After months of thinking about it...I decided that I want to wear a flower in my hair at my wedding.  I've always liked the idea of wearing a flower in my hair, but just never had the opportunnity to do so.  I mean seriously, when does a person get to wear a flower in their hair unless they are Hawiian?

But what to do with my veil?  I want to wear my veil higher up on my head so that it will show when looking at me face on.  All the pictures I've seen of brides have been of their veil pinned below an up-do with the flower/ornament showing outside of the veil.  Until this picture popped up on the internet!  I love this look...with the veil worn high on top of the head over a flower in her hair. 

I've actually not decided how to wear my hair...just that I want a white silk flower that I can keep after the wedding.  I also have a veil, borrowed from my MOH.  But I don't know if I should wear my hair up or down...high-do or low-do.  I typically wear my hair down...in fact, there are friends who've never even seen me in a ponytail.  I also have very thin hair.  I can't imagine how a hair stylist can put my hair up into a fancy do.  But I guess that's why they are professionals right? 

We took a quick weekend trip a few weeks ago to Arizona to visit the FILs who were wintering there.  The Friday afternoon drive out of Riverside CA was pretty brutal, it took us about nine hours to get to Phoenix.  But the rest of the weekend was nice.  We toured Scottsdale (pictured here).  The city was small but quaint.  They had a huge new shopping center.  The streets were also lined with touristy shops, but I love to browse those stores just for fun. 

My favorite thing we did in Scottsdale was eating at this ice cream parlor called the Sugar Bowl.  It was a fantastic place!!  Check out their menu.  They take ice cream to a whole new level.  The place was huge, but always full.  The tacky but fun pink vinyl chairs are probably original from the fifties!  The ice cream was so yummy.  It was a real treat.  It was only about 75 degrees when we were there.  But I can imagine when Scottsdale becomes over a hundred degrees in the Summer, the Sugar Bowl would be completely packed with customers.  If you happen to be in Scottsdale, you simply must visit the Sugar Bowl.

Wall today, gone tomorrow.  This is our new house in a state of remodling.  People back in the fifties loved the concept of a separate living room and family room.  But these days, everyone seems to realize that the living room ends up being a wasted unused space while everyone gathers in the kitchen and family room.  Plus, we would rather have a bright and sunny great room than two smaller dark rooms. 

Take a look at the difference after we removed the monsterous double-sided fireplace that divides the living room from the family room!  The contractors only took two days to dismantle the brick fireplace and the cement wall.  They also sealed off the gas pipes that supplied the double fireplace.  This literally added an extra four feet of space to our new great room. 

The house has the original wood floor which we love.  So the contractors have to sand down the original floor, cover up the hole in the ground with new floor, sand the new floor to match the old, and stain the entire floor to match the floor in the rest of the house.  Needless to say that this is not a cheap process.  But it's unfortunately necessary!

So what did we do with the hole in the roof where the fireplace was?  Put in a sky light, of course!  It will be right over our couch...so Toby and I can stare at the beautiful sky on the couch. :-)

Between home purchases, home rentals, home renovations, home selling, and wedding planning...let's not forget that we will be leaving for a two-week honeymoon in Italy a two days after our wedding!  I've left the honeymoon planning pretty much to Mr. BAW.  But he can not plan my wardrob out for me!  I'm not so much worried about what to wear in Italy, it's what to walk in that worries me. 

Flash back to early 2007, Mr. BAW and I were planning our first big trip together to Japan.  Several people, including Mr. BAW's own brother had warned me about his love of walking.  I just thought that all those people must just think that I don't do much walking (ok, I don't...but I live in LA.)  No big deal, I thought...I can walk a little, it's a trip afterall.  Well, as it turned out, I am indeed marrying the Walk-Nazi!  Not only does he like to walk everywhere, he walks very fast.  After a few days in Japan, my bad knee (I do have one bum knee) just started to hurt.  Not to mention that I realized very quickly that I did not have good walking shoes.  Though Mr. BAW has since been very sensitive to my walking limitations, I know that I will have to do quite a bit of walking in Italy. 

Sneakers you say??  Sure, I could just wear sneakers.  But on my honeymoon I would like to wear nice cute dresses on occasion.  And sneakers just do not go with dresses...or do they??  That's when the smart designers answered my prayers with the invention of the Sneaker Wedge.  Combining the comforts of sneakers with the cuteness of a wedge that can be worn with skirts and dresses, at the same time providing me with the height I need.  I think I'm going to have to pick up a couple of pairs for Italy!

