CHICAGO!

Yup, that's right - Scott and I took it upon ourselves to have me tag along on another work trip of his this month and spend a little "QT" with each other. And, I know what you're thinking...that it was driving me nuts that we couldn't get anything done AND I was spending and not making money down here in Florida...well...INSERT MEWAH MEWAH SOUND...for once, this wasn't the case!

I knew ahead of time that March would almost be a wash with getting what we needed to get done DONE, so I embraced that and as a result, everything that HAS gotten done has turned into a pleasant surprise... ;)

CHICAGO...WE'RE HERE!

Disclaimer: picture taken while inside of a car ;)

Let's start with our first night there: I was SO excited to get into the city after we landed, but let me just say my welcome into Chicago was not the smoothest...

I was very excited to land and still on Could 9 that Scott has surprised me with first class seats on my flights up to Chicago - how sweet is that?!

I actually landed a few minutes early into the O'Hare airport and started walking towards baggage claim, anxious to see my man! Sadly, the excitement of landing early quickly dwindled when I came to realize I was the last one on my flight left at baggage claim - sans bag.  My ride and Scott's partner in crime Barry must have circled around the arrival lanes about 50 times before finally giving up on my bag arriving on time.  They had to hurry to the arena and get to the Bulls game while I was left to raise "you know what" in order to get my bag in a timely matter.   

So there I was: no ride, no bags and worried about getting to the game on time.  Luckily, our friend Annabelle came to the rescue with snacks and refreshments.  Little did I know the 15 minutes planned to grab my bags turned into a 4 and a half hour wait time! YUCK!  She was very sweet and felt bad about the whole thing, when obviously nothing about that was her fault!  I could have had the bags delivered to my hotel, but I knew THAT would take even longer and no one had time for that nonsense.

Needless to say, I finally got my bags and it was time to head to the Bulls game!  I always love the opportunity to travel to different cities and experience NBA games from that city's perspective.  The game was really fun and I had a great time watching while Scott worked.

It felt great to "get away" again and know we had a few days in the city ahead...

The next day, Scott and I planned to enjoy the parks, tour some buildings and take advantage of the culture that Chicago has to offer.  Unfortunately, the weather had other plans: dropping to what felt like zero and raining.  So, we improvised.  We took this opportunity to tour the Museum of Contemporary Art followed by shopping and finding my two new favorite stores in the city Hershey's and Ghirardelli! ;)

I can't lie that Scott and I both got pretty excited about this adventure:

HOLY 5 pounds of Hershey's Bar!

I'm pretty sure he could have drank that entire bottle.

Ghirardelli hot cocoas - THE BEST hot chocolate EVER! :)

And..what better way to spend your time at at the Contemporary Art Museum, than remembering your time with some great photo opps?

.................

I'm sure we're the only ones who took pictures with this.

Just a hanging out in the giant shells...

You probably get by now that we made a great day out of a rainy and cold day in Chicago.  It wasn't ideal for "touring the city," but we still had a great time together and I would love to come back to the city either in early spring, or fall one day.  I'm sure there's TONS we didn't get to do or see.

Ahhh! There you are - in the rubber house...of course!

The last night before we left, we got to spend some time with one of Scott's best friends, Barry.  The two guys have always had a close bond and together are pretty ridiculous.  No matter what they do or where they go, there's always bound to be lots of shenanigans and laughs happening.  We had a nice dinner and went out to the House of Blues, which was so much fun! 

We didn't really want to leave, but at the end of the night we were all impressed by the funny little mini "pew pew" gun that our waitress shared with us, and yes, this is completely normal. ;)

There they are...Annabelle "pew pew"ing.

On the last morning of our trip, Scott and I woke up and spent the remainder of our time with Barry before we had to head back to sunny Florida - sorry guys...had to throw that in!

He took us up to his new place and we had brunch at a charming little diner by the arena that SCREAMS Chicago!  The owner of this place was hysterical and told us jokes I've never heard before...mostly inappropriate for this blog, so just use your imagination on those!  But, needless to say...even brunch was FUN.

Love these two...

 Thanks for a great trip, Scott. I feel very lucky to be able to travel with you and just enjoy time together during such a crazy time. 

Thanks for reading, and I'm sure there will be plenty up and coming to read about as we enter into April.
Time sure is flyyyyying....

4 MONTHS TO GO!

OMG.....(in 2 days) our wedding is 4 MONTHS AWAY!!!!

