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the renegade bride

“the wild, wacky adventures of a bridal industry insider +newlywed + new homeowner and (in practice)renovation-maven. Whee!”

August 3, 2011 I kissed an i-phone (and I liked it)

DISCLAIMER: this post has really nothing to do with my wedding or my reno, and mostly is me squeeing about my iphone. Read on with the knowledge that this post might not really enrich or help your life in any way, unless you seek some proof that you need an iphone (you do) or that buying one was a good idea in the first place (it was)

So, randomly, last night at dinner, I am attempting to do something on my phone (update the social networks with a pic of the new hair, which you can see below) and my phone won’t work. I have a hate-hate relationship with my phone, a beleagred and sad HTC Hero from the archaeic dark ages of the Android. HTC stopped having updates for my phone and it subsequently all went downhill from there.  My contract with Sprint is up in just a few months and I was going to hold out until it was over to switch carriers and get the iphone of my dreams. But then, husband says “well, why don’t we just go over and get you an i-phone”. I think it was the hair:

(aren’t thehot rug behind me and my unpainted walls just the epitome of sexy? yes, yes  i know). And i need to learn how to take a camera phone pic without it looking like a camera phone pic. Learning challenges.

Anyway. So…yeah, I got the iphone. Don is going to hold out for the I phone 5 but who knows when that is going to get here so I gladly got the 4. I’m sure the five will change his life and world, but for now the 4 is currently doing a pretty ok job at that for me, as I am queen of the world with happiness. I spent pretty much all night in my world of app downloads and wireless internet-ing and sending emails and geeking out over all the awesomeness that is the iphone. It’s way better than my HTC. Way, way better. Sorry, HTC, and sorry Android, but the iphone kind of just blew my mind and proved, once and for all, that the android isn’t even close in terms of a viable platform for smart phone butt-kicking. But I digress.

I got the white one. I love you, i-phone.  I know it’s crazy to love something that is a piece of technology, but seriously. I have been wanting/lusting after one of these babies for a really long time, and with the husband’s awesome discount through work and their $100 off with smartphone trade in, I got it for like nothing compared to what I thought it was going to be, so that was pretty much icing on the little cake. My i-phone cake.

And as a sidebar: I love our i-Pad (1, we don’t have the 2 yet) and I love the i-phone and now I wonder, dude, are we missing out by not having i-everything. Like would our lives be that much happier and easier and great? Because this phone works like a phone is supposed to. And our ipad has never glitched out on us. My husband will beat me for saying this (figuratively, not literally) but it does beg the question…is Apple just BETTER?

ANYWHO…I am seeking great (free or less than $3) apps that are “musts” for my phone. I am not a game player (so I will not be buying “Angry Birds”-) but I do like Words with Friends and am seeking friends who want to play some of those words with friends kind of games with me. I downloaded twitter/facebook, tweedeck, pandora, yelp, and pinterest (of course!) but I don’t really know what else to download. Anyone have some great reccs? Since half the people I know have i-phones, I’m hoping for some awesome suggestions.

Oh, and I am extending the DIY magazine giveaway announcement to August 5— so please, if you want to win, leave a comment! https://renegadebride.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/who-wants-a-subscription-to-diy-magazine/#comments I think the first issue in the subscription will probably be DIY holiday crafts, and WHO doesn’t LOVE holiday crafts (no one. NO ONE)

 

 

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August 1, 2011 I need a lil happiness.

Well, plumbing is all fixed, ya’ll, and it ended up being a cracked pipe caused by pressure + tree roots from the neighbor’s massive bastard tree. Refinished hardwoods in the kitchen budget later (Jen, what is up with the refinished floors = plumbing budget) we are the proud owners of …working toilets. Whee.

To celebrate (or mourn) the loss of this money, I feel like there’s nothing better to do than spend more money. Not really, but considering that I make hair appointments 10 weeks apart it makes sense that I should NOT cancel the one I have for tomorrow.  Haircuts make you feel happier, and I am in dire need of some happy. I started a Pinterest Board on hairstyle  with some ideas. Apparently, I want to cut it off. I have had it long(ish) for too long, and now I need the diversion of something different. Does anyone else get this urge?

