Top Secret.

What I am about to tell you is highly confidential. Even NASA doesn't know about this. If questioned by the CIA, your response will be, "I know nothing of the sort", using a British accent. It makes you sound smart.

Alright. Here it is.

Nutella Cupcakes with Nutella Cream Cheese Frosting. Oh my goodness. I need to find me some Nutella before everyone starts snatching them up. I certainly hope they're available in the desert. But seriously, this recipe makes me want to buy a muffin tin and a thousand little spring-colored cupcake liners.

One more day before the weekend. Oh how I love Fridays!

A-HA!

I am an appointment booking wizard! Here's my schedule for the days I'll be back in town.

April 6:
- 1:00 pm - Dress Fitting
- 3:00 pm - Cake Consultation
- 5:00 pm - Florist Consultation

April 7:
- 3:00 pm - Catering Visit
- 6:30 pm - Hotel Event

April 8: 
- 8:00 am - Marriage License
- 6:00 pm - Marriage Sponsor Visit

April 9: 
- 10:00 am - Mary Kay Visit
- 2:00 pm - Hair Consultation

April 10:
- Rest!

I'll be flying into town the morning of April 6, and H. will be arriving the evening of April 7. We'll both be leaving the evening of April 10. So much to do in the time in between! I wonder how my body will react to the two hour time difference. I'll probably get up at ten in the morning feeling like it's the crack of dawn, when really I've wasted half the morning. I'll also probably sit outside in the sun and tell everyone "This is nothing compared to the great A-Z." And I'll be confused when people say they're going to Fry's to pick up some transistors instead of tomatoes.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have a pot roast to attempt.

Blue Suede Shoes

I'm slowly making my way through the dozen or so phone calls to make appointments with every business and person involved in the wedding. So far, I have an appointment with the florist and for the dress fitting. There's an event that the hotel is having for some of their clients (I'm assuming it includes people who are using the hotel's services in the near future) - I believe it will involve a little bit of food and drink, but the invitation isn't exactly clear on that. The event is April 7, 6:30-8:30 PM. I am wondering if this will be the only time available for me to scope out the reception venue, but I also don't want to be stuck in a room with a million other people (23 have already RSVP'ed as Attending). I'm calling the representative tomorrow, and we'll talk about this event, among other things.

I thought I had a toothache yesterday. I had sharp pain in a very localized part of my mouth, and was scared that my teeth were falling out. That last part isn't an exaggeration, just ask H. Today, I went to see a dentist who had me bite down on various materials, then seemed puzzled as to why he couldn't explain the pain. I told him it stings a little when I press my tongue up against one specific tooth, so he took a look at it. He told me that when I last flossed, I nicked the gum on both sides of that tooth, and it was trying to heal. That would explain why it didn't hurt when I bit down on anything. I was sincerely relieved when he told me this, and told him I would take good care of it to make sure it didn't get infected or whatnot. Now I feel like I can conquer anything.

Dinner last night was a hit! H. and I bought this delicious teriyaki sauce from Costco recently, and I tried it out last night on strips of chicken. Add a little bit of brown rice and voila! Tastiness. Tonight we're having thin crust pizza (not exactly the standard of health, but hey, it has olives and green peppers and have as much crust as usual). I also picked up some froyo, since we were getting low.

I came across this picture on one of the wedding sites I read every single day frequent, and thought it was just stunning. The baker was inspired by sunprints - I had to look up this term. Apparently there's a specific type of paper that will change colors when left in the sun. If you put an object on the paper, it will retain the image of that object. Neato! While the person that made this cake didn't actually use that paper (she mentioned that would be poisonous), she did airbrush it with edible paint or something, maybe dye? Either way, it's absolutely gorgeous.

Sunprint Wedding Cake | Once Wed

Doesn't that just make you want to paint your walls blue and have white furniture? Maybe that's just me.

One last fancy photo for you all - a spring has definitely sprung centerpiece that has nothing to do with my wedding colors or theme or any of it, but I so so wish it did.

Nantucket Wedding | Once Wed

If I had all the time in the world, I would pick my own wildflowers and stuff them into vintage vases that I had coincidentally found from consignment shops and thrift stores. But, seeing as how I don't know where to get wildflowers for the wedding, I suppose we could go with a florist (prices depending) or use grocery store bargains to create our own magical flowery centerpieces.

