Pink Ombre Bridal Shower

So, needless to say, I'm severely behind on blogging again. The last few months have been eventful to say the least and I need to make a concerted effort to catch up since Joe and I leave for Europe in just less than 4 weeks. (YIKES!)

First up is a fluffy, fun one. I knew from before we were officially engaged that I wanted a pink ombre bridal shower. I had originally wanted exclusively dark pink flowers throughout our wedding but with Joe that just didn't seem like it was going to work out, so my vision shifted a bit toward a girly girly covered-in-pink bridal shower.

As usual, the planning of this event carried my mom and I nearly over the edge. In fact, we got glittery pink ombre manicures (that were promptly removed) which we both described as seeing the cliff, running straight toward it and jumping off... and then realizing that we'd completely lost our minds. The results, however, were completely worth the temporary insanity of the weeks before. Do you agree?

Ombre Invitation by Modern Ink Studio on Etsy.

The entrance table. Complete with individually labeled stemless wine glasses.

Even the cake pops were ombre! (By Elaine's Cake Pops - a friend since elementary school)

Perfection. (Straws here.)

My mom and I - the party planners in our element - and the main sweets table.

Pink Treats - hand labeled. Happy Girls sign from Etsy. 

Pink chocolate popcorn by my new Mother in Law and Rice Krispies Treats with pink candy coating - make EVERYTHING pink!

Even the cake pops were ombre! (By Elaine's Cake Pops - a friend since elementary school)

Drink Station with Pink Ombre drinks - clear water, sparkling white wine,
rose sangria, pink lemonade, and "dark pink" wine.

A different view that catches the ombre heart paper chain we made as a background.

3 nights work and about 100 pieces of pink cardstock = pure pink awesomeness. 

Loving the details!

One very happy bride-to-be!

Happy girls are the prettiest. - Audrey Hepburn

Even the gifts were pink!

Cate making the most amazing rehearsal bouquet I've
ever seen almost entirely out of tissue paper.

I am so grateful for my mom, bridesmaids, MIL, aunts, and cousin, who all participated in some way (big or small) to make my vision a reality. The event was beautiful. Take a look at a bit of the prep work that went into it:

making paper chains

Teamwork!

My Aunts Elaine and Mary, who spent 2 hours arranging flowers.

Covered in pink - just the way I wanted it!

London List

Joe and I have been brainstorming the list of places we want to see and things we want to do during our year abroad. Here's what we have so far, although we know already that a lot is yet to be added to this list.

Places

1.        All four countries in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland)

2.        Abbey Road

3.        Amsterdam, Netherlands

4.        Austria

5.        Budapest, Hungary

6.        Cambridge

7.        Croatia

8.        Denmark

9.        Dublin, Ireland

10.    Finland

11.    France

12.    Germany

13.    Italy

14.    Normandy

15.    Norway

16.    Paris, France

17.    Prague, Czech Republic

18.    Russia

19.    Stonehenge

20.    Stratford-Upon-Avon

21.    Sweden

22.    Switzerland

Activities

23.         live orchestra performance

24.         live singer/band

25.         live dramatic performance

26.         live soccer game

27.         live other sporting event

28.         Ride the London Eye

29.         Travel by boat

30.         Travel by train

31.         Formal High Tea

32.         Cooking class

33.         Bike tour of a major city

34.         Volunteer with the Ministry of Stories

35.         Hike 10+ miles somewhere

36.         Harry Potter studio set tour

37.         Find a bridge – add a love padlock

38.         London Museum of Natural History

39.         Take a spontaneous vacation

40.         Use all of the fruits/vegetables that come in a VegBox

41.         Ride a Double-Decker Bus

42.         Something historically Pink Floyd

43.         Drive “British”

44.         Brewery tour

45.         Holi festival

46.         IceBar London

47.         Flying Fantastic class

48.         Anne Frank’s house

49.         Van Gogh/Rembrandt museums

50.         Dutch flowers/tulips

51.         Oktoberfest

52.         Hay-on-Wye book festival

53.         Poznan’s lantern festival on June 21 in Poland

54.         Do a London photoshoot

55.         Buy something Burberry flagship store

56.         Host an American Thanksgiving

57.         Collect a British HP set and an international set (each book in a different language and from a different country)