Here’s some of the “big contenders”

I like that haircut a lot, and i like this one, too (which is super similar but also cute)

But then I get the anxieties about what if it’s too short? Too bold? too “young looking.”

I could always fall back on a “Jennifer Anniston” haircut, or let my stylist do whatever she wants:

But it seems like if i were to pick something, I’d suddenly have all this greater control and thus feel happier and better and like I mastered the universe. I dunno. Stupid Hair.

 

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July 31, 2011 Stupid house.

We knew that when we bought an old home that we would encounter issues in our renovation project. Especially since our house is 80 years old. This weekend, we spent tireless hours working on our varied around the house projects, finishing the living room painting job with its million coats of paint on plaster, putting the finishing touches on the bathroom ( cue the “Neverending Story”) theme music. It felt like we just kept getting crappy news all weekend. On Friday, my special order tiles for the fireplace came and the entire two boxes were broken and chipped. Postoned project number seven million. We got a call from the countertop people and learned it would be another two to three weeks without countertops…a constant struggle for me. I cooked dinner in the defunct kitchen with half working implements last night and felt entirely defeated and frustrated…it’s like this irrational feeling that if we did have countertops then somehow life would be better. I still can’t find anything in our in renovation home with piles of boxes, and when I sleep I either can’t breathe from my random I’m allergic to something but what allergies or the nightmares I have about weird things, like cabinets and the basement.
Anyway, I woke up angry. I was feeling mad and defeated and like nothing was going right. And then I spent an hour scrubbing the shower and tub because damnit, I was determined to take a bath today. And I did, and it was awesome. I felt so proud and happy and like yay, we have done something and this room is complete. Hurrah.
And then I get out of the bath and my husband tells me the tub is leaking or something because our basement is flooding. And I go down to help and after a few hours of digging in the mud and dirt we realize that the clay sewage pipe is cracked. And broken. And that if we use the bathroom, it’s going to come into the basement. Yeah.
My husband is beyond upset. He seems to think that we have bought a house that refuses to let us get ahead. I just think we are encountering the entire fun murphys law good times of home ownership. I don’t really know what we are going to do, because it appears to be an pricy thing to fix. But its one of those things you can’t just wait around on. And I guess it’s nice the terra-cotta pipes lasted bit longer than the 50 years they are supposed to, but we were kind of hoping on waiting on doing any more piping and plumber stuff after we already had to replace all the cast iron pipes inside the house. Sigh. And thus begets a new category on the blog entitled “the joys of home ownership” where “joys” really means “painful and expensive realities of owning your own home and making signing that mortgage check all the more enjoyable each month.” sorry for vent, dear readers, I just needed to get this off my chest

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July 29, 2011 Who Wants a Subscription to DIY magazine?

I recently picked up a copy of DIY (Do it Yourself) Magazine and fell in love, and decided I wanted to subscribe

There’s tons of fun, useful ideas in the mag, like how to organize with scrap and how to make pillows (a must-need skill to know in my world) and part of their subscription offer (the mag comes out quarterly) is that I can sign up a friend for free. So, if you’d like to win a subscription, it’s pretty easy. Just:

1. Leave me a comment telling me about how you love/hate or want to love DIY goodness

2. I’ll randomly pick someone on August 5 to win.

It’s pretty easy, right. And you get a free magazine subscription, which is pretty cool!

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July 28, 2011 Farmhouse, oh farmhouse…

We love farmhouse tables. We’ve been checking out Craiglist like a duo of crazy farmhouse table stalkers, and finally we found a local designer that makes handmade pieces to totally die for. The company is Morrow Rustic Furniture Design and they do completely custom pieces, which is so exciting. We have this really plain, regular, craptastic old table from American Signature that the hubs bought when he moved out of apartment dwelling, and it’s been an ok standby— but it’s time for a replacement, big time. Here’s a few drool-worthy images:

The husband seems really in love with the white leg style, though I’m totally infatuated with the darker, more primitive looks:

If a table could be categorized as sexy, well, that is sexy!

