Month: May 2012

Envelope Drama

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So when Cobalt and I designed our invitations months and months ago, I decided to go with 5×7 inch invitations, which would fit snugly into A7 envelopes (5.25 x 7.25). I figured that because A7 envelopes have a name (A7 envelopes), then they would clearly be easily located. This assumption turned out to be false. Cobalt and I went to a variety of office supply stores on Monday to get envelopes for the invitations he printed yesterday and all the stores had A2 envelopes (too small) and A9 envelopes (too big) but no A7 envelopes (just right!)… Booo. Luckily, the internet has a wide variety of A7 envelopes for sale. I chose envelopes.com (easy enough…) because they had a wide variety of fancy A7 envelopes for sale (and the ones we got were printed with 100% recycled paper! Score!).

On a related note, we have the invitations all printed out (Thanks to Cobalt for spending hourssss at Kinko’s yesterday!), we have stamps (thanks Cobalt for going to the post office yesterday…) and now whenever the envelopes show up, we can mail out our invitations (hopefully this weekend)…

Picture: Gustav the shark eyes the naked invitations. Quick envelopes! You’d better get here soon or Gustav will eat all the invitations! >_< Thanks Cobalt also for this picture!

Questions: a) Did you have envelope and/or invitation drama? How did you solve it?
b) Do you like my new header?
c) Tell me something exciting that is happening for you right now/soon/just happened! :)

Congratulations to a new married couple!

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This weekend, Cobalt and I headed to our first wedding of the summer! It was awesome. J looked beautiful in her dress and S looked handsome in his tux. The ceremony was lovely and we all cried like babies. We caught up with friends who we haven’t seen in years over dinner and then we danced the night away! Good times… During the dancing, J and I talked about how exciting this summer is! First her wedding and then wedding number three of the summer is Cobalt’s and mine! Can’t wait! Cobalt and I are sooooo excited right now. :) I’ve been up to a lot of stuff so hopefully I’ll get a chance later this week to talk about it all… but for now, I am celebrating Memorial Day by taking a nap in the middle of the day! I hope you all are having wonderful Memorial Days! Is there anyone you are honoring today?

Pictures: up there! J looking stunning during their first dance – one of my favorite parts of a wedding.

Down here: J and S during the toasts… they were all very good toasts… :)

How fortunate…

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So Tuesday nights Cobalt works for Geeks Who Drink. It’s a pub quiz company. Really fun quizzes! Look it up and see if there’s one near you. I highly recommend it (and not just because Cobalt works for them…). Anyway, so Tuesday nights he goes off to stump people with the quiz and I have a night to myself in our house to do whatever I want (dance party anyone?! ;)). Since last Tuesday night was spent sadly and frantically making a presentation for my annual committee meeting (grad school thing – your boss and two other faculty members listen to you talk about your work over the past year and give you suggestions/make sure you’re on track for graduating etc etc etc… sliiiiiightly intimidating?), I decided to make the most of this Tuesday night. First I made myself an epic feast (okay, it wasn’t that epic… but it was still delicious…) and then I decided to try out the pattern Cobalt and I found for making the felt fortune cookies we had in mind for our wedding favors. Turns out I actually had blue felt and green embroidery thread that are pretty close to our colors so my trial run pretty much shows you what the actual favor could look like. I like them! I think they look pretty neat. Now all we need to do is come up with what we want the fortunes to say… Thoughts? Potassium and Cobalt 2012? Or something sillier than that? What do you think of green fortune cookies with blue thread to go with these ones? Are you anti-fortune cookie? Tell me all your thoughts on this matter…

In other wedding planning news, the invitations are ready to be printed! Great job T for getting them ready right on time. :) Cobalt is (hopefully) headed to Kinko’s tomorrow to print a test invite and then it will be time for stamp and address acquiring! :)

Ribbit?

