Newlyweds. Goofballs. Movie stars. We are Carbonated Jeans.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

It's not "Perfect Chef"...it's PAMPERED Chef.

This past Saturday, my awesome sister-in-law Serena threw me a Pampered Chef shower. It was SO. MUCH. FUN! And I'd say it was a complete success for my very first shower EVER. (Er...I mean, I take showers. It was just my first, you know, party-type shower.)

So here's how it went down.

On Saturday, June 27th, a group of about 15 lovely ladies came from various places to the hot hot desert to hang out with me.

The end.

...Just kidding! There's soooo much more to tell.

The party started out with a little ice-breaker game, in which Serena stuck a sticker on each of our backs that had the name of people who were the "other half" of a well-known couple (example: Minnie Mouse). So we had to ask each other questions to try to figure out who we were, and once we figured it out, we had to track down our match. I'm pretty sure I was Lucy and I had to find Desi. My favorite couple that Serena included in the game? Cory Matthews and Topanga Lawrence. Yesss!

Before I get to the other two games, I'll tell you how the whole "shower" aspect of the shower went...cuz, you know, showers equal gifts. And a Pampered Chef shower equals really SWEET (no pun intended) gifts. But the cool thing was that Serena prompted everyone to, in so many words, "bring their checkbooks" rather than pre-order their gifts. Why? Because anything that is purchased AT a P.C. shower goes toward a sweet bonus for the person hosting. And that person is Serena. And Serena, in her awesome-sister-in-law-ness, gave her bonus entirely to ME. Which meant that in addition to the sweet gifts from all the lovely ladies at the shower, I got even MORE gifts from my registry because of the bonus.

Oh, but what I really wanted to tell you was the cool way that my "registry" was displayed. Jenny, the P.C. expert and demonstrator, printed out little tent cards with each of the items I'd registered for, and people just grabbed the one(s) they wanted to get for me and placed their orders at the end of the night. Genius, right?

But enough about presents.

Game number two was movie quote trivia. Serena picked out 15 quotes from well-known love-story-type movies, and gave us a cheat sheet with all of the answers, plus five more movie titles that didn't go with any of the quotes. It was pretty dang hard, but still fun! I only got four right, but the girls on either side of me (Nicole and Summer) had the two highest scores of 11 and 12, so I was surrounded by success! :-)

Game number three was probably the most fun: Guess Tabitha's Age in These Photos (not the "official" name of the game). Josh came to the house early to set up three little collages on the walls, with a total of 17 photos of me from birth through about the beginning of college. The goal was to guess my age in each photo, and you had to get the exact age, except for the photos where I was less than a year. Those you could be within a month of the correct answer.

Do you want to know how many I got right out of those 17 pictures of ME?

...Four. Yep, I fail at life. A few of the pictures, my guess was THREE YEARS off of my actual age. But it was fun anyway! And my mom got the most right, which I think made her happy since half the time she called me Lydia while we were growing up. *tee hee*

So, after all those awesome games, we got around to the whole "point" of the shower, which was to have a demonstration of some great Pampered Chef tools. I got to be the assistant, helping Jenny by chopping some almonds in this sweet food chopper thingy (which I'm totally getting), mixing up some fluffy whipped cream concoction, and layering everything on some puff pastry sheets. We made some kind of almond-strawberry tart thing, which (I hear) was delicious!

BUT...while the pastry was baking/rising/puffing, we had about 15 minutes to kill, so Jenny held me at gunpoint and forced me to tell the story of how Joe and I met. And when I finished that story about three minutes later (what? I talk fast), I told the story of our first date. And three minutes later, I told the story of how I interviewed at my current job the day after arriving home from Romania (and how I magically GOT the job). And finally, after being in the spotlight for 15 whole minutes (as if I didn't totally LOVE every second of it), we pulled out the stuff and put it together and everyone ate. Yay!

After that it was a bunch of hanging out and munching on the other goodies people brought, including my mom's fruit salad and veggie platter, my sisters deeeeelicious assortment of cookies, and some great seven-layer dip with "hint of lime" chips that Serena brought.

Like I said...best first shower EVER. So thank you to the wonderful (and mommy-to-be) Serena, and to my mom and sister, and to everyone else who brought stuff (or just themselves)! It was an amazing night to celebrate my upcoming nuptials.

(...Phew! That was a long one.)

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Getting down to my sex weight.

To explain the subject, a funny story:

My housemate Sarah got married a few weeks ago to a great guy named Scott. He had been living in Texas, so he flew out to Santa Barbara a few times to help Sarah with planning and stuff during the months before the wedding. On one of his visits, the three of us were chatting and I mentioned going to the gym. Scott said, "So are you and Joe trying to get down to your sex weight?"

Sarah playfully slugged Scott in the arm and said, "Scott, that's so crude!"

I said, "Have you met Joe? I'm used to those kinds of statements."

