my arch-nemesis

these wedding invitations have become my arch-nemesis.
honestly, when you finally get yours in the mail please humor me by not throwing it out right away. maybe, if you really like me, you could possibly even laminate it in order to commemorate all my hard work. thank you in advance...

if you have been reading regularly you know that making these wedding invitations have not been my favorite aspect of wedding planning. after debating too long on whether or not to make them (apparently it takes months to get wedding invitations done - months that i no longer have) i was stuck with having to make them. originally i was definitely leaning towards making them but as the date became closer i started getting second thoughts until i had no other choice. so, now i am making them. at the time i figured, "i like crafts - how hard could it be?". apparently, way too hard.

i was actually really excited about making them after i bought some of those premade invitation kits from bridal magazines brides line in purple and ivory from michaels. they seemed perfect. all you have to do is print onto the precut cards the wording of your choice. i also really liked the fact that we can get matching thank you cards, place setting cards and programs if we wanted. i figured that i would be smart and take them to be printed professionally so they look absolutely perfect. turns was not a "smart idea" - instead, i wasted a good week trying to find a company that would print them for me. i visited / phoned over 15 companies and they all told me the same thing : "sorry, we are unable to print on any stationary that was not purchased from our location as it voids the warranty on our printers" (obviously i have heard that line a lot considering i now know it off by heart). so, apparently they are not going to look absolutely perfect and i am going to have to print them all out, individually, myself. obviously, i am not excited about this. the thing is, i bought 60 wedding invitations since i only need to send out 58. when i bought the invitations i had assumed that i would be getting them professionally printed so i didn't think the fact that i only had 2 extra would be a big deal. now that i have to print them myself only 2 "oopsie" invites is starting to reallllly make me nervous...

and, to top it all off, canada post has decided to go on strike as of thursday. so, worst case senario i will be FedExing everyone their invitations individually. how wonderful.

on a positive note, i have successfully ordered all my bridesmaids dresses. i went in last thursday with my last two bridesmaids to check out styles and thankfully, all of the girls agreed on the same dress: a strapless chiffon dress in amethyst, my favorite colour. i was a little frazzled when the lady at the bridal shop informed me that i only had one more week to place my order before it was considered a "rush order" - an order that costs an additional $25-50 dollars a dress. so, this weekend i got all my girls in to be measured and the dresses are officially ordered. just one more thing i can cross off my long "to-do list".

my new "rush order" status got me a little freaked out. i figured that four months was plenty of time to do the rest of my planning but i was wrong. apparently, four months is four seconds in wedding world so on friday night i decided that we needed to figure out jesse's attire as well as his groomsmen. jesse really wants to wear a grey suit while his groomsmen wear black. and just our luck, although they have tons of black tuxedo's to rent it is basically impossible to rent suits, especially grey ones. at first we figured that suits would be the best option since most 23-25 year old men own one. obviously, if you are in a trade, like jesse, you wouldn't, but all his groomsmen have jobs you would need a suit for. turns out that three out of his five groomsmen do not own a suit. i was beginning to panic. i really did not want the guys to be wearing tuxedos since a) it seemed like too formal attire for the ranche house and b) rentals seemed like a massive waste of money, but we also didn't want to make his groomsmen spent $300 - $400 on a suit simply for our wedding. thankfully, we found out about a buy-one-get-one-free sale that moore's is having in the next few weeks. this seemed to be the best option since the guys would be able to get a suit for $150-200 dollars instead of having to rent one for $150-180. hopefully, this will all work out but i will have to keep you posted....

beautiful day

i am no longer worried we are going to get washed away.  the seven days of non stop rain (aka the mini monsoon) has finally ceased and today we are going to be doing yard work. val and kev came over this afternoon with some plants that they sectioned off from their garden so that we can transplant them into ours. i am sure that none of the terminology in that sentence is proper garden jargon... to be honest, i know nothing about gardening. as i have said in previous entries, our backyard has a massive garden that i am incredibly intimidated by. thankfully, val and kev have offered to help. val promises me that the plants she brought over are low maintenance and that i will have a full, flourishing garden eventually. i am still worried. not because i don't think val knows what she is talking about but because i don't exactly have the best track record with plants. i have successfully murdered 2 of my 3 hours plants... like i have said before, i may have a black thumb.

