Random pictures part 30

I've been going through trying to oomph some of my favorite wedding pictures. These are what I've gotten done so far:
If anyone is curious how I did it, feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me. I think my favorite so far was making the fake watercolor one.

First Ornament together

I have been keeping an eye peeled this year for a nice, simple and not to ugly "First Christmas Together" ornament. It's been insanely difficult as Hallmarks selections this year were terrible and all the other ones I've seen have involved bears dressed as brides and or grooms.

I don't know why but I have some issues with having a wedding bear on my tree. Imagine a bride with a yellowed dress and ripped veil still hanging there 20 years down the road. Kinda like the bride who has her fiance run out on her her wedding day, goes nuts, and refuses to take her dress off so she dies all alone in her house.

I'd pretty much given up on ever finding one til I stumbled across this cute little snowman pair.Simple, sweet, and you usually can't go too wrong with snowmen (well til the dog decides to smash through the poor thing and eat the arms made of sticks).

Has anyone else been looking for a "First 'holiday of your choice' symbol" and had any good luck?

First Ever Giveaway Christmas Contest!

Hey all you Black Friday warriors (or those that are just locked up in a nice cozy house with a laptop) I have something really surprising to share with you.

I am a huge fan of giving gifts and as a thank you for putting up with my insanity this year I've decided to have a little giveaway every week in December. That means 4 cool gifts that I have found and love so much I just had to share with 4 lucky winners.

They're all something that I have personally bought, so no free advertising from big corporations.

I do ask that only those in the US enter as shipping is already evil enough (which makes me sad as I know a few overseas bloggers I'd love to have get a little something, oh well).

Check back on Monday for the first little surprise contest and the challenge. Til then, have a nice relaxing holiday weekend.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us here at Introverted Wife.

So um, that would be just from me then. Anyway, here are some of the best bits from Turkey Days past brought to you by MST3K.

"Slug the turkey, Frank. He must die so we may live."

More texture

I'm just having too much fun, trying out different ideas and texturing the textures:

Name Changes are for the birds

I've been a really good newlywed so far: we got all the presents put away within a weekend of getting back from the honeymoon, wrote the thank you notes while driving to the honeymoon, and have not had a lick of any of that supposed post wedding blues.

But there is one thing that I have just been putting off like the plague, changing my name.

It took me a good three weeks to even get around to mailing in the form, only to have it come back as I forgot to sign it. Well I signed it and sent it in and am still waiting on those wonderfully speedy government officials. Do de do.

I kinda view the Soc card as the first official step and that there's really no reason to go to every single little web thing I'm a member of to change my surname until I get in that card (or maybe I'll wait til I get the drivers license, yeah that seems more official what with a picture and all).

If you can't tell by all the excuses, I really don't want to do this. It isn't that I was forced to change my last name, or I'm really attached or anything like that. I just don't want to do all the work.

I was never one of those lovesick teenagers that would write Mrs. (insert last name of current crush here) all over their notebooks. Okay so I also didn't think I'd ever get married but that's beside the point. I also still have no idea how to sign my last name (this just goes to show you, learn all capital letters in cursive, you never know what you could wind up with).

However, it feels like I'm the only weird one out there. Most brides seem to be exstactic to have the chance to change their say facebook name (the only thing I have changed so far), while I'm about the furthest thing from excited you can get (like sloth territory here).

Is anyone else out there like me, you have no qualms with changing your last name you just don't want to have to do all the work associated with it?

Texture

Jenna at That Bride yesterday posted a tutorial on how to texturize a photo and I thank her from the bottom of my heart for it.

I've done a bit of messing around with photoshop in my spare time but I've never tried to add texture to a picture before, til now:

This was my first attempt. I used some grass and weeds behind and of course dropped the saturation like a stone. For a comparison this is what the original looked like.

I wanted to see what I could do with this favorite picture of my tall flower girl:

She's got some gorgeous water hidden behind her. I also played that up by making the background a lot bluer. Here is the original for a comparison.

This last one was a bit more work but I wanted to try something a bit outside of my comfort zone:
This was my layer extrodinare as I wanted to make it look like we were made out of flames but not the whole picture. It involved a lot of boring rearanging, copying, and erasing that I am sure you don't care about. But the original is this.

I can't wait to try a few others, especially once I hopefully get in the rest of the reception pictures (this waiting thing really sucks). I have some really cool Halloween ideas.

Once again thanks so much Jenna, and you guys really got to go check out her tutorial.

Cool Halloween Pillows

After catching these on Canadian Bride, I just had to share for any fellow Halloween fanatic Brides. These are all from Creative Bridal.

The first pillow is silver while the second is in gold.

They have a corseted red & black Gothic guestbook that is pretty awesome too.

Gray Saturday

I am one of those crazy people who views Holiday shopping as something to be done long before anything holidayish is out.

Normally I start working on Christmas shopping as soon as November comes around and am done by the 2nd (if I'm really debating something maybe by the 3rd.). A lot of this is due to the fact that I really don't like shopping, I hate crowded stores, I hate long lines at the checkout, and no one should enjoy parking lots in snowy weather with all that black slush and ice threatening your every step.

This year the wedding has really messed up my usual shopping habits sadly. For some reason it just hasn't felt real to me. It seems like we just missed Halloween somehow and are floating around in time and space. So around about the time that November was just about to leave it finally got into my head that I need to find gifts and wrapping paper and possibly some sugar plum faeries to staple to presents.

So this past weekend I set out with my husband in tow to find everyone's christmas present (that wasn't already purchased on the honeymoon or through our good friend Mr. Internet). It shouldn't be too bad, right; after all it's a week before black friday when everyone starts putting their all into it.

Boy was I wrong.

Apparently along with some radio stations starting to play christmas music as soon as November comes roaring in like a turkey stores are beginning to think that Black Friday needs its own second holiday. A day that is a mere shell of its original but still terrifying to claustrophobics.

I call is Gray Saturday and it must stop. Black Friday is a tradition to many families. For some it involves scouring the ads on Thursday then getting up at an unholy hour to go stand in a cold parking lot, for mine it involves holing up in the house full of leftovers with the door boarded up to keep any shopping zombies out.

But now all of a sudden Santa is sledding in the week before, the stores are advertising their Quesadilla makers as half off and the bell ringers are out in full army force. I'm pretty sure that if you don't leave the mall with at least one bag the bouncers send you back in til you find something worth buying.

I say we need to claim back Black Friday. Santa suits cannot be put into jolly fat men's hands until the day before Thanksgiving, bell ringers must keep their knockers covered until the first sign of a snowflake, and if a single store has a major door buster sale I'll personally show up with a flame thrower and ask them nicely to stop.

Then I can go back to being the only insane one buying Christmas presents early.

If only I was a card person

In my random Labrador searches for things from etsy (usually for presents, I swear don't kill down time at work on there) I keep coming across these just adorable cards from blomma. Sadly I am not a card or stationary person at all.

But if you have any dog lovers in your life who does use cards these are just too perfect for the holidays:
The first one is such a lab thing to do, growing up our two were notorious package sniffers. I love the card of the puppy sleeping too, always a peaceful house when the dog was down for a nap.

And God forbid I ever need it but if someone I know does need a Get Well Card I am definitely sending the last one.

The Cutest Little Monster

Okay so it's long past Halloween but my best friend finally got up some pictures of this and I had to share.

I don't know if you all remember my cute little ring bearer who just had to be Cookie monster this year but his mom worked hard on his cute little costume.

She took towels and turned those into a hoodie and pants:

But that wasn't all. This is the really cute part. Thinking that he may get hot and want to take off his hoodie she made for him a T-shirt with cookie monsters insides.Look you can see the cookies in his stomach. Take that store bought costume.

A spectacularly amazing announcement

As I'm sure you have all noticed I'm trying to guide this blog away from non stop wedding stuff (though I still have lots more to share from my own including the rest of the pro pics as soon as the mail man gets around to fighting off Jack Frost).

But after talking with some of my good friends (who you've all seen pictures of) we've realized that between us we still have some great wedding ideas. So we've created a new wedding blog called Elegant & Budget Friendly.

What we're about is making a really cheap wedding look as fancy as possible. Trust me we're about as cheap as they come, but we also have some insider information into the fancy wedding world (one of our contributors is a caterer for a $200 a plate weddings).

We have one author that is a pro at the inspiration boards, she's also a nearlyengaged as she waits for this economy to figure itself out (and is our little caterer).

Another author is a mom about to add another little one to her family and has been married for nearly 5 years. She's got some great advice (or at least entertaining rants) on how to deal with hubby's and what to expect after that 2 year itch.

Hopefully we'll get ourselves an awesome wedding coordinator to chime in on what she sees with weddings as well.

And you all know me, every day you put up with my random insanity.

So go and check us out at Elegant & Budget Friendly. We're also open to any other newlyweds who still want to share some fun wedding stuff but don't want to bog their own blogs down.

Cuddly Sperm

I have been madly in love with GIANTmicrobes for a few years. The first anniversary present for my guy was the cute little yeast for making beer and bread.

I got my recently graduated veterinarian friend the heartworm that even has a little collar.

But I just about fell out of my chair laughing when I saw this guy:

That's right, during those cold lonely nights you can snuggle up with your own sperm (there's also an egg for any guys needing some love).

This would be so adorable as a gift for a bachelorette party, and much cuter than any inflatable penis. Or if you have any medically minded friends there's a great T4 bacteriophage virus and lots of bacteria.

I really don't think I could pick a favorite, oh okay maybe this one.

A hair raising experience

Cue the wavy lines:

I'm taking you back, back to October 17th when I was still a little lowly bride and had a horde of people coming to ransack our apartment.


I don't know what most normal people do the day before their wedding but ours was pretty much devoted to two things: 1. rehearsal and dinner & 2. the making cool and painting of numerous wigs.


My MOH showed up on our doorstep with a toddler in tow and a wig that looks like this:
Not very scary or Bride of Frankenstienish now is it? But not to fear my tall flowergirl and I were gonna work our magic to make it look awesome (or fail miserably and lead to some serious problems, we've done both).

First the Tall flower girl (while wearing the tiara I got her) pinned up the weird tales and shaped the poor wig to give it some lift.

Then I got out the white paint, mixed it up with some water and painted some really cool freehand racing stripes. I think it makes her head go faster.
I got distracted a bit and had to try on the Chucky wig my tall flower girl was gonna work on for her boyfriend as well.In the end our little bride turned out looking quite cool. It was quite surprising how quickly she fell into character without having a clue she was doing it.

(And if you're wondering about the shirt change, let me say wet paint is dribbly and changing a shirt while having a huge wig on is hard work. So put a towel down if you're gonna try this).

If anyone else wants to make a just about perfect Bride wig, we used this one from Target.


I am sure that lots of women routinely paint wigs right before they're about to get married, right? Right?

A call for links

Hi everyone,

I've got a little surprise cooking (actually I've got a few) and for this one I was wondering if you could help me out.

I am looking for those new or classic wedding blogs that give or gave you inspiration. They can be ones that I have already linked to or totally new ones that I have missed.

To thank you guys for your help, here's a dancing penguin.

Those things he does

Everyone has their own little quirks (fancies, idiosyncrasies, or whims) that can either endear a person to you or really make one question their own sanity.

No one is exempt (I am a talker, but only to myself or in my sleep) and while we all are madly in love with our significant others and wouldn't want them to change there are a few little things they do that just make you scratch your head.

I felt like sharing those that my husband does that I will never understand but I am sure to come in time I'd miss if he did it any different.

Whenever we get out of the car he has to shut everything off.

This requires a good two minutes of flipping switches, turning knobs, and pushing buttons. Then while I'm already inside the apartment he can get out of the car.

I can kind of understand his reasoning behind why all of the climate controls must be turned off before the car (I say kind of because I'm being nice, I really don't get it at all) but I have no idea why the radio must be silenced so then we have to turn it on every time we get back in the car.

He says it's because his mother always wanted to talk and not have the radio on while riding with him, but all I can think is anything longer than a quick 5 minute drive and I'd go mad without some background music.


Shopping is an interesting experience as well.

Apparently his idea is to let me be constantly in front while he's behind watching to make sure I don't suddenly bolt.

I remember in our early days of dating I'd slow up so I could walk beside him, well then he'd slow down again to be behind. It would get so bad we'd be standing in the middle of the grocery store, neither of us moving.

Growing up I was more used to the idea of splitting up and meeting up in the middle with whatever you wanted to look at. He likes to travel in a group and is scared to leave me alone for more than a few minutes (though he is getting better in a smaller store that we've been in multiple times. He's all but suctioned onto my side at Wal-Mart).

How about the rest of you? What strange little quirks do your fiances/husbands have that you can't understand?

It's our one month anniversary

And neither of us want to kill the other. Hurray!

We're gonna celebrate by um having some crock pot leg of lamb and then probably watching one of the zillion of movies we bought on our honeymoon. And then maybe do some . . . okay so we're really not gonna celebrate at all.

We're boring shut in types and lets face facts with Christmas around the corner (as well as the husbands birthday. It really sucks having to think of two gifts quickly for picky him. I'm trying to get him to move his birthday to a more manageable April but so far no dice) that's sucking up most of my gift giving surprise planning spirit.

Plus even though it's been a month I don't think it's really sunk in yet that I'm married and a wife and stuff. We lived together a year before getting married, we're still living in the same place doing living stuff (well when not sleeping then we're doing sleeping stuff).

I have been working on the name change thing. First thing I've learned when you fill out the Social Security stuff make sure to sign the thing before mailing it off. He he he. I hope I didn't miss anything else this second go around otherwise they're probably gonna refuse me on the grounds of not knowing how to fill in little boxes.

We've also done the boring responsible thing of taking all the money we got from the wedding and putting it into a joint savings account (though we could have gotten a stuffed pony if we'd gone the checking route, so it was a hard choice).

We've lasted longer than the tree behind us

Who knows, maybe by the next monthiversary I'll suddenly feel this cosmic balance as though all is right with the world. Or I'll be freaking out about what we're gonna do for the holidays. 50/50 chance really.

Congratulations to all married couples that have made it another month. Give yourself a pat on the back and maybe get a little treat too. Hot cocoa is very popular at this time of year.

Non-matching Bridesmaids

After reading That Bride's post about her own bridesmaids I thought I should share our little approach.

We didn't just throw out the rule book when it came to the bridesmaids attire, we also ran over it with the mower, set it on fire, and dumped it into a volcano for good measure.

I know next to nothing about dresses and shoes and how to make something look just perfect on another body. What I do know is how uncomfortable an unfamiliar dress and pair of shoes can be (not to mention how expensive and just downright evil).

So all I told my best friends and future family was to find a dress in either blue or green and wear it. It didn't matter if you already had it or it was found at a department store clearance sale. Just try to not show up naked (though thanks to some last minute alterations that was a possibility).

However, I would have been perfectly fine with a few barefoot women running around. People didn't even start asking me what shoes they should wear til about a week before and lets face facts it's way too late now, missed the boat, sorry you'll have to pick on your own (and we won't even talk about matching hair and makeup).


I'd say in the end it looks pretty good:


And for a shoe look:

It worked out so much better than I could have imagined, everyone was really happy and relaxed, and no one felt the need to smack me upside the head because my girls weren't in the exact same dress, shoes, and hair.

So take that rules. If one of your best friends wants to wear a dress that isn't made by the same designer as your others or even from the same dreaded dye lot just think about it letting her. Who knows how much fun you could have?

Come to the open house

Of my re-opening of the Introverted Wife.

That's right, I'm trying to embrace my new change in life status (crazy me thinking there really was only one change in life status: alive to not. Though I guess there are always zombies) with a quick blog redecoration and header re-design.

I have no idea what direction this blog will be heading in (though I still have lots more wedding stories to tell) but I'm sure it'll be a wild ride.

Won't you join me?

My own kidnapping

Hello, police? We seem to have had a bride get kidnapped.

Yeah, right at her wedding. They just came up behind her, slipped a blindfold over her and walked her out (though it seems they are really bad at blinding someone as she didn't walk into the few poles they tried to lead her in to).


The suspects? Well the ring leader looks a lot like Bride of Frankenstein

There is another one with blond hair in a wedding dress and leather jacket and another looks like she just got out of a scrap and had her dress torn.

The last one appears to have just gotten off work at a vet clinic.



What should we do? Just sit down and color while you handle it? Okay, we can do that.

We just got in these ransom pictures. It appears to our forensics office that the bride was kidnapped to a local Doc Johns probably to embarrass the shit out of her.

Here the culprits proceeded to drag her around the store, pointing and giggling. They may have at one point had a store employee show off one of their vibration machines. Perhaps they finished the crime off by buying her some "things" for the wedding night.

So, do we prosecute?

No, it seems she was delivered back in time for the end of her reception. Let's just call it case closed and go get some coffee.

A Horrible Wedding

Thanks for all the kind words everyone. It means a lot to me to find out that my crappy pictures are really all my fault for not being good at taking them and not because of what I was taking a picture of (that was a joke by the way).

You have all convinced me to show you a little something I made to appease my husband. I'm not totally happy with it due to a lack of footage but it was still fun to make.

I present my Dr. Horrible Wedding:


I promise I'll think of more fun ways to deluge you in pictures.

Wedding picture envy

It's funny in a sad sort of way, it was always entertaining to look at other people's weddings before my own and to see what they would come up with. Some people go all out with a high class place complete with plate chargers and silk napkins

I'm more of a paper napkin and plastic plate person myself so catching any of those $50,000 weddings never stirred my deep waters of envy. If anything it made me happy we were so simple as it was one less thing to worry about and a lot less money spent.

But now my wedding is over along with a lot of other peoples in the blog'o'ball and we're all posting our re-caps/fun pro pics at the same time. Seeing how other peoples visions turned out makes our wedding feel like the weird little knicknack you got once on a lark and now keep in the closet.

Basically, while our wedding was good enough for me it just doesn't feel like it's really good enough to share with the world wide web and I've been second guessing putting any pictures up thinking "There's no way anyone really cares, or it's helping anyone." Or there are those really evil little thoughts "You know everyone's just laughing at it, right?" (thanks The Knot)

Maybe it's my little introverted thoughts but while I always at first want to show off one of my artistic endevours, after it's been out for a little while I begin to see all the cracks and faults and promptly want to take it all back.

And I just want to stress that no I don't regret wearing a tail or having a halloween reception, I'm just not sure if any of you really want to see pictures anymore.

So while I debate and decide here are two comparisons of my head table and a fancy wedding's one:

A nice expected head table.

And then there was our mess

Am I the only other crazy person who really doesn't want to share pictures for fear they don't measure up?

Photoshop is fun

I have been a photobucket junkie for a few years now. It used to be that they'd just host my random avatars and other pictures I wanted to share, but they've somewhat recently added an "edit photo" option and I've been using the hell out of it to mess with my wedding pictures.

It's generally just been having fun with the saturation. In this one I can make just the flowers pop utilizing the layer tool: For this one I did some cropping and cranked the saturation the other way. But because of the fact that our skin is still showing I did have to layer that underneath so we didn't look like boiled lobsters.
Okay so this was just a simple macro on the edit site to turn your picture into a cartoon but I like it. It's subtle but still looks like a drawing.
Keeping with subtle, for this one I just totally dropped the saturation, softened it up a bit, oh and totally deleted the background. It's eerie just how similar they all look though.
But the guys can't have all the fun. This was probably my most complicated picture. First I changed the background, then I needed to make myself some green skin so another fun layer. I didn't want to completely make it B&W so somethings would pop.

Then it was just a matter of adding some fog and voila, a spooky bridal threeway.

As a bonus here's a picture I made real quick of the in-laws. I promise it was just for fun, not because I really think they're all a bunch of blood sucking vampires.

Is anyone else planning on getting their proofs and do a little editing themselves? Once you get into it and mess around it really isn't as scary as you'd think (undo is your friend). Even with those really picture perfect professional shots it's still a lot of fun to play and see what you can come up with.