A Somber Weekend in Death Valley

One of my first posts (more than a year ago), was the story of our crazy trip to Baton Rouge to watch LSU beat Florida. Since I started dating Rod, I have had no choice but to become a diehard Tigers fan. I have slowly began to replace all the black in my closet with purple. We try to go back at least once a year for a game. We have gone to some really incredible ones: the Florida game last year and the Tennessee game the year before. Both were really close games and both were surrounded by some really crazy tailgating. Tigers fans really know how to tailgate.

This year, the trip was just as fun (and crazy) . . . until we lost. This was the first time we have been to a losing game. It was strange to see how somber the whole town becomes after a loss. This one was especially painful because the best person on Georgia's team was Jared Lee (LSU's quarterback). Three pick sixes! We nursed our wounds, though, with lots of rich food. The highlight (foodwise) for me was Elyse's dad's shrimp grits. Mmmm!

Even though it was such a short trip we had a great time catching up with everyone.

R.I.P Parr Waddoups

Thursday morning I woke up with an overwhelming feeling of loss. The day before was Clark Waddoups's (and Tobi Potestio's) last day at Parr Waddoups (now Parr Brown). He's leaving for a very exciting reason . . . he's been appointed as a federal district court judge. He is perfect for the job. It is a fantastic opportunity for him and he will be a great addition to the federal bench. It is bittersweet, though.

Clark has been an integral part of the firm almost since its inception. He is not only a great attorney, but a great mentor too. Even though I only got to work with him for a short time, I feel like he taught me a lot.

The whole week before was filled with activities to celebrate Clark's new opportunity and to send him off properly. In large part, it seemed more like a funeral. At one point, I actually told his wife that I wished we had more time. It was just sad to know that it was the end of an era.

Tobi went with Clark to be his permanent law clerk. She and I have shared a legal assistant almost since we got there. We were the first (and, for almost a year, only) two people on the new eighth floor.

Although I know that for the most part nothing will change. My day-to-day will be largely the same. But it will not be same . . .

Wedding Wednesday: Posh Posy

I HEART Svetlana, the stylista behind Posh Posy. She was absolutely amazing. I knew I wanted Svetlana to do my flowers before I even knew her name. She did the flowers for my friend Melanie's wedding. They were the most memorable flowers I have seen at any wedding ever.

When I met with Svetlana, I came armed with this:

and about a million other pictures of flowers I clipped from Bridal magazines.

I had a clear vision of what I wanted, but was not sure if it was doable (or affordable). I knew I wanted a big centerpiece made of branches with hanging tealights and simple flowers in series of eclectic vases. I also really loved little green flowers (Svetlana explained that they are called kermits), hydrangea, and pomanders. One of our main concerns was that the flowers were environmentally friendly--no exotic flowers or huge bouquets of flowers that would die in day anyway. I had been collecting vases from thrift shops and planned on using these instead of purchasing new ones.

Svetlana took my ideas and ran with them. These are the mock-ups she came up with for five centerpieces: (1) Branches, (2) Grass, (3) Pomanders, (4) submerged flowers, and (5) single flowers in eclectic vases. I was more thrilled with some than others. I loved the pomander, grass, and branch centerpiece, but the submerged flower and single bud centerpieces did not do it for me.





After round one, I asked Svetlana to slightly alter some of the arrangements. I nixed the submerged flower idea. It looks good with exotic flowers, but those flowers were not right for our "green" wedding plans or with our style. Rather than put the single flowers in a series of eclectic vases, I found these images

and decided reused bottles was prettier and greener. She also took the third image to come up with the box centerpiece that replaced the submerged flowers.

Here are the incredible results:

©2008 ZumaPhoto.com: Pomander Centerpiece

©2008 ZumaPhoto.com: Grass Centerpiece

©2008 ZumaPhoto.com: Box Centerpiece

©2008 ZumaPhoto.com: Bottle Centerpiece

Courtesy of Svetlana

Courtesy of Svetlana

©2008 ZumaPhoto.com:Branch Centerpiece

I would highly recommend Svetlana/Posh Posy to anyone who is looking for creative flowers. She was a joy to work with. Her ideas were great and she was willing to work within out budget. Thanks Posh Posy!

Crazy couple of weeks: Week 1

More often than not, I feel like I'm writing about the past rather than the present. So sorry for the lack of posting and for this:

The last few weekends have been crazy! Two Fridays ago was the UMBA Annual Awards Dinner and silent auction. It is one of my favorite events of the year. There are always so many people that I have not seen for a long time so I spend a lot of the night catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. I didn't win anything at the silent auction (I was outbid by Judge Peuler), but I did get to watch Clayton Simms and Ross Romero get awards. They were both UMBA board members when I was still a law student! The Union Pacific building was beautiful, but the acoustics left something to be desired.


Immediately afterwards, we got to check out our friends Sam and Patrick's new house. It was GORGEOUS . . . a beautiful mansion with incredible woodwork. When they ran out of plastic cups, Clem was nice enough to fill a cylinder/vase with homebrew for me. I'm sure that this is somehow related to the elevator incident. Mellie and I were checking out all the floors and somehow got stuck between floors . . . well at least until we realized there was a back door.

Saturday night was a surprise party for Phil. Happy 30th! Rumba was so excited to be invited. We spent a lot of the party watching LSU beat S. Carolina. Geaux Tigers!



