Got one?

Okay, the new year is approaching and don't we always start them with good intentions. We're going to drop 20lbs...we're going to get more organized...we're going to cook dinner at home every night...blah blah and BLAH.

I'm no exception to the rule, I will start my new year on a diet. I've never been very good at the dieting thing. I was raised in a household where sweets were a very common occurrence, in fact, rarely a day would go by w/o some sort of dessert or sweet something. It has turned me into a sugar junkie. I love all things sweet. I would swear to you I could live on twinkies and snickers. Seriously!

Lucky for me, I've always had a pretty good metabolism....Butttttt things are a changing around here. In the last 7 months I've gained 10lbs. For me, that's a ridiculous amount of weight and I have no real good reason for it besides not putting the fork down when I should. One day in the not so distant future (post marriage...of course!), we hope to become parents and I hope to not pass along my bad sugar-loving habits to our children. I suppose I better get a head start now....I've joined Weight Watchers (yes...I can admit I did it!) and drug David out on our first nightly walk (of many to come)...here's to 10lbs less in 2009.

Until next time my friends....peace, love, and skinny thighs!

What Did Santa bring YOU?!

Was Santa good to you this year? He was very kind indeed to us -- I almost felt a like he was a little too kind. Is there such a thing? Ha! There were several things I knew I was getting -- a purse I picked out (thanks babe!), a pair of shoes I pointed out (again thank you dear!) but our most treasured gift of all.......the Kitchenaid courtesy of my in laws. While David enjoys most of the regular cooking in our household -- I am a huge fan of the baking stuff. Who doesn't love sweets? I think sugar should have been my middle name. It doesn't so well when you want to lose weight but hey.....who can't use a little sweet something every now and then. We also both got a plethora of gift cards and money. Won't argue there either -- more shopping when everything is on sale (yayy!)

Christmas dinner was lovely. My mother in law did all of the cooking -- I threw together my green bean casserole because for me it's not the holiday w/o the stuff. I think the only thing we were missing was the traditional banana bread my late grandmother made for every family get together. I have the recipe so I don't know why I didn't make it. Aaaah there's always next year :-) We also got to watch our 3 nieces open about 5 million gifts. Both sets of their grandparents are here so I can imagine the truckload of things they'll be toting back to OK....haha!

Today's our last full day in MS and boy are we ready to get back. We love to see family and lots of friends, but there is NO place like home. I think even the dogs are ready to sleep in their own beds.....

Holy Cow!!!

For those of you who don't already know, I'm in the midst of planning my August 2009 wedding. Since we are funding most of this craziness ourselves we decided we'd really try to cut costs as much as possible w/o it appearing cheap. We'd make what we could make ourselves, if it wasn't cost effective (or I don't have the time to learn the super complicated stuff) we would pay someone to do it for us (ie: cake making -- NO WAY I'm doing that myself).

So, we came down to MS to see family for Christmas and about week before I came down I really started to worry myself about doing the floral arrangement stuff. I wanted our centerpieces to be pretty simple.....all roses. We figured up the cost to do it ourselves (about $25 per centerpiece that held 2 dz roses). We visited a florist yesterday afternoon and got a consult with the people. To put this massive arrangement in the urn (provided by country club) is anywhere between $300-500 depending on how many roses we'd like (few roses vs. all rose arrangement). We were expecting that so I wasn't particularly surprised. What I was surprised was the cost of the bouquets/centerpieces. Here is breakdown of their costs vs my approximate costs. All arrangements were going to be fairly simple since I wanted all roses with some hypericum berries mixed in (nothing super complicated to make). Their price quoted is listed first, my approximate is listed after of course.

Bridal Bouquet: $225 <$50
Bridesmaids: $85 <$25
All Rose Centerpiece: $125 $30

I am going to hire someone to do boutonnières and corsages because I'm going to need about 15 of the things and I figure I'll have enough to do to keep me busy the day prior to the wedding.

My total approximate savings from doing the bridal bouquet/BM bouquets and centerpieces.........*drum roll please*.....$1000. Our total flower costs should be around $1000 total since we will be paying for the urn arrangement and flowers on the wedding cake. I can live w/ the price cut in half from the $2000 we would spend to have them all done. I can live with a 50% discount. Sheesh!

Hope Santa brings everyone lots of toys! He's bringing me a Coach purse...haha! (The joy of picking your own present...hehe). Merry Christmas everyone!!

Have to start somewhere....

Welcome to my page... I decided maybe it was time to give up myspace, but I still wanted a venue to update family and friends of things going on in my "neck of the woods".

Nothing fancy to say today....we're headed to MS to spend Christmas with David's familia and then it's back to the grind. Starting Jan 20th, I'll be both full time student and working full time. Someone please shoot me now!!