Sometimes I wish I was obsessed with wedding stuff a year ago and had planned everything out down to the last boutonniere before ever getting engaged. That probably would've made me a crazy lady, so I guess it's good that didn't happen.

Moar Cakes!

Seeing as how I never actually gave an accurate description of what I wanted in a cake, or perhaps my preferences changed since I started talking about it, here's a general idea of what I'd like. H. had the brilliant idea of having me draw it and putting it up on the interwebs. He really is a technical wizard.

I'm super excited about the bottom and top layers, but I'm unsure as what to do for the middle layer. I'll number the options so that we can keep track of them.

1. Vertical Dot Stripes - I spent half an hour on The Knot's cake gallery website, and couldn't find a picture of these anywhere. I know that cake-making people don't like to do horizontal lines (imagine trying to put something completely level around a circular object), but I thought for sure someone would have done vertical stripes using icing dots. Apparently not. The closest image I could get was this one below.

Vertical Stripe | The Knot

It actually resembles my drawing pretty well. Especially the bottom and top layers. Try to delete from your mind's image all of the flowers in between the layers. What do you think? I imagine that two columns of icing dots would be about the width I want. I don't really want thick vertical stripes on my cake.

2. Quilter's Diamonds - I realized that if we have two very textured layers on top and bottom, we might need something less textured in the middle for the viewer's eye to rest on (I've been watching waaaay too much Nate Berkus). This would be a good place to put a little blossom, don'tcha think? I'm also kind of in love with the color of these flowers in the next picture.

Quilter's Diamonds | The Knot

Love love love the simplicity of this cake. And the little flowers don't look overpowered by the design or anything. As far as flowers are concerned, that's another post. I need to know what the price point would be for the bouquets I finalized in a previous post. If we wanted to do our own flowers, I think we could do it, but it would be a lot of work and stress the day before. We might be able to do them two days before, but three is probably pushing it. But anywho.

3. Banner Drapery - Yeah, I just came up with that name. I have no idea what these things are actually called. This is the last option for the middle tier, and it looks kind of bridal-y. The more I write about it, the more I don't like it, but now you're curious as to what it is, so here it is.

Banner Drapery | The Knot

We're looking at the second to bottom tier, the one with the least number of things on it. The little curtain, drapery banner thingies. My initial idea on this was that if we put flowers on the middle tier, the little banners wouldn't get covered them up by the flowers. But now I think I'll just edit out this entire idea from your choices. Bridezilla to the rescue!

So your three two options are (1) Vertical Dot Stripes, or (2) Quilter's Diamonds. Better number one? Or better number two? (Optometrist humor.)

In the vein of things that are not related whatsoever to the wedding, we thought that someone was moving into the apartment below us, because there was a moving truck outside and loud men yelling things at each other as they carried boxes to and from the truck. Turns out, our neighbors that live diagonal downstairs from us are moving out. Which means that now we have no military protection (downstairs diagonal + downstairs neighbors + neighbors across the top from us = all Army people). Now we have to deal with what will probably be college kids being super loud all the time, or old people that will rock our socks with their degree of quietness. I'm hoping for the latter. I will also take a middle-aged person living by themselves. That's basically like living next to an old person, right?

Went to Costco yesterday. As you may remember, Costco has samples of their products on some of the aisles where people gather and carts collide in a huge tasty traffic jam. Well. Yesterday H. and I had some of the tastiest samples: meatballs featuring this delicious teriyaki sauce that they were selling. We decided to buy the sauce, since it really was the best we'd tasted, and proceeded to make our way around the store. Our list of samples included the meatballs, chicken salad on bread (H. didn't try this), flax seed mixed into yogurt (H. didn't try this either, so uncultured), orange chicken, and cheddar broccoli soup (super tasty, also super cholesterol-y). As we were deciding which line to aim for while we walked to the front of the store, we decided that as long as the meatball lady was still there, we would have seconds (a testament to how awesome the sauce was). We downed the meatballs, then a scary realization crept into our brains at the exact same moment.

It's a Friday. During Lent. It's a no-meat Friday during Lent. Crap.

