Tori Says "I Do!"

Of course it's no surprise that Tori's wedding on Sunday was perfect in every way (since the bride herself pretty much fits that description).

[Read more about her wedding planning here and see the wedding sneak peek on her own blog here.]

The venue was really incredible... Garré winery in Livermore, right in the midst of the sprawling vineyards.

As expected, the bridal party was looking pretty classy (actually very pretty and classy) in navy dresses of various styles to flatter each one's figure, pretty pearl strands, and pretty pink peony bouquets tied with navy stripe grosgrain ribbon.

And the guys were looking pretty sharp in their navy stripe bow ties and matching grosgrain around their boutonnieres.

But the bride -- the beautiful bride -- literally took my breath away. I almost have no words to describe her, but if I had to try I'd start with radiant, stunning, romantic...

Just stop me, I can go on and on...

I mean, just look at that dress!



One of my favorite details was the favors... potted herbs with wine cork labels -- such a great (and useful) idea! Ours are sitting on the kitchen windowsill as we speak.

And of course, I can never have enough peony. The soft pink petals complimented the clean navy stripes in all the right ways.

Another fun surprise? Navy striped straws with cute pink hearts with the B & G's initials. And the monogram napkins were another nice touch. It really is all in the details...

 

And then of course there was Caty's famous cake... And yes, I did manage to score a slice.



*A few of the photos above were downloaded from Facebook and used without permission. Sorry. ಠ_ಠ

Take Me Out to the Ball Game!

We took Ava to her first game of the season on Friday night to celebrate a friend's birthday.

We weren't sure she'd make it all the way through for the fireworks display after the game, but we figured she'd enjoy the experience either way.

This year, her cousin's hand-me-down A's outfit was a perfect fit.


Getting ready for the big game:

At the ball game:

 

 

Making friends out on the field for the fireworks display:

 

 

 

When the lights go out in the city:





It was so exciting to see her little face light up when she heard the first big boom and saw the dark night sky illuminate with colored bursts of lights.

Festival de Cannes

A certain someone (hint: it's me!) has a certain milestone birthday approaching (hint: I'm turning 30) so my amazing, wonderful, loving husband is planning a Cannes Film Festival pool party to celebrate.

(I had nothing to do with the theme selection, honest.)

Why thank you, Marilyn. Happy birthday to you too.

I think Alex has a little inner party planner too because he's already been talking about some of the fun surprises he has planned... Oh, okay, fine, think heated pool with glowing beach balls (see below; source unknown), strung white Christmas lights throughout, and... outdoor movie projector!



I feel like a kid getting so excited about my birthday party.

But until then, I'll be dreaming of the French Riviera...

Mother's Day Roses and Vintage Love Stories

I thought I would take a couple more pics of the cool vintage books we used to style Kristen's bridal shower. 

 

 

It makes a nice little centerpiece with the vibrant roses Alex gave me for Mother's Day.

Breakfast at Tiffany's Bridal Shower Invitations

Project of the week: Invitations to Breakfast at Tiffany's Bridal Shower

I think I came pretty close to the one we envisioned here.

Ribbon and rhinestones would have been nice, but I whipped these out in one evening with very little notice.

The card stock is Bazzill Basics grasscloth in Navajo and it's very close to the authentic Tiffany blue color (though it's hard to tell in the pictures above). I bought 12" x 12" sheets from Michael's and cut them down to 5" x 7" (3-up) at Kinko's before printing.

I found the Audrey silhouette in Google images and plan to use it in the party decor as well.

Everything else is right on track and the bridal shower planning crew is ready for action in -- drumroll please -- 29 days!

Happily Ever After

Kristen's bridal shower was on Sunday. You may remember reading about the party planning a while back so I'm excited to share the details of how it all actually came together...

Packing everything up to take to the shower venue.

I framed some quotes I found online (mostly from Pinterest) that fit the fairy tale / love story theme and we set them out around the private room we rented at Picán restaurant in downtown Oakland.

My personal favorite:

"Once in a while, in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale."

I also found the perfect scrapbook I filled with adorable pictures of K and B together to use as a guestbook. (It's in the bottom-right corner in the photo above.) I'm going to add in pictures from the shower for Kristen to keep as a memento.

I was also pretty happy with how the banner turned out. I just printed "Bride to Be" on the same white card stock as the invitations and taped it to the pink card stock backing to leave a thin border, then hole-punched the top corners and strung the twine through. The restaurant had the perfect wine rack where we could hang it along with some hot pink tissue paper pompoms via Martha at either end. 

Here I am with the beautiful bride-to-be and lovely MOH Jennifer. 

We set some gray stripey straws at the bar next to a cute little succulent, as well as in the water glasses at each place setting.

The bride and her future SIL enjoying a delicious lavender lemon drop martini that conveniently matched the party's color scheme.

