Remember here when I said that I would include posts on our reception hall? Don’t worry I didn’t forget 🙂
This will be very picture heavy (but what’s new with me) so I think this post will probably stick to the down stairs and the next post will focus more on upstairs/outside.
As you enter the house to your left is the ladies parlor. Judy (our tour guide and who is in charge of renting the house out) said that all the furniture in the ladies parlor is original. They don’t allow food or drinks inside the ladies parlor.
Next up is the Gentleman’s Parlor. It is to the right as you enter the doors to the house. All the furniture in the house is either originals or very similar to what the family had at the time. Mr. Phelps had a house in St. Louis as well, that is where he was from, and they said most of the furniture and a lot of the different ties to the house date back to companies in St. Louis.
This is the living room or Great room. It is straight in the doors. This is where they did most of their entertaining of company.
Here is another shot of the Gentleman’s parlor. I had the flash off on the camera but the picture still turned out very dark 🙁
This is the solarium. This is just off the main dining room.
Here is the main dining room. As you can see it also walks into the living room and back to your right would be the gentleman’s parlor. To the left through that doorway is the kitchen. And this would be Judy. 🙂 I don’t think she realized I captured her in my picture 🙂
There are the stairs that take you from the living room up to the second and third floors. The second floor is where the family slept. The third floor was the ballroom and the staff’s quarters, but more on that in the next post.
This is the buffet. It is an original but still gets used today for the parties thrown at the house. They just ask you cover it up with table clothes to help preserve the wood.
There’s a shot where I tried to show the winding up of the stairs.
This is the room just off the dining room right before you get into the kitchen. It is actually what you saw through that doorway.
Here’s the other side of that room.
Now we have entered into the kitchen. Now the house was built in 1895 so obviously they didn’t have a microwave, modern stove and dishwasher. The did have to update the house just a tiny bit but they also tried to preserve it’s naturalness (apparently that’s a word…) and keep it as accurate to the time period it was built as possible. Even the colors of the rooms.
This was going through this doorway leads you to the back stairs that the staff used to go up and down the floors. She never told us what was originally behind these white doors. Now they keep tables there.
This is back in that middle room between the dining room and the kitchen. It was kind of like the butler’s pantry. This here is a radiator but also had a built in warming house. That way if your food wasn’t quite warm you could send it back and the staff had somewhere to warm it up for you.
Now this handy little thing was located in the kitchen. You can’t really read the writing but it had the different floors/rooms listed on it. (next photo)
This is actually the button that the family would press say if they couldn’t find a glass and needed assistance. The previous picture that box would sound a buzzer and light up for the room the button had been pressed in and that would allow the staff to know where the family member was that was having difficulty so they could come assist. Wow back in the late 1800’s… that’s fairly modern!
Another photo of the kitchen.
This is the Dumb Waiter Elevator (or in my previous post I called it a dumbbell waiter… what do I know apparently). Currently they have tile samples sitting in it but this went to all three floors. The tile samples are really cool as in the house has gotten 2 grants that are going to be used to re-shingle the house. They are going to put the original tile shingles on the house that were on it when the house was built. Even neater than that is the original company that did the tile shingles then is still in business and they are going to do the tile shingles for the re-do. The business is out in Central Ohio.
This door wasn’t open and I was afraid to open it to get much of a shot but as you can see through the crack, these were the staff stairs.
My photo of a photo didn’t turn out so well but this is a photo of the house taken back in the early 1900’s when they had the family actually living there.
This is above the fireplace hearth. It is written in true English and it is imprinted in leather. It basically translated says welcome to our home please enjoy your stay (or so Judy told us :))
They had a family that lived here in the city donate these toilets. They are the old style toilets so all the bathrooms in the house are true “Water closets” as they were referred to back in the olden days.
This was in a room just off the family room. It is a photo of how the architect pictured the house as it was being built. And to true form, it looks very similar today!
The little boy in this picture is Mr. Phelp’s grandson. He is still alive and living in town today. He even told Judy stories of coming into this house when his grandmother lived here. Another interesting point in this picture is the wallpaper. Now days leather is a show of money. If you can afford leather you are upper class basically. In those days leather was so prevalent that if you could afford to buy faux leather you actually showed class.
