In Case You Missed It...

Hello! I had my bridal shower this past Sunday. You know what that means? Less than 2 months until I take the plunge... yikes! Whatever happened to time? This post is dedicated to my friends, foes, and family members who couldn't make it to the event on Sunday (P.S. if you're reading this, you're not my foe...). My goal is to make you feel like you were THERE. Heeeere we go!

Scene: You walk into an apartment building in the Pearl District in Downtown Portland.

Behold! You've found my mom hanging out in her "Working Girl" homage outfit! "The party is on the 16th floor Penthouse," she lets you know. You get on the elevator any mozy your way over to the Skylounge.


"Wow!" You think to yourself, "What a sweet set up! I just LOVE pink"

"Cute!" you say in your head.

"Charming!" you think again. You thinker, you.

You head over to pour your self a cup of tea...

Or grab a mimosa if that is more your style.

"Friend/Family/Foe!! You've made it! Let me have my future-aunt Sharon finish admiring my awesome engagement ring and I'll come say hello!" exclaims the bride-to-be.

"Melissa! You look fabulous!" you say.

"I always do," replies Melissa, "grab yourself a chai tea cupcake and a napkin, then I'll introduce you to my friends."

And then you do just that. Because you obviously love cupcakes.

Pink again!

"Here are all of my friends!"

"Oh! You guys look like da Vinci's "Last Super" painting!"

"Totally unintentional, but you are correct."

After meeting all of the friends/family, you head over to make your very own fascinator at the fascinator making station.

Cathy beats you at the clothes pin game. You lost quickly because you couldn't help but say "Mark" and/or "Melissa" over and over again.

Oh look! It's time to watch Melissa open gifts...

Riveting. PS: this goes on for a while...

Kitchen towels! etc, etc, etc...

The bridal shower winds up. You take a moment to enjoy the break in the rain outside and admire how pretty Portland is. "Goodbye Clouds!"

You grab the Jelly Belly favor and take off...

The End!

Thanks for coming to the shower!!! :)

The Diet

I've lost 28 pounds since I've started my diet. It's getting so much harder to lose weight now. I realize how easy I had it at the beginning of the diet. It also makes me realize how much my body didn't want that extra weight, being that it melted off so easily. I want to weigh at most 138 pounds at my wedding, but I'll see how much weight I can lose beyond that. ALTHOUGH, what stresses me out is my wedding dress. I go in for my fitting on June 4th. So I get my dress to fit perfectly... let's say... June 15th, what if I lose MORE weight after that (many brides have promised me that weight will come off the last two weeks before the wedding whether I want them to or not), what if the dress is too big? The things that stress me out these days! As far as my diet goes... I've been drinking lots (and LOTS) of water. I'm trying to eat dinner earlier in the evening now. Typically Mark and I eat dinner around 8:30/9pm because of my work schedule. It's hard to not eat at night. I've been at the gym CONSTANTLY. I only eat fruit for snacks. The weight is slooooowly coming off. Weekends are still really hard for me. This weekend I have the Bridges-Brews 8K to run. I'll be doing it with Lindsay, Mark, and some other friends. It's fun being a part of active things again.

A Tea Party!

For me!!!! For my bridal shower I'm having a Tea Party. My older sister made some very lovely invitations for the event. I just got mine today! Here they are:

The back side says "Children are welcome. Hats and gloves are optional!"

I got a fascinator for the event. One like Kate Middleton wears. I plan on lifting my pinky finger while drinking tea. It's going to be so proper! I'm excited for it.

Nothing to Report

My word, I lead quite a boring life. So I apologize for the lack of posting, but I have NOTHING going on. Mark gave up television for lent, so I've been doing more jig-saw puzzles recently. I've also created the invites for the wedding (they aren't that great, but they'll get the job done). I also have spent some more time at the gym. Speaking of the gym, tomorrow marks the day where I'm a 100 days away from being married. My older sister and some other nameless brides from the web devoted 100 hours of gym time for the last 100 days. I've been thinking about doing something similar. I don't know if I'd be motivated enough to spend that much time in the gym... OK~ I've made a decision while typing that last sentence there. I will see how close to 100 hours of gym time I can do in the last 100 days. And I'll gift myself things for certain levels. Example: 75-100 hours at the gym = Buying an hour massage for the honeymoon 50-74 hours at the gym = A new pair of shoes etc, etc. The lower the hours get, the lesser of a prize I'll give myself. Maybe if I do anything under 50 hours, I'll get a punishment. Ouch! Yes, yes. This is working for me. While I do everything but watch TV tonight, I'll figure out my prizes.

Stress-free bride

Despite being sick ALL of last week, I still managed to complete a lot for our wedding!

-I got my shoes. I just received them today, in fact! they are so, so perfect, it's going to be hard to not wear them ahead of time.
-I also received my wedding guestbook, which turned out great!
-Mark and I picked out and bought our wedding bands, I just received my own yesterday. My fingers have shrunk 1/4 of a size since the beginning of my diet. Heck yea!
-We started marriage counseling with the paster who will marry us.
-My future mother-in-law has hired a caterer for our rehersal dinner. I realize I didn't do any of the planning for that, but it's fun to see that night coming together as well.
- I've been taking advantage of Groupon and Living Social deals to start my beauty regiment. I got a teeth whitening kit and a spa day thing with a Mircoderm thing that will zap all my dead skin cells and wrinkles.

