Frijoles! Were getting Married!!!!

O.k. so I know its been a while since my last entry. About 3 years to be exact. Many things have changed since then. We have settled in to our house. We started working on the Outside of the house and the landscape. But who cares about all that right? lets get to the good stuff! Well Doug Proposed on Valentines day 2 years ago. We had wanted to get married soon, but money was always a big factor. I had gone to a few of those wedding expo things and it became apparent how much it really costs to have a wedding!

Almost 2 months ago Doug and I went to the Arboretum (we always loved that place) and figured were just going to ask about their Weddings. Next thing we knew, we walked out of there with a DATE! August 14th to be exact. With less then 3 months until the I Do date, we and when i say We.. i mean ME.. began to Hyperventilate! Doug Assured and RE-Assured me that it would be o.k and that as long as we took it one step at a time, this would be a wonderful wedding.
We decided to do at least 1 thing for the wedding on the weekends (since we both work really long hours during the week).
In just a few weekends we got my parents priest (catholic) to wed us as an Interfaith marriage. I'm catholic (non practicing) and Doug is... well... doug is Spiritual =0)
We decided on our guest list... and this was a very hard list to work with.
We can only invite 50 of our family to be present at our Ceremony and a total of 65 people at our Reception. Why 65 you ask..because that is all we can fit in our back yard! Our pool takes up a big space so 65 is the number we came up with that will be comfortable and SAFE to fit (wouldn't want anyone falling in the pool if you know what i mean)! But Coming up with this number was very hard because that meant that a lot of our friends would not be able to attend. But we needed to stay within the limitations and that meant that it would be mostly family.
We also came up with a theme. I based it on a wedding invitation i saw online.
It represented who we are and what type of wedding we wanted. We are having a Garden Summer wedding with a Backyard Reception at our home. Very laid back and NON fancy-Schmancy. This card represented all of that. Unfortunately we could not afford the Wedding invitations but, at the very least it was a great inspiration to our theme.

So now we had the theme and we had the "Padre" (as Doug likes to call him) and a wonderful venue. But nothing else.
Until my friend/co-worker Cristina came to the rescue. She is oh so Graciously catering our event.
When deciding food for 65 people, it can become a bit pricey. Doug is allergic to shellfish and i hate anything from the sea, so that was simple to cancel out seafood. Earlier last year i was introduced to Tropicana cuban restaurant. I thought it would be an amazing idea to have them cater our event with their appetizer/finger foods. We went for a tasting with my parents, and they loved it! Doug enjoyed it as well... and I even got my BFF Elizabeth (who is also getting married this year) to try it out with her hubby to be. They didn't enjoy it as much as we did. But We for sure thought we had it all down and figured out. Until i went and changed my mind because I thought it would be a bit weird to have a full on formal dinner setting and only to have finger foods. So i scratched that off the board and started brain storming with Cristina. We decided on an Amazing dinner and we where even able to fit a Cocktail hour in the budget!

In regards to the Budget. What exactly is the budget? I don't know.... BUT i know it's small. Everyone said SET A BUDGET! We can't really do that because we don't have money for a budget. Because it is only 3 months away... (now 1 month away) .. we decided to save from our monthly pay checks and work from there. What ever we have available is what we will use. We will NOT be using credit for this wedding that is for sure! My sister and my mom and Dougs mom is helping with what we need as well, but we are keeping the budget VERY conservative.

Yesterday we went to the Party Rental store in Brea and ordered all the tables, chairs, linens, china etc. We where both very surprised at how little it cost. I for sure thought it was going to be atleast $2500. But to our surprise we came in at under $1000. Not to say that $1000 dollars isn't a lot but with all the nice things we got it was worth it.

Today i went to the mother ship aka:Ikea to pick out the centerpieces for the tables. I was able to get all of the vases, rocks (for the vases), candles and such for under $75.00.
Tomorrow i will upload more photos of I have so far.

