Baby Registry

Once we got settled in the new house, it was time to start focusing on the next big change in our lives: the baby. We've sort of been ignoring the whole thing up to this point, figuring we'll deal with all the details once we got in the new hosue. And now that we're finally thinking about the kid, it seems like it's all happening way too fast. It doesn't help that there is an overwhelming amount of stuff to think about.

The biggest casualty of this whole procrastination has been the childbirth class. By the time we got around to signing up for one, there was only on possible date before my due date. A six-hour Saturday class on a day that Kevin only has a 50/50 chance of being in town. Luckily, this is the age of the internet. We found an online course that we can do at our own pace in our own time. Now we just have to remember to do it.

The other big thing is the baby registry. We had to pick out everything from a crib and a stroller to bottles and a thermometer. It ended up taking a couple of weeks to research everything and figure out what we wanted and what we felt like we actually needed. The store recommended an absurd number of blankets. After we put them all on, we ended up taking about half back off. We figure that if we really end up needing them, we can buy them after the kid shows up. And at the recommendation of the store, we didn't end up putting any clothes or toys on the registry at all. Apparently people just buy what they want in those categories, and we can always go back and fill in what we need when the due date gets closer.

It's nice to have this all taken care of. Now we just need to wait and see what people want to gift us and what we'll have to buy ourselves. Hopefully we manage the timing well enough that we have everything by the time the kid actually gets here. That could be the trickiest part of the whole thing. Maybe we shouldn't have waited so long to get our act together.

Hey Big Spender

We got a couple of big ticket items during the Labor Day sales, and I'm super excited about both of them.

First up is our new bed. We splurged on a Sleep Number mattress (that was still expensive at 50% off). I've wanted one for ages, and I've been bugging Kevin to upgrade our mattress basically since I moved in with him. I had a glorious pillow-top back in Colorado that I bought while hungover on New Year's Day. But it didn't make financial sense to bring it out to Virginia with me. So it moved to my mom's guest room, and I've been sleeping on an Ikea foam mattress that Kevin loved for it's firmness and I hated for the same reason.

But he finally agreed to buy a new mattress, so we went to the Sleep Number store. We'd also looked at some Tempurpedics, which were wonderful but even more expensive than the Sleep Numbers. We found ourselves torn between a foam-top and a pillow-top, and the price difference ended up making the difference for us.

When it was first delivered, it was a little ridiculous. The delivery men placed both foundation and mattress on top of the slats that our Ikea mattress had laid on, which meant we were sleeping nearly three and a half feet above the ground. But over the weekend we fixed it, and the mattress is now at a much more reasonable height (and Kina can get in bed with us again). I'm so, so, so happy with the new mattress. It's like sleeping on a cloud.

We also bought a new oven. I've been wanting one for a while, and it became more important when the big, front burner on our old oven started turning off at random. It's hard to cook when the heat suddenly disappears. I knew I wanted a flat top oven (we're not hooked up for gas and drip pans are the hardest thing in the world to clean) and Kevin did most of the research to find one.

The oven arrived earlier this week, and I'm super happy about it. It's so much easier to keep clean. I can just wipe it down instead of disassembling it to get at the mess. And all of the burners work, which makes me happy. The only thing is that I'm going to have to relearn how long it takes to cook things. Boiling a pot of water for pasta last night took forever, much longer than it's ever taken me to boil a pot of water before. It's probably because of the glass top between the pot and the heating element. But I will eventually get used to it, and then everything will be wonderful again.

Wedding Shoes

I got the call last week that my wedding dress came in. When I scheduled the fitting, the lady reminded me to bring my wedding shoes. Which meant that it was time to buy wedding shoes. I'd been trying to put this off in the hopes that there would be more selection when Winter turned to Spring, and this ultimately left me with a single afternoon to buy shoes.

I didn't think this would be a problem, since I had a good idea of what I wanted. But it turned out that what I wanted wasn't really for sale. There were plenty of styles I liked on the internet and I foolishly assumed that Bloomingdales and Macys would also carry them all in store so I could try them on. This wasn't the case.

I walked all the around Tysons Corner, which is a sizable mall, twice and found only four pairs of shoes in the color I wanted. Two of them pinched in weird places and were a bit too high to actually wear all day. The other two were fine, though not quite as special as I was hoping for. But they are the sort of shoe that I'll still be able to wear to the office after the wedding, which is probably important given what I paid for them.