i am hoping that i will do better with outside plants that i have with inside plants...

i think we did fairly well today. before val and kev came over jesse weed whacked and mowed the lawn, front and back. he mowed and fertilized the lawn last week right before all of the rain and between the fertilizer and the constant rain the grass grew so quickly. while jesse did that, i started collecting the various lawn gnomes / ornaments the previous owner left for us in order to throw them in the garbage. they were their own type of tacky.

emi checking out the weed wacker

running away

the tacky lawn gnomes...

around two o'clock val and kev arrived and it was absolutely beautiful out, amazing gardening weather. the sun was so warm after a week of hiding but there was still a consistent cool breeze - perfect relief from the heat. jesse and kev turned the mini flower bed against the garage into a little vegetable garden. i am giving the majority of the responsibility of the vegetable garden to jesse since i believe that is our best hope at fresh, home grown veggies.

our new vegetable garden along the garage

our tomato plants - hopefully we get some big, juicey ones.

 so, kev and jesse worked on creating the new vegetable garden while val and i worked on planting the various shoots that she brought from her garden into ours. we have a giant island-type flower bed in the middle of our backyard that i am hoping to completely fill with various plants and flowers. val and i transferred all the tulip bulbs that were lining the garage into the central bed as well as the lily of the valley and day lilies. we also planted some poppies and rhubarb along the back fence and peonies next to the house. i am especially excited about the peonies that are all the way from carnduff, from val's mom's garden years ago.

fingers crossed that soon there will be virtually no bark showing

val planting a poppy plant and attempting to get emi to leave her alone

tulip's we moved

peonies

 i don't know who had more fun, us or emi. we knew that emi had a love for digging up dirt but we had no idea she would have had so much fun running around underfoot while we did our thing in the garden. she definitely had the zoomies this afternoon, running in circles around the yard, stealing plants before they can be put in the ground, attempting to entice you into playing tug-a-war with her instead of digging holes and planting plants. i am starting to get worried though since she seems to love eating flowers...

going in for the kill

enjoying tulip

kisses!!

what a cute little girl

so, hopefully we will be able to keep these plants alive. i really, really hope so because i want a beautiful, full garden so badly. we have such an amazing backyard it would really be a shame not to take advantage of it. so, a huge thank you to val and kev for attempting to show us how to garden this afternoon! fingers crossed everything lives against all odds aka my black thumb and our little monster, emi, and her new found love for flowers.

wet vet

it has officially been raining in calgary for five days straight. i seriously think i am starting to get seasonal depression (my horrible mood was obviously reflected in yesterday's entry). i do not understand how people live in vancouver. i think the rain is getting to me just that much more because i am standing outside every 2-3 hours encouraging emi to do her business; when i am lucky i have on a raincoat for protection, when i am not lucky i suffer through the experience in my purple house coat. unfortunately for everyone, emi hates the rain. let me tell you, when a pup hates the rain and all mother nature wants to do is pour it makes potty training rather difficult. i think more than anything she just hates being wet (she shivered for a good thirty minutes after we gave her her first bath). also, it seems that emi has the opposite of a nervous bladder - she is only able to take care of business if you are within three meters of her... hence my consistant suffering through the rain. all complaining aside, i do think she is beginning to understand the concept. last night she nudged me awake at about, 12:30 am; when i took her out side she did her thing and we came back upstairs. apparently, she pawed jesse right in the face around 430 am to get his attention and, again, when he took her outside she immediately got down to business. then, this morning when we popped over to val and kev's she went right to the door. i am praying that these three events are not random coincidences because we have already gone through three cans of spot shot this week.

