39 Dresses and I Hated Them All

The other day The BF, the "pseudo" step-kids and I went shopping. I normally would not go shopping with the family, I am not into self torture but the cards all just lined up in such a way that we all went shopping. We have several weddings coming up this summer and everyone needed new clothes...okay I probably didn't but I felt I deserved a new dress.  First up "pseudo" step-daughter; A very cute blue and purple summer dress. That she absolutely loves and we found it at the first store we went to, within moments of walking into the kids section, talk about a score. Now on to shoes...she recently had a growth spurt so none of her shoes fit except an ugly pair of flip flops that she loves. However there were no affordable and cute shoes in her sizes anywhere in town. I am not kidding about this. She has huge feet and everything either has a heel (she is 7) or cost $25 for plastic sandals. I am not sure what we are going to do but I am open to giving her a pedicure and letting her go barefoot. Next up The BF. All he needed was a new shirt. All of his dress shirts are long sleeved and heavy and I know he will be very uncomfortable in the hot sun. But I lucked out and found him a green short sleeved button down linen shirt (casual but nice). The person I thought would be the hardest turned out to be the easiest because we found it at the same store as "pseudo" step-daughter dress and it was on sale. "Pseudo" step-son was not as easy. I wanted to get the same shirt we got for Colby but a different color unfortunately they didn't have any in his sizes. He is in that, men's sizes are a little to big and boys sizes are a little to small, size. He is kind of hard to shop for...I also want him to be comfortable and embrace his own style which is some interesting mix of skater guy, jock and rock star. So we went to another store and I walked through the men's section twice and the boys section once when I found what was the only small mans shirt in the whole store. A light weight button down shirt that he said he didn't hate and would wear without compliant (he is a good sport). "Pseudo" step-son also needed new shoes but unlike his sister his feet are not abnormally large. He found a pair he liked on sale but has stated he wont wear them often. My new favorite dress Then my turn, while shopping for everyone else I was trying on dresses...lots and lots of dresses but I hated everything. They were to long or where unflattering or to much dress for summer wedding season. After 4 stores I finally sent the family away and went into what I know is an expensive store but they were having a sale so I hoped I could find something. Here I tried on several more dresses, I found 2 that would work one I liked and one I LOVED. Even standing in the dressing room surrounded by mirrors and slightly unflattering light, the dressed work. After falling in love with the dress I noticed the price tag....ouch!!! It was the most expensive thing I had tried on all day. Whats a girl to do? Justify the hell out of spending the money and get the dress that you loved and was slimming, of course. I then decided I needed new shoes also but luckily I found a pair on sale.  Now I just need to decide how to accessories it.

Unhappy with the My Weight Loss

I am going through some weird things recently...I am feeling uncomfortable in my own skin, I hate all of my clothes and I am generally unsatisfied with my body.

This is not something that is normal for me. I a long time embraced the shorter than average and fatter than average me. I was okay with and decided to "own it" and accept the not made for fashion magazine me. But for the last two wings I have been going through something.

I think that my body is changing due to the healthy eating and increased movement and now nothing fits right and I look at myself in the mirror and I hate the way I look.

Yup I am the girl who hates the way she looks as she is losing weight....who does that? What kind of person gets up set and uncomfortable because they are losing weight? Is it some kind of self sabotaging mind set?

Is this why I am really struggling with making myself exercise or snacking recently? Its been a fight to keep myself on track and slipping is a daily occurrence. I cant tell you how many times I have just snacked on food. I try to correct the problem by stopping as soon as I realize I am snacking or eating an ultra healthy dinner. (What is an ultra healthy dinner you ask?...a very boring salad, luckily I like salad).

I am just unhappy with the transitionally me. I am hoping its a phase or a side effect of sugar withdrawal or maybe if my thyroid adjusting to the changes in my diet. That would mean one day I will again be comfortable in my skin and can go around singing "I feel pretty, Oh so pretty. I feel pretty and witty and bright..." because right now I just want to slap any girl that is me to night

Here are this weeks goals, they are the same ones from the last two weeks.

Good Habit: Add strength training into my daily exercise...at least three times this week.

Bad Habit: No shakes, candy or soda for the week.

Today is My 3rd Blogaversary!!!!!

Today is a very special day. Its my 3rd Blogaversary!!!

I never would have thought that I would still be blogging after three years.

Okay so this year the blogging has been sporadic and unreliable but I am still chugging along. I have lots of ups and even more downs (but only because I keep falling and falling and falling).

I want to thank everyone who has ever read, comment or accidentally clicked on my blogged.

I very special shout out to all my guest bloggers.

Thank you to all the wonderful people I have developed relationships with since I started blogging; they have encouraged me, challenged me and most importantly they have made me laughed a lot.

