We moved! (again!)

Ah wedding blog world, I've missed you! My 'to blog' list is quite full and I will try to clear it out slowly as I also catch up on comments with all y'all's posts. I love our new place but once all the essentials were unpacked I hit a wall on working on the apartment. Hopefully the couch we're buying off of craigslist will make it in this weekend so I can then do some furniture rearranging and gather energy to tackle it a bit more after my trip to Philly/Lancaster this weekend and before my trip out to California the following week.

To ease into it a bit, here's a champagne recommendation for Canals & Nubiola I found from Nothing But Bonfires as I read through her archives when I wanted to procrastinate from packing.

at the time of the review, it was under $10. Right now it's at $12.99 on BevMo.

APW on money and weddings

From "What I Learned About Money While Planning My Wedding":

What I mean to say is this: when you do not have unlimited resources and you are planning a wedding, sometimes every moment feels like a painful negotiation. You can't afford the things that it seems like everyone else has, shopping for a wedding dress can feel like h*ll, and finding a venue can become you're worst nightmare. If you're at all like me, planning a wedding can feel like you are thinking about money all the time, and learning to hate it.
...
Once you make a financial decision that feels right to you - stick to your guns. Wedding planning can be a constant pattern of second guessing - "Well, so and so self-catered, maybe we should do that?" This. Will. Drive. You. Mad. If your choice was right for you, that's it. You're done, and you're fine.
...
Try not to become obsessed with your target budget. Pay what feels right to you, and what you feel like you can afford. If you end up a little under or a little over budget? Its fine. Because guess what? You don't have to report your budget to anyone. So be kind to yourself, and remember that you did your best.

Dan and I have had fair number of contentious discussions regarding the wedding budget. One of the things that makes it difficult for us is that he has his 'respect tradition/family' thing so that certain things must be adhered to (extended family must be invited, there must be sufficient food) but he doesn't care about aesthetics at all and he very much cares about building up savings as much as possible.

Whereas for me, I thought I'd be ok with just eloping or a City Hall wedding + restaurant meal initially, but once it had to be in the format of a large party (though 100 is evidently on the smaller side for weddings, the single biggest event I've ever coordinated was for maybe 50 people? and that was a potluck Thanksgiving dinner at that), I have a certain minimal style and general 'nice-ness' requirements that have to be met. And now I'm looking forward to the fun of the projects and pretty, too.

The conflict makes me upset because we run into it fairly often on any sort of joint ventures. Dan's frugalness has the by-product of making me feel guilty for making him go along with what I want, which I then resent because I don't think my minimum requirements are outrageous by any means. And he just doesn't care about the things that I care about. I do have expensive taste sometimes but I don't always indulge in it entirely, and I'm willing to do some hunting if needed.

We just signed the lease on a new apartment, actually, as our sublet is up soon and I just don't love it where we're currently living. The new place was renovated just a year ago and has gorgeous flooring, kitchen, and windows that face south for the most part, with additional windows in the bedroom that face east and a window in the living room that faces west (the best layout for Northern Hemisphere homes, in my opinion).

The main big drawback of the unit is the lack of storage space, and already we've started arguing a bit over how to deal with the issue. Sigh. So it goes, though.

I leave you with this wreath made from book pages. As a total book nerd it does make me cringe a bit to think about tearing out the pages, but, the texture!

(repurposed book page wreath, via Creature Comforts)

We moved!

Last week, I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner (started at 1pm, served at 7pm) at my mom's behest, she had college friends visiting the U.S. for the first time and we wanted to show them a big 'ole American tradition. It turned out pretty well, I think, I got a kosher turkey from Whole Foods and also made mashed potatoes, stuffing on the stove, cranberry sauce with fresh cranberries, and an apple pie. I think it turned out pretty well, my mom's got the pictures so I'll post them if she sends them to me.

me: What do you think? Compared to last year, when you bought everything and told me the night before you wanted me to make a turkey?

mom: Oh, we did a turkey last year? Yeah, this year's is definitely better. I'll remember this one, I don't even remember last year's.

I also made gravy, from the drippings and everything! And it wasn't lumpy, the texture looked great! Unfortunately I didn't make the connection that with a kosher turkey (brined) we could probably skip the 'rub turkey all over with salt' step and so the drippings, and thus the gravy, were unpalatably salty. Oh well, that gave our arteries something to be thankful for, right?

[edit 12/18/09: my mom sent me pictures! Here's the feast, with one of my mom's only-use-on-special-occasions dining sets purchased in Thailand]

We then spent the rest of the long weekend moving. Fun! Many thanks to my sister for her help with driving, I'm a total wimp about driving but she's the complete opposite. The van we'd booked for Saturday fell through, so there were many...many...trips.

On the plus side, the previous tenants did an immaculate job of cleaning and we're all set up with the basics now largely out of stuff scavenged from my parents' basement (homeowners! keeping entire apartments' worth of furniture in storage!) and a bed frame that we built! As in, it used to be pieces of wood and a pile of screws, none of it from Ikea, and now it looks just like it does in the picture and it's a piece of furniture we use daily and hasn't fallen down. I love having a cordless drill!

Anyway, the point of this whole ramble is that now I have the project of setting up the apartment beyond functional basics, I'll probably be pretty light on wedding planning related stuff until late January, I suspect. Keep the links and ideas coming though, loving the stuff that people have sent me but I haven't posted about yet. I might pontificate on the whole living together for the first time thing if I get in a self-important mood.