Walk in the woods

What a gorgeous week we are having! Temps in the 60's and mostly sunny days. Drift and I decided to take a couple hours on Saturday and walk to the Campbell Creek Science Center. It's very close to our house and Drift really likes to cool down and splash around in the creek.

The mountains are still sporting a bit of snow and it will take at least a few more weeks to get rid of the white stuff permanently.

SO happy!

Moose like to come around and rub their antlers on the trees, and also eat the nubs off the branches.

One of the trails we took -- didn't see a single person (or animal) the whole time! That's a good thing because I usually sing or talk to the dog in order to keep from surprising bears that are hiding. I feel pretty foolish doing it, but think about the alternative.

I am 99.9% sure these droppings are from a horse and not bear scat, but we got the heck out of this area pretty quickly anyway. The bears are awake and hungry!

Yay, summer is here

Is anyone still reading this blog? Feels like ages since I have posted! Going on 15 straight days of work, with one day off. I'm TIRED. The good news is Memorial Day is coming up and it looks like I may be able to take a 5 day weekend! Even better, D is flying home for 3 days to celebrate the holiday with me. Yippee!

In my opinion, Alaska (or at least Anchorage) has 2 official seasons - winter and summer. If you count construction, then it's three seasons. Spring only lasts a couple weeks, as does fall. Somehow, seemingly overnight, summer has arrived!

I took these photos last weekend during one of our two health fairs. Seriously, who thinks it's a good idea to plan concurrent healthfairs on a Saturday AND a Sunday?!?! WTF. Anyway, it was a gorgeous day and I snuck upstairs to my office a couple times to take a break. This breathtaking view is from the waiting area on my floor.

I am so going to miss these vistas when we move to a new building on campus. I have a feeling I'll be sitting in a cubicle. Horrors!

A little bit of midtown Anchorage. Downtown is further northwest. You won't see many tall buildings around town because of earthquake codes. The tallest ones are found downtown and are grandfathered in (obviously) to the city buliding codes.

Update on everything

Here is a quick update for you peeps, then it's back to pressing my nose against that pesky grindstone...

There is practically no new construction work in town, so D agreed to take on a job out in the boonies to ensure he'll have a job later this summer. The downside is that he will be gone for 5 weeks and return one week before the wedding! So much for all the trips and home projects we had planned. But we'll make it work - we always do!

We decided to refinance our home loan since D found a great rate through a credit union. He completed the paperwork before leaving but I met with the appraiser yesterday at lunch. Quck process (30 minutes) and the lady was pretty impressed with all of D's home remodel work on the house.

Alterations on the dress are complete, but I want my mom to see it in person before proclaiming it finished! Truly AMAZING how different the dress looks from its original state. Honestly, it's hard for me to believe this gown is 40 years old. Since D isn't home, I have the dress hanging in our bedroom so I can bask in its loveliness.

I'm getting bits and bobbles together for wedding decor, and am hoping to schedule a trip down to our Moose Pass venue in the next couple weeks to talk with the owners about catering, setup, etc. Will maybe throw in a scouting visit to some hair salons too.

The weather is getting better every week. Gaining 3-4 minutes of light each day and temps are up in the 60's. I did some yardwork yesterday and pulled the rest of our deck furniture and flower pots out of the shed. Technically we are supposed to wait until Memorial Day weekend to plant anything outside but I don't know if I can wait!

Working all weekend so I will be pushing for one (maybe 2) days off next week!

San Diego 2

Worked today at a health fair. Next weekend I have 2 in a row, so Monday starts 12 consecutive days of work. Yikes! Maybe I can sneak in a day off somewhere.

More San Diego photos...this guy was pretty amazing. All of the rocks were stacked without the benefit of glue, wires, etc. He balanced this one in front of us in the space of about 2 minutes.

This picture is driving me crazy - it won't load correctly.

Boats in the San Diego harbor - some were for rent and the prices weren't too outrageous.

Intently studying the foreign language of my soon-to-be husband.

Wonder if there's a "How to Talk South Dakotan" booklet out there?

Love the PB (Pacific Beach) area of San Diego. We always drive over and hang out for a day.

Oh man, we were loving the sunshine! And D got to be outside quite a bit as he played disc golf with my dad and Gabe. He's a nautral at the sport, we've discovered.

What the...?!

Who steals an organic food box? Well apparently, someone at my workplace does! I always pick up our box as I leave for the day and ours was missing. I emailed the company to see what their policy is in this type of situation and also notified our security department. This sucks - $41 down the drain!

**Update - the company is refunding me my money! Excellent customer service.

San Diego 1

"Enjoy the ride - you'll never come this way again"

Saw this quote on another blog and it really resonated with me. I tend to get bogged down in the details and the stresses of everyday life, but sometimes you have to see the forest through the trees and look at the whole picture. This is a GREAT period in my life! We're happy, healthy (for the most part) and will be getting married in a month and a half. Life is good. My job may be difficult at times but the stress doesn't last forever - there is an end in sight. And I need to enjoy the process of planning a wedding and remember what all of this work is contributing towards.