58.         Go ice-skating

Mammoth

For several years, Joe has taken a trip with his family to Mammoth at the end of the summer. I've never been able to join him because I've been working, but this year he made a big deal about making sure I could come with him. He would deny it, but this is why:

The description of the trip is mostly hiking, being out of breath because of altitude, hiking, hiking, playing games, and hiking. Instead of a play by play, I offer these highlight photos:

Reschans: Uncle Rob, Aunt Terri, Ryan, and Joe

Scotland

Over a year ago now, when I was out of work, panicked, and looking for a way to focus my energy, I started writing a paper on a piece of literature I knew could get me back into the swing of academic reading and writing: the Harry Potter series. In the process of applying for graduate school I knew I would have to submit a sample piece of writing; I also knew that nothing I had written in college or grad school before would accurately portray the kind of work I wanted to do during this foray back into  academia. I had a theory and I wanted to pursue it. So I planned, read, went to university libraries all over San Diego, and wrote page after page.

About a month or so into this process I started thinking about the problem with academic writing in liberal arts: it is done in a vacuum, often with no connection at all to the wider world of academics or even literature as it is used outside of universities, and it is done without express purpose. I figured that if I wanted a purpose, I would look for one. So I searched CFPs for young adult literature and Harry Potter, hoping that I could find some conference somewhere that I could write for, with no real intention of submitting my writing at all. But then, I found it -  A Brand of Fictional Magic: Reading Harry Potter as Literature. The very first fully academic, literary conference entirely devoted to Harry Potter. In St. Andrews, Scotland, at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Abstracts due by Halloween, no pun intended.

I sent my abstract as a whim, mostly to keep my writing on track and give myself purpose. Less than a month later I got an email saying my paper on reading the last three books of the series as an entrance into dystopia had been accepted. I was shocked. Now, I just had to figure out how I could get there. There was no option or whim present now - I had to go.

It took months to write my paper and at 36 pages, it still feels incomplete to me. There is so much to say, so many nuances to examine, so many questions to answer. I was lucky that over the course of my composition phase I had people around me (my colleage, Mr. Elfman in particular), who could listen to my theories and find the discrepancies in them. I had the luxury of time to develop my ideas and hone my style. Then, when it came time to cut the entire text down to something that could be read in 10-15 minutes, I had enough courage to slash more than half of the paper, delete lines, and cut almost all of the background.
The conference itself was an unreal experience. I was surrounded by such brilliant literary scholars with deep and intriguing ideas I'd never considered before. It was enlightening and refreshing, exciting and overwhelming, and exactly the push I needed to remind me why I want to go back to school at all. Eight years after completing my bachelor's degree in literature, I am so ready to return to academia to recharge my batteries and renew my passion for literature. (Just for a little extra taste, here's keynote speaker John Granger's synopsis of the conference.)

Mom and I outside the St. Andrews University building where the conference was held.

Afterwards, all fifty of the conference speakers were invited to submit their papers to be published in a compilation book. Again, it was a whim. Again, I was stunned when I found out I was accepted. Of the fifty papers, about a dozen are in the process of being turned into a book and mine is one of them. If I weren't still so overwhelmed by this, I'd be hollering from the rooftops.

From the right: kilt, kilt, kilt, pajama pants, kilt towel, no really.

Scotland, itself, was a surreal experience, too. I got off the plane and was paralyzed with fear (as I almost always am the moment I realize what I've gotten myself into). The trip came less than a month after Joe and I had chosen Option 4 and I knew that I would actually be MOVING to the UK for a year with him. We were in Edinburgh for a few days before taking a train to St. Andrews. It was beautiful and historical and a lot more interesting than I expected, especially since I was on the plane before I realized that I really hadn't done any travel research at all for this trip. Beyond eating so much sugar, fat, and white flour in the first 24 hours to make me sick (so that I had to sleep it off for HOURS at the hotel), we enjoyed everything about Edinburgh. Views? Awesome. Weather? Held up well for the forecast. Kilt shopping? Don't mind if we do.

