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!

Guest Book Progress

My guest book project is off to a good start. I've had fun doing it so far. I've spent sometime with Mark's mom pouring over old and adorable pictures of their family AND just recently (over Christmas) have gone through all of our old family photos with my family.

Mark spent a chunk of time scanning his photos on to this computer. The next step would have been me spending time to scan all of mine, but Brenna just told me she had done it! Yes! Here's a sampling of some of the goodies I have got so far:

Yay! We were so cute. Now I just have to organize this all. Should be pretty straight forward though. I'm using a pretty neat program called PhotoBook America and so far it's been very user friendly. I'm excited to see the final product. I'm excited for y'all to see it too!

I'll change this to a wedding bloggy thing now

At the request of Jennifer, I'll blog about my plans for the July 16th, 2011 (save the date!) wedding.

What have I done so far?
WELL - less than a week after Mark popped the question, I bought my wedding dress. On eBay. Used. A size too small. And it's perrrrrfect. I can't wait to be able to fit into it one day. It's a J. Crew dress, so it's simple and elegant and classic. Some might call it boring. And then I'd call them tacky.

We got our church! We'll be getting married in Mark's Presb. Church in Forest Grove. It's a beautiful one room church that was built in the 1800's sometime. Mark has some family buried there, his great-grand-dad was a pastor, and several of his family member have been married there, so there's lot of tradition, which I love. Plus, I'm going to try to ring the bells after the ceremony. I've always wanted to ring the bells.

We got our reception site! The Grand Lodge. We'll be at the Children's Cottage and have the tables set outside and the food inside away from any pesky summer bugs. It's also right across the way from The Yard House Pub Cigar Bar, how perfect is that? Too perfect.

Mark and I have started a Fitness Competition (to try to help me shrink to size 8 before the ceremony). I'm losing. Next!

I've started a guest book. I've gone through all of Mark's old family photo's and got some embarrassingly adorable kid pictures of him. While my older sister is in town next week, we'll do the same for me. I've got very grand plans for this guest book. Just you wait.

We picked out flowers. There will be blue flowers and red flowers and white flowers and monkey tails.

Our Save-The-Date magnets are almost done. Mark's chum, Reuben - who happens to be a graphic designer, designed them and they are awesome. I can't wait to get one up on our refrigerator.

I suppose I'll get into more detail about things later. We've got a good head start on the wedding planning. I wanted to reserve everything way in advance so I wouldn't have to compete with any other brides. Mission accomplished.

And time goes by

I used to be so much better at blogging. I never have anything to say anymore.

Well, as it turns out, I'm crap at running, so I'm not doing H2C. Probably better on my knees in the long run. A friend mentioned to me that they also do a Portland to Coast (I think that's what it is) for walkers which is more my speed.

I'm doing better on my diet though, for sure! It helps that I'm in a wedding in October and getting married myself next summer. I have a lot more motivation. 15 pounds to go! Holler!

Although.... I may try to lose even more weight... I'll see how I feel at 140.