Congrats Chris & Jill

We were invited to two weddings on Saturday, Meehan’s and Trant and Jill’s wedding.  Of course we went to Meehan’s, but I was sad to not be able to go to Trant’s wedding as I’ve talked about it with him throughout their entire planning process - which began before our wedding last year.  Trant and Jill hired Joe Elario Photography - one of the best in the area - for their wedding and their photographer just posted a few shots from their wedding on his blog.  You can see them here.  They look great!!

Steve & Danielle’s Wedding

Saturday was Steve & Danielle’s wedding at Longfellow’s in Saratoga.  It was a great time!  I’ve posted pictures here. Didn’t get as many as I wanted to - I was never in the right place at the right time!!

Congrats Danielle & Steve!! 

It’s our 1st Anniversary!!

Alex and I celebrated our 1st Anniversary this weekend.  He’d wanted to go away for the weekend, but Dodi’s Bridal shower was today, so we’re going to just take a mini-break some other weekend.  We might try and go to the NYC Food and Wine Festival that the Food Network is involved with in October.  There’s a Saturday night event that’s Chocolate, Champagne, and Vodka and it’s hosted by Chef Duff from Ace of Cakes (one of our favorite shows).  The tickets are expensive - and for all I know they may be sold out - but if we could make it happen it would be awesome.  I’ll be able to take more time off in the Fall and I’d rather take a mini-break on a weekend when I won’t feel so rushed.

So we celebrated locally this weekend.  Friday night we met up with friends at Ravenswood and then spent most of the day on Saturday running some errands.  We did have brunch at Peaches, which was nice because that was something that we used to do all the time but haven’t done in a while.  We had dinner out Saturday night at 677 Prime.  It’s known to be one of the nicest places in the area to go have a steak - or at least it’s known as the most expensive.  We figured that there wouldn’t be another occasion where we’d let ourselves go there, so we tried it out for our anniversary dinner.  The food was fantastic - but the service was just ‘great’ and not ‘phenomenal’ like we expected of a place with such a reputation (and such high prices).  We both had steak, since it’s called 677 ‘Prime’ because they are a ‘Prime’ steakhouse serving ‘Prime’ cuts of beef and apparently that’s very rare.  The steaks were probably the best steaks we’d ever had and the salad course was amazing as well (I had the beefsteak tomato and gorgonzola salad which was incredible).  Our calamari appetizer was a little chewy (the Pump Station still has the best calamari in the area) and our sides - blue cheese gnocchi, tempura fried asparagus, and broccoli rabe - were all great tasting, but they were on the chilly side of warm.  We had to wait until our meal was more than half over for water and we had to pour our own wine and the dining room was rather noisy.  Wow, after having written all that, it seems like I hated the place.  I didn’t.  I think that the food - for the most part - was outstanding and I think that had we had another waiter/busboy team we would have had a perfect meal.  We enjoyed ourselves very much - but probably won’t be going back again.  Especially since our bill was very near to $300 when all was said and done, and that was without dessert.

1st Anniversary Cake

Alex surprised me with a cake from Villa Italia for our anniversary.  He knew that I was dying to have a slice of our wedding cake again and so he got a miniature version with our monogram on top and I have been in Chocolate Mocha Cream with Chocolate Buttercream frosting heaven all weekend.  Yumm!  He totally surprised me with the cake and I actually got tears in my eyes over it.  Crying over a cake… Hmmm…

Today was Dod’s Bridal shower - and Nora’s first birthday - as well.  :)  The shower went pretty well, I think.  It was a little hot and a little crowded, but I think that everyone had a great time.  :)  And Dodi didn’t seem too tortured by it.  ;)  Her wedding is coming up so quickly!  It’s going to be a great time.  Hair of the Dog is playing at the Pruyn House, where her wedding will be, in a couple of weeks.  I hope we go - it’d be great to see the place “in action” before her wedding day. 

Off to bed… I totally hate Sunday nights…

THREE WEEKS!!

Wow. Three weeks from today is our Wedding Day!! YAY!!!!

