Day 20/30 - My medieval inspired Wedding

When I was younger I always thought weddings were always fun to go to. Especially when it was a close family members wedding, since I was around when they were preparing for it. My mother almost always made the faux wedding cakes, (just think the three teared intricately decorated cakes with lots of scroll detail and even hanging strands of icing) and always helped with making and wrapping fruit cake favours that were cut in long skinny pieces and wrapped in saran wrap and doilies and tied off with the wedding parties colours. I also remember making tissue paper flowers to decorate the cars the that bridal party would be traveling in.

So when it was time to plan my wedding I was excited. I did none of those things above but starting to plan made me nostalgic for those times again. Chris and I got married two years ago in July of '09. We had a medieval inspired wedding. We got married in our home town with family and friends helping to celebrate our union. I made a lot of the decorations and hand made our invitations. The bridal parties attire was also made with the help of my mom, my sister and Chris's mom. I had debated on making my own dress as well, but at the same time I didn't want to miss out on being able to go around and trying on dresses. I happened to find the perfect dress at the very first store we went to. It was exactly what I had imagined it would be. It had the split in the front with a splash of colour, it came in ivory and it had intricate embroidery along the edges and was just beautiful. I wish that it fit better then it did and I still think to this day the ordered it in a size that was WAY bigger then it needed to be ordered in since even after they "took it in" it did not fit me properly, but that is a rant for another time. (sorry that is one of two things that really still grinds my gears).

Being a crafty person that I am I made a lot of the decorations myself and tried to keep with the theme as much as possible. Our card box was a castle, our center pieces were castles, even our fake cake was a three tiered castle. Our invitations where sealed with hot wax, and were hand coloured by me and a few family members, (who I love for helping me do that since there was a lot of invites) and then finally highlighted with metallic gel pens in red and gold, our wedding colours. I even made a wedding program with lots of interesting facts about medieval times and medieval wedding traditions so my guests would have something to read while waiting for me to arrive. 

I loved our wedding, it went by so fast that I honest can't remember half of the day. I can't believe that it has already been 2 plus years since the day we got married! There were some things that I wished were different or better but I am thankful for the pictures I have (another rant for another time) and for the great memories that were made that night and am thankful that so many of our friends and family were able to come out and help us celebrate. There were some photos that we missed out on since when we went to our picture location it was sooo windy out that I was stressing that the photos wouldn't turn out and honestly now seeing the ones that we took outside you can barely tell that the wind was whipping our hair every which way.  We moved to the basement of the hall which had a really nice decorated room so the rest didn't turn out as bad.

This is my invitation assembly space. You can see in the folder the invites. They had a woven vined border that had flowers on it. The vines were coloured with green pencil crayon and the flowers were coloured with gold and red metallic gel pens. They took a lot of work but they turned out so beautiful! The return cards were made to match with a small segment of vines and flowers. You can also see the stamp I used for the impression on the hot wax on that ice block as well. This was the tedious part of it since I could only impress about three or four before the stamp got to hot and I had to wait for it to cool down again other wise the wax stuck to it and was really hard to get off. I had found a place online that sold coloured wax sticks that you could put in a glue gun. With the amount I had to do I doubt that I would have sat there and dripped wax on that many invites :).

Here are some of the envelopes newly sealed and waiting to cool down enough to stack. Sadly I just wax sealed the ones that were being hand delivered since I didn't think the post office would appreciate wax going through their systems.

This is our marriage program that was given to everyone at the church. The font you see is the font that we used on the invites and everything else with text. It was quite big having about 4-5 full sized sheets of paper. So they were pretty thick once they were folded and assembled but I love how they turned out!

Our guest book was a photo mat with our engagement photo in it which is now hanging on our great room wall. I loved this idea so now we can see everyone that attended 365 days of the year. There was even some gold treasure in the treasure box to the left.

Our faux cake and the cake to eat with jousting knights on them! We actually totally forgot about eating the cake later and since we had the food catered we had no plates! We did have napkins though but no plates or utensils. So there was lots of cake left over.

