Repainting Brass Lamps

So, the wedding was on Monday. We are officially married, and our marriage certificate already came. It went really well, I didn't fall on my face with those heels, although my feet hurt like crazy afterward. His family took us out to a nice, fancy dinner afterward, and they even bought us a little wedding cake to cut during the dinner. It was nice. Now, Tyler is officially my husband. I did decide, however, that I will wait on updating my driver's license and stuff to my new name until we move - that way I can change it to the new address, and my new name all at once.

Anyway! The wedding is over, so now it's time to change my focus to other things. My mother is telling me to focus on getting through one day at a time, so that's my goal now. Wedding is past, so now I'm focusing on packing. And doing a few projects.

One of my goals for the new apartment: invest in it. By that, I mean... I'm making it my mission to really invest in furniture, decor, and little pieces to make it a home. With our current place, we still have a dresser and a desk that we received as hand-me-downs from his mother. I want to get better quality furniture of our own. At the same time, I'd like to do it on the cheap. That said, I've been taking inspiration from Pinterest, and embarking on a few small projects.

We've been taking small trips to the Goodwill, and Flea Markets in search of furniture and a couple random pieces for the new apartment. On one trip, I came across this lamp, priced at $4.

Normally, this lamp would have been so gawdy, that I'd bawk at it and move on. However, something stopped me. This lamp looks almost exactly like a touch lamp my grandmother used to own when she was alive. I loved the lamp as a child, just briefly touching it turned it on, and the hours of entertainment that it provided to me (and probably annoyance to my grandparents).... That simple memory of my grandparents sold me on it.

However, as is, I didn't want it in my new apartment. I decided to put my Pinterest reading to use, and I decided to spray paint it! I've never spray painted anything in my life, but this was minor enough to try on.

I wiped it all down with soapy water, and took it apart. And then set out to paint it! I chose a glossy white, thinking that it would probably go best with the things in our bedroom.

Ta Da! Looks so much better, I think! It has a few mess ups on it, mainly where I was too close in my painting... there are a few running paint drips, but for the most part - it looks awesome, all things considered. Not bad for a first try, right??

It was so awesome, that I decided to give painting another try. I took on a slightly more expensive project: a brass lamp, again from Goodwill for $7. This one, I think will end up going in our living room. I'll probably buy a more attractive lampshade for it eventually.

An Upgrade of a Move

Taking a break for a moment to talk about something other than the wedding... on Tuesday, we had gotten a call from Woodbury Heights, the apartment that we applied at, telling us that they already had an apartment that was coming available. This was financially unexpected for us, considering that we expected to start planning on moving next month or later. But somehow, we need to make it work.

We've cut back on a few wedding things, to save money for the expense of moving. (Sadly, the hotel needed to be cut). But, we will be moving in less than 3 weeks, and I am officially terrified, and overwhelmed with everything. First, we will be getting married on Monday. With all that, comes the cost of it all, stress of the name change, the worry about photos, all that. Then literally, right after, we are moving. This comes with, worrying about collecting boxes, packing, will we have enough money to move, U-Haul truck, people to help us move, transporting the cats, changing my address through all my accounts and post office, buying the things we will need there that we don't have here, unpacking, and there's probably more.

I'm freaking out a bit. I broke down to my mother, who is hundreds of miles away, and she did all she could do - told me to breathe and get through one thing at a time. So, here we are. taking things one day at a time.

Moving on! Woodbury Heights apparently has 2 types of apartments, with 2 types of wall coloring. They have brown walls, and then they have grey walls in other ones.I was expecting brown walls, based on what they had originally told us. Which was awesome, because I had ideas for colors for my bathroom and kitchen. I already had dark brown towels, I was going to buy new dark brown bathroom rugs, which would go awesome with the cardboard colored walls! Well, Wednesday, when we went in to talk to them, they informed us that... Hey no, your walls will actually be grey. The look on my face couldn't have said anything other than... Crap.

I liked my brown idea! So, right after I got done griping to Tyler about having to chose a new color scheme, we wandered into JCPenney, because I know the Home department was having a nice sale on items, and I could also use my associate discount, obviously!