There is still a bit of work to do - details to tie together. We got our license last week - yep, we’re “licensed to wed”. I’ve finally finished up all the ordering of supplies that needed to be completed. (Now I just need to actually assemble everything that those supplies were meant for…) I confirmed everything with the Priest, videographer, photographer, and we met with the DJ and Wham and I met with the florist. I’ll need to do final follow up/confirmation calls the week of to all the vendors, but we should be pretty much all set. The meeting with the DJ went phenomenally - he had some great ideas for the party and we’re really psyched to see it all come together. I booked our hotel room for NYC when we return from the honeymoon - I still need to figure out how we’re getting to/from JFK for the trip. Probably train/cab. And I still haven’t booked any dinner reservations, etc for the honeymoon itself - though Meredith emailed me about a reduced priced tickets booth for theater tickets (rock).

Mostly what we have left to do are gift related (bridal party, etc), honeymoon detail related, and DIY detail related. There’s a lot to do, but it doesn’t feel overwhelming. I’m so excited!

In other news I had a dress freakout. I read an article that said that strapless dresses aren’t for everyone and I totally started to worry that it will look weird and unflattering on me all night. My arms… oh, my arms. How icky! But then I thought, “who’s going to be looking at my arms when my hair is going to look so fabulous!” But I really do feel better about it. It’s a fabulous dress and if anyone thinks my arms look nasty they can just screw themselves. How about that?

Also, I’ve stopped losing weight. This is because I’ve started eating like a pig. Cake? Yes. Cookie? Yes. Goat Cheese Spring Roll? Please. Cosmopolitan? Two. Or three. Popcorn? Yep - with butter. Peanut m&ms? Of course! It’s ridiculous. I don’t know why I suddenly feel like I can eat whatever I want. Don’t I realize that I’m getting married in three weeks? Maybe it’s a subconscious thing… I’m worried that my next fitting is on my birthday, only 10 days before the wedding and if they have to take it in there will be too much stress to try and fit another fitting in between then and the wedding. Probably not. I think I’m just lazy. I like the way I look (well enough, anyway) and I want to have fun like everyone else! Hopefully I can reign it in a bit, though. I’m fine if I don’t lose any more weight before the wedding, but I certainly don’t want to gain any!

Don’t Focus on the Number

I had a doctor appointment yesterday and I got weighed. I was slightly annoyed to see that I was exactly the same weight as I was last Saturday at Weight Watchers. When the nurse left the room to get the doctor for me, I sat there, repeating to myself, “don’t focus on the number… don’t focus on the number… don’t focus on the number…”

I know that I’m getting thinner. Pretty much everyone I saw yesterday happened to tell me that. I need to not focus on the number on the scale because I know that with less than 6 weeks (OMG!!!!) to go until the wedding, that number is not going to reach the number I want it to be by the big day.

What I have to make myself realize is that’s okay. I’m looking great! I’m feeling great! I don’t feel like I need to eat all the time and I’m feeling much healthier. If I trap myself into that old way of just thinking solely about the number on the scale, I’m never going to be happy or just enjoy life. My whole life shouldn’t be about avoiding celebrations or situations where I might be tempted to indulge because I can’t trust myself not to eat those things. It should be about complete balance. Only eating when I’m truly hungry. Not having dessert just because I have the points available or just because it’s there.

I’ve had a few “non-scale victories” over the past month or so where I’ve been around a really favorite sweet thing of mine and I’ve not had it - not because “I shouldn’t” but because I just didn’t feel like eating it at the time. I’m really proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish and I hope that I’m really making a lifestyle change this time and not just dieting.

I don’t think that I’m really there yet because I catch myself thinking about how much I’m looking forward to the Wedding Cake (mmmmmmmm… can’t wait. My birthday is 10 days before the wedding and I keep thinking that maybe I want a small cake in our wedding cake flavors for my birthday…) and how I’m going to let myself have fish and chips and beer when we’re in London for the Honeymoon and how going out to eat will be a little easier after the wedding. And then I stop and realize that if I completely stop thinking about how I want to eat, look, and feel, I’m only going to be in the same place that I was six months ago. I should be able to indulge in those things every once in a while, but that’s the key: every once in a while. I need to keep in mind that my daily, every day eating habits still need to be healthy and I need to remember that I am enjoying exercising and I need to keep doing it every day!

