i'm back.

I'm back from a wonderful weekend of spending time with some of my closest friends, including a beautiful bride!

I'll be back to regular posting tomorrow, I swear!

p.s. The speech went pretty well for those who are wondering, and I'm happy that it's over!

absent.

Please excuse my absence for the rest of this week, I'm off to perform my maid of honor-ly duties in my best friend Dona's wedding!  Wish me luck on the speech.

Dona and Tony I am so happy and excited for you both!  Enjoy every.single.second of your wedding day!  Love you guys.

i heart him.

My fiance is one of the nicest, most thoughtful people I've ever met. Here is a perfect example of how sweet he is to me. I asked him to go to the store after work to pick up some noodles so I could make stroganoff for dinner tonight. He said yes and picked up the noodles on his way home. What else did he come home with?
Purple dahlias. And some other type of flower...not sure what they are. Spider mums maybe?

Why did he buy me flowers? Because this weekend I went on an unsuccessful journey to find things to fill my vases with since I couldn't use ornaments anymore. So he decided flowers would be perfect to fill my vases with. He was going to just get the light purple flowers, and then he saw the dahlias. Which happen to be the flowers that I want to use for my bouquet. So he bought both. Needless to say, he made my day. I heart him.

Also, I promised my dad I would put a picture on here of our new dining room set. So here it is! I'm very excited about it! And we are putting our purple candlesticks to use before the wedding... no point in letting them sit in a bag in the closet when we have a pretty table to decorate! Unfortunately we can only fit 4 of 6 chairs around the table in our little apartment, but you get the idea.
All photos are my own. I apologize for the poor pictures, I was too lazy to get the camera so I just used my phone. Please forgive me.

the big 2-5.

It's my birthday today. I'm officially a half a century old. Adam made sure to remind me of that this morning... not nice! But he has been quite nice to me for my birthday so far. Last night he took me to the Welcome Yule! show at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. We were up in the nosebleed seats, but the view was pretty cool. I would've taken a picture but no cameras were allowed. And I thought it was kind of rude to take pictures with a cell phone, although that didn't stop a lot of other people. So here's a picture I found to give you an idea of what it looks like, although last night it was even prettier with Christmas lights and decorations. Gorgeous architecture. The music was good too of course!

This morning Adam gave me part of my birthday present. I desperately needed a new wallet so that's what he gave me. The inside is purple! I have an unhealthy obsession with purple.

I guess the rest of my present is at his parent's house in MI, so I'll have to wait until Christmas for that one. He tries really hard to separate my birthday from Christmas, so I think he feels bad about me having to wait. Not like mixing Christmas and birthday is anything new to me. I used to hate it when I was little but now I don't mind. Christmas is my fave anyway... why do you think my parents named me Holly?

I'm not sure exactly what we're going to do for the rest of the day, possibly go to the Chicago Botanic Gardens (where we got engaged) so we can test out our new camera. Then we'll go out to dinner, possibly at Oysy for some sushi. Who knows after that. I'll share some pictures with you tomorrow.

Cupcake from here. CSO from here. Wallet pictures are my own. Holly from here.