This is Mr. Phelps. The interesting thing about this picture is, he ran both in the Missouri House and the Missouri Senate. This is his campaign photo. Notice the one thing that is missing? Any guesses? No? His name. He declared that he was well known enough he didn’t need to put his name on the picture.
One final thought I’ll leave you with until the next time is this, the 1st Mrs. Phelps was involved in planning and designing and decorating this house but she was in St. Louis and was on a run-away carriage. When she realized what was happening she jumped off and landed on her feet but she fell backwards and hit her head. She died the next day of a concussion. She helped design and build a house she never got to live in. The 2nd Mrs. Phelps was actually Mr. Phelps secretary so Judy pointed out that even back in the day rumors spread about the “secretary.”
Hope you’ve enjoyed your slight history lesson. Join us tomorrow (or whenever) for the next posting of The Historic Phelps House built in 1895 🙂
Have you ever had those nights when you just can’t get to sleep? I have!! What do I do… I count. Not count sheep, I don’t picture them, I just count. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on. What do I do when I hit 100? I start all over again. 101, 102 is just to hard so I’ll go through the numbers again. What happens if that doesn’t work, I’ll go backwards. Eventually I must wear my brain out or something because I’ll wake up the next morning.
1. Last night I wasn’t having the most spectacular night… 🙁
2. We did go and tour our reception hall though. I learned some great oddities about it.
The house was built in 1895
It was built for a wealthy family here in the area, but he also kept a house in St. Louis.
It had a dumbbell elevator in it.
Lots of cool things.
3. I went to bed around 8pm last night, I was just not having a good night.
4. I woke up at midnight, took out my contacts, brushed my teeth and took a shower. Then attempted to go to bed. That’s when I started counting.
5. So I started writing a blog post in my sleep.
6. Really can’t tell you a whole lot about what that blogpost said today.
7. Speaking of today I think it is Wednesday but I never can remember… OY! It’s even worse when I’m on vacation!
8. We are making homemade mints for the wedding. We’re trying to decide if made this weekend if we can freeze them for a month for the wedding. Do you know?
9. I plan on doing a post about our reception hall.
10. My highlights from last October are growing out… my hair is coming back in dark brown.
11. It’s still my turn in the fiance and my SHMILY game.
12. I truly love doing floral arrangements.
13. That was totally random to you but not in my head. I was thinking about the wedding :).
14. I had to go “white” dress shopping this week. In fact we went Monday night. My BM Evelyn sent me a text Monday asking if I had a white dress, you know other than my wedding dress. Nope… I had one with blue glitter but that’s it. So she, PC and I went white dress shopping. She hasn’t told me why other than we need to meet up with her next Friday night at 6:30, me in white dress, him in nice dress pants and a nice shirt. She has ideas 🙂
Don’t hold this photo against me, I loved the dress until I got it on… It didn’t look so hot on and I shouldn’t share but the look on my face cracked us all up…. and yes I made it a small pic… it’s that bad!
15. I still have no idea what I’ll do for my hair for the wedding.
16. Not even sure who is going to do it 🙁
17. I have ideas for the BM’s but I think the MOH’s hair might be to short for my idea, I can’t remember.
18. Oh well I guess they don’t have to be the same.
19. No I’m not counting to go to sleep right now, I’m just apparently thinking about numbers 🙂
20. My coffee mug on my desk is by Leanin’ Tree and it is a bunch of cowboys sitting on a fence with the saying “Nothin’ like buns ‘n coffee to start the day!” And I don’t even drink coffee.
21. Right now it has hot chocolate stains in it. I should probably wash it!
22. My great grandfather used to own (I believe) 3 hardware stores. Or maybe it was his father. Anyway in one of the towns where the original was they had a house. It eventually was sold to another family. The man who bought it passed away in April. Now the house is being auctioned off on Saturday along with memorabilia from it. I think we are going 🙂
23. If we go I’ll take pictures 🙂
24. My toenails are still flags. I really am going to have to re-do them though because my toenails are growing out.
25. I think I might quit counting here… even though I’m adding thoughts, I think I could close my eyes and take a quick nap, but I won’t. That’ll apparently make it harder to sleep later tonight. 🙂
Hopefully you are having a wonderful (I think) Hump Day Wednesday. My feet are cold so that is making my knees hurt. Fun fact about my knees, it can be 110 degrees in the shade and if my knees get cold they hurt and you can feel how cold they are even through jeans. See why I don’t like winter?
