Birthday Wish List

My birthday is coming up.  In case anyone is wondering, here are some things I've had my eye on:

Water Bottle!  A BPA-free water bottle in beautiful, vibrant colors!

BKR water bottle $28.00 

Chair! This chair would be great to take camping.

REI Flex Lite Chair $69.50

Shoes! Who doesn't want a pair of fun red shoes???

Vans Canvas Authentic in Red $45.00 - Wm size 7.5

Dresses! These dresses would be great to wear this summer during our vacations to Texas and Colorado! 

Navy stripe dress $54.00 - size S

Pink Dress $77.00 - size XS

floral dress $69.00 - size S

Orange Dress $59.00 - size S

Bridal Shower Cookies

Last weekend, I co-hosted a bridal shower for my best friend from law school.  I made wedding dress sugar cookies as a favor for the guests to take home with them.  I'd never made anything with royal icing before, so I studied up on blog posts to learn some tricks.  University of Cookie has some really great videos for beginners.  These cookies were a lot of work, but so much fun to make.  I can't wait to make my next batch of sugar cookies!


Sugar cookies are best made over the course of a few days.  Since the shower was on Sunday afternoon, I made the cookie dough on Thursday night and let it chill in the refrigerator for 24 hours.  On Friday night, I rolled out the dough, cut my wedding dress cookies, and baked them.  After they'd cooled, I put them in a tupperware, which I put in the freezer overnight.  On Saturday, I removed the tupperware from the freezer and let the cookies thaw while I made the royal icing.  I made this recipe.  However, I left out the corn syrup and the clear extract since I didn't have either.  By the time I had my bags filled with piping frosting and flood frosting, the cookies had defrosted enough to pull apart.  I spread them on cookie sheets on my kitchen counters.  I liked handling the semi-frozen cookies because the cookies felt sturdy.  In fact, I didn't break a single one!  

   Several hours later, after the flooded icing had dried, I used the piping frosting to add details to the wedding dresses.  This part was so much fun!  Which dress is your favorite? 

On Sunday morning, I placed each cookie in a clear treat bag and tied it with a plaid ribbon.  

Everyone at the shower loved them!

Wedding Flowers: Dahlia Love

Rather than hiring a florist, I went to a local flower farm.  I never really considered using a florist because I thought it would really stretch my budget, and I also thought that making my own flowers would be a ton of fun.  Guess what?  It was so much fun!  For a long time, I thought I was going to buy my flowers from one of the many websites offering wholesale flowers.  But then, I realized that the flowers I liked on the website were Dahlias - and - they were shipping from California!  What?  Well, since I lived in California, I figured, why not save myself some shipping costs and go get my dahlias straight from the source.  After some thorough google searching, I stumbled upon Aztec Dahlia Farm located in Petaluma.  Goldmine.  This place was dahlia nirvana - hundreds of Dahlias, just waiting to be a part of your wedding.

Aztec Dahlias

About a month prior to the wedding, I went out to check out the farm.  I didn't really have a plan in mind, just a central color theme.  I walked up and down the rows in their enormous flower garden and wrote down the name of the flowers that I liked, and crossed my fingers hoping that they would all look great together.

On the Thursday morning before our wedding, I picked them up from the farm and loaded them into the Outback.  My car was packed!  It was about a 3 and a half hour drive to Lake Tahoe from Petaluma and I was terrified that the flowers would wilt by the time I arrived.  As soon as I arrived in the cabin, I put them in the coolest room that I could find in the cabin:  the downstairs laundry room.  We seperated the flowers into more buckets to give them some space, and fed each of the buckets a aspirin tablet to ward off disease.  

My car is packed to the brim!

On Friday morning, we invited some close family friends over to help us make the table arrangements.  We were a group of about 5 women, including my two sisters-in-law, and a few of my mom's friends.  We started on the table arrangements about 10 am and were finished by lunchtime.  It was a blast!  We used a variety a pinks and purples, some deep reds and some oranges.  For those dahlia lovers out there, here's the names: Boogie Nites, Hollyhill Purely Purple, Sea Encantadorita, Dandie Alexa, Alloway Candy, Sea Cascabel, Jean Emerson, Marry Me, Mary's Jomanda, Thomas Edison, and Ms. Kennedy.

Before: just a bunch of empty vases

We put them in milk glass vases and added some sprigs of pine since my mom said they need some green, and since we were in the Sierras after all. 

After:  so gorgeous! No wilting here!

We made our own bouquets too.  The bridesmaid bouquets consisted of about 5 stems of Thomas Edison bound with flower tape and wrapped in a white satin ribbon.  Super easy.  My bouquet was a combination of the Mary Me, Jean Emerson, and possibly another flower (I can't remember now).  We made these on Saturday morning while we were getting our hair and makeup done.  It probably took an hour max.

Bridesmaids making their bouquets.

Seeing my bouquet for the first time!  So gorgeous!

Now, for what you really want to know.  How much did I spend?  A whopping $550.  That included enough flowers for my bridal bouquet, bridesmaid bouquets, table arrangements for 12 tables, flowers for the cake table, and flowers for the ceremony arch.

Changing My Name - Step by Step

Today I got my new drivers license in the mail.  It was so awesome to see my face next to my new last name!  What was even better, was DH's excitement about the fact that we now "officially" share a last name.

