$1 make-up

My future sister-in-law tipped me off to the amazing sale happening right now at E.L.F. (eyes lips face) cosmetics.  Apparently Nordstroms has bought out the line and everything with the e.l.f. logo on it is up for grabs at the stellar price of $1 on their website!  $1 for brushes, eyeliner, blush, eyeshadows, mascara and more!  Plus, you can get $5 off when you spend at least $10.  I'm not really into make-up (as in I wear it a few times a year) but that made it all the more exciting news for me as I can afford to build up my beauty arsenal and try out some new things über-cheap!

Non-matching bridesmaids

Before I was engaged I loved this idea.  In fact, for the past six years since planning my sister's wedding I knew I wanted my bridesmaids to wear something different.  Not different colors entirely, and not different models of the same color dress, but unique styles in the same color spectrum.

I love this.  I would like for my bridesmaids to wear something in yellow - hopefully not in that traditional bridesmaid satin fabric.  I'm thinking cotton, chiffon, or something more along those lines.  Casual, summery, cute and fun.

A few more examples...

Sources: photo 1, photo 2, photo 3, photo 4, photo 5, photo 6

Birthday shoutout

Today is my sister's birthday.  In six days, I will be in Minnesota and will actually get to see her - in person! For the time being, I managed to unearth this (poorly stitched) photo series of her on the day of my college graduation.  It was the first test for the "panorama" feature on a new camera.  Coincidentally, it's one of the only pictures I have of my parent's yard (where we plan to have the ceremony).  In seven days I will be in that yard - how exciting!

I hope you have a wonderful birthday, hermana mia!

Happy father's day!

"The life and love we create is the life and love we live."

Leo Buscaglia

Fun with colors

This is such a fun little tool to try.  You can choose up to 10 colors and the application will pull photos from Flickr to populate your real-life color palette.  Enjoy!

A wish for our wedding

Photo from ::here::

Photo from ::here::

I love these pictures!  I truly hope that our guests have so much fun at our wedding!

Ties

I'm sure many brides-to-be do their planning a bit more systematically than me.  I do not have a one-track mind.  I follow tangents.  And so, my wedding planning and inspiration gathering has led me to ponder more-or-less every single detail of the wedding.  One example: ties.  I don't know what the men in the wedding will be wearing, but I've seen a few ties that have really caught my eye.  I tried looking for a good tie source and had no luck.  I found some places for cheap ties but didn't like the designs.  I found some good designs that I was unwilling to pay for.  The other day, though, I came across these ties from The Tie Bar.  Each one is $15 and they have a pretty nice selection.

All ties from ::here::

The first purchase

My first official purchase for our wedding was a vintage, free-standing, old-school chalkboard.

I scored it for $30 off of Craigslist.  Luckily, my awesome sister and helpful parents were willing to make it happen, seeing as I'm seven thousand odd miles away and unable to pick up, haul, or store said chalkboard.  I'm so excited to use it!  And, being the nerdy teacher that I am (I actually own my own overhead projector...but that's another story), I am excited to use it post-wedding in my classroom, as well!

As for how I plan to use it in our wedding, check out my inspiration:

I definitely want a photo guestbook!  I'm not a big fan of traditional guestbooks or the big "have the guests sign their names on a photo mat" trend.  I think fun pictures make it a whole lot more enjoyable to look at and a better memento.  We still have to figure out exactly how we'll work out the photo portion, but we have a few ideas and Mike is willing to pitch in on that since it involves technology.  :)

Real wedding chalkboard inspiration from ::here::

Another serving of yellow inspiration

I now present to you the last two of my top six Snippet & Ink yellow inspiration boards.  In case you've been living under a rock and ignoring all of my links, I recommend you go there to see lots more pretty things and a huge variety of inspiration boards.  Really.  They're not all yellow.

I hope you all like this board because I love it!  A perfect picnic.  I would totally do tulips if only they bloomed in August and I really want to buy the eco-friendly wooden cutlery on top, except that I don't need to provide utensils...still looking for an excuse on that one.

And this board is undeniably fun.  I love paper lanterns.

Inspiration boards from ::here::

More inspiration boards

Both of these boards incorporate outdoor elements.  I love the thought of our ceremony being in the yard.

