SHOW US YOUR LIFE - Bridesmaids/Flowers/Ceremony

I am once again participating in Kelly's Korner blog tour this week. This week is bridesmaids, flowers, and the ceremony. There were very few things that I disliked at my wedding. Participating in this blog tour is fun because it gives me a reason to look at these pictures again, which just reminds me how much I love my wedding pictures. 

Our wedding was outside, in August, in Atlanta, which means it was HOT!! To help alleviate the extreme heat, we had big tubs of water bottles in ice on the sidewalk before you walked on the lawn for the ceremony. We also knew it was going to be hot, so we decided to make our ceremony really short. It turned out to be about 12 minutes long, which was better for everyone. 

A funny note about our wedding ceremony is that the week before our wedding, we got a notice from Piedmont Park that Falcons Fest, as in the Atlanta Falcons, would be occurring in the park on the same day. We were really stressed about it because we knew it would make traffic really bad, which would make people late, and that it meant less parking for our guests. It turned out to not be that big of a deal. However, Falcons Fest involved a stage for live singing performances. I didn't really pay attention at the time, but when we watched our wedding video, we could very clearly hear "Brick House" in the background. Apparently everyone else at our wedding noticed it, too. Oh well!! It is something to laugh at now!

When I first saw my flowers, I was a little disappointed. I thought the bouquets were going to be a little tighter. Looking back at my pictures now, I love them. The colors of the flowers and the size of the bouquets were perfect. The first picture is a close up of the bridesmaids bouquets. 

This is me with my bridesmaids, flower girl, and ring bearer just before we walked down the aisle. I love this picture because it shows everyone's personality well. 

I also love this picture with my bridesmaids. This is on a really old bridge that you have to cross over to get into the park where our ceremony was held. 

Ben with the groomsmen. This is a really good picture of all of the guys. 

Ok, this is one of the best pictures from the wedding. My super cute flower girls decided to play in the flower petals that lined the aisle after the ceremony ended. My photographer happened to catch her in the act! I think he actually uses this picture on his business cards now. 

Me with my flower girl. This picture is a good close-up of her dress and my bouquet. 

This picture shows the back of the bridesmaids dresses. I loved my bridesmaids dresses. I wanted a color that somewhat blended in with the natural background, rather than competed it. They were a pretty tan-ish color, with a cream sash. They were also tea length, which I think is very pretty and stylish. 

This was taken during our special ring ceremony thing we came up with that involved passing our rings around between each of our friends and having them say a special short prayer over us/the rings. They all formed a circle right in the middle of the wedding. During this portion, "One Hand, One Heart" from West Side Story was played by our string quartet that provided the music for our ceremony. It was a very unique part of our ceremony, and it was really special to us. 

Finally, this is our entire wedding party just after the ceremony. We are all sitting on the steps that are just beside the lawn where the ceremony was held. 

I hope you enjoyed my wedding pictures! 

A glimpse at life in a few years

Monday morning I got to watch my niece for a couple of hours while her mama got some things done. Ben and I watched her together several months ago while her parents went to dinner, and things didn't exactly go smoothly. She had not been around us much at that point, so she was a little freaked out. 

This time around went much better! She has been around us a good bit since they moved back to Atlanta, so she did really well. Once I brought her inside our house, she took a few minutes to warm back up to Cleo and Eleanor. After that, she was on a roll the rest of the time. I couldn't get her to slow down! I tried to get her to read a book or sing "The Wheels on the Bus," but she apparently had more important things on her agenda, like redecorating. She was particularly interested in the Pottery Barn Kids catalog. She also played with the weenies, inspected our file cart, and looked at a magazine. I had other goals for her, including two word phrases. 

She likes to laugh when other people laugh, so here she is laughing because I am laughing.
Inspecting the floor. 

This is while she is looking at the Pottery Barn catalog. 

It was lots of fun! We are so glad they are back in Atlanta now so that we can spend more time with Mattie.  

Speaking of Weenies...

We are definitely GT fans in our house, as Ben got two degrees from there. He hates all things UGA, as any good GT fan should. There are things that I don't like about UGA, some of their fans in particular, but I don't hate them. 

Ben showed me this online article a couple of days ago, and I have not stopped giggling about the whole thing. Look at the picture above. It looks normal at first glance. However, upon further inspection, there is a particular "part" that is a bit more obvious than it should be. Some of the comments on the The Hive were pretty funny, including "Maybe he should change his least favorite physical attribute." Hahaha!

