Happy Just After New Year

So in the 3 days into 2012 we’ve gotten, I’ve managed to eat less sugar (yes!) and exercise 2/3. Yesterday we spent the day up at Keystone mountain skiing, and while I may have cried the whole first run, it was ultimately a success.

Adam and I at the top of Dercum Mountain with Breckenridge in the background.

I wouldn’t say I’m getting better, I’d say I’m getting more consistent. Hopefully we can go up again in the next week or two and get another lesson which should help build the confidence. Then I’ll have to work on taking longer runs, since those seem to knock me out quickly. Though I should say that the first run took 50 minutes and doing it again later in the day took only 20. Definitely improvement.

Tonight we went to Jack Quinn’s. For those who don’t know, JQ is a local Irish pub (music sing-a-longs on Thursdays!) that hosts a running club every Tuesday. After 10 runs, you get a t-shirt. The sorority girl in me is determined to get the t-shirt. We’re now up to 4 ‘runs,’ when really Adam runs and I walk, so hopefully the weather stays crisp without any wind so we can keep going.

Hopefully I can keep this momentum going. Between eating less chocolate (I know, hard to believe!) and getting a strong fitness routine, I’ll be a happier, healthier (skinnier) me!

What new years resolutions did you make?

JK

His & Hers

Adam and I had a lovely Christmas yesterday. We certainly got some great gifts and enjoyed a trip to see Sherlock Holmes and a Packers win.

This is our first real Christmas together in the US – complete with cookies, lights, and church on Christmas eve. Despite one or both of us being abroad the last three Christmases, we certainly know just how to make it a great day.

I’ll admit, buying gifts for boys can be rough. There are so many video games and ties and books that it makes me want to lie down with a compress and a bottle of Advil. But this year, being in Colorado, I took keeping warm to the next level:

Brewing your own beer is a gift that’ll keep you warm all winter. He sensibly gave me a new hat and adorable matching white gloves with tortoise shell buttons. At least we’ll both be comfortable until May when winter might decide to end.

And when we bought each other His and Hers Sperrys, it seemed like a good sign for our new married life together.

Hope you all had a very merry Christmas! Now to find those cookies…

Cheers,
Jenna Kate

Tags: Beer, Christmas, Colorado, sperry

Happy Christmas from the Fratistotles!

Hello darlings!

Sorry for the hiatus, but now that our wedding, the holidays, and two OTHER weddings are behind us, I have more free time!

And to celebrate, I’m sharing a Christmas present with all of you: our wedding photos are online! Thanks so much to our amazing photographer Carmen who got these up for us today.

If you’d like to see all 1,054 photos, click here, then enter your name and email. Don’t worry, it’s just to prove you’re a real person. Feel free to comment away!

And just because Santa likes y’all, here’s a sneak peek:

38: Social Weddings

Tonight I went to a social media marketing and SEO class held by Stellar Marketing Solution‘s founder Kelly Noble and SEO guru Hunter Willis. The class was focused on business applications, but I’m coming from more of a lifestyle blogger angle. So, how does social media affect weddings?

1. When planning a wedding, you have to be careful what you share and where. You don’t want to incite any fights or get into a situation where you have to extend invites because social media makes people think they’re invited.

2. You can also take advantage of sharing your wedding information with your guests. We’ve got a pretty awesome website (weddingwire.com/jennaandadam) and people are using it. Not as much as we’d like, but it certainly helps. It was awesome to see our counter go from 200 to 2000 after our save the dates went out.

3. Social media has become a haven for brides-to-be. Reputable and reliable sites like WeddingBee and WeddingWire help provide planning resources, connect you with other brides in your wedding location, and give you access to opinions from people with your type of crazy on their mind. That way, you’re not driving your friends/family away with your neurotic obsession over napkin holders or cake designs.

As the web becomes less informative and more a complete social experience, niches like wedding planning will only continue to thrive. The salon I bought my wedding dress at offers a webcam where your family and friends not with you can log on and see you in the best and worst, to have that social experience without actually being there. The virtual world will only grow further into reality.

On that note, Pluto has also experienced the affects of social media, most recently after being demoted. There was a huge push online advocating for Pluto to keep it’s status, as well as yearly calls to return it to it’s former glory. Pluto definitely shows how cultural experiences are transforming.

 

Don’t forget to celebrate ‘Kiss and Make Up Day’ this week, because everyone can use a little lovin’!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: hunter willis, kelly noble, kiss, planning, Pluto, seo, Social Media, social media marketing, stellar marketing solutions, the wedding planner, Wedding, weddingbee, weddingwire

39: Poetry

One of the biggest parts to planning a wedding is writing the ceremony (duh, that’s the part where you get married!). That was our big project this weekend, and I managed to edit it down to only 6 pages, which is much better than the 13 we started out with. A lot of couples choose to write each other love notes or poems, but I prefer to use something a bit more classic:

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his heighth be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

or this excellent e e cummings piece:

i carry your heart with me by e e cummings 
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

or this piece:

Sir Walter Scott: Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto v. Stanza 13 
True love ’s the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy’s hot fire,
Whose wishes soon as granted fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.

 

 

Today’s links are in honor of National Poetry Day. I just love these two quotes. The letters Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote to his wife are some of the most beautiful letters I have ever read.

