Revelating

Getting in a car accident has made me realize just how precious life is and how short it is as well. I've been inspired to enjoy life and all it has to offer and not worry about meaningless drivel and to appreciate the beauty of existence.

Miracles happen from even the worst circumstances.

Goal-Oriented

I haven't posted in here in a while, so I figured I'd update with my plans for the upcoming year, or the rest of this year.

I'm really hoping to be able to re-enter school this coming fall. I just need to fill out the FAFSA and go argue with the school about giving me my scholarship money back. Ggrrr.... That's gonna be fun. I'm just worried, though, because my fibro has caused me to have to drop out THREE times. It's really ridiculous and frusturating. I shouldn't have to worry about not being able to concentrate or stay focused or staying awake at the age of 21! I should be finishing up my junior year, not still be considered a freshman. Sigh.

I'd also like to have two of my credit cards paid off by the end of the year, which means I need to start looking into getting a part-time job, with hopefully not too much heavy work or preferably standing for long periods of time. It's just something I can't do anymore. I can't even take long showers like I used to (like 20-30 minutes) without having to sit down in the shower. Rawr!

And I would also like to learn how to sew by the end of the year as well. It's something I'm really getting into, being interested in fashion design like I am, and I'm just itching to learn so I can start putting some of my ideas into practice. :)

And last, but not least, I would like to move in with my fiance by the end of the year. I can already hardly stand to be away from him for more than a day, and I'm just so ready to start our life together. I'm not a patient person, and for crying out loud, we've already been together 5 years AND we're engaged! Sheesh. ;) But really, I just love him immensely and want to be with him as much as possible. I love sleeping beside him and waking up to him, and even when I'm at home, I wake up thinking I'm with him, and then get severely disappointed and sad when I'm not. :-p

But yes, those are my goals for 2009! Wish me luck on acheiving them. ;)

Contest

UPrinting is giving away 250 personalized greeting cards to one lucky winner! The cards are 3.5 x 5 in size, with color on the front and a blank back. You can upload a picture of your choice to use as the cover, and may even include text over your picture. These can be used as your thank yous, as RSVP cards, as invitations to your rehearsal dinner, you name it.




Head on over to http://fortheloveofweddings.blogspot.com/2009/04/uprinting-giveaway.html to enter! :)

Wedding Costs

So let's see... What elements of my wedding do I have planned so we can add up the cost so far?

Band:

My uncle's band, The Folly Dogs, are going to play for our reception, and are only going to charge us around $200-250, which is awesome.

Wedding bands:

When Eric bought my engagement ring, it came with the wedding band, and Eric's going to use the titanium band I got him as a promise ring for one of our anniversaries.

Photography:

Our friend Sherri is going to be doing photography and I was hoping to pay her around $200-300 for her services since I think we'll be the first wedding she's ever photographed. ;)

Venue:

We're getting married at Eric's parents' house, so this is virtually free! Whee!!!! :)

Officiant:

We're having our friend Jon officiate the wedding, so I guess the only costs associated with this would be getting him certification as a notary public, which I'm sure is around $100 or so and then there's the license, which is like $70.

Catering:

A friend of Eric's parents is supposedly going to do our catering for us, and he's a top chef at a nice resturant Downtown, so that's exciting. Hopefully, he won't charge us too much, so I'm hoping less than $1000 for this, maybe even less than $500, if he only charges us for the food supplies. ;)

Flowers:

I'm going to be doing my own floral arrangements, since the centerpieces on the tables are just going to be a couple of blooms floating in shallow bowls with petals around the bowl, maybe sitting on mirrors, which we'll probably just rent, or I might buy them considering I can use them to do cool decorating stuff in our own place. :)

Decor:

I'm going to be doing a lot of my own decor, so me and my bridesmaids and any other willing hands will be doing this ourselves, but just cute little things like origami animals for place-cards and tissue paper balls to hang from trees.

