As You Wish

 What a lot of people don't know about Patrick and me is that we had a wedding date before he ever proposed.  We had been talking about marriage for, well forever, and had already decided on the early summer of 2005.  We even reserved the church before the proposal!  Maybe that initiated the pregnancy rumors...or it could have been the two month engagement, the fact that I was 17, or the freshman 15 8 around my middle.

In any case, Pat knew he would have to be creative if he wanted me to be at all surprised by his official proposal.  Enter Jeff, our youth minister/matchmaker/friend.  Mutt Pat and Jeff brainstormed together and came up with the idea of using one of Pat's and my favorite movies, The Princess Bride, for the proposal.  They made a copy of a Blockbuster rental (which is probably completely illegal, so don't tell anyone), then stopped the tape(DVD, actually) at the point where the bratty kid interrupts the story to ask his grandfather if it's a kissing book.  That's where they cut in a video of Patrick telling me he had something to ask me.

After work one Saturday, Pat asked me if I would like to hang out and watch a movie.  Of course I did!  He cooked (out of a box, anyway) beef stroganoff,  which was totally normal for us at that point.  What wasn't normal was that he insisted on eating before we started the movie.  I resisted, because I always prefer to read a book or watch TV while I eat.  He won (for once), and we ate in the dining room, Pat trying to slow me down as I scarfed down my meal.  I impatiently waited for him to finish so we could start the movie, having no idea why he was even slower than usual!

Eventually, Pat finished his stroganoff and agreed to start the movie.  Poor guy, he must have been so nervous knowing that once we popped the movie in, the timer started counting down.  No backing out now!  Needless to say, I was confused, then surprised, then excited when our movie stopped about five minutes in.

And that is why The Princess Bride is such a special movie to us.  I knew I wanted to reference it in some way on the frame wall, so when I saw this on Pinterest, I just had to make it my own.

Source: etsy.com via Kelli on Pinterest

 

For anyone who isn't familiar with the movie, my deepest apologies.  Netflix it tonight, unless you cancelled your subscription like we did.  : /  In the meantime, you should know that "As you wish" is a famous line from the movie that the hero uses in lieu of "I love you".  It's very romantic cheesy.

I didn't want to just print it off; I wanted it to feel very homemade and special.  Then I remembered a small project I saw over on YHL a few weeks ago:

Source: younghouselove.com via Kelli on Pinterest

Sherry just used a marker to draw "x"s in the shape she wanted, so it would somewhat resemble a cross-stitched piece.  I decided that this just might be perfect!  Wanting to keep it simple, I just grabbed a sheet of paper off our printer and started drawing some "x"s with a black ballpoint pen, to get the layout the way I wanted it.  I ended up liking the look of double rows.  You may or may not be able to tell from this picture, but I also toyed with the idea of using "k"s and "p"s, then decided to stick with my "x"s.  I outlined the basic shapes with a bright Sharpie so I could use this as a template, then put a new sheet of paper over the top and got to drawing.

I did one layer with ballpoint pen, then went over that with a red-orange sharpie for "AS YOU" and a blue-green one for "WISH".  Somehow, these pictures read more red and blue on my monitor, but I promise it looks much less patriotic in person.  Not that patriotism is a bad thing, it's just not what I was going for here.

As much as I liked the "finished" product, I knew it wouldn't look very nice without a pretty substantial mat.  I didn't have any spare mats, so I made one using cardboard and some fabric left over from my large frame project.  I used the book I was reading at the time (is it bad that I can't remember what it was, even though it was less than a week ago and I have a picture of the back?) to mark a rectangle on the cardboard, then cut it out with a box cutter.  Patrick, for some reason, doesn't like for me to "play" with those things.  Maybe it's because when I first started to cut the cardboard, I was using my lap as the solid surface, and I didn't see anything wrong with that until I felt the pressure of the blade?  I wonder if they offer workman's comp for bloggers. 

After cutting the rectangle out, I glued the fabric onto my cardboard.  I made sure to make it pretty tight to avoid wrinkles on the front.

Next, I cut an "x" across the opening and glued each flap onto the back of the mat, again making sure to pull it nice and tight.

After all that tugging, I expected a smooth finish on the front.  Instead, I saw this big fat wrinkle.  I started to work on pulling it tighter, but then Madison woke up, so I decided it wasn't that bad after all.

I taped my "art" onto the back of the mat:

Yes, I realize it's upside down.  No, I'm not willing to flip it and then upload it again.  Sorry!

Here it is all finished.  I think this is my new favorite, and it took me all of twenty minutes, glue drying time included!

I would love to hear your engagement story.  Or, if you're not married, what would be your dream proposal?

-Kelli

My Pinterest Challenge

I'm beyond excited to link up over at Young House Love and Bower Power for their Pinterest Challenge!  The idea behind the challenge is to motivate themselves (and their followers) to actually DO something they've pinned.