What is your favorite love poem?

 

 

Tags: ee cummings, Hawthorne, Menander, national poetry day, Poetry, Reading, Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, wedding ceremony

40: 40 Days and 40 Nights

 

 

40 days seems like a lot to y’all, but to me it’s a nap. Just think how Josh Hartnett felt when he gave up sex for Lent:

40 days is a long time. Especially when you spend your ‘crafting weekend’ not crafting. Does making cupcakes for a late National Cupcake Day make up for it?

 

 

Now I’m just hoping I can have a break from my allergies to be more productive. We did go to the Air Force football game yesterday, which was a nice break and a chance to see the sun for the first time in weeks. Hopefully we can fit in more little things like that to break up all this planning.

What would you set as your own ’40 day’ project? You can’t say getting married, that’s mine!

 

 

 

Tags: 40 days and 40 nights, Air Force, cupcake, daffodils, Falcons Football, Josh Hartnett, lent, national cupcake day, Wedding

41: Thoughts

 

Planning a wedding takes a lot out of you. Sarah’s quote today is ”Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is the threads, tiny hundreds of threads which sew people together through the years” – Simone Signoret. Sometimes it feels like I’m personally making hundreds of tiny stitches, just doing a little here and a little there to keep the fabric together.

This is not a metaphor for my relationship with Adam (we’re happy little clams), but it is a metaphor for daily life. Sometimes you have to do just the little things to make each day go by, then once you’ve had a chance to regroup, you can do the decorative parts in the middle.

 

Happy 41 days!

 

42: First RSVPS!

Yesterday we got our first mailed RSVPs! Our invitations went out last Friday from the Denver Airport, and technically best man Hardy’s parents were the first to RSVP via our wedding website, www.weddingwire.com/jennaandadam. Hardy himself was a close second.

But opening the mailbox today, we had a nice stack of SEVEN RSVPs from friends and family. The very first one we opened was from the Wood’s:

Of course Jake, a fraternity brother and Rugby teammate had to cross out our classy “happily” accepts and write in “drunkenly.” It was the perfect first RSVP to open.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, there are two people responsible for Adam and I getting together. The first is my Alpha Chi Big Sis (and maid of honor) Alana who introduced us, and the second is Jake who was determined to get an intoxicated Adam to ask for my phone number at 1:30 am the night we met. So really, if it wasn’t for Jake, we probably would be seeing other people.

Needless to say after going to his wedding last summer to the adorable Kim, we are super excited they’ll be coming!

On to our inspiration links from the newly Mrs. Sarah Trank:

I love these links for two big reasons. #1: Sarah and I have known each other since we were 10. She knows how I can polish off a gallon of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. She also knows there’s no way I’d ever diet for my wedding because frankly I love CCCDIC too much.

#2: Adam definitely deserves something nice. He has been an amazing help these last few weeks while I’ve been pulling my hair out and breaking down from the NASA Space Shuttle sized load of stress I’ve been carrying around.

And I say Space Shuttle because unlike a mountain, it’s a physical object that in theory could be picked up and carried. Granted its weight and size makes that impossible for even and army of humans, but it’s and effective image.

Now all I have to do is figure out what I should do for my hubby-to-be. Any ideas?

Cheers!
Jenna Kate

Tags: ice cream, indianapolis, mail, planning, rsvp, space shuttle, Wedding, wedding website

43: 80s Music

Today, REM announced they were breaking up. It just so happens this coincides with #86: August 10th is Duran Duran Day.

I won’t say I have a favorite R.E.M. or Duran Duran song, I don’t have many of them in my iTunes. But I love 80s rock. And I love Corey Hart’s “I Wear My Sunglasses at Night”

44: Confessions

I have a few confessions to make. We are 44 days out from our wedding (as of the 21st) and I have only done 68 of the 117 things on my WeddingWire to do list. I have not done any of the craft/DIY projects on my list. And I have put off opening the best gift anyone could give a bride to be.

I have a better picture somewhere, but my oldest friend Sarah made a very heartfelt paper chain as a bridal shower gift. Each link on the chain has a quote, word of encouragement, or a fun fact to help get me through my last 90 days of wedding planning.

Here is the confession part: I haven’t been opening them every day like I was supposed to. And reading through them all is making me wish I had opened them sooooo much sooner. Thank you for each of your thoughts, and I promise to open them every day from now on. If I’d thought about it, I would have just done 2 each day so I’d catch up without spoiling it, but oh well.

(These are all the ones I have yet to open…)

I know you won’t read this until you’re back from your honeymoon, but thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me, and how much I know this was exactly what I needed these last few hectic weeks (making my regret/remorse that much stronger!).

So, on to the good part. I’m going to be sharing them with you all! I’ll post a few each day and hopefully I’ll have a few other surprises to share along the way.

For tonight, we’ll go back to the beginning.

#90: August 6- Happy Bridal Shower! Have fun with the ladies!

#89: August 7- Recoup from bridal shower awesomeness

#87: August 8- Also, today is nationa “Sneak some zucchini onto your neighbor’s porch” day…for real!

So, if you didn’t put zucchini on your neighbor’s porch on August 8th (like I didn’t), then feel free to do it today.

Happy planning!

Tags: bridal shower, bridesmaid, chain, confession, craft, DIY, paper, Wedding, zucchini