Life in Color Photo

Yesterday was weddings times two. I didn’t end up going to the Apple store opening because I was under the weather. So I ended up meeting Bj and Sciarrino in Salem at my mom’s. We headed to Dallas for Tracy and Jeff’s wedding. Jeff’s vows were so good, there was hardly a dry eye in the place. After words we went to a little reception at the church. It was fun because a bunch of us crew girls were there since Tracy was a rower herself. After that wedding Karen, Sciarrino, Tex, Marin, Bj and I all drove up to Bridal Veil Lake to go to the end of Ang’s wedding reception. It was so beautiful up there. I took a bunch of photos, so I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking:

from the left: Karen, Tex, Ang, Me, Sciarrino

Me and Beeg, photo opportunities abounded!

Tex, Martin, and Karen on a canoe ride on Bridal Veil Lake (really like a little pond), later we had a little race, leave it to crew girls to get competitive on the water.

Ang gets a push from her sweet hubby.

We check out the grounds, they were awesome!

Here is a better picture of Sciarrino:

See isn’t her hair just great. Today was the final showing of her graphic design work at OSU, it was senior portfolio day in the ballroom today. I think her stuff looks so great, it’s amazing how much we both learned here in five years. I especially love that her outfit matches her portfolio, gotta love the matching. After the portfolio showing we went to a lingerie party for Settlemeyer. Check out all her goodies:

Don’t worry they all aren’t all tinted green, that’s just the color of the awning. 🙂 So another couple weddings tomorrow, and an Apple store opening! Fun stuff, I think I’ll bring Scully (did I tell you that’s what I decided on for Blythe’s name?).

Okay so today I’ve been a lot in my head. I had to do a lot of driving around and I was by myself and my thoughts always get the best of me. So I thought a lot about how things would be so much better if everyone was just nicer. I mean, just polite, and caring, instead of short and rude. What made me think of this? Well things are going pretty smoothly on the Ribbon Jar front except for one thing: a package got lost. This was from the second order. The person contacted me and said she didn’t get it, only not so nicely. I felt so horrible. That’s one thing I hate about internet shopping, no instant gratification, and then to have to wait longer than you are expecting, that sucks. So I apologized profusely and resent everything as soon as I could (which unfortunately had to wait until Tuesday morning since I didn’t find out about it until after I could ship out on Saturday). So I shipped it, and the person hasn’t gotten it yet. It will still take a couple days, but I got this e-mail, that made me feel like the worst person on earth.  I really want to make things right, to be the best and show her that I care, after all that’s what she deserves, she’s the customer. But… couldn’t she have been nice? I mean, I was nice. I guess you don’t always know who’s on the other end. So my thoughts kind of spun off from this.

How could I be nicer? I think I’m pretty nice, but not always, I mean if someone is wearing leopard print spandex in public, I can’t help but share the story, right? Well maybe I could. I hope I’m not getting to cynical, and pessimistic and well, gross. I’d rather come home and share some kind of amazing thing I saw someone do or something. Or something funny that didn’t hurt someone.  I’d rather everyone did that, like the news and everything, I just wish it was nicer. I don’t want to cover up the grittiness or anything like that, I just want it to be fair. Wouldn’t you say the news is mostly bad, and things in this world are mostly good? I mean there are more than 360,000 babies born a day, and isn’t that happy? Couldn’t we all smile a little more? I bet we could people. I bet we could ease off the gas and not follow so close on the freeway, and let people in a with a little wave when they need to get over, and then maybe they’ll wave back to you. And I know we can’t change everything and everyone alone. But there is a much better chance that if you smile at someone they’ll smile. Maybe they won’t. Maybe it will take like five more people smiling at them, but they’ll get it eventually, they’ll feel the love, I know they will. And then they’ll be nicer, and not write mean emails to nice girls on the other end who are just as frustrated as they are.

So here’s something to make you smile today, something silly I saw, just driving along:

I like to make up stories, so choose one:

A) The foliage is for a new bird who is really picky and won’t stop squawking unless he has a big nest.

B) The ultimate jungle themed birthday party.