Ok, enough of the pep talk...on to our recent vacation! I did not realize how badly I needed time away until we were down in San Diego. We really enjoyed ourselves and it was so nice to have D meet my mom's whole side of the family! They kept saying how handsome he is...I agree. :-)

My sister and Gabe totally surprised all of us by making the 7.5 hour drive down from San Jose on Friday! Risha kept saying how her work and school schedule would not allow them to join us for the weekend. And then they just showed up at IKEA as my mom and I were finishing up our shopping extravaganza. It was a great surprise.

My dad showed D the ins and outs of disc golf and it turns out D has some serious natural ability for the game. Dad and Gabe each gave D a disc (isn't that nice?) so we may visit one of the courses here in town for some practice.

If you are my friend on Facebook, chances are these photos will look familiar!

A pair of cool bikes parked outside of the Harley-Davidson shop along the water. My dad has a real chopper/motorcycle at home that he built - the shape is similar to these bikes.

What photo montage is complete without the obligatory funny hat image?

Girls' Weekend

Had a fantastic time in Girdwood for Girls' Weekend 2010! This all took place last weekend and we had 14 girls total over the 3 days, but some had to come or leave early - so 12 each night. The house was amazing - 5 bedrooms, big kitchen and huge hot tub!

The house was located in the heart of Girdwood and very close to Alyeska Resort. Since everything was conveniently located near our rental, we parked the cars and ended up walking the whole weekend. The restaurant we tried on Saturday night (Jack Sprat) was no more than a half mile walk -- it was SO YUMMY.

Covered hot tub in the backyard with a great deck and walkway. We spent a lot of time in the hot tub.

Beginning our 3-hour walk/hike around town and up to the resort.

At the base of the mountain - this is approximately 1 mile from the resort. There were snowmachines everywhere...some sort of sno-cross event.

Near the Sitzmark and chalet. Snow is melting fast but skiing is still open.

Some of our group inside one of the resort's lobbies.  

Beginning of the Winner Creek trail. So beautiful - it winds through the woods over the creek.

In the summer this a great blueberry-picking trail. Just watch out for bears!

We had planned on hiking all the way to the hand tram and going over the gorge, but there was too much snow and we lost the trail!

A really gorgeous weekend. Couldn't have asked for better weather.

Back of Alyeska Resort. A friend of mine used to be the Marketing Director here, so we'd always get free passes for the aerial tram!

The tramway - it runs really fast in the winter for the skiiers, but in summer they slow it down and tourists can go up to the top and sightsee. It's a great ride -- I've seen bears on the mountain in the summer.

One year the girls and I climbed to the top of Mt. Alyeska during the Blueberry Festival. It's 2,300 feet and my left knee was killing me by the end! The trail starts behind the hotel, winds around the back of the mountain and then heads straight up the face. But the nice thing about the climb is that you can ride the tram down for free.

This weekend went by way too fast, but it was nice to reconnect with all the girls without husbands, fiancee's, kids, work stress, etc. We're already planning for 2011!

Off to SD

D and I will board a plane around 1 a.m. tonight (red-eye flights are par for the course for Alaskans) and arrive in sunny SAN DIEGO tomorrow morning! Our next door neighbors just returned from SD a couple days ago and said the temperature was perfect. Lately the weather here has been lovely as well -- bright blue skies and temps in the high 50's. Seems like everywhere I look people are riding dogs, riding bikes, walking, running, etc...anything to get out and enjoy spring!

Had another dress fitting on Sunday after I returned from Girls' Weekend in Girdwood. The alterations are really coming along. The top is cut down and we figured out how low the v-neck should go. I also want the bodice to come in a bit to look a little more svelte. Hello, I have a waist and want to show it off! It's really neat to see my dream dress coming to life.

So far 4 RSVP cards have rolled in and we really look forward to those coming in the mail. And the rehearsal dinner invite from D's parents also arrived this week -- it looks great! Things are coming together...it's very exciting.

Favors

People who know that I have a side business (and know that I occasionally take on wedding favors as part of that business) have asked if I am creating a special set of favors for my own wedding. The answer was always "no" because I could not decide on what to make! Soap? Magnets? Then my sister offered an amazing gift!

Here are the amazing ceramic pieces that Risha and her boyfriend Gabe handcrafted for our wedding favors. I made mini tissue paper poufs to place in each cup.

I do love the bright green of this tissue paper, but it looks slightly like lettuce to me...

Each cup/bowl will also include a favor tag with a thank-you note. This is a lot of tissue paper and I am SO OVER making these things. :-)

Invitations: step by step

Begin with a lovely green cardstock envelopement from Paper Source.

Use a diecut punch to round the edges of the flap.

Use leaf paper punch to add interesting visual detail. Be sure to measure 1.5" from each edge for each leaf. And then trek back to Michaels to exchange the tool becuse it cannot stand up to 175 consecutive punches.

Add a bit of brown ribbon and make a bow through the punched leaves.

I ordered a custom address stamp from Etsy for the RSVP envelopes. The invitation envelopes are sporting a stamp with my parents address (since they are generously hosting this wedding event!) but I figured we would deal with the RSVP's here at home, so those will come to us in Anchorage. I used white ink so the image would show up on the brown envelopes, but they are smearing a tiny bit. Oops.