I guess they say that it takes 30 days to develop a habit - or something like that. I’ve still got a little over a month to go until the wedding and I know that I’ll be able to keep it up throughout that time. How many days does it take to break a habit? The challenge will be to keep it up after the wedding and honeymoon…

**Edited to add: I feel like such a hypocrite. I write this big post about not being concerned with the number on the scale and focusing on how I feel etc this AM, then go to Weight Watchers and find that I’ve lost 2 lbs and am all celebrating… I guess I can be happy about the number on the scale, just not make it the only thing that matters.

Back on Track!!

I am FINALLY back on track with losing weight! I weighed in at Weight Watchers this week and found out that I lost 5 lbs this week!! YAY!! I switched to doing the Core plan this week - which means that instead of counting points for everything i eat and having a daily limit of points with weekly “bonus” points, I now can eat as much as I need to feel satisfied of any food that is a “core” food and if I want a non-core food, I can use my weekly bonus points for them. Core foods are fruits, veggies, non-fat dairy, lean meats, brown rice, potatoes, grains… Basically whole or non-processed foods. Doing the Core plan makes me make better choices about the foods that I eat. I feel satisfied more and better about myself.

Along with switching to the Core plan, I got my butt back to the gym. I did weight training every other day along with daily cardio. I feel great! I’m really excited about my progress and I know that if I keep up my good work, I’ll be back at my goal weight by the wedding - which is three months from yesterday!!!!

Punch Buggy Blue! No Punch Backs!

That never gets old. I love when I’m out driving around and I hear that. Now that it’s BEAUTIFUL out, I can have my windows open! Yay! Of course, I HAVE to have my windows open when it’s warm because my AC is busted - it probably just needs to be recharged (or at least I hope that’s it), but I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet…

We celebrated the awesome weather this weekend by fixing up our porches. I found a “camp hammock” for the front porch at Target. It’s really cool: the frame just pops right open and then you attach the sling hammock onto it. SIMPLE! And it’s SOOO nice to lay on the hammock and feel the breeze come through the screens on the porch. I totally love hammocks - Alex proposed to me on one so I think I’ll always have a hammock.

For the back porch, we found a little wooden bistro set at The Christmas Tree Shop. It’s totally cute - a square wooden table with two wood folding chairs. We also found a little teak side table that we put our little electric grill on. We have to have an electric grill because both of our porches are enclosed. We’ve used the grill twice so far and it actually works pretty good. Alex made steak tonight - it ROCKED. (He’s awesome!) We also bought some mini light bulb string lights that sort of remind me of the lights that they have in the Macaroni Grill. Alex hung them up tonight and they look awesome! I found a navy blue lantern on clearance at Target and it looks hella cute out there.

It’s awesome having all of the windows open in the apartment and it’s great having two porches. We’re really in love with our apartment - finally.

Oh, and it’s 95 days until our wedding!!!!! I’ve finally been able to REALLY get myself motivated. I figured it out that I’ll need to lose 2 lbs a week in order to get to my goal weight by the wedding - so I’m totally back on program with weight watchers and not missing out on the gym. It’s easier, of course, now that it’s not SNOWING. I’m trying to do Core again. We’ll see how this works out for me…

So much to say…

I hate when it’s been forever since I’ve updated my blog. My whole purpose for having a blog is so that I have the ability to look back at what I was doing last week, last month, last year - whatever - and see what I was doing/thinking/feeling etc at that time. So, I get really disappointed when I suck at updating. And now, it’s been so long and we’ve done soooooooo much that updating becomes an enourmous task!

But enough whining about that.

Let’s see… Well, in the past month, we’ve had a cake tasting and ordered our cake, had an engagement party at my parents’ house, got a new car for Alex, discovered that Alex’s dad is giving us Marriott points for the honeymoon, and ordered our wedding bands. It’s all sooooooooo very exciting!

The cake tasting was a lot of fun! I was so adament that we were not going to pick out or order a cake while we were there, but I had one taste of the mocha cream filling and I was sold! Alex and I really enjoyed the cake tasting - sampling all of the different cake flavors and fillings while sipping on cappucinos was a nice break to a Wednesday. We found a design that we both loved and Alex decided that since he’s not too into cakes anyway, I could pick out the flavor. Since we both loved the mocha cream, we went for that. The price was surprisingly affordable and so we just went for it!

