Latest Obsessions 01.18

It’s a new year, but I’m still obsessing and plan to share all my latest obsessions every month with all you beautiful people – and I want to hear what you’re obsessing about too!  This months obsessions range from simple home improvements and upgrades to trying new things and fighting the post-holiday blues!
Latest Obsessions 01.18 - the bee life
Organizing. I love being organized in general, but I’ve been on a kick purging and organizing throughout the house. It’s been so great to clean out the pantry, fridge and freezer, we’ve even been tackling guest room closets and adding shelves, getting plastic bins, labeling and just throwing crap out – it’s been great.

H&M Pillow Covers. So before the holidays I stumbled upon pillow covers from H&M… can you say game changer? I excessively buy unneeded pillows, and have been wanting to find some ways to update our living room without buying all new. Moral of the story, the H&M pillow covers are affordable, come in a variety of styles and are perfect for a mini-room makeover without blowing a budget!

Home Chef. We received a gift to try out this home food delivery service for Christmas! We’ve had three meals so far, and the shear fact that we don’t have to worry about what’s for dinner and meals are portioned out perfectly has made for some easy, yet super flavorful meals this year. I’ll be sharing more about Home Chef in another post, soon!

The Crown. We finally started season 2, and it’s SO good. Obsessed with Princess Margaret, indifferent about the Queen (but love Claire Foy), don’t like Charles and love the mini history lessons! I’ll be sad for season 2 to end, and see Claire Foy and cast transform… but love the premise, fashion, style and drama of it all!

What keeps you busy during these colder months? Any other must-see Netflix and Chills we should be watching?

 

Image Sources: Top Left | Top Right | Bottom Left | Bottom Right

Tips for Creating Your Wedding Registry

Since we are in the prime of engagement season, a lot of you newly engaged ladies and gents will be looking to start creating your wedding registries! This is a super intimidating process, regardless if you’re needing everything new or looking to upgrade existing pieces.  So here are some tips I recently learned creating my own registries, and some tricks I learned after, to help you create your dream registry!
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Tip #1: Take A Walk Either through your house/apartment and make a check-list for each area and start creating your wish list of things you want/need!  Since everything is digital now, I also recommend going to the store, especially if you can’t decide between two stores.  Seeing, touching and comparing products will help make a decision and then no surprises when you receive gifts.

Tip #2: Use Starter Guides/Check-Lists These are pre-populated lists made by your Registries and they’re life savors, more and more sites are creating these.  It wasn’t until I’d already created two of our registries that I found Zola and their check list.  It was a game changer! The checklist allowed me to think of things I needed, ideas for pieces to upgrade, and filter out things that weren’t that important for us!

Tip #3: Star Your Most Wanted Obviously everything is a most wanted item, but reality check, not everyone is going to buy off your registry, and if they do – make sure you get your priority items first! I regretted not doing this sooner, as I ended up returning items in place of ones we needed more.

Tip #4: Take Your Time Since this can be a bit overwhelming, don’t feel like you need to do this all in one day or one weekend, start early, browse, shop, and add as you go and think of things.  You really just want everything final about a month before your first major wedding event (people are last minute shoppers!)

Tip #5: Put a Cap on It After you have your list created you’ll quickly find out what your priority items are, so limit the number of registries you create! This will be a life savor for you and your guests.

Tip #6: Use Zola The part I love most about Zola is the behind the scenes interface for brides/grooms, not only do they have a wide variety of products and brands, on top of money funds that you can create, they also make returns, shipping, exchanging, SUPER EASY AND you can be really secretive about it so you don’t hurt anyones feelings! Their app is easy to use and their customer service is great!

Tip #7: Link to Wedding Website Be sure to link your registries with your wedding website! This will be helpful especially if you plan on using your wedding website URL on all the various invites and serves as one central place for your guests.

Tip #8: Download the App! A lot of the apps for registries make it easy to shop, check-in and have built-in scanners for shopping in stores.  It can also allow you to check-in on pieces that might become out of stock or discontinued (because that happens more than you’d think!)

We had three registries; Target was a no brainer for me just based on shear convenience for myself and guests, Pottery Barn was mainly used for new dishes and few other fun pieces, and Zola was the catch-all but mainly all my dreamy Kate Spade pieces and other fun and functional pieces.  This is one of the fun parts about getting married, so don’t stress, add as you think of things, and get ready for a lot of awesome new stuff!

Happy Shopping!

My 2018 Goals

It’s that time of the (new) year again! Time to check-in with our 2017 goals, see where were netted out and set goals for the coming year.  I kicked my 2017 goals’ asses, every single one of them – so figuring out goals for this coming year was a little tricky, especially since I want to continue to challenge myself yet make achievable goals.
2018 Goals - the bee life
Maintain my fitness routine.  I finally reached and exceeded goals this past year, so now I need to maintain and continue to become my best self! I feel so good and confident with myself, I want to maintain that feeling – I want to maintain this through my bootcamp classes and running a few races, maybe another half?

