Please hold.

So everything is on hold.

I'm actually really good with this. I actually feel really good about it.

With all the recent health stuff going on it seems like a smarter idea to wait and see what exactly is going on with that. These days I'm having episodes daily and adding extra stress of wedding planning just isn't worth putting myself at risk for.

Plus I recently discovered Melissa Sweet "Dora" seriously how did this dress slip by my polka dot radar?

Seriously that dress is the stuff I daydream about! Dora might just beat out the previous coveted polka dotted dress Rasharna from Maggie Sottero....

Note to self.

Dear Self,

Do not walk by the three wedding dress stores that you HAVE to walk by to get dog food. Come up with a different route or wear blinders or have the food delivered.

Love, You.

PS. please remember to breathe.

You could say I'm having some difficulties letting go.

One chance is better than none.

I have never been one that would be described as "lucky". Sure I won a trophy for a drawing in when I was 6 years old and the odd scratch and win has forked over 12 dollars but I have never entered a contest and won or wanted something and suddenly it lands in my lap. Luck might be a lady but she ain't my friend it seems!

Oddly enough I have a friend who literally seems to make wishes and within a week or a month they literally become true. She's one of my bridesmaids so maybe because she's going to be part of my day some her luck will bite me in the tuckus.

Right now I am entering a contest open to people who live in my province. It is the fairytale wedding contest and I have every single appendage crossed that the name they pick out is mine...er ours.

It is wedding worth 25grand AND a honeymoon worth 5grand.

Imagine?

Imagine being handed almost everything you needed? The only things not included as far as I can tell are hair and makeup, photography, music and invites. Everything else? DONE. You even get a wedding planner!

I know it's a long shot and that many, many other people will be entering. I suppose having a chance though is better than not right?

Its funny though because even with a budget like that I'd still want to keep things relatively similar to my 6000 dollar budget. I guess it would just be on a bigger scale.

Wish me luck!

Time keeps ticking, ticking, ticking into the future.

This is my back deck this morning, about half the snow has melted. There would have been even more snow but during an earlier snow fall I had gone out and shovelled it into the yard. We built those chairs and stained them what we thought would be a reddish colour but it turned out to be really orange. I'm hoping that they will take on a vintage weathered look by being left out this winter. I think I'll paint them white come spring. One of the things I made sure we got when we bought a house was a large yard. Gardening is one of the things I'm really good at and really proud of being knowledgeable in.

I don't recall if I have mentioned it by The Mister is 6 years older than me. Most of our friends in the city are a bit younger than him but in our circle I am the youngest at 31. All of our friends are married, some are even divorced, we all own houses and we currently have one baby in the group(other than me!) and friends just announced yesterday that we are expecting a second this summer. I've attended all of their weddings.

Being an "older" bride -and lets face it I am older than the average bride it seems, even though all my friends married around the same age as me.- and having an even older groom brings up some things that I don't think a younger bride really has to think about.

Like if we have a bigger wedding it will have to be next year, meaning that we probably wouldn't have a baby until 2011. The Mister will be 40. I'll be 33-34. I want to have at least two children, this means that after that unless we had twins first time round that the second child would either have to be in the oven within a year of the first or I'd be in that land of chance called THIRTY FIVE. I know lots of women have children after 35 but with various health issues I don't think I'd be one of them. Time is not on my side.

Of course if we have a very small gathering. Maybe go to city hall then have a backyard shindig with really awesome food and lots of fun we could do it late this summer or early fall, after all the backyard and the house need a ton of work before I would entertain this option!

Then start trying for baby numero uno.

I know it sounds incredibly selfish and it should be an easy choice right? I know it sounds even borderline Bridezillaish which is not what I want to be and I know I'm not. I know in the grand scheme of things children are so much more important to me than a beautiful dress I wear for one day. It's just harder than I expected to let go of the dream.

Home is where the heart should be.

If I went back in time and told 20 year old me that in just 10 more years she would be comparing dishwashers and other large appliances she would have laughed at me took another swig from her cheap beer and ask me how I got so fat in just 10 years. For some reason up until we actually bought a house I just figured that we would go buy all our appliances right before we moved in. Along with the appliances would be any small renos we wanted to do and then we would just move in to our fresh new house. Except life isn't like that, especially not in Toronto when we were looking at houses during one of the hottest housing markets in history. Nope as soon as we started looking I realised that the dream of moving in with everything just so was only being kept by the new homes being thrown up in the suburbs and I'd rather have my toenails pulled out than move to the suburbs(nothing against the suburbs it's just not where we want to be right now.)

I daydream about coming home and finding out that Colin and Justin have chosen us. They could make gagging noises over the gawd awful beige carpet and dusty blue and pink kitchen and all the mismatched horror because I would be walking on a cloud, an incredibly wonderful fabulously decorated cloud. Partially because having those two redo our tiny bungalow into something that wasn't decorated in a decade I couldn't drink in but mostly because having a show like that would mean that I could focus on wedding planning knowing that one major two bedroomed hurdle was taken care of. Heck I'd even have get married at the house because I would be that chuffed about showing it off!

For Christmas we bought a washer and dryer set. Even though the house came with all the appliances they are all that weird yellowy beige colour and from department stores that no longer even exist. The dryer had one setting ON and it took about 4 hours on average to dry a small load of clothes. No, I'm not even exaggerating. We went to the appliance store and I stuck my head in ovens and freezers, pulled out dishwasher racks and pressed buttons. I inhaled that new appliance smell, which is probably some sort of toxic gas so I probably shouldn't have inhaled so deeply. I was in home owner heaven.

It's nice to have one thing checked off the list but the list is so long and it seems every day we have something new to add to it. Decorating is a mid level to do and it bums me out every time I come home. I should be happy I own a home, I know I am lucky to be able to in a large city. I know that these things take time unless you happen upon bags of money. I know. But in my head I imagine myself coming home to honey coloured floors and dream bedrooms or hosting dinner parties at a long table that has matching chairs or at least chairs that don't wobble. I dream of table runners and area rugs. I dream of a place where the dvds, video games don't decorate the mantle of the fire place. I dream of inviting living rooms and basement rec rooms. I dream of bathrooms with heated floors and marble counters and anything but the citrus coloured sparkly floral wallpaper that currently hangs there. I dream and I dream and I think that's part of my problem too much dreaming.

I cannot wait for our washer and dryer to arrive. I'm going to wash every thing I can get my hands on. I'm going to sit in front of them and watch things being properly washed. I'm going to watch as thing flip around in circles and I'll dream of honey coloured floors.