TV - have time to watch it?

I watch tv seasonally, which means when I have time to watch :) During my unwed college life (sounds funny, I know), I dedicated Sundays to tv. I watched a bunch of shows on hulu.com (which doesn't seem to work from Finland, bummer) and kept up with most of them. Among the shows I followed were CSI, NCIS, Bones, Fringe, Gossip Girl, Dollhouse, Castle, Medium, How I Met Your Mother among others. Due to what my roommates/friends watched on our community tv, I've also watched the likes of Arrested Development, House, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives and a lot of cartoons (while living with my three male roommates :). I also tried to think of what I used to watch before college and these came to my mind: Gilmore Girls, Charmed, China Beach, Roswell, Popular and a bunch of old school sci-fi series like Star Trek, Space: 1999 etc.

While I was pregnant I watched a ton of tv, basically every day. I was on bedrest majority of my pregnancy (not fun), but luckily we had cable, so I had like 300 channels to choose from. I watched the usuals (Bones, NCIS etc) and Flashforward, Battlestar Galactica, Warehouse 13 and a bunch of America's Funniest Homevideos episodes :D I still watch the latter on Finnish tv, I love the laughs it gives me! After I had my baby I watched tv less frequently and usually on Hulu, since I never knew when I would have time to watch tv. I watched all the Modern Family and Parenthood episodes, since I was living my new life as a stay-at-home mom :-)

Now that my lil man is a toddler and takes 2h naps during the day, I have time to watch some tv. I still watch Fringe, NCIS and Bones and have added Mentalist, Lie to Me and especially Glee to my list. I also usually watch at least the pilot episode of interesting new shows and this fall I've found a couple pilots I've really liked. I loved the pilot of Hart of Dixie and the New Girl. The latter appeals to me partly since it's about a girl living with three guys and that really brings back fun memories :) I miss my roommates! I also watched the pilot of Secret Circle, but I have to say I've grown out of high school dramas, however magical they are. One exception though, I'm seriously in love with Glee. I've just been a bit bummed out about the third season, but maybe the third time's the charm and the third episode will be magic!

Any shows you think are worth watching?

Purple themed wedding

Staying on theme of weddings :) one of my high school friends got married over the weekend in Helsinki and she had a lovely purple themed wedding (it's her favorite color). Everything from invitations, decorations, bridesmaids' dresses to her own flowers (bouquet and hair) followed the theme and it was done really tastefully. Unfortunately I only had my Blackberry with me, so I wasn't able to take any quality photos, but here's some anyways:

Beautiful church

Groom and groomsmen waiting for the bride

Table decorations, loved the petals! There were tiny purple hearts on top of the petals

Cutting the cake :)

And here's my own dress, which I ordered custom made from dinodirect.com. I think it turned out pretty well!

The reception was held at a hotel. I really liked the hotel's lobby, which had these centerpieces. I might consider having something like this at my own wedding, maybe with cinnamon and red/white dried flowers:

I really enjoyed the wedding! My husband and I stayed overnight at the hotel, since my Mom had our lil man, so we had a little mini vacation to boot :)

Hope everyone is having the most amazing week!

Bridal hairstyles

More wedding stuff coming up! :) Now that we've booked our flights, I can plan more!

So, I've been thinking about what to do with my hair for the wedding #2. Here are some strategically cropped photos of my do for the wedding #1, which was held in Finland.

The first three are (for the lack of a better word) trial-dos :) The first do looked okay, but I felt like a figure skater. The second and the third one were what I wanted. And this is what I ended up looking like:

I was really happy with my hair! My hairdresser did my hair and makeup as a wedding present, he is such a sweetheart!

As for the second wedding, my husband said he'd like me to have my hair down or partially up. Unfortunately I have the stereotypical Finnish hair: dull, thin and without any volume :D I don't think my hair is thick enough for a partially up do, and hair down probably wouldn't be that fancy either. So up it is, and for the second wedding I'd like something a little bit messier :) Here are some of my ideas:

Have any good ideas for the perfect wedding hairdo? :)

Senior pics

This blog is mostly about observations (I hope!), but I guess you could categorize this as a lifestyle blog. I haven't really posted a whole lot of recognizable photos of us, but I might change that at some point. Anyways, my husband gave me permission to post a photo of him :) It's one of his senior pics from a couple years ago.

