Butterfly Music

Here they are.  :)

Well, I was laid off from my job on Tuesday morning. This was completely unexpected, and as my Robert's job ended just last week, we are both without income at this point. Thankfully we have some money saved up for our wedding, May 16th, which is just 22 days away now. So we'll cut back as much as we can on wedding stuff and save anything else we can for the honeymoon and for living expenses afterwards.

Please pray that I can find a permanent job (2+ years) that will pay well. We already signed a 13-month lease on a somewhat nice apartment, and we'd like to stay there if possible. But that means minimum wage won't work.

Please also pray that Robert can find a good summer job; he has a job for a schoolyear, but nothing for the summer at this point.

If you have recommendations for places to look (my primary experience is call center work/basic IT helpdesk, but I've also worked as a receptionist, HR representative, tax preparer, and general office help), please leave a comment.  I'm also looking for something temporary for the next couple of weeks before the wedding-- if you're in the upstate of SC and have a project you need done in your office, please let me know.  I can organize just about anything, and I don't mind data entry or stuffing envelopes.

For those who are interested, here are links to our wedding registries.  Please do not feel obligated to buy us a gift; this is merely information for those who want to know what we'd like.  :o)

Target

Bed, Bath, and Beyond

Pampered Chef

Amazon.com

We don't mind gently used items.  If you have an item that we've requested and you wouldn't mind getting rid of it, please feel free to give that instead of a store bought gift. 

A couple of other notes:  my mom purchased an almost-complete set of Lenox Temperware Fancy Free dishes at a thrift shop for me.  They are in great condition; anything gently used would work nicely with them. To complete the set, I need:

7 cereal bowls
1 dinner plate
2 cups

We're also hoping to find the following pieces of furniture, listed from most needed to just "nice to have":

- table and chair set.  Four to six chairs would be perfect.  We bought two solid dark wook 24" chairs a few weeks ago, so a tall table and two more 24" tall chairs would work great too.
- bookshelves.  We're going to need several... preferably 2 or 3 tall sets to save space, and perhaps one or two shorter ones for bedroom and/or living room.
- a pantry of some sort, as most apartments don't have even a tiny closet anywhere near the kitchen.
- a kitchen island thingy on wheels.  Something like this, but hopefully not that expensive. 

I figure it'd be nice to say hello at least.  So... hi.  :o)  And maybe I should give a bit of an update, yes?

Life is crazy.  I had no idea how much went into planning a wedding.  I thought that if the bride wasn't picky about things, that it'd be easy to get everything done.  Ha.  Haha.  Whatever.  Even if I'm not that picky, I still have to make decisions about what I want.  I think I finally figured out my flowers a couple of weeks ago, and I found quite a few pictures of cakes to give me some good ideas.  I think I want my cake to have three square layers... I'm unsure about the exact design on the layers though.  I know I like drape-like things, latticework, and horizontal or vertical lines.  We'll see what happens with that.

The bridesmaid dresses are nearly done!  I'm getting to help make the buttons.  Covered buttons, I mean.  You make them using a neat little kit with button fronts, button backs, a rubber "miracle holder," and a plastic "pusher."  There's a pattern on the back of the package to tell what size circle of fabric you'll need for your button size.  You place the circle of fabric on the rubber "miracle holder" which has a hole just the size of the button front.  Then you place the button front on top (make sure the fabric is facing the right way) and push it in.  Make sure all the edges of the fabric are folded in toward the center and not sticking out, then place the button back on top.  Use the plastic pusher thingy to get the back in and voila!  nice covered button.  There's a demo with pictures on this blog... though she's actually making fabric-covered pushpins instead. 

Let's see... what else have I been doing?  Working a lot, of course.  Last week was my six on... which means I worked six twelve-hour night shifts in a row.  Ouch.  This is the fourth time I've worked six straight, and the first time I haven't wound up feeling depressed toward the end of it.  I finally figured out that toward the end of the six on my body is worn out and I start to feel down physically.   As long as I'm aware of it I can deal with it rightly, but otherwise I sit at work one full night moping and feeling like crying for no good reason. 

The guest list is almost done-- yay!  It looks like we'll be inviting about 300 people and sending Facebook invitations to at least 150 more.  I think we know way too many people... haha. 

I had my first Pampered Chef party this past Saturday... lots of fun.  It wound up being very small (nine people including the consultant), but we had a nice time.  (I also had online orders from work, which helped.) I found out that Pampered Chef's salad chopper is really cool-- it has two blades and cuts whole romaine leaves really easily!  Pretty sure I've gotta have one of those.  ;o)

Robert and I bought a used couch at a yard sale on Saturday.  :o)  The seat cushions are quite soft, so I'll need to buy some slightly firmer padding to go inside.  And the outside has huge pink flowers (definitely not Robert's type, but he was the one that said to buy it!) so we'll use a slipcover.  Robert's mom actually has a slipcover in a nice dark olive/hunter green... she says it'll probably need some adjustment to work for our couch, but she doesn't mind us using it.  :o)  I think the color is great.  It's not such an olive green that it's disgusting, and it's not so hunter green that it's too dark. 

We also got a couple of chairs/stools at Big Lots yesterday.  They were having a 20% off sale, and these chairs were already on clearance.  They're solid dark-colored wood.  I think they're lovely... and they were $24 each!  That's hard to beat.  :o)

Well, I think that'll be all for now.  Hope all three or four of you are doing well.  ;o)  Have a great week!