Sunshines and Creeps

Sunshine to a super productive morning already. Between 5am and now, I've gone running, cleaned the house, started laundry, and checking 5 things off my wedding to-do list.

Sunshine to my first shower this weekend, hosted by Michael's mom's friends. I am excited!

Sunshine to my parents coming down this weekend.

Creep to back pain. No clue where that came from but I'm over it.

Sunshine to a two-day work week next week.

Sunshine to getting several work things out the door this week.

Creep to the snarky alum I had to deal with yesterday. What an a$$hole.

Sunshine to dinner with my parents, Michael's parents, M&I, and our officiant and her husband tomorrow.

Creep to the stack of magazines that is building up on my coffee table. Need to find time to read those.

Sunshine to the local female swimmer who made the Olympic team. She's been featured in the paper for months so it was excited to see her make the team.

Sunshine to the Olympics starting in a month. I LOVE THEM!

Sunshine to signing up for a spin class next week. Can't wait to get back on the bike!

Wedding Wednesday: Invitations

Michael and I mailed our wedding invitations a few weeks ago and have started receiving RSVPs already so I share the finished product with my blog readers. 

Michael and I agreed from the beginning that we loved the idea of working with someone to design unique invitations, and not using a standard template off of MagnetStreet or from some paper vendor. We were also set on our colors and wanted to find a vendor that could match them when printing. Finally, we wanted to do letterpress invitations if at all possible. In fact, Michael was the one who pushed hard for this.

The creation of our invitations happened because of Pinterest...

Back in January, Michael and I were in midst of making big decisions about our wedding and we were still trying to identify our vision for the wedding so I was on Pinterest non-stop. We knew we wanted to incorporate wine into the wedding so when I saw a picture of a wine bottle with a personalized label, I pinned it. Later that night, I had a comment from a friend from college named Garon who said that she designed labels like that. 

Garon and I served together on a campus leadership board for the sororities in college. We are in different sororities but FB has allowed us to stay up to date on what is going on in the other person’s life over the past several years. I hadn’t seen or talked to her in years, so we set up a meeting so she could show me some of her past designs.

After that meeting, Michael and I agree pretty quickly that we wanted to work with Garon. I showed her some invitation ideas I liked and the colors and then she ran with it. She was so easy to work with and open to our many edits.  What she created is perfect and I absolutely love everything about them.

Garon helped us get our invitations letterpressed via a connection she had. Letterpress is more expensive than digital printing but Michael and I really love the look (and feel) of letterpress, and Garon was instrumental in making it happen for us. If we could, we would letterpress all our wedding stationary.

Anyways, here are our invitations. And I said before, we are in love with them! I whited out a bunch of personal info using Paint so I apologize that it looks like a 5-year-old attacked these with a white out marker. Most of my readers have already seen these but you never know who reads your blog…

Whole invitation suite - sorry about the poor quality. I took these on my  iPhone.

Invitation - I loved that Garon right-aligned everything. I also love the different fonts and colors. And course, the little squiggly, as I call the design on the top and bottom.  There will lots of more the little squiggly!

Accommodations card.

This is my favorite part of the invitation. I saw an invitation on Pinterest with the pictures and I knew I wanted to do it. Garon nailed it!

Mailing envelope. Michael's step-grandmother did all the addressing for us. 

Return envelope.

Garon is doing all the other paper products for us for the wedding too. I like to tell her that she is “branding our wedding.” Obviously, we think Garon is amazing. Seriously, if you have any design needs, I would highly recommend her. Check out her website and blog (our reply card is featured on it!).

73 days!

One Year Anniversary in MN

Last week was my one year anniversary in Minnesota. It's hard to believe it's only been a year since I left Chicago and moved to MN with Michael. So much has happened since then!

