a little help from friends

"What would you think if I sang out of tune,

Would you stand up and walk out on me?

Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song,

And I'll try not to sing out of key.

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends."

I'm not going to lie, I almost did not blog today because I am exhausted, irritated, and just plain stressed. However, I knew you would all give me a little bloggie love if I told you about my day.

First of all, I'm so glad you all liked my stuffed tomatoes from last night! I have one hanging out in my fridge to make an appearnace sometime tomorrow!

I think my problem with today started when I woke up at 5:30 and couldn't fall back asleep. I got out of bed around 6 and decided to take my time with breakfast this morning.

whipped banana oats with oodles of toppings, monkey cup coffee, h20

i realized this breakfast would be perfect for the 4th of july!

cherries (red), coconut (white), and blueberries (blue) - of course topped with cinnamon and peanut butter

I left my house pretty early to go over to my parents where the dining room table is wedding central! Before I went, I got in a strength training session over at the gym. It was only 9:30 when my stomach started rumbling - I guess that's good and it must mean my muscles needed to be repaired! It also may have had something to do with the fact I ate breakfast at 6. I snacked on this bad boy:

delicious, but i'll take my cashew cookie bar over this one any day

I had no idea how intense the place card making would be. It took me probably three hours to do all of the following:

• print out
• tear apart
• put into table groups to make sure no one accidently got left out
• put into A-Z groups
• Alphabetize

My printer really didn't like these - I swear at a couple of points my printer literally SPIT them out at me. They FLEW out of the printer. It was kind of weird, but had me laughing nonetheless.

I also cut our favor cards as well. We are doing a donation instead of a traditional favor, so those will go in place of a menu card. At about noon, I picked up my mom and we went on some errands and to my favorite lunch place: Chipotle!

Chipotle is almost the only "fast food" place I can go to eat. I love the quality of the food, and I also love the morals of the company. Chipotle strives to use the best ingredients - I absolutely love it. You really can't see my burrito bol underneath that pile of lettuce - I always get extra!

Just so you're aware, however, I had black beans, fajita veggies, a plethara of salsas, guac, and lettuce

From here on out, I apologize for the fact that my picture taking was really lacking today. I had a really stressful afternoon. First, mommasita and I went to Costco to get sooo many lemons and clementines for my centerpieces. When I got home, I started to continue on my wedding duties when I got a call from the country club where we're getting married at and having our reception. I went in there yesterday to make our final payment and was sooo happy to finally have that past us. I got a call today from the accountant saying they made a mistake and forgot to charge us sales tax! I looked at the recepts, and sure enough.. they did.

Now, here's the thing: it was their mistake. Their mistake is costing us another $700. Something seems a little wrong with that. It would have been one thing if they were nice about it and didn't sound accusing (yes, she made it seem like I was TRYING to get away with not paying.. seriously?), but the woman was rude, very aggressive, and just not nice. She was not very sympathetic to the fact that that amount of money is a really big deal to a young couple who are paying for a wedding and just renovated a house. I was hysterical, FH was livid, but in the end... we have to pay if we want to get married. It is so frustrating.

After that whole debacle, I went to go pick up my wedding dress from the woman who steamed it. She is a friend of someone I know, and she did a great job putting my bustles on. However, when you walk into her house, you can definitely tell it is a house with smokers. The room she uses as her sewing room is totally smoke free, and the last time I dropped my dress off and picked it up, it was totally fine. Today, however, when I picked it up, it was hanging out in the living room. I took it home, unwrapped it as she instructed me, and my entire bedroom reeked of smoke. MY WEDDING DRESS SMELLS LIKE A BOWLING ALLEY. I am so unbelievably mad it is not even funny. Needless to say, hysterical again, I called mommasita. She assured me it would get better before Friday, but I am so angry about it. I even called the seamstress to tell her about it and she "just can't believe" it happened. Well, DUH lady! If you smoke in the house and leave my dress hanging in a smoke infested room, my dress is definitely going to smell like smoke.

At this point, I had given myself a stomachache from all the stress and was just done with the day. I had to meet FH, his brother, and sister in law for dinner though. His brother is marrying us and wanted to go over the final details of the ceremony. I am glad I went because I had a great time catching up with them. I didn't get a pic of my food, but I want you to picture a chopped salad with tomatoes, cukes, onions, olives, and mushrooms. There was also a homemade vinagrette on the salad. I wish I could have had something else, but we were at a pizza joint so there weren't very many options.