I have gone to the church we are getting married in since as far back as I can remember. It is the church my parents got married at, it was the place I always new I wanted to get married. We had a few slight problems at first but it all turned out okay in the end. There are still 32 days to go so more things could arise… we’ll just have to wait it out and see what happens. But for now I’ll share with you photos (like I promised in my last post) of our church. The exciting thing was they had the church set up for a wedding Saturday night (we went Saturday morning) so we were able to see what it would look like all set up.
This is the outside of the church. You’ve seen it in other photos as well. I got it off the church website, I didn’t take this one.
This is standing at the doors looking up toward the Alter. This is my favorite part of the whole church I think.
This is the balcony back behind the lower pews. It was my favorite place to sit as a child. Now I sit on the left side 3 pews from the back. You can see it in this picture b/c I sit very close to the outside next to my great Aunt and her boyfriend (do you call him that when they are in their upper 80’s?)
Here is the Alter and the way they had it set up for their wedding.
Another view of the Alter. We’ll have to do something a little different because we are doing 2 unity candles. One for PC and me and the other as a family one including his daughter. It is actually our wedding colors.
They put these bows on all the pews. I think we’ll do something similar but for the “family” pews I am making flower arrangements out of the same flowers as my bouquet.
You may not want to see how they are tied on, but oddly enough when we are out and about I pull up my blog looking for pictures so this is a just incase for me shot 🙂
I loved how they intertwined the Tulle.
Here is one choice for a Candleobra (sp?)
PC likes these best. I’m not picky 🙂
These are the other Candleobra’s (again sp?) the church has.
Differ shot of the second.
This is where they had their guest book set up. We are doing photo frames/mat boards b/c who looks at a guest book after the fact? But I love the confetti they used! I also snagged one of their fliers for another idea to use. I have one from my friend Doti’s wedding also 🙂 I love the birdcage. It is for the cards so they don’t get lost. I’d love to figure out where they got this.
This is what they had on the windows for the opening doors for the church, that way the bride could walk up to the doors and still not be seen by the groom and guests.
Peace, Love & decorating!
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I’ve debated for a while now on sharing this or not. I was actually blogging when it happened and I chose to not make a big deal out of it and still truthfully I’m not but since the fiance and I were discussing it yesterday I thought I might share.
My fiance proposed to me on February 12th of this year. It was funny because we already started making the bigger decisions that day and the weekend (the 12th was a Friday). We had it narrowed down to my grandma’s church (which I am a member of) and his dad’s church (which he was a member of). When it came down to it, my church was the prettier of the two and it is the larger of the two so we wanted my church.
I’ve never been married, never talked to my friends who have gotten married on how you proceed to book a church/minister, etc. Once we decided on the church I called my grandma, who is very involved in the church, and just asked her if she happened to be in the church this next week, ask them what we need to do to proceed in reserving the church for our wedding date. That way we could get all our I’s dotted and T’s crossed. She told me she was going into the church the next day (Tuesday) to be exact so she’d go talk to the secretaries to find out what we should do. Awesome! :). Now I wasn’t asking her to do any of the work, I just wanted to know where to start.
She came home that night and left a piece of paper and a book in my mailbox for us. She then called and said she talked to one of the secretaries. They looked at the calendar wrote us down for Sept 4, 2010 at 11am (I didn’t specify the time, my grandma did) and we just needed to fill out the paper and read the book. Okay, that works.
So we sat down and started reading the book when we ran across a section that talked about Holiday weekends. It stated that you were not allowed to have a wedding in the church on a Holiday or a Holiday weekend and then it listed out: New Years Eve/Day, Christmas Eve/Day, Easter, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, oh and wait, Labor Day. Well crap, we chose the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. But they wrote us down on the calendar so we were extremely confused. I finished filling out the paperwork and then PC said he would take it to the church the next day and while he was there he would ask to make sure.
When he got there the next day the minister was out for the morning so PC gave the secretaries the paperwork and pointed out the fact the book said what it did. The secretary looked at him and said, “Oh well I’ve never read the book. I guess the minister will have to get back to you about that.”
When I found that out I thought that odd. A lady scheduling the church should know these things but okay…. So we waited for the phone call from the minister. (this was Wednesday, I’ll help you out with a timeline :))
As of Monday we still hadn’t heard back from the church so PC called asking for the minister who was out at the moment. PC said we needed to talk to him and explained again what was going on. Okay he would call PC.