Shout out to my family. They have provided an endless fodder for my blog.

To all my friends for the constant mocking and comments like why would I read your blog you tell me everything you write about.

And last but not least and big thank you to The BF who has tolerated countless hours of me ignoring him so I could post, promote or participate in some blog related thing.

Thank you all for your support.

A Random Post From a Random Girl

I have this post in my head but I cant get it out.

Its funny and witty in my head but on my screen it reads weird and awkward.

I don't mind being the weird girl. And I am often awkward. 

But this post is translating into a maybe she needs to go rest in a room with padded walls weird.

Thinking about resting in a room with padded walls has some appeal to me after all I often walk into walls. It seems I wouldn't get hurt as bad if the walls were padded. I wonder if I can pad the walls of my home, and all the counters, tables, chairs, floor....I am really clumsy.

Why are some people more clumsy than others? I don't see my coworkers walking into the walls of the office but I do it all the time. 

Its frustrating to always have new bruise that you can not explain. Its even more frustrating to not be able to express myself like I want.

I bet its just because I cant focus my mind...I have so many things going on in my head it cant fully focus on what I need. I am starting to wonder if my funny and witty post is really that cleaver or if I just think it is because I am so random today.

What are some of the random thoughts you are having today?

How My Sister and I Made 200 Wedding Invitations

Have I mentioned my Health Nut Sister is getting married? No? She is and in her infinite wisdom once she decided to get married she decided 6 weeks was enough time to plan a wedding. I disagree but thanks to the predominate religion in Utah and all of the brides in Utah blogging I found a plethora of sites detailing how to plan a wedding in 6 weeks complete with checklists.

Since my Health Nut Sister and her equally Health Nut Fiancee have 6 kids between them (they are the modern Brady Bunch), they are trying to plan a low budget wedding but still have a classy wedding. This means my sister and are doing most of the stuff ourselves, normally this would be a problem for the two of us as we are not the most crafty people. But thanks to Pinterest we have morphed in to a the Dynamic Crafting Duo. If you would like to see some of our inspirations for her wedding you can check out her wedding board here.

One of the first things we did was wedding invitations with only six weeks we had to get them out ASAP.

After deciding on the invitation that we thought looked like something we could do, I created the basic design on Microsoft publisher. You would think it would be the easiest part and it mostly was, we just had a lot of discussion on the wording.

I thought it would be cute to have the kids announcing the marriage and inviting people to attend. Blending families isn't easy but this was a fun way to connect them. They also have a cute family quote they wanted to add: When you are a family you no longer work as a single unit, you are a team. You accomplish nothing alone but everything together.

I love that they created the motto together as a family.

The next step was deciding on what paper to use for all the elements of the invites. This was the easiest part of the whole process. We then printed off the invites and decided to mount them on cream paper to make them "pop".

The next step was to mount their very cute engagement pictures on corresponding paper. Now these two things sound fairly simple and they are very easy. But they are incredibly time consuming, maybe not if you are creating a dozen or so invites but when you are doing 200, it took us hours...seriously hours. I cant even tell you how many hours this took. And it probably wouldn't have been bad if we had done a little at a time but our deadline was immediately. There was so much cutting and gluing and more cutting and more gluing...have I mentioned the gluing and cutting. My fingers were sticky for days. 

After that we had to add the cute lace element and this is where we got smart, we noticed at our local mega store they have paper dollies so we bought 200 of them (luckily the store had that many) we cut them in half (yes more cutting) and glued (that's right more gluing) them on the back of the invite then folded them over.

 Before I continue I would like to take a minute to thank my coworkers/friends and the ex-wife/friend they took time out of their lunch brake to help us cut, fold, glue and assemble the invitations (yes more cutting and gluing). They actually thought it was fun and enjoyed and helped us speed up the process. They even addressed envelopes and were nice enough to let my sister hand them the invitations for themselves. 

I would also to thank my mom and The BF for helping to entertain my cute nieces while we spend one whole day cutting and gluing (have I mentioned all the cutting and gluing). 

On to assembling the elements of the invite together, we added the engagement picture and the "in lieu of gift card" (they decided that since they are blending households they really don't need anything but if people are inclined they have one request, In lieu of gifts please help our blended family expand our home with gift cards to Home Depot.)

The last thing we did was tie everything with some twine. The end result is very cute, don't you think? 

I would like to give one little word of caution if you decide to take on this project for yourself. The United States Post Office will make you pay extra postage for the invitations. They claim because of the twine, it made the invitations shaped odd and they can not run it through the machine and the stamp has to be hand cancelled hence the extra postage.

This whole process has taught me one thing...if I ever get married I will pay a lot of money to have someone else do my invitations. 

This, of course, is one of several wedding projects we are working on...I will post more as they get completed in less than 3 weeks.