i heart things and things NOT tuesday

you know, every so often i get excited about a giant amount of things before the week is out and i just cannae hold it in or i will forget all of it and then the list on tuesday runs the chance of being barren.

so as a result, on the occasion that my delight cannae be controlled, i am now implementing 'i heart things and things NOT tuesday!' hooray!

on to hearting!

• Japanese Restaurants... on our last night in brighton, husband and i had a wee date at a tiny japanese restaurant and MYGOD it was the best ever. like, usually, when you go into a chinese restaurant the waitresses are large and moody. they make it seem like you are inconveniencing them in some way because you would like to ingest food. well, at this restaurant (which, for some reason i cannae find the name of) the waitresses were all the tiniest japanese women you have ever seen in your life and they just pranced around and smiled the most precious smiles ever. it was like all the cutest little japanese schoolgirl stereotypes all rolled into one when you saw them. so friendly and oh so precious. and the meal... OMG the meal! it was like, the best thing ever. it was a prawn den ricebowl with like, the best white excitement ever tossed all over the top. the rice was perfect and the honey ribs and prawn tempura was to die for. i was mostly the most pleased ever. no, really. it was just amazing.
• the sea. i have now grown to realise that if i do not live by the sea at least once in my life i will have not lived to the fullest of my capacity. being from midwestern america, i was never privy to the joys of excess humidity and the saltiest water in the world, but i took advantage of the sea whilst i was there much like a randy college boy would were he to see a drunken, passed-out paris hilton laying on his couch. i wept upon first glance of it. we drove by it on the minibus and i just welled up (which is nothing THAT exciting, as i seem to be weeping at every single thing, ever at the moment). upon arrival at our hotel, we settled in, unpacked and departed for a prance around a city that held no familiarity with us. we were with two other people and i could barely contain myself from just running away from them and flying into the sea fully-clothed. instead, though... i contained myself long enough to allow us to get some cupcakes and cider for an afternoon of amazing delight. the cupcakes were perfect, the cider was icy and the sea was producing all the best sounds in the world. we met up with gem and mel after their meal and returned to our posts at the seafront with more cider and fish and chips for some pre-wedding chats and generally to enable us to breathe in as much of the most beautiful air in the world. due to the amount of booze cat and i had drunk, we decided to go paddling in the sea only to decide that our calves getting wet was not nearly enough, so we moved in further so our thighs were participating... soon, though... that was not enough. we needed to become a part of the sea and we sat in and the sea just hugged us like i have never been hugged in my life. it covered us and it was the warmest and loveliest experience ever.
  i honestly cannot recommend the sea any more than OMG you NEEDZ to go NOW!! it is the best thing ever. OMG!
• orangina. never before have i drunk orangina, but i have decided that after i saw the following advert on telly that i have no choice but to drink it almost constantly... please watch and enjoy...

• swapping things... again!! so, i have received another swap and i just cannot stress how much fun it is! this time i have swapped with a girl in florida and she has sent me the largest box of delights ever. as you can see from the photo there are oreo cakesters, chef boyardee ravioli pots, almond joys, maple syrup and grape delight! i have almost never been happier in my life. it is just the best thing ever to get parcels and to open them and just... well... it's just like christmas. i cannot explain how amazing it is. i will be sending her stuff off tomorrow and it is just as much fun from my end. you get to imagine what this person that you do not know would enjoy. i just love to be able to share all the delights that are in england with other people who are NOT here. it is so fun!

• honourable mentions... american treats aplenty, coke, my goldfish, cupcakes, popping spots, when i overhear classic conversations (an example is when we were walking down the street in brighton and we overheard a lady arguing with a shopkeeper and she decided it would be fair to say the following... 'fuck off back into your shop and suck your mutha's cunt!' yeah... classic, indeed), maple syrup, rik mayall, cheesecake, chevy, alan carr...

big gay weddings and a small amount of disappointment.

a list of things that i did for gem and mel for the wedding?

• made the bouquet of wonder and flowers for bridesmaids to wear.
• cared for their dog in a hotel across the city because theirs apparently does not like dogs (and as a result, was kept up all night the first night due to his incessant groin chewing and leg licking).
• planned the hen night of delight.
• gave up my house and my husband's cooking skills for the hen night so all the ladies had a place to convene, eat a big fat curry, make themselves pretty and suitably inebriated.
• planned and organised the wedding cake of glory to be as they did not have a wedding cake and it is just NOT RIGHT for someone to not have cake on their wedding day!
• went to numerous dress fittings and took photos to help the beautiful gem be sure that the dress was absolutely perfect.
• left work early several times to meet up to discuss wedding-related things.
• made countless phone calls to make sure everything was just right. (this included people bringing things for the hen night, wedding and for the BBC to send flowers to their room on their wedding day)
• spent more money than i ever should have for food and decorations.
• was the only reason that gem had bridesmaids, as she did not even think to have any until i mentioned it.
• was NOT asked to be an official witness to their wedding.

should i be pissy about it? no, most likely not, but it still feels like a bit of a slap in the face because i REALLY put a lot into this. this wedding stressed me out more than my own wedding did and at the end, when the officiator came out to prepare the witnesses for the ceremony, he called sarah up instead of me.
i am not saying i regret doing the things i did for them, and perhaps it is a wee bit petty for me to be upset about it but it just feels like perhaps that would have been the ultimate thank you for someone who threw their entire life out of whack to make sure your wedding and hen night was as perfect as physically possible. am i just being stupid? when i say it out loud i feel like i am just being a big fat stupid face but mygod, i am only human.