On Tuesday the minister calls PC, chews him out for being so rude to his secretaries and tells him that rules are in place for a reason and we are not going to be ones to break the rules. We aren’t allowed to have the wedding at the church. PC tried to explain that we saw that and that’s why we were calling but the minister cut him off, told him that things were done incorrectly, that we should have contacted him first before ever reserving the church and just went off on PC. PC thanked him and immediately hung up the phone before he went off on the preacher.
Called me but I was in a meeting at work so he called my mom who was working in North Carolina for that week. My mom told him to call my grandma and get her involved. He wasn’t real sure he liked that idea. In the mean time I get back to my desk from the meeting to many missed calls, voicemail, and messages on Google Talk to call him so I’m worried. I called him and asked him what was up and he proceeded to tell me what happened.
I was floored. My grandma has nothing but good things to say about this minister and for as much work as she and both my great aunts do for him I just was completely shocked. I knew there was a misunderstanding there some where, I wasn’t completely sure where but I was going to get to the bottom of it. PC told me not to but I said, No honey he if nothing else owes you an apology.
I grabbed the phone book and proceeded to call the church and got one of the secretaries. I told her I needed to speak to the minister. She said he was out getting his hair cut would I like his voicemail. I told her no I needed to speak to him now. She said well he isn’t here. I said okay well here’s the problem I have and I told her a brief overview and told her I needed to speak to the minister NOW. She said she wasn’t the one that PC spoke with and that the minister wasn’t there but she’d take down my name and phone number and have him call me the minute he walked back in the door. I gave her my cell number and said please do and let him know I want to talk to him NOW.
Now if you knew me, I’m a non-confrontational person. I HATE confrontation. I wish there was a word worse than hate because that describes my feel for confrontation. I’ll sometimes suck it up sometimes to avoid confrontation. That being said I was upset. I knew there was something wrong and I was going to get to the bottom of it.
I really didn’t want to get my grandma involved but by this point I was upset, especially since she raves about this minister so I called my great aunt’s house, where my grandma spends a lot of her days. Aunt Ellen told me that she was at the church. I knew that’s where I needed to head so I went to lunch early, jumped in my car and took off for the church. On my way there the minister called me.
I told him my full name and who I was (pulled grandma’s name out) and told him I was extremely disappointed with him. I told him that he spoke very rudely to my fiance and I was getting to the bottom of this to see what really happened because my grandma does nothing but talk nice things about him but I truthfully wasn’t seeing it right now. In fact I was so upset with the way things were handled that I wasn’t afraid to tell my grandma what I thought of him.
I started to tell him how we got into this whole mess and he went to cut me off which was just fuel for my fire. I stopped him in his tracks and told him he wouldn’t give my fiance the time of day to explain our side of the whole situation so by golly he was going to listen to me. He told me to proceed so I started from the beginning of the whole mess from our side of the story. Once I was finished he proceeded to harp on me a little bit. I went to cut him off and he said, I listened to you now it is your turn to listen to me. He proceeded to tell me about how “rude” my fiance was to his secretary and he wasn’t about to allow anyone to treat his secretaries that way. Once he was finished I said, were you there? Did you hear how he spoke to your secretary. Of course he said no. I said, okay so you took her word, didn’t find out anyone else’s side of the story and just proceeded to jump my fiance. How does that really look on your part? I said I heard his side and now you can see that I’m on the phone with you trying to figure out what happened, did you do that? No you cut him off and then tried to cut me off. Then he proceeded to call me Young Lady. Oh I hate that, that’s what my dad did when I was younger and in trouble. It upset me because he’s not my father, he’s a preacher, a minister, not MY father. Only MY father can get by with that and that’s because well what can I say to him… LOL.
Now I was driving into the church this whole time. I would say the church is 6-10 miles from work depending on which route you take and I’m not sure one is faster than the other.
Other questions that got asked and statements that were said, and no I’m not completely happy with everything I said but I never once cussed :). Go me! But he asked me how many times I had been to the church since he’d been a minister there. I was like, here lately quite a few. He said well I’ve never seen you. I said that’s because I sit in the back with my great Aunt Ellen and Floyd. I also told him I have been a member of this church longer than he’d even thought about being a preacher here. I also told him if nothing else, rules were there for a reason and I understand that but he owed my fiance an apology and by golly he was going to give him one. I also started in by saying if you are a preacher then you preach every Sunday and he tried to cut me off by saying we aren’t going there, and I said oh yes we are going there, you are a preacher and preach every Sunday that we are to do right by everyone and not judge anyone but you sure did judge my fiance by a hear say version of what happened and didn’t get both sides. I said I know my fiance and that doesn’t sound like him.
