It’s Moving Time!!!

That’s right, now that we are married we decided it was time for a change! So we moving, well not that kind of move yet, just a new home for the blog!

Follow us (and Bella too!) at our new home - www.Fardink.com!

Abandonment Much?

I know it looks like I have abandoned blogging all together, but truth is I am doing it now more than ever! I’m just not doing it here. Instead I have been blogging my little butt off over on Weddingbee.com! I’m Miss Cloud!



I realize that unless you are fully engrossed in planning a wedding the way I am, you might not have ever heard of Weddingbee before. Well, it is a community of brides who blog about the trials and tribulations of the planning process. I had been religiously following the bee since we were engaged last year, and after a LOT of encouragement from Brian, I decided to start my own blog and apply to become a Bee myself. And after a few weeks, I heard back and was accepted! It’s been a truly awesome experience so far, I’ve had the chance to “meet” so many people and blabber on and on all about the wedding to other brides. Please feel free to go check it out, but I warn you I divulge a lot of details of our upcoming wedding, so if you will be attending and want to be surprised, stay away!

Brian has also been really busy these past few months. He was promoted at the T-Mobile call center to a Senior Rep position putting him into the role of management and all of the responsibilities that come with (ie. very long hours!) but I couldn’t be more proud of him! In the past few months since his promotion, while working with a new team they moved from the very last spot in the center’s ranking to tenth overall!

Other then work and blogs, it has been wedding central in our apartment. An engagement ring should really come with a disclaimer: “wedding supplies will soon take over every spare inch of your living quarters”. We are learning to live with it though, and Bella loves all the new stuff to sniff! 76 days to go!!


Even Bella thinks this wedding stuff is exhausting!

Happy Memorial Day!

It's Brian again, here to wish everyone a happy Memorial Day! Katie and I had a great day. We made it to the early morning sale at Michael's craft store (which was super exciting for me....), had breakfast at Bob Evan's, stopped at Joann Fabrics (another great stop for me), purchased some steaks and came home to grill them up and watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It was a great day and I wish we could have more days like that. We hope everyone had a great cookout, or at least a great day off!

New York, New York

Hey all, Brian here.... We recently took a road trip to New York to watch my mom graduate from SUNY Fredonia! The drive was pretty quick and we made it to town a day early to see friends and relax a little bit. On friday night we went to my buddy Jason's house for a "fire." This was quite an experience for Katie.... The best part was when Jason started to pour a random liquid onto the wood and Nick says "...What's that?" and Jason replies with "a mixture of gasoline and used motor oil." The look on Katie's face was priceless, especially when Jason said "You may want to back up, this might make a pretty big boom." Haha

On Saturday we watched my mom graduate! I got to see my Aunt Mary for the first time since my sister's wedding which was very nice. The graduation ceremony was wonderful and we all went to lunch at a local hotel with my mom afterwards. We were all very proud of her!



That night we went to Shawbucks which is a local bar in Jamestown. Thankfully there was a very good band playing by the name of Porcelain Bus Drivers. We met up with a few friends, Amber, Barry, Nick and Mike Sorce. It was a great time. We all drank a few too many and had a good time with the camera.... We gave the camera to Mike Sorce for a while and he took a bunch of hilarious pictures......but lets all take a look at something... Katie is always smiling in every picture! It is always nice to go home to NY.... that place never changes!

Road Trip!

We are off to New York for the weekend to see Brian's mom graduate! We couldn't be more excited for her :)

Granted in this picture Bella doesn't look too stoked, but its just because she's like me and likes to sleep through the actual driving part! And yes, she has her own car seat, is anyone really surprised? :)

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

busy busy busy!

Who has time to blog when you decide to take on millions of wedding projects yourself?? At least I'm making progress..

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Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

It's BRIAN!

Stop the presses!
I'm finally posting another blog post. It's only been 10 months since my last post and since katie has been "busy" I am here to pick up the slack. (love ya babe!)

We've had a big few weeks! Last weekend I finally bought a Craftsman buffer and spent all day buffing my car. Although a new paint job would be ideal, this buff job will have to do for now.


I also helped katie construct some of her custom thank-you cards. She says I'm co-owner of babybubba ink.... but all I do is mess everything up. Everytime I tried to use the can of spray-glue it would blow all of the cards off the newspaper!




On Saturday April 18th, we joined katie's maid of honor Dawn in the MS Walk! It was alot of fun. Dawn brought her dog "Diva" and we brought Bella. On top of that, Dawn's father brought his little weiner dog named "Tater". Dawn even made them matching t-shirts! We walked for three miles and I think the dogs handled it better than we did! (well, at least me)






Crossing the finish line!!!


Shortly after crossing the finish line, hahahaha


aaaaaand shortly after that, loving the A/C!



There was also a dog show that katie decided to enter Bella and I into. I had to show off one of her best tricks. I tried to get her to do the "sit, lay, head down" trick... She did it, but it wasn't very clean. But we plan to practice for next year!


