Anna's Wedding Preparation!

I have always seen Anna as my cousin I have felt the closet with because we are so close in age, we are both laid back (most of the time), and we just get each other. So I didn't want to miss a minute of the wedding preparation. So I took a 5 day weekend so I could be by her side. However, first I needed to prepare myself to go to the wedding which included a little self pampering.

 

On Wednesday I went to my sister's beauty school to get my dyed, cut, and got a facial. I love that I'm back to my true dark brown hair color. Also, it was a great way to help out my sister and get to spend some time with her as well.

The next day I was off to Michigan, and my first stop was to visit with my grandma over some lunch. I mean if I'm going to be in Michigan, I going to see my grandma- there is no question about that.

 

After lunch, I was on my way to Anna's soon to be new home! All I can say is- WOW!! This house is so big, but I guess your dollar goes a lot further when you live in the country. There is still some work to be done on inside the house, but the outside is so pretty! 

Later that night was Anna's second bachelorette party. This party included games, "boob" cake, and a good old fashion sleepover! It was a great girls night in.

Friday was rehearsal day! The big project of the day was to decorate the church for the ceremony. It took about 3 hours to do, but I think the end results turned out really well.

 

May I say, the hardest part of all decor was those lights and tulle at the back of the church.To get everything to look right took well over an hour.

After the rehearsal we went to dinner, and then back to Buddy's for the night. However, before the end of the night I had to make a trip to Walmart to so I could buy Anna's wedding gift.

The idea for my gift came from something Anna said while she was in Chicago. However, my whole plan behind the gift and getting it executed took some work. Lucky for me I had some help- but more about that tomorrow.

Chicago Bachelorette Party

I wanted to recap so of the fun things I've been up to over the past few weeks starting with my cousin's Anna bachelorette party!



Being that I'm the person in my family who lives in "Chicago" (the suburbs really don't count, but whatever), I was happy to take a major roll in planning the events of the party. To start per Anna's request this is what she wanted:

1. Dancing
2. No penis stuff

And from there, she was pretty much open to whatever. So I worked with Anna's sister Carla to come up with more ideas and this as far as we got:

• Chicago sight seeing
• See some type of comedy show
• Dancing
• Try not to spend too much money!

So with this loose plan in place- I got my "Chicago" friends involved. I work with a few of my friends to come up with all the details and I have to say it went really well. Here is how the weekend went down:

Friday (night)- Anna and Carla made it to town. We had people over at our house for drinks and games. It was a great way to start off the weekend.

Saturday- We had to pick up Carla's friend Courtney from the airport in the morning. We then went to breakfast, went back to my house to pack, and off to Chicago we went!

*I have to say, I have the best brother in-law. Joe and his girlfriend Whitney were super sweet to open their house to us to so we could have a place to crash in the city. Plus they live two blocks from an CTA train so no one had to play DD- it was awesome!

Once we made it to Joe's place we pretty much dropped our stuff off and were off to go sight seeing.



I was excited for our first stop because I had never been to Buckingham Fountain. It's so much bigger than I was expecting it to be. From there we were off to "The Bean".



After "The Bean" we started walking toward Navy Pier.



Yeah- let me tell you the don't try making that walk. After about 30-45 minutes of walking and getting lost, we gave in and took a cab. But we made it still with enough time to get some ice cream...



and ride the Farris-wheel.



From there we went back to Joe's place to get ready for the evening events. 

The first stop for the night was to go to "The Comedy Bar". It was a great deal- only $10 for the tickets and no drink minimum.



 After the comedy show, we were pretty hungry so we went back to Joe's place. Joe and Whitney were nice enough to make us a really nice dinner with fancy cheeses and all! Plus it was great because this also kept with our "not spending too much money" plan.

Finally we ended the night at a dueling piano bar so the girls could get their dance on!

Sunday- We got up, got some breakfast, and walked over a mile in the rain so we could go to the Lincoln Park Zoo!

Being that is was raining, we had the zoo pretty much to our selves. We start by spending a lot of the time watching the monkeys (plus it gave us a chance to dry off). They were really entertaining.

Then we spent some time looking at pretty flowers.

 

The only problem with that was even though we were inside the green house, it's pretty old so we still we getting rained on!

 

However, the girls did find a way to stay dry! Even though we were damp, it was a great way to end our weekend in Chicago.

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!