2011 Reflections

All in all, I'd say 2011 was a pretty amazing year...perhaps one of the most exciting of my life so far. I was very blessed this year. TONS happened, but here are the highlights:

got engaged and married

changed my name

added some great in-laws to my life

plus got niece and nephew

saw tons of family and friends I hadn't seen in years at showers and wedding festivities

got tons of new stuff via wedding gifts

quit my job that I had for almost 6 years

bought our first house

moved to a small town

made a lot of new friends

learned how to cook real meals (aka meat)

went to Romania

went to NYC

went to Colorado

went to California

went to Playa del Carmen for our honeymoon

AND got the most amazing husband in the world that at a little shy of 4 months of marriage, I still fall more in love with each day.

Last year, I was very content with my job, apartment, singleness, and just about everything else. God had other things in mind. Now that my life looks NOTHING like it did a little over a year ago, I have no idea what to expect in 2012, but looking forward to the unexpected!

Wedding Stationary - Door Hangers

Somehow in the midst of pre-wedding stress, I went crazy creating anything I could. Suddenly cute water bottles and snacks weren't enough for my hotel guests. I decided that they needed to be able to find each other in the hotel and it needed to be a cute creative way. I found ideas for door hangers and many of them were complicated! Instead, I created my own using the same linen paper I used for the programs and borrowed a circle cutter and round edge cutter from a craft friend. These are pretty basic tools, so if you don't have them, I'm sure any scrapbooking and/or craft making friend will let you borrow.

All I did was create two columns in a page. I lined up our wedding logo then typed the guests name below. Each column had one persons door hanger. I even made one for our bedroom as our honeymoon suite for the first night was our first night in our new house together.

1. Create 2 columns in your word document

2. Place logo toward the bottom of each column

3. Type guests name below logo (Mrs. & Mrs. So-and-So, or full names)

4. Either on word or by hand, mark an x a few inches below the top of the paper for the center of your hole.

5. Print on fancy paper - something with a decent weight like cardstock

6. Cut in half with paper cutter

7. Use a circle cutter to cut using the X as the center mark. You may want to test this on scrap paper first to be sure its the correct size. Mine cut a hole only about 1 inch in diameter

8. Cut an angle from the right edge to the circle (see picture above for an idea)

9. Trim corners with a curved edge trimmer if desired

10. Hang on door(s)

Sample of word document with names edited/smudged for privacy:

I used linen business paper. It has a heavier weight than regualr paper and is a little thinner than cardstock. Up close it looks like this:

Wedding Stationary - Water Bottles

For each of our out-of-town guests, we created a guest basket with some snacks, local maps and tourist info and a water bottle with our custom logo.

I really liked the pre-made waterbottle stickers I found at a craft store...but I was very disappointed! DO NOT BUY A WATER BOTTLE LABEL KIT. The labels were super-sticky and it was impossible to place them on a bottle without wrinkles, especially since almost all water bottles have some sort of ridges. I ended up using the FREE template they offered online and just printing them on regular printer paper. I cut them carefully to size and hid a piece of double stick tape at the end. For copyright sake, I'm not going to give you the company I got the template from b/c they want you to buy there sticky labels - but you can search for them online or even just set up your own template dividing a word document page into 4 equal parts. If you have more questions about how to do this, send me a comment.

1. Create an image in photoshop with your desired background (the purple for me) and wedding logo on top of it. Make sure to size it 8.25 inches wide and 2.5 inches tall - this may have to change a bit. Center the logo on the design.

2. Bring the picture into a word document and copy 4 of them (you can try to print 4 in photoshop, but that never works for me) Be sure to make the margins as small as your printer will allow you.

3. Print.

4. Trim each with a paper cutter. Keep in mind that depending on your printer may need to trim the top and bottom one a bit more to make sure the logo is still centered perfectly (only if your printer cut off some of the design)

5. Remove label from a bottle and replace with your label. Use double-stick tape to keep it in place.

The bottle label will last, even if in the fridge. It won't last if left in a hotel ice-bucket though...but I doubt the fancy labels would either :)

Here is what they turned out like. The picture is fuzzy, but they were perfect.

Wedding Stationary - Programs

The instructions for the wedding stationary programs has been moved to my new blog. Click here for the full instructions. Sorry for any confusion.

Wedding Stationary - Mad Libs

The tutorial for the wedding stationary mad libs has been moved to my new blog at this website.
Sorry for any confusion- the new site was just much easier to organize for a high-traffic post!

Wedding Stationary -Logo and Thank You Cards

One of the best decisions I made in my wedding planning was to create my own wedding stationary. It was easy to do, but took some planning. So I thought I'd share a little about how it was done so others may not have to struggle as much in the future.

