total change of plans! October 16, 2009

the vegas wedding was getting TOTALLY out of hand, and after lots of thought, consideration, and maybe a little hair pulling, we decided to get married here after all. ladies and gents…this is our wedding venue :

and we are TOTALLY using a carriage ride for our big send off!

just look at this staircase we’ll be saying “i do” on…

i got together with my mom, and my future mothers in law (yup, i get two of them and they’re both awesome!) to go and view the house and we all loved it so much that i went back the next day to book it! they even had our awesome 10/10/10 date available still!

however… i will also be choosing a different gown. the whole “slit up the thigh” thing of the other dress was perfect for vegas…but here, not a chance!

i’m really going to try and make more of an effort to post here so that i’ll have something i can look back on after this is all said and done. i have less than a year and LOTS of planning to do. so far, we’ve booked the venue, the photographer, and the cake. that still leaves music, food, booze, flowers, bridesmaid dresses, and figuring out what the boys will wear. i’m not crazy about matching bridesmaids at all. as a matter of fact, i think that the one thing i’m most sure of about our wedding is that i absolutely do NOT want matching bridesmaid dresses at all. i want them each in a style that is flattering to them and each in a different jewel tone color. as adamant as i am about the bridesmaid dresses, is it terrible that i’m kind of indifferent about what the guys will be wearing?

more dress shopping August 6, 2009

yesterday my mommy and i were in dallas and decided to check out terry costa, since they carry both maggie sottero and mori lee gowns. everybody there was super friendly, especially konnie they even told us we could take photos of the dresses i was trying on! in most bridal shops, that’s a huge no-no. neither one of us had a camera with us, but my mom got a few with her iphone.  anyhow…on to the dresses!

they had a dress similar to the melanie style that i got to try on called fredricka. i liked it a lot, but it was not THE dress, ya know?

here is fredricka…

and here is fredricka on me…

*pardon the lovely cell phone quality. also, the picture is of my reflection in the mirror, so that’s why the shoulder strap is opposite of the other photo.

let me just take a moment to explain what it’s like to try on wedding gowns when you’re 5′2″ and a size 4 on a fat day…it sucks. most sample dresses are size 8 and up, and are the longest length that the designer offers. the ladies at most bridal shops will clip the dress in the back so that you can see, at least from the front, what the dress will look like when it fits you. even then, sometimes it’s hard to ignore the fact that the dress slinks down into a puddle of fabric at your feet. also, since i don’t plan on wearing ginormous heals on my wedding day, it limits me to styles that don’t look silly once you cut off a half a foot or more from the bottom of the dress.

next we have gatsby…

the sample dress for gatsby was a size 10 so even with the corset fully laced and clipped tight in the back, it was impossible to get it to “fit” without making my torso look like a barrel!  to give you some perspective…the ribbon around my waist was about 2-3 inches below my hipbones. GORGEOUS gown, but not for me.

next i tried on a gorgeous gown from the sottero-midgley line. it was dress ASM3156….

i REALLY loved this one, but i’d like to see it in a size closer to my own. it doesn’t have a corset back so we had to make it fit with just clips and we still couldn’t get all the fabric into the clips in the back. and the back….i LOVE the back. it goes down so low and i love my back so that’s a good thing the only thing i’m not so sure of is all that poof…any dress i do pick, i’ll be having to pack to travel to vegas. also, i can’t imagine bustling that train and having it still look good.

tomorrow morning is the maggie trunk show and april, my best friend since i was NINE, is in town to come along!! a lady from the bridal shop called today to tell me that the melanie gown that i love so much in pictures will be at the show and that the sample is a size 6!! wooohooo! i am DEFINITELY bringing a camera along tomorrow, just in case they let us take photos!

long time, no type? May 14, 2009

things i’ve loved since we last met :

turbojam!

my very own homemade veggie soup

shannaleighimages.com

abita strawberry harvest lager

kings of leon – only by the night

she & him -volume one

bon iver

facebook

my new apartment

versaspa

gossip girl

the tudors

bailey (still going strong over ten months later<3)

the japanese gardens in fort worth…seriously…how dreamy is this?

i NEED this bathing suit! March 2, 2008

i am in love with this bathing suit from macy’s and i MUST have it. i don’t care that it will cover up my blood, sweat, and tears (ink). however, i do care that it’s a hundred friggin dollars! if anyone knows of a suit like it for cheaper, let me know

or…if you’re feeling mighty generous, or just in the mood to blow a hundred bucks on a gal, i usually wear a size S or XS in bathing suits

it’s my baby’s birthday today February 12, 2008

today (well technically yesterday since it’s past midnight…whatev) was my margot bear’s first birthday. but, i didn’t tell her since i had school all day and worked tonight. i did, however, make her some scrambled eggs for breakfast we’ll probably end up celebrating later this week, but for now here are some pictures of my how fast my big girl has grown up….

the day i went to pick margot up i brought bella with me so that i could pick out a puppy that she would get along with. i decided to choose the most mellow puppy there since bella was already 5 years old and quite mellow herself. at 14 weeks old, margot was much older than bella was when i got her (she was only 6 weeks old) and was nearly housebroken already! she was extremely shy, though! i had to put her bowls under the coffee table in the living room to even get her to eat or drink. she was so shy and timid that i thought seriously about taking her back and trading her for a more out-going puppy. you’d never know she had a shy bone in her body if you met her now, though!

