No fluffy white dresses for me, thank you

Finding a wedding dress shouldn't be hard. Lord knows there are a zillion of them out there. However, they are all strapless, puffy things with lots of sequence and beading. Which is exactly what I don't want at my morning, outdoor wedding. I've been looking for the dress for a while now, online of course. I don't think I'm being picky. All I want in a dress is:


Straps
Natural material (cotton, linen, hemp, ramie)
Long skirt
White-ish
No beads, bows or sequence

However the hardest request to meet is I don't want to pay more than $200 for it. For some reason if it is a white dress it costs ten times more than a dress of any other color.

/wedding dress rant

The Day After, the Day After Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was fun. I got tipsy on half a glass of wine while I was waiting for the Turkey to be carved. I guess that's why you shouldn't drink on an empty stomach. There were 12 of us and since the weather was perfect we set the table and chairs up outside. All the food was delishious. I ate so much food that for a good hour afterword all I could do was lay around. Then we played some card games and laughed. Just the way a good Thanksgiving should be. Oh and Susan and Marigold duked it out over the wishbone.

Christmas Lights

http://www.fazed.org/video/view/?id=125 (video w/ sound)

"Those poor neighbours"

"Friggin sweet! Seizuriffic!"

"...that was the neighbour filming it at 2:00 in the morning after a failed attempt to go to sleep. "

"Just think about how many people he had to pay to plug and unplug all those lights at the same time. They must have practiced for weeks."

As posted on Fazed.org

Thanksgiving

Jeff is now done with Fall quarter! Only two more quarters to go. His break is from now until January. We will be driving home for Christmas to spend ten days or so in Iowa. So I'll probably be driving on my birthday. That always seems like the way it is. I should just change my birthday to New Years so I automatically get a party.

For Thanksgiving we will be here in Savannah so we are having an Orphans Thanksgiving with the other SCAD who don't have family in the area. There will be around ten of us getting together for the classic potluck turkey dinner. So far the menu is:

Turkey, Gravy and Stuffing - Marigold
Candied Yams - Susan
Bread - Susan
Booze - Lenz
Scalloped Corn - Foy
Cranberry Relish - Foy
Mashed Potatoes - Jeff
Salad - Fara
Green Bean Casserole - Chris and Sarah
Pumpkin Pie - Chris and Sarah
Pumpkin Bread - Farah
Monkey Bread - Jeff

I might make a carrot/cranberries dish to use up my left over cranberries. I'm hungry already!

Wedding Pictures

Since we now have a date and location for our wedding, I can start working on the details. One of the things Jeff and I have agreed we want to splurg on is a really good photographer. So I started hunting around for wedding pictures I liked, which was really just an excuse to oogle other peoples weddings. Here are some of the pictures I found that I really like. I don't know any of the people in these photos. Jeff thinks it's weird that I am posting pictures of people that I don't know. Maybe it is.

The House that Jeff Built or The Apartment that Jeff Renovated

Some times I forget just how many things I have that were made for me. My father and grandfather spent lots of time building things in the shop when I was little. My sister and I have twin beds, I have a china hutch that was a child size of my mother's china hutch. Lots of furniture in my parent's house was made or refurbished by my father, the deck chairs and tables, dinning room chairs, bookshelves, coat hooks, coat trees, and let's not forget all the wood floors in the house.

Now I have Jeff and he makes things too. I think I take it for granted because all my life people have made things for me. When people visit they always remark on these things. Jeff made many of the cups, bowls and vases. Most of the art on the wall is his. He made the table, the desk, computer chair, the shelves in the bathroom. I value things much more when they have been made or at least adapted by hand. Actually looking around the apartment every piece of furniture was come by in an odd way. The bed was traded for a case of beer, the table chairs are from the Good Will in Ames, my desk and little set of drawers is from the big house, the side table is from the Good Will in Pennsylvania, the arm chair is cast off from Ray our landlord. I think I like it that way. Everything has a story and I value it all the more for that.