Since I've moved here, I've been making note of things that I love about MN and things I don't love. Here's my list:

Things I love

• Living with Michael. There is just something so nice about waking up next to him every morning, falling asleep next to him every night. Not having anyone else in our house is just so nice.
• Speaking of our house, I love having a house. Sure, we have yard work to do and a driveway to shovel in the winter, but I love having a place that is ours. We have a private deck, I have my own garage stall for the first time in my life - it's just great.
• Driving places and finding a place to park. In a lot. Easily. For free.
• The lakes. I love running, walking, and biking around them. Lake Michigan in Chicago was nice, but so crowded and you couldn't go in a circle. It's one of my very favorite things.
• Getting visitors and being closer to my family. When we lived in Chicago, my parents visited a few times a year and my sisters came once. Now that we are in MN, I see my parents a lot more often and Jessi has already visited us too. 
• Being closer to my girlfriends. My best friends from Chicago all live here now. And my best friends from college either live here or within in a few hours drive. Even though we don't see each other that much more, it's nice to know how much closer we are now.
• The difference in light. Chicago and MN may be in the same time zone but it stays lighter here a lot longer than it did in Chicago. 

Things that I don't love (and never will)

• The driving. OMG - my road rage here is out of control. No one knows how to merge. Speed limits are just suggestions. The traffic jams are caused by people being WAY too cautious. And the lack of signaling when changing lanes or turning is mind-boggling. I truly don't get it. It's like no one took drivers education. That, or MN has a REALLY poor drivers education program.
• The mosquitos. We had mosquitos in ND but then I moved to OH and Chicago and was without mosquitos for 6 years. It was great! And now, the number of mosquito bites I have is kind of ridiculous. Just this morning, after our run, I got a few bites when we were doing abs in the driveway, one of which is on the bottom of my chin. Really? My blood tastes that good?
• The lack of fancy restaurants. Maybe I just haven't found them yet. And I know Chicago is a much bigger city than MSP but I really miss the food in Chicago. M and I used to try new restaurants all the time, and we very rarely eat out here.
• The price of airline tickets. Flying out of here is a lot more expensive that it was in Chicago.
• Having to go to three different grocery stores to get all the things I want. I had one store in Chicago and they carried everything I wanted. Now I have to store hop to get the right brand of turkey, goat cheese, bread, etc. 

Even though I don't love everything about MN, I do not regret my move here for a second. It was the best decision I've ever made, and one that I had been wanting to make for several years. Here's to many more years in MN!

Sunshines and Creeps

Sunshine to taking today off as a mental health day. We’ve been so busy and gone every weekend so the first thing on my to-do list today is clean the house! Then I plan to catch up on life – i.e., wedding to-dos, work out, grocery store, and a little TV.

Sunshine to date night last night: dinner at Barrio and court-side seats at last night’s Lynx game. So much fun!

Sunshine to Carrie Underwood standing up for gay marriage and staying classy as she did so. Love is love.

Creep to another really busy week full of stuff in the evenings. Next week will be the same too.

Sunshine to starting to get RSVPs back already.  Creep to the drama that has come along with that already.

Creep to the gym and workout space at the School being closed until the end of July. So much for workouts over lunch :-(

Sunshine to running a few mornings this week, but creep to rain (and laziness) from preventing us from going every day.

Creep to not going to yoga sculpt this week. Need to get back on the bandwagon!

Sunshine to an awesome weekend at home last weekend with my fam and Father’s Day evening with Michael’s fam. We’re so lucky.

Sunshine to sneaking out of work early Monday to pick up my wedding dress. Needs some alterations but I love it.

Sunshine to the super cool App Michael bought that is helping us design the layout of all of the events for the wedding. Check out EventPlan (must have an iPad).

Sunshine to spending the weekend with my love at the cabin. We have work to do but I hope to relax a bit too.

Wedding Wednesday: Engagement Counseling

As an engagement gift, Michael’s parents gave us engagement counseling. Michael’s mom suggested working with Adrienne Larson, who calls herself “The Engagement Coach.” As you know, we are not getting married in a church so going through counseling with a religious leader didn't really make sense to us. Adrienne seemed like a good option so we moved forward with it.

While some people might think this is a weird gift, we were actually pretty excited about it. We agreed that it would probably be nothing but helpful and we went into it with open minds.