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This weekend, Cobalt and I went to the Denver Botanic Gardens as part of his birthday adventures and we had a really good time. The gardens are kind of awesome (except the plains one which, in our opinion, seemed a little plain… :-/). It was all overcast and wet outside, which apparently inspired me to be really creative with my photography. I took so many cool pictures with my DSLR… it was awesome. As soon as I can pick out which pictures I like best, maybe I will post some cool flower pictures on here. Today’s pictures come from the rainforest part of the garden (verrrrry humid in there…) where they had some poison dart frogs. The frogs were being a little antisocial and hiding behind the plants in the darker parts of their aquarium so it made taking their pictures kind of challenging (working at really low exposure speeds and f stops…). Which is your favorite?

I like that his little toes are in focus in this one…

One without a flash…

Dress Fabric update (and a day in the city)!

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Hey everyone!
Wow… it’s been so long since I updated. Boooo grad school making me do stuff all the time. It’s not like you’re my job or anything… Anyway. Craziness has semi subsided so you get a post today! And it’s a fun one with LOTS of pictures! :)

Also, today is Cobalt’s birthday! Yay! Happy birthday Cobalt! I’m sorry grad school has made a bad fiancee out of me this week but I promise I will make it up to you tomorrow on your fancy birthday outing that I have planned! :D But that’s a secret (for now) so let’s talk about something else…

So last weekend, my mom and I went to go get fabric to make my wedding dress! When you want good fabric for something fancy like a wedding dress and you live in California, there is one really good place to go and that is Britex Fabrics in San Francisco!! So that’s where we went. Since neither my mom nor I really enjoy driving in the city, we decided to make a day out of it and take the San Francisco ferry into the city. It was really fun. Some pictures:

Here is a pic of Mom and me on the boat, ready to go!


Scrarmpl the shark got to come too but after this whole fiasco of him getting on the other side of the railing in an attempt to reach the water, he had to spend most of the boat journey in my purse…


The Golden Gate bridge was being shy/mysterious and decided to hide behind a cloud of fog…


San Francisco!!! So pretty. I like that I got the sail boat in the pic too..


It was windy on the boat… :-/

Anyway, then we got off the boat and walked to downtown San Francisco where Britex lives. It was a beautiful day in the city, perfect for walking around and hanging out with your mom. Britex had a HUUUUGE variety of fabrics in all sorts of colors and patterns. I was drooling as soon as we got inside. Anyway, we found a bunch of really nice silk satin fabrics in all sorts of colors. I actually found the perfect blue I wanted for my dress but when Mom and I put it up to my skin, we realized that perhaps light blue is not a very good color for me. She said I looked all ashy but I thought I just looked yellow. SO I gave up on the plan for a light blue dress and decided I would rather have a color that would make me look pretty instead of a color that I personally like but that makes me look weird on my wedding day. We found this amazing silk satin instead that looks really good with my skin color and it was sooooo soft. I can’t WAIT to have an entire dress made out of it. So exciting. Sorry though, we weren’t allowed to take pictures in the fabric store AND I can’t have pictures on here anyway because Cobalt reads this blog… So you all will just have to wait for that.
Anyway, we went upstairs (Britex has FIVE FLOORS of fabric, people… :):):)) and found some really nice fabric for my mom’s MOtB dress too. I also got some French netting and a comb for my veil/hairpiece thing. I loved chatting with the French netting ladies because they were so excited for me and we talked a lot about how to arrange the netting to make it be the perfect veil/hairpiece. They were very knowledgable and funny. :) So yeah. A good experience overall! And a great day. I love San Francisco. I feel bad though because being there reminded me of how much less I like Denver, CO… Sorry Colorado…
Here are some more pictures:


Beautiful day in a beautiful city. Look at those trees and the buildings and the sky! <3


Saw this guy at the grocery store at home… Totally made me want to buy those nectarines… Haha, such a sucker for shark things.


Cute bunny in Colorado… See, there are things I like about Colorado!

Anyway, that concludes my post for the day. I hope you guys are doing swimmingly! I am off to have lunch with Cobalt for his birthday!!!!! But while I do that, you should tell me some things… Like… what is your favorite city in the whole world? I think it’s a tie between San Francisco and Seattle for me. But there are so many places I haven’t been to yet! Also, I am always talking about sharks in here so what is your favorite animal?
Have a good weekend! :)

Fabric shopping!