We had a fab time at our engagment party at my parents’ house. Wham and Amy worked hard and pulled off a great party! There was lots of food and drink and everyone had a great time. Alex and I tried to make sure that we kept circulating to socialize with everyone and I couldn’t believe how quickly the night went by - I can’t imagine what the wedding is going to be like! Of course, I was exhausted for the party because of some unexpected car business the night before and hopefully the night before the wedding will find me sleeping more so that I won’t have to battle exhaustion through the night.

Speaking of the car business… Alex went out with his friend, Dave, the night before our party. They took Alex’s car - the 91 Escort that was his sister’s then his father’s and became Alex’s when we were in need in December - to Albany. On their way home at 2:30am the car died. Dave was driving and wasn’t used to the quirkiness of the clutch and it ended up burning out on them. So I got the call at 2:30 to go find them on the side of the Thruway. Of course, I’d only been asleep for about an hour at the time so I was TIRED. I ended up finding them and driving them back to our apartment, only to have Alex realize that he left his wallet in the car. So we drove all the way back out and then tried to have the car towed but gave up after not getting thru to AAA after being on hold for over 45 minutes. I didn’t get to sleep until close to 5am. Got up early that morning to go to Weight Watchers and then kept running all day to find the Escort which had been towed and impounded and get it taken care of. Needless to say, Alex and I were pretty stressed out about it.

We ended up going car shopping the next day and actually found a car for Alex right away. He knew that he’d wanted a Toyota Camry after driving the rental that I had after my accident over December. We found a 2005 Camry for a great price and were able to get excellent financing for it. Alex was super-psyched because the car looked great - it’s black with chrome accents - and was actually a standard. Alex was very happy about that. We were even able to pick it up the next evening. I am sooooooo happy for Alex because this is his first “new” used car bought through a dealer. He is so in love with his car and I am so happy for him!!

My dad had told me a couple weeks back that he’d be able to give us air tickets using frequent flier miles for our honeymoon flight, which we were hella excited about. It brought us one step closer to going on a honeymoon, which is something that we weren’t positive was going to happen. We still had to figure out how we’d pay for a hotel. Alex told me this past weekend that his dad was going to be able to give us Marriott points - enough for a week’s stay in a “category 7″ (five star) hotel. So we are definitely going to be able to go on a honeymoon!!!!! We are soooo excited!! We decided that we’d like to go to London. We’ve got to figure out all the particulars now, but it looks like the honeymoon will be a week in London with day trips to Paris and Edinburgh. We’re SO happy! It’s fun to plan our honeymoon - less stressful than wedding planning. Not that I think that wedding planning is stressful - I’ve actually been having a blast with it! But there are a lot of details to the wedding planning and only so much I can do at a time. The honeymoon planning is a lot of research and daydreaming right now and that’s a welcome change of pace.

Yesterday, we went out and bought our wedding bands! Alex has known for like 3 months which band he wants. We’d gone to Frank Adams jewelers in Stuyvesant Plaza a while back and Alex tried on a ring there that he really connected with. It’s yellow gold on the inside, white gold on the edges, and hammered rose gold in the center. The ring is large (which looks right on his hand) and very heavy. Every ring that he’d tried on after that didn’t feel right to him. They didn’t have the same heavy feeling. He wanted his “one ring to rule them all”. That ring was pretty expensive, though. After I did our taxes, I figured that we could use our tax returns to buy our rings and we’d totally be able to afford the one that he wants. I kept thinking about a piece of advice that Beck gave me - don’t skimp on the wedding rings because those are a forever thing. How could we not get the one that Alex really wanted? I didn’t think that I would find a ring at Frank Adams that I wanted because the last few times we were there, nothing looked right to me. The salesgirl that was there yesterday was awesome. She pulled a bunch of rings for me to try on and I finally found one that Alex and I both really liked. My engagement ring is so intricate that most bands looked odd next to it. A plain white gold band looked too plain, but a band with prong set diamonds looked like it was too much. I found a very thin pave set diamond band that had a single row of small diamonds halfway around. It’s very delicate and vintage looking and looked great with my band or alone on my finger. We’re very excited for our rings - we both want them right now. The order is going in tomorrow and I guess I’ll find out then how long it will be until they get here. Can’t wait!!

