Dancing Machine

I am so happy this week flew by. It means I can relax and sleep and recharge. I've been having trouble falling asleep lately. Want to know why? Because last weekend, I was dozing off and I dreamt I woke up and saw someone hovering over me on my side of the bed. I screamed, "There's someone in the room!!" Then I sort of jumped over to A.P.'s side of the bed while simultaneously swinging my arms trying to defend myself. A.P. woke up and calmed me down, but my heart was racing and I was so freaked out. Ever since, I've had a hard time falling asleep.

I know what this whole thing stemmed from, too. After we returned from Leland, we were hanging out in our apartment, resting with a couple of friends who had gone with after having lugged everything upstairs. We were laughing and talking and our neighbor knocked on the door. Before we could answer, she just walked in the apartment. It scared the crap out of me and made me so angry. Plus, I felt so, so violated. Who in the hell does that?? Ever since, I've been making sure our door was locked and I've become paranoid about our neighbors coming into our apartment. We have nice enough neighbors, but they're all a little crazy.

Needless to say, I am excited about catching up on sleep this weekend and relaxing to the max. Which is perhaps why I'm loving this week's wedding. It's beautifully shot by Andrew J R Squires Photography, is super sweet, and so low key. James and Charlie bucked tradition and got married in a small, warm registry wedding. It oozes love and charm, but not a lot of fuss, which is exactly how I'm feeling these days: unfussy.

Is that not the sweetest thing? And I love that there are details...just not an obscene amount.

Besides relaxing and maxing, we are going to celebrate our little dog Radar's b-day. He would have been 11 this Saturday and I decided that instead of being sad he's not here to nuzzle and cuddle and wish happy birthday, we would go out and celebrate the fact that we got to live our lives, even a small part of our lives, with this awesome dog. Plus, it gets us out of the house, which is key these days since everywhere we look, we expect him to be there. How will you be passing your days off? Whatever it is, I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

In the mean time, here are your dance moves for the week:

10 silly home objects I'd still like to have

Got a glove that lost its mate? Turn it into a cute little chipmunk.

The traditional 1st wedding anniversary gift is paper. Why not give your partner 52 things you love about them?

One of my favorite things to photograph is stenciled street art. I can't tell you how much I wish I had some of these in my own personal library.

Autumn always makes me want to make delicious things in my slow cooker, like this yummy French Onion Soup.

I think I would have a hard time eating at Tsujita in Los Angeles because I'd endlessly be staring at the amazing ceiling.

I wish I could pull off hats like this a bit more.

Maple pumpkin custard? Yum!

Love this shelving unit idea!

(Friday dance photo via here; James and Charlie's Registry Wedding photographed by Andrew J R Squires Photography via Rock'n'Roll Bride)

Wedding Wednesday: DIY Lovebird Cake Topper

Are you enjoying today's DIY projects? I hope so! It's Wedding Wednesday here on NTMK and if you're just waking up, today is a very special Wedding Wednesday. I'm posting several DIY projects from our own wedding in honor of our five year anniversary, with the last being the one that ties into our first date. Again, if you end up using any of these projects in your own wedding, feel free to email me the results.

This next project was fairly simple and turned out better than I expected. In fact, it's so quick you don't even have time for wine or The Bachelorette. I adapted it from this DIY tutorial on Once Wed. I simplified their instructions/design a bit since I couldn't fathom dealing with fresh flowers on a cake topper. Yeesh! I wanted a pretty, dramatic bird like the one they used, but couldn't find anything. The only one I really liked was this semi-cheesy pair of doves holding a set of wedding bands. I thought they would look cheap and out of place, but they actually ended up looking kind of vintage-y and cute. Plus, the cost of this was under $20! You can't beat that! Here's what you'll need:

Bark covered wire. Once Wed's instructions called for 2 yards. I don't think I used that much at all........................................................................approx. $3-5/roll

Heavy duty chipboard. I used some from the bottom of a sketch pad. This can be expensive, so look around your house for something you can use before you buy new. Make sure it's heavy duty, though, especially it you want to hang on to it as a keepsake. You don't want the grease from the frosting to ruin a flimsy piece of cardboard, which is the bottom of the whole cake topper. Dammit.........approx. $9

Pair of lovebirds. You can usually find these at any craft store ...........approx. $4-5

Moss. You can buy a new bag or if you're making the escort cards from this morning, you can use your leftovers.........................................approx. $3-5/bag

Vintage Millinery. Again, you can use your leftovers from the escort card project or you can buy new................................................................approx. $3-5/bunch

Heavy Gauge Craft or Floral Wire..................................................approx. $3-5/roll

Hot Glue Gun & Glue Pencil

Sharp Scissors

Round Glass

1. Using your glass, trace a circle onto your chip board. Using your scissors, cut the circle out.


2. Make three loops of your bark covered wire the size of the chip board circle. Set the circle aside and continue making loops. You want to stop when the wire becomes fairly substantial and "nest-like."


