Life is like a bunch of flowers ...

Tonight was my first floral design class and it was lots of fun. We made a basic round centerpiece. I learned not to be the last person in line to get my flowers 'cause you end up with the stems that have lots of un-opened buds and the broken ones! :) However, I think mine still turned out just fine. And hey, when the buds open in 3 days it'll be like a whole new arrangement, right?



I have to say, getting out of the house and taking this class, I felt more like myself than I have in a long time. It was nice to be around new people, and I get completely lost in arranging flowers. So zen. Driving home (with my arrangement in tow), accelerating down the highway with the setting sun in the rear view mirror, blasting Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" on the stereo, I could at least recall the memory of a time when I knew everything would turn out alright. And that's not darn bad for today.

Craft Store Withdrawal

A little-known side effect of marriage is apparently craft store withdrawal ...

Most people probably don't have a job where they frequent places such as JoAnn Crafts, Michaels, and the wholesale floral supplier, but I do. (Also, how many of you have a "favorite fabric" you visit once a week but never buy because you can't imagine what you'd do with it that would make it worth spending the money? Guilty!) And now, every time I go in I find myself wandering through the aisles, thinking of all the lovely invitations and decorations and bouquets I would make with such beautiful materials. Sigh. I really am pathetic.

But, I guess before I feel too sorry for myself I should remember the 4 bins of yarn under the bed, the storage rack full of fabric, and the various other art supplies scattered throughout the house that I could do something with if I weren't so lazy! Vive la weekend!

What to do with the dress?

As the wedding began to fade into memory I had to decide what to do with my wedding dress. Now, I loved my dress. It was comfortable, fun, and just perfect for me. I loved shopping for it with my mom, sister, and grandmother. But I didn't love the idea of letting it hang in our (non-existent) closet for the next 500 years. Because I loved my dress I wanted it to be worn again. So, I decided to sell it.

First came the task of getting the dress clean. Now, dry cleaning for a wedding dress can cost $100-$200 easily, which would pretty much negate the profits of selling the dress. I did some research online and turns out you CAN hand-wash a wedding dress, IF it's made of synthetic fibers (not silk). So, I scrubbed the bathtub really, really well, rolled up my sleeves, and dove in. It probably took 3-4 hours of soaking, gently scrubbing the hem with a soft toothbrush and detergent, more soaking, copious rinsing, and rinsing some more to get the dress sparkling ivory again but it worked! The dress looked great and ready to go. Granted, I was getting it clean for the purpose of re-wearing in the very near future. If you're trying to preserve your dress so your granddaughter can wear it maybe hand-washing isn't the way to go.

Finally, I put the dress up for sale on BravoBride. A couple weeks later I had an interested buyer. We exchanged a few emails, she sent a payment using Paypal, and I put the dress in the mail! Sometime in the next year a Minneapolis bride will have a fabulous wedding wearing my dress and I couldn't be happier. She gets to save a little money, I get to make a little money, and we both conserve the resources that would have gone into making another identical wedding dress.

With the money from the dress I signed up for a floral design class at a local university. I had so much fun doing the wedding flowers that I decided to learn how to do it for real! It starts Monday and I can't wait.

"So How's Married Life?"

Married life is good. Fine. Not all that different from shacking up life, I like to say! I think that running a household together for almost two years made for a pretty simple transition. Now that the wedding is well in the past it's just back to the day-to-day grind.

Which leaves us with a question: what is the future of this blog? Not much else to be said about the wedding, really, unless anyone has a few more burning questions. The blog turned out to be more of a personal planning journal and a way to share information with family and friends, so I can't imagine I have any sort of "public" audience using this as a wedding planning resource. I suppose I could re-name it "Owen-Harmon Life" and regale you all with tales of our adventures ... unfortunately our life is pretty boring right now. I work. Bill looks for work. We cooks, we clean (though never enough), we laugh at our ridiculous and adorable cats. Together we ponder our next move, more often than not we feel discouraged. (Welcome to the real world, right? Yeah, I get it, life can be discouraging at times ... but who, during such times, doesn't hope/wish/long for slightly less discouraging days?)

So, I guess the answer is "stay tuned, maybe I'll come up with a good reason to keep posting here!" And, you can always stop by my other blog, Knitjenious, to see what craftiness I'm up to. Now that I've said that, I better go update it! Eeep!