As is this one…

Check out these chairs:

Since it’s all custom, we can pretty much have what we want. So I started getting really excited, and then I stumbled upon this crazy find from World Market: $99 (from $299) with a 15% off coupon:

So, in my freakish way, I sent him this image rendering I did with all my crazy notes about what I wanted:

So, now we wait. But I’m ridiculously excited, and I can’t wait to see more of his work and see if he will be willing to work with us on our furniture project. Yay. It’s like planning to have a furniture baby or something.

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July 27, 2011 The Fireplace Mantle, Pt I

When we first saw our house, I loved the fireplace to pieces, but wasn’t so in love with the mantle hearth– a glued on piece of marble that looked really dated and like a bad decision from 1970:

Don’t you love the sexy marble + fake wood logs?

I taped off the decorative pieces framing the fireplace and pulled out the fake logs, and then pulled up the marble piece. I revealed old door mats (??) taped with duck tape onto the existing white tile squares that must have come with the house. I painted the entire thing with a quote of Martha Stewart “Picket Fence”– we’re re-doing all the boards, trim, etc from “dingy gross off white” to “fresh + clean white” and there’s a layer of the gray I chose for doing the edges of the fireplace:

That tile is gross. I cleaned it repeatedly with my favorite all-purpose cleaner, Fantastik!! and I am currently breathing in moldy fumes of old. I digress…

I have a teeny, tiny budget for this project (Given my promise to stop hemorrhaging money on the house) and I had originally thought I wanted to do tile. But seeing the origianl tile (albeit not what I want at all) I’m all indecisive. I saw this via Apartment Therapy:

And then there’s the cool wood-grain tile:

or this pretty Yakarta Wenge tile I saw and loved:

But those both break the budget at over $16/sq

So, I went over to good ol’home depot.com:

It’s not too fancy, but it’s got some nice colors to it. Then I came upon my old favorite, the hex tile:

at $5.55 a square, this is kinda a steal…

So I ordered it. I need about 11 square feet (Sadly, they come in boxes of 9 square feet, so I had to order two boxes, but thank goodness Home Depot takes returns) and while shopping found our tile backsplash for our kitchen at a much lower price than I’d expected, so that was good news, too!

The tile takes a few days to get here, so in the interim I’ll finish painting out the fireplace, break all the existing tile and get it out of there, and pick out the grout. I can’t wait t see how it all turns out. Stay tuned for part II

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July 25, 2011 I have a problem

The first step is admitting it, right? Right? Well,  thanks to the wedding and then the house,  I have developed a serious shopping problem. Perhaps the problem is more centered around “spending money” but either way, it’s like an obsession/addiction and I can’t stop myself. I think I need to go to shopaholics anonymous. Is it so wrong? Pre-wedding it was the various purchases of “must have” items like $150 antique napkins, shoes, undergarments, makeup…whatever. And then it was the obsessive need for clothing to suit the honeymoon, and snorkeling gear, and new jewlery. When we got back, it was various items for the house– kitchen towels (they are a neccesity, I don’t care what anyone says), new dishes, new rugs, new silverware, new towels. Accessories for the bathroom. Curtain rods. Trash cans. Nothing was good enough anymore. I had to have new EVERYTHING.

I promised I wasn’t going to buy ANYTHING this week. Nothing, Then this morning, I got my little “This stuff is on sale, and you ought to buy it, you stupid B….” and I went and looked at it and I do want to buy it. Behold the Kati cardigan from Kate Spade: http://www.katespade.com/kati-beaded-cardigan/NJMU1169,default,pd.html?dwvar_NJMU1169_color=370&start=30&cgid=sale-clothing

 

and the Sunny Elaine Dress:

and the Linette Sunglasses:

Damn it! I want everything I see.  I can’t restrain myself. It’s sickening. And while I did technically restain myself since I didn’t buy any of this stuff, it does’t change the fact that I still really want it. Badly.

