I made this gown for My friend Kerrie for the NE
event. The theme was the 7 sins and virtues.
I designed this gown to be Envy, I like the play on it
that she's going as envy but she looks so beautiful that
everyone will Envy her.

I made the necklace, earrings, bracelet, and hair ornament also.

A very happy Birthday to all of you Halloween babies.
Most notably Mikey Crane and Sabrina Pandora!

Autumn here in Rochester NY is quite something.
Most of the trees are bright gold tipped in orange and
they have left a carpet of gold over everything while
seeming miraculously to still look as though they really
have not lost any leaves. I have been enjoying it every morning
as we drive to the school we are at this week.

Also I find that all of the houses here are very interesting.
No plain old colonials here no sir! All the houses have interesting
angles, sun porches, siding, or some other neat little touch that makes
them all interesting to look at, all in all the scenery is quite nice.

Rochester is also the land of really nice restaurants.
Since it seems like no one here really wants to be photographed it's
more like a work funded vacation with internet.

I feel a bit like I'm always running around of late ha ha ha.
I went to the cake lady's on Wednesday with my mom.
She's local to my parents house and has been making only
wedding cakes for about 25 years. The funny thing is I picked
out a cake on the knot that I liked a lot for an example of
what I was looking for and it turned out to be one of her cakes.
She had a picture of it up on the wall in the office ha ha ha.
I guess she's the cake lady for me then.

We also picked a florist who's in Haddam, my mom and I used to
go to their park and rec flower arranging classes. their prices
seem pretty reasonable and they also own a nursery so we can rent
plants and hanging baskets or anything they have on the lot instead
of having to buy things like that so that's really cool. Plus they
are really nice people.

Amy came to visit for the weekend which was supremely awesome.
We spent Saturday running about to bridal shops to look at dresses.
Everyone has their dress ordered now and we even wound up picking out shoes!
yay efficiency. That really leaves deciding on a DJ mostly, everything else
is just deciding on little touches and buying things. We need to pick out dishes
and silverware. We already picked out our china. I find I am somewhat grateful
not to have a job right now because all of this is so time consuming.
I am enjoying it though.

I am also working on Kerri's dress and I must say I think it is my favorite so
far. I am really pleased with how it is turning out. Matt and I are in Rochester
this week working so I shall have to wait until we get back to work on it any more
alas.

My house is now decorated for Halloween
this makes me happy...Also it is clean.
Wonder of wonders. I have to mop the floors
today though and then the cleaning shall be
complete in it's magnificence.
(see Amy you get to stay in a clean house!)

Also I have the best Fiance' ever.
He came home last night with roses and
caramel Cheesecake from the cheesecake factory.
^_^

Well I've been a bit busy.
Jeeze louise.... I'm somewhat glad I don't have a job
because I have no idea how I would meet with all these
wedding people if I had a full time job. It's so time
consuming O.o

So we have pretty much settled on a caterer and a site.
We've decided much to matt's delight not to get a cake
through the caterer so we get the fun process of going to
cake shops and trying all the cakes. Which matt thinks
is a large part of the reason to have a wedding.
We'll try the first shop this week. It's right near
my parents house and all they do is wedding cakes.

In other news we went out to do a matt and I shoot
in the rain sunday in Lake Mohegan park. It was fun
yet cold and occasionally wet. I think we got some
nice photos though.

I am also back to sewing. I'm making a gown for Kerrie
for the NE event and I'm having fun with it. It's mostly
of my own design and I think it will be very fun and sexy.

We went to the Big E last night and had
a great time eating our way around.
They put like 6 strawberries on a skewer
THEN dipped them in chocolate. GENIUS!
So much easier to eat that way nom nom nom.

Matt went about with his tripod and camera
taking slow shudder speed photos of the lit up rides.
We stayed until it was just too cold.

Today we head off to the last wedding of the month
Ali and HOWIE! Matt is the official wedding photographer
for this one. I'm doing the bride's hair and make up.
It should be a good time.

I now have 3 more caterers who seem to be willing to talk
about making a reasonably priced meal so I feel a lot less
stressed out about my budget and being able to have actual
people attend our wedding and not just plants :)

More wedding fun with Mike and Siri's wedding.
We again had a wonderful time and everyone looked amazing
I was entranced with the coolness of Siri's hair.

Sunday my parents threw Matt and I a family engagement party.
It was lots of fun and Matt's father made me the most beautiful
wooden scroll box. good times.

My dad is getting very stressed about planning and money
and I am trying to not let him stress me out.
So far I've done fairly well at just having a good time
planning things.

I am however slowly growing to loath caterers
and their ridiculous idea of what counts as reasonable
prices.

wedding looove.
We trucked out to VA for Eddie and Emily's wedding.
We really had a wonderful time, it was a beautiful wedding
and Megan did a wonderful job officiating it. Everyone looked
appropriately dashing or beautiful, and it seemed like everyone
had a great time. I thought their favors were adorable. They
gave everyone a pair of d6's with their names and wedding
date on them. Matt decided to test out his polarizer and wound
up playing second photographer. Which was good as their photographer
didn't have a wide angle lense or a bounce flash and wound up borrowing
some of his stuff.

We went with my parents to check out a wedding site yesterday.
Matt even wound up finishing work early and got to come along.
The place is beyond amazing and unless they wind up freeing up
a more convenient date in the next two weeks we will be getting
married on May 16th 2010 at Eolia Mansion in Harkness state park.
WHEEEE!

We are enjoying being engaged and are both
stupidly sappy about it, my mother is having great fun
avoiding doing work and cruizeing around on websites.
She found us a super amazing place in Waterford CT.
We're going to go meet with the people there next
week and see what they have for openings.
If it lives up to it's photos it's GORGEOUS!

We've totally dived right into planning.
So far we are really enjoying dreaming
and planning.

So I actually got engaged on Tuesday September 1st, but then I went away to
Virgina for the rest of the week so I am a bit late with the posting. But we went away to
Saratoga Springs, NY on Monday and Tuesday to visit our friends Ali and Howie,
and for Matt's work. I hung out with Howie all day until Matt got home at about 3:30
at which point he decided it was a nice day for photographs and that there were a
lot of really pretty local parks. So I put on some make up and headed out for our
"shoot."




( Love in the Gardens )

Here is the dress I made at siri's shower.
It's the middle one with the rosets up the bust part.

So I got to try my outfit on Siri and
it looks so very lovely and wondrous.
I am pleased.

Second Siri's shower was a blast.
I learned I can make one pretty sweet
toilet paper dress in 10 min flat,
complete with toilet paper flower
detailing.

I finished the outfit I was working on for Siri.
It is so lovely I can't wait to see how it looks on her.
It is really some of my best work so far.
I am so excited about it.

Project super hot Siri goes according to plan.
It is amazing, and I am impressive mwahaha.
hopefully the rest will go as swimmingly.

Other than that I am being annoyed at how the peaches
are taking their sweet time ripening this year.
I have not been able to make any peach pies yet,
It's almost September...this is blasphemous!

*pout*

There is just something about a beach vacation that is
so much more relaxing and refreshing than other vacations.
Perhaps it's because my brain only recognizes beaches as vacation
from spending every summer in CA as a child.

Matt and I went to Old Orchard Beach with a good portion of
his family for the weekend a bit ago. It was very nice and fun
and relaxing and we got to hang out with his cousin Bill and his wife
Mandy while most everyone else made goo goo faces at the cute baby.
We walked on the beach, laid out in the sun, ate ice cream, had
good conversations. It was all very nice.

I'm fairly used to my routine as the non married housewife/freelance
artist chick. I do the grocery shopping, cook the meals, I'm slowly
weeding and mulching the garden into delightful flowers instead of it's
usual weed and grass infested mess. I bake a lot. I really like living
around so many farms. It means I can get fresh local produce in the summer
instead of going to stores, plus we have our own massive garden once things
start ripening out there.

I still work Freelance for my old job here and there, and I've picked up
a new client to freelance for that will hopefully be fun. They seem to
really like me and my work.

I've also started a sewing project for Siri. You'll just have to wait till
after nonclave to hear about it, but it should be very pretty I think.
I have been ridiculously meticulous about putting it together.

anyone know how to setup a postscript printer
on either Mac OSX or Windows xp?
I need to do both.

thanks

Happy Birthday Vinny!

You know funny thing about being unemployed...
I don't seem to be sitting around much.
I seem to have way more to do in a day then when I was "employed"
Sheesh.

I did more book cover work today,
I spent a good 2 hours running through the trouble shooting answers
to get my wacom tab up an running, that worked. Though my photoshop
seems to dislike some of my shift keytabs today that it did just fine
yesterday. It probably just needs a reboot but i made due without them
to finish the project.

I redesigned a part of the dance recital CD cover and then resized
it and then had to go get it printed again.Then I had to put the covers
on all 50 dvds so they are ready to mail. I then attempted to go to the
post office to get envelopes but they were closed already alas.
I did pick up packing tape though so I can print out the lables
here cut them out and then just tape the address on each package at
the post office. Bleh

I have a meeting set up with a printer in early August who is really
excited to have me do some freelance work for them. Hopefully it'll turn
into some full time work, or full time work with one of the many people who
they print for.

wooo got a lot done today!
Finished the back cover of a book I had
done the front cover for earlier. Got the cd inserts
printed for the DVDS of the dance show to go out.
Designed a logo for paper city pictures.
Designed a webpage layout for paper city pictures.
(It's pretty sweet I'd say.) Made lunch, and soon I
will head over to my parent's house for weekly bonding and
So You Think You Can dance.