this morning we took emi to the vet. for some reason i was really nervous about this appointment. my friend maddy recommended an animal clinic mckenzie town where she takes her puppy, heinz. i was actually very impressed. the vet tech and the veterinarian we dealt with were both really knowledgeable and nice. they also give you your "first puppy check" for free with the puppy's shots. everything seemed good apart from the fact that emi is pretty under weight. apparently, 8 week old great dane pups should be between 22-25 lbs; emi is almost 10 weeks old and is only 17 lbs... the vet said that it may be either her food so we switched.  the vet also warned us about the typical issues that surround great danes: bloating and heart problems. i have come to terms with the heart issues since there is really nothing you can do about them: danes are genetically prone to being at higher risk for heart failure. since i, along with everyone else in my family (thanks dad), can be a slight hypochondriac, i am now all nervous about emi's stomach getting twisted and flipped upside down. apparently it is super common in big dogs, especially danes, and it almost always results in death. the only real preventative measure you can take is getting their stomachs tacked when they get fixed but otherwise you just have to make sure you dont over feed them or exercise them after feeding. this is incredibly hard with a rowdy puppy. fingers crossed her stomach stays put.

one thing i found odd about the visit is how shocked everyone was by emi's colouring. i know that our family and friends think she is beautiful and has such unique colouring but i didn't expect the same reaction from a vet or a vet tech since they see animals everyday. both the tech and the vet just loved her, saying how amazing her colouring was. the vet even asked us about it since she hadn't really seen a blue merle coloured like emi before. i guess our friends and family aren't biased and she really is as gorgeous as everyone says! haha

emi napping with her favorite toy, road kill.

registering

today has been an incredibly unsuccessful day on the wedding front. finally, i decided it was time to go and get the invitations printed and to attempt to register for gifts. our lovely puppy (who finally slept through the night for the first time since we got her - yay!) woke us up at 7:00 am so we decided to take full advantage of one of my last mornings off before i start working 9-5, monday to friday. although i constantly complain about my procrastination with regards to the invitations i have actually purchased the them and chosen the wording; all we really have left to do is get them printed and assembled and then we can send them out. we probably could have printed them at home but since there are all sorts of different sized pieces that go along with them i figured it would be easier to take them to kinko's where they could make sure they were done perfectly. anyways, for as long as we could remember there had been a kinko's conveniently located on macleod trail, about 15 minutes from our house. since i am so neurotic, i actually googled the location and exact address just to make sure we knew exactly where we were going. turns out, google is not always up to date or accurate. an hour later, after circling the same strip mall about 100 times and attempting to ask 2 or 3 neighbouring business owners if they knew where the kinko's was, a lovely woman waiting to get her tires changed informed me that it had in fact closed over a year ago. get with it googles / yellow pages. anyways, needless to say that was an entire was of an hour and we still don't have our invitations printed.

