sweet jesus

the invitations are going to print! eek!

i feel sore

i'm pretty wimpy by most people's standards, i mean when it comes to free weights i max out at like 5 lbs, 7.5 lbs on a good day on each arm... or a maximum of 20lbs on the overhead press machine (thats the lowest increment you can possibly do!) so in the spirit of getting into shape, i'm going to force myself to do more weight training with Chris in an attempt to move a step up from wimp...it may or may not work, but after Sunday's weight lifting and cardio combination filled Sunday I'm feeling pretty positive about it... i also continued with my new found love of yoga on Monday nights to stretch my poor aching body out and i'm still loving it...Julie on Monday nights at the Rockefeller center nysc is fantastic! shes not an overly spiritual yoga instructor which is good for those of you that don't like the whole Buddhist monk thing or the meditation thing...she tries to get you to focus on the movements and the breathing that will enable you to get into deeper poses and to just in general help you find a better sense of self being i suppose...it's really good...i'm still a beginner but i can see myself doing this for a long time from now...

in terms of fitness progress, i have plateaued, i can very safely say i've been the same weight for what feels like 12 months now..granted i fell of the wagon a little during the holidays and then getting back into the groove and in the midst of planning my wedding gaining zero weight isn't so bad...considering my dress has been fitted through the first rounds...i shouldn't be changing my body too too much...but toning up a little never hurt anyone...so i've set a small goal for myself to lose 5 lbs by my wedding day...i know i can do this, its only 5 measly lbs! and i'm technically borderline overweight for my height according to the BMI chart...

so even though people keep saying i've gotten thinner (it might be muscle mass and not weight loss who knows) the numbers on the scale have not been budging...i must step back into a minimum of 4 days of working out combined with a lower fat diet...this may help...my portions are actually pretty good and my daily caloric intake is just right too, that or im kidding myself haha, we shall see on my next fitness update in a couple of months.

nerdy cake topper

heres the backstory...the mr is a nerd, to put it succinctly he is a MAJOR geek especially when it comes to nerdy things and all things star wars and indiana jones related...here is some proof

about 4 years ago we took this in disneyland

about 3 years ago we took this on a return trip to disneyland

last weekend we made another journey to the land of the mouse with one of my maid of honors and a groomsman and returned with the above

so here i was thinking a couple of months ago it would be very fitting if we had a han solo and leia cake topper! should be a cinch to find since there are so many star wars fans out there right?! i have never been more wrong...finding a han solo leia cake topper is like the impossible task! it's either really cheesy looking, expensive or just all kinds of wrong...and then...(cue hallelujah music)

i was walking around the gift shop waiting for our photo above to come out and i saw a minnie mouse leia and han solo donald figurine!!! it was like the sun came out of the clouds...so without further ado i present to you our wedding cake topper!

ok so its not the most elegant and it might not even be 100% wedding appropriate, but it is 120% indicative of my relationship with christopher and i couldn't be happier to find them in an unlikely place :)

save the date dollars and cents

for those of you that liked my save the dates, heres the breakdown in cost of them...

200 printed magnets from vistaprint: $39.99 + $17.81 priority shipping = $57.80

150 A2 sized cards from papersource in mars red: $11.28 + $7.00 shipping = $18.28

120 glue dots from office depot: $4.58 + tax

200 A2 sized envelopes in ivory from office depot: $ 20.98 + tax

300 clear labels from office depot: $ 14.08

grand total: $117.86

what i didn't factor into the budget above is the cost of postage but depending on how many you have to mail out of this country, that number would obviously fluctuate...we also hand delivered a few so yea...in hindsight i could've save a little bit more if i figured out how many i had to make beforehand, but i was working with estimates since i didn't finalize my guestlist yet... i had to guess on how much i needed of everything.

but what obviously cost the most is the time and effort i had to put into all of these guys...the labor effort is PRICELESS!