The name change process turned out to be much easier than I had expected.  As soon as I got home from our honeymoon, I got started.  I might have lingered, but my HR department needed my new social security card to process my name change within 60 days.  Fortunately, the whole process took me only about three weeks.  Here's what I did:

1.  Certified Copy of Marriage License
First, I had to get a certified copy of our marriage license.  Ordinarily, you can get an official copy by personally appearing in the Recorder's Office where you applied for the marriage license.  However, we got our marriage license in Placer County because it was much cheaper than getting it in San Francisco ($56 versus $97), we didn't need an appointment in Placer County, and the Office was just off I-80 on the way to Lake Tahoe.  So, instead of driving two hours back out to Auburn, we opted to send in a notarized request for a copy of the license.  Getting the notary was pretty easy.  I just stopped in at a UPS Store at lunch, had them notarize my signature (about $10), and then mailed in the request and a check for $14/copy requested.  Although I requested three copies, I really only needed one.  I received my certified marriage license in the mail about a week and a half later.

2.  Social Security Card
Now, I was ready to change my name with Social Security Administration.  I showed up at the San Francisco Social Security building at about 10:00 A.M. on a Friday.  I didn't realize that you could make an appointment, but apparently you can.  I checked in and was given a number and an approximate wait time of: 45 minutes!!  But, after only 10 minutes of waiting, my number was called.  I presented my application, my marriage license, and my drivers license.  Five minutes later, I was on my way!  It really was just that easy.  They told me to wait about three days before I went to the DMV.  Click here for more information about changing your name with the SSA.  I strongly recommend filling out the application before going to Social Security.

3.  DMV
I made an appointment with the San Francisco DMV for the following Wednesday morning.  Please, oh please, do not try to go to the DMV without an appointment.  I showed up at almost my exact appointment time and was ushered to the front of a line of about 25 people.  I was in and out of the DMV in about 30 minutes.  Meanwhile, those 25 people behind me in line, probably didn't move an inch.  I presented my marriage license, filled out the application (which is not available to fill out before hand - boo!), they checked my info with Social Security, I got a new picture, and I was out the door!  Phew!   They told me it would take 4 to 6 weeks for my license to arrive.  It took six days.

4.  Bank Accounts, Frequent Flyer Numbers, email accounts, etc.
Changing my email with my friends was actually pretty easy.  I just sent out a mass email to everyone and told them to please use my new email using my married name.  The annoying part was transferring emails for all the other emails that I get on a daily basis: Banana Republic emails, Travelzoo emails, Groupon, etc.  I actually decided that I would just unsubscribe from all of them.  Prior to the email change, it wouldn't be uncommon for me to wake up to about 40 marketing emails.  Now that I've been an unsubscribing fool, I'm getting around 3 emails each morning.  There's not a single email that I miss.  Sure, maybe I miss a great sale on housewares from Macys, but do I really need to be tempted to spend money right now?  No.  No, I don't.  I'm still working through the bank accounts, reward programs, investment accounts, etc.  But, at least I've got the important stuff done.

The one where we got married....

It's about time I tell you about our wedding! We got married on September 24, 2011.  All you really need to know was that it was easily the most amazing day of my life. Sure, it was pretty stressful for about the month leading up to the wedding, but it turned out even more perfectly than I could ever have imagined.

Stay tuned for more!  I'll try to break down the wedding into more details in the posts to follow.

Halloween

Happy Halloween! All of my Facebook friends are busy posting pictures of their little babies in adorable little toddler costumes. They are such little cuties! If we start now, DH and I can have a little munchkin just in time to dress it up for Halloween next year! haha. just kidding.

Sadly, we never get any trick-or-treaters tonight since we live in an apartment complex in the city. I don't believe there are any children that live in our building. In years past, I've always liked to go for a run about the time that the kids go trick-or-treating. I like to run down Lake Street because it is teeming with families and cute kids. Lots of families open their garage doors and host parties in their driveways. So much fun! And since I'm just "out for a jog" I get to peek at the cute costumes without looking like a creepy old lady.

To celebrate Halloween tonight, DH and I treated ourselves to Frito Pies. It's always been a tradition in my family to eat chili on Halloween night. Last night, we made a big pot of chili using my mom's recipe. Just as delicious as I remembered it, even though it turned out a little thicker than I had expected. Tonight, we heated up the leftovers, spooned some over a bowl of Fritos, and sprinkle it with cheese! Tami Taylor would be so proud. We California-ized this Texas treat by adding some avocado chunks.

Look out Mom, I think we have a new tradition!

For desert, we had some pumpkin chocolate chip bars that I made using this recipe from Two Peas And Their Pod. I made it using big ol' chocolate chips from Sees Candies. While I was making it, DH said: "eeew gross! pumpkin and chocolate?!" Well, I showed him. After they were done baking, DH ate an entire row of pumpkin bars. He even took a plate with him to work to share with his co-workers.

Simple One Flower Bridesmaid Bouquets

I love these simple bridesmaid bouquets. Since we are making the bouquets ourselves, it's nice to know that one-flower, simple bouquets actually look pretty great! Phew! Obviously, mine won't look like this because my colors are purple and pink. But, here is some inspiration anyways: