Pro Pics!

The disc of pro photos arrived today! Hooray! I'll be putting them in a Flickr folder if you want to order prints that way, or you can also order archival quality prints from Scott C Photography. Also, remember that the highlight gallery photos can only be ordered through the photographer's website.

Updated to add: It appears as though you must be signed in to the owen_harmonwedding flickr account to order prints, though you do not have to be signed in to view or download the photo files. Email me or leave a comment if you lost the password!

Kusudama Ball Tutorial, or, What Were Those Things Hanging Overhead During the Ceremony?

I've been asked several times about the hanging paper flower balls that we used as ceremony decorations, and the link to the tutorial is here and here on Folding Trees.com.

The directions tell you to you 3"x3" squares of paper but you can use other sizes, as long as the pieces are square. For the wedding kusudama balls I used 6"x6" squares, and I've also used squares as small as 2"x2" to make Christmas ornaments. Also, I just glued the ribbon to the inside of the ball, instead of running it all the way through and securing the end with beads/buttons. The other sneaky trick I employ when making these is to use paperclips as clamps. That way you're not stuck holding the paper petal together, waiting for it to dry. Once you have the basic idea down I would estimate making one ball takes about 3-4 hours. (Fortunately I had help from my mom in making the wedding balls! Extra hands make the process go a lot faster!)

Honeymoon Pics 4

More hiking pics ... this time in the other half of Lake of the Ozarks State Park. The big feature here is this castle! Or what's left of it ...

Honeymoon Pics 3

One great way to cool off in Central Missouri is to explore one of the many area caves. We chose a particularly hot afternoon to visit the Ozark Caverns in Lake of the Ozarks State Park. We arrived early for the tour so we took a little hike first.

This is the most striking feature of Ozark Caverns, an area where the water that forms stalactites and stalagmites rains down like a shower into a geologically formed basin.

Us in the cave. In spite of the 100+ degree heat index it was about 60 degrees inside the cave. Chilly!!

One the drive back to the resort we drove down some winding dirt roads in search of the Swinging Bridges. While driving we saw this turtle in the middle of the road! And if you know DH you know he loves turtles ... we had to get out of the car and take this picture.

Speaking of wildlife, we saw deer in people's front yards nearly every time we drove back to our condo.

Puttering Around the House

Now that all this wedding hoopla has passed DH and I find ourselves with a lot of time on our hands. We try not to drive each other crazy being home together every day (I start back to work for the season on August 10th) and one of the things we've been doing to pass the time is make lots of meals from scratch. We recently started planning our dinner menu for the week in advance (an idea we totally stole from Janelle and Drew) and that's working out great. Even DH is enjoying it, and he's always been the "go to the grocery store every day and get what you feel like having at that moment" kind of guy. It also really reduces the chances we'll waste food because we've focused on buying only what we need to make the specific meals we've chosen. All this home cooking has also given us the chance to play with our new toys (aka wedding gifts)! We've used our KitchenAid mixer, waffle iron, baking stone, cookbooks and recipes, and lots of other stuff at least a few times already

In the past few weeks we've made homemade chickpea burgers, red beans and rice with chicken, pizza (with dough from scratch), sushi, carrot-peanut summer soup (surprisingly good), jicama slaw, fish tacos, and lots of other things I can't remember right now. The farmer's market is in full swing these days and our intake of fresh produce has picked up significantly, a much-needed change after a month of celebrations, vacations, and generally eating terribly.

So, one of the bright sides of dual unemployment is getting in to some good habits that will hopefully stick with us when we go back to working full-time.