Accessorizing on a Budget

When I tried on my dress as I picked it up a couple weekends ago, I tried on a veil with it. It was pretty--unlined, had little crystals on it, fingertip length, one tier, and melted into the dress. It was perfect.

It was $250. My dress was just over double that. So I walked away.

Then, after some internet searching for accessories like a veil, this was purchased (in ivory), and it's the same thing as the $250 one, just without the brand name:

$15. Including shipping.

Then, with a bit more internet searching, some other accessories needed to be owned for cheap:

Like this Tiara. This may have been a bit premature, though, because I haven't picked a hair style yet. But, nonetheless, I now own this original-ish thing:

For $20.

And this 2 ring slip...which I hope fits and I actually like it when it gets here:

$30.

Then I found these lovely ring bearer pillow/flower girl sets and will be getting this one, as well as a spare basket for our second flower girl:

$25+$16 for spare, plus shipping. Most expensive of all these accessories. Too bad our flowergirls can't drop the petals at the church :( I'm going to call and beg for an exception I think. I'm super sad about that.

Then we got these little candy hearts for the cupcakes:

But, only the blue and yellow ones. I think we're going to have them keep the cupcakes in the back until it's cake cutting time. We're having a 3-tier cake, but using the cupcakes to supplement. Having 14 dozen cupcakes, though. However, one 6lb bag of these is $20, and each lb has 650 candies...so we'll have 3900 candies--I think that will be sufficient!

And last but not least, we are going to go with this topper:

But haven't bought it yet. It's on the list! It's pretty much perfect for us!

We probably saved several hundreds of dollars by doing this stuff online rather than finding them in bridal stores. And they are perfect!

Bin Zoogan

Today B and I ventured down to the zoo. It turned out to be a great day for it, even though Friday's reports were yelling "SNOW AND FREEZING RAIN! WEATHER DEATH SUNDAY!" ...yea, it was 47, and didn't rain or snow at all. It was perfect.

Also, you want to know how to push yourself to become a better photographer? Marry a photographer. B and I are constantly trying to one up each other with our photos (in our heads, of course). When we go on photographing adventures, there's a lot of "woah, look at this one!" and "I DEFINITELY just got that!" going on.

Today, we got a lot of animals being tired.








I feel ya, animals. I'm over the snow too.

Suggestions?

I'm having song-picking-issues. I need advice.

Specifically? Father/Daughter dance songs. I'm having two of them: one with my stepfather because I want to, and one with my biological father because I don't feel like dealing with it if I don't dance with him.

But I'm having a serious issue finding a song to dance to with my biological father. We do not get along, and as much as it would be nice if it were, it's not just one of those things where we don't get along because we have conflicting personalities. It's more of an issue where, in the future, I'm 95% decided our kids will never be left alone with him. Needless to say, everytime I try to pick a song, the only things that come to mind are not nice songs.

So I need your help--any song. It doesn't have to be specifically father/daughter related, it can just be something nice. In fact, I'd really rather prefer it not be father/daughter specific. But when I look for suggestions online, all I can find are songs like "butterfly kisses" that are all mushy and...yea, I'd prefer the song not to lie completely haha!

Help?!

I Love Thee, St. Valentine

B and I don't do "all out" Valentine's Day things. We put a very low spending limit on this holiday, and force each other to come up with something personal.

This year it was no different. And B always does a fabulous job with personal touches to things. He got me a basket, and filled it with all my favorite things (mostly foods, anyway). It was perfect!



And Brady...well Brady blessed us with this lovely Valentine's Day dance yesterday. What can I say? The kids got talent. And it's always nice to have a plan B just in case she doesn't get into medical school in twenty years. (please excuse her "just woke up fro" and lack of pants, it was a lazy day ha!). And no, you aren't the only one who doesn't know what she's saying.



But this right here? This is all I need to make me happy on valentine's day...



Hope you had a good one too!

P.S. Valentine's Day was a great movie, too. You should go see it :)

Snomagedden.

It's been snowing here all week. We are not unaccustomed to snow...each year we get one or two snows that total out at a minimum of 15" and several little snows. But, from the way our city closes down when even the slightest bit of snow falls, you'd never know it.

To be fair, this wasn't a small amount of snow. I thought I would go stand in the snow just to show you how deep it is compared to my legs. But then I went to the edge of the snow, and decided it wasn't worth getting my jeans soaking wet.