My center pieces with little medieval army guys. They took awhile to make. I cut cardboard pieces, taped them together then used paper mache and then painted them.

Our card box that was totally secure and there was no way anyone would get into that thing without cutting open the bottom. I love how it turned out. Also a knight guard with my brothers chain mail armor, helmet and sword. I kept forgetting that it really wasn't a person standing over there.

Our head table. Part of the wedding parties gift from us was medieval tankards and goblets that you can see here in the picture. We had a slideshow being projected on the back of this wall throughout the night with pictures of Chris and I through out our lives.

These are the wedding favours. Since I make chain mail inspired jewelry and other things I made everyone chain mail key chains in our wedding colours. This is the flower version but I also made a diamond shape. Chris came up with the little rhyme on the tag which said "come celebrate our rein with this finely wrought chain".

The beautiful church that we got married in. This is the Catholic church I have attended since I was born.

I did not carry down the traditional bouquet of flowers. Instead I carried down the same bible that my sister carried down when she got married. Mom just changed the flowers and the ribbon that hung down from the bottom (and we even changed the few tissues that were still in between the pages from my sisters wedding). This was my something borrowed. I also added a picture off my father on the flowers since he passed away when I was four years old. This symbolized to me that if he couldn't be here at least he was with us in spirit.

One of my favorite shots. The one before was beautiful as well since it captured the stain glass window above the door.

 My beautiful ladies in waiting. I really wish that we could have had pictures like this outside.

The knights and one of our little squires. I love our wedding colours! The pictures picked up the material so well. The gold crosses were hand painted on by me a few days before the big day and I have to say I was SCARED TO DEATH of screwing them up! I had to take like two hour breaks between each one because I was afraid of not getting it centered properly or getting paint somewhere where it shouldn't be.

We even surprised our MC aka the court jester (my brother in law) with his own medieval inspired court jester outfit. He literally found out about it minutes before he was going to introduce the wedding party after pictures were done. You should have heard the roar of the crowd and the applause he got when entering the hall. :) The jester hat also played a part of our kissing game since anyone that wanted us to kiss had to go and get it from him and do something to entertain the "court", like juggling or hula hooping while juggling.

I think this is my favorite picture of the two of us! Love it! I really wish that we had all went back outside to take photos but I can't change the past. I am definitely thankful for the photos that we did get! I have heard horror stories of photographers never given brides their photos!

I love this one as well. It was a awesome day and it really is crazy just how fast the day goes by! It felt like it was never going to get there then it's two years later! It was a lot of work but it was worth it!  There are so many other things that I made for the wedding but these are just the highlights. I hope you enjoyed seeing our medieval inspired wedding!

Did you do anything special or unique for your wedding?

Day 18 & 19/30: Plans for the future and Nicknames

Day 18 - Plans/dreams/goals you have

I am happy with where my life is at the moment, so I don't have a lot of long term goals or plans for the future. At least nothing that interesting. They are mostly just the normal things like, paying off student loans, paying off the house, making upgrades to the house, saving for our future. Pretty standard things.

Eventually some time in the future, hopefully not to far though, we want to have at least another child. I would love to eventually be able to just sell my jewelry and crafts for a living and be able to stay home with the kids. For right now my plan for work is basically going back when my mat leave is over and working until we have another baby. After that who knows. 

I would love to be able to stay home with them after the second one comes but it all depends on finances. I don't know if I want to work where I am for the rest of my life but for now it's a job and it pays better then the last few that I have had. I honestly wouldn't even know what I would want to do if I did want to find other work. I just basically want to be happy and I don't really need much to do that. I have my family and Chris's family, Chris, Monkey and my friends, that's all I really need. :) Not really the most exciting but we have already accomplished some of the goals we had set for ourselves a few years back like getting married, buying a house and starting a family.

Day 19 - Nicknames you have; why do you have them

I don't really have to many nicknames, but I do have a few.

Krissy or Kris - That has to be the most obvious ones really since my name is Kristina and they are the typical short forms of my name. I actually prefer to go by either one of those then my full name though.

Mouse - This is a nickname I got from the family. I have been called that ever since I could remember. I guess it's because I was so quiet and I liked cheese.