I decided all paper stuff other than the invites would be produced by myself...not because I'm crazy crafty (I'm not good with crafts at all) but because it would save money and ensure that things matched. I also realized very early on that this was the only way we could get programs in time since we made final decisions on music and scripture a week before the wedding. I'm going to break this into a few posts just for ease of searching, but we created the following with a computer, paper, a printer and in some cases paper cutting stuff and tape.

Logo

Thank You Cards

Programs

Door Hangers for Hotel Guests

Water Bottle Labels

Gift Tags for wedding party gifts

Mad Libs for reception entertainment

and more that I may or may not include :)

First up, the logo. We ordered invites from a company online as sim

ple as we could find, but one unique thing we did was put an ~N~ at the top instead of both

our initials (eNc). We decided to carry this out through the wedding stationary. So, I opened up photoshop and found the shape I wanted, added a border using wedding colors for both (light pink and dark gray-ish purple). Then I added the wedding date on the bottom. It took a while to line it all up perfectly, but we had a logo. All the wedding day stuff had this logo.

We also used it to create thank you cards. We bought blank printable greeting cards at our local office store and used word to place the logo on the front of the cards only. We changed the wedding date to a simple "Thank You" and we had custom thank you cards at very little cost. They were very simple, but people loved them and they matched the rest of our wedding perfectly.

The best of small town living

So I was all ready to blog every single day...or close to it. I already have the next blog or two half written.But the holidays distracted me. And then I got sick. It was a nice reminder of how much my life has changed. I had text messages pouring in from family and friends asking if I was pregnant. It seems from now on, instead of compassion, any sickness I feel will now be met with excitement. (For the record, it was food poisoning, not a baby)

Married life has lead to many changes. Most have been easy to adjust to. The most difficult has been moving to a small town. But here are my favorite things about small town life.

5. High School Football - We only managed to go to one game this year, but the entire town seemed to be there. It's not just football too. We can go to any game, concert, play, etc and see tons of people we know. The kids are treated like celebrities in our small town paper.

4. Parades - My first weekend here was the 4th of July parade. I was actually in the parade! Since then, we have had many events. The school homecoming parade drew out a huge chunk of the town. The most recent, Christmas Stroll and Parade featured floats and shops with free hot chocolate and cookies. I can definitely get used to this. Each parade we head to the square just us and then run into tons of people we know. It's a great time to say hi to everyone and just enjoy a change in activities.

3. Quiet - The first night I lived in the house by myself, I just laid in bed amazed at the sound of...NOTHING. Literally, I could hear nothing. It was so strange. It was hard to sleep. I lived by the train tracks in the city for 10 years and no longer even noticed the train whistles. Car alarms constantly went off in my apartment complex parking lot. How on earth can one sleep in silence? Luckily, our ceiling fan makes a low ticking sound that helps for now. But I've now become accustomed to the quiet. We live in a cul-de-sac and hear no cars other than the neighbors. No headlights shine in our windows ever. We live close enough to the small airport that we actually hear more small airplanes overhead than we ever hear cars in a day.

2. Traffic - I have hit a few traffic jams since moving here in July (aka 4 cars in a line at a stop sign during "rush hour"). It is amazing how I used to be able to only travel from my apartment to the mall only a mile away in 30 minutes during the Christmas holiday. Here in my small town life, I can travel across town in 10 minutes even during "rush hour". The nearest mall may be an hour away, but that's only 30 minutes more than traffic in the city was.

1. The Sky - "The stars at night are big and bright..." deep in not-really-the-heart of Texas. Not even sure where the heart of Texas is, but I do know where I am the sky is amazing. We received a pair of binoculars for a wedding gift and learned that we are actually able to see Jupiter and its moons clearly almost every night. Thanks to star-guide apps for our phones, we have been able to see the Andromeda galaxy and other great things as well. With the help of our neighbors telescope, we have been able to see all the clear details on the moon (and even take this photo through the telescope). It's been a while since we ventured out with the telescope, but even with the naked eye we see amazing things in the sky each night - it is simply beautiful.

Marsala Cream Sauce for PKU

This is a recipe for those with PKU...but if you have no clue what I'm talking about, see the previous post for the real recipe.

For those fellow PKU-ers out there, this makes a great sauce variety for pasta. I don't know about you, but I have eaten my fair share of low-protein pasta with tomato based sauce. If you need a little variety, try this. I estimated the PHE, but you probably want to measure it out yourself based on what you actually use. From what I could tell, it would come out to about 250mg PHE. Feel free to correct on comments if you know better...my food list is a bit out of date! Thanks, and enjoy.

2 servings of your favorite low pro pasta*
1 1/2 tablespoons margarine
100g white mushrooms, sliced
40g onions, diced
1/2 cup Marsala wine
1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme
1 teaspoons fresh parsley, chopped
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup heavy cream

1. Cook the pasta according to package directions.

2 Melt the margarine over medium heat in a skillet. Saute the mushrooms, then set aside.

3. Add more margarine to the same skillet, if needed, and turn the heat down to medium-low. Add the onions, cover, and cook for 5 minutes.