Insert elements!

Final product:

A little bit of everything

Guess how hot it got yesterday? 61 freaking degrees! Who knows what the summer will be like -- I can't figure out this weather. Last week it snowed, this week we are supposed to have temps in the low to mid-50's.

Took my car into a local shop for a 20,000 mile checkup. Should run under $100. The Honda dealership wanted to charge me $296 for the same service! The only good thing about going to the dealership is the free shuttle. Since D is still out bear hunting and I couldn't wait any longer, I ended up taking a cab from the shop to my workplace. Only $6! I guess I could have ridden my bike but I couldn't find the pump to reinflate my tires. Hoping to bum a ride from one of my coworkers after the shop is through with the service.

Oh and I wanted to include a photo of my completed dessert stands - all 5 of them. They are currently being stored in the guest bedroom (a.k.a. wedding central!)

Invites & USPS

For pete's sake, what is up with the invites?! One thing after another with these things. The latest hiccup is postage on some of the envelopes. Before sending out the first test invitation, I marched on down to the post office and had one weighed. Perfect, the lady said. One $0.44 stamp is fine.

So then I mailed out the remainder in batches until my parents called to say that some were coming to them (theirs is the return address) with "postage due" on the front. Argh. Now they are affixing extra postage (sorry mom & dad!) and re-mailing. I ended up using my leftover postcard stamps for the envelopes still remaining here at the house. What's weird is some have been making it to their destinations while others get returned.

I was just given a huge project at work, so with that added to my workload I will really not be blogging much in the coming weeks.

Craft night

It snowed hard yesterday, but most of it has melted off and today is a slightly sunny day. D has been gone all week but should be home by the time I get off of work. He saw some bears, but no shooters.

Hosted girls' craft night at our house on Wednesday evening. It was a great night! I really need to have everyone over more often. I had planned on making caribou lasagna, but (surprise, surprise) got too busy and ended up serving pizza - along with side dishes of fruit salad, salmon dip, summer sausage, cheese and some salad. And wine. Lots of wine!

This is my last free weekend for the next 5 weeks, so I'll be making the most of it! After that, 5 weeks of pure h@*# will ensue, work-wise. (FYI...don't expect many coherent, happy-go-lucky posts during that time.)

Invites

The wedding invites arrived at our house on Sunday (thanks to Gabe for making a mail run for us!) It's always my worst nightmare to open up a print job and see a mistake. Well peeps - there was a MISTAKE! The printers forgot to ink the second side of our RSVP card, so they're all blank.

Honestly it's not the end of the world, but I had a special design for the back side and I'm kind of disappointed. The company offered to reprint the RSVP cards but it will take at least a week to print / mail out, and we don't have that kind of time. So I'm taking a discount code instead and will use that for a future project.

Overall the paper products turned out beautiful. Great paper, good weight, color matching was pretty spot-on!. I spent all of last evening tying ribbons and stuffing envelopes. Current status: 1/3 complete. The outer envelopes all have mailing labels - I know that technically I am supposed to handwrite all of the addresses but (here come the excuses): 1) I have work tasks and stress up the wazzoo; 2) my fiance' has been gone 24 days out of the last 30 and does not have time to help me address envelopes; 3) invitations would be arriving in guests' mailboxes, oh, by next year if I had to handwrite out each one.  So I hope no one is offended, but something had to go and it was this!

Wedding project: dessert stand

When I started wedding planning last fall, one of my first to-do's was price out wedding cakes. I was shocked at what I found out. $5 a slice for cake and $500 total? REALLY?! It's difficult not to get jaded about the wedding industry when you are faced with inflated costs left and right. My solution for most of these overpriced options is to DIM (do-it-myself) or DIWDH (do-it-with-D's-help).

Instead of a traditional 3- or 4-tiered cake, we will be offering our guests a selection of our favorite desserts, like cheesecake, cookies, cupcakes, etc. I saw this project on the internets somewhere and modified it to fit our needs. It's basically a 4-tiered dessert/cake stand.

I saw these melamine plates at Michael's and immediately snatched up 25 of them for this project. The store also had cute door knobs that matched the color scheme so I bought 5 of those as well. Total cost of these plates and knobs was $30.

At Home Depot, I purchased something called Allthread that matched pretty closely to the diameter of the threaded portion of the door knob. I asked the HD guys to point me in the right direction and ended up finding everything I needed in one aisle. 

After D returned home from hunting, he took up his tools to help out with the technical stuff. He matched his drill bit size to my 1/4" 20 allthread. I planned to make 5 stands, so I bought at least 5 of everything. After some broken and cracked practice plates, D switched to a ceramic tile bit and drilled holes in the center of each plate. (I think we ended up losing 6 plates.)

From one of my Home Depot trips: washers to protect the top and bottom of each plate from my tightening nuts, really long nuts to connect the allthread and doorknob, and rubber feet to make the stands more stable.

D put some weight on a couple levels to test our first stand. It held up!

Overall this project came in under $50 for 5 stands, not including our time, but we definitely would have paid more at the store for something similar. So I consider $10 per stand to be a substantial cost savings over retail.