By this time I’m sitting in front of the church, just sitting in my car talking on the phone to him. He made the comment, I hate talking on the phone, I’d much rather talk in person. I said great I’m sitting outside, would you like me to cross the street and come talk to you in person? He said you are where. I said in the parking lot across the street from the Fellowship hall entrance and I’d be more than happy to come in and speak with him. He proceeds to tell me that’s fine and to bring my grandmother in with me. I told him she didn’t need to be involved in this, it was between the fiance, him and me but he insisted. I told him I wasn’t getting her and he said that he would. So about the time I get in fellowship hall he gets my grandma out of the kitchen and I follow them to the office. My grandma had no idea what was going on or even that I was behind her until we got to the office. When we went into the office and sat down he told me to tell my grandma everything he and I had discussed on the phone.
I sighed, apologized to my grandmother that she was being brought into this and proceeded on with the story again.
By this time my nerves were shot, I was so upset I was shaking and started crying, it was a bad deal but I never backed down. He owed my fiance an apology if nothing else for the way he treated him. Again I reiterated the fact that rules are there for a reason but by golly he owed my fiance an apology for judging him based off another person’s view point and not seeing both sides. I said I could leave here upset because that’s how I am right now, I could tell the next 5 people I see how rude and inconsiderate you are, do I believe that, no, I’m mad… but they wouldn’t know any different unless they knew you so they could believe it. You took your secretaries position over my fiance’s and we’ve been trying to get ahold of you since last Wednesday. He said well they didn’t tell me that. I said well I’m here to tell you that paper was brought in on Wednesday and we were told you would give us a call. We’ve been making all the moves until today.
Eventually he looked at me and said that he was impressed by me. I never backed down and I stood my ground backing up my fiance. He also said that he was the minister of the church, I called him out when he didn’t act rightly and that being the minister he could break the rules that were set. He granted us permission to get married at the church on Labor Day weekend, but being a holiday weekend we’d have to pay the custodian more money than a normal weekend wedding. but I agreed. He also agreed to call my fiance and apologize to him. That’s truthfully all I wanted out of all of this. I believed he deserved that.
Then all the sudden he looked and said I need to apologize to you both. I looked at my grandma with a huh? look because I thought everything was cool. He proceeded to tell me that he thought I was my cousin. The cousin who got married in 2004, the cousin who became a bridezilla, the cousin who disowned her mother. He said that his wife and my aunt had become extremely good friends during her divorce and they “knew” (again one sided story) of all that happened and he thought I was my cousin.
I called my grandmother that night because I was embarrassed that she got brought into all of this. I was hurt for her too. My grandparents and my whole side of the family were also disowned when this all happened but my cousin is still my grandmother’s granddaughter. My grandmother was hurt to think even my cousin would have been treated that way. All I could do was apologize to my grandma and she kept telling me no apology was needed on my part. She was just glad I did the right thing and stood up for my fiance and what I believed. I told her that PC was scared that she was upset with him, I was scared she was upset with me but she told us both not to worry about it, she was sort of upset with the minister and had he not apologized to PC (which he did) that she would have quit helping at the church. She couldn’t believe what happened did. I told her I’m okay with rules and I understand but what upset me was the fact he wouldn’t listen to our side. Just sided with her and went on.
We got it all worked out and this is the minister that is marrying us. One thing he has done is compliment us every time we’ve been in there. The skeptical side wonders if it wasn’t because of what happened, but I truthfully believe that has all been forgotten and not swaying how he treats us because he treats us even different than he did when this all happened.
We also made it a point to go to church that next Sunday and went through the hand shaking line before leaving to prove we actually did come. Usually we just bi-passed that line.
Life throws lots of curve balls, all I have to say is you have to work together and not against each other. A question that has been weighing on my mind a lot lately is every time you turn around a new person getting engaged is So Happy and Marrying their Best Friend and The Guy they want to be with the Rest of their Life… if that’s the case, why is the divorce rate so high?
