How is it already the end of September?

I know my posting has been pretty spotty of the past few months. However, this month was filled with so many great things, I need to get them down in writing for my own memories proposes. Here are a few of the things that have happen over these 2 1/2 weeks-

• My cousin Anna's Chicago Bachlorette Party !
• My Michigan trip/ Anna's Wedding!
• Adventurers of Rebuilding a hot tub

Then yesterday was a mini milestone in Sam and mine life- it was our 12 year anniversary. I'm not sure if you should still count your dating anniversary, but it's been an important day in our lives for so long that September 28th can not pass with us noticing.

 

Sam- I love you more today then yesterday. And my hope is that our love will just continue to grow everyday for the rest of our lives! Here's to 12 years of having you in my life as my best friend, and the many many more to come!

Why I have the greatest friends in the world!

My friends have always showed us so much love over the years. Often we prefer to spend time with them than just by ourselves, and we would never want to live without them in our lives.

However, this weekend just proved that I have some of the greatest friends in the world. You know you have great friends when they are willing to help you move. But we aren't talking about just moving some boxes, we are taking about moving this-

No, it's not some crazy alien spaceship even though that's kind of what it looks like- it's a hot tub! Not only do I have awesome friends because they helped us move this thing to our house, but also because Jen's parents were willing to give us the hot tub. Free hot tub- heck yes! The only thing wrong with it is that one of pipes are leaking, so we just have to figure out which one and we will be good to go. So you are looking at Sam's weekend project- to rebuilding the case and hopefully get this all hooked up in the next week or two. I see many hot tub parties in our future. This is going to be awesome!

Joel and Casey's Wedding

Happy Sunny Sunday Everyone! Today is a beautiful day here around Chicago- I couldn't ask for better weather. Even though today has been great- last Sunday was pretty awesome as well because it was wedding day for our friends Joel and Casey.

 

(From their wedding shower)

The morning of the wedding my sister was nice enough to come over to our house and do my hair for me. I really do like to have my hair up at weddings because if I'm going to be dancing that means I'm going to be sweating, so it's nice to have your hair off your neck and hopefully look less of a hot mess by the end of the night.  Here is a sample of her handy work-

(I'm not sure why my hair look blondish- I have no highlights in it right now)

The wedding was really lovely. It was outside and the rain held out until after the ceremony, so that worked out really well. 

 

Joel and Casey wrote their own vows which was very sweet. And I'm so proud that Casey's was able to keep it together enough to make it through her vows because you could feel the love that is between these two crazy kids. 

After the ceremony we moved on to cocktail hour and then dinner where I got a picture of our part of our table. 

 

(I'm not sure what I'm looking at, but everyone else got the memo to look at the camera.)

 Then it was time to get our groove on! Joel and Casey started it off with their first dance-

Then the party really got started-

 

 

And you know you had a good night when you get this the next morning-

Oh good times with great friends!

Joel & Casey-  

I hope that your first week of marriage was as good as your first day. I love you two very much, and thank you for including me on your special day. Congratulations!  

~Stacy

Working Out for the Wedding

So for the months now, as you know, I've been on a weight loss journey and during the last few months I have set mini goals for myself along the way. So far my goals have been set around the different weddings I have been attending over the summer.

My first wedding I went to was at the end of June and I set a goal to be under 180 by the time that wedding happened. I was excited because the day of the wedding I saw this number on the scale (which ended up being a low weight fluke because it was higher the next week but it still made me happy to see it)-

After that wedding I made my next goal to be under 170 by the time Joel and Casey's wedding happen on September 1st. So I needed to lose about 10 pounds in two months which seemed like a reasonable goal. However, then the summer hit and I went on trips, had grill outs, and just enjoyed my summer.

The last time I check in on August 1st, I weighed- 

So being that I was about half way to my goal (but really only down 3 pound less from the last wedding) I knew I really need to buckle down in August if I had any chance of making my goal. Here is a quick look at the progress that happen over the last month-

 

 

So between being better at logging my food, hitting the gym, and do extra house work to get get ready for our open house- I'm happy to report when I stepped on the scale on Saturday morning this is what I saw-

So needless to say I was excited to show off a little. Here is me in the same dress last August at Mike and Ashley's wedding-

And here me (and Sam) from Joel and Casey's wedding this weekend-

There definitely is a difference especially in my hips, stomach, and face. And to see pictures side by side makes me realize that losing the weight is making a difference in my looks.

However I won't lie when I did get back into the gym yesterday the scale didn't read that number anymore. I guess 3 days of non-food logging, and boozing will do that to you. So being that I have one more wedding to go to this month, my goal is to see under 170 again by my cousin wedding on the 21st. 

Wish me luck!

Happy One Year House Anniversary!

So one of the big events this weekend was our house warming party. If you been around these blog parts for a while you know that we have been living in our house for a while. This very true because we got the keys on August 30th of last year. So I decided that we would have a "One Year House Anniversary Open House" party.

I'm glad Sam agreed to this party because it has made is get our butts in gear to finally finish projects we been wanting to do since we moved in. This included finishing our yard project:

Buying curtains & blinds:

 

(Yes somehow it took us a whole year to do this. I mean who really needs privacy.)

Painting / refinishing our downstairs bathroom:

And finish hanging things on our walls:

Needless to say there were some major work that has been done the last few weeks. (Hence the lack of blogging.) So when Saturday rolled around I was excited to welcome our friends and family over to our house to celebrate. We put out a good spread of food-

And by the end of the night we had just our friends around our kitchen table enjoying each others company, with a few drinks, more food, and an always hilarious game of "Cards Against Humanity".

It was a great way to start our weekend!

Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day! I hope everyone had a great long weekend! I know I did!  More about that in a minute.

Was it just me or was last week the longest week of your life? It was for me. Thank god I made it through August in one piece. I don't know if it was because it was the first week of school, or because I had to work an extra late night, or because I've been going non-stop for the last 10 days but last week couldn't end soon enough.

However, this was an awesome weekend which made all the hard work worth it. My weekend was filled with two very exciting events- my official house warming "Open House" on Saturday.

 

 And the wedding of our good friends Casey and Joel on Sunday.

 

I will be sure to do a full recap on these events because they were to good not to share. Even with these two events this weekend- I still manged some rest and relaxation with 2 naps today! It was a great weekend and I hope yours was just as fun and exciting.

Wedding Shower for My Cousin

I hope everyone had a great weekend. My went bye in the blink of an eye.  Saturday was a blur of cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning. But then we did may some time to have a few friends over for dinner. It was a great night. However, the more exciting day of my weekend was on Sunday when I went with my mom to Michigan to go to my cousin's wedding shower!

Even though it was a 3 hour drive to get to the shower, it was great to celebrate this special occasion with this very special girl!

One of the best shower games we played involved making a wedding dress out of toilet paper on each on the bridesmaids.

 

Then Anna's job was to pick a winning team that was the most creative and looked most like her wedding dress. Needless to say our long sleeved traditional dress didn't win. Oh well.

After the shower my mom and I went to dinner with my grandma and uncle Dave. I mean a trip to Michigan can't happen without spending a little bit of time with my grandma!

 

It was a great weekend, but I have a very busy week planned being that school start next week. So if I'm not around much this week it's not that I forgot about you guys- I'm just trying to make it through week with my sanity!