Mario & Peach

Nathan & I have wanted to be Mario & Princess Peach for Halloween for like 2 years now. We finally got the costumes together! Here are some pictures of our awesome-ness.

Here's the "real" Mario. He's fantastic. A plumber by trade, he spends his days smushing goombas and fighting off the evil Bowser to rescue his darling Peach.

Nathan's version. Doesn't he look great? (Sorry it's so far away...he is quite tall after all!)

Kudos to my fabulous husband for the great idea & for his amazing dedication-- I mean, c'mon, the kid grew & dyed a mustache!

And here's Princess Peach! Mostly playing the "damsel in distress" role, she does take the time to send Mario sweet letters that keep him going on his journey.

My costume! So much work, but so rewarding. I even won "Cutest Adult Costume" at the ward Halloween party!


I'm giving credit once more to my mother-in-law, Kathy-- without her help I would not have had such an amazing costume!

Pumpkin Carving

At 9 o'clock the other night, I decided that I'd carve a pumpkin. It was a no-brainer to use one of the HomestarRunner.com patterns, and I always loved The Cheat, so that was an easy decision, too. In typical bite-off-more-than-I-can-chew fashion, I chose to carve the pumpkin without cutting the pieces out completely. (You've seen it I'm sure. It's where the light just shines through the thinned out pumpkin wall.) This technique is difficult with the right tools & even more so without them. I ended up using a vegetable peeler, cheese slicer, and the back end of a spoon to get the job done. Some pictures, including the finished product, are here for your viewing pleasure.

Dressmaking 101

My dear, sweet mother-in-law agreed to help me make my Halloween costume/teach me to sew. We made a Princess Peach dress! Here's the documentation of our efforts.

As we were cutting out the pieces, we realized that I got shorted a yard when I bought the light pink. That was fun. We made a quick trip to Savannah to get some more, only to learn that they didn't have the same fabric (despite being told that they did over the phone). So we got some sparkly light pink to do the bodice & sleeves.


The completed bodice. I sewed the whole thing! Kathy ironed. I don't do irons. I've come to terms with the fact that I need to make friends with the iron if I'm going to sew, but you're gonna have to give me some time...




Sleeves (light pink) and skirt poof (dark pink). The skirt poofs have my first official rolled hems on them!




Bodice with sleeves. I also at this point sewed the skirt panels together & gathered the top, but didn't take a picture. There was too much skirt to get a clear shot!



Here's where Kathy took over. See all that mess? Yeah. That's gathered skirt poofs sandwiched between the bodice & skirt, which is also gathered. I didn't put a ruler in the picture for scale, but trust me, it was nearly 3/4 of an inch thick of fun-ness to sew through. So, yeah. Kathy took over.



Action shot! I'm ripping out a seam, I think it's the zipper. That zipper did not want to go in properly! It was quite the debacle to say the least. She finally got it in though & all was well. Notice, too, in this picture that I'm wearing what looks like a white skirt. That's my crinoline. Yup, I was sporting the T-shirt & crinoline look most of the day!


No picture of the finished product because it's a surprise. Stay tuned for pictures of the entire costume!

That time Nathan got hit in the face...

Y'all have all heard by now that Nathan got hit in the face with a softball. Here's the story.

Well, it started as a typical office pick-up softball game. Nathan plays catcher & there wasn't really anything exciting happening. Until someone comes in to score & he stands up for the throw from 3rd base.
As you can see from the above picture, the ball WAS heading straight for Nathan's glove as the runner arrived at home plate. Turns out he's pretty good at pick-up softball!

But then here comes the twist. Mr. Runner runs straight into Nathan trying desperately to get to the plate. In the process, as you can see, the ball is no longer aligned with the glove & instead its smack on track for Nathan's face. Uh oh.

And here's the result. My poor husband ended up with a very swollen, broken nose & two black eyes. (The left eye blackened the next day after this picture was taken.) Apparently, it bled for somewhere close to 3 hours! Thankfully, it doesn't look like his nose will be crooked for the rest of forever, but I don't think it's going to be quite right either. One of those it hurts when it rains kind of things.

Also not pictured here is Nathan's mustache, grown in preparation for his Mario costume. With the double black eyes, the mustache really adds to how rough he's looked for the past week. Anything for the costume!

This week he's feeling a good bit better. True to Nathan form, he's reluctant to take his medicine, so he's playing through the pain for the most part. It does look better every day, so hopefully it won't hurt too much longer. If it still hurts in another week, he's gotta go for a CT scan of his face. Not really clear on what the utility of that will be, but that's what the doctor said, so we're just going with it.

Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day weekend was tremendously busy. We started it off by going to the Georgia Tech football season opener versus South Carolina State.

Here's us before the game started, i.e. pre-sunburn of the century. There are no pictures to document, but I'm pretty sure that I had a second degree burn on my upper arm!




The band always makes a "T" during their pregame show. You couldn't appreciate it from our angle, so I just took a picture of it on the handy dandy gigantic screen.




Our seats are in the corner near the north inzone, so we have a great view when they're down close to the goal line! Notice also how many people are in attendance. It was pretty incredible!





In celebration of the 41-10 victory, we went to Papi's for some delicious Cuban cuisine. We both opted for the traditional sandwich & let me tell you, they were in true form that evening because the sandwiches were delicious!

Sunday was nice, just church & some more football. (There was so much football crammed into this weekend that I was amazed at Nathan's stamina watching it.) Monday morning we woke up super early to go help out at the bishops' storehouse over in Tucker. We both enjoyed the opportunity to serve & got to go on a mini tour of the facility. It's truly amazing what the church can do.

Now, I wish so badly that I had a picture of our lunchtime adventures on Monday afternoon. We decided to try out this restaurant that advertises a lunch sushi buffet. Trick is, that sign is the only thing printed in English in the entire restaurant! Of course, as a corollary, we were the only non-Korean people in the place. Pretty decent sushi though.

Here's an updated picture of Electra, courtesy of our new digital camera.

And we're off!

Contrary to what I just posted on my personal blog, I have decided to post about our comings & goings after all. I don't really have pictures just yet to support them, so don't hold your breath for posts! Basically because I want to have something to say, here's a little of what we've been up to for the last 8 months & change.

We got engaged & took some pictures. I like this one. It's not the one we sent out with the invites, but then again our invitations were pretty formal. (For which, we got kudos all around!)




We got married. It was a good time. Then we had our honeymoon. There aren't so many pictures of that!






We went to John & Stephanie's for New Years & got some awesome presents. Thanks y'all!


Everyone took a trip down to Grandmother's for Mother's Day. We had a lovely time & couldn't resist getting in the water even if we were in church clothes! (P.S. Did you know the ocean sloped sideways in Pensacola Beach? hehe)





We were homeless for a while there while we waited to hear about a job. John & Stephanie took us in because they're awesome like that. I blew some bubbles.




Everyone was jealous that we got to hang out in Columbia, so they came on down for the Fourth of July. We made some tie dye shirts. (Not pictured: Stratt in his adorable tie dye onsie!) Also not pictured was the amazing pirate fireworks finale. We were all too awestruck to bother with cameras.

Since then & scattered throughout, we've been to a couple Braves' games, set-up a new apartment (thanks, Ikea!), and had various & sundry other adventures. It's been a good time for the most part & we're excited for more!

College football starts tonight with the Utah v. Pittsburgh game. Then the real fun begins with Georgia Tech v. South Carolina State on Saturday. Hopefully, we'll dig up a working camera so we can document our weekends this fall!