I already let PC know that divorce wasn’t an option for us 🙂 I’m not changing my identity more than once. Doing it this first time will be pain in the butt enough!
I’m sorry this was so long and if you made it through, Good for you. The next post will have lots of pretty pictures, Promise! 🙂
We had our first wedding shower yesterday (on my birthday). One of my co-worker’s Nancy threw it for us. When trying to decide the date we chose my birthday because I was planning on taking off the day (so I just took off the afternoon so I could take the presents home and clean and put them away). Also come on, who doesn’t like to open presents on their birthday 🙂 (might I add this post is loaded with pictures, but what’s new :))
We have some awesome co-workers is all I have to say!
Nancy forgot her camera so I was trying to show her how to use mine (well PC’s). At this point I was taking Rachael’s picture because she was taking mine 🙂
See, here’s Rachael :). She got caught
We’re good at getting pictures of Nicole (right) with food in her mouth. haha! Theresa is on the left.
Here was our cake. It was half white, half chocolate. It was good!
Here was the cake and punch table. Nancy was laughing because the table cloth just showed up. No one fessed up to bringing the brown table cloth.
Here we are. We got to go to the front of the room.
Here was Nancy (pink shirt) telling us about the joys of marriage and the hard times we’ll have and that if we put everything in God’s hand, he has a plan and he will see us through. Then she went around the room and gave everyone in attendance the opportunity to give us advice that has or hasn’t worked. She also bought a book and passed it around and left everyone there write us messages. Later we were told we could use the book to record memories throughout life.
There’s my dad. The only picture with him in it. (he’s on the left standing up). My mom is in the blue shirt on the far right of the picture. Kalem, one of the groomsmen is standing up talking to my dad.
It’s present time.
All I can say is we have some excellent co-workers and friends!
Reading cards.
I’m a little shy when it comes to being in the “spotlight” like this. I was shaking at first. Once everyone started eating cake and talking I relaxed a little.
I would so like to know what was being said to cause that look on my face 🙂
I think we were both concentrating here 🙂
We got the Rachael ray Brown & Bubble pans. I wanted these so bad! They are awesome!
Here is our present table.
Here is a shot of everyone in attendance. Nicole was mad we didn’t have to do a toast or drink with arms entertwined or anything like she and Ed did a year ago. I was like yeah but we’re having a real wedding you ran off. We all laughed. She was like you better do this at your wedding. I told her not to worry, we had all the stuff to do that 🙂
This is my big Boss Jim talking to us. (He is my bosses boss.)
This is how our table was decorated in front of us. Super cute!
I read on a blog you should do something nice for the people that throw you a shower. They go above and beyond to throw this for you. I thought that was a sweet idea so we put together this small Thank you gift for Nancy. What I read was to base it around “showers”. Well this was hand treatments. Also there was a small heart cup & saucer with a few little bags of tea.
We had a meeting with the preacher last night. This was our second meeting and basically our last. We have one more but it is to just discuss the details of how the wedding will run and in what order. It’s the week before the wedding week. Not a big deal.
We’ve had a bumpy ride throughout all of this but it’s all worked out in the end and that’s what really matters.
Our first meeting with the minister he had us take a “test” although he said it wasn’t called a test, it was just a survey, but when you fill out your answers on a scantron sheet, I’m thinking Test all the way! Anyway based off how each of us answered the questions, he uses it as a tool to see where we might need counseling before marriage.
The closer to 0% both answers got you, the better. We had a couple columns that were all the way at 0%. In fact he said out of his counseling there has only been one other couple in the recent past that has scored as well on this as we did. I should have kept that paper for our scrapbook but I left it there 🙁
There were a few areas that he just asked us a few questions on but my favorite was:
Preacher: Ok I’m going to ask you this one and I think you both might be able to answer for the other. We both look at each other with, um… ok looks. P: who wants to go first? I pointed at PC, he pointed at me. P: Ok What annoys you the most about Nicole. What is something she does that absolutely annoys you? PC: Nothing really… P: So nothing she does even gets on your nerves? I grin… PC: Ok I guess the fact that I have a backseat driver. P: Oh I know that all to well. me: Yeah well when he’s driving down the road looking out the window and a car is stopping in front of us and he isn’t paying attn I can’t help myself. PC: I have it under control. me: I’ve even volunteered to jump in the backseat if need be. P: Oh so add insult to injury we all grinned and got a good laugh out of that.
