steampunk wedding pictures!

Sometimes, when two people really love each other, they decide to throw a huge party and make their vows to stay with each other for a really long time public. And sometimes, when those two people who love each other and are throwing that party are my friends, it means they are sci-fi and literary geeks who decide to make their wedding steampunk themed.

What is steampunk, you ask? Good question. Steampunk originated in the 1980's as a literary term for science fiction that took place in Victorian times - think HG Wells with his time machine in Victorian-Era England. So it's lots of corsets and bustles and full skirts and top hats mixed with combat boots, clock and watch gears, test tubes, mini-telescopes, pocket watches, keys, etc. Steampunk is all in the accessories. If you want to American-ize steampunk you go with aviator hats, goggles, bomber jackets, things like that. Some movies that have good examples of steampunk are: the latest Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey, Jr; the movies Wild Wild West, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and even the third Back to the Future movie.

Here's your ideal steampunk girl:

(I sort of have a crush on this girl. How much do you want to be her? Oh, and I got the image here)

So with that in mind, I present to you just a few of the many, many pictures I took at my friends Eric and Stacy's steampunk wedding of AWESOME.

Me and my friend Alli. Yes, she has a metal clamp for a hand. It was rad.

My friend Jeremy was the officiant and official Sky Captain. He's holding what I think is a modified hair-dryer; I'm holding a can opener. Most people were betting on me with the can opener still whupping his ass.

The beautiful bride and I :)

Me with the groom, Eric. Here's our normal faces...

And here's our Muppet faces. We were both Muppets in a former life.

Trying not to laugh hysterically (or get hit in the face) as Benni and I open our favors, traditional Christmas crackers from Victorian England that usually have a small gift inside.

My friend Jeff and his beautiful girlfriend Somer.

Some of the gang...from left to right, the maid of honor Monica, me, my dashing roommate Peter, his insanely hot girlfriend Kelice, and Alli.

Yes, this IS the wedding cake. I'll let you take a moment to absorb that fact. Every part of it was edible - and it was so freakin' incredible that not one but TWO separate film crews were swarmed around it - one for the restaurant itself (so it can show off the wedding on its website) and another film crew for the reality show Amazing Wedding Cakes.

The bride and groom have their cake and eat it too.

Benni rocks the aviator look and you guys get a full view of my outfit.

From left to right: Kelice, Mandy, her wonderful husband (and my martial arts instructor) Isaac, and me.

The bride and her two bridesmaids!


And for those of you who are into making outfits like this: I got my dress from Clockwork Couture, a steampunk clothing website; my black widow necklace is from past fall's jewelry collection from Anthropologie (the body of the spider is a canister that opens up to reveal solid perfume inside), I wore arm length, fingerless gloves from an Etsy shop that I don't remember and strung a necklace with a key on it around my waist as a belt. The calf-length combat boots I got from Delia's a few years back, and I stuck a brown and black feather I had in my hair.

Oh, and the purple drop earrings I got from Etsy too. I'm so bad at remembering names... they were in a goodie bag from a blogger get-together that this awesome chica hosted a few months back. She would probably know better than I!

Thanks for indulging me...blogging will be light this week as I'm prepping for some extra business before tax-day but don't forget to tune in on Friday for another dose of poetry to celebrate National Poetry Month! Yay!

Happy Tuesday, y'all! :)

Easter!

I ending up taking a lot of pictures at Easter and thought I'd subject you guys to some of 'em :) Hope you enjoy!

Everyone gathers in the kitchen to dye eggs...

...including the menfolk. :)

My mom hard at work on her Easter egg

The two of us posing with a rainbow egg that I made!

My cousin Tom is not so sure of what color his egg is going to turn out...

...but his girlfriend Valerie ends up with a purple middle finger, which she lovingly shares with all of us ;)

Some of the eggs we made!

Me posing proudly with my two eggs...a rainbow egg and my Scottish Flag egg, which I used rubber-bands to make.

Three of my favorite boys waiting for their eggs to dry...from left to right, my oldest brother Scott, my cousin Tom, and my middle older brother Jeff.

Love 'em or hate 'em, you gotta have Peeps in your Easter baskets...

Benni thinks that if he gives me those puppy dog eyes I'm gonna give him more of the eggs I found during our Egg Hunt. He's dead wrong.

Everyone shows off how many eggs they all found... my brother Scott was the official egg-hider this year, and he hid some of the eggs in the cat-boxes. EWW. From left to right: my mom, my cousin Tom, my aunt Darlyne (yes, she and my mom are identical twins), my brother Scott gloating in the background, my brother Jeff, and Tom's awesome girlfriend Valerie.

Valerie attempts to show Tom how to juggle as we wait for dessert to be served.

Benni shows off that he knows how to juggle too.

Tom and Jeff are skeptical of Benni's mad juggling skillz.

But Benni proves that he is a fantastic juggler.

Er....sorta.

Maybe we should leave the juggling to Valerie, guys?

Oooh, look, dessert! Three kinds of dessert!!

And that's an Easter wrap!