Brat - I used to get this a lot when I was younger by my oldest brother. I guess I was a brat? He hasn't called me that in a long time though so that is good. LOL.
 
Steen - I've been called Steen for a number of years when I used to hang out with a particular friend regularly. He liked to call people by the middle part of their names. (kris-steen-a)

To be honest those are really the only ones that I can think of. Not really a whole lot. I'm sure there have been some random ones along the way but nothing that really stayed around for a while. I think I elementary school someone started calling me giggles or something like that at one point because I was alway laughing, but that memory is pretty foggy lol.

Day 16 & 17/30 - Mainstream music and favorite websites

Day 16 - Your views on mainstream music

To be honest I really don't pay too much attention to what is mainstream music or not. I basically have two categories for music. Stuff I like and stuff I don't like. I'm sure that most of the artists or bands that I begin listening to is because they are popular at that time but I don't really pay attention if they are or not. If I hear something that I like I seek more songs out by that band/artist and add it to my collection. I pretty much still love the music I used to listen to when I was younger and haven't really branched out from that to much over the years but it is always nice to find new music to fall in love with.

Day 17 - Some of Your Favorite Websites

There are a few websites that I like to check out daily. Here are a few of my favorites:

[1] www.craftster.org - I think this is my all time favorite website ever! They have a forum for just about every type of craft imaginable. Being a craftster myself I am in heaven when I surf their forums looking at the amazing talent of others and having so much inspiration to go out and create my own beautiful things. If your a craftster go check it out! You won't be disappointed.

[2] www.etsy.com - Another site I could just browse forever. There are tons of crafty people out there who come up with very unique ideas to fill niches that you never think were possible until you come across their store and go 'why didn't I think of that!' I love that you can search by place - so if you want to support people in your immediate area you can. There are so many things on there that I would love to buy for myself. Sometimes it's really hard to resist! (I would be broke if I indulged all the time lol)

[3]www.goodreads.com - This site is a neat way to organize books by what you have read, what you are currently reading, what you want to read and is a way to leave and read reviews. I love reading :) My username on there steen if anyone wants to check out my bookshelf.

[4] www.smartcanucks.ca - Since I am Canadian I check out this because it is a good site to find deals, coupons and even to read up on reviews on things you may be thinking of purchasing. There are tons of forums and I have found the people there to be helpful.

[5] http://triberr.com - I live on this site pretty much daily as well. I found that it is a good place to find other like minded bloggers, gain exposure to my own blog and in turn expose other tribemate's blogs to others as well. It's a great community. :)

I might be doubling up days about me together. It is taking me longer to get through these 30 posts then I intended. I don't like posting more then one post per day to often and I find that when I have something else monkey related or life related this gets a push back. :)

I am in nap time shock.

Yesterday for the first time ever I let my 7.5 month old cry herself to sleep for her nap. I knew that I probably would have to eventually do this but I was envisioning myself doing it when she was at a bit older. I only did it now because she has shown me that she could do it and because I needed her to start napping once again in her crib since she is so mobile now. She can't crawl yet but she can move herself around pretty good. Her naps lately have been in our bed since I could either take a nap with her or tip toe away after she was asleep. I could never master transferring her from my arms to her crib without waking her up. It was almost impossible to get her back to sleep after that. Since she is more mobile I am afraid that she will fall off the bed even with pillows surrounding her.

I used to nurse her to sleep for naps and at night and that was all fine and good until I needed to start weaning. For a time I was happy with half nursing/half formula feeding her. You only have to look at earlier entries of my blog to see all the trouble I have had with nursing so I thought I had finally found a happy medium that I was okay with. Any breast milk is better then none. I would have continued this for as long as possible if it wasn't for the fact that I need to go back to work at the end of January and that I seem to need to take donperidone to keep my supply up. Nursing to sleep had let me keep my sanity and our days were much better because it wasn't a long, long, long process to get her to finally drift off. Most days I ended up just skipping her nap altogether because after an hour of trying to get her to sleep I was exhausted. As I started to wean off of donperidone at the same time, I could tell my supply was decreasing. I got to the point where I was only nursing in the mornings and at night. Unfortunately for me getting her to fall asleep with the bottle was not working anymore and it was getting stressful for me again since if she did not sleep she was cranky and clearly tired and it made me upset so we both had not so good days. (Having said that I definitely did not give her her bottle and leave her to fall asleep with it, I would take it out when she was either asleep or switch to her soother. Maybe that is just as bad but it worked and I knew I wasn't going to do that for forever.)

