Cheese!?

Some of us really, really, really like cheese.

Lights

One of the areas we're trying to skimp on for the wedding is decorations. With an outdoor cocktail hour, ceremony location and who the f knows what for a reception venue already decorated reception venue it would be impossible to compete with nature. And we don't have the budget for crazy uplighting and draping and chandeliers and extensive centerpieces.

The reality is, I don't really care about any of it. No one ever divorced because they didn't have uplighting at the ceremony.

Decorations for the cocktail hour are the flowers we planted over Memorial Day. My mom and grandma have pots of flowers going for ceremony site decoration. We're doing super minimal centerpieces... which is a big step from my previous declaration that we wouldn't be doing centerpieces.

I did want to do something though. I initially wanted to hang paper lanterns around the house, although unlit, as we'll be at the house during the daylight hours:

And I found some reasonable places to purchase them... but... I didn't want to spend over $100 on paper lanterns (that wouldn't be lit!). So... off in another direction I went.

DJ and I already have a lot of Christmas lights, so using them would be free. So do my parents. I use Christmas lights to decorate around Christmas, but also in the summer for nice mood lighting on the deck. And Michaels was having a 50% off sale on their spring silk flowers.

So last night, I watched Peggy Sue Got Married* while pulling silk flowers off of plastic stems, and sticking them onto Christmas light strands. I finished two strands, and still have over 70% of the silk flowers left to use on the other strands that I and my parents have.

For free Christmas lights and $26 in silk flowers, I can creat 6-7 100 foot long strands of these:

Since the silk flowers have some color, you'd be able to see them as a garland in the daylight. Then at night they'll be colorful and festive. We'll wrap the railing of the deck at the reception venue (restaurant? marina?) so that they'll be visible at night. We'll also wrap the railing of the shack, and maybe the posts under the deck. Simple, and cheap.

*WTF with Nicolas Cage in that movie? He's so weird...

Deflated.

Can we talk?

We've got 31 days until the wedding, and yesterday afternoon the reception venue sprung a giant $3,000 "site fee" upon us. A site fee that was not planned for, budgeted for, previously discussed or mentioned. I was mad yesterday. I scrambled and am in the process of exploring other options, before I even respond to the restaurant.

By the way, WHO DOES THAT? Just springs a "oh by the way, that'll be an extra wad of cash that you don't have!" in an email? Especially when we met face to face last week, and have been speaking on the phone frequently! What. The. Hell.

Anyway, in the big scheme of things, it'll work out, and maybe even to our advantage. But in the short term, it means stress on my/our end, and a giant sense of disappointment that my extensive planning, spreadsheeting, and "save image"ing still means that with 31 days to go, we're scrambling.

The disappointment that comes with that is so deflating. We haven't picked first dance songs. The To-do list is still a mile long. Yet... I have no interest in working on it until this gets sorted out.

And dealing with the whole thing makes me sad... there are so many better ways to spend five figures of money.

Give me some advice. How do I perk up from this wedding-slump and jump start the enthusiasm again?

Heitstuman's wedding announcement

While scanning my grandparents wedding photos, I came across a yellowed clipping of their wedding annoucement. It cracks me up, mostly for it's small-town gossip and play-by-play style of reporting. I know it'll be hard to read in this format, but couldn't resist sharing. I love the "Sister, Maid of Honor" headline, as well as the "Grooms Sisters Serve" notation. It's also fun to look at the ads!

New best friends

We took Harlow to the lake with us last weekend. She traveled in her kennel in the back of Dusty's pickup, and met my dad for the first time.

I'd warned Dusty all spring that my dad doesn't like dogs. They get in the way. He trips over them, especially if they're in the kitchen. They shed. They have accidents. They bark. They bite. etc.

You can see where I'm going with this. My dad and our dog are now best friends. Well, maybe not besties, but for sure like each other. Lots of frolicking, licking, and falling asleep on his feet. Dad called yesterday to say "she passed." Which for him, is high doggie praise. Sadly, I don't have a picture of them fawning over each other.

(Seriously, how gorgeous is my sister?)

I do, however, have pictures of her exploring the dock, running with Gretchen and totally breaking the no dogs on the furniature rule:

June (JUNE!?) 4 Friday Farming Update- Harrison Style

I promise to squeeze in a Friday farming update about our house this evening. It'll be tough, as I need to get ready for a bridal shower/ pseudo bachelorette/ fun evening out that my friends Jos and Kelly are so graciously planning! I'm looking forward to some fun girl time!

In the meantime though, let's talk about the landscaping we did at the lake last weekend in preparation for the cocktail hour. It was kind of the final push of landscaping installation (or reduction, see below), before El Weddingo... now 36 days away!

You may remember that in the past my parent's lawn has looked like this, when they purchased the place in 2005:

Guests to our wedding will notice a few changes. First, the juniper (?) tree directly behind my dad is gone. So is the tree with the reddish leaves to the left. You see, my dad has a love affair with cutting down trees and burning them. These two trees were getting into the septic system, and had bugs all over them, respectively, and thus have been removed. Because Mike loves chainsaws. And burning brush:

So Memorial Day 2010 involved more tree cutting down. The property is dotted with bull pines, which drop pine needles into the gutters and create a fire hazard. It does, of course, mean Mike gets to use his blower:

Saturday morning when Gretch, Mom and I ran into St. Maries to pick up flowers I got a text from Dusty: "Holy shit... TIMBER!" Down came four trees before I really had a chance to take a picture!

Guests will also notice that the juniper bushes near the lower deck are gone, as is the cherry tree in front of the shack in the back of this photo.

See how the ground slopes downward to the retaining walls in this photo from last summer? A little too much slope... not even... kind of a fall hazard. And the grass didn't grow up to the retaining wall, leaving this dirt space (possible encouraged by Mike and his trusty Roundup).

This spring my folks hauled in about half a dump truck of topsoil, and tried to even out the grass surface. They then seeded it, and overseeded the rest of the lawn in an effort to even it out.

Another issue with the old landscaping was the mosquito breeding area West Nile Virus incubator fish pond. We never ran it. In fact, dad tore out the sprinkler system, because we didn't have enough water pressure to run it and flush a toilet at the same time (A situation which was remedied through a major project in the spring of 2007). It looked like this last summer, not bad, but not great. Actually seriously gross...

Since we're not fishpond people, dad ripped it out (maybe Mike should be a demolition contractor?):

 

They backfilled the area, and seeded it to grass:

So what did this whole mess of grass and dirt look like over Memorial Day? Well, I think we made some progress. The grass has grown in to the edges of the retaining wall (it's still a little soft). The irises are about to bloom (too bad they don't bloom a month later!)

And they're hard to see, but we planted blue, white and purple petunias, blue lobelia and some other blue annual that I can't remember in the beds. It'll be a bright, cheery, and very festive set of plants in 36 days!

The other imporant piece of information here is that the above photo was taken at about 5:30 in the evening, about 21 days before the summer solstice. Since we're getting married about 21 days after the summer solstice, we'll assume that the shade provided by the bull pines across the street in the above photo will be the same on July 10. So we have shade, on the lawn, at 5:30 in the evening. And spots of it at 2 PM too, as shown in the photo below:

Harrison

O EM GEE do I have a story for you. It involves taking the scenic route home, and turning a 5.5 hour drive into a 13 hour expedition. Snow, railroad tunnels, swift moving streams and 1 AM (on a school night!) arrivals. Suffice to say, I've got a lot to say.

Also, HELLO JUNE!

I'll leave you with this tonight. A view of Harrison, taken with a blackberry camera, in the back of a speedboat. Are you ready for wedding fun, because we've got 38 days!