I'm doing this month's check-in post little early because we are going to hit our "4 MONTHS TO GO" mark when Mr. Hess and I will be in Chicago!  I had to do something wedding related before we left...right?! SO - I thought it was time for a video update.  Here I explain everything that we've been trying to book, negotiate, and settle since our 5 month mark:

In the video I mentioned a few things: 

Invitations!  We have FINALLY BOOKED a company to do our invitations:  

• Paper Charm Custom Designs.  Our contact's name is Angela and I picked up her business card at a bridal show we went to last October.  Everything she does is hand made and she can put a lot of special touches and creativity into whatever she does, so I know we are in good hands.  Once we get proofs back for our invitations, I'm sure I will be writing more about this!

Her link is below, and it directs you to her blogpage:

www.papercharm.com

Catering!  WE ARE DOWN TO 2 PEOPLE!!!!  

• Millenia Catering - http://www.milleniacatering.com/.  On of the top 3 preferred caterers of our venue.  More on a smaller scale, and every event is personally ran by Chef Lo.  He understands our contemporary style and is very accommodating.  The thing we love most about him is his attention to detail and only does one event per day.  He has thrown in a lot of "extras" into our package for free and is a pleasure to work with!
• Big City Catering - http://www.bigcitycatering.com/. On the top of our wedding coordinator's preferred caterers.  Offers an overall great package of everything we need with a contemporary style!  Has done tons of events at our venue and is highly recommended by some of our other vendors.  
• BOTH are within the same price range, give or take a few dollars, and we are equally impressed with them.  WHAT TO DO?!

SUGGESTIONS?!?!?! It's our goal to BOOK a caterer by the end of this coming week and sign a contract.  Any type of feedback would be greatly appreciated! :)

And on that note, I'm now off to go pack for Chicago.  I'm so excited to see the city for the first time and spend another few days "away" with Mr. Hess!

124 days to go... 

Presh 

HAPPY ST. PATTY'S DAY!

Not only is today St. Patrick's Day...but today celebrates the heritage of my amazing fiance, Mr. Hess.  Anyone who has met him knows he is proud of being Irish, and I have to say I am proud to officially marry into it in about 4 months! 

If you paid any attention to the silly but informative video post about "Our Claddagh Rings" in the beginning of the month, you would know all of these things.  But even if you missed it, you probably now understand how much Mr. Hess and I LOVE St. Patrick's Day and celebrating an IRISH holiday!  Heck, we ideally wanted our wedding to be all green and white and theme it out around this time of this year (St. Patty's Day) - but obviously that didn't happen and thankfully we still have 4 months to put everything together! PHEW!

Traditionally, Mr. Hess and I will be celebrating the day with an Irish dinner made up of corned beef & cabbage....well at least he will.  I can honestly say I try to eat it every year, but I mostly just end up pushing the food around on my plate and ordering some kind of Irish stew - works for me!  Either way, we like to at least honor the holiday by grabbing an Irish meal and usually meet some friends out to celebrate later.  Hopefully by next year once we are married and settled into our new place, I will actually take the initiative to learn how to cook these things, but for this year - a good 'ol Irish pub will do!  I can here the "top of the mornin' to ya's" already....

So before we go, I thought I'd share some fun facts about St. Patricks Day with all of you, as I stumbled upon them a week or so ago doing some research on shamrocks!

• The shamrock is the traditional symbol because St. Patrick used it to explain the connection between the father, the son, and the holy spirit in the Christian religion. 
• For good luck, the shamrock is usually included in the bouquet of an Irish bride, and also in the boutonniere of the groom. **HINT HINT!!! ;)
• The very first St. Patrick's Day parade was not in Ireland. It was in Boston in 1737.
• The city with the largest population of Americans of Irish descent is Boston (23%). (NO WONDER those Boston Celtics fans are DIE HARD, even when they come to Orlando!!!)
• In Chicago, on St. Patrick's Day, the rivers are dyed green. (FUN! We'll be there next week!)
• 34 million Americans have Irish ancestry, according to the 2003 US Census. That’s almost nine times the population of Ireland, which has 4.1 million people.
• One estimate suggests that there are about 10,000 regular three-leaf clovers for every lucky four-leaf clover. 
•  Legend says that each leaf of the clover means something: the first is for HOPE, the second is for FAITH, the third is for LOVE, and the fourth for  LUCK.

   

Dying the Chicago Rivers Green - SO COOL!

All of this information I found at http://www.whsv.com/seasonal/misc/40129602.html...which also provides some great videos on how to make Irish dishes such as Irish Nachos and Irish Coffee...YUM!

All the best to you and yours on this St. Patrick's Day! Off to go get ready for dinner, but I'm going to leave you with a pretty amazing video if I do say so myself - ENJOY!!!

HAPPY ST. PATTY'S DAY!!!!

Presh

Wedding Ring BLING!