3. Now, wrap wire around your piles of loops. Make sure you are pulling the wire tight as you loop around your pile. This is what will hold your pile in place and form the nest. Cut the wire and tuck it on the inside of the nest.


4. Set aside your nest. Heat up your hot glue gun. Then, take a long length of your heavy gauge craft or floral wire and wrap around the diameter of your chip board circle. Loop the wire around to the other side, meeting the two ends in the middle. Twist the ends, securing the wire around the chip board circle. Keep the ends pointed up. This might need picture explanation. See below.


5. Using your hot glue gun, secure your chip board circle to the nest.


6. Take you bird and stab it on the craft wire. Glue it into place.


7. Glue moss into place around the birds to fill in the space and cover the chip board.


8. Glue millinery around the nest to pretty it up. Your finished product should look like this:


So simple! So pretty. Because we had a dessert buffet, we didn't have a fancy wedding cake. Just a simple cake for cutting. This cake topper made our cake. It seriously prettied up the whole dessert buffet. And all for under $20 and less than one night's work! Sweet!

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(Photos by me, except for the last one by Theresa Scarbrough)

Wedding Wednesday: DIY Moss Covered Vintage Soda Crate Escort Card Stand

Um, yeah. That title was a mouthful. Or an earful. Or an eyeful. Whatever. It's a helluva title! Yes, so hello! Welcome! It's a regular Wedding Wednesday, but today has a special twist. In honor of our fifth anniversary (that would be me and A.P.), I'm posting several posts today featuring DIY projects we had in our own wedding, ending with the most special one that reflected our first date (and the reason for today's anniversary!). Each project has instructions and a basic budget breakdown. If you end up using any of these projects in your own wedding, feel free to email me the results. I love seeing other takes on my ideas. It's so rad!

The first DIY that I'm featuring today is for the moss covered soda crate we created to hold our escort cards. This was one of my favorite projects in our wedding and it was also one of the most time consuming. Ironically, it was used for all of, like, ten minutes. Oh, well, it's pretty and it photographs well. Plus, I got to watch a lot of reality TV while I made it. Win some, lose some. Here's what you'll need:

Vintage Soda Crate. You can find these on eBay fairly easily. Also, for reference, we were able to fit 75 clips on one crate and 64 cards. Figure you will reserve a few clips on each create for some vintage millinery......................approx. $10-15/crate

Black Foam Board. Enough to fit the top of each crate.............approx. $2-3/board

Gold Paperclips; 75 clips per crate............................................approx. $3/package

Moss. You'll need quite a bit of this. I want to say I went through at least two bags, if not three................................................................................approx. $3-5/bag

Vintage Millinery......................................................................approx. $3-5/bunch

Wood Veneer Business Cards (or any business card-sized escort card)..........varies

Hot Glue Gun & Glue Ruler & Pencil

Exacto Knife

1. Get yourself ready. Gather your materials, some wine, and put a good trashy TV show on in the background. I'm a fan of The Bachelorette these days.

2. Trace the top of the crate on the foam board with your pencil. Sip your wine. You'll need to be buzzed to tolerate the latter half of this project. But don't get too buzzed. You still have to use sharp objects, do math, and squirt hot, hot glue on things.

3. Cut your foam board with your exacto knife. Place on top of the crate and trim as needed. Save the foam board. You can use it for other great projects.

3. Using your ruler measure and mark out ten lines of equal distance on your foam board.

4. Okay, here's where it gets a little complicated. In order to fit 75 clips on your board, you have alternate rows of 7 and 8. You also have to stagger the rows so that one row of seven falls between one row of eight. Oh, just look at the picture, will you? You'll understand me so much better if you just look at the picture.


5. Okay, once you've got all these things marked, plug in your hot glue gun. Have a glass of wine while it warms up. The worst is ahead.

6. Okay, now in order for you to fit 75 cards on this board and allow people to read them, you have to angle the clips. This is a bit tricky. Place the clip with the single loop side down. You're going to have to hold each paperclip at a 45 degree angle to the foam board and hot glue it into place. You have to put a pretty large dollop of glue in order to create a rigid support for the clip. What's frustrating about this is that you have to hold the clip in place until the glue cools enough to hold the clip. A.P. did this part of the project and I have to tell you, he was really, really fast at it. When I was doing it, I was averaging two clips a minute. He got the whole thing done in a hot minute. If I remember correctly he rigged some kind of system where a book or magazine held the clips in place while the glue dried.