Travel out of the country. And get a passport! Yup. Never had one, need to get one so we can start crossing off bucket list trips. In addition to <hopefully> traveling out of the country, we’d like to explore some more/new cities.

Listen more. I often find myself being distracted with my surroundings or my own thoughts in my head – making a conscious effort to listen more, engage and remember conversations is definitely something I need to work on.  This includes shutting down digitally!

Get out. Of the house! Go to local events, take a road trip, learn new things, visit friends, go to concerts and games, takes classes, go out dancing… have new experiences!

These are just the starting points for my 2018 goals as I’ll continue to reflect and challenge myself this year. One of the keys of having a successful year, is not only reflecting on your goals, but writing them down!

Cheers to another year of new possibilities!

2017 Recap

I thought 2016 was epic… but 2017 was pretty epic, too! Especially since WE GOT MARRIED! On top of getting married we went on four amazing trips, celebrated four other weddings for dear friends, conquered some house projects, got my butt into gear with my health, and created a ton of other awesome memories!
2017 - Recap - the bee life
This whole year seemed like a constant celebration for our wedding, or our dear friends weddings from bridal showers to bachelorette parties to planning for all the events, let alone the big day.  Every time we saw family or friends, dinners and happy hours turned into wedding planning filled with laughs and good company.

We traveled to DC, Myrtle Beach, St. Louis/Ozarks, and Palm Desert – all of these being firsts together and perfect getaways from all the wedding crazy filled with more family fun. We are so fortunate to be able to travel like we do, and can’t wait for all our future trips together.

We have been so blessed this entire year and I can’t believe it’s nearly over!

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas – 2017

Before we all start running around and making our last minute trips to the grocery store, Target and anywhere in between, on behalf of B and myself, we want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!
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We hope to remember to take a moment and pause in all the hectic and reflect on the true meaning of this holiday, how fortunate we are (in our many different ways), and squeeze everyone a little tighter this year.

We are so excited to spend our first Christmas as Mr. & Mrs. and continue to build our own traditions when we can and celebrate this most special day with our nearest and dearest.

Merry Christmas!

E+B

 

Photography Credit: Timothy Logan Photography

Local Love: Wedding Edition

I wanted to share some local love with the amazing team that helped me pull together my dream wedding! And I can’t stop gushing over how perfect everything was, it was so beautiful, I seriously look at pictures and can’t believe that was OUR wedding!
Local Love - Wedding Edition - the bee life
Bouquet Studio. What sold me on our florist, Amy was her knowledge and love for what she does. We first talked in early 2017 for over an hour; talking through our initial vision before having a lot of details finalized – her suggestions of different greens and florals to use within each of the pieces were spot on.  Not to mention she helped envision a grand space with different centerpieces; allowing me to have some of my dreams fulfilled from a floral perspective, including peonies!

Kelsey Elizabeth Cakes. Quickly becoming a household name in the suburbs of CLE, I’d swooned over KEC cakes and sweets on instagram for over a year plus.  Our compromise was to have a special cake made just for B and I and then give our guests other sweet treats – but we picked the Hand Painted Florals Cake from KEC’s Buttercream Collection; we were able to select colors, the flavors this helped us make a statement especially after topping it with our custom cake topper.

Borrow Rentals. This was definitely one of our splurges, but it was SO worth it.  We really wanted to make a statement with our sweetheart table, which included needing a grand chair – once we toured the Borrow Rentals showroom, we fell for the double wide Settee.  We also ended up renting a few 60″ mirror table toppers to make a statement and play into the space of our venue with the amazing ceilings.  Finally we picked out the Gigi chairs for lounge seating with a cute side table, they were the perfect touches and just enough. Furniture rental for weddings is pure genius.

Campbells Sweets Factory.  We used another local sweet spot to help us fill our hotel Welcome bags with delicious popcorn and also a sampling of cake pops for guests at the reception. The flavors we got; Buckeye, Chocolate Cheesecake and Wedding Cake were eaten right up, they were so delicious!

Little Mondays. Although this isn’t local to CLE – I worked with an artist out of NYC who is a friend of a friends; she helped us create a few custom pieces for our wedding day.  These were also splurges, but for me it’s all in the details. We had a series of our favorite F. Scott Fitzgerald quotes, hand drawn for added accents around our venue. She also created a wedding map for us to include in hotel Welcome bags for guests, sharing the days events and also pieces of our love story!
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We also had cookies that were made and brought from my hometown by a family friend who is very talented at making pretty AND delicious cookies.  She made 100 cookies for us that included our hashtag, wedding date, a W-initial and just a pattern – these were the finishing touches to our sweets and coffee table!

It was all the details that made this special for us, and all the details that came together and blew me away. Not only did these lovely teams help bring our vision to life, the customer service and passion was in line with how we felt for our wedding day! We are so thankful and lucky to have found amazing vendors for our special day.