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July 22, 2011 I got my Ring Back!!!

Last friday, I got the call that I’d been waiting for….my ring was back. It’s been gone awhile (almost 4 lonely months) but it is back and better than ever. And while I will promise to actually put decent pictures on here when I get some, I have to share my lame phone pictures because my battery on my regular, decent camera is dead and I can’t find the battery charger in the sea of boxes that line every random space inside of my home.

In case you don’t remember the previous ring, it was basically this:

And now it looks like this:

I honestly couldn’t be happier. It’s perfect now, and I love it so, so much. Getting it back after the wedding was like an unexpected Christmas Gift in March– it’s a delight, and it makes you feel all glow-y and special. Yay!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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July 19, 2011 Boudoir-dom (or how I learned to take off my clothes and love the bomb. Or something)

Ahh, look, a wedding-related post. Sorta!

So, I did a boudoir session with the amazingly talented Kristyn Hogan, with my hair and makeups (and extentions) by the ever-so talented Amy Lynn Larwig. The result: hotness. To be honest, I would have never, ever, ever, ever had done a Boudoir session prior to What Not to Wear, but the amazing lack of clothing in various states of undress in umpteenth dressing rooms made me kind of lose my sensitivity over nekkidness, and to top it all off I’ve worked HARD to look the way I do, and while I’m not anorexic thin or really even THIN, I’m definitely better. Soo…

Now, saying all that doesn’t make it easier to post pictures of yourself all half naked in and in a state of flagrant, whore-like abandon, but I’ll try. I have some tips:

1. Get your hair and make up done (I also recommend this for wedding days) because you are going to want to look amazing and not worry about HOW you look the entire session. Get someone to help you feel uber-glam.

2. Have some alcohol. I drank a lot of frozen margaritas (thanks, Matt!) and unwound while my hair and makeup were done, and it really made me feel, errr…more frisky?

3. Bring lots of outfit options. That means having a lot of lingerie on hand. I got a lot at my shower (thanks friends, and I know that instead of writing this blog post I ought to be writing thank you notes, but I am a horrible person and lack manners and grace) and I bought more right before, in fear I “would not have enough”. There are still pieces I never wore, and i wore A LOT (an entire suitcase ahem ahem) on my honeymoon

4. Bring props. You will want to do stuff with your hands.

Ok, so here along with narrative… we started slow. I looked out a window and in between giggling, some pictures were taken. And as a disclaimer: all images copyright the lovely Kristyn Hogan, whom without her guidance, patience, and amazing photography skills, I’d have looked a whole lot less awesome)

Despite my obvious sexiness, this is so me:

We kept it fluid with lots of wardrobe changes. My hair was mostly extentions (and is now really blonde, so that is kinda strange) and I was wearing lee-press ons instead of real fakes, as i have THE WORLD’s SHORTEST NAILS IRL:

 

My photog had lots of ideas coming in with images she’d collected, I also had one of Michelle Trachtenburg looking into the mirror I wanted to re-create but I wasn’t quite as, err..and sexy as she is, so mine is not really the same, but different. Hers:

Mine:

A friend of mine recc’d that I do some shirt pics, which I totally did and turned out great, but they are a bit too risque for the blog, even for me and my modern lady sensibilities. This next pic is my favorite picture of me, ever, and I wish I could like…put it on my website. But I can’t. For obvious reasons:

And another fave are just of the legs:

Most of my faves are those that have this really strong sexiness, but it’s just suggestive— which is just so seductive and part of the fun of Boudoir (oh, and fake eyelashes, WHAT)