C) An extreme case of car fungus. 🙂

Today I wanted to do another project for the Ribbon Jar, you know, to juice up the home page a bit. So I decided that beads would be a great thing to put with ribbon (yum, yum!). I had to reorganize my bead collection before I used them, of course. I love doing this because for my 22nd birthday Bj made me the most beautiful gift, a homemade bead box (that’s it on the right). He planed down the wood, put it together, and finished it all. The inside his mom helped him finish in velvet with a box and elastic to hold all my things down. He also spacial ordered these awesome glass specimen containers and funneled all my beads into them. I just love it, thinking of him doing all this work for me, his big hands handling all my teeny tiny beads. I was gone all summer at camp and he missed me a bunch, so he planned this awesome surprise.I go on various craft kicks and I haven’t been on a bead one for a while, so I haven’t looked at this in almost a year, but it was a great memory to come to today. It’s hard because Bj is applying for all these jobs and some of them aren’t so close to here. I can’t imagine spending so much time away from him, that would suck! Let’s just hope he gets a job in this state. Anyway we hung out tonight and watched Beauty and the Geek, have you heard of this show? It is totally awesome, the best idea. These “geeks” (super smart Mensa guys) and “beauties” (not so smart but pretty girls) are paired up and have to teach each other the other ones tricks. So tonight the beauties had to teach the geeks to dance and the geeks had to teach the beauties stuff you would learn in the fifth grade (spelling, geography and history). Any way it’s a pretty cool idea (Ashton Kutcher you genius, you), so check it out, I think they are going to replay the premiere.

Well I survived the bridal madness! I had a lot of fun hanging out with some great friends. First up was Tracy’s bacholorette on Friday night. I picked up Tex and met up with Karen at my mom’s. It was oh so tempting to pop in the pool, but we had to head up to Aloha (near Portland). First stop was Tracy’s sister’s place to open presents and have hors d’oeuvres (why, oh why is this spelled this way!!!). Then we headed to a bar called Bushwackers for some dinner and fun. We ate, but unfortunately did not do much dancing. See we were going to take dancing lessons but it turned out to be couples night. Tex, Karen and I stayed until about ten (when Jeff showed up and crashed the party, bad fiance, bad) and then drove back. I had to get home so I could be ready for more fun the next day.

My mom woke me up (I spent the night in Salem so I didn’t have to drive all over the place) and after the customary, “mooooooom, just give me five more minuets.” I got up, got ready, and came downstairs to full mom party mode. This mode equals: stripping the downstairs of anything “distracting”; i.e papers on the desk, shoes lying around, or even the crock of kitchen utensils usually on the counter. My mom was busy cleaning off every surface, which was really cute in her Juicy Couture sweats (mom, you’re the coolest!). I got to help by cutting bouquets from the backyard and arranging them in cute little vases. Gene showed up with all the food (and I mean like a ton of food), so we got to work. A couple hours later we had 35 guests and a party. The bridal shower went perfectly and Ceara got a lot of great stuff. I helped my mom clean up and went to pick Ceara up around four. We headed to Corvallis so I could get some stuff then down to Eugene with a quick stop to get Powerball tickets at 5:54 pm (talk about cutting it close!). We arrived to a very bacholorette-esque setting. Athena (the maid of honor) and Kristin (another bridesmaid) had decked out the apartment with men, food, a bar, and red tinsel. The signs were great, and very creative since Athena only subscribes to Runner’s World and Backpacker (I especially liked the runner that said, “If only I could have caught you Ceara!”). We were instructed to make construction paper penises (peni?) and cut them out. The bar opened at eight and we got to mingling.

Athena tends bar.

Okay seriously people, I never drink. I don’t like alcohol to me it tastes disgusting, and I just don’t get the whole being drunk thing (and I never have been drunk). That being said… Athena makes these lemon drops which are like so fabulous. Ahhhh! I couldn’t even tell there was alcohol in there, but she swears there was. And the rim of the glass is covered in sugar, I mean, yum! Ok so then we got to play some silly and really fun games which got us all giggly. We got out our peni and stuck them to a board while blindfolded:

Then we had a trivia game about Ceara and Grant, a tossing game, and a how fast can you put a condom on a banana race. Then Ceara got to open all her gifts, and after we toasted her she got her assignments. These were a booklet of things she needed to do at the bar in order to get a prize. They were so funny!  Here’s Ceara all ready to go out:

The bar was awesome and we had a ton of fun dancing. When we first got there it was still 20 minuets until comedy night was over, and the guy had a field day with us. When he was done he made us all get on the dance floor and get down, which of course we didn’t mind at all. Ceara completed 8 out of 10 tasks to earn her prize (which Athena and Kristen said would arrive in 7 to 10 weeks). We danced until about 1:30 and then headed back. Urmala was super hungry because she hadn’t eaten much the whole day so we stopped at Jack in the Box on the way back and when she ordered the spicy chicken sandwich I thought Ceara was going to loose it. We crashed all over the apartment and woke up about 10 the next day. The next day was so much fun too. No one wanted to leave because we never get to see Ceara. So we just sat around and ate a bunch of munchies and leftovers and talked, and talked, and talked. It was awesome, like a sleep over, and I haven’t been to one of those in forever (and I think grown ups should have more of them because they are so fun). Finally we left and Ceara headed to Salem, then Portland because her flight left super early for Little Rock this morning. I didn’t get back until five and I hadn’t showered or anything, it was great. I had two big orders for the Ribbon Jar, so that was awesome. One of them was almost all lime green ribbon, a girl after my own heart!

I say I like hot weather, but it’s just not true. I like luke warm weather with a chance of evening showers. My room is so flipping hot that it feels like ice to go downstairs (where the thermostat currently reads 81 degrees). I have to resort to all kinds of cooling methods like not cooking anything (Bj bake rolls to go with dinner, are you crazy, we’re not turning on the oven!!!), ice cold showers, and the hack job on my weird shaped windows to keep out the sun (look left). Then every night you have to judge when window opening time is. The old, is it hotter out there or in here? Then you get them open so that your neighbors can start up their sucky band practice and smoke on their back porch, ew, ew,ew. See, I think the sun makes me a little cranky. The good news is that I won’t be here very much this weekend. I’ve got a bachlorette party tonight (my first time at a country western bar, I’ll let you know how that goes), a bridal shower tomorrow morning, and another bachlorette party tomorrow night. Go ahead everyone, get married at once! Tomorrow’s bridal shower is at my mom’s house and I am thinking we should turn it into a pool party. I hope everyone else has a great weekend planned.

Oh and if you didn’t read the comment Erin left yesterday, you have to check this out: the turtle song. You know I love everything about Oregon (well minus this current heat wave), and this song from the Oregon Coast Aquarium just proves what a special lot we are over here. 🙂

Just wanted everyone to know that I am listening to this fabulous song over and over. It’s called Hide and Seek and it’s by Imogen Heap. You might recognize it from the season finale of the O.C. Check it out.

So today was awesome. As you can see I got my back-tacking goodies from my secret someone in Maine (yay, I love Maine, hi Pinecliffe people)! I got some seriously cool fabric, great ric-rac, a zipper, some cool buttons, and lots of candy. Even Mentos… someones been reading my blog! So if you don’t know back tack is a swap of sorts. You send fabric to one person, you in turn get fabric. Then the next part is making a little bag thingie out of the fabric you received (you are allowed to add extra or whatever if you like), then you too get  a bag. I think we have until the end of June to make something out of this and send it along. It’s all secret and then at the end it will be revealed who is who. The list of blogs on the back-tack website is really cool because everyone on it is super crafty, check it out.

Today I went with my mom to get a few of the many presents for all the fun things I get to go to this summer (graduations, weddings, bridal showers, and bachlorette parties). It’s fun to see what people register for. Of course I’ll be adding my own touch and making somethings for all the newlyweds… 🙂 Then my mom and I just had to get in the pool because it was so so hot (really it’s really hot, kind of unbelievable hot (91 degrees) after all the rain we’ve been having.  I managed to pop out a few more freckles and get my cheeks just a little pink, it was nice. I came back to another package as well as the back tack one… my Blythe is here!!!!  She is so awesome. I am going to make her a whole bunch of cute little outfits and take pictures of her everywhere. I ended up ordering a remake of the old Blythe because they are way cheaper (the 1972 ones go for a bunch, so I’m hoping some day to just stumble across one that might need a little love). The one I got is called Smash (she’s a tennis player). Blythe’s bodies are the size of vintage Skipper doll’s (so if you’ve got any of those clothes hanging around let me know), but her head is much bigger. He eyes change color, which is the coolest thing. Bj and I took a little walk to the park to take photos, check it out:

Bj was reluctant at first, but then he was all “try this, and this…

Leave it to a guy to come up with this.

A lot of the pictures were with the green eyes, I think they’re my favorite.

I am just in love with her expressions.

There is still lots to figure out with her, I think I need to wash her hair to get it moving a little bit more. I know some people think she’s a little creepy, I did at first actually. I think my mom thinks I’m a little nuts for getting a doll, but hey, I can’t help myself! So now what should I name her? I was thinking Scully, I don’t know…