at this point i was a little upset but refused to let myself get down since i was so excited about finishing our registration. we all know how much i love shopping, especially for housewares etc. honestly though, it was completely exhausting and frustrating. who knew registering was such a time consuming process? jesse sure didn't haha we went to the bay last night, since everyone says it has the biggest and best registry, and set up all our information the night before, and choose a few things here and there before the store closed, knowing we would be back this morning - key phrase "knowing" we would be back in the morning since the lady we dealt with suggested we register for at least 150 things between our wedding and shower. we registered for 5 things last night. we were ready to get the ball rolling this morning. anyways, we enthusiastically started scanning all the things we need and were actually getting excited and enjoying ourselves until some grumpy old man in electronics decided to poop our party. he kindly informed us that currently the bay is having some crazy renovation sale (i'm sure you have heard the ad on your local radio station, it goes something like this "here at the bay we have prided ourselves in our image as well as yours for the last century. for the first time in a century we have finally decided to renovate over 90 of our highest grossing locations across the country just in time to completely mess up brenna and jesse's gift registration. nothing will be in stock by the time your guests go to buy your gifts, don't worry though, everyone else will get it for at a ridiculously low price") and most of the products currently in the store will be gone in a matter of weeks.  so essentially, the 3 hours we spent carefully registering for what we needed had been a complete waste of time. oh, and also, the bay is completely getting rid of its "decorative department" which means i wont be able to register for candle sticks, picture frames, vases or any sort of decorative pieces.  grumpy electronics man obviously got me all frazzled, so i went to discuss this with betty, the lovely little asian lady that set up our registry for us last night. betty, bless her heart, completely forgot to tell us not to scan anything that is listed as "priced to go" or "clearance" or even "on sale" because chances are incredibly unlikely that they will still be in stock when people go to purchase our gifts (i know it probably sounds stupid that we scanned things listed as "on sale" and "clearance" but the ENTIRE STORE was on sale since they are attempting to clear all existing inventory). i honestly could have strangled her at this point but she was such a cute, frail asian woman that i obviously had to contain my inner bridezilla. long story short, we are going to have to start this whole experience all over again at sears this weekend.

i guess that the silver linging is that we did learn a lot about place settings. i never knew there were so many different types of plates: dinner plates, salad plates, serving platters, bread plates, saucers etc. oh, and there are equally as many different types of bowls, cups, mugs, platters and serving dishes. then, on top of this, every brand has been fired, once, twice, ... seven times. some can go in the freezer and the dishwasher but not the microwave. others can go in the microwave and the over but not in the freezer or on the stove top.
it.is.so.overwhelming.
anyways, after betty was done explaining all of this to us ignorant young'ins we finally decided that we should probably go with denby dishes since they are the best quality place settings you can get without buying china. i definitely did not want china; i think it is such a waste of money since it only makes an appearance on your dinner table maybe three times a year. denby makes sense since they are amazing quality dishes that can be used everyday. now we just have to choose a pattern... something we have decided is equally overwhelming. luckily, they have a greater selection at sears and i hadn't started scanning my place settings yet...

when we first started registering i was so excited. i had this "oh this is exactly like shopping only without having to pay for it yourself" mentality. as the day went on though i simply started to feel greedy. it was really weird. jesse and i are young and need things. we are not asking for anything we already have. we are literally only asking for things we need yet i still felt guilty. everyone keeps telling me to ignore the guilty feeling because this is what weddings are about: friends and family helping young couples prepare for their future together. still, i feel like a spoilt kid with a 25 ft long christmas list...

i know this entry sounds like an annoying rant (probably because it is)  but i think that my shock and frustration comes from the fact that the bay advertises itself as the number one bridal registry in the country; the catalog they gave us while we were setting up our registration was even titled "the biggest and best bridal registration in canada", and ironically, our wedding has to coincide with the first time they are out of stock of all their stock in over a century! i am hoping that we have a bit better experience at sears...

congrats

also, congratulations to my little sister, vicky, who graduated from high school this weekend! she had her graduation ceremony on friday afternoon and i got to do her hair and make up before we left to go camping. she looked pretty beautiful if i do say so myself.

vicky is on the right

congratulations little vortex! we know amazing things will come in the next year with your move vancouver to go to U BC but we will definitely miss you. love you xoxo

mexico and new puppy

okay, i know, it has been a while. i apologize. after mexico we had so much going on between unpacking, catching up from our holiday and bringing home our new puppy i literally had zero spare time to update this little blog of ours. ironically, the only time i have been able to justify blogging has been today, when i should be doing our wedding invitations. honestly, there is something about these wedding invitations that makes me want to clean my kitchen, organize my closet, sort, fold and fluff all my laundry, plant a garden just so i can spend hours weeding it .... even pick up dog poop. i don't know why i keep procrastinating but, here i am, writing a long over due blog post instead of working on the invites.