The Big 3-0 & Death Valley

So dougie asked me what i wanted to do for my Birth Day. My BIG 3-0 Birthday. I knew i wanted it to be special. I tinkered around with different ideas for a while, and i couldn't decide on anything. Then i gave it a different approach. I thought back to my past and tried to remember the times that made me the happiest. One though stood out from the rest. CAMPING! I have always loved camping and Death Valley is the place that makes me the happiest. I have had so many awesome memories there. I have found Peace and happiness in the solitude of the Sand Dunes. So for my birthday I said to Dougie "we are going to Death Valley". Oddly enough he was stoaked about the whole idea. We have both been avid campers in our past. So it was funny when we sorted our camping equipment out and he was like " i want to take my stove" and i said "NO i want to take MY stove" in the end .. he won. His was nicer.
So we packed up the Element and headed out on the road for a 3 day trip to my favorite spot on earth!!!!


Our first night was not that great because we couldn't find a camp site...I mean .. who knew Death valley would be full on Easter Weekend?!?!?!?!
So we settled for pitching tent in the parking
Our 2nd night was better, we got up early and snatched a good camping spot with a table, bench, grill and fire








During the day i made sandwiches and such and Dougie Senor Chef made us Dinner.
There's something about camping that will make ANYTHING taste good! (Not to say that dougie can't cook, because oh my lord he can) But those wher the best hot dogs i have had in my LIFE, and that chilli. i don't even EAT chilli and i ate the whole thing!!!







So Sunday morning Easter morning but more importantly SIGRID'S BIRTHDAY Morning =) I woke up at about 6 am dragged dougie out of the tent so we could rush to the dunes before the sun came up. After what i think was about 45 min hustle through the dunes we got to our sweet spot! The top of dune!









Dougies big climb








We also found Big Foot strolling in the dunes










Not bad for a 30 year old!


























Together For Ever In Death Valley

Primero

Ithink it's only appropriate that i kick off this blog with Our new house!
Yes Dougie and I bought a House! We officially became home owners the day Before thank's giving. Ever since we have been working hard on fixing it up. It's a 3 bedroom 1 bath with a pool! Yes it has a pool. I mean how cool is that! I'v always wanted a pool. I remember last summer me and dougie wher pool hopping and overstaying our welcomes to anyone who had a pool. We where bad. So now, we have our own. And NO ONE can kick us out this time! =)
For now though we have fixed the majority of the inside of the house. We gutted the kitchen and bathroom. Re piped the entire house to new copper plumbing. Re-painted the whole house. (believe me..if you would have seen the colors you would have too!) We also re-did the floors ourselves. OH man was that a task. It sucked, it was a lot of work that took patience that apparantly dougie didn't have! So 4 months later ..we did it. Finally....After a few meltdowns =)
Following are photos of the before and afters. Hope you Enjoy!!!


We cut out a whole in the wall to open it up into the living room.
Dougie wanted to turn it into a bar. Yeah like that was going to happen!
The kitchen had to be completely Gutted. New floor, walls, electrical, ceiling, lighting fixtures, cabinets, appliances..even the outlets had to be changed. Cabinets where from Ikea with the butcher block counter tops. Everyone Now take perticular attention to my stove! that is my baby! I bought it at an antique shop. It's a Chambers Model C in Buttercup Yellow. It has a thermo well a Griddle and broiler up on top and It has an awesome oven that cooks with the Gas Turned Off! Anyhow it's super cool.
Well needless to say we where very pleased with the way the kitchen came out.


The Living room was a big challenge as well. Besides the Obvious paint job, we also had to re-do the entire ceiling. First of all it had popcorn ceilings and 2 beams where warped and causing slopes, so it all had to come down.
We replaced the beams, added all new insulation and installed new recessed lighting. We also cut out a portion of the main wall to make it feel more open and so i can keep an eye on dougie while i cook =)