My gorgeous husband :)

I had never seen this particular senior pic until last week, when my sister-in-law came across it online and sent us the link. It was as one of the photographer's example photos on a website. As you can see, I'm one lucky girl ;), but also how different high school senior photos are in the U.S compared to the Finnish ylioppilas-kuva (high school graduation photo). I've seen plenty of them, since my sister-in-law has a studio and takes a lot of them each year. Finnish ones (at least most of them) are pretty formal and we usually wear the graduation hat. U.S ones are pretty informal, and often include hobbies or pets etc. Lately I've also seen some more relaxed Finnish ones that have been taken outside the studio environment. I think that's a great development! I'm not a big fan of my overly formal studio photo, but I love this one of my husband!

p.s I love Glee! But I just watched first episode of season 3 and I have to say I was a bit bummed out:( I loved Rachel and Kurt, but I was soooo disappointed in Quinn's new persona... perhaps it'll get better. Seasons 1 and 2 were so great, maybe my expectations are too high.

Wedding blogging? - Bridal jewelry

Our second wedding is less than three months away and I'm getting slightly nervous again :D I promised myself that after being a complete nervous wreck around the first wedding, I'd be a chiller bride this time. My sister-in-law is a professional event planner and she has all the right contacts, so really there's no reason for me to panic, and yet I'm feeling quite panic-y. I guess I can't help it, I'm the worrying kind.

I'm afraid this blog will turn into part-time wedding blog from now on, since I can hardly think about anything else right now :-) I'll try and write about everything else as well, but please excuse me if there is too much wedding stuff in this blog. And just to be clear, my life is not just about wedding planning; I'm still working on my thesis and am taking classes at the university, plus being a full-time stay-at-home mom/homemaker :D

I thought I'd start with something gorgeous: my jewelry. I used the same jewelry at my first wedding and will recycle them to next one too :) My sister-in-law has a boutique in my husband's home town, so she got me these from Mariell. I absolutely loved them! The rhinestone pins are my own purchase from eBay:

Pearl and crystal necklace and matching earrings. The flexible crystal tiara band didn't really like the hairdresser spraying on it, so it's not as silver-y anymore :( but it'll still work cause it is just amazing ;). It's really lightweight and you can't even feel it in your hair, perfect!

Last, but certainly not least, my gorgeous engagement ring:

My amazing husband got me exactly the kind of ring I wanted: beautiful white gold filigree diamond ring! I wanted something petite to fit my tiny hands :) and this was just the right size, not too wide. I absolutely love the filigree details!


Hope everyone is having an amazing week!

Wedding dress from China - Confessions of an online-shopaholic, pt II

Our first wedding was organized with a very small budget, since my husband was unemployed and I'm a student/homemaker. The budget for my wedding dress was super-small as well. Most store-sold dressed here in Finland were wayyyy too expensive. To make things worse I have a very annoying body shape (wide hips, very narrow waist, broader shoulders), which means most store-sold dresses would have to be altered and I would end up spending even more money. While in the U.S I bought one wedding dress online through Amazon and the dress itself was gorgeous. The problem was again that I would have had to have it altered to fit my small-ish waist. I ended up selling the dress when I got to Finland. After that I decided to get a custom made dress to solve this problem. Considering the minuscule budget, I basically had no choice, but to order my wedding dress from China.

I had my doubts about ordering a wedding dress from China: would it be the right size, would it be like the description/photo, would it be acceptable quality, would my credit card be charged more than promised, would the dress ever even arrive? Those were the obvious questions. The other things I wondered were if it was ethically responsible to order the wedding dress from China, when I have no idea who made it? I pondered this for quite some time until I had to accept the fact that I never really know who makes the clothes I wear, unless I have them made at a local shop and even then I don't know who made the fabric etc.

Next step was to search a good site to order the dress from. I read a ton of reviews and looked at even more photos of gorgeous dresses. Based on the dresses, the reviews and the price I finally chose Lilywedding.com. And I wasn't disappointed; the dress was gorgeous, just the right size and the best part was it totally fit my budget! For the price of little over $200 I got the custom made dress, a pretty veil, an okay two-hoop petticoat and all this delivered to my door on time. All in all a very good experience! The only slightly negative thing was that Lilywedding forgot to add the spaghetti straps I asked for, but they did send them in a letter afterwards. The original dress did not have straps. I actually ended up not using the straps since the dress was just perfect without them!

The dress on Lilywedding.com

And on me :)

I've also ordered some cocktail dresses from dinodirect.com, which is even cheaper. They have a ton of different wedding and other dresses, some of them custom made. The three dresses I've ordered have been good for the price, but the quality hasn't been as good as Lilywedding. For example one the dresses was way too big and didn't have a lace-up back as promised, but a zipper. The two other dresses have been great, but not exactly as in the description/photo. But like I said, for the price they have been awesome. Also, dinodirect.com delivers really fast. All my dresses were here in less than a month from when I ordered them!

I just ordered a dress for our second wedding (the first one was in Finland and the second one will be in the U.S) and this time I used 1luckybride.com. Judging from the reviews they seemed to be pretty good at delivering what they promised. I guess I'll find out in two months :)

Bachelorette party!