St. Andrews was small, freezing, and everything closed at 5 pm. We ate dinner at the same restaurant 2/3 nights. But the conference was so amazing that it didn't matter. I do understand now why Rowling put Azkaban prison in the middle of the North Sea. Weather forecast for one of the days = 42 degrees, real feel 26. Yikes.

One additional highlight? Fantasy grocery shopping, wherein Mom and I wander the aisles of Marks and Spencer pretending that we're shopping for groceries for my London flat where I live with Joe while attending University. We even planned a dinner party based on the things we found, and oh man, my fantasy dinner party was awesome!

The Five Year Plan

I've been pretty tight-lipped lately about the progress of certain plans for travel, work, grad school - basically all of the parts of my life that make up the blog's title. In January, I explained my reluctance to say too much based on the fact that nothing I've imagined for my life in the next few years is set, none of it is permanent. I didn't want to commit anything to writing in case it didn't work out as I'd hoped. I didn't want grad school plans to be the Teach-in-England prep posts of 2009. There are too many pieces that have to fall into exactly the right places, so I had scared myself out of writing anything at all...

Until now.

In March I received an email one morning at work. It came from a representative of University College London, the most prestigious of the five UK schools to which I applied, and said, "I am pleased to confirm that an unconditional offer of admission to the above programme of study will appear on your applicant portal shortly."

That was it. I was stunned. I'm pretty sure I turned completely white and was shaking in my chair for several minutes before I did anything else. Accepted. At one of the top universities in the world. My dream of traveling abroad for grad school could be realized.

Within a few weeks I subsequently received acceptances from all four of the other universities I had applied to as well: King's College London, Queen Mary, Roehampton, and Kingston. If I wanted to do this, I would have my pick of university programs.

Thus started a series of very serious conversations with Joe. Only a few weeks after I started receiving this good news, Joe got a job he'd very much wanted and started working. This, if anything could, complicated our plans. I didn't want to make Joe leave a job he loved for my dreams; it wasn't fair to ask that of him. So we discussed several options that included all of our priorities for the next several years of our shared life: marriage, careers, education, babies, home ownership - all of it. 

The way we saw it, we had 4 options. I don't really remember the particulars of the first three now, but the plan we called Option Four became our favorite for a variety of reasons. This plan included:
- Joe stays at his new job for 1+ year (instead of 4 months)
- I keep working at my job and continue saving $$
- Get married in 2013, instead of waiting until we get back from the UK to get engaged
- Defer enrollment for one year and leave for London in summer 2013
- Joe travels on a spouse visa so that he does not have to spend the $$ to go to post production school, since he's not sure he wants to actually work in post production

This is why I couldn't post. I didn't know how to talk about any of this until I knew that all parts of the plan were really going to happen. I didn't want to post that Joe and I had decided to get married before we'd officially gotten engaged. I didn't want to post that I'd been accepted to 5 universities in London until I was ready to explain the deferment and could deal with the repercussions that would come if my boss found out. And then I'd gotten myself so freaked out that I felt like I couldn't post any of these pieces of news - incredibly positive and exciting decisions in my life that I am thrilled with and truly believe are going to be awesome choices for Joe and I and our goals together - because I didn't want to seem like I was bragging or full of myself or acting like I'd done something incredible when I really hadn't done anything at all yet. For probably the first time in my life, humility took over and I couldn't tell people anything that was going on that might make me sound better than I really deserved. I hadn't (and still haven't) done anything incredible yet.

So I didn't publish anything. I didn't blog. I didn't put anything on facebook.