In addition to sharing our dating history and current lifestyle, we each took a “prepare and enrich” survey between our first and second session that helped us identify separately and together our areas of strength and improvement. We talked about a lot of relationship issues, from communication and raising kids to how we fight and our “wish lists” for improving our relationships.

We met with her four times over the course of three months and just finished our last session this week. We do have the option of using a free “follow up” for a year after the wedding, which I think we will.

Adrienne was great. She’s under 40 and married herself, so she could relate to us much better, than say a Catholic priest who’s never been married. She was smart, kind, funny, non-judgmental, and easy to talk to. And best of all, she really got Michael and I to talk to each other during our sessions vs talk to her.

If you or anyone you know if looking for any type of couples counseling (she does marriage counseling too), I highly recommend looking into meeting with Adrienne.

80 days!

I am not getting paid for this post. I simply really enjoyed working with Adrienne and wanted to share my thoughts about my experience.

Sunshines and Creeps

Sunshine to having today off because I'm in Minot with my family for the weekend. It's my unofficial bachelorette party (I'm not having a real one because I don't want to) so my mom, sisters, and I are playing cards while the boys (yes, Michael is coming so this is definitely unofficial) play with the kiddos. Love my fam!

Creep to not falling asleep with Michael last night. I'm in Minot, and he's not coming until today.

Sunshine to my wedding dress being in at the bridal shop. I cannot wait to pick it up!!!!!!!!!

Creep to not having any time to pick up my dress in the next two weeks. Looks like I won't be getting it until June 29 :-(

Creep to spending the entire week sorting a mailing list on Excel. Manual sorting is not fun. My brain still hurts.

Sunshine to reading the book "Are You Hanging Out Without Me" by Mindy Kalling of The Office. Absolutely hilarious. If you liked "Bossy Pants" by Tina Fey, you would like this book.

Creep to my total breakdown on Wednesday. Full on sobbing for 45 minutes is exhausting.

Sunshine to running three mornings this week.  Creep that it meant getting up at 5:05 to do so.

Sunshine to ordering my wedding band this week. Only 85 days until I get to wear it!

Sunshine to mailing our wedding invitations on Wednesday. I can't wait to get our first RSVP!

Wedding Wednesday: Oh So Many Vendors...

Having a wedding at Michael’s family’s cabin has afforded us a lot of flexibility in the ways we wanted: we got to pick our caterer, purchase our own alcohol, customize our ceremony down to every word, and have a tented reception to name a few things. But having the wedding at the cabin has also meant that we have had to search for every vendor on our own AND keep track of everything from appointments, deposits, day-of scheduling, contracts, etc. It is A LOT! Here are all the vendors/people we have (so far):

• Rental Vendor (tent, chairs, tables, linens, dance floor, lighting – we need to rent everything)
• Caterer
• Baker
• Florist
• Photographer
• Officiant
• DJ
• Ceremony Musicians (maybe)
• Bathroom rental (yes, we are renting porta-potties but they will be “fancy, luxury” ones)
• Shuttle service
• Getaway Car
• Stationery Designer
• Tuxedo Rental
• Seamstress
• Wedding dress/bridemaids’ dresses shop

That is all I can think of right now. I am sure there are more.

I went to my friend Becky’s wedding in August 2010 and I remember during her dad’s speech, he said “This wedding is brought to you courtesy of Excel.” And since I am a planner and love Excel, I was all about using Excel to help me manage our vendors. I've already used it (in Google Docs - LOVE!) for my wedding research before we picked our location, the guest list, shower lists, etc. Becky was kind enough to send me her Excel file, which has been super helpful since it's a timeline that was not just for people but also vendors. 

Some of these vendors/people don’t appear on our timeline per say, but they are still a vendor with an important role. I have yet to work on our actual wedding day timeline, other than the hair and makeup schedule, mostly b/c there are still quite a few unknowns at this point. For example, I know my florist is delivering and setting up all the flowers for the day, but I don’t know what time yet.

But I’ve worked out Friday for now and here’s a little sample of what we’ll be up to the day before the big day. I can’t wait!

I think my wedding day timeline will be in increments of 5 minutes...oh jeez!