Here are a few I found:
Red and Green: Keds,  Blue: Payless

Our salad selection is: Baby Lettuces, Apple, Walnut and Roquefort Salad
Our dinner selection are:
1) Individual Beef Wellington with Sauce Perigourdine (My favorite beef dish)
2) Fresh Filet of Halibut floating on a Leek and Mushroom Ragout with Sun-Dried Tomato Butter (Overall favorite)
3) Vegetarian Dish

Our choices are tasty, but they are not necessarily the tastiest dishes.  But we had to keep in mind not to be too exotic with our choices for our guests.  So we kept it safe and didn't go with the yummy papaya salad, choosing instead the safer choice of baby lettuce with apples.

But here are pictures of all of the options we tasted.  Sorry for the fuzzy images, the lighting was an issue for my camera.

Fanned Belgian Endive and
Mesclun Salad with Sliced
Grapefruit, Glazed Walnuts
and Crumble Roquefort

Arugula Salad with sliced Pears
and Mandarin Oranges

Hearts of Palm and sliced
Papaya on bed of Butter Lettuce

Baby Lettuces, Apples, Walnut
and Roquefort Salad
(Our Salad Selection)

Mixed Baby Greens, Hearts of
Palm and Grapefruit Salad

Arugula, Radicchio, Avocado
and Walnut Salad

Grilled Salmon Filet with Saffron
and Tomato Coulis

Medallions of Beef with a Morel
Mushroom & Port Wine Sauce

Individual Beef Wellington with
Sauce Perigourdine
(Our Selection)

Medallions of Veal Scallopine
with Artichoke, Basil & Calamata
Olives

Chicken Breast stuffed with
Forest and Wild Mushrooms with
a Merlot Sauce

The package we chose will also include a Viennese dessert table for our wedding guests.  So instead of serving wedding cakes that costs tons of money which no one really likes, we're going to provide our guests with a large choice of desserts that they can choose. 

Here's a glimps of what they offer.  Yummy!  We will get a small wedding cake for our cake cutting at the reception.  Hopefully, at the reception, we'll get a chance to try some of the other desserts too! :-)

We have popcorn, lots and lots of popcorn, ~1300 sq ft of it as a matter of fact.  But it's not the yummy kind.  We have popcorn ceiling at our new house.  I personally have no problems with popcorn on the ceiling.  However, Mr. BAW is very passionate about it.  He absolutely hates the popcorn ceiling.  Apparently, it's a guy thing.  I have a few guys friends who are equally passionate about their ceilings.  They all hate popcorn!  That and I think all men are passionate about shower heads. 

So we got a couple of contractors out to give us some estimates for removing all of the popcorn from the entire house.  The quotes range from $8500 to $3200.  Pretty crazy expensive, but there's no way we're removing it ourselves.  Plus, there's the danger of asbestos in the popcorn.  As expensive as it may be to remove them, this is the time to do so, before we move into the house.  There's no way we will have this opportunity again.  And the thought of Mr. BAW complaining about the ceiling for years down the road is not good.  So we're going to do it, remove those nasty popcorn from the ceiling.  We're going to get another quote and pick a contractor. 

The sad thing is, I remember popcorn being all the rage in the early eighties.  My dad wanted to put them up at the house I grew up in to hide imperfections in the ceiling.  I even remember people mixing in glitter to the popcorn so that their ceiling sparkled!  Now we have to pay thousands of dollars to remove the bad decorating fads of the past.  I guess that's what keeps contractors employed.

Toby is strange...I know, he's been living with me for almost six years and he never ceases to surprise me.  What did he do now?  Well, it's more like what did he not do. 

It was the beginning of the month and time for Toby's monthly bath.  We all know how much Toby loves baths.  But he tolerates it.  He'll quietly endure the process and then run amuck after he gets out of the bathroom.  So this time he did the same, endured the whole bath quietly.  Then I release him from the tub with a big towel over him.  I went about cleaning the tub and the bathroom. 

When I got out, I expected him to be lying on the floor or on the bed.  Instead, I couldn't find him...for a second.  Then I noticed the green lump.  Toby was sitting there with the towel around him like a green ghost.  He was motionless...just sitting there under the towel. 


Toby looked like Yoda just sitting there completely still.  I grabbed the camera and took a few pictures of him.  Then I
called him, nothing.  He didn't move.  Then I walked over to see what he was doing and got this picture of him...

Still did not move.  That's when I realized he must have gotten frustrated trying to get the towel off.  So he just decided to sit there sulking with the towel.  So I slowly peel it off of him.  Toby is such a strange boy.  It's dorky things like this he does that makes him such a Toby.  We love him very much! :-)