Sunday, Rod and I spent the day doing something we both enjoy . . . cooking! There was one failed attempt at peanut butter brownies, but the creme brulee turned out well. I manned the dessert section (and the table design) while Rod worked on the main course: roasted pork loin, roasted brussel sprouts, and roasted potatoes. So yummy! We had Pat, Megan, and Dasch over to enjoy it with us.

Weezer!

The first time I heard Undone the Sweater Song, I was hanging out at my friend Rachel's house, in the music room, "playing pool." Actually, Rachel, LisaDawn, and I were watching Rachel's older brother Jared and his friends, including my then-crush Gavin, play pool while we tried to be cool. I think it was Valentine's Day. I had gone over to Rachel's house after mutual (a church thing) and without telling my dad where I was. I got in so much trouble. I was grounded for a week and spent most of the time in my room listening to Weezer.

Every time I hear that song, I wax nostalgic about 8th grade when life was so much simpler and everything was new and exciting.

The concert really took me back. Weezer opened with My Name is Jonas and ended with Buddy Holly. They played a couple other songs off of that album and three songs off of their Pinkerton album (my favorite), but not my favorite one Why Bother. Most of the songs were from their newer albums. It was crazy to see so many kids there and realize that they were not even alive when Weezer came out. Seriously, can you believe it has been 15 years?




Carrie got us great seats. We were only about thirty feet from the stage. At one point Rivers walked off stage and stood right in front of us. We were less than ten feet apart. It made it even easier to see Rivers' bald spot. We are old!

P.S. Angels and Airwaves opened for Weezer. They were not my favorite--whiny without clever lyrics. But Tom DeLonge (formerly of Blink 182) is totally hot!

A long three weeks

I'm sorry that I have been so bad about blogging (except for my pre-scheduled wedding posts). I have spent the last three weeks dealing with a baseless motion for a preliminary injunction from a professional plaintiff seeking to hold hostage a $94.8 million deal unless paid some greenmail. The hearing was scheduled for today, but within an hour of receiving our opposition memo yesterday, Plaintiff called to withdraw the motion. Now (fingers crossed) I will have more time to post.

To give you a brief overview of the last couple of weeks, we have spent a lot of time catching up with old friends. Karthik and Eve finally returned from their world trip. They made a very professional slide show, which they broadcast onto a sheet in their yard while their friends munched on the international fare that the attendees each brought. So fun!

We had to say goodbye to our good friends Kara and Colby and their family. They are moving to Ireland. We will miss them! We are excited, though, to visit them in their new digs.


The WLU retreat at Deer Valley was a good opportunity to hang out with Mellie, Nici, and Carrie even if the speakers were less than ideal. Both of the speakers talked about how to communicate (in general and in branding yourself). It seems to me that if a room full of attorneys does not already know how to communicate, they should be looking for a different profession. There was an interesting discussion, though, about the women lawyer's retention survey. I am so anxious to see what they find out.



We went to a new restaurant with friends--Brookside Grill. We all got stir fry. The appetizers were good, but the main course was okay. I preferred the Blueberry Pastry we had for dessert at Ally and John's afterwards.

Our book club book this month was "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". I didn't read it, but I plan on it. Adriene, our host, announced that she is engaged. Congratulations!

I also went to Weezer with Carrie and to Zions and Bryce with Min. Both were awesome, but deserve a full post (with pictures). I'll write more later.

Wedding Wednesday: Out Of Town Bags

One of the first projects I tackled in the wedding process was the out-of-town bags. Both of our families (and many of our friends) were traveling long distances to attend the wedding. We wanted to greet them with something that would show them our appreciation and also give them all of the information they would need to find the wedding and pre-wedding activities.

To comply with our low impact theme, we tried to get all of the goodies from local vendors. We also wanted the bags to reflect our personalities. We decided to include items from each of our home states and from our new home. The bags included the following:

Great Salt Lake Salt Water Taffy (in our wedding colors)

Jar of Miller's Pure Honey

Idaho Spud Bar

Small bottle of Tabasco
Small salt shaker of Tonys (a popular seasoning in Louisiana)

A brochure with information about SLC, the weekend itinerary, suggested locations and restaurants, and a map to our house (for the pre-wedding BBQ) and Log Haven (for the wedding.


All of this was carried in a reusable canvas bag with out logo screenprinted on it.

Now for the DIY details:

Salt Water Taffy - the Great Salt Lake Taffy Company was awesome to work with. They even made special print outs of their labels and gave us a history of the taffy to include in the bags. I had to run the labels through a sticker machine. My mom and I cut off some cellophane bags, filled them with taffy, and sealed them with the labels.

Tabasco/Tony's - We put both of these in a little box with a seal that looked like the tabasco label. Tobin, my awesome friend and graphic designer, changed the tabasco label to say "Taste of Louisiana".

The Map and brochure - The brochure was a simple print and folding project. We used a special stapler to bind the cardstock pages together. We were lazy and purchased the map from etsy. For security reasons, I won't print the map or brochure here, but if you are interested in seeing how it turned out, email me.

The Bag - When we went to visit my mom and stepdad in Denver, they showed us how to screenprint the logos onto our bags.




We left the bags in the hotel rooms of our guests in the Residence Inn (our recommended accommodations). I loved how these turned out!