I like big butts

this girl is workin this.  Love it.  Found via Pinterest

Omg! Omg!  You guys!

I fit into my crazy-expensive jeans* from college again!!!

Happy dance around the closet this morning :) I think this weekend I will be spending some time finding out what else I have reclaimed :)

*I have several pairs of pants I have been holding onto, in a desperate hope that the money I spent on them would not be wasted.  And now it was worth it!!

Some days

"Escalator" (1970) Richard Estes.  Found through Pinterest.

Some days are a struggle from the get-go.  You wake up, drag your lifeless body to the shower, slather it with some soap, point a hair dryer at your head, and stumble out the door.

And then you get to the Metro, and some girl who is too busy texting to pay attention to where she's walking fails to notice that they have switched the down escalator to an up escalator.

And that makes it all worth it.

heh heh heh :)

Wedding Drama: Uninvited guests: Update!

photo from here

Sigh. Men are silly.

Turns out that our rogue guest has actually been dating the girl for over a year, and didn't think to let Brandon know about it.  But if you've been seeing someone for that long, why would you put "probably" on the RSVP card next to their name?

(again, if you're not sure if they can make it, DON'T RSVP UNTIL YOU KNOW FOR SURE.  That's actually exactly how its supposed to work, none of this maybe bizness.)

Anyway, shes coming, and we're fine with it.  And hopefully our guest learned a little something about etiquette.

Wedding Crafting: Cake Toppers

Tell me this little guy in his top hat didn't just make your day.  Just try.

Excellent tutorial on making a tiny top hat found here.  As Lisa said when I showed this to her, I have no idea what people did before the internet.

I am so happy.  Had a super successful weekend working on wedding bizness, including a dress fitting with the lovely and talented Sarah.  I'm torn about posting photos of the dress, but I am so so happy with it that I just might have to offer a sneak peek.  We shall see.

Test Cake! Or, why I leave baking to the experts

Some of you may know this already:  I do not care about dessert.  I am an enormous fan of Nestle Turtles, and anything vaguely pecan-chocolate-clustery, but besides that, I would really be OK to never eat anything sweet again.

So when it came to my wedding cake, I decided: here was a great opportunity to save some money!  Who actually eats wedding cake anyway?  There will most certainly not be shoving of cake into my face by the hubs-elect....

And immediately there were riots.  My sister went up in arms, my roommates in London began to insist they would not come to my wedding if I insisted on such insanity.  So in the face of such intense dessert-loving friends, we came up with a solution:  I would save money on the cake by having Lisa bake one, and my London roommate bake the other.

So I have been happily ignoring the cakes, until recently when I realized that I should look into the recipe and try it out in the cake pans I had bought.  And what a perfect opportunity presented itself!  My lovely future mother in law (who really is lovely) celebrated her birthday this past weekend, and I decided I would win her over further with my charming cake.

So I went to my mom's house (because it was empty as they were on vacation, and because she has a KitchenAid), and decided that cake baking = no problem.  So first things first, I go to separate 8 eggs.

An inauspicious beginning, as I immediately break the first yolk into the first egg white.  Bah.

Ok!  So!  now I have 8 eggs separated.  Now the flour.....

Can you tell I was really more interested in taking cool photos of the stuff than in the actual making of cake?

Action shot!

This is how I felt afterwards.  Desolated and covered in flour and egg white. 

I knew something wasn't quite right - and I should have known that I needed to beware any recipe that included folding in egg whites...but I didn't listen to my inner voice.  As my father says, ALWAYS listen to your inner voice... because this is what my cakes looked like on the inside:

Lumps of horrible, unmixed cake batter.  Ugh.

So I went into panic mode, and was really really grateful for the fact that my parents buy eggs in packages of 18.  It was 5:30 - the first cake had taken me 3 hours to ruin, and we were supposed to be at Brandon's parents by 6:30.  I threw together a second batch of cake batter, mixed it properly this time, and melted a ton of chocolate and butter together.  And behold:

a little sucking up never hurt anyone :)

 It sure looks good, doesn't it?  Too bad it didn't taste great :(  But I tried!  And the hubs family, to their everlasting credit, ate everything I served them and even came back for seconds.

And this is why I leave the baking in my family to the masters.  Sigh.

Well except for these cheese and adobo pepper cornmeal muffins, which I made on Sunday morning.  They were delish.