7. Now that your clips are all glued to your foam board, it's time to mount the foam board to the vintage soda crate. Place a thick rope of hot glue around the perimeter of your soda crate and gently press the foam board down. Spot glue anywhere it seems loose.

8. Now comes the super, super tedious part. Begin gluing down the moss around the clips, slowly covering up the foam board. I used white because it's what I had in the house, but even with the black foam board, you can still see the board. It's vital that you cover every inch of board. In order to do this, you not only have to cover the top of the board, but the sides as well. You can do this and create a really pretty look by making the moss look like it's creeping down the sides of the crate.


9. By now, you're probably hammered. And Ashley has made another bad decision. And she's cried and wondered if she's made another bad decision. And she's found yet another reason to dance or have a wedding-themed date. So, go ahead and take a break. Finish it tomorrow. Or the day after that. Then, place each card into a clip. Reserve a few of the clips in the front for your vintage millinery. We did not secure these with glue, but it would have been a whole lot better if we had. Learn from our mistakes. Glue yours down. Cover your glue with more moss. Then, when you're all done, it will look like this:


See? A super sweet, vintage project for your wedding. And not too hard on the wallet either.

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(Photos by me except for the last two which are by Theresa Scarbrough)

Wedding Wednesday: DIY Project Day

In honor of our five year anniversary (together, not marriage), I'm going to share with you a few of the DIY projects we did for our own wedding throughout the day. Check back all day today, as I'll be posting several DIY projects! Here's a sneak peek of what you'll see today:


See you soon!

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(Photos by me!)

Marriage Mondays: Anniversaries

This week marks a very special occasion in our relationship. Not you and me, dear readers. Me and A.P. This Wednesday is the anniversary of our first date. Five years ago this Wednesday, A.P. and I met for the first time and went out on our first date. I remember sort of fleetingly thinking that maybe this was the person I was going to marry, but it wasn't until a few months later that I was brave enough to write it down (I'm always a bit superstitious) in a journal I was keeping at the time.

A.P. and I had a somewhat unique date and it's thanks to him. We talked on the phone about different things we could do: movies, dinner, etc. But A.P. was pretty set on it being something unique and memorable. He made an offhanded remark about making a cake together and I jumped at the idea. I told him he could come over to my apartment and we could make the cake there. It was only later, as I was shopping for ingredients, that I realized it might be kind of weird to have someone I've never met come over to my house. I think I called one of my girlfriends and told her A.P.'s name and phone number, just in case. I also realized that I was in the middle of a huge reorganization project, which meant my place was a disaster.

In order to get ready for A.P.'s arrival, I pretty much dumped the clutter in my bedroom. I cleaned and made my place presentable. I have no recollection of what I wore, but I remember trying for casual chic. And then I waited. And I waited. And I waited. I actually thought I was getting stood up. Finally, I called up A.P. and asked what gave. He apologized and explained that he'd accidentally fallen asleep (our first date was on a Thursday...a work day). He promised he'd be over soon.

And then he arrived. My heart was beating fast as he came up my stairs with the goofiest grin on his face EVER. I'm not going to lie, ladies. When I first saw A.P. I kind of freaked out. He looked so...young and...thin. I was afraid I would look like a giant beast next to him!

He came into my apartment and asked if he could use the bathroom. When he went in there, I began freaking out. I started doing some serious silent screaming. I thought this was going to be such an awkward date!

But it wasn't at all. Instead it was totally comfortable and great. We made our cake (yellow cake mix from a box) and while it baked in my tiny oven, we talked to each other. I remember that I offered him a beer and he took three sips and didn't finish it. We sat on my couch and talked and I sat next to him, looking at his face. Up close, he wasn't so young looking. He had fine lines around his eyes and mouth. He also had a lot of gray hair. From the side, he actually looked kind of distinguished. I remember thinking that I could look at his profile forever. I also enjoyed listening to him. He had the slightest twang to his voice.

When the cake was done, we had to let it cool. I had these sparklers leftover from the fourth of July sitting on a shelf in my kitchen. A.P. saw them and we decided to light them on my back porch. We went out there and blew through a couple of boxes. After, we frosted, then ate our cake.