My goal is to use the timeline as a tool to help people, but try not be super rigid about it being followed exactly to the minute for everything little thing. For example, I want the wedding party to be on time for pictures, but no big deal if the toasts are 10 minutes later than scheduled.

Only 87 days to go!

Never Any Time

Currently, I feel like Jessie Spano on that infamous episode on Save by the Bell where she's addicted to caffeine pills.

"No time. There's never any time!"

My wedding to do list is growing and growing, even as I keep checking things off the list. My work to do list is also starting to get really busy. Michael and I continue to have a busy schedule of evening and weekend commitments, which seems to be growing and growing, even though I feel like we're totally full already.

And then there's the whole working out thing. I wish I had more time for that.

Anyone have a revolutionary idea on how we can fit more hours into the day?!

Sunshines and Creeps

Sunshine to my friends Chad and Michelle coming over tonight for dinner. I haven't seem them in WAY too long!

Creep to the incredibly hot weekend we are about to have. We'll be at the cabin working so I am sure I'll be exhausted, and probably sunburnt, by the time we're done :-(

Sunshine to my 2+ hour conference call with my friend Amanda and Katie from my old job. SOOOOO good to catch up!

Creep to playing phone tag with Kristen all week. One of these days I hope we can connect.

Creep to how incredibly messy my desk at work is. I need to fix this.

Sunshine to actually cooking dinner a few times this week.

Sunshine to feeling more organized about the wedding this week.

Sunshine to my friend Becky for sending me her wedding day timeline in Excel format. So helpful!!!

Creep to all the work I have to do in the next few weeks.

Sunshine to seeing my family in one week!

Creep to no more free lunch starting Monday.

Sunshine to becoming Mrs. Jenni Beadle three months from today!

Wedding Wednesday: Dance Lessons

Last May, when Michael and I decided to move from Chicago to MSP, I signed up for MSP Groupon. A few days later, I bought a Groupon for some dance lessons in the city. It was a great deal - 4 group classes and 1 individual class for $25 - and I thought it would be something fun for us to do this winter. I had no intention of it being somethign we did in preparation for a wedding.

Well, fast-forward to May and we were a few weeks from it expiring so we tried to cram everything into a short period. We still didn't plan to use anything we learned in the class at our wedding, even though we were now engaged. I think Michael was a little bit hesitant at first, 1) because he had never taken ballroom before, and I had in college and 2) because he wasn't sure it was going to be any fun.

The studio offers 2-3 group classes every night and several "progressive" classes, meaning they build on each other each week for a month. We decided to go with the progressive waltz and foxtrot classes. The first time, I could tell Michael was a little nervous. I didn't blame him. Our class was a mix of people like us - engaged, 20 somethings - and older couples, meaning 40-60 years old. Both Michael and I instantly liked our instructor, Robert, and by the end of the class, Michael had relaxed and even said how much fun he was having.

The last thing we did for the Groupon was the private lesson. Michael had said to me before the lesson that this would be our last thing, and he didn't think we should continue after this b/c of the cost (it's surprisingly expensive without the Groupon). Well, that idea quickly went out the door, as Robert taught us Tango and both Michael and I loved it. A few hundred dollars later, we signed up for 5 more private lessons and have unlimited group classes until we use all the lessons. Last night, we learned the Viennese waltz and holy cow, it was hard, but so much fun. I'm sure, in no time at all, we'll look like this:

I don't expect us to whip out the Tango at the wedding but you might see us doing more than swaying side to side with one another.

No matter where you live, if you have a partner, you should look into taking some lessons with him/her. We are having so much fun and look forward to our classes every week.

June Goals

Is it just me or was May the longest month ever?! You should see me and Michael’s monthly calendar at home – we had something every single night in May. And work was just crazy with both of us so we are looking forward to June.

Unfortunately, June is going to be a crazy wedding month. Ah – so much to do! We are in the double digits now for the countdown so things are in high gear!

Pretty much all my personal goals are mostly wedding-related – I have a feeling this will be the case for awhile.