The high school I'm teaching at now has had two snow days already this week, and is on a 2 hour delay for tomorrow (translation: it will be a snow day by the morning, and we'll be making up days). Even my Uni closed yesterday, and opened at 10am today. I showed up to my night class today, however half the class didn't so it was canceled.

So, besides watching a ridiculous amount of television and finding multiple fire hydrants to photograph...



I read a book.

True English major confession: I haven't read anything other than school related material in probably over a year, and even then it was mostly sparknotes. It's sad, but it's so true.

But I picked this one up after somehow finding it related to the Joyful Heart Foundation (February's Tuesday Tribute). It's by a woman named Andrea Buchanan...who is somehow also related to JHF, though I don't really know how.



It's pretty good. It's 30 essays of inspiration for women, basically. It wasn't as inspiring as I wanted to to be, though admittedly what I really wanted was for the book to reach out and slap me when I got to the "Inspiration Especially for Via" section. Turns out, books don't have arms...or sections especially for me.

It is kind of like a Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, but for women.

...but that kind of already exists. So...really it's just a smaller, more expensive, pink one.

BUT. Joyful Heart Foundation is in the running for a funding of $250,000 from the Pepsi Refresh project. And you should go vote for it right quick here.

A Little (Heated) Plea

Dear AF,

I love you. Don't get me wrong. But I have a favor to ask.

I want heat.

I know you are thinking "We don't control the weather." And usually you would be right, but this time you are wrong. You do, indeed, control the weather.

See, you gave us a list of bases and told us to rank our top six. We ranked them all on the East coast and southern California. You laughed in our faces and stuck us in the middle of nowhere west. We were shocked, but we accepted it.

Then you said that we would know in December when we were to report to the mountainous terrain, and we didn't. Then you said we would know in January, and we didn't. Then you said we would know in February, and we...well, that's not over yet. But we've accepted it.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not asking you to speed up the process or to change your minds and throw us in SoCal (...unless of course you feel so compelled, in which case we would not be sad). I'm just begging for some warmth before we disappear into the coldness.

We need one week. One week between commission and reporting to the base. Just one. Two, if you really feel like you owe us and want to be generous. But just one week and B and I will take off to the south and enjoy the weather (that you would be granting us, of course) in Mexico, or the Bahamas, or St Lucia...anywhere with sun and sand and a coast, really.

B and I hate cold. We hate snow. We hate winter. It's a fact.

So please, grant us some warmth. Just this once.

Like this:


Or this:


Thanks for your help,
Meg

P.S. If this is undoable, could I get a monkey instead?

Blizzard Bloghop

Thanks to Household 6 Diva, I have something to do today! Thought it would be a good way to tell you guys a bit about myself, and meet some new bloggy friends!

Anyway.

I'm Via. I'm a 20-something blogger. I'm currently in college, attaining my education degree (hey, they say the average degree takes 5.6 years to actually complete...right?).

On May 15th, I'll be marrying my amazing air force officer, B.


And then we'll be moving way "out west" via Air Force. (And if you know anyone in Wyoming, I'd love to chat it up!).

This is my dog, Chase. He's awesome.


I love Photography. I'm a writer and a crafter.


But more than anything, I love to travel. Kenya, by far, is the best place I've ever been.




I love to advocate for things, especially breast and childhood cancers and groups especially for violence against women.

I started this blog originally to meet other air force/military wives to see what life was like for them (you?). And it's been amazing!

Saturday Fail

I woke up this morning to many inches of snow. It was icing all day yesterday, and I was very aware of the coming snow.

I don't think I told you guys this, but B was the only one chosen from his entire detachment to go to DC for a week for an officers seminar-thingy (technical name, of course). They left this morning.

So I hopped on the Drudge Report and see this message as the front page:

"BIGGEST D.C. SNOW STORM SINCE 1922 AND IT'S STILL COMING DOWN"

Isn't it ironic? Dontcha think? I may or may not have laughed so hard at the irony that I cried. PHA.



Another awesome fail of the day has to do with our registries. I got onto or Macy's registry (or, at least attempted...but they changed their system and I got locked out so I haven't actually gotten on it yet) to add some serving pieces to go with our silverware.

We had a hard time adding our silverware. We'd scan it, it would say it was added, and it wouldn't show up. Two phone calls and two days later, it was added. Couldn't add it online, because it wasn't an option--you could only add the serving set.

So I went to add the serving set today. Found this message about it:

"On Order: Usually ships within 126 business days"

Um. We'll be married before that.

This leaves me very weary about our silverware choices. Chances are good I'll be changing those too. But I laughed really, really hard.

But I didn't cry. Not that hard ;)