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Short wedding post today due to insanity continuing in life.

Anyway, this weekend, my mom and I are going to go fabric shopping for my wedding dress (and veil, if you count French netting as fabric)! I am really excited to spend the day with my mom and to finally pick out the fabric for this dress! We are also doing one final fitting with the muslin dress to make sure I like her corrections from last time and then… she gets to make the dress! Should be a good weekend. Updates next week! :D

In other wedding planning news, Cobalt and I have planned our “honeymoon” in that we have decided we are going to go ziplining the day after our wedding before we have to head back to CO and our respective jobs. Booooo time off why are you so short? I am excited that we will get some fun and exciting “honeymoon”-like time together anyway. :) Hopefully we will get to have a real honeymoon sometime in the nearish future!

Have you ever been ziplining before? I am excited now but I am pretty sure I will get nervous when I actually get up there… What is your idea of the ideal honeymoon? For Cobalt and me, it’s a joint trip – first to New York City and then to Paris. One day…

About the picture: I know this isn’t ziplining but it is still a picture of me and Cobalt having fun and there is a rope and some trees in the picture so… I say it works. :)

I love soccer

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My friend A and I were talking this last weekend about activities that feel “natural” to us. Like an activity that feels so natural to you that you don’t really have to think about what you are doing. You kind of just go. That is how soccer feels to me. As soon as I can feel my cleats digging into the grass as I sprint towards the soccer ball, I am home. Isn’t that a relaxing feeling? I am so in the game that I am not concentrating on what I look like, what I have been worrying about lately, or even how much I suck at breathing when I am running. I am just going. For my friend A, it is horseback riding. What is it for you? Did you guys do anything amazing this weekend?

Thanks to Cobalt for taking pictures of my soccer game yesterday! Look at this awesome shot he got of me trying to score a goal!

Mountain towns are fun…

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Oh the joys of living in a mountain town… This morning, as I cruised along my new (mostly downhill) route to lab, I noticed these signs on cones in the middle of the bike path reading “MOUNTAIN LION PRESENCE IN THIS AREA CONFIRMED. BE ALERT!”

…

Be alert?! That’s it?! If I see a mountain lion on my way home, should I just nod and be like “Hey Mountain lion! Please don’t eat me but I’m aware of your presence!”? Hrmmmm… maybe I should take the long way home….

In other non big scary cat related news, I repotted my baby lemon cucumber and tomato plants last night! They are growing so happily. I hope they weren’t too traumatized by the move to bigger pots. They will thank me when they realize their roots have so much extra dirt to crawl through… Pictures hopefully next week…

In OTHER non plant or cat news, my sister’s birthday was this week! This message is as belated as my present to her is (hopefully you get it today, wee!) so I hope both find her well. Happy belated birthday! :D Here is a picture of me, Gustav, and my sister in CA last time we were both home…

Transparency

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Last week, Karyl tagged me in a blog post. Basically, each person tagged had to answer a specific question. Mine was: “What do you look forward to in your marriage?”

I thought about this all week last week. Not that I’m not looking forward to anything… more like I was trying to figure out what will be different about being married. I know that things will be different but Cobalt and I have been together for so long now that it’s hard to nail down exactly what. So I thought a lot about what changes when you get married: the breaking off from your families and forming a new unit, coming up with new traditions, etc.

Then Cobalt and I met with our premarital counselor/pastor last weekend and he talked to us about this idea of being transparent to each other. We were talking about learning how to better communicate our feelings to each other and our pastor told us that we are becoming the safest person in the whole world for the other person. That it’s okay for me to open up to Cobalt and that it’s okay for him to open up to me. That we can be totally transparent about our feelings and our beliefs and that it’s okay. It’s safe. Cobalt won’t stop loving me when I am feeling fragile or angry and I won’t stop loving him when he is feeling frustrated or hurt. And I think that is what I am most looking forward to in marriage, learning how to be transparent to Cobalt. Makes me feel all warm and bubbly inside. Makes me feel safe to know that he’s the one I get to finally open up to…

In other wedding news, we have officially paid off the photographer! Kudos to her for making us a contract where everything is due BEFORE a month before the wedding so we can get her checked off before we have to start paying everything else off in July…
Also, the invitations are almost done. Cobalt and I had to decide on some fonts for T, which we did this weekend. Hopefully we can get those printed off soon.
ALSO – we are starting to get registry gifts! I am excited to try out Natalie’s Gift/thank you note excel file and excited that Cobalt and I already purchased our Thank You notes.

