Projects for the Week

Time for a bullet list!

• Find a wedding dress. Hayley and I are hitting up The Brides Project (women & wedding dress manufacturers donate dresses, mostly new, some used, so that brides can find affordable dresses, and the proceeds to to helping children with cancer), The Dressroom, and Becker's on Sunday. Just about everyone I know who has gotten married recently got their dress at Becker's, including Kerry, the hubby's sister-in-law, so I figure I've got to check it out. And all three are blocks from each other (Becker's and The Dressroom are the same store in two locations, with different selection), so it's a manageable project to get to them in one day. I found out from my parents (who are the sweetest, especially my dad, who is already getting all sentimental about his baby girl getting married. And I am such a daddy's girl) that they want to pay for most of the wedding, so it certainly takes the pressure off. Thanks Mom & Dad! However, I still think that spending lots of money on one day is nonsense, so I will be as economical as usual, natch.
  

• Finalize the catering menu for the wedding. I booked our caterer, finally. We're going with a company called Gourmet Galaxy, run by Andrew Cohen. From the first time that I spoke with Andrew on the phone, I felt totally at ease and confident that he was 100% committed to working with what we want for the wedding, which is simple, elegant, food that people can eat standing up. And we're getting it. The menu is going to be great, and once it's finalized, I'll post it for your gastronomic pleasure.
  

• Talk to a photographer. The hubby's mum recommended someone who took photos for a fundraiser that his dad organizes every year. I've seen photos from the event, and they look great, so hopefully she'll turn out. Things are lining up!

• Master Iron & Wine's "Upward Over the Mountain" on the guitar. I've got the chords down; it's just the strumming pattern that I need to work on. Apparently there's a tab version that sounds like the two parts together, but I think it might be too complicated for me. It's one of my favourite songs of all time, and super simple, so I'm going to enjoy working through it. I think my current plan of attack is to find a good video of Sam Beam playing it, and work from there. We're supposed to (if we feel up to it) perform something in our last week of guitar class, so this might be it.
  

• Watch 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James. The hubby and I went to see No Country for Old Men last night, which was AMAZING. I heard people in the theatre pan it after it was done, but I think that they just weren't getting it. You have to understand the Coen brothers and Cormac McCarthy to properly comprehend what's going on, I think. And as I enjoy the Coens and have read a fair bit of Cormac McCarthy, I was really into it. The last scene was killer. It still astounds me, though, how just through a haircut and personality change, Javier Bardem, who is really appealing and attractive in real life, made himself so scary and ugly that it was hard to believe that it was him. That's good acting for you.
  

It's also a pretty good social week. Guitar on Wednesday, the TSO on Thursday (Symphonie Fantastique), dinner with Auntie Laura & Emily on Friday, and potentially dinner with Avi & Leora on Saturday. Fun times! Right now, it's off to the grocery store to pick up supplies for all of the great recipes that I'm gathering from the new cookbooks I got for Christmas. Tonight's dinner will be Artichokes with Pork Sausage, Lemon & Sage. It's a Tyler Florence recipe, and I got these gorgeous leek and garlic Macedonian sausages from the St. Lawrence to try it with. I'll let you know how it turns out!