Winter Wedding: The cakes

Our cakes were amazing - Hilda from Magnificent Cakes in Birmingham did a fabulous job!

The brides cake was vanilla cake with buttercream frosting. It tasted so good! The cake was covered in edible snowflakes - it looked like snow had fallen all over the cake. The cake was placed on a glass cake stand with lights and small bits of babies breath underneath. I love, love, loved this cake design.

On the cake table we had our Waterford Lismore toasting flutes (one of wedding gift from my parents) and photos of my parents on their wedding day with both sets of grandparents in it and a photo of Bradley's parents' wedding with his parents and grandparents. And then of course my bouquet was placed on the cake table.

The groom's cake was....of course... a Michael Jackson cake. Chocolate cake with mint filling. This cake was a huge hit - not just for the design, but I also heard it was delicious. The only taste Bradley and I got of this cake was when we cut it and tasted a bite. Boo...we totally missed out on this cake. And while we missed out on the cake, someone saved 'Michael' for us. He's 'chilling' in our freezer right now. Bradley wants to preserve him.

And yes, that would be a glitter MJ glove from our dance worn by Bradley when cutting the cake.

Read the rest of my blog posts about my Winter Wedding in Birmingham, AL on 12.10.11.

10 minute ab circuit

I recently bought the Gymboss interval timer. It was only $20 and I heard about it from BodyRock.tv.

I got mine in orange of course!

I am obsessed with this website and lurk sometimes to watch the workouts. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to take it on, but it's an interesting 'workouts at home' concept and the people doing the videos are mega-ripped.

Until then, I wanted the interval timer so I could set up my own interval workouts. Yesterday I decided to try it out for the first time.

I'm getting over a cold, so I didn't want to do anything crazy - so I hopped on my elliptical for a good 50 min session (while watching Downton Abbey!) I alternate resistance, incline and I hold 2 lb weights in each hand while on the elliptical for most of the workout. I love the elliptical because it forces me to run properly...i.e. not on my toes.

Afterwards I put the battery in my handy dandy new interval timer and set it to 1 minute intervals with 20 second intervals in between, 10 times. I wrote down on a piece a paper 10 different ab/core exercises.

When I started the timer, I'd do the exercise I'd written down for that minute for the full minute until BEEP... rest and reposition for next exercise in 20 seconds then BEEP...next ab exercise for a full minute and then BEEP...

You get the idea...It was a good mini ab session to do after my cardio. I didn't feel as challenged, so I might shorten the rest time or repeat the whole thing. But considering I can barely breath out of my nose, this was a good starting point. P.S. Why do side planks hurt so bad?? They are my weakness.

Do you workout at home often? What do you do? Do you every make up your own random workouts?

Randomness Round Up

I'm rocking a major cold today - thank you very much ever changing, rainy, pollen infused Charleston weather.

I'm pretty sure my entire work cubicle needs to be disinfected. "Why are you even at work?" you ask.... Good question. I should be home on my couch under a blanket. However, my employer only gives vacation days... not sick days. So, if I want to take a 'sick day', it's actually a vacation day. In other words, we all come to work sick here and share germs... a lovely mental image for you I'm sure.

Anyways...

So with the cold comes medicine that makes it hard to focus on just about anything...so forgive me if this post is so completely random....

I really want to work out today, but my body is saying "No, no, no..." I didn't work out yesterday because I felt blah, and I ate horrible all weekend...so I feel like I have to do something today. I usually take Blast 900 on Tuesdays, but with this cold I wouldn't make it through the first five minutes...so I'm on my own today. I'm thinking I could probably pull off something like this...

Source: pbfingers.com via Christy on Pinterest

But in the back of my mind I am not sure I'm feeling up to it...so I might just do an old faithful and hop on my elliptical and watch a new episode of my newest obsession on my Kindle Fire - Downton Abbey...which until recently I was referring to as Downtown Abbey (who knew?). I'm now a (proud??) Amazon Prime member - so I get free streaming movies, tv shows and book downloads. I'm curious to see how much I use it...but I also get free two day delivery on Amazon purchases, which is pretty cool. It's $79 a year to be a member - we had some credits from our wedding registry, so we decided to put it towards that.

Maybe all of this sneezing is exercise in itself...abs?

{sniff, sniff, sniff} {Ah..choo!}
Excuse me...stupid cold.

So my incredibly baby fine and thin hair has gotten almost to it's max length again. You see, my hair will not grow past my shoulders. "But Christy," you say, "your profile picture shows you with long, beautiful hair.." This is correct. As someone who lives with baby fine, thin hair that doesn't grow, I'm also a big investor in professional hair extensions from time to time -- but that's another post for another day.