We chose a shower curtain, which I instantly fell in love with (right from that moment, I knew I was going to be okay without my dark brown. In fact, I didn't even care about brown anymore). The woman who was in the home department that day was probably one of the most helpful people I've ever encountered as a customer. She had went out of her way to use all possible washcloths as swatches for us to find the perfect color rugs and towels.

After a half hour of holding the shower curtain up to a variety of towels, I think we found the perfect shade a blue for the curtain. And, I think it would look fantastic with light grey walls. Through this whole process, Tyler was such a sport for shopping, even taking off on his own in search of a matching rug. To his credit, he was even the one who picked out this color.

 

They look fantastic together, right? At least I think so. We did end up with the lid cover, contour rug, and the bath rug to go in front of the shower.

When I moved here to Iowa, I had bought the cheapest bathroom accessories I could find from Ikea, and brought them with me. Now, it was time for a upgrade. Since there was some white in the shower curtain as well, we got this white ceramic toothbrush holder and a jar thing for holding Q-tips. there was a matching wastepaper basket, but it was  ceramic too, and I just know that the cats would find their way into it and break it. I'm not even sure how well they are going to do with these, but I figure I will try them.

 

I didn't want to buy too many towels, because I have several brown ones already. But, I like to match, so we just picked up two bath towels, and a hand towel to hang on the towel rack for washing my face at night.

Decorative pillows were on sale as well. When we bought our couch, it came with four decorative pillows. All were ugly. So, new apartment, new pillows. these were on sale for $29.99, and you get two of them. A deal, if you ask me. So, I chose these. They should go well with our couch, and the wall color.

I also bought a 13 piece pot and pan set, because I believe we will be cooking a lot more, instead of eating out all the time. Also, I picked up a kitchen rug for in front of the kitchen sink. Gotta always have a rug for the kitchen, I think.

Truffles

We decided that we were going to get truffles for Valentine's Day. Instead of going to Target, or Walmart for them, we actually found ourselves at Palmer's Candy - an actual candy store. We wandered around for a while, looking for mainly a pre-packaged set. Couldn't find any. Eventually, we wandered our way to the back of the store, where all the gourmet chocolates were behind glass.

I boggled at how beautiful the chocolates were for several minutes, then saw the price. $3 per truffle. I was prepared to waltz out the same way I came in, but Tyler was determined. He wanted these truffles, and he was not about to take no for an answer.

We ended up with six truffles, that we picked out together. It was apparently buy 5, get one free, so we got six of them. They are rather large, and extremely tasty looking. I also managed to get a piece of fudge for $3, as well. To be fair, the fudge was really awesome, and was a small taste of home - my mother used to make fudge at Christmas, so it was actually worth three dollars to me.

While at Palmer's, we came across a very special truffle. It was specifically labeled "Wedding Cake Truffle". And you know what is coming up, right? So, we picked up two of these truffles. Since we won't be having a wedding cake, these will do just fine, I think!

For these, they gave us the option of little cute truffle boxes. They are cute, and adds a bit of special to them.

Wedding Jewelry

On Sunday, we went on a rather large spree of buying things we need for the wedding. The major purchase we did was the wedding jewelry. The jewelry isn't fancy by all means, it's just a few pieces from Claire's, but I wanted to make sure that I bought a headpiece of some kind.

Naturally, I picked out the headpiece first.I had originally wanted to purchase it from Etsy, and have it possibly custom made... but well, we have time constraints, and finances are quite small. This was kind of something that I wanted originally, so I picked it up.

It was a complete nightmare to find other pieces to match this. Other pearl items at Claire's were a different shade of white, or the metal was a bit shinier. I'm still not happy with the necklace, and I may not wear it in the end, but we will see how it plays out. This was the closest thing I could come up with that somewhat matches.

 

The bonus to the necklace is that it came with matching earrings. The earrings were probably the only reason why I picked up the necklace. If you read my blog a little bit, you know I love a good deal, and when it comes down to a necklace for $18.50, or a necklace with earrings for the same price... I'm likely going to go with the latter. Again, I may not even be able to wear these at all, because I'm still having issues with my ear piercings.