Bee Holiday Hacks – Gifts on a Budget

Bee Holiday Hacks are back! And this is a fun one I am excited to share with all of you. One thing about the holidays that both B and I absolutely LOVE is to spoil and go over the top for presents, especially with each other. But there have been years,  that major life events happen like a new job,  buying a house, or getting married… so money hasn’t always flowed as much as we like and we need to budget, AKA reality.
Bee Holiday Hacks - Gift Giving - the bee lifeSo in years past we try to limit each other, and set expectations ahead of time. But how you may ask? Here are some hacks for saving cash while still spoiling your loved one and having a meaningful Christmas!

Talk about it. First things, first. You need to be on the same page with your people or person. Set the expectation that this Christmas isn’t going to be as extravagant as past Christmas’ and ask that they respect and reciprocate.  This goes with family too, I’m sure everyone would like to feel a little less pressure around the holidays especially financially.

Pick Gift Themes.  So this past Christmas B and I picked 5-categories of gifts that we each had to get for each other. One of them could be on the higher end, but the other ones had to be modestly priced.  Here were our categories (1) An Experience (2) Something for the House (3) An Inside Joke (4) A DIY (5) Something for the Wedding.  I bought half-marathon race registration for our experience, and B got us tickets for a sushi making class. For the DIY, B attempted to make me a sofa table and also made cookie trays – while I ended up making B do is own DIY for our laundry room, haha! It was really fun to see what each of us came up with, and had fun doing it and stories to share with each other after the fact.

Stocking Price Limit. I love stockings – but these can get a bit out of hand as well. So we put a price limit on these too; i.e. $50 or 10 gifts under $10. Again this is something you could put categories too or mini-checklists!

White Elephant. When it comes to the <extended> family; don’t be afraid to suggest a white elephant exchange OR the exact opposite, don’t be afraid to opt out of the family exchange.  We used to do a cousin exchange but as we’ve gotten older and schedules get jumbled we now just do a family wide white-elephant, totally optional, totally fun and no pressure!

We need to remember it’s OK to slow down, and take a back seat every once in a while, the great thing about Christmas is that it happens every year. Oh! And it’s not all about the gifts.

Photo Source: Extra Petite 

#EmnBWed – Sneak Peak

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a blessed and loving day with family, friends, loved ones and furry pals.  Our Thanksgiving this year was one for the books and a bit out of the ordinary since we were on our honeymoon! But more to come on that… so since we finally tied the knot, I wanted to give my readers a little sneak peak of our wedding since we are anxiously awaiting the final photos from our photographers – although they have teased us with a few.
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In a nutshell, the day was absolutely perfect.  Everything seemed so surreal, I couldn’t believe it was actually our wedding day – I felt like we were playing dress-up the whole day. But it was so beautiful, everything worked out as planned and our guests seemed to enjoy themselves! The day didn’t seem to go too fast, but there were moments throughout the night where I almost pinched myself and a few times when I just sat down and soaked it all in.
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No one can prepare you for what you feel on your wedding day, the mix of emotions, the wave of people, love and support, the overwhelming feelings and the moments of perfection. I imagined how I would feel, what the day would bring, things I wanted to try and do, but you can’t do anything but live in that moment at that very time, and oh what a crazy beautiful moment it all was.

Cheers!

Photography Credit: Timothy Logan Photography

#EmnBWed – The Final Update

In case I have any avid bee readers out there – yes, I’m still getting married, and no, we haven’t gotten married yet! But it’s happening, and it’s happening very soon! I figured I would fill you all in with the latest and greatest, but keeping in bee fashion and not spilling too many deets of the big day.IMG_4765So about a month ago, we hit a few hiccups – and I’m only sharing in case any other brides are reading and have experienced the same thing; and I’m sure many have experienced much worse.  All of the following hit at once; B started a new job, B lost his voice and was diagnosed with a paralyzed vocal cord (still happening, 5-weeks strong), the electric in our garage magically stopped working ($$$), my debit account got hacked and drained my savings account – thank you overdraft, oh and our DJ mentioned he was declaring bankruptcy.   We rallied through most of these and as mentioned, B is still working through the whole paralyzed vocal cord diagnosis, which is pretty crazy, since one day within a few hours he just couldn’t talk. Our awesome and super handy neighbor was able to help us through the garage electrical drama and saved us the money and headaches we would’ve had to manage had we gone the contractor route. And we’re learning to have a little faith with our DJ. But woah, was it a lot, all at once.

So now that hopefully the worse is behind us… here are all the things I’m most excited for, and I think B would probably agree about most after our recent chats.

  • Seeing the reception venue all set-up and all the tables put together – it has all been a vision in my head for well over a year… and I can’t wait to see it all put together.
  • Walking down the aisle to B and seeing him all done up in his suit!
  • My Father/Daughter dance – it’s going to be a tear jerker but that’s all I’m saying.
  • Dancing the night away with B, our family and friends.
  • Eating MY wedding cake and drinking champagne!
  • Finally being B’s wife!

The details have come together quite nicely, there are still a few things to do on the list but nothing crazy it’ll only be a matter of time before I’m straight butterflies, complete ADD, and ready to walk down that aisle to my husband!

Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to share all the details and a behind the scenes look on the blog later this month!

Until then! XO!

Photo Credit: Timothy Logan Photography