So my {real} hair grows just about to my shoulders and then just gets stringy and flat. Usually when this happens, I chop it off and start over...it's a cycle I've had for years. And so now it's time to chop...

I'm super obssessed with Chelsea Staub's hair cut. And so is the rest of Pinterest...but I loves it. I used to have a similar cut a few years ago and I think I want to rock it again. I have to be careful not to go too short (above my chin) because my face is so round, aka chubby cheeks, but my hair always looks thicker and healthier when it's short. And it's so super easy to fix... granted, no more high buns on my head for a while, but that's ok.



Source: officialchelseastaub.com via Christy on Pinterest

Source: officialchelseastaub.com via Teresa on Pinterest

So I have an appointment Friday, and along with these two images, I'm also taking in a picture of fellow blogger Jess from The Kentucky Priss who recently had her hair cut in a simliar style and I love it...I hope she doesn't mind if I copy her, in addition to seriously printing out this picture and giving it to my hairdresser. :)

P.S. If you don't already, follow her blog! She is super sassy and funny - a great read!

Speaking of following blogs, thanks to Pinterest, I've found a few new fashion bloggers to follow - one is Classy Girls Wear Pearls. I love the preppy, New England outfits which remind me of Blair for Gossip Girl.

However, I'm suspicious of this girl - is she real? Is she real in that all of her photos look like staged photo shoots/catalogues. And...she works for Kiel Patrick James. I'm sure she's 'real', but I wonder if she's a model and some marketing team from Kiel Patrick James is ghost blogging as her.

Randomly in her outfits she's wearing Kiel Patrick James...but not excessivlely so. I mean... the photos are amazing and the outfits are great...but it's just a little too cataloguey (word?) and staged to be a real 'look what I wore today' fashion blogger. Thoughts?



Oh look, just me and my impecably dressed bff sitting
oh so pretty on a table while at work.

And speaking of clothes... I gave up buying any clothes for Lent. It's a major sacrafice for me, but a much needed break for my wallet. I went to Target today and had to plan my route so I wouldn't walk by the clothes...and I checked out with a bill under $100. That's got to be a Target trip record for me.

So in place of my shopping, I've been spending a lot of time on Polyvore, creating outfits with pieces I already own... I really should give up the shopping longer than just Lent and just shop my closets...yes, that would be plural... closets... hence my shopping problem.

Black & White stripe w/ Teal by charlestongirlblog

Finally, I leave you with some puppy cuteness. Everyone is posting the brooms standing on end and eggs standing up straight all over Facebook. At first I thought it was some faked thing to get 'breast cancer awareness' or something, but it's really a trick that works that has something to do with the equinox, leap year, planets aligning..blah blah. Google it.

So I posted this photo last night to Facebook...maybe I was just poking fun because I never could get my broom to balance on its own. {names have been hidden to protect the innocent}

Ok...enough from me. I hope you're all having a fabulous Tuesday. Cheers!

Winter Wedding: Centerpieces, Drapery, Lights...Oh my!

The transformation the ballroom went through for our wedding was amazing. My florist (Joy Patterson) and her lighting guy took my inspiration and brought it to life.

Our reception was held at The Club in downtown Birmingham. It is one of the few venues in Birmingham and the surrounding area that can hold a 300+ person wedding. It sits up on the mountain and overlooks all of downtown Birmingham, so the views are stunning, especially at night.

The Entry Way

When you enter The Club, you walk down a long mirrored hallway to the entrance of the ballroom.

Guestbook table - our guestbook was a custom
wood surfboard..another blog post later. :)

Our photographer didn't get a good picture, but this arrangement
is a 'snow globe'. Inside are precious moments figurines of a surfer (Bradley)
and a ballerina (me!) and a small black lab (Willow). Bradley always tells me
I look like a precious moment figurine, hence the precious moments characters.

Our table cards were on little mini 'snow filled' clear ornament balls
with white glitter snowflakes on the outside. The cool thing was guests
could keep the ornaments, tie a ribbon to it, and use it on their tree...perfect
for December. :)

The Ballroom

The entrance to the ballroom.

We had two bars, this is one of them.

Drapery above the dance floor. And you can barely see, but a wall of
drapery and lights behind the DJ at the head of the dance floor.

Navy tablecloths, silver chairs.

We had four different centerpiece designs - all using white
flowers, candles, lighting, etc.

The tall centerpiece...my fave!

The head table.

This wreath is part of The Club's Christmas decor. I wasn't happy
with the gold since we had mostly silver accents, but they were going
to charge us $500 (no kidding) to take it down. Ridiculous. So our florist
stuck some lights and babies breath in it, so it wasn't all that bad.

 Read the rest of my blog posts about my Winter Wedding in Birmingham, AL on 12.10.11.