It came to the point this week that she would eat all of the bottle and be cranky because she wasn't asleep. I was frustrated one day and had to put her in her crib and leave her for a five minute break to calm myself down and refresh my patience batteries so I could go and try to get her to sleep again. Well she cried for a few minutes then there was silence. I checked on her and she was fast asleep in her crib and actually slept for longer then she normally EVER does. I was in shock but relieved because I really did not have the energy to fight with her to get her to take a nap.

Yesterday was the first day that I let her cry it out and it was SOOO hard. She cried for almost 20 -30 mins straight with only a few slight pauses. I did everything I could not to go in there and get her. I twittered, I rambled on in a email to my hubby and my friend. Finally she was silent and when I checked on her she was asleep! It worked! It actually WORKED and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. She really surprised me. I was relieved and so happy that she had stopped crying because that seriously broke my heart to have to listen to her go through that! The kicker is that she slept for almost 1.5 hours!! Her max used to be 30 mins at a time which never was enough and when she woke up she was happy and not crying. I was also relieved that she had a big smile for me when I came in to get her. I thought she was going to hate me. She was content and ate lunch and played on the floor without whining or crying because she actually had a decent nap for once. Her second nap came and I have to admit that I delayed it as much as I could (but only for about 10 mins) because I was afraid that I would have to listen to her cry again and it would break my heart again.

I did her nap routine, (which is pretty short, basically wave to ourselves in the mirror, change her bum, turn on her music, shut the door and then feed her and kiss her night night and walk out) and the second nap there was not a single peep out of her and she again slept for 1.5 hours.

Today for her first nap she only cried for less then 20 mins with long pauses and slept for over an hour again. I am in COMPLETE shock! She woke up again and was happy. She was actually jibber jabbering to her little monkey for a bit after she woke up. I am so happy that she is finally getting decent amounts of nap time sleep and that she is happier in general! It was the same for her second nap today. A little bit of crying but you know what the little monkey butt is actually asleep. I now might be able to get some house work done if she continues to take decent lengths of naps! I just can`t get over it! I don't know if it's just because it had to be done, or if it's because we were trying to be consistent in her sleep routines, or if it's because of her age or what. I just know that I am happy that nap time is no longer a emotionally draining heart breaking fight! 

Sadly yesterday morning was the last time I am ever going to nurse my little monkey and despite all the problems I have had with nursing and how much I hated it, I have to admit that I am a bit sad. I had dropped the night nursing session last week sometime and was planning on keeping the morning one for a bit but being completely weaned off of the donperidone and her not nursing hardly at all, I have dried up. I could tell all this week in the morning that she wasn't getting too much. So as of today she is completely weaned and I am sad that it's over but happy that I was able to nurse her for as long as I did. Despite all the problems I have had, I do plan on nursing any future kids for as long as I can and hopefully the next time it will be a much better experience because I will not make the same mistakes again and I will know what I am doing. As for now I am going to go enjoy my quiet time while monkey is still soundly asleep and just have to say that 'Victory is mine!!'  ;)

Halloween 2011

Last night we handed out candy with monkey. We didn't bother taking her around considering she is only 7.5 months old and has no need for candy. Although we were considering it just to introduce ourselves to the neighbors except it was really FREAKING cold out. So we opted out this year. We did dress her in her monkey costume though and she had fun looking at all the little kids who came to the door. We had about 36 kids. There really wasn't to many duplicate costumes which was great to see and I am shocked that each and every kid that came to the door said thank you! I don't know why I expected them not to but it was a nice surprise. This is our first Halloween in the house so we haven't really handed out candy before. The apartment we used to live in handed out candy but they did it themselves. We also didn't really get to many older kids and no teenagers/high schoolers so that was also good. It was a good night although we found out that our house layout is awkward to hand out candy from. We can't sit in our great room and watch tv until we get a knock on the door because then we have to run to the front of the house and then down our stairs. So we sort of hovered in our hallway at the top (it's an elevated house so we have a short set of stairs to the main floor and the basement with a small landing as you come into the house).

