Wedding Report

The last week of my life has been an absolute whirlwind of events, excitement and general celebration. As usual my life has taken over and my blogging efforts have been minimal. I'm happy to report that all is well. I'm employed, in school, and still in Austin. A year from now I should be done with my Master's program.

But now back to the events of this weekend! In particular, my sister Amy got married!

Wedding Rings! The diamond engagement ring was my mom's.

 Because my sister, Sara, lives across the world in Sydney our time spent together is even more precious. I know some families live down the street or across town from one another, or at least reside in the same state. Our family is spread across the globe and while we make it work with Skype dates and emails, any time we can spend together is that much more important.

Niall and Sara. He maybe stole my sister away and now keeps her down under, but he's a pretty good guy. Though now he is not my only brother-in-law, weird!

My parents were more or less elated all weekend.

 

Katelyn - cousin, friend, semi-professional photographer. I heard she filled up 8 GB on her memory card with over 1500 photos. Until those pictures surface everyone will have to make do with my iPhone photos. They may not be perfect, but at least I'm getting them up and out into the world.

The blushing bride and groom. I love their expressions in this photo. It's during the rehearsal dinner when a couple of people in the wedding party gave speeches.

This was taken the morning of the wedding. My sister will only be single for another 8 hours. 

Getting ready at the salon. I loved my hair for the wedding and hopefully there will be lots of pictures of it from Katelyn or the professional photographer's shots. (Also I hope there are pictures of Amy's dress and other "important" wedding things.)

The bridal hair with a purple fascinator.

Katelyn being Rapunzel/a photographer. Amy getting ready as a gorgeous bride.

iPhone camera can do pretty well, I think. 

My sister, the bride. Wow, I'm getting choked up all over again. 

Here is a super-helpful diagram of how the reception was set up. 

From here on in, my photos are more sparse because I was either 1) setting up for the wedding 2) being in the wedding or 3) I don't know, I was busy!

I did manage to get a shot of the father-daughter dance. 

And one more of me and Sara. An official maid and matron of honor shot.

I hope you can tell from my brief descriptions and few photos that it was a beautiful wedding and overall a wonderful experience. Our family and friends came together and now BOTH of my sisters are married.  Amy had a vision of what she wanted and being the creative and artistic person she is she carried that out in so many ways. Each table was themed as a different movie that held meaning for her and Mike. She made intricate tissue paper decorations to hang from the reception tent. The place cards fit the color theme and stood on corks (fit in with the fact that we were at a winery). I wish I had had time to take pictures of all of the wonderful details, but again that was kind of someone else's job. 

I'm just at the beginning of my wedding experiences. With a handful under my belt, I'm starting to see the common denominator. It's a day to celebrate who you are and the choice you're making to live your life in harmony with another person. In so many ways that is a wonderful thing.

When I think about the fact that my sister Amy now has a HUSBAND... I am a bit flabbergasted. Childhood is starting to get smaller in the rear-view mirror. We're leaving it behind a little more every day. The fact that our lives are going places is a reason to look forward towards the horizon. 

I Covet...

... the life of a puppy.




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Goodbye, Goldilocks

From this:

 and this:

 

To this:

 and this:

I cut all of my hair off! Okay, so perhaps all is a bit of an overstatement. But I cut off a lot! And I am very happy. The response has been incredibly positive, though I suppose people don't regularly insult me to my face. 

I've missed blogging and the end of the semester is nigh. Look out blogosphere my semi-regular/occasionally/sometimes posts will be making a comeback.

One last photo:

 

 

That's the 10 inches I donated. I didn't get a picture of what was left on the salon floor, which was even MORE. 

As Easy As Apple Pie

Sometime around Thanksgiving I made the mistake of commenting that I didn't think making a pie would be that hard. A character on Parenthood (great show!) was whining about how she had messed up the pie, and I rolled my eyes. In the age of the internet, I feel it's almost impossible to fail at making something well the first time. Just read enough food blogs, use a trusted recipe and you'll be fine! Well EC did not let my arrogance slip by unnoticed. She challenged me to make my first pie (crust included) from scratch.

The challenge was not time sensitive. Between the lemon bars I made for her birthday and the constant creation of cake balls every weekend in December, I had a bit of culinary fatigue. But one night the other week I was supposed to babysit and the plans were expectantly canceled. I had an entire evening free to make a pie! So I went to HEB, gathered supplies and came home to get started.

This is the kitchen that awaited me. I love this picture because it says so much about our apartment. Exhibit 1, Olivia being a pain. I put rubber bands around the cabinet knobs to keep her from constantly batting open the doors. She thinks, "oo! Rubber bands to play with!" Exhibit 2, EC's coffee mug, that never gets put away because it is constantly in use. Exhibit 3, empty bottle of wine. Anyway, I couldn't start with a messy kitchen, so I got to work tidying.

Ahh, that is much better. 

Here are the ingredients I used, except I didn't actually use cornstarch. This was a mistake. 

I tried to find a pastry cutter at the store but after a good five minutes of searching the kitchen tools aisle I came up empty. I went with two knives, which worked...

...surprisingly well!

I peeled and cut a lot of apples. That peel ring was the longest I could manage. 

At this point I was very excited, because the crust really looked like pie. I had high hopes that this would pan out perfectly. I substituted my Sigg bottle for a rolling pin. Necessity and invention and what not.

Final result: Picture-perfect pie!

In the end, EC gave me full marks for presentation, the crust was definitely the strongest part. For my filling I went with the Better Homes New Cookbook recipe, which did not call for a combining agent like cornstarch or tapioca. And in the end, that was my one mistake. The filling, while tasty, was very watery and impaired my "perfect" pie. Overall, I'm proud of my attempt, but I suppose there is certain finesse that comes with experience in pastry making. 

Final grade: B+

'Tis the Season... for pumpkins!

Perfect Pumpkin

These are $2 tools from HEB. They are dead now.

EC: "I will caarrrrve this pumkin. I am a pirate."

Guts!

Yay TX pumpkin! (I am ignoring that it might be from NM.)

I am very intent on my masterpiece. Later I joked
that we could always pretend a 3rd grader helped us.

And here is the third grader's school portrait.

I couldn't tell you why I am making this face. I just am.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

Rumpelstiltskin/Rapunzel

Whenever I'm on vacation (weird to think a trip to Houston is now "vacation") I like to take time to do my hair a little differently. Mostly because I'm staying with Sarah and can use her hair straightener. So behold the various stages of taming my hair.

 Post shower, post blow dryer. Typically I wouldn't comb out my hair, but here it is. A giant lion's mane.

 Right side: straightened! It's amazing how much less volume there is after it's straightened. I would say that doing half of my hair took about 15-20 minutes.

 All done! This took probably about an hour from start to finish. It's so weird to see my hair this way, and it's impossible to not want to feel how smooth it is.

As silly as it seems, after all that work, I had Sarah add waves back into my hair with the Chi. It's fun and not something I can do on my own. Though looking at this picture, my hair looks very similar to what it is without the 1+ hour it took to accomplish this. I wore this style to the Homecoming Tailgate... and pull my hair back for the wedding.

I'm scheduled for a haircut next Monday! It's pretty overdue.

October!

 This month has been pretty overwhelming. Behold the contents of my refrigerator as of this morning:

 

ACL two weekends ago, and a wedding in Houston last weekend has kept me busy. But I have a success to report! I'm employed again. It's a job in my field and I'm sure to learn a lot from it. And be really busy. I have lots of pictures to share from ACL and from the wedding, and I'll try to fit those in soon. 

P.S. I went grocery shopping so I now have more than lemons, tomato sauce, yogurt, and tofu. Just FYI.