Engagement photo session!

I was so nervous! I'm not sure why, as I'm not a shy person. The more I thought about it, the more nervous I got! If I was this nervous about e-pics, I will be a hot MESS when I do my b-pics! But, after we got used to being in front of a camera, it was so fun. So fun I wish I could be followed around by an amazing photographer all the time. It was kind of like having paparazzi. It took a bit to learn how to "not pose" and just be us.

We started out at this little no-named park down the street from our house. What I liked about it was that it had a long, straight, dirt trail with lots of over-hanging trees. It wasn't as groomed as I remembered from last year, but it was still OK. We only took a few shots there. This whole time I wasn't sure about the other locations. I just didn't know!

Right before John (photographer) got to our house, I was thinking "hey! The village would be awesome!" so we went there. Lots of cool lines, lots of cool, different looking places in the Village. The bridge, the canal, the cool brick wall by the ice cream place. It was so awesome.

We brought the bike a prop and got some really cool glamour shots of it against the brick wall and with us on it. I'm not sure how good we looked on the bike or if my face looked like a meatball like it tends to. We'll see in a couple weeks how they turned out. John said we only needed about 20 good shots.

When we wrapped up, Steve made it home before John and I did and out comes Steve and both dogs with their fancy collars on. I knew right away what Steve was about to ask "do you think you could get some good shots with the dogs?" Our photographer is cool and said of course - so we headed to the backyard out of the sunlight and got some amazing shots of the dogs. Got a couple with the dogs and us, but I always wanted to get some nice head shots of the dogs to get framed. Here's one sneak peek:

I love how we look like we're having fun in the background. And Hudson looks soooo handsome!

We should be able to go in 2-3 weeks to pick out our favorites and then we can get started on our save the dates and our card box. And it's just nice to have SOME professional pictures of Steve and I in our house. I will post more as soon as I can.

our wedding night

We've been wondering what/where we plan to be after our wedding. Like right after our wedding. We know we won't want the party to end right at midnight...but we weren't sure what options we had. We didn't want all our friends to just disappear to their respective places so we've been on the hunt to find a good spot.

We booked rooms for our guests at both the Woodcliff Hotel and Spa and also Brookwood Inn. Both places are amazing so we decided to check out their bridal suites. Brookwood Inn was nice, one floor, pretty generic looking bridal suite. For $450. (Yikes!) So then we hopped on over to the Woodcliff to see if their prices were comparable. Well, for the high price of $450, we could get the two story, 1,100 square foot Art Deco suite. We went there this past Tuesday to look around but unfortunately the Art Deco suite was booked. Argh. We didn't want to make a decision until we got a chance to look at that room - we did look at other suites and they were pretty awesome, but we really had our hearts set on the Art Deco room.

My contact over there was able to send me some pictures and set up another time to go look at it. I'm hoping to swing over on Sunday to book the place.

Here are some photos. Ah-mazing.

wet clothes

I *try* to do our laundry every week. I do our combined clothes and Steve is responsible for doing his work clothes. I don't like his greasy stuff mixing with our nice clothes. So this past weekend I was going to do a load. I had to wash our comforter first, to get that out of the way. After it washed I threw it in the dryer and left it. I went back down later that day and realized it wasn't dried all the way. Ok, well, no biggie, I threw it back in and turned the timer for another hour. I figured, it was a comforter, it could've gotten tangled in there - so whatever.

Steve decides to do a load of his clothes, so I just said to hang the comforter on the treadmill and have it air dry so we could do another load. Well...this is when we realized that our dryer had shit the bed. His entire load of work clothes that he had just washed was cold and still wet after being the in the dryer for an hour. Great. It was spinning and turning on, so we would leave it, thinking it was working. We were wrong. And now we have wet clothes in our basement.

We did some preliminary research and stopped at Home Depot Sunday evening and found a pair (why not get both since our old ones are both about 20 years old and came with the house). We did more research once we got home and then stopped at Lowe's last night. Free next day delivery, haul away and hook up. We also got 12 months free financing which is cool too, we'll obviously pay if off way before that, but it's nice to know we have some time.

It's a Samsung somethingorother. I don't know the exact product name....and we were thinking about the Maytag version that's comparable, but after talking to the sales guy and a few other couples looking to buy, we heard that Maytag has all new engineers and the new machines just aren't built like they used to be. So we landed with the Samsung. It's got this cool thing (VRT) that keeps the machine from jumping around during the spin cycle. Very cool. The sales guy showed us the floor display and ran the machine for us so we could see ourselves how this technology works. The spin cycle looked like a freakin jet engine, and the machine started to freak out...then it stopped. The shaking stopped but the machine kept going. So neat to see.

Here are some pics of the floor model. We didn't get the bottom part that has drawers and keeps the units up higher.

The two units side by side

I want to push the buttons

and I want to turn the knob

They get delivered tonight, between 4-8pm. So excited. That wet laundry is probably pretty gross right now so we'll *have* to wash it again!

Steve is also building me some nice shelves and a folding area so I can keep all the laundry stuff together in one place. Right now everything is everywhere.

You know you're getting old when new appliances are SO exciting.

I haven't blogged in so long!

Why? It's because I'm crazy busy at work these days. I got put on a new account (not even sure if I've mentioned it before) but I'm now working FULL 9-10 hour days. I get in at 8am (30 minutes before my office opens) and I don't leave until after 6pm usually. And I eat my lunch at my desk. I'm not complaining - well, not really. I LOVE being busy. It makes the time just FLY and I can't believe the day is over when it is. Days are going by super fast, weeks are flying by. Before I know it, it'll be close to my wedding day!

So what has happened since the last time I blogged. Well, hmmm....Steve got the biggest raise ever because he got approached by another dealership and he went to his boss and negotiated with him. I'm super proud of him, all his hard work is paying off! I'm officially marrying a "Master Tech" Saweeeeet!

Sunday was Mother's Day. We usually split our day between his mom and my mom. We went to his mom's for lunch, but she wasn't feeling up for anything so we just hung out and chatted. Then we went home, took a nap, and went to my mom's for dinner. I offered to either cook or bring food over, but if you know my mom, you know she'd rather cook a gourmet meal for us. So that's what she did. Pretty awesome. We didn't get any real gifts, but we ARE making my mom a mahjong table...OK, Steve is going to do it while I supervise. We got his mom a card, a GIANT balloon and some flowers. I think I'm going to send Turk's mom something in a couple weeks too.

No more wedding updates, other than our invites. My sister finally finished the first layout, which is approved, so now we have to do all the other stuff....the RSVP card, directions, accommodations, etc.

Here's our invite. It's not hi res (obviously, so forgive the quality please):

you can't really see the detail that's faded in the back, but you get the general idea.