3 Things I Love Today- Fall in PA, Amici's Pizza Crust, and Jon Stewart Dreamy Freshness

1. Fall in Pennsylvania- This beautiful picture was taken yesterday by Stephen West of West PA Magazine from the Belmar Bridge. I wish I was home to see the leaves change! I don't know how people live without the big color change.
2. Amici's Pizza Crust- second to Leonardo's, but that is about it. Super floury- but in a good way. My favorite of their pizzas is the Siciliano, which has roasted garlic, sausage, and broccoli on it.

from www.dailymail.co.uk

3. Jon Stewart's Acceptance Speech- From getting into the fighting bit he is apparently too old for, to very sincerely and graciously praising the other nominees (in a night where things were predictable and emotionally contrived), to pointing out just how predictable these awards have gotten (YES), a tenth time winner somehow came off as one of the freshest moments in the whole night. All in all, I would give the Emmy's maybe a D, Julia Louis Dreyfuss's speech a B+ (because I am bitter Amy Poehler didn't win), the Modern Family repeats was a whole lot of awkward (I really thought it was Sophia Vergara's night) so maybe a C. Not a great night for television, all being said, but Stewart still made me laugh out loud.

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Quote of the Week- Woody Allen

"The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don't have."

" Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon."

 " If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative."

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3 Things I Love Today- Dianne Wiest, Raspberry Popsicles, and our New Fancypants Buffet!

from www.imdb.com/title/tt0093818

from www.woodyallen.info/2011_11_01_archive.html‎

1. Dianne Wiest in Woody Allen movies- I know she doesn't have the reputation for being one of his greatest muses or anything, but she is fantastic in Hannah and her Sisters. I watched Radio Days tonight (maybe my second favorite Woody Allen movie now), and she is just so good yet again. I mean I can name about ten other things I love her in, and I think because of the kind of veneer of sweetness, she is generally an underated actress, but she just radiates a strength and intelligence in her performances (think Edward Scissorhands). A great example of femininity being successful and strong on its own terms. Can you tell I love her? 
2. Raspberry popsicles- a popsicle maker has now become the big surprise success wedding present. I could eat a raspberry popsicle literally every day for the rest of my life.

from www.potterybarn.com/products/benchwright-buffet/‎

3. Buying a buffet- this is the biggest purchase we have made as adults, so it was pretty exciting. The Boy has agreed to stay in our super cheap apartment if we can get more kitchen storage (and therefore counter space), so this became the number one priority. So rather than paying an extra 4000 dollars a year in rent (that is not playful exageration... that is the truth) we are putting some chunk of that money toward furniture we can hopefully use forever. I am also happy that rather than scale up, we are figuring out how to best manage our small space. Sizing up is greatly overrated, and we have the rest of our lives to have more space than we can manage. Anyway, our (ok, his) new army of kitchen gadgets has found a home, and our apartment is about to have one more piece of furniture that we actually picked out instead of inherited! So, that's grown up I guess.

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100 Things I Love Wedding Week Part 4- Everything Else

 

76. McDonald's French Fries-  Those fries were hard earned! We stopped at McDonald's right after the wedding, and it was pretty much awesome.

 

77. Our flowers- Man, they were pretty! Sad that I couldn't really preserve them or bring them with me to California, but JPC did an awesome job, and it was cool to wake up the morning after the wedding and see just how pretty the bouquet looked. It was like it was saying "yep, that was all real."

 

78. The food at our brunch- Ooooh Bundt cakes. How I love you. I also loved that my cousins and Nana made the giant fruit salad in a cooler. Hilarious. 

79. Leftover flowers- there were so many flowers left over after the wedding and they used them to decorate the brunch. They looked so pretty!

 

80. Having people at Alfeo's house! There is something very cool and special about having people who wouldn't usually be in that house hanging out there. That was probably my favorite thing about the brunch.  

 

81. The dress my Mom got me for the brunch- it was so cute! This is the only picture we got with it. I like the polka dots a lot and it just looks so festive! Thanks Mumma!