DIY failure? judge for yourself

alright, so long ago i proclaimed myself a DIY dummie...but because of the time crunch there was just no way i was going to be able to get my save the dates professionally printed...so i had to resort to Do it yourself-dom...it was torture...or i'm just a baby in reality, but considering all pain asides...i thought they turned out quite well...majority of them came out the way i had envisioned...so lets begin shall we?

after our engagement session with Ryan, it took about 3 weeks for me to get the pictures and then to choose a few that i thought would make a good magnet, and then sent them off to Luke for some graphical magic...i loved what he did, and it matched my engagement party invitations! i then sent the artwork out to vista print for magnets to be printed...

this is what they're supposed to look like

these are what came back, actually lets get a close up look
the borders were all cut off a bit...the artwork was formatted so that they were supposed to fit the dimensions of the magnet perfectly, but for whatever reason this didn't work out, but i was too pressed for time to get them reprinted and redone , so i had to make peace with imperfect save the dates...but otherwise the picture quality and color satuation was pretty good i thought...

i then designed a card for these suckers to be mounted to on microsoft word, yes as in the program you used to write those school papers on...no photoshop or some fancy shmancy program for me...this is what i came up with

i formatted the paper size to fit an A2 sized card and landscaped it and voila! insta magnet card

i then ordered some red card stock from paper source in my desired size, which was pretty easy, if i wasn't so fickle and couldn't decide what color to actually make these guys! but i settled on red in the end because well it matched the magnet and it was ON SALE! the fortunate thing was, because it was a shiny card stock, it will only work if i printed it with a laser printer...which i very conveniently have one at home

yep this is the baby that i printed everything on...seee!

the sucky part of my printer was for some reason the feeder is really dumb, so i had to hand feed every single card! yes i had to sit there and individually hand do 150 cards...painful i tell you

and of course like everything i do, there will inevitably be rejects...but not because its my fault, but because i didn't anticipate the printer being this retarded...here let me show you the handful of rejected cards

yea the printer smeared ink on the edges of a few...ugh...ok on second thought it might be my fault for not having the foresight... gah!

but all is not lost, most of them came out perfectly, like so

after all this, how the heck do i affix the magnets to the cards? double stick tape? glue dots? i tried both and they both work...but majority of them were done on glue dots, these guys

i got about 130 of them from office depot, staples didn't have them...but they made assembly easier...i got the idea from weddingbee.com mrs butterfly to design a box onto the card so i wouldn't have to worry about centering the magnets, stuck one of these guys in the box and attached magnet, VOILA! easy peasy

the final product looked like this:

stuffed into envelopes by chris and i , these babies were ready to go out.
i chickened out and printed all the addresses on clear labels instead of writing them all out, yea sue me, they're the save the dates not actual invites =P

so whats your verdict? did i pass or fail on this DIY project?

Updates

stayed tuned for i have some stuff to share!
1. save the dates are officially completed so i'll be posting on the assembly process, it was painful.
2. invitations are on their way to getting designed and printed...i changed my mind yet again, i'm no longer a my gatsby girl...so stick around for the big reveal on my new vendor ;)

Movie review - I was an emotional wreck

during and after i watched UP this weekend.

(photo by disney)

disclaimer: if you haven't seen the movie don't read today's post as it will most likely give away a lot more story plot than you'd like if you traditionally like to see movies before you know the story.
originally i didn't have much expectation about the movie since i didn't read any reviews nor did i see any previews for it, but chris' brother insisted that it will be good and we should watch it and in all 3d misery i did (i'm weird like that and can't stand movies in 3d) and i liked it, A LOT.

For the most part it was like watching a movie of my life unfold...story about a shy boy and a loud mouth girl (chris and i) fall in love and get married (also us) throughout their lives its just the two of them happily ever after...but when the part comes where they part, i was falling apart in the movie theater i kid you not, it was like imagining what my life or what chris' life would be like if we weren't there for each other... i just couldn't do it...it was painful even though its not a reality, the possibility of outliving the one you love is devastation to a degree that i can't even fathom at this point in my life...it's beyond my comprehension...so of course everytime the reference comes up where she is not around to share some certain event with him i'm crying buckets again...

BUT it doesn't end all there..the little boy that gets introduced into the movie would be what i'd imagine a child of chris and i would be like...little chubby asian boy (thats me! asian!) , loves chocolate and wilderness (thats all chris) throw in some humor, manenrisms and his penchant to whine "i'm tired" (thats definitely the both of us at some point or another) it completed what my life would be if it was in a movie and chris happened to oulive me...of course like all disney movies there was a happy ending butboy did it drain me emotionally to watch it...i laughed and i cried and enjoyed myself...definitely what life is all about...

seriously, if you haven't seen it yet, GO SEE IT!