When I got home, FH put together the bed for our guest room and I put in a load of laundry. Guess what we found out!! Our washer is leaking. You've got to be kidding me. Looks like I will be doing laundry at Mommasita and Big Daddy Wayne's before the honeymoon.

I wnated to calm down so at about 9:30, I pulled oat (I meant to write OUT, but hey... Fruedian slip, right?) some blueberry muffin crunch cereal to make me feel better about my life.

Nice job muffin man, nice job. You did your job.

I know a lot of you are commenting about how calm I seem 3 days before my wedding, but I'm really not! I'm a crazy wreck.

In retrospect though, if the only bad thing that happens is my dress is a little smelly and I have to dish out more cash than I expected, so be it.

My bestie comes tomorrow (not the one who was featured on here before... I can have two okay?)!! I'm so pumped!

Question: Can you give me some words of encouragement for the days ahead? I would really appreciate it! I love reading everyone's comments. They keep me going for sure!

this was anything BUT a lazy sunday

Where in the world did this day go?? Thank you for all your comments about my little "blue" dress - it's actually kind of purpley in person. How versatile! I bought it a couple of years ago from The Loft for New Year's Eve and loved it!! The Loft used to be my favorite store - until I had to buy a house and pay for a wedding! :)

After church, FH's aunt, uncle, and cousins came with us to our house to pick out paint colors. His uncle owns a painting business and will be painting in there all week long! His aunt just has really great style so I wanted her input. I am really happy with the colors we ended up choosing. I cannot wait to show you the pictures! I also get something I have always wanted: a red door!!!

I was debating whether or not I wanted to go to the beach, but it was starting to look a little cloudy. FH and his cousin were the only ones going, so I let it be a "boys" trip - I went out and ran some errands with mommasita. We had a mission today: get a closet organization system to install into the master bedroom. We mosied over to Menard's because I had a gift card there. We found the perfect one, had it in the cart, and I got out my gift card only to find out my gift card was to Lowe's. UGGGGH!!! It would have been fine, but we went totally out of our way to get it. Before I could get frustrated, we decided we needed to get food in our bellies to make the situation seem better. So, we went to Chipotle (unpictured). One ginormous burrito bol later, we were off to Lowe's!

Long story short, today's shopping trip was a total bust. I came home with nothing and felt like I wasted my afternoon. I was aggravated, so I had a snack.

first off - lighting in this pic is absolutely stunning, no? grapes, a naner, almonds.
another snack included unpictured hummus and crackers

After I had some food in my stomach, I was feeling nice and sleepy - nap time! I find that Sunday afternoon naps are perfect. I cozied up with a book and read until I drifted off for a good 45 minutes.

I putzed around for the rest of the afternoon doing random wedding things and an abs video was thrown in there. Around 6:30 I decided to make dinner despite my kind of "off" stomach. It was probably from all the fiber in that burrito bol I ate earlier. I eat when I'm not hungry - I know I have to, so I kind of force it down. Once I start eating though, I am glad I did!! I kept dinner light and fresh.

baby spinach salad

sweet tater halves

After dinner, I went over to FH's (parent's) house where his mom helped me do the seating arrangements for her side of the family. That was a HUGE help - if you have never planned a wedding, the seating chart is the most DIFFICULT part of it all! It has given me the most stress (which is so minimal it's almost funny) of the entire planning process.

While I was there, she was making zucchini bread - yum! Would you like to know why? She wernt to her garden yesterday to get the two of us some fresh produce (for this, i love her) and came home with the most massive zucchinis you will ever see in your entire life!! To show you a comparison, I have paired my zucchini up with a roll of paper towels.

mr. zucchini

I see lots of zucchini in my future - I have that huge one, two normal sized ones, and my mom and I got two zucchini yesterday! I am planning on making bread tomorrow. Any more ideas on what to make with zucchini?

When I left FH's it was raining like nobody's business. I got drenched when I was walking running to my car. I couldn't see when I was driving - perfect! When I got home, I also had to make another run for it! Moments like that just make me laugh. I feel like a little kid and have to just giggle. My FMIL asked me if I wanted an umbrella, and I said, "No! It's more fun this way!" - which it totally was.

After I got home, I felt a small twinge of hunger, so I decided it was best I made a snack. An apple sun butter "sun" with raisins. I am currently eating it, and just got sunbutter on my keyboard - whoops! Guess who's at my feet - Chagall! He knows the crunch of an apple from a mile away.

i miss you natural sunlight....

I'm off to go enjoy the thunder and lightning - I may watch a movie or just read myself to sleep!

Question: Do you like storms? Why or why not? Have you had a scary incident with storms?