I racked my brain for what pin to make my own.  I dug through all my boards, rediscovered a lot of great ideas, and then found a few that had me all, "what the Hagrid was I thinking when I pinned this?"  After a bit of hemming and hawing, I stumbled on a picture one of the most inspiring projects I've found in blogland.  Is anyone surprised that I found it on YHL?  Yeah, me neither.

Here it is:

Source: younghouselove.com via me on Pinterest

After I finished cleaning my puddle of drool off the floor, I started thinking logistics.  I knew I had one week to complete the challenge, and this was no small project!  Fortunately, I had a head start; I had already spray painted most of my frames a bright white, and I had painted a few more frames the same off white color as our breakfast table and Madison's changing table.  I had also already used John & Sherry's newspaper trick to determine where to hang the frames, as well as facilitating an inconclusive vote on which arrangement looked the best.  I had even filled the largest and smallest frames with some sentimental "art".

All that remained was to fill a few more frames and actually hang everything!  It made sense to me to hang the frames before filling them; that way I could see how everything was getting along.  Part of the beauty of using newspaper to map out the wall was that the newspaper dummies doubled up as templates!  I just laid each sheet on its corresponding frame, then felt for and marked where the nail(s) should go with a highlighter.  I did this one piece at a time, replacing the newspapers on the wall as I went.

I also labeled each sheet with a description of the frame that it was standing in for.  This one, obviously enough, was for my plain frame.  After marking and replacing all the pieces of newspaper, I started hammering.

 Insert Mitt Romney joke here.  Maybe, "I nailed Mitt Romney?"  Nah, too easy (ha ha).  For the record, I have never "nailed" Mitt Romney, and I have no way of knowing his level of easiness.  I'd hate to get any character bashing started too early in the campaign process!

 One helpful tip I wish I had known before starting this project: when hanging multiple frames, go from the bottom up!  I had to remove almost every one of these to hang the bottom ones first.  Dope!

Next would be the part where I fill the rest of the frames with beautiful and meaningful art, except that I ran out of time steam.  See, my daughter Madison is four months old, beautiful, sweet, funny, and smart.  She also seems to be part owl, meaning that I've gotten about one halfway decent night of sleep in the last two weeks.  Yeah, I did just blame my procrastination on my four-month-old.  And yes, my dog did eat my homework!  

Here is the (not so) complete frame wall.  Out of the fourteen frames/objects on the wall, only four are definitely staying as is.  Most of the frames just have temporary filler, and some, as you can see, are completely empty.  As unfinished and imperfect as it may be, I LOVE it!  I smile every time I walk through the hallway. 

 The four "done" items are, in no particular order:

Well, done except for making it level.

I'll be posting about this tomorrow.  This is my new favorite frame!

  

Are you participating in the Pinterest Challenge?  Do you ever go through your Pinterest boards and wonder what you hit your head on the day you pinned something?  Have you ever used "Hagrid" to fill in for a curse word?  Most importantly, do you know any good Mitt Romney jokes?  

Happy Hump Day!

-Kelli

Happy Halloween!

 Last night we hit up the fall festival at our church.  I haven't come to the event for a couple of years, and I was really surprised to see what a big turnout we had; there was less parking than Easter Sunday! 

Here I am with our little cupcake. Oh, and the tree we're standing in front of has not fallen; it's actually still alive and growing!  It has been leaning pretty severely for as long as I can remember, but Hurricane Rita pushed it down to pretty much parallel with the ground.

All the activity at 6:45 at night was a little more than she was used to.  Pat and I kept grabbing her from each other because she was being so much more cuddly than usual!

Madison's first piece of candy.  I need to remember to get that out of the diaper bag before our weather man remembers this is Houston! 

Madison's typical bedtime is somewhere from 6:00 to 6:45, and we usually let her wind down slowly.  After all this craziness, I expected her to have a difficult night.  Nope!  For the first time in two and a half weeks, she actually slept pretty well!  She got a total of eleven hours, with one feeding about six hours in.  Then she woke up this morning, ate, and fell right back asleep! 

I hope this means she's back to normal.  I'm not sure how many more nights I could handle.  The night before last, the second time she woke up, I was trying to calm her down.  I remember thinking, "I could handle this if her cries weren't so red.  And square!"  That's when I decided to get Patrick's help.  Thanks, honey!

On a side note, I was very disappointed in Nancy Grace's performance last night on Dancing With the Stars.  I have always hated her show(s).  I think it's terrible the way she judges people in front of America before they have their fair trial.  However, since she's been on DWTS, I've come to actually kind of root for her.  I would still never willingly watch any of her shows, but I think the way she gets excited about good feedback is kind of sweet.  That's why I was so upset when she was forced to dance the jive to "The Devil Went Down to Georgia".   There was no way a 52 year old non-athlete would be able to move fast enough to do justice to the song.  I hope she makes it through, anyway.

How was your Halloween?  Have you ever seen a sound?  Who (if anyone) are you rooting for on DWTS?
-Kelli