Well it has been fun, maybe I'll post again in 10 months.... :)

Things that suck my free time..

1. Google Reader
Yeah, I admit I am obsessed with blogs. Current blog count on my reader: 93. Current unread posts: 167. Ridiculous, I know. I read everything from friend's blogs, photography blogs, TONS of wedding blogs, a few crafters, and of course some food/recipe/design blogs. Brian laughs at me. I don't care.

2. WeddingBee.com
The one blog I refuse to follow on my reader because I love the whole experience of being on the site. Blog, boards, all of it. I am doing a TON of DIY for the wedding, and you can guarantee a lot of the ideas come from the bees. Again, Brian laughs at me, and prays that I don't overwhelm myself from ideas.

3. Facebook
Sucking my time since 2004. Facebook updates on my blackberry too, it's allll over.

4. General Hospital
I tivo every day, and watch every night. Mobsters, affairs, and psycho grandmothers, what's not to love!?

5. Twitter
The newest obsession, I may not know how to use it yet, but dammit I will figure it out! Find me @katehiggy.

6. This blog, on occasion of course.
But since I just spend 10 minutes typing this list, it counts for today!


Not that I needed to list reasons why I am a big dork, but just in case you needed hard evidence. :)

Take me to paradise!

It’s official, our honeymoon is BOOKED! We are going to Excellence Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic and could not be more excited! This place is heaven on earth if you ask me!

So pretty, can we just go now?!
We decided pretty early on in our planning process that we were going to have a hard time registering for wedding gifts, and while we have managed to set up traditional registires, we have also registered for our honeymoon through TheBigDay.com! Their whole concept is to allow guests to buy a couple memories not items, I love it! You can see our full registry here. Only problem is we are still over 200 days away from leaving!! I don’t want to wait that long!!

Our long lost friend.

Many of you may not know that Bella was not the first dog in our lives here in Richmond. Before we found our little fluff, Brian lived with a bunch of boys in a big dirty house (if any of them every try and tell you it was clean, DON’T believe it!), so of course they needed a big manly dog. Then came Miller. When they got him at the SPCA they were told he was a lab/boxer mix, and would probably end up being about a hundred pounds, well not so much. We jokingly used to say Miller was half lab, half Clifford (you know, the big red dog). He was huge, like 130+ pounds huge! And when Bella came along, it was instant love. In all his huge glory he loved her and was very aware that she was a tiny 3 pounds when she first came home. They would run and run and run, and to keep it fun, she would hide underneath him so he couldn’t find her!

Tiny baby and her BFF!
Sadly though the boys started to move on, Brian and I moved in together, and the others eventually parted ways as well. They all decided it would be best to find Miller another home. It was a really hard decision, so much so that we considered taking the big guy with us to our tiny apartment, but decided ultimately it wouldn’t be fair to him to be so cooped up. Luckily Brian was able to find Miller a home with a woman named Annette and her 8 year old son Timmy. It was sad to say goodbye but we have always hoped Miller was living a happy new life with his new family!

Then a few days ago out of nowhere Annette emailed Brian, they were going to be in Richmond, and she wanted to know if we wanted to visit with Miller! Needless to say we were super excited and planned on bringing Bella too! But it has been over a year and a half since we have seen him, Bella isn’t a puppy anymore, and we were worried he wouldn’t remember her, and more so that since her attack, she would be scared of him and his size. I will let the pictures speak for themselves, they didn’t exactly remember each other right away, but I think they may just have fallen in love again!




As you can see, Miller is doing wonderful! He has settled into family life very well, and it turns out he was having surgery for a torn ACL at almost the exact same time Bella was having her surgeries last summer! He is so well behaved, healthy, and happy. It was such a good visit and I think we know now that it was the absolute best decision we could have made to let him go. Hopefully we will have more visits soon, I know Bella certainly enjoyed herself, so much so that she had to spend the whole afternoon sleeping it off!

They didn't even want to say goodbye!

Change is coming!

Source

I just saw this and it made me a happy happy girl! Being that we are now only SEVEN whopping months away from our wedding it is such good news to see that so many other people are also now able to start planning a wedding of their own, and for that marriage to be legally recognized! Following in the steps of Iowa, Vermont is also changing its rules and allowing gay couples to marry! That brings the total to four states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, and Vermont!

Oh, and for the record my week off from planning went very well! Now I am back up and running feeling very refreshed and excited about everything all over again!! Updates on the wedding site soon with room block info and fingers crossed that the honeymoon will be booked this week as well!!

Cooling my jets..

For anyone who has seen or spoken to me in the last few weeks I think it has been pretty obvious I have become completely overwhelmed with life. So much so I have become the girl who doesn't even have time to blog a quick little post here and there! Between working a new job, school full time, and the wedding, I am going to start pulling my hair out any moment now.