We had both completely forgotten somehow, and were now feeling guilty about what we had eaten. We promptly bought our things and drove to the nearest Wendy's for a fish fillet lunch as a means of making up for what just went down.

Couple of hours later, I'm on good ol' Stalkerbook, and H.'s younger brother commented on someone's post to thank Momma Mary for letting us eat meat. Scratching my head, I asked Google if this was true, and it was! If a holy day falls on a Friday in Lent, we are allowed to eat meat instead of abstaining. There was a huge sigh of relief in our apartment, lemme tell ya. So yup, there's your happy feeling of the day.

Now it's time to see which team will go through to the final eight or the sweet eight or whatever it's called in NCAA basketball. Side note: I always get N-C-double-A mixed up with N-double-A-C-P. It's like how I get Tom Hanks and Bill Murray mixed up. But back to basketball! I would like both UConn and Arizona to move onto the next round. Seeing as how their playing each other in five minutes, I don't think that will happen. But this also means I will like either outcome. :D

Coupon Win.

This post is brought to you by Michaels. Without them, I wouldn't be able to get 40% off of everything I bought this week. Mind you, they only allow one coupon per transaction, so I did get a snobby look from one of the cashiers when I told her I wanted to do two transactions because I had two coupons. But she did it, and now I have lots and lots of painterly stuffs. In all, I bought two canvases, one beginner's set of acrylic paints (six colors), a double-adjustable easel, an extra tube of paint (orange wasn't included in the six colors), a set of 25 brushes, and a plastic palette to mix colors and whatnot. Pretty freaking awesome.

The canvas that H. and I bought is 24"x30", which is a pretty decent size for a painting. Definitely bigger than your standard eight-and-a-half-by-eleven piece of paper. I thought the best way to paint the image I wanted was to sketch it out on some piece of paper first, then transfer it onto the canvas once I'd worked out all the kinks. I'm sure there'll be kinks. As luck would have it, we still had some of the packing paper the moving company used to fill space in the boxes they packed. It might be called butcher paper, but I refer to it as packing paper, and luckily we had two sheets of it left in the corner of the office that neither one of us uses. The paper is an inch or two wider and a half inch shorter than the actual canvas, which is a remarkably close fit if you ask me. I packed up my little world peace themed tote bag with the packing paper, a half-frozen water bottle, and the camcorder and set out for the nearby park.

Well, first I went to a nearby office supply store and bought pencils, a pencil sharpener, an eraser, and colored pencils. But I did make it to the park.

In the sun, it was about a million degrees today. In the shade, it was about 50 degrees because of the cold, cold wind. As I was walking from my hundred degree car through the million degree sun towards the park, I decided it would be nice to sit in the shade under a little gazebo thing that had tables where I could draw. Little did I know that after sketching the outline of the mountains I would start to freeze to death. I even switched tables under the gazebo so that the sun was shining on my back in an attempt to thaw out. I tried to tough it out, and got about halfway done with one color on the sketch, but eventually the wind started blowing in such a way that the paper started flipping up. Very frustrating.

Here's a poorly lit picture of my sketch, followed by a closeup for those of you who like details.

I'll probably do one more round of dark blue, then hit it up with an orange or a yellow, followed by a splash of bright robin's egg blue. Stay tuned for progress reports and percentage completed numbers.

What's that? You want to know how my gladiolas are doing? Well why didn'tchya say so! Two of them are growing tall and strong, and one of them got a little bendy in the leaves and started swaying towards the sun (again, chyea), so I had to rotate the box around. Haven't done that in a long time. The three of them are starting to become water hogs. I suppose that's a good thing. Well, here they are.

That's the canvas in the background to compare the greenery to. The canvas measures 30" tall, so I suppose these guys are right around 34" tall now. And to think we planted these a month and two days ago. The interwebs says it takes 90 days for buds to form, but it would be nice to see flowers before then.

And now for the awesome wedding-related picture of the day! I realize I've already done a bouquet countdown, but I can still admire more flowers, right? How sweet is this bouquet:

New Zealand Wedding | SMP

Any idea what the small blue flowers are? I was going to say Lily of the Valley, but I thought that only came in white.

Have a lovely night, folks!