Engagement Photos!

Our engagement photos are here!!! We had our photos done by the lovely Janine from Saving Grace Photography a few weekends back. I was first introduced to Janine through my previous boss and his wife, who hired her to do maternity and newborn sessions when they had their baby daughter. I was so blown away with her work that I contacted her to see if she was open to doing an engagement session with us... Luckily, she said yes!!!

We had a blast with her, wandering around the Financial District and the South Street Seaport on a sunny Saturday morning. We ended up at Trinity Church, one of our favorite Episcopal cathedrals in the city. It was the perfect way to end our session, since our faith is such a unifying bond between the two of us.

Without further ado, here is a little teaser of our session:

You can find the more of our photos on Janine's blog here! I cannot wait to see the rest of the photos when they are ready, and share them with you!

Happy Friday, lovelies!

xoxo,
Lulu

Everything's Coming Up Roses!

Happy Monday, lovelies! I hope you've been having a great and productive start to Spring. Can you believe it- Mr. Wonderful and I are getting married in less than a month! Thanks to an amazing fiance, a supportive bridal party, a creative parents, and the world's most organized and calming planner, I can honestly say that I am feeling NO stress about this wedding! Sure, I may not have solidified a hairdresser or started the seating arrangements yet (which I'm sure may bring out a minor bridal freak out), but still! I'm just so thankful to be *having* a wedding, to the man of my dreams no less, that even if the sky opens up and pours on my garden reception I'll be the happiest girl on earth.

I have to say, I can't remember a time where I have been more busy and have had more amazing things come my way. Believe me, it has been a welcome change to the tumultuous 5 months I've just been through. I couldn't feel more blessed and appreciative of everything going on in my life! Just warning you now- if you're not in the mood for some serious cheerfulness, I say star this post in Google Reader and come back to it at another time. The stars have aligned and God has been GOOD to us, so I couldn't have anything negative to say if you paid me!

Here's a little recap of what I've been up to over the past 2 weeks:

My bachelorette party? A complete dream come true! I spent 5 full days in Scottsdale, Arizona, working on wedding plans and spending time with some of my nearest and dearest girlfriends. We relaxed, we ate great food, and spent some serious quality time together. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect way to ring in my final days before becoming a Mrs. I'm planning a big recap post soon, as soon as I can wrangle the pictures from my girls (start sending them, ladies!)

I switched gears on Tuesday, travelling from Phoenix to my company's Headquarters in Atlanta for my first business trip. I spent the remainder of the week practically living in the office- attending meetings and getting to know our business counterparts. Even after all the meetings, acronym translations, and database briefings, I still don't think I could love this new job more if I tried. Great business trip.

I was able to catch an early flight home on Friday, which gave me a nice jump start to the weekend. At this point, I had been away from home for *8 days*! Needless to say, I was ready to see Mr. Wonderful. He took me to a local Mexican food restaurant his coworker recommended. Who were we seated next to? None other than Cameron Mathison from All My Children and his family. Too fun.

We capped off the weekend by discovering our new favorite weekend to do-

mixing brunch with real estate hunting! We spent our days trolling the Craigslist no-fee rental listings on my Blackberry while sipping mimosas at some of the local sidewalk cafes. We alternated cocktails and open houses all day, it was the greatest! We met some great people, and saw some AMAZING apartments, including a garden apartment with a 450 square foot private back yard. In Manhattan. Could you *imagine*?!?! We're not looking to move until our lease is up this summer, but it was a great way to see our favorite neighborhood and catch up on life.

If you can even imagine, I have more fun things to share - Mr. Wonderful's big birthday, our engagement photos, and a *humongous* wedding recap... Stay tuned!

xoxo,

Lulu

Busiest. Week. E-V-E-R!!!

Greetings from sunny Arizona! I'm currently snuggled up in my PJs, taking my first breather in a week! There is SOOOO much I want to catch you ladies up on, I don't know where to start! As you may remember, I had quite a laundry list of milestone events going on these past few days:

- First day at my new job

- Our engagement photo session in downtown NYC

- Going to see the taping of Saturday Night Life

- The big NYC blogger meet up at Lilly Pulitzer, courtesy of the lovely Hopsy

- Mr. Wonderful's birthday!!!!!

- My big bachelorette party weekend

And now, I can also add one more item to the list - my first business trip for the new job, which I am headed to directly after my bachelorette weekend! When all is said and done, I'll be out of town for more than a week straight, Good Gracious!

I'm going to try and do each of these events justice, so I'll start with this past Saturday's big events - our engagement shoot and our Saturday Night Live taping. SO MUCH FUN!! Also, please bear with the length of the recap below, I *promise* that it is worth your while!