I truly, truly, truly think that every woman ought to do a boudoir session. Regardless of if you are engaged, single, married, divorced… whatever…it’s such an amazingly empowered event. I had such a great time doing it, and it really gave me a kind of zen like feeling about the camera. I now absolutely love being photographed, which is so weird because for my ENTIRE LIFE i have hated having my picture taken, and to suddenly love it is weird. I think that I am going to do these every few years as a way to reconnect with myself, my inner sex kitten, and to give my husband one more reason to keep loving me 🙂  I think it’s important, in some odd way. If you’re on the fence about it, or if you kind of thought of doing it in passing, you should take the plunge and do it— it’s amazing, it’s fun, and when you look at the images you’re like “Damn, that’s me. And I’m pretty much the hotness”– and that’s the best feeling in the world.  And let me tell you— when my then-fiance and soon to be husband got my little “black book” gift on our wedding day, story is he pretty much flipped his top a little, and the picture of him looking at it is a lot like that kid in the Madonna Video for “Open Your Heart (to me)”. And that in its own way is kinda empowering, you know what I mean?

 

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July 19, 2011 Domestic Goddessdom

In ever-increasing effort to prove my domestic goddess-ness, yesterday I solidified my path for becoming far more home-ecc. savvy and accomplished by doing a few key things. I kicked off the morning ordering a Sewing Machine, which shall be here tomorrow and I will then extole its amazingness, but basically I have always wanted a sewing machine, and at one point had one– a hand me down relic from the turn of the century 1900s that didn’t really work and I could sew better by hand– but I have never set about becoming highly skilled at using a sewing machine until I came to the full realization that textiles are expensive. Once you get done buying curtains, throw pillows, duvet covers, kitchen towels, etc etc you’ll spend a freaking fortune. Oh, and for those interested, I did go to IKEA and I spent boatloads of money that i should have put toward my emergency fund but instead bought joyful things at IKEA. So there, emergency fund. Didn’t really need you that much anyway.

So, moving on, I bought some stuff, and while at IKEA I had this whole Sewing Machine realization. I could buy a pillow for 14.99, or I could buy the fabric and make seventy million pillows for 14.99. Or something similar to that, because i’m not really great at math and who knows how many pillows I can really make, but in my mind I was a pillow making, quilting, sewing, embroidering goddess of skill and refinement. I was really highly accomplished in this vision I had, and so I began my thirsting need for a Sewing Machine.

After dwelling on it a few days, I decided to do some research and thus buy a Sewing Machine. The research I did told me not to buy the cheapest one because it would frustrate me and I’d cry a lot and never use it, so I bought the one that was beneath the awesometastic ones that basically have little men that come out and sew for you. I got the Singer “Stylist” Model:

Clearly, by that embelem you know I made a good decision as it’s a Consumers Digest Best Buy. Anyway, it can do like 100 different stitches and it’s programmable and the needle threads itself. I also purchased “Me and My Sewing Machine” — depicted below– which will tell me all there is to know about my Sewing Machine, along with easy things to sew. I’ll be saying stuff like ‘it’s sew easy” and “this is just sewtastic” in no time.

To conclude the day, I went out seeking recommendations for good cooking magazines that include crafts. I already knew Martha, and subscribe to her already, but I wanted some other recommendations. Thus far:

Cooks Illustrated: Recipes only, but the best from America’s Test Kitchen. I used to subscribe a few years ago but the rate is kind of high, however, given my new kitchen I think this may be a good splurge. I can highly recommend the online subscription– access to all the back issues, tips, and  tricks.

Everyday Food:  I had honestly never heard of this one, but checked it out last night and made a chicken dish from their “Dinner Tonight” section, which was really delicious. I’m going to hang out with it online some to see if I want to subscribe.

Eating Well  I used to have a gift subscription to Cooking Light (thanks Jess) that I loved, so now I just need to decide between these two.

I have a few others but I’ve not had a chance to peruse them yet, I will keep you updated. I just don’t want ONLY cooking– I want ideas about how to make my house more functional, how to make pillows, etc etc. I welcome your reccs!

 

 

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