Picture: Cobalt and me at 14,000 feet above sea level on Pike’s Peak – the easiest 14’er to get up around here (you drive).

Reflections on a busy week

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WOW! It’s been a while since I wrote. Thanks grad school for making my life insane for a bit there. It’s funny. I am done with all my qualifying exams and my classes so all I have left to graduate is “just” research. That’s right. Do enough research to be able to publish two scientific papers on new findings and then I can graduate! If only it were that easy… Sometimes the “just research” part of grad school is awesome. You go in, get your work done, you go home, no sweat. Life is great. Sometimes the “just research” part is insane… so insane it makes you wish you still had classes left because at least classes have a finite length and obvious expectations (write this paper? DONE. Study for and take this test? DONE… vs… I looked at bacteria under a microscope for HOURS and I took HUNDREDS OF PICTURES and I still have NO idea what anything means… Whyyyyyyyyyyyy?). Anyway, you get it. Plus we packed up our whole lab and moved it a mile away into a new building. There was some moving drama in there last week too.

ANYWAY – I have been really sad that I haven’t been able to write recently. So much stuff has been going on AND I got tagged by Karyl to write a post on marriage and I am worried that she thinks I forgot about it. Don’t worry Karyl, I’ve been thinking about it all week and I hopefully will be able to finally publish my thoughts tomorrow or Thursday this week! Yay! So, I talked about grad school being dumb and moving being time consuming… What have else I been up to, you ask?

Well, besides apparently freaking out small children at church on Sunday, here are a few things I did since the last time I wrote.

1) Had really good barbecue in Longmont, CO. Seriously. Amazing. Best BBQ I’ve had so far in the state. Go check them out. Obviously skip this recommendation if you are a vegetarian.

2) Moved the lab – already talked about this but here are some pictures:

Old Lab – see that big thing of pink bubble wrap? It was probably 3 times as big when we got it and then we used it and another whole roll up moving all our fragile stuff… intense… There is nothing worse than trying to get lab tape off of bubble wrap for your information…


New Lab – my new bench bubble wrap free! In other new lab news, I learned today that it is about a 2 mile bike ride to the new building and it is almost alllll downhill on the way there. Fun times coming home this summer… :-/

3) Saw President Obama speak at my school. Regardless of your politics, how cool is it to get to see a president speak in person? Obama pictures in a minute. I just want to emphasize on here that part of the awesomeness of all of this was actually all the waiting in line to get into the events center.


We had to wait for the bus…


In the line, we had a race across a random patch of grass/compared our weird feet/did other silly things. If you look closely in the top left hand corner, you can see the line behind us…


We were all distracted by this helicopter that we thought Obama was in but then he drove right past us…


Obama on the jumbo screen of the events center. I’d say that’s a typical Obama face…


Live Obama and jumbo screen Obama in the same shot! Because our lab move day was the same day as Obama’s speech and because that was the same day my boss decided to tell me how much data analysis she needed me to do in the next few days, we didn’t get to get in line until later in the afternoon so we didn’t get the most amazing of seats. But you can still see Obama!

4) Took a road trip with Cobalt to see his family

On the road again… Cobalt and I enjoyed rocking out to crazy mashups (courtesy of Milkman) as we drove along…

Anything exciting going on in your lives? Do you obsessively photograph everything like I do? Discuss!

On the docket for tomorrow (hopefully… or Thursday… sorrrrrrrry) – What do I look forward to in my marriage? Stay tuned. It should be exciting… I have been thinking about what to say for a week now…