margot’s first bath

it took me nearly a week to name her. i really liked the name “greta” because it was cute little german name for my cute little german dog. the other name i loved was margot, after one of my favorite bands, margot and the nuclear so & so’s. the final decision came when my baby sister, brooka (her name is brooke but i’ve always called her brooka…short for brookabear), went with me to make margot’s pink heart name tag that’s in this photo. brooka liked the name greta, but i ended up going with margot…margot elise to be exact! when i got home that night i looked up the meaning of the name “margot” and what i found out is that “margot” is the french form of “greta”!

a few days after i brought margot home, i’d planned on going up to denton to watch the mavs game and spend the night with friends. since she was still a baby and i wasn’t crazy about the idea of leaving her alone in her kennel all night long i just decided to bring her along with me. everyone loved on her all night and she was such a good baby dog!

she has always been a silly sleeper!

my legs and my margot…it’s hard to believe she was ever that tiny!

her shyness was soon replaced with fierce playfullness! margot is the darker one in those pics…the lighter one is my bella dog <3 bella actually lost weight once margot grew to be big enough to play with. they play, and play, and play for hours!

margot graduated from puppy school in september…i wore my miniature schnauzer socks in support of her on her big day

the girls and i for margot’s first thanksgiving and also her first time to wear a sweater. it was absolutely hilarious when i put it on her for the first time. she immediately just dropped to her side and rolled belly up as if to wave a white flag and say “i give up! i surrender! i don’t know what i did, but i’m really sorry! can you please take this torture device off of me?!” she got used to it eventually

i was curious to see how margot would react to the christmas tree. for bella’s first christmas, she sat under the tree 24/7 like it was her job. margot prefered to play under it. she would bring all of her toys to the tree and wad them up in my make-shift pink tulle tree skirt until they were impossible to get out, which were all the more fun for her to play with that way.

my whole world in my hands = ] margot’s grown to be such a big girl! she’s almost twice the size of bella!

i don’t care how big she gets, she’s still my baby dog <3

repetition February 11, 2008

this is what the ginormous mat board was for last week…

and a closer look :

this was for my design class. our original assignment was to take a shape (either a 4 inch square, triangle, or circle) and cut it apart to make a new design. after that, we were assigned to make an even bigger creation using repetition of the previous design.

it took me about three hours to cut the design out of white drawing paper with an exacto knife, then at least 4 to 5 glue sticks to get it all mounted down on the black mat board. i loved every minute! i added the diamond shapes (you can see these better in the close-up view) last. i glued them down on top of the design and cut away the parts that were over-lapping so that it would look like it was behind the main design.

it’s really quite simple, but i’m very proud of it

note to self February 5, 2008

it’s probably not the best idea to go shopping for mat board that is 32×41 inches when you’re only 61.25 inches tall and the wind is blowing in gusts of 20 mph.

but, seeing as hobby lobby had all of their mat board on sale for half off and i really needed some for a massive design project that i’m working on right now, i had no choice. thanks to their 40% off coupon online, i was also able to get a killer deal on a ginormous (p)leather 23×31 inch art portfolio for ridiculously cheap to haul my shit around in! i’m just glad i didn’t drop all of it in the wet parking lot when the wind caught a hold of it and nearly knocked me down…

noisiest neighbors ever January 8, 2008

i seriously have THE noisiest neighbors a girl could ask for. i’ve lived in apartments for about 8 years now and i have NEVER had neighbors this noisy. to begin with, they’re some of the tallest, heaviest, and well…just plain biggest people in the world. no, seriously…like, the island where they come from, people are just bigger. we share a stairwell that leads up to our front doors. they are incapable of walking up the stairs. they stomp. louder and louder and LOUDER with each step as if their legs are getting heavier and heavier with each ascending stair. while i realize their legs may, in fact, feel heavier with each stair, i’d like to point out that there’s only like ten stairs to begin with. once they reach the top of the stairs, they noisily fumble with their keys in the lock until it opens, then they proceed to slam their door with such strength that it knocks pictures down on a bookcase in my living room.

as annoying and irritating as all of that is, i can live with those things. i made the choice to live in an apartment. i realize that living in an apartment means that you’re going to have someone on the other side of your living room wall and (gasp!) that means you might hear them occasionally.

the thing that makes me want to pull every hair out of my head is their bass. 24/7 i can hear bump bump bump bump bump. the only wall i share with them is in my living room, yet i can hear and feel the bump from every room in my apartment. just the other day i was in the shower and could hear it. yes. IN THE SHOWER. with WATER RUNNING. that’s absolutely absurd! i finally called my apartment office yesterday morning to put in a formal complaint. the office put a letter on their door asking them to be considerate of their neighbors. you’d think that might deter them from turning their bass up so loud? no. right now i’m being serenaded by some asshat playing guitar hero in surround sound with the bass all the way up. joy. i’d hate to become that neighbor that bitches about everything, but the office is definitely gonna hear about this tomorrow.

overkill January 5, 2008

because i just couldn’t get enough of my pretty, girly ornaments as i was taking them down last night…

like, hi. December 31, 2007

i’m shanna.  2007 was one of the most adventurous, amazing, heartbreaking, heartwarming, shocking, kick-ass, fun years of my life.  i fully expect all of that and more from 2008