The biggest stress (and only one I really have any control over) is the wedding. Who knew throwing a big party for all our closest friends and family would be so incredibly stressful? Despite the fact that I do have a lot of help (including an amazing husband-to-be who is very supportive of all my crazy ideas), it is time I take a break from my self-induced madness. That means absolutely no wedding stuff for a week. No planning, no calls, no vendors, no emails, no wedding blog reading, I'm not even going to read Weddingbee at all! Can I do it? Probably not that hard core, but I sure am going to try.

Instead I'm going to spend my extra time catching up on school work, cleaning our disaster of an apartment (which the majority of that mess is also wedding related), getting back to the gym, and of course hanging out with Bella and Bri. Yeah, no wedding really does free up THAT MUCH time.

Next week I will finish up and get all the room block info posted on the site, but for now its just going to have to wait. Who knows with all this spare time you might even get more then one blog post out of me this week!

it's our engage-aversary!

No, I did not bake this unfortunately, in fact I have not baked anything for Brian to celebrate one year of our engagement, or valentines day! Work, school, and wedding planning has swallowed me whole recently. But I promise, updates soon!!

In the meantime, happy love day everyone!!

I pledge..

I think this is wonderful. Apparently it is causing a bit of controversy, for various reasons, but if it gets people to stand up and make a change, I am all for it.

I pledge to be more conscious about my environmental footprint. I have reusable grocery bags, it's time I start using them! No more water bottles either, refill and reuse instead. Recently, our apartment complex installed a "recycle area" next to the trash compactor, we have started to use it, but I am going to try to be better.
If we could all just take small steps, what a huge difference it would be! Here's to CHANGE!! :)

sunday random pic

In honor of my Mum being here this weeking to help me make HUGE progress on the wedding planning I present one of my most favorite pictures ever... :)

Mum & Dad at their wedding 30 years ago.. aren't they cute?!?!

this one is for dad...

“ The odds of divorce among women who married their only cohabiting partner were 28% lower than among women who never cohabited before marriage, according to sociologist Daniel Lichter of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.”
Read the full article here.


And he calls our apartment the "house of sin"! ;)

sunday random pic... is BACK!!

Would you be able to blog if this kind of cuteness happened to you everytime you opened your laptop?? I didn't think so..

Happy New Year!!

So here we are, a whopping 8 whole days into 2009 (and a mere 10 months until the wedding, for anyone who is counting), and I haven’t even wished everyone a happy new year! We’ve got big plans for such a big year, and I am very proud to say we are already on top of some of our big goals. So while I can’t speak for Bri, because he’s not one for resolutions, the list I have for myself is quite a big one. No worries though, he is getting dragged along in a few of mine as well. I certainly can’t have all the fun can I? So without further ado….

Get into shape (Well we are on our way, we joined a gym! Shocking, I know, but who wants to see a flabby bride walking down the isle?)
Get healthy (Ok, this is just mine and I have joined Weight Watchers! Sounds nuts because I don’t exactly have tons and tons of weight to loose, but for me it’s more about eating right and feeling better about myself. Don’t expect a weekly update on here with my progress or anything, but weight Watchers Wednesdays are becoming quite the big deal around here!)
Keep in touch (I like to think this means I will be remembering to send birthday and anniversary cards, but let’s be serious, I’m just trying to respond to emails and phone calls on the regular first. Oh, this will also include an increase in blogging. Man, I’m already slacking big time.)
Get organized (Not that our house is a complete disaster, but hiding behind some of our cute little bins and closed closet doors, there are some major disasters.)
Get motivated (I have big plans for my little project called ‘Baby Bubba Ink.’ If you got a Christmas card this year, you saw our first large production. A very lucky dad and brother I know also got some fantastic productions for x-mas as well. More on that later..)
And last but certainly not least..
Plan this crazy wedding and GET MARRIED!!

So what’s next? We are definitely starting to pick up the pace on the planning. You just wouldn’t believe how fast vendors book up around here! This includes a wedding show on Sunday (yay!), and meeting with a potential DJ on Monday. Then, next weekend my Mum will be in town for more meetings with potential vendors, and if all goes as planned, invitations will be ordered as well. And if that doesn’t make January jam-packed enough, the following weekend, Brian’s parents will be in town for a post-Christmas-Christmas! So our tree is still up and since I love all of our holiday decorations so much, I don’t mind one bit! Whew, it’s going to be a big month!

Since every post needs a picture, you will have to excuse me for the randomness of this one, but I just have to share. Before the holidays, on a randomly warm day Bri, Bella, and I all met up with our fabulous wedding photographer, Heather of Dolphin Dance Photography to finish up our engagement session. We originially were going to do pictures with Bella at the first shoot, but it was about a week after she was attacked, so she was still in the Doggy ICU, and in no shape to have her pictures taken. Trust me, she will let you know if she is in the modeling mood. So here is one of my favs, isn’t our gal precious?!

Please check out DolphinDancePhotography.com to see more of Heather’s amazing work!