Weddingbee Blog

I was roped into joining a boot camp for seven weeks (six weeks, and they were running a one week free promotion) in Oakland. Was I nervous? Heck yes. I was essentially going from couch to working out three times a week+, and I expected it to be grueling. It was tough, but not too bad, and super rewarding.

My boot camp focused on gaining muscle while working out at an elevated heart rate. That meant short intervals of cardio with weight training mixed in between. So, it was never an hour long cardio dash (yikes! scary! too hard for me!) nor was it just weigh training where you didn’t break a sweat…it was a great way to go from not working out at all to getting on track.

Obviously there are different types of boot camps all over the world, so my boot camp experience won’t be the same as yours, but there are some key elements that were important that I think you should look for when choosing a boot camp.

Accountability - find classes that are small, and that meet at times that you know you can always attend so you have NO EXCUSES to miss classes. If the classes are small, people will notice and ask where you’ve been. If you’re serious (of COURSE you are!) find a specific-set week regimen that’s pre-pay, so when you feel like giving up you remember how much money you sunk into the camp. Larger classes are probably cheaper, but more impersonal, and you might not feel as obligated to show up consistently. (If you’re responsible and wonderful and committed, obviously this doesn’t apply to you, and you can find a large format cheap class and go to that!)
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I was rooting around for some pictures of myself for this post, when I realized that beginning sometime after our wedding, I didn’t take a lot of pictures anymore. A lot of it had to do with being unhappy with my weight.

To understand me a little bit, I will say that I’m not obsessive about my weight. On a daily basis I don’t care that I’m overweight. I don’t think about it, don’t obsess over it, it really doesn’t bother me. Aside from feeling bad for my husband that he only outweighed me by 15 pounds but was 10 inches taller than me, I truly enjoyed my life. I love healthy food (fish, veggies, all that good stuff) and while we did (and still do) eat out 3x a week and my portion sizes our OUT OF CONTROL, I can’t say that I have a particularly bad diet, nutrition wise. That being said, I didn’t like having a lot of pictures taken of me. Only when looking at pictures did I realize how much weight (25 whole pounds) I’d gained over the last few years. That’s rough for my 5’2″ frame, as I started out squarely overweight, and zoomed right up into obese (according to BMI calculators).

YEAH YEAH Wii Fit, I’m OBESE. And you’re an inferior gaming console. TAKE THAT.

So, simply, the solution was to stop taking pictures. Weight problems solved.

But that’s boring and detrimental to blogging. Plus, even more dangerously—I don’t go to the doctor. I was so terrified of getting weighed in (I avoided scales like the plague) that I haven’t had a physical in quite a few years. BAD. BAD.
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Hi hive!

I’m just a month shy of my 3-year wedding anniversary and I have a confession to make: by the close of the holiday season this year, I’d officially gained 25 pounds since our wedding.

Being a newlywed is pretty blissful—lots of great meals, lots of travel, lots of basking in the glow of finally being done with wedding planning and moving on into the next stage of your life. Mr. Peng and I ate our way through Thailand this past winter, where I looked a lot like this:

Mouth agape, willing to accept whatever happened to fall in it, like a giant pummelo, for instance.

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Hi all! So sorry it’s a little slow on the blog today…we’re having problems loading images which means…no posts with images can go live! So, I thought I’d write a little no-image post.

Recently I went to a friend’s bachelorette party where we all took a pole dancing class. It was touted as “empowering exercise” and a great group activity. I didn’t have a problem with it; I actually thought it would be great fun…plus, we brought champagne and snacks, and it was with an intimate group of girls I knew. What could be so bad about that?

The instructor was pretty awesome and it was clear that most of the girls had a good time, including the bride. But for some reason, I REALLY REALLY hated it. I was almost SHOCKED at how much I disliked the class.

As a back story, it’s pretty well known that the Matron of Honor’s husband and the bride’s fiance frequented strip clubs in their free time. No, not just in a “it’s a bachelor party, we’re going to a strip club” manner. They actually just go when they’re bored…maybe a couple times a month.

I don’t have a huge problems with strip clubs. I often say that I’d rather have my husband wasting money in strip clubs with naked women that only care about his money than I would have him in an actual club meeting real-life, nice women.
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I’ve had a behemoth Yudu screen printing machine taking up precious space in my closet for two years. I’d dream up projects for it, chicken out, and change my mind here and there about using it. (I particularly wanted to use it with Robin’s invitations, but with any gadget, there’s a learning period to using it, and I didn’t want to tackle someone else’s project learning on the machine.)