I may not be a college student, but I sleep like one

I don't have to worry about when I get up. (I work at the gallery in the evening, except for Sunday when I work all day.) This has led to my sleep pattern adjusting to Jeff's. It is 9:24 at night, but for me the day is only half over. I usually get up at noon, eat a bowl of cereal. Have lunch around 6pm and then dinner around midnight. I usually go to sleep between three and four. So far this doesn't seem to be doing any harm to me. I kind of miss daylight. By the time I get up the sun is warming our little back porch on the east side of the carriage house. I keep meaning to go out and take a picture of my lovely little garden so I can post a picture of the pansies, but I only remember when it's dark out.

I'm sure this is bad for my body in some way. I keep telling myself that someday when Jeff is forced onto a normal schedule, probably by a job, I only be to happy to follow along. If I revert to being up at daylight hours, Jeff won't and I'd rather spend some of my time with him than be up when the sun is. I guess you could say he is the light of my life ;)

88.5 WXPN

It stopped working! My radio in the kitchen that I listen to when I am cooking. Desperate for my NPR, I remembered internet radio. WXPN in Pennsylvania web casts, brilliant! It makes me realize how crappy Georgia Public Radio is. The music is sucky and it is aimed at African American men, which isn't a bad thing, but I don't relate very well and it makes me feel guilty for being one of the "white majority".

Yesterday, while listening to WXPN, I heard a cover of Ani Difanco's Joyful Girl by Dave Mathew's Band. It was strange but wonderful. The only drawback to the web cast is they keep plugging concerts that are happening in the PA, MD, DC area. Someday I'll head back up that way again.

n.b. Now my radio is working again. Maybe it was the station not my radio that was broken.

So the soup wasn't that good

Yeah, the soup sounded good, but it wasn't. So I'm going to erase that recipe out of my blog lest anyone else commit the same cooking folly as me. However, I did make some wonderful buttermilk blue berry pancakes. (The recipe is in the comments.)

Jeff and I have taken to reading a loud to each other. Jeff can work on his art while I read. I am like a live, interactive book on tape. We just finished The Game of Thrones. It was a pretty good book. We spent a lot of time talking about all the intrigue of characters between chapters. I had to inner library lone the next book in the series. That's right, it's a series and an unfinished one at that. However, while we were waiting for it to come in we started 1984. I enjoyed the book up until the main character started to read a philosophy book. We've been reading the philosophy book now for 20 pages and it looks like it goes on a while. I don't want to keep reading, it is boring and school bookish. I didn't expect a philosophy book. I was expecting something along the line of Brave New World. Where the philosophy is coated between characters and interesting hypothoses about what the future is like. Ah well, I can check it off my classic book list.

Hhhhmmmm...mmmmm...goood!

I am trying a recipe off Aprille's blog. I don't really know Aprille, I stumbled on her blog via Lisa's blog. It will be interesting to see/taste how the recipe turns out. I don't have a food processor or a strainer. I hope a fork and a colander will work. I’ll let you know. Right now it is baking in the oven, it smells really yummy.

Ames High Gang at Sarah and Dave's Wedding

I got this picture from Brenna the other day. It's all the Ames High people we could round up at Dave and Sarah's wedding. It's a pretty impressive show to be sure.

Let's see if I can get everyone's name. Left to Right
Top Row: Jeff, Dave, Ross, Andy, Adam
Middle Row: Steven, Naomi, Brenna (Luke's wife), Luke, Sarah
Front Row: Some Girl, Brenna, Emily, Sarah, Foy

Halloween

Jeff and I had an excellent time on Halloween. Actually it was Saturday night that we had fun. We went to a house party and then down town. I stole these pictures from Aunt Faintly. Thank you AF!

Jeff was a pan handler. He spent the better part of an hour figuring out how to make the palm roses that the bums down on River Street try and get you to buy.

Susan the kitty cat and Foy the vintage pin-up girl.

Fara the butterfly, Marigold Dia De Muerto, Foy the vintage pin-up girl and Whitney Poison Ivy.

I think Andy's sign says everything you need to know.