By the time I had went around and around, trying to decide on a necklace (I am an extremely indecisive person), I was at the point where I just wanted to be done with the whole thing. I picked up a bracelet without really looking too closely at it, and was on my way.

All in all, I think the pieces I picked up were okay. I do really love the headband piece, it was quite what I wanted, and I think the others should be fine with it. Now, this is the part where I realized... I was not a fan of Claire's. I try to stay positive on this blog, but there was something that irked me in that store.

When I was just browsing around after getting frustrated with finding my jewelry (maybe I was going into this situation already heated? I don't know), I had seen a clearance sign, stating: "10 for $10" placed over a display of earrings. Nartually, my eyeballs zoned in on it and I headed over there.

I clarified with an associate who told me that not all of the items on the display were for that special. Only certain ones, which were originally less than $10. (Signage was not displayed well at all, and associate was quite short with me when I approached her, confused).

Nonetheless, I purchased 10 clearance items, which were originally under $10. And while I am happy with my earring purchases, I am not amused with Claire's, in general. They were a good deal, and at $1 each set, that's even better than what I pay for earrings at work, even with my associate discount.

The big hoop feather ones originally had caught my attention, and for only $1, I'll deal with terrible signs, and a rude employee.

Tyler's Dress Shirt

Tyler has been wanting a "suit" for the wedding. He wants to go all out with buying the full jacket, pants, vest... the whole thing. It's been my mission this week to try to talk him out of it. They are expensive. and for our little courthouse wedding, a little too dressy then what I'd like to have done.

We came to a compromise of what to dress him in. We settled on a dress shirt that should match my dress, and a silver/white tie. I think the ensemble should look nice, paired with a pair of dress pants that he already has.

Also, a couple things. My ear piercings appear to not be doing well lately. They are swollen, really painful, and I think they may be infected now. I've stopped using the cleaning fluid they gave me at the Piercing Pagoda, and switched to a salt-water mixture a couple times a day. I think it might be making them feel a little better, considering they aren't throbbing anymore. So, hopefully I'll be able to leave them in for the wedding.

Thursday, early morning, we turned in our application and deposit for the apartment we hope to get into. we should be one of the next people on the waiting list, so maybe, we will hear a response soon!

Wedding Shoes

I have purchased yet one more piece of my wedding day attire. My shoes! I got off work last night, so Tyler and I decided to do just a little bit of shopping, and looking around at JCPenney and the rest of the mall. More specifically, there was a sweater I had been eye-balling all afternoon, and I wanted to get it if it was still there once I was off work.

It was still there, so I grabbed that and just took a walk around the rest of the store. We decided to take a quick look over at the shoe department to see if there was any kind of sales on shoes for the wedding day.

I found myself once again, checking out the clearance rack. But this time, something caught my eye. $3.97 shoes. High heeled shoes, in silver, just the color I was looking for to wear with my dress!

I nabbed them up.I normally wear a size 7 shoe, but these ran really, really small. The ones I have are a size 8. and are still really small. But, they did not have anything bigger. I still bought these, because I figured, if they didn't work out, I didn't spend all the much money on them anyway. After my associate discount and the coupon I used, I paid about $2.60 for them. Love it!

Also, in other news... I finally took my wedding dress in to be steamed. Shipping left it with all kinds of wrinkles, so David's Bridal offered to steam it for me. It will be ready to be picked up on Saturday. We have also decided upon a "honeymoon" destination. We'll be staying a couple nights at a nice, upscale hotel in town. This way, I can still be close enough to check up on my cats, if I get a little anxious.

Just think - the wedding is only 13 days away. We are already starting to join our lives together, early this morning, we went into my credit union and got him added to my account, to join our finances. Which, in reality is horrifying to think about, because I am a huge control freak with my money. But, if we will be married, we should share an account for bills and such, right?

Our next steps - We are planning on moving, and we have an apartment complex in mind. Unfortunately they have a waiting list on their one bedrooms, but this week, we will be going in to apply and put our deposit down. Hopefully we get approved, so that we can move before the weather gets warm! (Yay, central air conditioning!)