Count your blessings instead of sheep.

Well...

Here I am on the eve of the flight to Japan doing of all things, blogging. 

I'm actually putting off cleaning my room which is something I know needs to happen before I go to bed but... whatever. 

My feelings are super mixed at the moment. 

I'm WAY excited to go to Japan (like WAY EXCITED.), I'm terrified of the flight, I'm sad because my friend really needs me right now and I'm going to be out of the country and away from internet and phone, and because I miss Mom and Aric already. 

My mom and I are super close, and this is the first time I'm going to be away from her for this long without even being able to call for five minutes to say "hi, i love you, i'm having fun". So... I'm not a fan of that. Plus I wanted to spend time with her tonight, and I spent most of the day with her, but then I had to do my final project for one of my classes so for about 3 hours I was starring at the computer screen and of course now that I'm done, she's asleep. I kind of hate school sometimes. 

I miss Aric because he's on a mini-vaca for the weekend and he has no reception where he is right now, so we had to say our goodbyes last night and via email this morning. Plus, this is the longest I've been away from him (with him gone before me it'll be almost two weeks), the first time I've been away from him without contact of some sort, and definitely the first time I've been away from him being my fiance. 

And I'm listening to Christmas music. By myself. 

I've noticed doing that, especially when you're worried and its late at night makes you sad and borderline uncomfortable. I just want to procrastinate and not clean my room until morning, but I know that will make the morning WAY more stressful than it needs to be, and it will definitely help my packing in the morning if I clean now but... I kinda just want to go to sleep so I can stop feeling alone.

Okay, I'm done being all emotional on you guys, I promise. 

Like I said, I'm super excited to go to Japan, and I'm super excited to get to spend time with the other side of my family. I don't see them much, so its going to be a lot of fun :) PLUS, I MEAN COME ON ITS JAPAN, HOW CAN IT NOT BE FUN?? I'm going to take so many pictures its going to be stupid. My computer is going to blow up. I need to buy more memory cards in the morning. I forgot about that.... *facepalm*. I'm going to be shopping (DUH) while i'm in Japan.... I'm mostly looking for something to wear in the engagement photos... maybe a skirt? I got a rockin' sweater I can wear in them. Oh gosh I love it. It has like... a bustle almost. Win. Plus its grey. Perfect, my favorite color. (not actually true.) 

I guess I'm going to go for the night. I'll be back in about two week with lots and lots of photos. Hopefully the benadryl will make my flight a very nice, restful one. Oh gosh. 

 Au revoir mes amis!!!

xoxoxoxo

Ash 

Halloween

Hey look I'm posting before I go to Japan! 

I'm doing so good. 

Anyway, I'm excited (obviously) about Halloween. 

Clearly my love of all things spooky isn't evident thanks to my blog title. Oh the lies. 

So it's "that time of year" again. The "lets figure out what we're going to be for halloween this year" time. 

I'm kinda feeling being a witch. I've never been one before, and last year's tribute to old school halloween costumes (I was a black cat. I'll try to find pictures....) makes me want to keep this thing up. 

So... I already have the hat, I have some rocking shoes that can't be worn out much (the ones i posted about earlier in the month) and legwarmers, and ripped tights so... I guess I just need to make myself a dress. 

(all images from weheartit )

Last one is my favorite :)

Do you celebrate halloween? 

If you do, what do you want to be this year?

xoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxo

Ash

Japan and such.

So I'm posting this now in case I become a slacker and don't post before Saturday. 

On Saturday I'm going to be flying from here to Washington D.C. to Tokyo/Narita airport!! I'm super excited. I know the trip is going to be "go, go, go" the whole time I'm there, but I'm WAY excited. I think I'm going to get a lot of my Christmas shopping done while I'm there and I'm going to be on the look-out for wedding shoes and engagement photo outfits. (And clothes for the Aric-guy.) 

On to wedding stuff!

We're working on venues and stuff right now. And can I just say how much it helps to have a mom that's a certified wedding planner? Yeah. So much help. Especially since I'm in school and working right now and don't really have a lot of time to go on the hunt for things. Thank you Mom for being an awesome designer/wedding planner!!!!! 

My Grandma has been sending me photos of her wedding and my great-grandma's wedding and gosh I have some pretty ladies in my family!!! 

Grandma and Grandpa :) How cute were they? Oh my gosh. 

I guess that's it for now! I'll try to post before I go, but if I don't I'll see you somewhere halfway through October!! 

Engagement parties and things of the like.

I'm writing this as I sit here with a trash bag on my head wearing nasty old clothes and hoping to not have chef boyardee colored stains on my face. Ah the joys of at home hair coloring. 

So, as the title says we had an engagement party thrown for us by one of the BFFs, Tianna. (She's super cool, you guys would love her.) We had so much fun, we ate yummy stuffed shells Tianna made and played an awkward couple questionnaire game and apples to apples (oh my gosh i love that game. especially with my group of friends. oh hilarity.) 

SO the following are pictures/explanations of the night's events. 

Reeses, the puppy/wizard. 

Aric's new short hair!! I have such a cute fiance. 

Can you tell that we're both half asleep? haha

Epic. 

"HEEEEEY MACARANA!"

Okay, so... I have to go wash this gunk out of my hair and hope its the right color and then I'm off to meet with the lighting guy for our wedding, blow a bunch of money at steinmart (a.k.a. my best kept secret), go pick my car up, go to dinner, and then its off to poetry night at our local cafe!!

Also guys, thanks so much for your kinda comments! I read them all and they mean a lot to me! I should start replying to them, huh? lol oops... 

xoxoxox

Ash 

p.s. I leave for Japan a week from tomorrow!! Exciting! 

I said yes to the dress.

Seriously I did. 