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anyways, all that aside, the wedding and the entire holiday was flipping brilliant. in fact, if i do say so myself, the entire week has been perfect.

it all started last friday when i left work in a big fat hurry to ensure i was home in time to get all the shopping done for the hen night. i tidied like i never have in my life, got all the decorations i could ever need and made all the final phone calls.

saturday was a day of OMG TEH STRESS!! husband was still in a whirlwind of unsure-ed-ness about whether or not he wanted to even come home and help cook. i was running around tidying and answering the almost-constant phone calls from the BBC, trying to figure out when they were arriving. when they finally arrived, it all calmed. i was able to just sit and relax. they helped decorate and we discussed the differences between drinking here in england and america. the crew were amazing. i really enjoyed talking to them.

once everyone arrived i was able to really just chill out. i LOVE playing the hostess and i can say that there is no more satisfaction than pouring your first drink for a guest of the night and watching everyone sit in the garden eating a meal lovingly prepared by your husband...

it went a little like this...

we ate and pranced... once we were finished and we have performed a suitable amount of talking, we then proceeded to take a group photo and run away to another pub of which i am not such a huge fan. it turned out amazing though because SO MANY splendid people turned up.
we were obviously followed by the three from the filming crew for the entire night, but it was so totally fun. cherry, who is in the red top to the right there. she was just like, the funnest person ever. her and i had many a lovely talk that night.

the film crew made a quick stop over to the stag's night just so they could see how much less they are enjoying themselves and we moved on to another pub which sucked balls.


upon arriving, the landlord was incredibly inebriated and therefore the most awkward person on the planet. he decided he would short change husband a pound and when husband mentioned it the guy said that he could make something of it and if he did, he would bar him from the pub. yeah. apparently, he rolls like that. after that incident we decided to finish our drinks off and run away to the next pub where we were to meet the stags.


OMG was this place glorious. i hadn't been there in over a year and since then it had been turned into a gaybar which i had been a bit leery about because it was like, the most heterosexual bar ever in the world before. WELL! let me just say, it was the most fabulous place ever on the planet. and i shall show you!



and OMG the wedding was incredible. i really had a brilliant time in brighton. it was my first time REALLY seeing the sea and i couldn't have imagined it to have been any better.

i am just going to post loads of photos now, as i am completely exhausted.












overall, it was just splendid because i was at at the sea and husband was there and i got to share a really special event with some very close friends. i really, really loved these last few days. they were something i will remember forever. hooray!

oh the hair that you weave

oh the last week has been exciting and full of lots of things to keep a girl preoccupied. not that i have anything i need to preoccupy myself to avoid... i actually realised this morning that i am preoccupying myself far TOO much. there have been some reasonably important things going and coming up in my life that i have just been too distracted to notice.

take, for instance the fact that the fabulous gem, of the darlings... she and her 'sig-oh' are getting married soon and i am to be a bridesmade AND official hula wrangler(HOO*LAH-WRA*NG*LER: individual denoted with the responsability of taking care of the precious french bulldog that is hula... aka tulamond, pig, toot, piggarie.) now, the fact that they are getting married is not the only important factor here... there are also factors of if husband will get the time off work, how we will get down to brighton, how much money we must save for the wedding and the oh-so-important, WHAT WILL I WEAR?!

i came to realise, after having a long, hard think, that because this is going to be the wedding/event/partay of the year, it is important to look absolutely perfect, whilst NOT out-shining the bride (who will be looking fabulous, by the way!). now, because this will be a 50's themed wedding, i searched and searched for a dress that would offer me the just perfect amount of cute and sassy whilst NOT overstepping the 'fabulous' line. when i realised it would be wholely impossible to rely on the fashion availability of etsy, ebay and vintagejunkie.com, i decided i would have to take matters into my own hands and make my own dress...

and so it begins... i printed out and taped together all the bits and pieces of the pattern last night and have been left with this:





i am excited that i will hopefully be making a dress all by myself that i will be able to love and beam about when people ask me where i got it. i plan to cut the fabric out tonight so i am ready for sewing maching party time with vic tomorrow. hooray!

now, one would think that the above would be enough to deal with when it came to preparedness for a wedding but oh no! i have also been given the job of planning and maintaining the hen night. OMGWTF!? i had almost forgotten about it until my arch rival in the post-wedding party arrangement contacted me via email to advise me that her STAG-DO would be better than MY fabulous hen night... AS IF!! since then, i have been planning like a big giant planning bee for the best night gem and all the other hens that will be attending could ever ask for. everyone will die.

alongside all of that, i have also been planning to get some special extensions placed methodically into my hairs. they will be like this....



but insanely sexier and thinner, as i have picked not only the best colour and wool, but also the best person ever in the world to do it. my wool is being dyed as i type and i should hopefully have longer 'hair' by the end of next week! hooray!