The Sparrow Still Falls

My super clever husband came up with a new snack tonight

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 00:38:38 -0500

He calls it a Fruit Salad Sandwich - toasted wheat bread, peanut butter, apple slices, banana slices, and grape jelly.

It’s super tasty, and we agreed that it would be a good hiking snack :)

I’ve been really using my new kitchen for the first time...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 23:22:06 -0500

I’ve been really using my new kitchen for the first time this week. I tried a new recipe, lemon garlic chicken (recipe here), and it turned out ok, but not great. Too much lemon…kinda bitter. But it could be good with some work.

I really like that I have a lot of colorful kitchen stuff though! It makes it much more visually fun.

Matt and I made apple cider donuts today (recipe here), and that was a new challenge. It took a good three hours, but they turned out really well! I was kinda scared to actually cook them (boiling oil and all that) so Matt handled the frying. He did great! They ended up super tasty!

Soooo...I got married.

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 20:55:45 -0500

Like 2 weeks ago. October 20th. Yay!

Matt was saying he couldn’t believe that I hadn’t posted anything about it yet, but it’s been a busy couple weeks! Easy to let blogging slide when you’re moving, and there’s boxes all over the place and you’re learning to live with a new person. But I’m posting now. So, there. :P

We’re actually on our honeymoon at the moment, at Yosemite National Park. It’s AH-mazing. We had a four hour plane ride, and then drove for about 4 hours as well to get here. It was a beautiful drive - California is so different from Illinois. So many hills and palm trees!

The place we’re staying at is in a pretty remote area. We were driving through the mountains, where there would be an occasional little house, but they were few and far between. Then suddenly we were in the middle of a little town that had like, Jamba Juice and Taco Bell. After another 20 minutes of nothing but twisty, winding roads and no sign of life, we found the road that leads to where we’re staying. It’s a crazy steep, narrow road that then branches off to other houses, and we’re pretty much at the top. It’s a really nice house, but a bit big for just the two of us. We’d really like to come back sometime with other friends.

Today, we spent the day at Mariposa Grove, where the giant sequoias and redwoods are. They’re absolutely astounding. None of our pictures does them justice, neither in scale nor color. Everything is just so rich! It’s beautiful!

They’re huge.

We hiked around for almost 4 hours, and didn’t even see everything we would have liked to. We’re hoping to go back before we leave, and make it through the rest of the grove. It’s such a peaceful place. There weren’t nearly as many people there as I thought there would be, so many times there was no one else in sight. It’s such a refreshing break to spend an entire afternoon outside, hiking through a beautiful forest on a mountain… So great. :)

MY FRIENDS THREW ME AN ALICE IN WONDERLAND BACHELORETTE...

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 04:39:21 -0400

MY FRIENDS THREW ME AN ALICE IN WONDERLAND BACHELORETTE PARTY!!!

Oh my gosh. It was amazing. I don’t have pictures yet, but it was so great. I could not believe how much thought they put into this! The door was decorated to look like you’re going down a rabbit hole, and inside was a Mad Tea Party. It was all decorated with playing cards and tea cups and little jars and petite fours and cookies that said “eat me” and UGH it was so perfect!

Starting to feel the stress...

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 11:30:44 -0400

There’s a 10 days left till the wedding. 10 DAYS. And I feel like we still have so much to do.

We got into our apartment, which is awesome. I love it! I’m so excited to move in!

For a while, that amazing gnome candle was the only thing we had in the apartment :P

Since I took these pictures though, we’ve painted [well, I say we but really it was pretty much all my dad… Yay for dads!], moved in our couch and some of our kitchen stuff. All the rest of our furniture is still in Matt’s parent’s van, waiting to be moved in.

Neither of us have packed up our stuff from our old rooms yet either. Except for my books. Six boxes worth! But that’s all so far. It’s weird looking around my room and thinking about putting it all in boxes and taking it somewhere else.

There’s a big part of me that just wants to stop doing anything. Just pretend we don’t have a ton of things to still figure out, and just sit in my room watching tv. I get like that when stuff gets too stressful - I just want to seclude myself in a little ball of obliviousness and ignore the problems. But I know I can’t do that. I have to get stuff done. And even though it’s for such an amazing thing (my WEDDING), I still have trouble staying motivated to do all the little things.

Because in 10 days, whether we feel ready or not, we’re getting married. And really that’s all that matters. We’ll be married even if the programs aren’t perfect. We’ll be married even if the card box doesn’t get set up just the way I want it. We’ll be married even if we don’t hear back from everyone we invited.

We’ll be married. :)

It's been a busy couple of weeks

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 10:33:52 -0400

We get our apartment keys tomorrow.

TOMORROW.

That’s crazy. I’m so excited though. Last weekend we spent HOURS at Ikea looking at furniture and deciding what we wanted to get for our new apartment. Then we went to Menards and got TONS of paint chips (we probably went a bit overboard with that…but hey, now we have options!) So we’re planning on spending a lot of time tomorrow looking over paint swatches and deciding how we’re going to arrange things. I can’t wait!

While we were at Menards, we also decided to look and see if they had any seed packets. We wanted to have cute little bags with seeds for favors at the wedding, but we’ve been having trouble finding anything but bulbs because it’s fall. We wandered through the garden area, and Matt spotted this stand:

We bought ALL THE SEEDS!

(amazing image from Hyperbole and a Half)

It was great - over a hundred seed packets for less than 15 dollars. Score.

So I managed to keep this up for almost 2 weeks

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:43:34 -0400

And then I missed two days. Merg.