Mr. Wonderful and I spent Saturday morning shooting our engagement session in a few of our favorite areas, the Financial District and the South Street Seaport. I haven't seen any of the proofs yet, but will share them with you once we get them!

I know you have all been dying to hear about the big SNL taping, so I'll try to share everything I remember. SNL has been one of my favorite shows since I was a kid... It will forever be in the top 3 best nights of my life (after getting engaged and getting married, of course!). We showed up at the Rockefeller Center to claim our tickets, and were ushered into a special line- the line for floor seats! There are only 38 seats on the studio floor, so we felt like the luckiest people in the world.

Once we were ushered into the studio, we stood in line for about 15 minutes (for those of you SNL fans, it was that notorious backstage hallway they film a lot of skits in). We had people like Andy Samburg and Bill Heder walking past us. Jason Sudeikis was wandering around in KU basketball shorts and a button-down flannel shirt. So funny!

They ushered us in a few minutes before taping, where we were entertained by the opening act- Jason Sudeikis doing a stand up routine, and then Kristen Wiig and Fred Armisen singing "One Way Or Another". Kristen is a great singer, and Fred actually played electric guitar! Then, the SNL announcer guy came out to talk to us and practice announcing the names- the guy was so old and adorable! He looked just like my grandpa, which was a real trip. I actually heard that he lives elsewhere, and that they fly him in every week for the evening just to announce! Sounds like a good gig to me!

The beginning of the show was a total whirlwind- we had cameras whizzing over our heads and RIGHT next to Mr. Wonderful, since he was on the aisle. We were seated in the back row, so we could see all the floor action on stage and behind us. I don't think I can even explain how exciting and amazing it was. Cast members were running back and forth right behind us, smiling and saying things like "What's up?!" to us as they ran by. You can tell they were having a great time.

I haven't seen the entire show from start to finish yet, but I know for a fact we were on TV! You can see us in this clip of Ray Lamontagne's first song- The Rock was practically sitting on Mr. Wonderful's shoulder when he introduced Ray! You can see us here! I'm sitting to the right of the blonde lady, and Mr. W is sitting behind the guy in the light blue shirt. How much fun is that!?!

NOW- I'm going to go into what was the BEST part of the entire night for me (and no, it wasn't Justin Timberlake, but bear with me). Right after The Rock introduced Ray (which was maybe the best live performance I've *ever* seen), I started to look around the studio to try and take it all in. I noticed that there were a bunch of people filing in from backstage to watch Ray perform... Suddenly, I glanced a familiar face. OK ladies, imagine this- looking behind you, and realizing that your *favorite actress in the ENTIRE world* is standing right behind you. Just picture it: for you it could be Angelina, Anniston... Whomever. For me, that actress happens to be Jennifer Westfeldt:

She's hands-down my favorite actress, and she was standing just steps away from me.

IT. GETS. BETTER.

My brain was trying to compute simultaneously hearing the coolest song ever, seeing some of my favorite SNL cast mates, AND my favorite actress all at the exact same time. Then, it occurred to me- Jennifer Westfeldt has a boyfriend. Who just happens to be VERY VERY VERY FAMOUS RIGHT NOW. I knew he had to be behind me as well, so I took another glance and saw this particular man standing next to her:

Um, HELLO!!!!

To be perfectly honest, to even Justin Timberlake's surprise appearance didn't even phase me when he came out (even the audience didn't know he was coming) - I was on such a sensory overload, that my brain just couldn't compute any more ridiculously awesome celebrity sightings. I did snap out of if for a half of a second to chuckle when Jessica Biel made eye contact and smiled at me as she was leaving the stage after the big "Goodbye, thanks for coming" end piece of the show, since she and I are from the same town and once upon a time she threatened to beat me up freshman year of high school... But that's a different story for a different day! (I know that she didn't actually recognize me in the audience, and was just being friendly to a 'random stranger', but she certainly picked an interesting target!)

My brain is seriously starting to hurt just thinking about all of this, since it was such a sensory overload!!! I'm going to sign off now to grab some food (I can see In N Out from my window! Grilled cheese sandwich from the Secret Menu, here I come!) and then need to catch some sleep (I'm running on nothing but 4 hours of sleep and a ton of Red Bull).

Sweet dreams ladies, can't wait to catch you up on more soon!

xoxo,
Lulu

Watch Saturday Night Live Tonight

The Mr. and I are headed in a cab over to sit in the audience of tonight's SNL taping!!! Keep your eyes peeled- I'm in as green tweed blazer, and he's in a striped shirt and grey v-neck sweater... SOOOO excited! Full recap of tonight's taping and today's engagement pic photo shoot tomorrow!

Xoxo,
Lulu

Last Day of Freedom!

