Baby Talk

My mom wants a grandchild. His mom wants a grandchild. (They both have no grandchildren). My dad just had a baby with his wife, I have a 5-month old half-sister. I invited my mother and sister to lunch a while ago and they thought I invited them to make a big announcement. Went to dinner with my aunt and cousin and they also thought I was going to make a big announcement.

I'm not pregnant! And most likely will not be pregnant anytime soon. I love babies and I do want children, I'd like to start trying next year. Mr. J could wait longer, however he's not the one who'd have to carry said baby and is four years younger than me, and he has the luxury of being a man and could wait another 10 years and probably not have any issues.

The point is, I hate when people ask "When are you going to start a family?" We officially started our family on August 8, 2009, though our family began before that.

Whenever I see a baby, I do want it. But right now I'm all about borrowing babies to get that fresh baby smell and then giving them back to their mommas.

Creative Date Nights

Mr. J and I instituted date night in our relationship at about the 1 year mark. We were both serious about each other, living separately, and both uber busy with work, school, and other priorities. We didn't have a specific date night, we just looked at our schedules every week and chose a new day to have quality time.

After we moved in together, we kept date night. Especially because I'm a night owl and Mr. J is a morning person...so we were basically watching each other sleep throughout the week. Our date nights were pretty standard, go to a restaurant and make googly eyes at each other, go to a movie and hold hands, or go to hear live music and sing together. I read an article in the New York Times a while ago, "Reinventing Date Night for Long-Married Couples." I think this article is important, not just for long-married couples, but for all couples. The main thing I took away was that by learning something together as a couple, you can strengthen your bond.

Because it's freezing cold and we've been snowed in--Mr. J and I have to be really creative having date night at home and not falling into the rut of Netflix and dinner :) For our last date night we got really creative and decided to paint portraits of each other to hang in our bedroom. We both are creative, but we haven't painted a picture since watercolors in kindergarten. We went to an art store after work, picked up our supplies, got some takeout and wine. We were painting until about 3 a.m. (almost done!).

We learned that we've both got some skillz, y'all! We both can already draw, but it was hard to execute our sketches into paintings. We also bought two smaller canvases so that we can eventually paint our two cats and have a whole family portrait wall. We're planning on taking a painting class together during the summer when Mr. J has summer vacation and things are slower for me at work. I can't wait!

Check out our paintings! Keep in mind that we're not completely done yet. (I need to make Mr. J's teeth look less like Chiclets and he needs to give me a nose!) ***And please forgive me for the large photos, I'll resize photos moving forward, too lazy now :)

First time painting: Success!

Babe, where's my nose?

We based our portraits on this photo of us
taken by Richard Louissaint.

What creative date nights have you had? Do you have any more creative ideas for us? Share!

Marrying into Debt

I have student loans. Mr. J doesn't. When we met, Mr. J was a master's student (English lit), he took the long route, taking one or two classes a semester and summer classes for years. He paid for grad school without loans and had a free tuition ride for undergrad. I have loans from undergrad (yay loans) and more loans from my MFA in creative writing which I just finished up in December.

So, the point is, Mr. J has married a woman with debt. A lot of student loans. Last week Mr. J showed me what it means to have a partner. One of my private loan lenders from undergrad called me and offered me a deal since I've paid consistently for years--a one-time payout of half of my loan if I could come up with the money in 30 days. I only had half of the money in savings. I told Mr. J about the offer and the first thing out of his mouth was, "Well, let's pay this thing off!" And he said we could just split the cost down the middle. I had a koolaid smile on my face. I wasn't expecting him to offer to pay for half, I was going to ask him to cover the amount I couldn't cover...instead he would give me half and I'd be able to keep more money in savings.

Sometimes I forget that we're in this together. He doesn't have to help me with my student loan debt. And yet he wants to. Gotta love this man!

Happy 2010!

I hope you all had a great New Year. One of my resolutions was to get back to blogging, no longer about wedding planning, but about creating a successful marriage.

We've been married for 5 months now...and I have to admit I haven't really felt like a newlywed until just recently. I just graduated from my MFA program in December and Mr. J graduates this January...and wrapping up our last semesters was pure craziness. We have both been so busy. But now we've got more time and it's winter, so we can spend more time cuddling and being all romantical.

We went on our official honeymoon/graduation celebration/Christmas present to each other vacation to Costa Rica, thanks, in part, to the wonderful monetary wedding gifts we received. We spent both Christmas and New Year's in this beautiful country. It was a vacation to remember, very beautiful and adventurous! We went horseback riding, white water rafting, canyoneering/rapelling, ziplining, and on many many hikes through the rainforest. We picked coffee, learned how to make fresh corn tortillas and how to make chocolate. We soaked in hot springs, frolicked on the beach, and slept in the rainforest. Sigh.

It feels good to be married. One of our most important challenges right now is making quality time for each other. We'll continue with our weekly date nights...and I'll post some things that are working, and things that don't.

Thanks for reading!

In front of the Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica

At a river in Sarapiqui, Costa Rica

Canyoneering

Yes, this is actually us covered by the
Rio Toro while white water rafting

Sorry, I needed a break!

There are so many more pictures to share and advice, advice, advice!

But after spending almost a year being focused on planning the wedding, I was pretty much over anything to do with wedding, so I've been avoiding blogging, reading blogs, etc. Some women go through wedding withdrawal--but I am super busy (trying to finish these thank you cards) finishing up my last semester in graduate school--no withdrawals here.

I am slowly coming back to the wedding world. My mom is getting married next year, so I've been enlisted to help since I am now an expert.

I'll be back with a budget breakdown and some other stuff soon!

DIYing Was Worth the Hard Work!

photo by Nisha Sondhe

I cropped this one show bouquets

I wanted to share this picture of my bouquet and my bridesmaids' bouquets because I've been receiving lots of compliments from our guests about how they loved how personalized our wedding was. People left with a better sense of who Mr. & Mrs. J are as people and as a couple. In future blog entries I'll post our ceremony, our vows, and all the other unique Mr. & Mrs. J touches that we included. Having a wedding is not a competition, but I'll admit it does feel great when people tell us, "Best wedding I've ever been to," or "Top 3 of all the weddings I've been to." To me it says that all the hard work we did meant paid off.


My bouquet was very simple, dried lavender and artificial baby's breath, which I wrapped in purple ribbon and attached three quotes from love poems to. For the bridesmaid bouquet's I made all of the girls an initial bookmark, which I tied to the lavender stems. Lavender was great because the bouquets will actually last for a very long time. All the centerpieces that had lavender in them were taken by guests (in fact, the bamboo mats we used, donated books from our bookshelves, framed photos, and LED candles were taken by guests) which made break down after the reception easier.


During the planning process I was second-guessing myself all the time about decisions we made, "Is this too out there?" or "Will our guests like this?" when the reality is that almost everything we did that was "outside the box" and special to us, was what made our wedding so touching and memorable to people.

Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself, My Name is...

Mrs. J. Yup, that's right. My wonderfully talented friend Nisha Sondhe, photographer extraordinaire has given me some photos...and I'm sharing a few with you until I have them all.

Mr. J and I had an amazing time. It went by so fast, but it will remain in our memories forever! Our friends and family who supported us are AWESOME!

I promise there will be more to come soon!

All images were taken by Nisha Sondhe