Wedding Planning begins!

In my head, the wedding was already planned. Spoiler alert: rehearsal dinner was to be at Lou Malnati's. Pizza you say? Devon, that is so not like you. You see, we rarely see our friends, especially now that we live in MN. I haven't seen certain of J's friends in YEARS because women are not allowed at the Badger reunions (oh boys, how that is to change!!) All I really want is an opportunity to enjoy seeing everyone! Plus we can all enjoy pizza and for everyone who doubts that Chicago has the best pizza around - I just wanted to settle it once and for all. Secretly I also thought to myself - I am the BEST BRIDE EVER. A no-fuss rehearsal dinner that everyone can be comfortable at? A quick cab ride from wherever the reception site is? I had it figured out before I was engaged? I must be pretty awesome.
BUT NO! Lou Malnatis won't rent out the restaurant for the night. Jason and I still have our hearts set on catering Lou's pizza to another location. But now the drama of finding another location. Which will allow us to cater in our own food. And will be comfy. And fun. And Chicago-ey. Now I'm not the best bride, now I'm bridezilla-esque. I'm very mad at you, Lou Malnati's.

On to the venue. I had already picked out a great venue. I should mention that I have impeccable taste. I have such impeccable taste that I picked the most expensive place in Chicago!! After paying for the new house and all of its remodeling fun, the way Jason explained the desire to pay for the most expensive wedding venue in Chicago was "not so much". Again, here I thought I was the SUPER BESTEST BRIDE EVER because I had BAM! picked a venue in about 5 minutes. Thankfully Jason's mom is an amazing party planner and is touring Chicago looking for a venue. She is absolutely humoring my requests to one, not have the wedding at a museum or library, and two, to have a pretty skyline view.

On alternating days, the wedding planning is appealing and not. If I had my choice, for example, we'd serve beautiful, organic food, but venues have you use their catering which offers late-night snacks like mini-cheeseburgers. Jason also keeps trying to explain to me that there is room for excitement for more than one child; that just because his brother got married already doesn't mean we have to get married at a justice of the peace because no one will want to come to our wedding. As an only child, I really don't get that. If his parents celebrated one wedding already, how do they have any oomph for another one? The fun of a wedding has already been done! "Been there, done that" kind of thing. Ours is just perfunctory. (p.s. ditto with a grandchild - does one even care about other grandchildren? I don't get that.) Let's not mention my mom - she could care less! So today is one of those alternating days when I think, why bother? Why bother inviting people to eat mini-cheeseburgers that I hate? Tomorrow I could wake up and it could be different. I guess welcome to wedding planning?

The Deck

Our poor, poor deck. We love the deck. We bought the house partially for the deck. Mind you, when we bought the house the deck was covered in snow. We could not tell that boards needed replacing, that the whole thing was peeling like the deck had a bad sunburn.
It starts here - on the side of the house. The sliding door you see there is the kitchen.

You can see it was long neglected.

It continues here. There is lots of built-in seating that will be great.

And you can see there is lots and lots of seating! Plus this great tree for kids to climb!

The back end wraps around to the back of the house. The first window on the left is the living room.

Then there are steps that lead down to the patio that is outside the family room.

Tonight I met with one of the potential deck guys. He used a pressure washer to get some of the paint off. I loved seeing the wood underneath all of this neglect!! Unfortunately, the pressure washer did not take the paint off of the spindles, which means sanding them all down. (Sanding them all down = a lot of work = a lot of moolah.) This means instead of staining it and having a great natural look, we may have to paint it. I am not excited to paint it. So we are going to check with our contractor to see if he knows of other ways to get the paint off of the spindles.

So far what I've learned about home ownership:
1.Every day there is a new something to learn about.
2.Nothing in and of itself is that hard, there's just a lot.
3.If I knew all of this stuff, I could save a lot of money.
4. Whoever buys this house after us is effing lucky.

Yard Work

It's true - Jason has mowed the lawn!

Earlier in the evening of this picture, the secretary of the neighborhood homeowners' association had stopped by to introduce herself and to ask if I knew about the regulations on grass length. You see, we closed on the house on April 29th and while the lawnmower was bought that very first weekend....it wasn't used until June 8th! I can see why the neighbors were getting worried.

As it turns out, yard work is kind of fun. After a trying day the other day I came home and weeded the front of the house. That was the best stress reliever I've found in a long time!