I ended up with a pair that I like and that I should be able to wear all day long. Though I should probably try to spend a bit of time breaking them in around the house. After I bought them, Kevin and I met up to do other wedding related shopping. We have now purchased all of the bridesmaid gifts, groomsman gifts, paernt gifts, and wedding favors. We also looked for a guestbook, but ended up even more indecisive than we had been when we started. But we still have time on that.

It's nice to have so many of the purchases out of the way. At this point it's just a matter of paying off balances once we get a final head count and doing some of the things that we aren't spending money on. Like putting together a playlist. We should probably get on that. The wedding's getting close and it's nice to have so few things left to do.

The Case of the Missing Bridal Boutique

Last weekend my mom flew out from Colorado for the official Wedding Dress Shopping Trip. I'd made appointments at a small bridal boutique that had gotten great reviews and at the local Macy's. I'd also attempted to make an appointment at Nordstrom, but that basically fell apart. It all worked out in the end, though. Which is to say I found and bought a dress. After a bit of an adventure, that is.

The boutique I'd made an appointment at was a place called Vivian's. It had a bunch of great reviews online, most of which emphasized how cheap the dresses were. Cheap as in price, not quality. Everyone seemed impressed with the dresses they had been able to find. So I was excited to check it out and see what they had.

We left twice as early as we needed to, because I like to schedule time to get lost. I had the address of the place and figured it would be easy enough to find. I wasn't expecting to find myself in an office park on a Saturday morning.

We went inside the building, but we didn't see the name of the company on the directory. I called and left a voice mail asking if I had the right place. Then we went upstairs to see if we could find the suite.

We couldn't. As far as we could tell the place didn't exist. None of the doors had either the suite number or the boutique's name on the door. Kevin's mom eventually asked someone, who said there was, indeed, a bridal boutique on that floor.

I tried calling the number a few more times, but it always went straight to voice mail. After we'd waited for almost half an hour we decided to cut our losses and head to the mall. I emailed the person I'd been in touch with to find out what happened, but I have yet to hear back from her. I'm not sure we'll ever know, but I'm sticking with my theory that she had to flee the country in the middle of the night.

We wandered around looking at formal dresses in Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom and got lunch before heading to Macy's. Where I bought the second dress I tried on. So at least I can call the day a success, as strange as it was.

Dress Shopping, Take 1

My mom is coming out at the end of the month for the Official Wedding Dress Shopping Trip. Unfortunately, this coincides with one of Nordstrom's trunk shows. They don't allow customers to make first appointments during trunk shows, because they want the customers who do show up to have some familiarity with the designer on display. To get around this, I scheduled an appointment two weeks early and Sarah and I went out to look at dresses.

The whole thing was a bit strange. I tried on 3.5 dresses (one wouldn't come all the way up). Luckily, one of the one's I liked happened to be from the designer doing the trunk show. So we were able to schedule an appointment while my mom's in town. But I wasn't particularly thrilled with any of the dresses. And now I'm actually considering heading off in an entirely different direction.

I may end up canceling the second appointment that I went through so much trouble to land in the first place. But that's all part of the process, right? At least I have a better idea of what I want now. I actually have my eye on one dress in particular, though I have yet to try it on. Hopefully I'll get a chance to when my mom's here.

Spring Shopping Spree

The weather finally warmed up this weekend, and for some reason it put me in the mood to go shopping. This doesn't happen very often, but there were things I'd been meaning to buy for a while, so I took advantage of the mood and ended up getting a lot of stuff.

I finally bought a table lamp and completed the room that it's taken us the longest to furnish. We bought the couch and tables back in January when we knew Kevin's family would be coming to stay with us. It ended up being a bit too dark to read on the couches at night, though it's been perfect for hanging out with guests. I'm glad this room is finally finished.

I also bought new drip pans, making me feel like an adult. Our old drip pans have been a mess since we moved in, and the kitchen never quite looked clean. I tried everything, from magic erasers to steel wool to soaking them to wrapping them in aluminum foil. Then a discovered that a brand new set costs less than $15. If I'd known this a year ago, I could have saved a lot of time and money.

Shiny!

I also bought a new purse that I'm really excited about. For a long time I had a massive purse for work, so I could cart my laptop back and forth. Then my new job provided me with an enormous laptop that was too big for that purse. So I've been using a backpack, and I ran to Target to get a new purse for work. Unfortunately, that purse ended up being too small to hold a novel. So every day I was carrying the backpack, a purse, and whatever book I was reading. Not ideal. Then I found this purse at JCPenny, and it's perfect. Not only is it big enough for everything I want to carry without looking too massive, it's purple!

