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Tiffany Blue

by Kay~Kacey on 5/17/2010

The Adorable Fiancee loves the color Tiffany Blue. Yep, there’s a woman who knows her own mind. So there was no surprise at the wedding invitations for The Geeky One and The Adorable Fiancee…

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These are just. so. her. (and I raised my son to know enough not to disagree with a woman picking the wedding invitations.)

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Too cute, with the hint of damask on the band, huh? Then on the left side they had the RSVP card and a card with info about the wedding location and their wedding website. (My son’s nickname IS The Geeky One, you know!)

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They are just too cute, aren’t they? When I got married, wedding invitations were cream or white, engraved or embossed. Blah, blah. Wedding invitations can be so creative now! I love it!

I was not the first one to RSVP, because I had to grab photos for this blog post. :rofl: It rained and was gray for days. I wanted filtered warm light to take the photos. Finally gave up and took them with the light I had. I’m waiting for it to sun up here in St. Louis just any. day. now.

Though if it wants to rain now to get it out of its system so it’s nice and sunny for the wedding and the rehearsal…I’m good with that! :clap:

Carnival Triumph Cruise

by Kay~Kacey on 3/2/2010

Ah, a quick cruise out of New Orleans on the Carnival Triumph. Nice if you can get a last minute deal…which we did. Then we got a “Missouri discount” on top of that. Of course you have to add our alcohol bill to the cost of the trip… :rofl:

carnival-triumph-cruise-5694We love sailing out of New Orleans. You sail down the Mississippi for about 5? 6? hours to reach the ocean. It just seems like nicer people cruise out of New Orleans!

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I love watching the waterfront slip by as we pull out of port.

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Some old building on the river. (SuperGuy took this. I love it!)

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We had a balcony room which was very nice but very COLD. Even with the vent turned all the way off. Hated that! The ship itself was nice…but confusing to get around. It’s a fairly new ship…not sure who they hired to design it, but it wasn’t passenger friendly at all. Lots of dead ends where you had to go up a floor or down a couple of floors to get past things to get where you wanted to go. Not that we let that hinder our fun, mind you. But it was a really silly design. They needed more non-smoking areas. It was the smokiest ship I’ve ever been on. Their ventilation system seemed to be non-existent. You had to walk through the very smoky casino to get to the two non smoking bars we found….or happen to find the one bank of elevators that would drop you in the back of the ship.

We tried out their Any Time Dining instead of early or late assigned seating. We really enjoyed it. We just wandered to the dining room whenever we were ready to eat. We only had to wait for a table one night, on formal night…and that was only about 15 minutes. They did have this weird arrangement with like 3 tables in the back entryway to the dining room. We got seated at one of those tables one night…it felt like when I was a kid and got seated at the “kids table” during family holiday meals…so when they tried to seat us there again the last night (what are the odds…100’s of tables, only 3 in that hallway/entrance…SuperGuy gave me one look and knew he better do something. He asked for a different table. :love2:   )

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This is their Lido buffet. SuperGuy says these look like eyes. After he said that, I felt like they were watching me the whole time… :crazy: Their lido lunch buffet wasn’t very good, but we did enjoy their breakfast there. I got a croissant, a sweet roll and yogurt most mornings. SuperGuy got platefuls of all sorts of stuff. They also had 24 hour pizza, a deli, and an Asian food counter. Lots of choices.

It was a five day cruise (which is 5 nights/4 days). One day at sea…still rather chilly. One day at Progresso…and may I just say that SuperGuy now owes me…like until August. We’ve been there once before on a cruise with The Geeky One and The Adorable Fiancee. You take a long bus ride down the pier (no other way to get from the ship to the “town”. Then you sit on the bus for like 20 minutes with the diesel exhaust from a ton of buses pouring in the windows. They finally let you out to this tiny straw market. Not much there. A bit of a strip of beach you can walk to. I didn’t want to even get off the ship there, but SuperGuy insisted we should give it another try. Hah!! He owes me. Big time. I’ll skip it if we ever stop there on a cruise again.

The next day was Cozumel. We had fun. Did some shopping for silver. SuperGuy is stocked up on presents for me for the year. :love: Though cruise rules apply, and I got to wear it during the cruise. Then he snatched it away and hid it. (don’t tell him I know where his hiding place is….) Another day at see where it was rainy and very cold. So cold that SuperGuy had on jeans and a sweater…which is almost more than he wears in the winter at home… We read and ate the last day. Lots of both…

Oh, and if anyone is wondering…go to the California Wine Bar for the best martinis on the ship! Just sayin’ (and it was a smoke  free bar!) We went there every night. Very nice. Smaller bar and we got to meet some fun people there while sitting at the bar.

We were off the ship by 8:00 am the last morning and drove our 10 1/2 hours back to St. Louis. It was a relaxing and fun trip, but we’re glad to be home!

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Tomorrow there will be scenes from the road trip home.

The Story of a Door Lock

by Kay~Kacey on 11/17/2009

So with the new front door, we needed to get a new door lock. So….we did….

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Yes, it’s going to be one of those stories…

We go to the hardware store that shall remain nameless (Home Depot) on Saturday while the contractor was putting in the new front door. We talked to the Hardware Store Helper Guy, and he talked us into a Baldwin lock. “The Best” These have a smartkey system where you can rekey them yourself whenever you want to. You know, like say…when one of the boys loses their keys and has no clue where they are… :mad2:

This is Baldwin’s prestige line. Okay. We’ll pay more for them. We have a double door, so we wanted the  matching “fake” handle for the second door. The Hardware Store Helper Guy said he’d call and order that part on Monday. Fast forward to Sunday morning. SuperGuy goes to rekey the front door to an existing key we have. He messes it up. (why, oh, why do males refuse to carefully read instructions??? ) It locks up the front door lock. :wallbash:

So, SuperGuy pulls the lockset completely out of the door and takes it up to Home Depot where Hardware Store Helper Guy uses their secret-double-probation-key-redoer thingie. They set the lock to our existing keys. SuperGuy comes home and puts the lock back in the door. (He forgets the extra keys he was supposed to have made for the boys and my parents, but I digress…)

Fast forward to Monday. Hardware Store Helper Guy calls. “They don’t make a fake handle for that model you bought. You’ll have to buy another whole set $$$ and just use the handle off of it.” For real??? THEN he says, oh, and I found out the model you bought isn’t made by the Baldwin $$ well made door lock company. It’s made by Black & Decker and just marketed under Baldwin. (So we overpaid for a “good lock” which, well, isn’t one.)

So we can pull the door lock and handle and return it. Buy a new one. Get it rekeyed. Reinstall it. Or go with one door handle.

Why, oh, why is remodeling stuff always like this???

Note to my beloved sons. I did not lock you out of the house. We just need to get you new keys…you know, when we decide what we’re actually going to do about the front door lock.