SHOW US YOUR LIFE - Wedding Dress

Through blog hopping, I have found a nice lady's blog in Arkansas that I like to read. Every Friday she has been doing a home tour. Each week features a new room in the house, and everyone who participates puts pictures of that specific room on their blog and then links it to hers. Although I read many of the blogs relating to the home tour, I never posted my own, mostly because we live in a studio that does not have separate rooms. Now the home tour is over and the topic has changed to Show Us Your Life - Weddings. Every Friday for the next several weeks, the topic will focus on specific details of the wedding. This week is the wedding dress. I decided to participate because, well, I have one of those! I also think it will be fun for me since these few weeks are leading up to our 2 year anniversary. 

(As I am typing this, there is a segment on the Today Show about "Waitie Katie" and whether Prince William will propose soon. I bet that will be a heck of a wedding dress!)

Anyway, back to my own dress! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my wedding dress. I searched and tried on so many wedding dresses. Finally, I found the website of a bridal boutique in Virginia Highlands, LaRaine's Bridal Boutique. I figured I probably would not be able to afford anything in there, but wanted to give it a try anyway. I also found a dress on the website that I really liked, as it was completely different from anything I had tried on, but also thought it would be too expensive. So I went with my mom and my grandmother, and discovered that it was definitely not too expensive. The dress on the website was even better in the store, and once I tried it on, I knew that was the one! 

This is the back of my dress just before I put it on. 

This is one of my favorite pictures from our wedding. 
During the ceremony...a side view of the dress. 
I had to include my shoes in the post, because they are so fabulous. I am a big Kate Spade fan, so I had to have Kate Spade Wedding Shoes. Here are my shoes with sweet little flower girl's feet. 
That is all for today! Check out Kelly's Korner for more dresses. 

Speech?! I don't want to give a speech!

Me: No, you don't have to give a speech, Ms. ___! I said you are going TO speech! To work on your memory? 

Patient: Oh! I thought you were taking me to give a speech, but I didn't write one. 

My medical internship officially ended last Friday. It was 10 weeks full of working with elderly folks with diagnoses ranging from aphasia secondary to a stroke, to dementia, alzheimer's, and schizophrenia. And I loved every second of it! The conversation above was from one of the first few days of working with one of my most favorite patients. She was full of interesting conversation! 

Going into this internship, I was not particularly excited. I had requested to go into a hospital, but what I got was a skilled nursing facility. I was most worried about going to this type of facility and having my patients die on me, which I thought would just be terrible considering the deaths of two family members this year, particularly my mom. Basically, I thought it would be too emotionally draining. Fortunately, (well, unfortunately for her) I only had one patient die, and it happened on my third day before I got too attached to her. 

The patients that I was able to work with for therapy were normal people with normal lives. Most were working class folks, so they were stable in the sense that they were able to provide for themselves, but definitely not wealthy. Most had very little education, mostly due a lack of opportunity rather than a lack of ambition, but they had a lot of practical knowledge. 

I had three patients in particular with whom I developed a close relationship. It is hard to not become invested in their lives when you see them everyday and the struggles that they must face. I think I may become a little too invested, not in a bad way, but in a way that I really care about them and want to do whatever I can to help them. It seems that the patients are often thought of as just that, another patient to take care of on your list. This is true for the the therapists, nursing, and doctors. It takes no more time to let the patients know that you care about them and are committed to your part in their recovery. My three favorite patients had such interesting life experiences, some good, but most were sad. One of the patients was discharged the week before I left. The other two were still there, and I had a hard time leaving them! One of them cried on my last day, and the other grabbed on to me and said she wasn't going to let me leave. Anyway, I loved these people. I wish I could just adopt them into my family, especially since they both had no family. 

I think I get my caring nature for my patients from my mom. She always seemed to find those people who needed someone to be kind to them, and she was that person. 

I spent my days laughing at all the crazy things my patients would say, and their funny personalities. Here is a sampling of my favorite patient quotes.

(whispering) "You know there are a lot of people missing legs here. I even saw one lady without an arm!"

Patient: You see that over there? Looks like they put a red light up over there. 

Me: That's not a red light, that's a tail light! 

Patient: You hear that? It sounds like trees. Wind blowing in trees. 

Me: There aren't any trees in here. 

Patient: I keep looking around and I don't see any. But I hear trees. You don't hear that?

Me: Ms. ___, that is the air conditioner!

(We were sitting in an office with no windows.)

Patient: My husband did not like me to wake him up. The only time he liked me to wake him up was.....um....was when it was time for him to get up to go to work!

Patient 2: I thought you were going to say sex. 

That's all I can think of right now, but there are about 50 more funny conversations like these. 

Yay!