This year for Christmas I decided to bite the bullet. Back in October I ordered 150 flour sack towels from the American Chair Store with high hopes and intentions to put together a small package for our Christmas cards. In December it was a mad dash and a few long nights of ironing and screen printing, but I’m happy to report that my first foray into Yudu screen printing was a success, and I would love to print some invitations on fabric in the future…a good excuse to throw a party!

I had to wash and iron all of the towels first to get rid of lint and give myself a nice flat surface to print on.

OMG ANNOYING IRONING OVER 100 TOWELS. YAWN BORING LAME TAKES FOREVERRRRR.

Then, the fun begins.
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I was in Minnesota last month and went with my MIL to get manicures, and the manicurist asked me if I wanted to pay $10 extra dollars for a UV gel manicure. I had no idea what she was talking about, but she convinced me that the manicure would last at least 2 weeks (a normal manicure lasts 2 days on me before it starts chipping, and then is usually a disaster by day 5). I was skeptical but also, a total sucker for an up-sell, so I agreed. (At least it would be a blogable experience, right?)

I got the manicure on Friday August 20. Here’s what it looked like the next day:

Here’s what it looks like 13 days later on September 1st:
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I have an awesome return address stamp I got from my Weddingbee Secret Santa, Mrs. Lemon, 3 (!!!) Christmases ago that I use all the time. It features my name only, so I thought it was a good time to get one that had my husband’s name on it. You know, because he lives here, too.

I’m pretty sure I heard of Primele on Weddingbee. Swearsies. But I can’t for the life of me find any reference to it, so… boo. But once I saw it, I knew I had to get my hands on my own Primele stamp!

Upon first glance it appears as any other address stamp…

But check out this custom calligraphy goodness that the actual stamp produces:
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I recently attended my girlfriend Lauren’s bridal shower in Fresno where good times were had by all. Cristina, the Maid of Honor, had one game that I found particularly genius that I had to share with the hive! But before we get to that, check out the cake that Cristina made at home for the shower. It was incredible!!!

… Not to mention the hydrangea centerpieces, with hydrangeas cut from her mom’s garden!
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Or, How Dick Blick Punched Me in the Uterus and Left Me Cowering in a Corner

You’ve likely spent a bajillion dollars on wedding photography and now you want to hang some of it. But, you’re still out that bajillion dollars, right? There’s no room left in the budget for professional framing. That’s where you come in and do it yourself. I haven’t had many of our wedding prints printed, but I do have TONS of posters that I’ve acquired over the years, and figured now was as good of a time as ever to get them up on the walls.

I acquired my latest poster goody at the Brooklyn Renegade Craft Fair: A Peaceful Traveler print of Minneapolis/St. Paul. I’ve been buying a few posters here and there and never took the initiative to hang them, but today pulled out all my random posters and decided to do something with them. At first I thought I might cover an entire wall in our house with every random poster I have, but after laying them all out, I realized they were too hodgepodge and needed a new plan.

(That Los Angeles poster is SO ’80s but I bought one anyway 10 years ago and never put it up… I fear as the decades go on it will never see the light of day, but oh well.)

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I’ve toyed with talking about how I met Mr. Penguin for some time, but always feel somewhat embarrassed retelling the story. A “normal” love story often consists of 2 people mutually falling in love because they are clearly attracted to each other and want to give each other a spin. I don’t know if it’s my lack of self confidence, or over confidence in setting my mind to something and making it happen, or something in between (clearly it is something in between, because who considers him/herself both lacking confidence and being over confident?), but I would consider our love story to have begun with more of a “poaching of prey” than “two people falling madly in love”.