I hope you enjoyed the pictures...I'm going to be trying out something different this month so look for a post each Friday celebrating the fact that April is National Poetry Month! Since you guys seemed to like my taste in poetry I'll be sharing a few of my favorite poems with you every Friday AND plugging a few of my many favorite poet bloggers too :)

See you tomorrow, poetry and all!

inked!

Okay, so first of all, I forgot to show you one last picture from the past couple weeks that I feel sums up where I'm at in life perfectly: see my two bloody pinkie knuckles? Yeah, that may or may not be because my instructor had me boxing with focus mitts without my boxing wraps on and I punched them so hard I broke the skin and had a bloody mess on my hands for a few days.

Yeah...anyways... (hey, at least I punch with the correct fingers! Never punch with your thumb or pointer finger or you'll break your wrist.)

On to tattoo pictures!

beginning the needle work and tracing over the stenciled-on design

Pretending I'm in my happy place...Disneyland...

Surprised you can't see how white my hand is from gripping this chair to death.

Inking!

Smiling through the pain.

Little more than halfway there!

View from over the shoulder of Pat Fish, the tattoo artist. She was great - very professional.

Another view from over her shoulder.

Done! And I only bled a little, didn't squirm at all. :)

Checking out the finished tattoo in the mirror...

Photo of my tattoo reflected in the mirror. No, I didn't get it backwards!

Bandaged and sore. Thank god for saggy jeans.

Less than a week later...healing nicely!

So thanks for your patience, folks... I loved my tattoo experience and if people are ready to commit to permanent body art I highly recommend it. It wasn't as painful as I thought and I am thrilled with my design.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone...I'm off to finish off a batch of red velvet truffles for my accountant (he decided not to charge me for doing my tax return, thank the gods, so I'm thanking him with baked goods) and I'm finishing up planning a bachelorette party that I'm throwing tomorrow night with a bunch of other tattooed girls!

Oh, and no...I won't be taking pictures of the bachelorette party. What happens at girls' night...STAYS at girls' night. ;)

Happy Friday, y'all! And to all who celebrate it - a wonderful Easter as well!

patience is a virtue...

...which I usually don't have, so I suppose I don't really have a right to ask anyone else to have any either. Nonetheless, I haven't had a chance to get my tattoo pics uploaded from my camera and I have a ton more pictures of what I was up to during my blogging break that I want to share with you, so bear with me for a couple more posts while I get these pictures out of my system.

Also, to clear up a couple things: 1) a couple of you asked how on earth I got my idea for the Pride and Prejudice and Zombie engagement party, more specifically how the hell I came up with the idea to combine the two. Well, it's not my idea! There was a best-selling book that came out last year:

In which a contemporary author took the original Pride and Prejudice story and then added in a zombie story in the background. He's also publishing this book later this year, which I am pretty damn excited about:

Now if only Abraham Lincoln could take out that emo little vampire punk Edward Cullen...hmmm... :)

So that's where I got the idea from, given that the bride Stacy loves Pride and Prejudice and the groom, Eric... loves zombies. So it was kind of a match made in...purgatory?

Other things you need to know: 2) Yes, the tattoo hurt. Tattoos hurt. It's what happens when someone puts a needle full of ink to your skin and then goes back and forth, back and forth, along the same lines, over.and over.and over again. Was it totally worth it? You betcha. I love the look, it only took about 40 minutes, the pain, for what it was, was completely tolerable because it was on my lower back, and it's healing nicely as I'm pampering it and putting lotion on it every hour.

Also, before I leave you with a bunch of photos of what I've been up to over the past couple weeks: 3) don't give your cat catnip five minutes before you go to bed. This doesn't really have anything to do with my post or my pictures, I just felt it was an important life-lesson to share with everyone. Tell your friends. It could save lives. Or, you know, valuable hours of sleep.

And finally: one of my favorite girls in the entire world wrote this post about how the two of us met and her thoughts on my tattoo. It made me cry. Lira, I love you so much.

Now behold: pictures.

This is what happens when you loan your roommate three rolls of toilet paper over the past few weeks and then he decides to pay you back all at once, video-game style. I walked into my bathroom and found this EXACT set-up. Lovely, eh?

Desperate times call for desperate measures... in a stress-induced freak out attack I decided that getting a pedicure would make me feel better. This is the second pedicure I've ever had in my entire life. It totally worked.

These are some pictures I took at The Huntington Library and Gardens. I know, you're thinking, Where are the freakin' gardens? but I'm posting those later this week with a fun little tool that makes nature pictures look AWESOME. Yes, that required all caps.

Falcon!

Very Secret Garden-esque!

Benni, STAY ON THE PATH!!

We be real cool.

Ellesmere's illustrated Canterbury Tales!! I'm such a fan-girl of Chaucer.

I love this curmudgeon. He's one of my favorite poets of ever.

Buddhist temple in Whittier! Did you know it was there? I didn't!

The more levels there are, the harder it is for evil spirits to get in.

View from the top.

Happy Buddha is....happy.

View over-looking downtown Whittier.

K, so them's my first batch of pics. I will do another post of nature pictures in the next day or so, and then it's all about the tattoo, I promise!

Happy Monday!