Anyway, Scott had apparently heard this term "sex weight" on multiple occasions, so he figured it was a widely known phrase. I'd never heard it before that evening, but I got the point, and I said, "Well, yeah, I guess you could say we're trying to get down to our respective sex weights."

(End story.)

So, my goal back in February or March was to lose ten pounds by our wedding.

It is now June 10th, 59 days before our wedding, and my weight pretty much hasn't budged. At all. Talk about lame...

I mean, I'm not worried about my dress fitting. I know that it will be fine. And I don't feel "fat" or ugly or anything like that; I just know that I would ideally like to be at least ten pounds lighter than I am right now (in general, not just for the wedding).

So I canceled my Curves membership and joined Joe's gym. I knew I wasn't making much progress at Curves, and I had reached a point where it didn't really feel like much of a workout anymore. I have been loving going to a "real" gym, and working up a pretty gnarly sweat.

The problem lately? I'll push myself too hard, and be SO sore for the next few days that I can't do much of anything at the gym without wanting to cry. Case in point: Monday, Joe and I did a full round of weight-lifting, leg-pressing, and then about three miles on the elliptical machine. The next day...my thighs and my arms felt like mush. And two days later (today), it's even worse. It took me a full minute to walk up the stairs to Joe's place, because it hurt THAT badly.

And thus, I feel like everything I manage to accomplish at the gym seems to be nullified by the fact that I can't do anything for several days thereafter. Hence, no weight loss.

It probably also doesn't help that I've been feeling sick on and off for the last two weeks. Bummer.

P.S. Sorry for the downer here. Just thought I'd give you something to read besides a boring list.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Checking in, and checking off.

I know it's been awhile since either of us posted, and I'd like to say that this post is going to be amazing...but it's not. I'm updating the to-do list again, because I need to feel accomplished! Or something.

Here we go (blue is new):
  1. Figure out vows and pastor's speech/talk/whatever it's called
  2. Plan order of ceremony
  3. Pick songs for ceremony and reception (Getting there!)
  4. Send ceremony songs to Josh so he can practice
  5. Make sure Josh knows we want him to play at our wedding (He knows!)
  6. Get unity candles (Thanks, Pauli!)
  7. Figure out stage setup (Getting there!)
  8. Make flower arrangements from the metric buttload of silk flowers from Michaels (including bridal party bouquets, centerpieces, corsages/boutonnieres...) (We've come up with the prototype for the centerpieces, so now it's a matter of putting them all together. Still have to do bouquets and boutonnieres.)
  9. Finish gifts to my bridesmaids (Getting there!)
  10. "Something borrowed, something blue?" (Am I doing that?) (Meh. Probably not.)
  11. Send cake design and flavors to Kristen (Done! Now we just have to do a little taste test. My favorite part of wedding planning...tee hee.)
  12. Find a cake topper we both like (Done! Just gotta order it.)
  13. Practice for our first dance
  14. Get white keds for the reception so I can dance
  15. Put together wedding favors (need to add ribbon or something with color) (I've got the general idea down, just gotta make it happen.)
  16. Plan table decorations (table cloth overlay, place settings, etc.) (Pretty much done. Once we got the centerpiece designed, the rest should be pretty easy.)
  17. Choose meal and appetizers and stuff; send to Blennie (We know what we want. Just gotta tell Blennie.)
  18. Finalize invitation design with Mom; send around June 13-20 (The design is done; now Mom's putting them together to send soon! Yay!)
  19. Maybe have Mom design a program, too?
  20. Plan order of reception (cake cutting, first dances, etc.)
  21. Find a "going-away" dress (so I don't have to take my wedding dress on our honeymoon) (Done! Got the cuuuuutest dress from Target.)
  22. Plan what clothes to bring on honeymoon
  23. Plan some sight-seeing/show-seeing in Vegas for honeymoon
  24. Lose ten pounds so I can sunbathe in Vegas on honeymoon (Heh...workin' on it. I got a membership at Joe's gym, so we're going together now!)
  25. Get a flower girl basket (and maybe a flower girl tiara? Oh, and shoes!) (Got a basket - thanks Mom! - but may have to decorate it a little. Working on the tiara/shoe thing.)
  26. Cut and curl fabric for flower petals (it's the only way to have them in the right color!)
  27. Practice the three-second kiss with Joe (hey, this list was starting to feel too much like WORK) (We do this a lot.) :-)
  28. Make sure our registries are totally finalized (like, SOON!) (Done! I think. Probably.)
  29. Get ready to pack up and move things to Joe's.
  30. Make/get table numbers/place cards for the reception.
  31. Make some kinda sign for the foyer pointing out the "cry rooms" for use in case of noisy munchkins.
  32. Get Joe's wedding ring! How did this miss the list on the first go-around?
  33. Choose a sterling pattern (and DON'T register for it at Macy's...sheesh, it's expensive!).
  34. And most importantly, during all of this planning, remember that none of it is anywhere near as important as planning our LIFE together. Whee! (Gotta remind myself of this every so often.)