4. Add the Marsala wine, thyme, parsley, and pepper. Stir until the liquid is reduced to 2-3 tablespoons.

5 Add the cream and stir constantly until reduced by half.

6. Pour sauce over strained pasta.

*For an even better taste, use Cambrooke Food's Low Protein Portabella Spinach Ravioli or Cheese Ravioli and/or top with Mozerella Shreds

Chicken Marsala with Mushroom Ravioli

This recipe has moved to my new blog...click here for the recipe! Sorry for the confusion.

Teaser

After a teaser about blogging again, I followed with nothing. This was not because I had no thoughts to share- I have so many. It was because I was trying to decide what of my life to blog about - spiritual stuff like I did in the past blogs, new cooking adventures, home projects, wedding planning ideas, small town life or PKU. I realize none if these will be interesting to all people- but they are all part of my life. So expect some super short blogs with links to recipes, some long blogs of spiritual thoughts, and some random commentary about PKU and small town life. Enjoy or skip as you please. Oh and I just learned I can update from my phone app, so no excuses now.

testing 1...2...3...

So this is my first blog in a really long time, and life has changed so much that topics will look different. Mostly, I am just testing to make sure this DOES NOT upload to facebook. I don't need/want my 694 "friends" all reading every thought I type. So if this does upload, and you see it and want to read it, wonderful. But be sure to bookmark the real link because I'll delete it from FB. If you have been reading in the past, I still will update on mission trips here and on Facebook notes, but on here only I also want to share stuff from life in my small town adventures - learning how to cook, remodeling some of our house, shopping when there is NOTHING but Walmart near by - I really have no idea what I will write, I just know with no job and a lot more time, I want to write.

Update on my life

It has been a while since I last updated.Things have changed a bit:

Wedding Tickers
Story coming soon...

Romania trip part two

Thursday Dec 30
The day started out shopping after a bit of sleeping in. I went to bed earlier than past nights, but the sleep was needed because I was woken up in the middle of the night by some sort of whining creature, most likely a mouse. He had found his way between the wall and roof and was crying, perhaps because he was cold and stuck. A few times I heard him walking and sliding down the sloped roof. I’m not really sure what happened to him but he stopped making sounds after a while. Perhaps he gave up, or worse, perhaps he got inside the warm house. Either way, I was up for almost an hour dreading meeting my new friend. I never did see him, but there still are a few nights left.
In the morning we met Rebecca, Kiki and Dita to go shopping in town. As always, TM offered very little options for souvenirs, but the shopping was still enjoyable. Then we went back to the LOC houses for lunch and some hang out time. We played board games, chatted, watched a movie, took a walk to the local store and even skyped some people. I was able to give the kids the gifts some of their sponsors sent with me and it was great to see them open them (pictures and videos will follow for those that sent gifts). Sergiu even got to Skype Taryn to thank her personally for the gift, which was fun to observe. The time went by really fast and it was great to just hang out with the kids with no schedule at all. We followed it all with a nice dinner at The Atlantic with Jenny and then back to the house. I stayed up too late to work on the computer and write this blog, dreading a visit from my new pet creature living in the walls.

Friday, Dec30
Today was by far the longest and most emotional. The day started with the most fun I’ve had in a very long time. We went sledding at a place near the zoo with a ramp built for tubing…which meant amazing speeds. It was so much fun. I’m pretty sure I have not been sledding in almost 20 years, so it was great. The time with the kids was wonderful as well. After sledding, we had lunch at TipTop with the three youngest boys: Levi, Sergiu and Fanel. They were hilarious and seem to enjoy the special attention. We went back to the houses for some hang out time which quickly transitioned into our new years party. The kids had a cooking contest and then just hung out after dinner. During this time, I was able to have some really good chats with some of the girls and my father had some great times with the guys. The stories I was reminded of and the current struggles I was told about were hard to hear. It reminds me so much that even though by world’s standards these kids with their backgrounds of neglect and abuse have very little chance at success, God is fully capable of healing them and allowing them to live successful adult lives. I learned so many specific ways to pray for the kids. The party had some issues as some kids had attitude issues and did not want to participate. After all was said and done, only a few ventured out to the Center for music and fireworks. Only two girls came, Kati and Marga, both girls I had very little conversation time with the past years. We had some short but good chats on the van rides, which was great. Once in the center, somehow I ended up with Bela on my arm keeping me warm, and Levi by my side quietly enjoying the show. It was extremely cold, but a great experience to see a “traditional” (I assume) new years celebration. As I finish this blog at 1:40am Romanian time, I am still not tired (perhaps too much caffeine in preparation)