I love everything about weddings and one of the funnest parts of getting married is having a bachelorette party! My friend is getting married in a couple of weeks, so we had one for her last week.

We surprised the bride-to-be by showing up at her place in the morning with all sorts of yummy foods and desserts. The theme for the bachelorette party was the 80s, so we also did her hair in the true 80s fashion and had gotten her some colorful 80s gears. One of her friends had even made her cute legwarmers just for the occasion! We didn't tell her what was going to happen, so I think she was a little nervous about what we had come up with :D But luckily for the bride-to-be, we had been supernice and planned things that we knew she'd like to do. We took her to a beauty salon to get pampered and the beautician also created her an 80s eye make up.

Waiting for the bride-to-be at Heineken Style Nuggets

Then we took her to the park and did the rest of the make up. She really looked for the part! We also gave her a notebook where she was supposed to gather marriage advice from passersby and she was actually really successful in filling the book!

After that we took her to Stockmann's where she got to record a song of her choice in the Stockmann's studio. We had given her a selection of the songs in the morning so she had some time to decide which song she she was going to sing, although she didn't know where or when she'd have to sing it :) She was soooo relieved when she found out she didn't have to sing it to an audience, but instead got a cd to take home to her husband-to-be :)

Then we took her to have some pre-dinner drinks and had an amazing dinner at Virgin Oil!

Drinks at Cantina West

Yummy foods at Virgin Oil

After dinner we had some more drinks, went dancing and ended the night by going to a concert at a club. I think the bachelorette party was a success! :)

Bachelorette parties in Finland are a wee bit different than in the U.S. I think the biggest difference is that in Finland the party is often themed and the bride-to-be dressed in a costume and doing different tasks. In the U.S it's less of a costume party and more of a drinking party :) In Finland the theme might sometimes be even a bit embarrassing, but it depends on the bride. I've seen pretty embarrassing outfits on U.S brides-to-be's too! :)

Confessions of an online-shopaholic, pt I

My paypal password hasn't been changed and the shopping continues. I'm assuming everyone has already deducted that I'm an online-shopaholic. It's true. I never used to be until I moved to the Midwest where I wasn't necessarily near any mall or any store bigger than Walgreens/Alepa. Amazon and eBay are my worst addictions. But while in the U.S I was also hooked on Sephora, 6pm (supercheap brand clothes) and believe it or not; Walmart.com. Actually, I confess, I love/hate Walmart. The stores have almost everything at an affordable price and they're usually open 24hrs. Walmart.com is super convenient and you can have them ship for free to a store near you. Then again, Walmart treats their employees horribly according to several reports and the stores themselves are full on weird/scary/pathetic people (check www.peopleofwalmart.com it's rather accurate). My husband absolutely hates going to Walmart, but does it anyways, since they have everything. I've also ordered from dozens of other places like Clinique.com, Biotherm.com, Target.com, Diapers.com...

When we moved to Finland I had to give up on this addiction until I rediscovered eBay and discovered that Amazon.co.uk ships free to Finland if you buy over £25 (selected items). I didn't quite give up on Amazon.com though; I sometimes order stuff to my mother-in-law's address and she's a sweetheart and mails them to me :)

I've been craving for a grey colored Guess clutch for a while and today I ordered one from 6pm for quite the nice price too, $27 for this is not too much:

The matching satchel is on sale at Macy's right now...I'm a little tempted... ;)

Reunion in Stockholm

I studied abroad through the ISEP program several years ago and met some amazing people, who now have reunions in different countries every year. I haven't been able to attend all the meetings, but I did get to go to this year's meeting since it was in Sweden. I hadn't seen some of the guys in 6 years, crazy! I have to say studying abroad has been one of the best experiences in my life and I think every university student should give it a shot :) I made lifelong friends and got a new perspective in life. There were obviously some not so great experiences as well (like my first roommate, a German girl, hated my guts haha), but I wouldn't be the open-minded, social person I am today, if I had not ventured to live abroad.

I love reunions, and was very bummed that I missed my elementary school reunion in Finland two years ago. I was also bummed my husband missed his high school reunion last summer, since we moved to Finland. I think I was more bummed than my husband :D I would've loved to see the people he went to high school with! I'm so glad that Facebook exists and I've been able to reconnect with a bunch of people that I have met through the years.

Here are some photos from our Stockholm Reunion:

I flew to Stockholm-Arlanda with Norwegian airlines and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Their seats even had seat pockets, take that Ryanair! :D

Huge plate of yummy vegetarian food :)

Tasty, but expensive drinks at the Vampire Lounge

Tranquility of the Stockholm cemetery

p.s off topic, but someone should change my paypal password and not tell me. I've been doing way too much online shopping lately :)