But I wanted to. I wanted to make a status update every time I received an acceptance letter. I wanted to gush to anyone who would listen that Joe and I had decided to get married. I wanted to write and write and write about it all. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Since then I have had MANY other blog post-y events that need to be written still. Please stay tuned for:

- A week in Scotland
- A week in Mammoth
- A proposal (oh yes, that kind)
- the new plan as laid out in Option Four

Stay Tuned

I know I've been absent from this blog for a long while, but I promise it is not for lack of news. There's a lot coming down the trail in the next few months and as soon as it is share-worthy, I won't be able to stop typing about it. Until then...

A Note on Audiobooks

Last weekend Joe and I took advantage of President's day (and it's 4-day weekend) by driving out to Arizona to visit my best friend and her family. We usually fly whenever we go anywhere, so I was concerned before our trip about how we would pass the 14+ hours in the car. We do enjoy some of the same music, but not enough to fill that many hours, so I knew I couldn't look forward to the Mamma Mia sing-along party I have when I make the same trip with my mom...


The solution we came up with was to pick an audiobook that we both wanted to read/listen to and that we could talk about. Joe suggested The Selfish Gene. I suggested 1Q84. Joe suggested The Moral Landscape. I suggested we listen to the entire, multi-season soundtrack from Glee. :) I think you can see where I'm going with this...


We finally agreed on the unabridged recording of The Lord of the Rings. The entire trilogy is almost two days worth of recording, so we would definitely be covered. And I'll say this: we are both totally loving it. We managed to get through about 9 hours of the recording during our trip and have since been listening separately - me on my commute to work and Joe before he goes to bed.

lotr.wikia.com

So here is my dilemma: The audiobook makes complete sense for me in the car, but listening when I don't have something to focus on with my eyes feels awkward. This weekend I had a chunk of time that I would usually devote to reading, but picking up something new while I'm still in the middle of Fellowship of the Ring felt unsatisfactory. I didn't want to start something new. I wanted to keep going in the world I had already entered. So I tried to listen to my audiobook at home. I didn't know what to do with my eyes in the meantime, so I closed them. When I opened them again, over an hour had passed and I had no idea what was going on in the book.... I tried to follow along with the printed book next, but that was weird, too. The actor who recorded the books is fantastic - he does interesting voices, emphasizes all the right stuff and has clear diction - but he's slow. When I found out that the track for "The Council of Elrond" was an hour and forty-five minutes long, I was SURE it would be at least 100 pages in the print edition. It's 31. Let's just say I wouldn't take almost 2 hours to read 31 pages. So I tried to just read the book myself. But then I missed the voices. Catch 22.


Because of my career, it is not at all unusual for me to read two or even three books at the same time (one for each grade I am teaching and one for book club or personal entertainment). But normally there's a reason why I'm reading more than one book at a time - two entertainment books seems ridiculous for some reason. So how do I deal with having an audiobook that I can't sit down and read, but not wanting to delve into a new world while I'm still in this one? Dilemma!

On Budgeting

Probably the part of this crazy let's-move-to-London-on-student-visas plan that gives me the most anxiety is just how we're going to pay for it. London is widely acknowledged as one of the most expensive cities in the world. (Even if it did slip from #17 to #18 between 2010 and 2011.) A cursory search of tiny, poorly-appointed flats online has lead me to believe we'll be lucky to get out for under $2000 in rent per month for a shoebox. And while my new job is better-paying than any teaching job I've ever had, I've had to amp up my commuting costs (despite my Prius) and have struggled to meet my savings goals each month. Joe and I both need to get realistic about this one, as it really could be the final say in whether or not we get to have this big adventure: how could we be saving more??

photo from www.dailymoneysaving.com

We cut out some of the obvious expenses from last year - no flights or big trips are planned. But we still eat out more than we should, both separately and together. I still buy clothes and have my eye on not one, but two pairs of $80+ flats at Nordstroms. I fear that we aren't being serious enough about stepping up our frugality, challenging ourselves to save not the minimum to meet our modest savings goals, but instead daring ourselves to put away every possible penny we can. It's something we have to dedicate ourselves to. If we don't, we'll still be living in SoCal next fall, wondering if that extra drink out with friends was really worth it...