Well, today did not start out with the best of mornings...I have had to deal with a lot of stuff from my accident back in December, and it looks like today will not be the end of it either.  Accidents can get very complicated and very emotional, and it's something you may never get over.  Mr. Hess has supported me through this entire process and will continue to stick by my side for the rest of our lives, and he definitely proved that this morning.

On a lighter note, he also knows JUST how to cheer me up and make me feel better: Taking me to go look for our WEDDING RINGS!!!!! On our way to the mall, hearing the words come out of my mouth that we were going to look for our actual "wedding rings" turned this girl's frown upside down in no time!  This has been something I have been looking forward to ever since I saw my engagement ring, and goes wayyyyy back into my dreams as a young girl....you know what I'm talking about here ladies...we've all had the picture of our "perfect day" dating back to the elementary school years, and this definitely includes what my ring(s) would look like!

Now, I'm not saying that my taste hasn't changed since the age of 8, but I can say I get to live a little bit of the dream every day planning our BIG DAY! Mr. Hess did a really good job at picking out such a unique engagement ring for me, and I'm learning just how unique it is every time we go into a store and look for our bands.  It has a double strand of diamonds on each side of the 2 baguettes that hold the main diamond, so it has been very challenging to find the perfect wedding band to compliment it without taking away from the original ring.  If you ask Mr. Hess, he says he did this on purpose so that I wouldn't need a wedding band at all.  Well, tough luck buddy, because I believe in the meaning behind the wedding band and want that extra ring closest to my heart on my wedding day.  I love what having the rings together symbolizes and I wouldn't want it any other way.

I've gotten my ring cleaned several times at the jewlers Mr. Hess purchased my engagement ring from, and found several different options that would work for me there, but this is the first time we have actually gone to look together at rings and I was in the best mood EVER!!!!!!

We went to about 5 or 6 jewelery stores in the mall, and I found a few similar rings for me at each store...but of course I have my FAVORITE!  It's from Tiffany & Co. (go figure) and it is as traditional as a string of thin diamonds can get as far as bands go.  Anyone who's asked me knows exactly what I'm looking for - a small band of diamonds that compliments MY ring without overpowering it - so I'm pretty sure you can figure out a good idea of what my wedding band will look like...and for this reason only I'm going to show you all what it is because I am SO excited to finally find one the compliments my challenge of an engagement ring:

It was the first one I saw that actually looked MADE to compliment my ring!

You can imagine my excitement when I tried this baby on!  And the best part about it all?! It's within the SAME exact price range as rings very similar from other jewelers that I felt would just simply "work" with my ring.  At first, we didn't even want to walk into Tiffany's because every time I do, I see something I want and then see that I would be paying 3 times as much if I purchased something similar from somewhere else, but luckily for once (and maybe the MOST IMPORTANT time ever!) this was not the case!!!!! YAYYYY!!!!!!! This ring in particular just came out and will be available in my size in mid-April.  I wanted to hug the guy when he told me the good news...so I feel like I am SO close to buying MY ring!  Now we're on the mission to find one for Mr. Hess...

So many options and so many stores to choose from! What to do?!

I found out very quickly today that we both agreed what my ring should look like but had absolutely NO IDEA about what we wanted Mr. Hess's ring to look like.  Traditional?  Trendy? Plain? Embellished with diamonds?  White Gold/Platinum/Titanium? The questions for this seem endless!  We found a few options at each store we went to that we both liked and agreed upon.  We saw a lot of plain rings, and right away knew that nothing about our wedding is going to be plain, and knew we wanted something a little more on the trendy side.  So the search began...

We probably had a favorite or two at each store and my favorites included one from Mayors and one from David Yurman.  I can't show you pictures of the ones we were thinking about for Mr. Hess because I feel like it would give TOO much away....c'mon people, mine was a no brainier so I have to save some element of surprise for you to see later down the road!  We still aren't 100% sure whether we want a super trendy ring for him, because we found some GREAT but still more traditional rings that we both liked.  What I can show you are some cool ideas that are definitely more trendy and contemporary options along the way that both Mr. Hess and I LOVED:

David Yurman bands - complete with black diamonds.

But don't get too excited...we haven't picked one out for him just yet and we still have a few more places to visit.  The important thing is that we figured out what we were looking for, and Mr. Hess showed me once again how great of a companion he is going to be.  What started out as a horrible morning ended with an amazing afternoon, so THANK YOU MR. HESS for being my rock, my best friend, and my soon-to-be husband.  Today was JUST what I needed...

What makes ring shopping even better? Panera Pick 2 & Lattes! YUM!

 128 days until our rings become OUR RINGS!!!!

Until Next Time,

Presh