My Dress:

So....This is where I go a little extreme. My dress is a couture, one of a kind, piece of mastery. It's seriously the only one EVER and it's terribly TERRIBLY expensive. like, almost $3000 expensive. And that's with $1200 off, because I traded in TWO dresses I already HAD. :-p But it's so beautiful. You can see it in a previous entry. It's GORGEOUS. Ugh. And the dress the model on the runway is wearing? That's the EXACT dress I'm getting. As in, the one she wore is now MINEEEEE. Just not paid off yet. ;) But it's going to look AMAZING, I promise, and we're making it so I can wear it again.

Alcohol:

As for this one, Eric's parents, his mom particularly, know a LOT of people, so I'm hoping they can help us get discounts on this. :)

Planner:

I only really need a planner to help with logistics and especially day of stuff so I don't stress, and our friend Jake has offered to get us in contact with a friend of his who is trying to get her event planning degree, and if she's willing to work for a low fee, I'd love giving her the experience to work on our wedding, though it's going to be a very low-key event, even if I am a damn fashion-wannabe spending an ASS-TON on my dress. :)

Cake:

I like the idea of having a dessert buffet instead of a cake, so that there's variety, so we might just cut into a cupcake or something. ;) Hopefully, this can be including in the catering costs. :-p

Rentals:

This will probably be the biggest thing, next to my dress, that we spend money on. We just need chairs and tables and linens and plateware and silverware and glasses and such for guests. We also may need to rent catering supplies for Mitch, Eric's parents chef friend, so we'll have to see about how much this will cost us.

Other than that, the only other this is stationery, which I'm still up in the air about at the moment. I have invites made, but it's for a different wedding date, one for this year, and I'm pretty sure that's not gonna be happening, so that was a waste of money.... Sigh. Oh well, right?

Sneak Peek

So...

Tomorrow's the day in which I get to try on a gown I have deemed my dream gown!!! :)

Fashionista

So the Bridal Couture Fashion Show was fabulous! Jess and I got to see a TON of beautiful dresses, eat some delish desserts, and see a ton of gorgeous wedding ideas. We also got to meet the editor of the magazine I won the tickets from. She's an absolute doll. :) And I saw a dress at the show that I totally fell in love with, even though I already fully own two other wedding dresses. ;) What can I say, I'm an impulse buyer. But I'm going to try the dress I saw on on Wednesday at a wonderful little high-end boutique with a fantastic owner who is just a peach. :) I can't wait! I love weddings!

Luck of the Irish?

I am happy to announce that I recently won a little contest that our local wedding magazine was having, and I now have two free tickets to go to the Bridal Couture Show at our fashion week next week! I'm really excited, as I really really wanted to go but didn't have the money to pay $40 for a ticket. Yikes!

But now, I get to go and see all the lovely dresses and runway shows and accessories and such. :) Whee!!! I'm super excited about it and hope Jessica can attend with me. Hehe. :)

Just wanted to update about that, and I'll definitely be posting a blog about the show itself. ;)

Tempermental Me

I am a very passionate person. I feel INTENSELY. And that means I feel EVERYTHING that way, every emotion. It's part of what makes me who I am, and I feel that if that ever changed, if I ever stopped being so emotional and feeling so deeply, then I wouldn't be me anymore. And I kinda like the way I am. ;)

Being this way does have it's downsides, but hey, it's just part of how and who I am, and I just take it in stride.

My emotions are like a box of chocolates....without the little map thing they give you to tell you what's in there. ;) You never know what kind you're gonna get. Hehe.

Revolted

I am disgusted by people like the Governor of West Virginia who increased HIS OWN SALARY by more than 50% while there are STATE WORKERS who are BELOW THE POVERTY LINE having to be on WELFARE, even with their jobs! And he refused to give teachers pay-raises, even though other political employees had similar pay-raises to his!

That is absolutely ridiculous! How can people who are in positions of power that are meant to HELP the people WHO ELECTED THEM to those positions be so selfish and self-absorbed? Did they just never care about the people they represent and serve, or did they become tainted by the jaded world of politics? Why can't people maintain the idealism of making this world a better place and actually put it into action when they have the opportunity?

This world makes me incredibly sad.

One Step at a Time

"I often feel trapped in people's ideas of who I am... stuck by it."

This was a statement made by someone whose blog I read, and I have to say that it struck me, as I too feel I have an issue with this.