I can honestly say I had no intentions of buying a wedding dress yesterday. 

I had every intention of having a corset custom made and making a skirt to go along with it but... as the fates would have it, that isn't going to happen. On essentially a whim my mom and I drove almost an hour out of town to go to a bridal salon, we got there and they were all booked except for one appointment, which we took. I tried on layers and layers of puff and fluff because my "go to" silhouette is the ball gown since I'm a curvy girl, and I can honestly tell you I really liked all the dresses I tried on, but there was at least one thing wrong with each. One wasn't the right shaped top, one was too puffy, was was too short blah blah blah. On another whim we decided to change up the silhouette of the dress and get rid of all the tulle.

The bridal consultant brought me two dresses to try. The first was strapless and all lace. It was super form fitting and straight. It was really pretty, but it just wasn't right. The last dress I tried on was perfect. PERFECT. It fit close to my body and showed my curves, it had the right neckline, the back of it was amazing, and it had a pretty train. (You don't get to know more than that until the wedding day. Sorry guys...blame Aric for reading my blog.) I didn't want to take this thing off. We had budgeted about $1000 for a dress, alterations and all so I'm not going to lie I was a little nervous at the price but guess what? $545. Yeah. Accidental bargain hunting for the win!!! 

Ugh guys I love this dress so much. I can't wait to wear it on the big day!!!

Guess what else happened yesterday? Aric chopped off all his hair!! I'm sad its all gone, but he looks so super cute with his hair that short. I'll post a picture soon. He's a total hottie. What else happened yesterday you ask? Well, I got my ears triple pierced (thank you Aric!!) as a birthday present, and I went non-vegetarian. I'm kinda sad to do it, but I want to loose weight and its easiest to do that if you can eat meat proteins. Plus I'm going to Japan in a little under two weeks so.... yeah. I'm not going to lie though, my first non-veg meal gave me a major tummy ache. Boo. :'(

Bye bye for now. I need to go make myself some of the stuff in the picture above haha. Today is going to be a loooong day. Mommy and I are going to two bridal shows. In one day. Oh gosh! 

Wedding update act 1 scene 1.

Hey guys! So I thought I'd just leave a little update on how things are going with the wedding planning!

Yeah, we've started already, oh gosh! BUT, we have about a year and a month and with my being in school and working and Aric being in school and working, and both of us working over the summer and then me going back to school in fall (Aric graduates this spring so he doesn't have to. Yay!) we kinda need to start now so we don't fall behind and we don't have to panic too much. 

Right now we're looking at venues, I'm totally in love with one, its our contemporary art center and its BEAUTIFUL. Words cannot express. Seriously, I'm MAAAAJORLY crossing my fingers on that one. And we're looking at 3 other venues that I almost care about haha. We're meeting with the contemporary art center on Friday morning about the facilities and such so... cross your finger friends!! 

We're starting to look at dresses and things, but I can't tell you anything about that because Aric reads my blog. Sorry guys!! It'll be a surprise to you too though! (And surprises are good, right??) But I can tell you its going to be epic. I have lots of ideas for this... 

Mom, Aric and I are meeting Friday night to go over budget and talk about ideas and stuff, so I'm looking forward to that. Aric's so cute, he's all excited about planning. I think he has our whole honeymoon planned out already, he's just waiting for when they let him book it all. He's excited about the actual wedding planning too, he even left class an hour early last night to come over and look at wedding magazines. Oh that boy... what a cutie. 

Lets see... I'm trying to think of if i have any other wedding updates for you... hum... well.. OH! We have an engagement party planned for monday night at our friends Tianna and Andrew's house, so I'm way excited about that, and we have another one planned for October 30th with our family. And on Oct 22, a day after our anniversary, we're having autumny themed engagement photos taken by a very talented local photographer. They're going to be epic. Just wait and see... 

In other news, I go to Japan in like... two weeks from Saturday. Super exciting! And today is payday and I have one more before I go which means I'll have monies for clothes!!!! YAY!!

I probably ought to stop blogging since I'm in class... oops. 

I'll post again soon to give you more updates on our big day!!

But for now (mostly because I can't justify not posting any photos in a post) , look I'm engaged:

 xoxoxoxo love you guys thanks for all the warm well wishes!!!!

LIFE CHANGING NEWS a.k.a. I'm getting married.

Okay guys, so... 

remember how I said that I was probably going to have big news soon? 

Well its time for the unveiling!!!! (though if you read the title you can probably guess it. 

I'M GETTING MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my gosh. So excited!!!!!!

Aric proposed to me at 12:00am September 11. 

Despite that being possibly the least romantic day in American History, it has become the most romantic day EVER. Well... to me anyway. 

So, on to the story! It all started Friday September 10th.... 

I went over to Aric's family's house for a birthday get together (my b-day is the 12th), we went to Bean There Cafe (our favorite local coffee place) for coffee, tea, and poetry, and then we walked around the downtown area. It was awesome, it was almost totally deserted. I think we came in contact with like.... 5 people tops within the period of like 2 hours. It was AWESOME. We took some photos, and then we sat out on a bench overlooking the water. The city lights were sparkling in the water, it was deserted, and there was a nice cool breeze in the air. It was perfect. He leaned over kissed me, pulled out the ring, went down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

I obviously said yes after spazzing. 

SO ON TO THE RING PICTURES!! 

Oh gosh I am so in love with this ring its insane. Its like... my dream ring! 

So I'm now engaged to be married! (Oh! And I'm now 20 years old) That means expect lots and lots of spooktastical wedding updates! 

Speaking of which, my mom and I are going to chronicle the adventure of planning this thing via blogger, so head over here if you're interested!

Bye for now!

xoxoxoxoxo

Ash