I really almost feel guilty that everything is coming together so smoothly. I keep waiting for the stress to hit me, and it keeps evading me. We'll see how I am in a month or two. I'm sure I'll be singing a different tune by then.

Update on My Life

Let's start with a random thought: I just got done grocery shopping. My older sister, Brenna, was talking about judging people on the groceries they buy on her blog the other day. I realize I occasionally do that as well (only if there is no juicy gossip on the magazines). I judged my own groceries today. This is what I took from it: 80% of me wants to live forever, 10% of me wants to spoil my cat, 6% of me is dieting, and 4% of me realizes I only live once.

My grocery list:

A bunch of veggies

Bread with flax seeds

Organic chicken

Lots of fruit

An incredible amount of Friskies cat food

Some low-fat snakes and desserts

Beer

I've been doing a very good job at dieting. I still have fun, so it's slow going, but it's coming off. I finally came to terms that I might never fit into the dress I bought off eBay. My bust is... plentiful and my dress can't handle it. So I went on a more official wedding dress shopping trip, this time with Brenna, Lindsay, Mom, and my future mom-in-law, Peggy. I found a great dress that I ordered yesterday. I'm very excited about it. It's much more bridal, but casual and fun still.

I also finished my first 5K at the Heart Breaker Half. I finished it in a little less than 33 minutes (they still haven't come out with official race times yet). Here's a picture of me before the race:

I don't have a picture of me after the race. I was very flushed and out of breath though. Next step is to complete a 10K. Yay!

I am an Anti-Goatee

I drew that cross out sign all by myself, such is my devotion to rid the world of goatees.

I hope Austin from Season 11's Biggest Loser is still around for the make-over episode so they shave that stuff off his chin. Nothing, NOTHING, is worse than a mustashe-less goatee. Case and point:

I'm more offended by his goatee than I am his weight. Let it be that he'll leave the show losing both.

Deviated

I ate everything I said I was going to eat except the brown rice and chicken. Instead I had a spinach salad with avocados and EVOO and balsamic vinegar.

I've lost 3 pounds and am back where I was before the weekend. HA!

I also found out that I'm five pounds away from no longer being considered overweight according to the BMI calculator. Go me!

Two Week Detox Diet

So my work is throwing a "Smallest Winner" (kind of like the Biggest Loser) competition. A colleague of mine, Carlie, approached me about starting a detox diet to kick it off right. Being that I'm still about 12 pounds away from fitting into my wedding dress, I agreed.

In true "Smallest Winner" fashion, I spent the weekend carb/cheese/sodium loading. I ate Top Ramen for lunches. I ate pizza with peperoni and sausage for dinner. I drank wine and beer. I ate nachos (ps: what do you call cheese that isn't yours? Nacho cheese! whomp, whomp). I ate and omelette and french toast for breakfast.

I gained three pounds. Time to win, folks!

So the detox includes drinking 100 oz of water a day. I'm half way there and it's 12:38pm. I have been to the bathroom no less than 8 times today.

It also involves no alcohol, no dairy, no sweets, no salts, no preservatives. It's going to be a long two weeks. Although I can still eat whole grain wheat, which is the only reason I agreed to do it. No one can take my bread from me. NO ONE.

Today I have had a hard boiled egg, an apple, grapes, a little bread, a lot of water. I have a turkey/spinach/avocado sandwich for lunch. I have another naner for a snack. And I think I'll have brown rice and chicken for dinner. I'll let you know tomorrow how much I deviate from this plan...

Bride Melissa

This weekend I had my mom, my younger sister, Lindsay (MOH) and myself go to the "Brides Against Breast Cancer" dress show. It was quite lovely. We first went out for a fancy brunch and had ourselves some cocktails:

Yuuum!

Then we went on and I tried on a bunch of dresses. I'm showing you pictures of me as a Bride Melissa because I didn't buy any of the dresses. I already have my dress, but I figure I should go out and do bridal stuff while I'm still engaged!

I think Lindsay was trying to get a shot of the lady in her knickers in the mirror. Naughty!

See? If I can be a bride, ANYONE can. Thumbs up.

This was everyones favorite dress. It was also only $200. Was I tempted? Kiiiiind of. But not really. I like my own dress better. I'm excited to accessorize it.

And that was it! Oh wait! No. One more picture of us all being goofy with glasses...

Yaaaay!

Honeymoon Update

I'm not going to lie... I got in a funk about the wedding because for a while there, it didn't look like Mark and I could afford a honeymoon. I wasn't a little girl who dreamt of being in a white dress walking down an aisle. I was a little girl who dreamt about going somewhere tropical with a hunk of a man I chose to marry. When I played with Barbie and Ken, I skipped them getting married and made them go straight to their honeymoon.

Despite the fact that I wasn't expecting a honeymoon, I was still excited about the wedding, I was just a little... disappointed I guess. Until my mom called me and told me that Mark and I got our first wedding gift! A trip to Hawaii! A trip to this:!


Look! Look at those tropical-like waters! And the black sand from the tropical volcanoes! Think of all the tropical fish in those waters! Think of how fresh they'll be when I consume them in a tropical way! I plan on eating so much fresh, tropical pineapple that I'll have an ulcer when I get home.

The plan (which is subject to change) is to fly to Maui and spend a day or two there, then fly over to Kona on the Big Island and spend another week. Mark and my wish list is very grand: go hiking, deep sea fishing, swim with dolphins, snorkel, go to a luau. Eat.

And now that I have this wonderful trip to look forward to, my wedding planning has jumped into high-gear again. We're gonna have a party!