And now it is time for me to go to bed. It’s almost ten (gasp!) and I’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn to get to the gym. I’ve been pretty good since January when I started back at Weight Watchers and have lost 17 lbs so far. I’ve learned, though, that I really can’t skip out on the gym and I’m trying really hard to get there in the mornings so that I don’t find excuses not to go after work. I’ve got an appointment on Tuesday with one of the Fitness Trainers (included in the membership) and I’m hoping that he can help me design a good upper body and abs routine. I really hope that I hit my goal for the wedding - I really want to love my pictures!

I must say that I rule.

I have been rocking back at WW. I started going back to meetings on 1/6 and since then, I’ve lost 9.8 lbs. I am so freaking happy about that!!! I don’t know if it’s the fact that the wedding is less than 6 months away now and I really don’t want to look like a fatty in my pictures or what, but the motivation has certainly returned. I’m super-psyched! Every week as Saturday approaches I get excited and nervous for my weigh-in… Will I lose weight this week? How much? I hope I don’t gain! My goal was to lost 40 lbs and get back to my goal weight for the wedding and I’m already almost 30% of the way there. I hope I can keep this up!!!

Another quick update…

I hate that my posts have become quick updates of what’s been going on in the last couple of weeks. I’ve been so busy lately, though… And I’ve been reading a lot, which keeps me away from the computer.

I’ve been going dress shopping and to wedding shows… Fun times. We met with photographers last week. We met with Niki Rossi at Starbuck’s in Saratoga on Tuesday. She was great. SO funny and relaxed. Her style is very photo journalistic and her photos were awesome. Alex liked that she is all about candids and that when she does do the formal shots, she says that she’ll send you off to stand together and tell you to talk with each other while she snaps the pictures. He’s very much not into standing for a ton of formal shots.

We met with Linda Conley on Wednesday at Starbuck’s in Albany. Apparently, photographers like to meet at Starbuck’s. Linda’s style was more of a mix between formal and candids. Her albums were really beautiful. She seemed a little more conservative than Niki. I definitely felt like I’d be more relaxed around Niki. Linda’s packages are a little cheaper and I do like her pictures, so if Niki isn’t available, I’d still be happy with Linda.

I’m planning on booking a photographer this week and a DJ. The DJ that we’re going to go with is DJ Vinny of Cool Cat Entertainment - that is, if he’s still open! He seems very cool and I’ve heard nothing but good things about him. Erica from work said that he did her sister-in-laws wedding and that he was awesome. I’m pretty excited! So after this week, we’ll have a DJ, a Photographer, and possibly a dress! Yay!

OK, now the really depressing news. Ginny got sick last week. We were hoping that she was just a carrier of FeLV. Turns out, she’s not. She was fine all weekend but on Monday night she didn’t meet me at the door after work and didn’t beg for food during dinner. That is very unusual behavior for our spaz. She was also breathing kind of fast and it looked like it was hard for her to breathe. We took her to the vet the next day and they took chest xrays and she had a huge fluid build-up in her chest. Because she’s FeLV positive, her outlook is pretty grim. The dr let us take her home and gave her a shot of prednisone, just to see if it’d help. Amazingly, it did. By Thursday, when we thought we were going to be bringing her back to the vet to be put down, she was almost back to normal. The dr put her on oral prednisone - a tiny pill that we’re supposed to give her twice a day (along with tuna). She hates the pill. HATES it. Why would you ever prescribe a pill for a cat? Annoying.

Anyway, for now, she’s doing OK. She’s playing and being cute… but she sounds kind of crappy when she breathes. She’s not going to get better - Alex keeps reminding me of that. But for now she’s doing OK. We’ll take that.

Oh, and my last piece of news is that I did go back to WW and weighed in this Saturday and after my first week back on the program, I lost 4.6 lbs. I ROCK!!