P: Nicole What bugs you about ? I grinned and looked at PC PC: The fact that I don’t always remember to put the toilet seat down. We all crack up laughing. P: Well yeah I learned at an early age to do that from a woman at church but I’ve heard many counseling sessions where the woman says she goes in in the middle of the night and doesn’t see it and falls in. I shutter! Me: No it isn’t so much that, it just looks gross in my opinion. I always watch for it. He knows he’s in trouble when I GRRRRRRR! at him. PC: She is phobic of the germs me: That’s not it, it looks gross! We all laugh again. Me: The fact that when I get tired, I get cranky and just try to get everything done so I can go to bed and that’s apparently when he wants a hug or to slow down my pace. PC: I can’t help it, I get Lovey Dovey when I’m tired, and she just gets cranky. me: Yup, I just want to go to sleep. We all laughed again *********
Then there were more serious type questions that he asked us, but really I think he only addressed maybe 5 questions. I think we wound up taking close to 40-50. The hardest part that PC and I had filling out that survey was it was either agree, disagree or uncertain. Sometimes that isn’t always an option when you are thinking about questions.
Anyway it looks like he’s going to let us get married :). Whew I was sweating that. haha j/k.
This weekend the guys are getting measured for tuxes, we are meeting my great aunt at the church to see what all the church has for decorations (she’s in charge, how cool is that), next week we are talking to our reception place to finalize details. We’ve been in contact with the caterer. Slowly but surely getting RSVP responses to the wedding. It’s all coming along, and I still have all my hair in tact!
Speaking of hair, I have a lot of it and need to start deciding what I want to do with it.
Oy! I swear, everyone thinks I’m kidding but this birthday is hitting me harder than any other… It must have something to do with everything that is going on, that’s all I can seem to figure out. It isn’t a milestone birthday… 16 – Driver’s License – Been There, Done that 18 – No longer a “kid” – Nope 21 – Oh now you can drink if you want to – Not all it’s cracked up to… 25 – Hey your insurance drops – or in my case 26 but whatever 30 – You are no longer in your 20’s – Check, still there… for now 40 – Start hearing the Over the hill jokes – Oh boy I can’t wait 50 – More over the hill jokes – Yeah 60 – Approaching Retirement Age – definitely looking forward to this one but by the time I get there I probably won’t be able to…. 70 – Becoming a kid again – Still up in arms about this… 80 – You have the world at your fingertips 90 – Woohooo you are still alive!!! 100 – Seriously?? Imagine what all you’ve seen in your lifetime at the age of 100!
Nope 27 doesn’t fall into any of those categories. I think I might only have 2 more birthdays, then I’ll do what the norm is and stick with 29. I’ve even heard people subtract once they hit 30. They say they are 29 minus 1 🙂 haha. Truthfully I think age is fairly irrelevant to an extent. My great grandma died at 94 years old and no one knew how she was until they put up her headstone. My other great grandma made it to 101. My great grandpa was 10 days shy of his 108th birthday when he passed away. See you just never know.
Over the weekend we had PC’s daughter so we celebrated my birthday then with her, that way she could be involved. It was funny because I gave her a hug and thanked her for my present (a new standing jewelry box) and she goes, why you thanking me, I didn’t have any part in buying that. haha… Kids are brutally honest!
We had my mom & dad, my grandparents (who my grandma and I share a birthday), Memaw, Tbug, PC & myself at the house for lunch. PC smoked a pork Tenderloin and his fabulous cabbage. My mom made my favorite potatoes. My grandma brought a Peach Cobbler. Memaw brought a triple decker cookie cake (like I had last year) and Tbug made me a single layer cookie cake.
As I said, PC, Tbug, dad and mom got me this:
My grandparents gave me money.
Memaw gave me this cookbook. This lady is outstanding. You can also go to YouTube and search for her, she has her own facebook page as well. She’s 94 years old. Reading this cookbook is fun! She gives stories from living in the Great Depression.
So people ask this question, Where do you see yourself in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, etc. Then later they ask, well are you where you thought you’d be 5 years ago, 10 years ago, you get the picture. I wish when I was 20 I’d have written down where I thought I’d see myself in a few years because I can tell you that no, I’m not where I thought I’d see myself. Is that a bad thing, absolutely not.