As of today, I am married to a registered architect! We found out today that he passed his final test. No more studying for him for right now!

Bless His Heart

Remember this guy from Ben's office? The one who rigged the march madness pool? This is his Halloween costume he wore to the office, Supergirl. Not Superwoman, or even Superman (which would make a little more sense), but Supergirl. 

Bathroom Renovation: Part 1

Back in May, Ben and I finally started round one of our bathroom renovation. We have been planning on doing the renovation for about a year now, but things kept coming up that prevented us from carrying out our plans. During that year, we ordered items we wanted for the bathroom as we found them on sale/had a coupon and just let the boxes stack up until we were ready. 

Our bathroom contains our laundry area and closet as well. Here are some before pictures: 

Our bathroom was painted lime green, which I loved. We just got tired of it because it has been like that for about 3 years now. One of our least favorite parts of the bathroom were the curtains we had to use to cover up our closet. The dogs like to eat the curtains, and it just looked messy. 

Round one of the renovation involved painting the bathroom grey, adding a super fabulous closet system from Ikea (with DOORS!), new lighting fixtures (globes from West Elm), new mirror, new shelves over the toilet, and new accessories. 

I love this mirror. We happened across it the day after Christmas at Crate and Barrel. It was a $400 mirror, but Ben found this one as a floor model while I was in the bathroom for only $100! I love it! We will be taking this with us when we move. 

Also notice the super cool dachshund art on the wall, which we found at Z Gallerie. 


Round two of the renovations, which will happen in a few weeks on my break between semesters, will involve removing the light fixture over the mirror and replacing it with a sconce on each side of the mirror. We will also take out the old vanity/sink/faucet and replace them. The new vanity will be Ikea kitchen cabinets, a white vessel sink, and a new brushed nickel faucet. I also plan on changing the fixtures in the shower. My one dilemma is the shower. It is just nasty. No matter what I clean that thing with, it never looks clean. More like just a lighter shade of grey because of all the dirtiness. It would cost WAY too much money to replace it, so I decided I would just have it refinished. For some reason, I was thinking this cost about $200. According to my pricing, it will actually be close to $400, which is a problem. I found a kit online to refinish it yourself that only costs $50. I'm just scared it might make it worse. 

That's our bathroom! I will post more pictures after we finish round two. 

Weenie Update!

Cleo can be a grouchy weenie at times. She likes to take both bones so that Eleanor can't have one. When Eleanor gets near her, she growls. 

Here she is with two bones. She looks really innocent, but don't let that fool you.  

She is being really sweet in this picture. 

Crazy Eleanor! 

Happy Fourth!

I know it is now the fifth, but this post is about the fourth. Yesterday evening we went to the Lenox fireworks show. Hillary works for a PR firm that had something to do with the VIP tent at Lenox, so she was able to get us in with her for the evening. It was so nice! We parked at her office across the street, walked straight over to the VIP tent, and then got us some free dinner. The tent had catered food, free drinks, and tables set up with a perfect view of the stage and the fireworks. It was all FREE. We had a really good time!

 

We Made It

Ben and I successfully completed our first Peachtree Road Race this morning. We were in the fourth time group, which is pretty good. We started just before 8:00 this morning, so it was still relatively cool. We jogged on and off most of the way, except for at the end. Considering I did ZERO training for this, I am impressed with myself! The best part is that about half of the people walk the whole race, except for the last .2 miles or so, when about 90% of the people start running like they have been running the entire race. I guess they want to finish strong, right? Most of those people looked like they were about to pass out after they crossed the finish line. We are a little disappointed that the shirt is plain white. We were hoping for something a little more exciting! The design on the shirt is nice, however. 

Ben's parents came out to watch us, even though we didn't see them as we walked past them. We met them back at our house after the race and went to lunch together at the Vortex. Nothing like a post-race grilled cheese and coke zero! 

Anyway, we had lots of fun and hopefully we will do it again next year!

I Picked A Good One!

This morning on the radio they were talking about Forbes top-paying jobs for women. Guess what was number 9? Speech-language pathologist! I was pretty excited by that, so much so that I had to call Ben and tell him. I think it is a great job, but it is interesting that it made Forbes list. However, the only problem I found is the salary that they report for SLPs. It is a bit high, but SLPs get paid less in this part of the country. 

The article is an interesting read as well. You can check it out here. According to the article, a pay-gap still  exists, with women earning about 80% of what men earn. I'm surprised that the gap is still as high as 20%. 

Anyway, I'm glad I decided to be a SLP! And on that note, I will leave you with a quote from one of my patients.

Me: Can I sit here?

Patient: Anywhere but on my head!