On the details - DIY wedding souvenir

Here is the first post ever related to my wedding details :p

I have this DIY idea of having a bi-fold door as an escort cards holder. As our feel is vintage, I'd like to have the door color either off-white or light sky blue. The cracks on the door will serve as escort or name card showing their table. I saw this design somewhere and I love it. Fortunately, we have a bi-fold pantry door that is going to be gone when we're re-doing the house, so might as well use it for some good.

The inspiration

I have not yet finished the painting the door, but I have found a gold frame that will be hung on it. I found this gold frame at Marshalls with discount. There are cracks at the corners of the frame. But again, since we will have a vintage wedding, I think that goes pretty well.

I sticked a chalkboard paper on top and wrote "Please take a seat". I did not like the paper to much. It is too smooth, I'd prefer a rougher surface. You can achieve this by using chalkboard paint on rough surface such as woods, instead. But I'll take it. Probably for further project, I'll do that.

The above picture also shows my wedding favor. This DIY wedding favor idea comes from J's mother. She is really good at glass art. She has given me a few ideas previously, which I liked as well. However, when she showed me this, my heart melted. This wedding favor is a heart-shaped glass, made out of 2 pieces (left and right) and the 2 pieces can be in different color. We used the combination of gold, blue, and white. I like the gold and blue because they can be a little more transparent and it looks cool. After she created the hearts, I came to help wiring and beading. We wrapped a beaded wire around it and did not forget to glue the wire, so it sticks to the glass piece.

I love our DIY wedding favor. It's very personal and it's unique. J's mom was also kind to not let me worry about the cost. She took care of buying the glasses, wire, and the beads. I guess I'm really lucky! :)

The box is printed by the same place who printed my invitations. The pattern also matches the invitation pattern. I luurrrrrrve it.

Hopefully this post can help anybody who's in search of DIY wedding favor idea, especially dealing with glass artwork.

Love and Joy,

On finishing our Catholic wedding prep

We are getting married in a Catholic Church. I have always wanted it, although the thought of getting married outside is tempting :)

In order to be able to do so, we have to complete a set of seminars, titled "Real Love, Real Life" and "God's Plan for a Joyful Marriage." And I'm glad to announce it that we've completed it! At the end of each seminar, we received a certificate and we can cut it in half, keep one half for us and give the other half to the parish.

Real Love, Real Life - St. James, Madison, WI
We started at 8:30am. We arrived pretty early and was provided with breakfast snacks. We didn't eat anything, but we grabbed coffee and orange juice. J was dying without his mountain dew. Overall it was a nice experience. The format for each topic was sharing experiences by the leaders, breaking into personal time while answering the questionnaire, and finally getting together with your partner and discussing the answers. I think it means well, though J is hard on expressing his feelings, which is fine. We got done about an hour earlier that what it was supposed to be.

God's Plan for a Joyful Marriage - Bishop O'Connor, Madison, WI
We started at the same time. But this time, we got muffin and bagels :) Oh! and banana! We got apple juice, coffee, andddd....they have the dew! You can imagine how happy J was :)
The same format, but I like the first one better, or maybe I would prefer to take this first, then followed by Real Love, Real Life. I think that way because Real Love, Real Life was more personal, so it would be good if you knew the drill! Bishop O'Connor was a nice place, though! It also has a chapel. The chapel made me think twice why I didn't think of it as a place to get married. I love our church, but I'm afraid that it would feel empty as we're not inviting a lot of people. Three things that I remember:
1. I kept eating the banana. Every time we had a break, I'd grab the banana :p
2. For the last session, we were up by the chapel and talked about their cool umbrella holder that's shaped like an umbrella and we missed the bell! When we're walking back, there was no one! Everybody had gathered back in the room. It was a bit embarrassing as we didn't know how long they'd been there. But, we're not the last!
3. We watched The Hunger Games afterwards :)

Our Certificates :)

On my latest obsession

"I don't know if this obsession is an actual obsession or if this is normal. I really like spending hours on reading news comment section. It's either about the Afghan shooting by US soldier or about the very unfortunate death of a Florida teen."

It starts with The Bachelor. Every Tuesday morning, I felt excited to read the recap or blogs about the night before's episode. If they show the awful side of Courtney, I would be eager to read what other people think. In a way, to affirm my repugnance to Courtney. I'd feel great if everybody also despised her. But, when one or two people defended her, I'd be, "What is she thinking?!" Well now, it just sounds horrible for me to judge someone intensely. After The Bachelor's over, I stop reading/ following them and go back to my normal news reading, or so I thought.

I found myself scrolling down the news page until the comment section where then I spent hours reading the supportive and non-supportive comments. Almost judging every person who did not agree with me (this is bad) I'd like to know if this is normal or not?!?!

Example of the comment from CNN page:

You can tell that I've been reading these comments by how small the scroll bar looks.

Love and warmth in March!

On celebrating the pi day

Happy Pi Day! 

3.14

As an engineer, I feel so strongly that I should mention this in my blog. The least that I could do.

Today is actually a warm day. We are going to break our record high in Madison. They say that it can reach up to 80. I went outside for a little bit today and found that it was pretty windy. But, the horrible thing is that it's very warm in this office. It's just too warm that it's suffocating you. Geez, Engineering Hall, you have never got it right!

How many digits of pi number do you have memorized?

On the 99 days left!

Well well! I missed the 100 days countdown yesterday. But, today marks the 99th day before our wedding day! In anyway, we like the number 9 better :)

I am going to make the most out of these 99 days. Stress-free and pretty much get everything else ready! Happy Wedding Prep!

On what I'm reading

Currently I am reading Dracula by Bram Stoker. I am aware that this is an older book that probably everybody has read. The first reason why I actually got this book was because it's free for my Kindle and the second reason was that if it's a popular book, why haven't I read it? I also know that the story is very popular that again probably everybody has seen some sort of its portrayal (movies, etc). But I want to read it. So here I am reading the book which I just started 2 days. Usually I read my kindle on the bus, in the morning, for about 10 minutes. But I know, with this one, it's not gonna be enough. Another thing is that I really like it so far (not too far, I can tell you that). The flow is really nice, the words well put, and the description is really nice. So, I am for sure going to spend a good mount of time enjoying this book :)

On what I'm giving up

This may be a very late post indeed. But, for Lent, I am giving up a few things:
1. Facebook
2. Coke
3. Style Me Pretty

I think I understand the idea of Lent to give up something that we really love to do and instead we can use that time to get closer to God or just to pray for the strength to not be tempted and thus get the relationship closer together. Well, I can tell you that I've been bad and away a bit from God. But, as my root is pretty deep down, I can't just ignore and choose not to do Lent (I give up meat on Friday). I'm not a Facebook fan, I don't post or check my FB like crazy, although I go to Style Me Pretty like crazy (every minute probably). It's just nice to actually then use that time to do something more useful. Or at least to create a new habit which I don't have to depend on them everytime. It's been good so far.

I also finished my book by Rosamond Bernier. I am just currently reading weightless-free-romantic story that I won't even bother to share. I am looking for the next book, though.