 

82. Truces- life is odd. This may be one of my favorite pictures from the whole shebang.

 83. The Tennessee cousins! The Boy got to spend more time with his cousins the night before the wedding while their moms filled canolis, but we both felt like we didn't get to spend enough time with them at the wedding. They ended up having a tough travel day back, and I think we both really wish we could have done something to help and really appreciated what they went through to be with us for our wedding!

 

84. This picture- I have no idea what is going on here! I have to say, now that I am writing this way late, that one of the weird pleasures is how well everyone gets along with my husband. Like, he has an independent friendship with more than half of my bridesmaids, but this friendship might be my favorite. They are hilarious together! And on that note...

 

85. Seeing people I love love on each other! I can only describe some of the emotions I have gone through after the wedding as jealousy, because I was jealous of the good times everyone was having around me- they had time to spend quality time together! But it has been more and more of a treat to hear the compliments people lay on each other. Having Shelly and Melissa bond so much was huge. Seeing people have fun and just good conversations together is a testament to our friends. And I am glad they get to see how fantastic these other people in my life are, because I think they are fantastic too!

 

86.This. Weirdest/ most awesome brother-in-law pair in the world. Just adorable.

 

87. Just hanging out with the family- more specifically, that they are officially my family now! I am really happy/ excited to be my neice and nephew's official aunt and Carlo, Pam, and Elizabeth's official sister!

88. Listening to the Boy play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to everyone- he still doesn't know all of the words.

 

89.  Finding this the next afternoon! Joining the Writing Center was one of the best decisions of my life ever.

 

 90. How much faster undecorating is than decorating- I expected myself to feel sad, but instead I think I still felt overwhelmed by the number of people who came just to help us clean up! Especially, my Aunt Becky and Uncle David. It's the least fun part of weddinging, but we had a perfectly fine time and it went fast, and the Boy's cousin Matt didn't fall to his death, so it was definitely a win all in all.

91. Finally getting a chance to sit at our computers and see all of the stuff people had already put up on Facebook- we even got to change our relationship status. It was nice that coming down from the sort of frantic excitement

'

92. The thoughtfulness of the gifts people gave us- we got some very neat stuff! It was fun to open gifts with our family around, but I really wish that my Mom could have been there.

 

93. We got another quilt! My old friend Sally's family are also Nick's old travel buddies, and their mom Patty made us this amazing picnic basket with placemats and napkins and a quilt inside. It is so beautiful! Very cool present.

 

94.  A boring day with the kids- Aubrey is soooo cute now, and just laying around on the couch watching her play with her momma was just the thing we all needed.

 

95.  Shiley family get togethers- It was nice to get to see everyone one more time before we had to go. I wish we had been able to see everyone a little more before we left, but we just didn't give ourselves enough time.

 

96. Our anniversary cake! Ok, so we may have eaten our 1 year anniversary cake 2 days after the wedding, but I am willing to bet it is a lot more delicious that way, and this way we got to share it with everyone. JPC is the last thing I have to write about, and the difficulty there is that they did so much for us that is hard to sum it all up! But I am glad we got to try the chocolate cake, and I really thought it was so good.

 

97. Aubrey drinking water- she is a hoot! I also really love Pam's face in this picture.

 

98. That we didn't go on a honeymoon right away- I am sure it is the right choice for some people, especially people who use vacations to relax (as opposed to explore) but I think we really needed to just go lay on our couch for like 3 straight days. It is also really nice to have another big thing to look forward to, because I need to apply my planning energy to something new!

99. That there is a Quaker Steak and Lube in the Pittsburgh Airport- Leaving early in the morning from that airport is a fool's game! You can't get wings or milkshakes! Our post-wedding diet was pretty awesome, but I am actually kind of proud that neither of us really jumped off the ledge like we had talked about doing.  Now that we are trying to get back to being healthy, I think we are glad we don't have too far to go.

100. That so far, being married is a whole lot like living together, except that people always ask you how married life is. I have enjoyed it, but mostly just like I always enjoy having the Boy around. It hasn't been earth shaking, thus far, but in a good way.