Monkey's bedtime is usually around 6:30pm but because of the knocking and door bell ringing and because her room is at the front she stayed up until around 7:30pm when she passed out with a bottle. She was entertained by all the kids though so it wasn't like she was too grumpy. By the time she passed out though we hadn't had anyone come for 10 mins so that was the end of our night. Next year I want to decorate the house a bit more then just three pumpkins on the stoop. We did turn our outside lights on as well so that the kids would know that we were handing out candy. That is what most of the people down the street did as well.

Love the attitude!

A monkey in a monkey suit with a....monkey!

Pumpkin Carving!

Yesterday we finally carved our pumpkins! We had bought three, one for each of us a week or so ago at the grocery store for 99cents each! Not to shabby! We were going to go to the pumpkin farm but it has been way to cold and I really didn't want to take monkey out in it for to long. Plus I think she will get more out of the experience next year when she is older.

Monkey is still to young to help out this year with the carving but she still had fun watching us work. It took a lot longer then I thought it would. Scooping the guts and getting all of them out was harder then I remember. We had a decent amount of pumpkin seeds after all three were emptied though which was nice. It took a loooong time to separate the pumpkin seeds from the pumpkin guts and we finally ended up boiling them in salt water once we got most of the pumpkin off. Then into the oven to be baked! Once that was done it was back to the pumpkins to carve. 

Chris cutting the tops off.

Scooping out the guts.

Monkey watching from her high chair.

Chris's evil face while scooping out his pumpkin. I don't know how his hand fit in there! lol!

Lots of seeds!

Trying to get them to separate.

The finished product.

I picked the cat pattern to carve and it wasn't really that fun to try and get it to stay on. The instructions said to use tape. Yeah like that was going to work! I finally had to use push pins in the parts that were going to be carved out and that worked like a charm! I didn't press hard enough with the tool to indent into the pumpkin though so when I took the pattern off it was a pain to use the drill tool to make the holes bigger. Next year I am just going to use the drill tool right on the pattern to make the holes. It would have been so much easier! 

My solution to an annoying problem.

Chris working on his.

The finished pumpkins.

Carving took a long freaking time! I'm glad that we got tools with the patterns though because I couldn't see me carving anything other then a circle and squares if I had to use one of our kitchen knifes. Mine turned out beautiful though! Chris used the ghost pattern which was also neat! The third one I just did something simple because by this time it was already like 8 o'clock or maybe even later and we started at 3pm!! It was fun to carve them though. I really don't remember the last time I carved a pumpkin, let alone baked the seeds. They were sooo good and we ate tons. We had to bake them in two batches. I found out later though that there are a lot of calories in pumpkins seeds so I made Chris bring what was left to work with him so I wouldn't eat anymore! I ate so many of the darned things! It was a good pumpkin carving experience and we were sure to take lots of photos.

15/30 - first 10 random songs with my iPod on shuffle

Day 15 - Put your iPod on shuffle and list the first 10 songs that play

1- It's not the things you say by Tiesto
2- For the ocean  by Finger Eleven
3- So alone by The Offspring
4- Cold day in hell by Tracy Bonham
5- Pain for pleasure by Sum 41
6- Walking in Circles by Our lady peace
7- Your star by  Evanescence
8- Pulling Teeth by Green Day
9- Mascara by the Deftones
10- Pardon Me by Incubus

Got to love music. I kept hitting shuffle after listing the first 10 and I have a lot of Canadian Bands on my ipod (Mudmen, Three Days Grace, Our Lady Peace, Tegan and Sara to name a few). I don't think I have ever listened to any of my music on shuffle. I always just listen to whole albums. I might have to try it sometime :)

What are the top ten on your ipod?