Thank you SOOO much for all your organizational tips, ladies! I've been pouring over them all morning long. If you have any other tips on how you balance work/school/housework/meal planning- *anything* that helps you get through the week without tearing your hair out - please let me know here!

I've been trying to stay cool and collected, what with the excitement/nerves my first day at work tomorrow is bringing and all. However, I didn't realize until this morning that I leave for my bachelorette party a week from tomorrow!!! Holy major life milestone coming my way! The more I started thinking about my week, I realized that the following will ALL be going down in the next *7 days*:

- First day at my new job
- Our engagement photo session in downtown NYC
- Going to see the taping of Saturday Night Life (I'll let you know what I decide to wear so you can try and spot me! haha)
- The big NYC blogger meet up at Lilly Pulitzer, courtesy of the lovely Hopsy
- Mr. Wonderful's birthday!!!!!
- My big bachelorette party weekend

It BOGGLES my mind to see that so many huge events all happened to align themselves into one 7 day period. I can feel my blood pressure rise just by reading that list, and realizing how many outfits I need to pull together this next week! Ahhhh! Thank goodness for all of your helpful organization tips, I'm going to need ALL of them in the next 7 days!!!

I'm trying to spend my last 24 hours as a housewife in a calm, focused manner (or as calm as I possibly can be, considering the list above). I started off the day by beginning Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred DVD plan, in order to do a little stress busting. I'll let you know how the next 30 days goes! I'll also be finishing the laundry, tidying up our apartment, and cooking my favorite new crock pot recipe - Weight Watchers Zero Point Soup! (you should seriously check it out! I add extra red pepper flakes for a nice zing).

Fingers crossed that my first day goes well! I can't wait to see how it goes!

xoxo,
Lulu

Countdown to Rejoining The Working World- Help Me Transition Back!

First of all, THANK YOU, Dear Readers, for your congratulatory words!!! Your kind thoughts and well wishes mean SO much to me. I'm so proud and thankful to have such kind-hearted blogger friends!!!

Needless to say, it has been quite a celebration in our household for the past few days... After landing on my flight back to NYC (more on the Dallas trip soon, it was *beyond* fun and eventful!!), I walked to baggage claim and was surprised by a familiar face- Mr. Wonderful had traveled all the way to the airport to surprise and congratulate me! He was standing at the baggage carousel, an ear-to-ear smile on his face and a bottle of Veuve in his hand. Beyond adorable. We headed home, and went out to a celebratory sushi dinner.

The next morning, I woke up to the smell of breakfast... Mr. W snuck out of the house while I was still asleep, and ran to the corner store for my favorite breakfast sandwich. He surprised me (again!) with breakfast and bellinis in bed. Ladies, I almost died *right there* and went straight to Heaven. I can't tell you how great this man is to me! We rounded out the celebration weekend by ordering the HBO channel for our apartment (SUCH an extravagance for us!), and catching up on one of our favorite shows- Big Love (HIGHLY recommend it!!!).

It dawned on me today, in the middle of room cleaning and laundry folding, that these were my last few days at home full-time! I'm both elated and nervous at the prospect of rejoining Corporate America. I've gotten into such a great routine over the last 5 months, I have an irrational fear that I'll never cook a decent meal or have the laundry done on time again! It feels like the first day of school, all over again!

Here's where you come in, Dear Reader! I would love for you all to share some of your favorite time-management skills!

What helps you manage your career/household /schoolwork/volunteer/church time? I'm talking cleaning schedules, meal planning, packing your lunch the night before work... ANY suggestions would be *greatly* appreciated! Nothing beats a case of the nerves like feeling 100% prepared beforehand... Please help me get there!

xoxo,
Lulu

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After almost 5 months of unemployment, I'm proud to announce that I just accepted the opportunity of a lifetime!!!! I've been interviewing for this particular position since the first week of January, but didn't want to jinx it by blogging about the process. ***Edited to add: I can no longer go into any detail about my job, due to Corporate Policy. Let's just say that it is a REALLY great job, and that I'm REALLY REALLY happy. Hooray!

I can't even begin to tell you how blessed and relieved I feel to finally be employed again. When I lost my job, I felt like God came out of nowhere and put me through quite a trial- I had no idea how I was going to try to search for a job and plan a long-distance wedding, all while living on 30% of my previous income (in one of the most expensive cities in the world, no less)...

Now that I've finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel, I couldn't be happier to have gone through this trial. I will never again complain about how much I dislike my job or how boring I think it is, because I'll be forever grateful to HAVE a job affording me a steady income and health insurance. I've learned to never take for granted the daily extravagances I can now afford, like body lotion or cable TV.

I've really enjoyed having you on this uncertain path with me, Dear Reader... Let's raise a celebratory class of Veuve, and toast to the next leg of this amazing journey!

xoxo,

Lulu