I'm in love with DIY

Mr. Fried Rice's company flew him to Seattle Friday night to pick up a truck and spend most of Saturday driving it home. What better time to indulge in my first do-it-yourself project: the out of towner bags.

I purchased a bunch of canvas bags from the dollar bin at Target. Inspired by knottie Stefanie, I created a beach umbrella stencil with a fiber bars box and an exacto knife. Turns out fiber bar boxes are a bit too thick, so the California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizza for one box worked better. How fitting.

I had to play around with the colors, particularly the yellow, to get it right. I ended up using the gold and blue metallic tulip fabric paint.

I think they are fantabulous! I'm considering adding the word "welcome" along the bottom, but only if I can find a stencil that already says that. I'm no good at spacing letters.


Now, what to fill them with - water, snacks, sunscreen, a visitors guide to Cambria, a letter with our favorite places to visit. Any other suggestions?

Now I want to do more DIY! I know I want to do tags for the parasols - but what to put on them, names? And I just may also steal Stefanie's idea with the 101 reasons I love FI, but how to present them? What else can I do?

To cupcake or to cut cake

Mr. Fried Rice and I originally decided not to have a wedding cake, back when our reception was just a dinner. Now that things have evolved, I don't see how we can have a wedding without a cake. And since we'd already budged in the restaurant's deserts at $6 a pop, we decided to go with cake that would (hopefully) be cheaper.

I'm in love with the idea of cupcakes. I'm having parasols for female guests at the ceremony and for pictures, which led me to the idea of little drink umbrellas in our wedding colors inserted into the tops of cutely decorated cupcakes.




The only baker in Cambria sells them for $4.75 a cupcake. Such a rip off. I could make them myself for about 20 cents each, but I'll be a tad busy in the days leading up to the wedding.

In fact, I have been making a lot of cupcakes lately. I used a gift certificate from my sister and nephew to buy my new favorite cookbook: "The Baker's Field Guide to Cupcakes."



I've done chocolate cherry cupcakes with chocolate frosting and handmade chocolate leaves molded from real leaves. And most recently I made malted milk ball miniature cupcakes. Malted milk balls are crushed up and folded into the batter and the frosting and one milkball is plopped on top of the cupcake. Those things disappeared at the July 4th barbecue.

When I mentioned cake to Mr. Fried Rice his eyes lit up and he said, "pound cake?" The man adores pound cake. And who doesn't? Anything with three sticks of butter in it is scrumptious. The man has so few requests when it comes to the wedding, this is one we'll definitely honor. I'm thinking a mix of pound cake cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes.

But now I have a dilemma: If the cupcakes are on display, will guests help themselves to them before the "cake cutting" time? If so, I'll need more, which ups the price tag. And how do I serve them? The restaurant charges a $2 a person plating fee for use of plates and silverware associated with cake. Can I get away without paying that charge if we have cupcakes? What do you think? I'm thinking maybe we can look at bakers outside of Cambria to save money, but that would probably entail someone driving to that other place to pick up the cupcakes.

The beginning

B used to be for Bethany. Now B is bride.

I'm still Bethany, of course, but I've been feeling so many new and strange emotions during this process that B can stand for something else too.

I'm going to be a wife. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around that. I am excited, thrilled, and a little nervous to be marrying my fiance, who we will call Mr. Fried Rice for the purposes of this blog (seriously, the man is addicted to the stuff, ate it six days a week before I came along).

I'm not one who likes to be the center of attention, so when I began shopping for a wedding dress, it was an unusual experience. At first having someone in the dressing room with me was weird. But I got over it. Seriously, I couldn't lift half those heavy dresses myself, much less put them on myself. And then once the dress was on, I was even more in the spotlight, stepping onto that little podium in the brightly lit area, surrounded by three-way mirrors. Friends, family, bridal consultant, all staring at you, the bride and her mother at the next podium over sneaking glances at you. The bridal consultant slipping a shoe on my foot (the dress' skirt was too big, I couldn't get down there), I felt like Cinderella and I wasn't sure I was comfortable with that.

And later, watching the smile on my future mother-in-law's face, excited to have me in the picture. And the great aunt of Mr. Fried Rice, who wants to throw me a bridal shower, even though she's only met me twice. And Mr. Fried Rice, of course, the man who always said he'd never marry. He actually loves me enough to want to make me his wife.

I was walking through the mall one day looking for shoes and bridal shower dresses. I remember thinking I was glad I had the body to pull off a snug-fitting dress. Hell yeah I do, I thought. And I need to get me some lingerie too. And maybe a sexy after-party dress. I'm worth it. I finally found something people dream of: a wonderful man, an amazing perfectly synced partnership grand enough that we're going to commemorate it, to make it official. Yeah, that's worth it.

So with a tad bit of narcissism, I decided to start a blog. I'm a writer by trade and always have the urge to record my thoughts. So here it is: B is for bride.