I often tend to define myself by what and who others think I am. Even if what they think is negative, I tend to internalize it and believe it. It's a bad habit that I need to learn to overcome. I know that I'm not what others perceive me to be, as they don't know me as fully and deeply as they should before passing judgement, either positive or negative, on me.

The whole point of this is to say that I am my own person, not the product of other people. I cannot define myself, on who or what I am, based on those around me. I have to define myself based on my own beliefs and values and morals, and it's been a hard road for me to travel to realize this.

I have always taken to heart what others have said and thought about me, and let it affect me in negative ways and let it influence my actions in negative ways, and it's about time I start being my own person and move on from the past ways I allowed myself to be affected.

On this journey of mine, this is one more step in furthering myself and finding who I really am. And I couldn't be happier. :)

Growing "Up"

Tomorrow is my 21st birthday, and I feel strangely contemplative about it. 21 is considered by most to be the threshold into adulthood, the age that springboards us from adolescence to maturity, where we put away childish things and live as men and women. But in this day and age, that doesn't quite seem to be the case anymore. As people continue to live longer and longer, the date by which we're expected to "mature" seems to get pushed farther and farther back as well. There are people in their 30's, hell even their 40's or 50's, who party like they're teenagers or twenty-somethings. Are they not past the age to "mature" and give up such past-times, even after having birthed children and become parents? Or are we really ever expected to "mature"? As long as we fulfill our financial obligations, does that mean that we're free to forever more act like adolescents? Even know it seems the world is plagued by the "man-child" and the "woman-child",in reality, is that really such a bad thing? Isn't staying young at heart what keeps us from becoming bitter and cynical and helps us live longer, happier lives? But then again, isn't having drunken wild nights way past your prime incurring upon what time you have left as well? A catch-22, I believe.

Feng Shui It!

I am very interested in the idea of feng shui, and though I can't exactly move everything in my room/my house/my fiance's room around, I'm going to follow the lead of one of my online friends from California, and make myself a feng shui board! I'll have different boxes in the different colors that represent the different aspects of your life (I sure did say different a whole lot in this sentence, didn't I? ;) ), and then place pictures/images or writings or just inspirational things that represent what I want from each of those areas into those little boxes. I hope to get started on this new project ASAP, and I'll be sure to post pictures of my finished board so everyone can marvel at my craftiness. ;) Or just maybe get some inspiration of their own to embark on a new journey in their own lives. :)

Beyond the Pain

In the interest of making this blog more active, I decided to try to post a little about my life.

I am a fibromyalgia patient. It is a very difficult condition to deal with, considering it involves being constantly in pain and constantly exhausted. It sucks the energy and life out of me sometimes, but I keep on keepin' on, and push through as much as I can. There's no cure, but I accept that this is now a part of my life, and I have to handle it and adapt as best I can.

Most people don't understand what I'm going through, and the easiest way to describe it is like having a flu, 24/7. And some doctors don't even believe fibro exists, which makes it even more fun. But I've been lucky in that I've met some amazing people who share this condition, and they are incredibly supportive and understanding. I also have a good doctor who was recommended to me by many local doctors and fibro patients.

But the point of this post was to show that even though this proves to be a challenge for me, I'm not going to just lay down and give up. I won't let fibro control my life, and even though it does have a big impact on me, it will not make me any less of a person and I will continue to live my life as fully as possible. :)

Forgotten Password

It's been a while since I've written here. Only because I couldn't figure out how to login. Hehe. Oops. ;)

Henry is no longer the baby of our menagerie, as two mice found their way into my heart. Sophitia and Cassandra are my newest babies, having joined our little family just a few weeks ago. I rescued them from a pet store, where they had been dumped by some uncaring person. Poor darlings. :( They're sisters and quite cute. And super fast. ;)

My veggie-ism is now 3 months old, and I believe I'm doing quite well. I'm expanding my food options and trying new things and loving being a veggie-freak. :) I do have to admit, I do slip on occasion and eat meat, but it's mostly just chicken. :-p

Welp, that's all I've got for now. I'll hopefully update more often now. :)