Purple Bold = complete

Black Bold = incomplete

Professional Goals – May 2012

Finalize Reunion Volunteers. Just one class left.

Establish ¾ of the class party locations. Yes. Just three to go.

Block of time to work on big reunion events. Starting to work on this day.

Execute a successful Award Dinner. Done – yay!

Update website with pictures. Done (last Friday– nothing like waiting until the last minute).

Start working on golf event. Working on it – and ahead of schedule.

Do an informational interview. Done.

Keep searching. Haven’t looked all month.

Stay positive. Doing my best!

Personal Goals – May 2012

Yoga Sculpt twice a week. YES! I am doing everything I can to look great.

Cardio three times a week. More like two (not counting Sculpt).

Finish basement bedroom. Just need to make the bed.

Plant flowers in our flower beds. Yes, and I’m loving my dahlias.

Spend at least one weekend at home. Go to the cabin all other weekends. Well, I spent one weekend at home. Michael went every weekend.

Complete Target registry. Done (man, that seems like a LONG time ago).

Start dance lessons. Yes – so much fun!

Site visit at the cabin with some of our vendors. Done.

Sign contract and pay deposit for catering. Done.

Meet with officiant to work on ceremony. Working on it.

Finish engagement counseling. Almost. We had to push the last session to June.

Think about ceremony music. Hasn’t crossed my mind once.

Meet with florists. I’ve met with one.

Finalize shower dates. Done.

Start working on other graphic design needs. Yes, and am loving what she’s done so far.

Finalize centerpiece design. Not yet.

Finalize cake design. Not yet.

Frame engagement photos. Done.

Research wedding night transportation. Not yet. This is now Michael’s job.

Design and purchase my wedding band. We have the diamonds, we just need to go in to the jewelry store and do it.

Professional Goals – June 2012

Finalize all class party locations.

Block of time to work on big reunion events.

Get golf invitations out the door before July 30.

Start working on design for reunion invitations.

  

Personal Goals – June 2012

Yoga Sculpt twice a week.

Cardio three times a week.

Private dance lessons.

Finish engagement counseling.

Research wedding night transportation.

Finalize ceremony with Jill

Finalize floral order

Finalize music for ceremony

Finalize menu for rehearsal dinner

Finalize rehearsal dinner guest list

Book final flight for honeymoon

Start researching vineyards to visit in Sonoma

Book dinner reservations for Sonoma and AZ

Finalize bridemaids’ gifts

Finalize groomsmen gifts

Finalize parent gifts

Order cake

Order Kynleigh’s tutu

Order my wedding band

Send invitations

Check on my dress ship date

Book night of transportation after reception

Follow up about hair and makeup trial

Start working on day of timeline

Schedule lunch with our day-of wedding coordinator

Finalize centerpiece design

Buy centerpiece needs (vases, candle, candleholders)

Start working on favors

Sunshines and Creeps

Sunshine to a short work week. I could not handle another day this week so I’m glad it was only four days.

Sunshine to date night tonight. Edina Art Fair and then cooking at home = perfect Friday night.

Creep to nobody coming to a meeting we had last night at work. It’s been on the calendar since September, and six people waited until the day of the meeting to tell me they were not coming. Waste of time!

Sunshine to the National Spelling Bee. Yes, I am a nerd and watch it every year. I love it!

Creep to not cooking at all this week.

Sunshine to seeing my sister Jami on Wednesday night. She was in town for work so she got to see our house for the first time.

Sunshine to my parents visiting again this weekend. It’s always good to see them.

Creep to driving all the way to the Mall of America to return a pair of shoes to Nine West, only to discover that the store no longer exists.

Creep to hardly having any time for us over the past month. And it seems that this will continue into early June.

Sunshine to getting a bunch of things checked off my To Do list at work this week.

Sunshine to getting a few weddings To Dos checked off the list this week, despite having little time.

Sunshine to talking to my friend Becky on Wednesday night.

Creep to not having a Girls Night since Feb, and I missed that one because I was sick.

Sunshine to being in the DOUBLE digits now for the wedding. 99 days!