At the end of the night, I walked A.P. to the door. He told me that he had a good time and that we should do it again soon. I played it so cool and was all, sure whenever. He reminded me that he was going to New York the next week for work. I told him I'd talk to him when he got back because up until then, I assumed that's how guys operated. None of them ever called you right away. You had to play that shit real cool. You had to wait at least a few days. And he was leaving in a few days and he certainly wasn't going to call some girl he just met while he was away on a business trip. I assumed, like I think a lot of single girls would, that he wouldn't call me until he got back in town. He looked me right in the eyes and said, "Oh no, we'll talk before then." And then he broke all the rules and called me the next day. (See? He was great from the get go!)

It's been a long time since I really thought about our first date and all those giddy feelings I felt. Five years seems like a good time to reflect. Anniversaries are good like that. But now, too, we have two anniversaries: the anniversary of our marriage and the anniversary of our first date. A.P. and I have been getting into a debate about celebrating anniversaries. He says that now that we have our wedding anniversary, we shouldn't really celebrate the anniversary of our first date, mumbling like his 80-year-old self* that, "You can't have anniversaries for everything." He thinks that the wedding anniversary is the bigger one, but I argue that if it weren't for the first date anniversary, we wouldn't even have the wedding anniversary. In his heart of hearts, A.P. knows the futility in arguing anything about anniversaries with me. He knows he'll celebrate it and it will be awesome. I may even girl out this year and make him look at old photos. Who knows what the week will hold! In the end, we both like celebrating. Now we just have another excuse.

Which anniversary do you celebrate? Do you still celebrate both?

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*I always refer to A.P. as my 80-year-old boyfriend. So much so that on his groom's cake, I put the number 80 on top!

Our Anniversary: The Details (Finally!)

Here's how we spent our anniversary. We actually kicked off the celebrating on Saturday night. We prepped for the big day by finally getting around to trying a new Italian pizzeria near our place called Ciao Napoli. It was delicious, and we'll for sure be heading back soon. We drank some good wine, ate some delicious pizza, and then we were stuffed.






Any and all plans on our actual anniversary were made by A.P. I flat out told him that I planned the wedding, so he could plan the anniversary. It only seemed fair. I had no idea what he had up his sleeve, but for some reason, I woke up on Sunday, and thought, "Man, it would be awesome if he was taking me for a massage." Guess what? He took us BOTH for massages! We went to the same place we went on our wedding day, Urban Oasis, which is by far my favorite place to go in Chicago even though it's hella expensive. We got hour long massages, and then after, had a steam shower, which was awesome.

After our massage, we came back to our place and chilled. I was happy A.P. scheduled a lot of down time in between all of the things we were doing. It made it a more relaxed day, which was necessary considering how exhausted I've been lately. After we relaxed for a while, we hopped in the car and started driving towards our next destination. I had no idea where we were going and didn't figure it out for a long, long time. Finally, after a bunch of guesses, I figured it out: Garfield Park Conservatory! I was so excited because I'd never been there, and have always wanted to go.

For those of you who don't know, I'm an avid gardener. With the exception of last year, I've always had a large, luscious container garden (sadly I've never been able to do more...until this year). Usually in the summer, you can find me on the back porch with the dog and the cat tending to my many, many plants. A.P. figured I'd get some inspiration for my garden this year, plus I could take lots of photos, which you all know is a hobby of mine. I started out taking a lot of photos with automatic settings on my camera, but eventually forced myself to go manual. Here are some of the better shots from the day:

Making a wish for another good year!

You have to excuse my immaturity with the next picture. I couldn't resist. It's actually two cacti, but when put together, it's one adult themed cactus!

Anybody know what the hell this thing is? We could not figure it out. This was the best picture I could take of it swimming/walking underwater. It looked like an alien, or the three-eyed fish in The Simpsons.

After spending a couple of hours at the Conservatory, we headed back home. A.P. had one more trick up his sleeve: a romantic dinner. Initially, he wanted to take me to the The Signature Room in the John Hancock building, which is on the 95th floor and boasts many spectacular views of Chicago. However, I just didn't feel like getting all fancied up, so he did some searching and found this new Moroccan restaurant by our place, so we checked that out. Neither one of had ever eaten real Moroccan food (I've eaten takes on Moroccan dishes, but never authentic Moroccan cuisine), so we were both pretty psyched. It was delicious, particularly this dish we had called Chicken Bastila. It is a pastry filled with chicken and other delicious things, and covered in powdered sugar and cinnamon, which sounds weird, but was SO delicious.


And that was it! A.P. really did a great job of planning everything. It was a wonderful, fun, relaxing day. I didn't do a lick of work either, which was REALLY nice. We didn't give each other gifts, but not on purpose. We've both been so busy we just haven't gotten to it. We're still planning on doing the traditional first year gift: paper. I actually know what I'm getting him, I just haven't had time to work on it at all. Better get going soon, huh?