I don’t have a lot of patience for crap, and dating was one thing I considered TOTAL crap. So, around the ripe age of 19, I decided to poach me a husband.

~~~

I knew I wanted to marry my husband from the minute I met him. But not for all those fuzzy lovey normal reasons people claim love at first sight for—I feel like I evaluated my husband’s traits and tendencies for exactly what they are, figured that they were compatible with the life I wanted to live, and decided that, at whatever cost, we WOULD get together and I WOULD make him eventually marry me—love be damned.
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One of my best friends from college is getting married and I’m so thrilled to be a part of her wedding. She lives in Fresno, and damned if I’m going to drive down to sweltering Central CA to help her out, so I’m helping out as much as I can from my temperate 60-degree Berkeley living room. I kid. But seriously, Fresno is freaking hot.

Anyway, her shower is coming up, and I’ve been dying to make some fabric backed invites ever since I saw Miss Pudding’s fabric backed save the dates. How fabulous they were! How labor intensive they were! And so, I thought it’d be fun to make them for Lauren’s shower. I mean, how many people usually get invitations to showers? Like, 30? (My showers.)

Hmm… have you met Portuguese people? They LOVE their families. And they have big families. And Festas. Anyway, the point being that she is inviting 80 of her closest family and friends to her shower, but I’d already committed to the fabric backed invites before knowing the final count. Mrs. Pudding only made 30 for a reason. These things took a very long time but turned out pretty cute!

Lauren had 3 requests: green, purple, and a beach theme. I gladly obliged.
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Mr. Peng and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary with separate vacations. What can I say, the honeymoon is over! Just kidding. He and his brother gifted each other an East Coast baseball stadium tour this Christmas, and the only time the teams they wanted to see had their home games all line up was over our anniversary weekend. So, I took the opportunity to fly to NY with him and hang out with my bee pals while he hit up a multi-state tour of the East Coast.

We had a lovely brunch at Craftbar with 11 bees including: (front row) Mrs Cloud, Mrs Swan, (back row, L-R) Mrs Onion, Mrs Dorsay, me (Mrs Penguin), Mrs Canary, Mrs Dahlia, Miss Hermit Crab (one day before her wedding, oh yes she DID attend!), Miss Trail Mix, Mrs Pug, and Miss Thimble! Afterwards, a few craft fanatics (and a few troopers) headed to Brooklyn to check out the Renegade Craft Fair.

If you’re addicted to Etsy (and I suspect that at least 80 percent of Weddingbee readers are) then you MUST go to a Renegade Craft Fair.
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To preface, I just want to make it clear that my parents love Mr. Peng. I’m pretty sure my mom loves him more than she loves me. They share the same hobbies and interests (drinking, playing golf) while I’m off in my nerd land of interests (being on the internet, sitting on the couch). My mom is overly concerned with making sure she cooks things “that Mr. Pengy will like” when we come over. I’m very lucky to have a harmonious family life.

But even so, my parents are completely, over-the-top insane when it came to (and continues to come to) my independence. I got all the lectures repeatedly growing up: “Don’t depend on a man for your finances. Make sure you have your own things when you get married. Don’t ever do things just because your husband tells you to. Make your own choices.” They were pretty persistent about it.

My mom is a homemaker, and her lectures were based upon, to put it bluntly, how she sometimes feels trapped in her marriage. She and my dad have a good marriage—but, any good marriage has trying times. And she’s been very honest with me about how she enjoys her life, but doesn’t always feel like she has freedoms when times get rough. My mom is not a born-to-be-homemaker type—she has more education than I do, and had a successful work-life before she had me. Through a series of life choices (that, no doubt, were good for me, and my family), she’s stayed at home and raised me. And I am eternally grateful for that. I don’t doubt that I am a better person today because my mom stayed home and raised me.
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Hola hive! The lovely ladies at Inspired By This asked me to write a guest post about what inspires me! Here’s a tidbit from the front end:

I’ll be completely blunt: reading and editing countless wedding posts a day for Weddingbee (about 8,300 posts a year, to be more precise), it’s hard to be truly inspired by fresh ideas. New brides enter the wedding world every day, and what’s new and fresh to some is old and recycled to others. Blogs have the power to push trends to the extreme—and to tire them out quickly. I totally love that, though—it pushes us all to bring unique and fresh ideas to market at a rapid pace.

However, one element of weddings never ceases to inspire me or go out of style in my eyes…

… Check out the rest here, including mentions of Mrs. Hot Cocoa and Miss Jellyfish!

The B-List was given a look into this season’s WEtv wedding programming, including a new season of Bridezillas and a brand new show called Girl Meets Gown. Girl Meets Gown is a WEtv original series that takes a behind-the-scenes look at the Dallas area’s premiere bridal salon, Stardust. Some pretty wacky scenarios come up, including two sisters searching for one wedding gown to share between the two of them for their upcoming weddings. Check it out!

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