v-day plans

i'm excited for valentine's day this year. josh and i already "gave" each other our presents (ok, really, we both bought things for ourselves at Best Buy and pretended like we gave them to each other. much easier). i'm staying at my aunt and uncle's* so i have access to there gigantic and amazing kitchen and their formal-ish dining room. i'm planning on lasagna for josh and i, plus i need to make some fancy Italian dessert and get some fancy yummy wine to go with it all. my guess is we'll watch a movie and eat all night, and that's fine with me!

writing that note about my "aunt and uncle" makes me really want to share the story of how my parents met. it is pretty amazing and i really think it could be made into a movie (although i'm sure it would get some embellishments...)

photo taken by josh for me during his trip to NY last year

*not really my aunt and uncle. mum's cousin and her husband. see post here.

baby clothes

i was at my parents the other night and they had dug out some baby clothes my sister and i wore when we were little tykes in dreary England. some of these cute little bonnets and knitted things were made by my Gramma Grace, my dad's mum, who passed away last April. some of these were so adorable! i was trying my hardest to remember them, and i came across this one and i knew i had seen it before...

granted, i don't remember wearing it, but i remembered seeing myself in it...

yep, that's me. super cute and super happy. and there's sissy above me, with her blonde hair and Gramma Grace's nose. seeing this was so cool to me, holding something my Gramma had made for us over 25 years ago...just so awesome.

birdie

this image was on my iGoogle this morning, in the new section i just added, "captions." i don't really get the whole "captions" thing, but the images are funny or super cute, like this one. i couldn't find any credit for it either, but OH MY GOSH, so cute.

sick & wedding progress

like what seems to be the rest of Erie, i am sick. my roomie, sister & her hubs, aunt & cousin and my mum are all sick. i'm sure more Erieites than that are too...i've spent at least 24 of the last 36 hours asleep, if not more than that. i'm feeling better this morning, but granted, it's barely 8am.

haven't done too much wedding planning lately. too busy and exhausted after the work day to think about it, and too sick this weekend to bother. Josh and I did a little cake testing at my "aunt & uncle's" (my mum's cousin = my aunt) on Thursday. she made an amazing chocolate layer cake with chocolate-caramel ganache center, caramel butter cream frosting, caramel and chocolate drizzle and chocolate shavings on top. it was AMAZING (pic below).

also, i asked my "cousin" (above "aunt & uncle's" son) to whip up a song for Josh & I to dance to at the wedding. he seriously can "whip up" a song in like, a week. we don't really have a "song," more so...music that we like (Nine Inch Nails, Audioslave, Daft Punk...not really wedding-slow-dance-song-material) and TV shows that we always watch together (Futurama, Simpsons, Fringe...). none of these will do much for our first dance at the wedding. my cousin Paul is an amazing songwriter and told me a few days ago that he has a tune and he's going to get really working on it within the next few weeks. i'm so excited! he is currently living in New York and playing around with his band, Paul and The Patients (@PATPband for you twitter folks). he also does a song of the week http://patp.bandcamp.com/, and wrote a song for my grandpa in December, but i can't find that link!

hope everyone's weekends have been good so far, and if you're sick too, i hope you feel better soon!!

i'm trying to be awesome today

in honor of Jamie and her post last Wednesday, i'm wearing my very own pink scarf today!

my boss got me this scarf when her family went to the Caribbean several years ago. i forgot all about it!

we only do EXTREME

i don't think my family believes in doing things "the easy way," or "simple." (at least, i don't!) So when my sister Rachel's baby shower rolled around, we knew we had to go EXTREME. we also knew this because her hubs works at the church, there are a lot of church people they are close to and need to invite. we had her shower on sunday and the guest list kept climbing up from 80 people, and we knew we were still somehow leaving people out that are important in their lives and we wanted to attend.

that's a lot of people. that's a lot of food.

we had an amazing array of food and even more so, desserts, made and provided by our awesome family and friends.

we had wegman's subs and carrot cake thanks to my auntie mary, my mum made tortellini salad, veggie pizza, two amaretto trifles, and cut up all the fruit (and bought most of the gift baskets and decorations), my auntie paula made her amazing lime vinaigrette salad dressing as well as a chocolate peanut butter cake and her own version of a "baby cake." friends of the family also made butter cream wafers, chocolate cherry brownies, oreo truffles and nut roll. and i provided the salad and fixings and made lemon cupcakes with raspberry filling and cream cheese frosting. mum also made nut and semi-sweet/white chocolate bark and i made peppermint bark for the favors.

yeah. it was a lot of food. it was also amazing. we had a lot of fun and everyone we knew helped out a lot. mum and i kept the freaking out to an *extreme* minimum, and rachel did a great job opening all her presents and talking to everyone and refusing to let herself be overwhelmed.

we can't wait to meet this little baby girl! every day she comes closer to joining us! she is going to be amazing and so loved and supported. can't wait!!

here's some pictures!

dreams of flying

the other night Josh and i started talking about weird dreams we've had. he's told me that there have been times in his dreams where he has realized something isn't right, figured out he was in a dream and taken advantage of it. like flying. and killing criminals. and teleporting.

this idea totally freaks me out.

i've definitely had one of those dreams where you KNOW something isn't right (um, had a dream the other day my roomie was presenting a not-even-close-to-completion interior designy-type project to my boss. roomie is an amazing girl with a communications degree. however, as far as i can recall, he project in the dream was turning out AWESOME). so yes, i knew there was something wrong here. but i couldn't make myself realize it was a dream and take advantage of that.

seriously though! being in control of your subconscious? that's nuts. Josh has told me i can train myself to do this. just make a habit of looking at something (i think it needs to be the same type of thing), then looking away, then looking back. when you look back in a dream, it's usually not the same as it was before, which will trigger you to understand something is wrong, therefore a dream.

have you ever had a dream where you took control? what did you do? i would probably try to fly, that sounds cool. or spend lots of time underwater without the need to breathe. that'd be sweet.