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Wedding Wednesday- Final Thoughts on Gift- Giving

from www.amazon.co.uk/The-Monster-Factory

Alright, one of the other things I couldn't really talk about during the process of preparing for the wedding was gift giving! This, to me, is a very important part of any event, because I just genuinely love giving presents. I feel like it gives me an opportunity to show people how much we love/ appreciate them, so we spent a lot of time/ discussion on what would be a good gift to give. 

As a bridesmaid, you basically always get the same gift- the jewelry you wear for the wedding.

 

 

 I tried to get them jewelry that was really cool and special- I bought them from Jennifer Jones Jewelry on Etsy ( you can find her shop here- http://www.etsy.com/shop/JenniferJonesJewelry?ref=seller_info). The ones for our wedding were in all of our colors and had all sorts of neat vintage earrings on them. I felt kind of torn about them once I got them, because they were so my style and not the girls, necessarily, but I think they liked them. I had spent a long time deciding which bracelet for which girl, and at least my sister-in-law Elizabeth wanted to know why I picked hers for her, so that kind of curiosity was fun.

etsy.com

  

I would highly recommend Etsy to brides who are looking for cool original jewelry that perfectly matches the style of their wedding. We were going for a kind of light late 40's/ 50's feels for our bridal party, so I went with these big retro looking studs for their earrings. I found them at a wide variety of stores, almost all of whom were pleasant and easy to deal with. Every girl got different flowers for their ears, and I think they were a nice simple foil to the otherwise kind of busy get ups. Plus, I figured that the earrings might actually be wearable again, even if the bracelet wasn't.

My mom and I had decided that we would pay for the girls' hair, so that pretty much ate up the bridesmaid budgets, but the boys were getting such a fun gift that I wanted to get the girls something fun too! So I had the idea, thanks to think geek, to get them all weird cookie cutters (the original idea was to get them all ninjabread cookie cutters like the top picture!). I decided that since many of them are more functional adults than I am, I would try to mix in silly and sentimental cutters with ones that they may actually use. The only person who got all silly ones was Elizabeth, because she is 17 and therefore is at about the same maturity level as I am. The cookie cutters reminded me of many of the times that my MOH and I made cookies with our Nana.

I think cookie cutters work because who doesn't like making cookies? Even better ones that have some silliness and joy? It is one of my favorite things to do, and I weirdly have silly baking memories with a lot of my bridal party. Something like that also offers you the opportunity to give everyone equal but personalized gifts.

etsy.com

The last thing I gave the girls was a pez dispenser with a disney princess theme. Over the years, the boy and I had joked about an elaborate wedding at Franklin High School track with Celine Dion on a crane that was Disney Princess/ sin themed. I had a couple of throwbacks to that wedding planned, but the biggest one was that each of the girls got their pez dispenser (my brother had bought me the set about 5 years ago) and a little cupcake charm (also from Etsy) to attach to their bouquet. The cupcake charms were cute, but they were kind of a fail, because they fell apart all day long- mine even fell apart at the altar!

 

The boy had a much easier time choosing the gifts for his groomsmen (I want to point out here that we used the tissue paper as wrapping material... which I will be doing for the rest of my life). He and his brother (and their friends) had played with legos together since they were kids, and the legos have been making more and more of a comeback over the last year. My brother is also into legos, so really the only person who wasn't crazy into it was The Boy's oldest brother Johnny. I am pretty sure they had pulled him over to the dark side by the end of the wedding.

  

The legos were a pretty big hit, except for Pete who wanted us to get him a different set. He had helped me wrap them all, but he did such a good job keeping them all a secret. He is awesome!

  

For guys, there are less accessories you need to provide, but leave it to us to make it more complicated. We bought them all robot socks, which I think looked a little bit more like monsters than robots. We also got them their bow ties and suspenders, since the odds are they won't be getting much repeat usage out of them. 

 

Despite Jim's face in the picture, they mostly seemed pretty pumped about wearing the bow ties. I thought they looked pretty sharp and adorable, so I am glad I took a stand for the bow tie. 

The last group we wanted to really give something great to was our parents. It turns out there aren't many traditions or guidelines of what you give to your parents (much less stepparents) for your wedding so we tried to have a good time with it. But all of our parents had been ridiculously helpful, supportive, and enthusiastic en route to our wedding, so it was very important to me that we put some thought into their gifts.