so i will begin with mexico. our trip was amazing. if you ever get a chance to go to an all inclusive resort with 20 of your best friends do not pass it up, i do not care how much it costs you. it was really nice going with so many different people because there was always something different to do. for jesse and me this was the perfect solution for our different vacation philosophies. personally, i enjoy wasting away my vacation days laying out by the pool reading my book and sipping the delicious fruity drinks and doing an odd excursion or activity here and there. jesse, on the other hand, looses his mind if he has to sit still for more than 20 minutes and wants to do nonstop activities. so, lucky for jesse, he had tons of friends to scuba dive with, play shuffle board, volleyball, basketball, ping pong, and even chess with all the while i was relaxing with my girlfriends, a good drink and an even better book while working on my tan : win, win situation.

here the view of our resort from the beach... it was so beautiful. the dome shaped buildings are where all the buffet's and a la carte restaurants are.

the resort had a ton of amazing swimming pools including an adult only lounge pool with those built in chairs (unfortunately, brian was right and the chairs were incredibly uncomfortable)

jesse and i on the beach our first night there

the beach

the first day a group of us thought it would be a good idea to take the daily water aerobics class

those who know me well know i realllllly hate fish yet i was brave enough to swim with these ones while being pelted with bananas by my "friends"

jesse and i on our way to our Brazilian a la carte dinner

leave it to jesse to participate in the oddest activities: drop in water polo 

obviously, we lay by the pool, reading and consuming calories while they burned some.

here is the bride, maddy, and my good friend adelle at the wedding

all of us girls in black are in the wedding party.

soon it will be our wedding - yikes!

breaking it down at the reception 

we were in an air conditioned building - it is just THAT hot there

after the formal reception the youngsters changed into something far more classy and headed out to the local disco, Jaguars, to continue on in the celebrations.

the next day was cinco de mayo and it was also our friend brit's birthday

so, we went to senor frogs!

instead of bar stools they had swings made our of life preservers 

we went to this really neat underground exploration park called x-plor; here, we did a cenote swim, underground river rafting, zip lines and atving.

everyone had to wear these really attractive orange helmets with built in cameras to document your day of fun.

only ten of us went on the excursion that day.

that night we went out with some friends to the french restaurant on the resort. the food was amazing.

i loved these chairs - too bad jesse would never let them fly in our dining room.

i ate an oyster for the first time!

our last day at the resort!

so, as you can see we had a really amazing time in mexico. it was really interesting to experience a wedding there. mexicans are notorious for their "mexican time" and they were no different with regards to the wedding. the bride was incredibly stressed and no one in the wedding party knew what was going on, including the bride and groom. it made me really glad that we were going to be getting married in canada...

so, when we got home, i had a lovely email sitting in my inbox from our breeder begging us to come and pick up the puppy early. apparently, all the other pups were gone and she was very lonely.  obviously, since i am a sucker, we ended up driving up to edmonton on tuesday night at 7 pm to pick her up... this may not have been the wisest decision we ever made considering we had definitely not caught up on our sleep after mexico and brand new puppies = many sleepless nights.

emi slept the entire ride home in jesse's lap

crazy hair at 2 am

playing the first morning at home

pooped after the first trip to petland

happy puppy

up to no good, like always

playing with maddy and brian's pup, heinz

snuggled up in the blankets on her first camping trip

playing with casey

pooped puppy; before we know it she will take up this entire chair!

so far so good. she has good days and bad, like every puppy, and unfortunately, today has been a bad day since its rainy and she seems to hate being wet / going outside to pee. apparently, my carpet is the next best thing to grass. she is beginning to sleep better, only having to be let out once or twice, but she still seems to be wide awake at 6 am ready to play. since we got her she has done fairly well adjusting to our busy life style; she has come with us to two bbq's, a birthday dinner, 2 baseball games and on a camping trip and done really well. obviously, we will keep you all posted on her progress. we definitely love her and its nice to have our own little family.