Lists and Stacks

I have a pretty extensive to-read list. For a long time, this was just a mental list. I'd hear about a good book and think that I should read it. And then, depending on my memory, I might or might not ever actually do that. But when I started this blog, one of the first things I did was actually write out that list. You can see it by clicking on the "Books" tab at the top.

Having an actual list has helped a great deal. I'm never at a loss when I finish one book and need a new one. I can add a book when someone mentions it in passing and then remember the name and author the next time I'm going to the book store. I've even sort of organized it according to the order I'll probably read those books in. That is, the ones I own are at the top and the ones I want to own are at the bottom. Every time someone recommends something already on the list it moves up a little bit.

When I add a book to the list, I'm thinking "I should read this book". It's not until I actually buy the book that I've committed to reading it. I may hear something new and lose interest. Or it may just wallow on the list for several years until the stars align and I decide to buy it.

A few times a year, I go on a book buying spree. I head into a book store and give myself free reign. This is a lot more fun than just buying books one at a time. Since I'm able to limit how often I do this, I end up with a stack of books that I'm planning to read in the near future

You see, the problem with my to-read list is that it keeps getting longer. No matter how fast I read or how many books I juggle at once, I add to that list faster than I check things off it. I never feel like I'm making progress. In a way, that's how it should be. I'd hate to run out of books to read. That's not really likely to happen, but it's nice to have a safety net stretching out to infinity.

Then again, it's nice to feel like I'm making progress. That's where the stack comes in. The stack doesn't grow; it shrinks. It will last me for a finite period of time, but then it must be replaced.

I mention this, because I have a pretty good-sized stack right now. The last time I had one this large was when Borders went out of business and I went on a mini-rampage. This year I used part of my end-of-year bonus to finance a bunch of books (along with a new bookcase). Here's the result.

Okay, I already owned Robinson Crusoe (the brown and red one) and The Silmarillion. But I just added them to the stack because I'm really planning on reading them before my next major book purchase.

That should keep me busy for a while.

Sometimes I Fail Being a Woman

A friend of mine is getting married in a few weeks. This has posed an interesting challenge for me that most people probably don't face when it comes to weddings. See, I don't wear make-up. I don't own it. I don't really know how to put it on. I can do stage makeup really well, thanks to years of performing, but that's a bit much for people seeing you from closer than 20 feet.

One of the other bridesmaids can do most of my makeup for me, I just need to bring foundation. Which means I need to buy foundation. Which is far more complicated than I ever thought possible. Which is probably why I don't wear makeup.

I was at Target today grabbing a few things when I remembered that I needed foundation. I ventured down the beauty aisle to pick some up. Thankfully I watch enough TV to know what the basic brands are, so that part wasn't overwhelming. Everything else was.

There was an entire wall of vaguely skin-shade makeup. Some was in bottles, some in tubes, some in powders. Some of it might have been blush or eye shadow. Nothing actually said foundation. It did say SPF 15 or SPF 30. It said it made pores vanish. It said perfect fit or age-defying or acne-fighting. It said for oily skin or for dry skin. I'm guessing I should probably have some sense of whether my skin is particularly oily or dry. The fact that I don't makes me think I might be in the normal category. I'm not sure that category exists, though.

I quickly decided I needed help, so I paid for my purchases at Target and drove to the Ulta across the street. I also awarded myself 5 points for knowing that Ulta sold makeup (I went there once to get makeovers for a friend's 13th birthday.)

I walked in and was immediately greeted by a girl who seemed willing to help. I told her I needed foundation and she started asking me questions that didn't make sense. So I backed up to inform her that I don't wear makeup and don't know much about it, but my friend is getting married and I need some for the wedding.

She seemed okay with that and grabbed a bottle of foundation and a brush. She put some on my face and decided it was too dark for my skin. Of course it was the lightest shade that brand offered, so she switched brands and tried a new one. She painted half my face and declared it a success. Great!

Then she told me it was $40 a bottle.

$40 for something I'm going to wear once? I actually asked her this and she looked a bit ashamed of herself. I had told her this was a one-time deal. I was expecting something closer to $5.

She directed me to the other side of the store with the cheaper brands. The brands I recognized. But she warned me that it's harder to match skin tone since they don't have testers. She suggested I buy one and, if after a few days I didn't like it, to return it. I didn't bother explaining, again, that this wasn't for daily wear.

At Ulta, the cheap brand section was about three times as big as at Target. I gave up and left.

The new plan is to go to the CVS on the way to work on Monday and buy the lightest shade of the cheapest brand. If it ends up being too dark, I'll just have to go without foundation. I'm sure the photographer can remove my pores in post-production if necessary. They have that technology now, right?