For the centerpieces, we set potted flowers (left and right photos below are baby roses and center is a hydrangea) atop classic fairy tales, love stories, and romantic collections of poems tied with raffia.

We also broke out the old Scrabble game and spelled out as many wedding-related words/phrases as we had letters for. Then we scattered glass pebbles and Hershey's kisses for the finishing touch.

I can't take credit for the menu cards and games. Jennifer did an amazing job with those and were a huge hit. We set them at each place setting while we were setting up so we didn't have to spend quality time passing things around during the party. 

We also put these little note cards in the same colors from Target at each place setting so guests could write their words of wisdom for marital bliss or just general well wishes to Kristen that we'll include in the guest book along with pictures of the guests.

Then we filled glittery silver favor boxes from Pier 1 with chocolates for guests to take home.

Kristen was the most adorable little girl and everyone loved admiring her childhood photos and guessing her age.

The keys are actually bottle openers from Bed, Bath & Beyond. Jen also found the adorable bags for the prizes. And she actually made those flower pens for my own bridal shower a few years ago. (I've used them for a few parties since then -- I love them!)

The ladies all insisted Kristen showcase her place setting as she opened gifts containing the various pieces.

Kristen was not very impressed with the ribbon bouquet I crafted. (And she'll probably kill me for including this picture.)

Kristen, I love you and can't wait to see you marry your prince charming and live happily ever after! 
There's no one more deserving of a fairy tale ending than you.

There's a New Sheriff in Town

Ava has really been running the show around here lately. 

If we don't replace the baby lock on a lower cabinet right away, she's the first to alert us ("Uh-oh!") and is a relentless enforcer. 

I'm so proud that she already seems to have such a strong sense of organization and loves to keep everything clean and in its place.

These pictures from our hotel room in Paris illustrate this point perfectly.

Why Our House is the Eyesore on the Block

We sent a response to a casting call for HGTV's Curb Appeal: The Block makeover show a couple weeks ago. We're still anxiously awaiting a response but I think our argument why our house is the biggest eyesore on the block is totally compelling:

Dear HGTV:

We would like to be considered for an HGTV Curb Appeal Makeover in the SF Bay Area! After seeing our home and learning about our young, fun little family, we know you won't be able to resist picking us!

Before we even closed on the house, the first thing one neighbor, who happens to be a realtor, said to us about the house when we met was "It really lacks curb appeal."  

We bought our 1947 California Ranch-style home as a foreclosure three and a half years ago to get into a great school district as we were getting ready to start our family. We knew the whole property needed a ton of work -- cracked paint (blah blue/gray color), piles of dirt sitting in the front yard, completely overrun with weeds, cracked driveway... If there's something that would make a house an eyesore, you name it, ours is probably a victim. And with several additions that obviously took place in different decades, everything is piecemeal. We like to say our house is having an identity crisis. It desperately needs to get some help!

Not only that, but we replaced most of the windows throughout the house with double-paned ones to help with our insane electric bill, but then never finished the exterior window trims! And when we tried to install a doorbell, we cut the wrong piece, and it's still a drippy glue-DIY-gone-wrong mess!

It's not just that every other home around us is perfectly manicured, but with a huge blind spot to traffic around a bend in front of our house, it's not even safe now that our daughter is running around making mischief.

We have a lot of family in the Bay Area and our place is usually the meeting point. We've already hosted several bridal showers, baby showers, neighborhood mixers, and birthday parties at our home, and we almost want to blindfold people until they walk in the front door.

We completely remodeled most of the downstairs already (mostly ourselves and on a pretty tight budget) but after taking a break to have a baby and then focus on our careers, we've been so overwhelmed when it comes to the landscaping and the rest of the exterior that we don't even know where to start! That's where your team and this awesome project come in, so please help us stage an intervention for our home!

Thanks for considering us!

Sincerely,

Alex, LJ, and Ava

 

Proud to be an Online Bargain Shopper

So... a couple weeks ago, I found the dress I saw in Portland and ended up paying even less for it! I couldn't stop thinking about that dress, and regretted not swooping it up since I desperately need dresses for all the events we have coming up, and I don't find things I love enough to own every day. So I actually called the Portland store to see if they could maybe ship it to me, and they gave me the style number and checked some of the stores closer to me, and they actually had it less than two miles away from my house!

I will refrain from showing the dress as it will make its debut soon enough... but let's retrospect on what brought me to make this purchase, shall we?

I do almost all of my shopping online these days (even, and especially, my groceries, an expectant friend was horrified to learn recently... she'll soon understand).

Caution: Online shopping often creates the tendency to overspend. Seriously. It's common enough that the April 2011 issue of Glamour, p.145 (yes, I finally just got around to reading this during some me time on the elliptical a few weeks ago; don't judge) talks about how to overcome this trap. It's so easy to get click-happy and end up with stuff you don't really want or need. Then, even if you actually ever get around to returning it, you're still out shipping costs, both ways.