 

Because we had two big Harry Potter fans on our hands, we gave both our Mom's Harry Potter wands! Well, technically MIL got a Molly Weasley wand and my Mom got a McGonagal wand. I think they liked them a lot. If you want to buy someone a wand I would highly recommend this store- http://www.etsy.com/people/SticksAndKicks. We also got The Boy's parents a family tree from Etsy, which I thought turned out really beautifully.

etsy.com

My mom was the only parent we instantly knew what we wanted to get her- she has wanted this kind of Hawaiian bangle for a long time, so I saved up to get her one for the wedding. We debated between this number and another one with flowers on it, but my Aunt Ann felt like she would like this one better. I also got a set of coral print for my mom's husband, who is big on the scuba diving. 

I had the hardest time shopping for my dad- I got him an embroidered tissue, and we got his wife a necklace charm of her dog Big, but we needed to do something else. We talked about getting them a nook kitchen table, or a hammock, but eventually we got them a gift card for a verizon store, because they both have ancient phones, and my Dad's was truly terrible. It was a more practical gift than I usually get, but once I thought of it I was pretty proud of the idea.

Ok, so now that I do this, I realize that a lot of this would probably not be that helpful for brides making plans. So, my advice for the gift-giving is to take your time with it. I am not sure it even makes some of those wedding checklists, but it is worth your time to start putting thoughts and money aside as you go. I think it is also great if you can connect the gifts to the larger goals of the wedding, because you usually give them on the night before- they help set the tone, so if you are going traditional, do traditional gifts! If you want a serious party feel, do shot glasses or something silly like that! These people, in theory, are the closest to you of anybody, so think about them and want they might want or need. I feel like it is an important part of of the wedding to show people you appreciate them, and honestly one of my regrets is that I didn't do that more, so I am glad we had this chance. It really is worth the effort, I promise!

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3 Things I Love Today- Mitt and Lucille, Calls with TP, Nights with Grads

 

 1. the Lucille and Mitt tumblr (http://lucilleandmitt.tumblr.com/) - they take Mitt Romney quotes and put them on top of Lucille Bluth gifs and images. It's that simple, and that hilarious. I am sure this reveals all sorts of things about me, especially because I imagine a certain kind of person enjoys Lucille Bluth and Arrested Development. But if you enjoy the show (and seriously, if you haven't netflixed it yet you are missing out) you probably enjoy anti-Romney humor. All the same, my new favorite (poor McKayla). Rich people do say the darndest things.

 2. Long conversations with my brother on the phone- I really like him, and that feels like a big deal all its own. But my brother is a hoot, has well-developed opinions on the season premiere of Parks and Rec (bleh), and becomes more and more the peacemaker as I get ornerier. He makes me smile.
 3. Not having to spend every day with tools anymore- I complain about where I am now, but man I am glad to not be incoursework anymore. Grad students really can be the worst people in the world, myself included.

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Dissertation Progress- Proposal Revisions and Big Decisions

So, now that I have gotten married, given my American Moon presentation, and gone to see my Aunt Ann, there is really nothing left to do but to finish this freaking proposal, so that is what I am working on nonstop now. I am frustrated, to be quite honest, with the process, because I just feel stuck. It feels like you know someone wants something from you, but you really don't know what it is or how to give it to them. Plus, I just want to get to work (and start applying for fellowships, or I am going to be one poor grad student next year!).

The other big issue that has come up is that I have an opportunity to go to DC to do research for 10 weeks in the spring. But then I have to be in DC for 10 weeks! It certainly doesn't seem like the best way to start out my marriage, but every time we sit and have a logical conversation about it, the more it seems like a good long term choice. It will help get the dissertation done more quickly. It will force me to reunite with my focus. It had become a should do, but it certainly isn't a want to do. My attitude about graduate school, in general, has become progressively worse, so I am really trying to turn it around. It's hard to love something that consistently just tells you you aren't really worth loving back or that the things you think you have to give are just quaint and not particularly worthwhile. But I know I am finishing the stinking degree, so maybe making the process go a little faster would be wise. Can you tell how I am bouncing back and forth? Alright, the pomodoro tomato says it is time to work again!

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