I think my problem with starting new things is being overly ambitious. Like, posting every day on a brand new blog when I haven’t even kept up my journal in months and months? Too ambitious.

Same thing happened when I started working out. I joined a gym, started going three times a week, and then my knees started to hate me. So I stopped. And now I’m getting physical therapy. Bad choice.

I need to ease into things. I need to remember that starting something full speed ahead is just going to exhaust me and make me want to quit.

So, as a means of remedying this, Matt suggested that I commit myself to one significant post each week. Maybe write down little things that happen during the week so I can remember and draw from that.

That’s what I’m gonna try for.

I had no intention of doing another “Look what came in the...

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 01:53:25 -0400

Even the little card it came on is adorable!

I had no intention of doing another “Look what came in the mail!” thing, but then I saw how adorably this was wrapped and I just couldn’t help myself.

Writing

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 02:44:00 -0400

Still working on that book post. I keep tweaking it, and changing my mind about how detailed to get with some things. But I’ll post it eventually!

Even though I haven’t been at this long, it’s made me realize that I miss writing. I’ve never considered myself a ~writer~ of any sort, since I don’t write fiction, and I only had a brief, angsty stint of poetry writing in high school… But I really enjoy the process of it. I often have a hard time explaining my thoughts or feelings in person, but when I can write something out, see it, read it back, edit, read again…it’s so much easier.

A+ for effort?

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 01:03:57 -0400

I started writing a post about how I’ve been re-reading a lot of books lately, and then it morphed into this really lengthy thing about my favorite book and how important it is to me, and I’m so tired and sick right now that I just need to come back to it tomorrow to do it justice.

So this little explanation post is it for today.

It's astounding how much snot can come out of a single nose.

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 23:14:41 -0400

BUT WHY. WHY IS THERE SO MUCH.

…

I’m very sick today. Hence, all this.

And also:

I JUST WANT TO KNOW

Posting every day was probably an unrealistic goal to set.

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 01:16:00 -0400

It sounded good - just post something, even if it’s just a few sentences, to keep track of the days. I still plan to try to keep that up as long as I can, but right now, I just want to sleep.

Today, we signed the lease for our apartment! We also went to a family birthday party, and addressed rsvp envelopes - 100 so far. I wrote my name and address so many times, and it was strange to think that that will all be changing in about a month. New name, new address…it’ll take a while to get used to, for sure. But I’m so excited for it.

The day started with gelato, sorbetto, and wedding ring...

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 02:01:48 -0400

Matt :)

Tasty, tasty gelato and sorbetto

Tasty, tasty margaritas

The day started with gelato, sorbetto, and wedding ring shopping; it ended with buying a ring, margaritas and barbecue.

Good day.

I can’t get over how much I love this song. I’m not...

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 14:33:00 -0400

I can’t get over how much I love this song. I’m not incredibly crazy about the rest of her music, but this one is so great.

I found this on my kitchen table

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 14:27:43 -0400

Either my parents have suddenly become MUCH older,

or they’ve started a detective agency.

…

Also:

More fun things in the mail today! This is going to be the card...

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 23:50:17 -0400

More fun things in the mail today! This is going to be the card box at the wedding. I got the idea from pinterest (just as addicting as tumblr, really):

So great. I love it.

The little details are starting to come together now, and I know the next month and a half is going to fly by. It’s hard to believe that it’s so soon now. I have this vague idea of what the day is going to look like, and part of me is afraid that our ideas haven’t been cohesive enough, and that it’s not going to end up at all the way we imagined.

And obviously, it’s about so much more that just the decorations or throwing a great party or something like that. But every girl wants her wedding to be beautiful and perfect and wonderful to look back on, so it’s hard to just have a “que sera, sera” mentality about it even though I want to.

But I know the truly important stuff will work out just fine. And if for some reason it doesn’t, then God’s got some other kind of plan up His sleeve for us and we’ll take that as it comes.

This just came in the mail today - an itty bitty acorn necklace...

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 22:03:16 -0400

This just came in the mail today - an itty bitty acorn necklace from Etsy (which you can find here). So cute! And the Peter Pan reference makes me happy.

I just looked at the clock and was like 'OMG 11:54 I CAN'T MESS THIS UP ALREADY" so here's a ridiculously rushed post for today.

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 00:59:00 -0400

My soon-to-be sister-in-law helped me make my veil, and then some of our friends helped us address our invitations.

Edit: Gah, it says Sept 5th on the post, but it was totally still 11:58 when I posted it.

Communication

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 21:54:19 -0400

I think Matt and I have pretty great communication skills. And a lot of the credit for that goes to him. I tend to be very reserved and don’t really share things with people unless directly asked. But his openness has helped me to become much more at ease with sharing my feelings. He can read me so well, it’s kinda crazy.

Which is not to say it’s perfect. Today, we realized that we hadn’t asked his cousins about being a flower girl and boy in the wedding because we were both waiting for the other person to decide if we should. Oops.

But we’re really good at talking through problems and not letting things just sit and stew if we’re upset.

And sometimes our communication consists of making weird noises back and forth at each other with increasing volume until people start looking at us funny.

So, y’know, whatever the situation calls for. :)

Trying to sneak into my pictures… Matt and his brother are...

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 18:45:22 -0400

Trying to sneak into my pictures…

Matt and his brother are playing Gears of War while I’m working on blogging. He looked over at one point and said “You could write stuff like ‘he said this and it was ridiculous but I love his face.’”

I like him. :)