a bit better now.

Click below if you want to see the invite. If you could let me know what you think, if it needs any changes, etc, that would be fabulous. Of course it looks a bit less awesome without our surnames as it sits up nicely next to the ampersand, but so it goes. And the actual one has the password for the website, too, but it's not finished yet.

OH! I need to do a NZ post of some description. I'll knock that up a bit later.