I’m not sure I want to answer that question anymore, I think I’ll just stick to the day to day matters and see where those take me…
I hope you all are having the most wonderful Thursday. Me, not crazy about Thursdays, it’s just a tease it isn’t Friday but I’m not sure I want Friday this week, it’ll make a year older… but hey one good thing to come out of it, PC and I are having our first Shower (minds out of the gutter please), I’m talking wedding shower, bridal shower, what ever you’d like to call it. We both work for the same company and so they are throwing US a shower :). Looks like this will be our only shower. Oh well, at least we get the experience of having one 🙂
So I got to thinking about what all still needs to be done for the wedding and what has been done for the wedding. That caused me to make a list this morning. I think I’ll share it with you all. For those of you getting married, maybe you can help jog my memory of what I’m forgetting, for those of you already married, you should be pros and know what I’m forgetting, I hope :). Boy that was a run-on sentence!
I have my dress
I have orders in for the guy’s tuxes, they are going at the end of the month to get fitted/measured.
My Flower girls dress is done, shoes are bought, she’s decked out!
We’re still torn on the ring bearer… I can’t see spending so much money to rent him a tux :(, that bothers me.
We have the reception hall booked but still need to do a finalized tour.
So the age old question, how far before the wedding do you send your invitations… I found on a couple different websites that if you are having it catered 8 weeks prior to the wedding. Well technically we are having it catered but not a meal, it’s more of Large Finger foods, appetizer type things. Since our wedding is at 11am we figured after we’d have food, we don’t want them suffering from hunger pains. Well Sunday July 4th was 8 weeks exactly. Our wedding is September 4th.
So that means I really should get cracking on sending my invites out. I’m just afraid sending them out way to early people will forget about me… but i guess we’ll see.
Then the decisions came about what invitations to purchase. The company I work for actually has a printing service all of its own and they do excellent work. And they don’t try to make money off employees, I believe we get it at cost, or maybe a little more. I’m not 100% sure. So basically I could have them design an invite for me and then print it or I could have someone else design it in photoshop and then they’d print it. They are easy going.
Well we thought about going with the standard invites. A lot of people look at them, might stick them on their fridge until the day of so they remember and then toss them, or you have people like me, I have most all invites I’ve ever received. I was keeping them around for ideas. Well we pondered for a while and then saw these on line. I fell in love. They aren’t anything like I’ve seen before. The guy who did our engagement photos also works for the company and actually works with my mom, so my mom did a mock up of the invites and then Taylor did them in photoshop for us. I love them. If no one wants to keep them, hey whatever, that’s their prerogative but me, I love them. I’ve never seen anything like it. He sent me screen shots in Adobe reader. The top part is the outside. The far right is the front, the middle is the back and the far left is the inside. Then on the bottom side the one of us looking at you is on the left side as you open it up, the middle is well, the middle and the right is on the other side.
I was going to print labels and decided why waste the time and money so we decided we’d just print the addresses right on the envelopes. Well that back fired too. I was getting so frustrated the other night because it wasn’t working and it was messing up my envelopes that I said screw it and started handwriting all the addresses. I’m about 3/4 of the way done. I don’t have terrible handwriting. If I had a calligraphy pen it’d look pretty close… haha. So anyway I just thought I’d share.
We have to sit down with my mom at some point and go through the details still for the wedding. It’ll be here before I know it… 58 days… although the tracker at the side says 57 days… who knows. At least we have a place to live after the wedding and it’s coming together nicely! Whew one less worry!
Ok, so I’ll be honest, I’m not usually one to do a book review… to me that is to much like those days when we had to do book reports back in junior high and that just brings back bad memories. Especially because in Junior high I didn’t read enough books for the quarter and got a referral which meant I had an 8th hour (detention) and had to go sit in the teacher’s room and read for an hour. Well long story short, my dad didn’t agree with that so the teacher and my dad worked out an agreement that I had to read all my books for the current quarter AND all the books for the previous quarter and the referral was removed, otherwise it still stood and I had to serve the detention. I got my crap together, read a lot of books and the referral was removed. And at the time, I HATED books and I HATED reading. Hate is such a strong word and usually lasts forever, well I’ll have to admit, my HATE for books has changed and oddly enough I don’t mind reading them now.
Anyway sorry for the trip down memory lane… but I thought out of all my babbling that I would share a book with you.