Being cautious of this trap, I am careful to factor shipping here and back into my cost-benefit analysis. With so many free shipping promotions out there, it's rare that I pay shipping at all, and I always make sure I can get free return shipping as well or am able to return in-store so I'm never out anything if a product doesn't work out.

This online shopping methodology means you have to be prepared for constant returns.

So here is my formula for successful online shopping:

1. Price-shop online to find the best deal. It is so much easier to bargain hunt when you literally have every store in the world at your fingertips. Be sure to pin your top choices for easy comparison.
2. Go in to check the item out in person. Besides not paying for shipping, I admit, there is something nice about actually going to a store and seeing the quality and even trying something on before calling it your own. 

Disclaimer: I rarely have the luxury to actually go into a store to see something in person (which is why Portland was such a treat for me), so sometimes I take chances and make a purchase without seeing it in person first, but only if I'm able to return it at no financial loss.

3. Buy it on the spot if you can get the same deal or better without shipping charges (since you already know you've found the best price). If not, place the order online when you return home. (This is where the pinboards will come in handy.)

I'm sure this process has saved me hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. It's rare that I will still want something after putting it under this microscope (or keep it after seeing the dent it's put in my checking account).

Side note: It's not that I'm such a penny-pincher. I'm totally willing to spend money, sometimes even on things that others would consider frivolous, but preferably under the following circumstances:

• It's on sale at a huge discount. Almost everything goes on sale eventually and I don't usually mind waiting until it's out of season. I'm in this for the long run.
• I'm not able to get the same thing for less somewhere else. It's worth it to me to shop around.
• I'm not able to make it myself for less. Whether or not I think I'll actually have the time or patience to do it; I just can't justify it.

Example: Here are a few items from the J. Crew spring sale that passed my criteria and found themselves on my doorstep last week:

Stripe twisted stitch henley in champagne/black.

No longer available!

Linen cable-knit sweater in flax.

Whisper linen dolman-sleeve tee in concord grape.

Now, I don't know what the deal is with J. Crew's sizing because I ordered all smalls and I'm swimming in all of them.

How to Nail a Job Interview

This week has been entirely consumed with round four of six in the interview process for a very exciting position at an amazing company.

I made a comment about something to my husband last night and he responded with, "You have a lot of pent up blogging, don't you?"

I can be very self-disciplined when I want to be so I was on very strict orders from myself not to blog this week or get distracted by anything other than preparing for the interview.

"Just one teensy little post?" I pleaded with myself.

"No!" barked the drill-sargent-me.

"Not even to publish a post I already had drafted?"

"No! You know it's a slippery slope. Next thing you'll be wasting away hours on Pinterest."

So I guess I meant business.

But now that the hurdle is behind me and I have a few days before I'll likely hear regarding round five, I'm back and ready to indulge.

Want to hear a few interview tips I learned along the way (mostly from my husband -- my biggest critic)?

• Be genuine. Sometimes that will mean you have to write and re-write the perfect response to each potential interview question over and over until you sound natural when you deliver it, which seems like the opposite of being genuine, but that's just how these things work.
• Confidence -- not cockiness -- is king. You know you're amazing, and you want the hiring manager to know you are too, but reign it in just a bit and convey the message factually without sounding braggy and annoying.
• Make a list of all your major accomplishments (there has to be something you've done at work that you're proud of). You can pull from these as examples to use in your responses, because showing that you've done something well in the past is the best way for potential employers to see that you'll likely achieve the same successes for them.
• You're not supposed to answer interview questions literally! Each response is your chance to sell yourself and why you're the best person for the job. That's it. Trust me, they don't really want to know the details about that challenging situation, but the way you explain what you did to overcome the challenge should give them insight into what kind of an employee you will be.

Mother's Day Weekend Wedding

Alex and I just spent our first overnight together away from Ava. (We had previously each been away on separate occasions, both for work and fun.)


It was the first wedding of the season! Sadly, I didn't have a chance to interview this gorgeous bride, but I do have a few details to share from this quaint country affair...

I absolutely love this photo display of the bride and groom. I probably would have done something like this instead of the usual slideshow at my wedding if I had thought of it back then.

The cupcake tiers are a great low-maintenance alternative to a formal cake that I've been seeing more and more and I can't say I missed the cake. These flavors were extremely tasty -- chocolate peanut butter, strawberry shortcake... heaven!

Photographer Kim James really captured the intimacy of the bride and groom and the picturesque White Ranch in Chico.

 

 

 

 

Sleeping in was the perfect Mother's Day treat. 


And this is what Ava was up to while we were away...

She spent the night with Grandma but my brother and his beautifully expectant wife spent the day with her at the local Art & Wine Festival. She really loved the goats at the petting zoo.