Inspiration boards from ::here::

Snippet & Ink inspiration

I am ashamed to admit that I didn't use Google Reader until spring break this year.  But, oh, did I make up for lost time.  I fell into a black hole of link-clicking and o.d.'ed a little on inspiration.  Luckily, I emerged at the other end with a solid-yet-not-all-inclusive list of wedding blog inspiration.  One of the best sites is Snippet & Ink.  On this delicious blog, Kathryn (the blogger) has posted oodles of inspiration boards.  Of course, I have just about every yellow inspiration board saved in my wedding folder, but I'm going to show a little self-restraint and only share my six favorite yellow boards with you.

Up first, a couple featuring daisies, the flower we'll probably be using.

Inspiration boards from ::here::

Yellow it is.

Once we decided on the location, my vision for our wedding started evolving.  I should note, this process of planning our wedding has really made me aware of how much I have changed these past two years.  Living on this teeny tropical island has removed me from fashion trends and most of pop culture.  I find that my tastes have changed and I am able to choose things I like without even being aware of current trends.

So I have more-or-less decided on yellow as our wedding color.  Believe me, I shocked myself.  Coincidentally, this was actually the color my parents chose in their wedding.

Of course, we're going to skip the canary yellow tuxes.  (Mike occasionally voices an opinion and he put his foot down on that one.)

I think there will already be enough blue between the lake and the sky.  And the grass, trees, and other plants called first dibs on green.  Yellow seems like the perfect sunny addition.  Classic, casual, cheerful yellow.  Just perfect for our wedding.

It's all in the location

Mike and I got engaged last August.  We knew we wanted to have the wedding in Minnesota so we could have all of our friends and family there.  Unfortunately, we are currently living a long ways away from Minnesota.  Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my tendency toward perfectionism.  Full-boar perfectionism.

And so our wedding date was set for August 14, 2010.  We would have two years to plan (and wait!) with one visit back to Minnesota (this summer) to get our ducks in a row.

I guess we'll see how that works out.

That settled, we moved on to the next big decisions...location(s), colors, themes, etc.
Idea overload.  I am a visual person.  I like nice-looking things.  I like to make nice-looking things.  And weddings (and thus wedding-related magazines, blogs and the like) offer up a lot of pretty.  I had powerpoints with color combinations and flower varieties.  And there were so many pleasing options.  How to choose?

Mike and I agreed that we would love to have a lakeside location.  We're really drawn to water (our Aquarius nature, I guess?) and likewise uncomfortable in churches.  With over 11,000 lakes in the state of Minnesota, you'd be surprised how ridiculously hard it is to find a lakeside location.

I scoured the internet and found a handful of places.  Most were in northern Minnesota, far away from our family and friends.  One seemingly perfect site in the twin cities was rejected after a bad review from my sister.  It seemed hopeless and it was looking as if we'd have to settle.

After awhile, a small, quiet spark of an idea began gnawing at me.  An idea I had pushed aside but started to like.  And then it became an idea I loved.  I (er, we) decided to have the wedding in my parent's yard and the reception at the Lakeside Ballroom just down the street.  Perfectly imperfect.

In the beginning

In the immortal words of Michael Jackson...

You wanna be startin' somethin'
You got to be startin' somethin'
I said you wanna be startin' somethin'
You got to be startin' somethin'
It's too high to get over (yeah, yeah)
Too low to get under (yeah, yeah)
You're stuck in the middle (yeah, yeah)
And the pain is thunder (yeah, yeah)

I've been dawdling with this blog, waiting for some divine inspiration for a suitable first post.  I tend to get stuck on beginnings.  It's just that, I've paged back through many a blog all the way to the start only to be disappointed by the the less-than-momentous first post.  "There's no beginning!  They just start.  Right in the middle!"

And so it shall be with mine as well.

Perhaps I will back track a bit in the future, but if I don't get started, I'm never going to put this blog to use.  And that's the whole reason I created it in the first place.  To collect and share my ideas and let my thoughts float out to cyberspace.  So without further ado, the thoughts and ideas for my wedding and pretty things in general shall commence.