Anyway that is more of a professional goal. I’ve also been thinking about goals like a bucket list. You know, the things you want to do before you die. Here are some of the ones I am thinking about right now:

1. Vacation in New York City from Thanksgiving to January 3rd. I want to stay somewhere that overlooks the parade route and then be in the city for the Christmas season and New Year’s Eve.

2. Start an Etsy store. Not sure what I will sell, but I love Etsy and the idea of making something cute and selling it there would be awesome! Maybe I will make cards once I know more about Photoshop.

3. Design a house. I want to build my dream house someday and design every aspect of it. This house will be completely clutter free and perfectly organized. It will also have two sets of stairs. Growing up I always thought the ideal house would have two staircases like on Full House.  Scott can keep his stuff in a man-rage that I will design him so it’s not in my way.

4. Have at least 10 perfect recipes. I don’t do much cooking as of yet, but I really want to have my perfect recipes that aren’t too bad for you, taste wonderful and always turn out right. This means actually cooking someday and keeping track of ALL the details.

5. Get a tattoo. I’ve wanted a tattoo forever, but can’t decide what to get. The latest idea  has been a Christmas tree on my foot with the word Believe across it. Not totally sure, but so far it’s my favorite.

6. Always have a dog in my life. I love dogs, they make me happier than anything else. My goal is to never be without a dog.

And that’s all I can think of right now. See, not much. That’s why my resolution is to have goals. I need to think about this more. Think about the things I really want to do with my life so I can do them. I would like to travel more, definitely out of the country, but the idea of flying for 15+ hours is really disgusting to me. I guess another goal is to get over that fact.

What are your goals, dreams, bucket lists, aspirations? I hope this inspires you to think about what you want to do with your life more also. Good luck and happy 2010!

CRAIGSLIST: You can use Craigslist for so many things. If you can’t find a vendor in your price range, post a classified ad. You can post a classified ad for free and you can list exactly what you are willing to pay. Here’s a link to a good example: http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/evg/1474929781.html You can do this for just about anything. If you want a string quartet and only want to pay $150, it might be difficult to get one but you can post a classified ad and request samples of music or links to the vendors’ websites before you even contact them. Posts can be anonymous and you won’t get annoying emails from vendors who you already decided you don’t want to work with. For example instead of the vendor having access to your personal email it will be 3454hwhdj@craiglist.org and the emails will forward to your personal email. Remember if you respond from your personal email they will get it that way. You could start a wedding planning email address if you want though, something like rachaelswedding@yahoo.com would probably work.

You can also use it to buy or sell goods for your wedding. If you want to buy 1,000 candle holders you can post an ad for that. Same goes for after your wedding, you can sell the 1,00 candle  holders you bought. In short anything and everything you need for your wedding can be done on Craigslist, but remember my commandment #4 if you have any inclination that the vendor is not right for you, move on to the next!

I had only been to one wedding before I got married. Well a few more when I was little, but wasn’t really paying attention to ideas/what was going on. I didn’t really have that much first hand knowledge of the must-haves or must do’s of a wedding. I found myself constantly asking, “Well what do people usually do in this situation?” or “What is the normal order of things?” So here I am offering my list of things you absolutely NEED to know before your wedding. AKA things I didn’t do and wish I did, or things I did do and couldn’t live without.

*Please read this knowing that I am 100% happy with my wedding and I think it was perfect, these are just the few things I would have changed and/or suggest to a friend to keep in mind.

#1: HIRE A WEDDING COORDINATOR: A lot of people think they can plan their wedding all by themselves and have it be spectacular. You definitely CAN plan your wedding and manage it all by yourself, but it would be much more spectacular and relaxing with a wedding planner or coordinator. I hired Lori Losee of Elegant Affairs: http://elegantaffairswa.blogspot.com/ I hired her much later than I wish I would have. A wedding coordinator can be pretty cheap and save you a ton of money in ideas.

#2: HAVE SOMEONE FILM THE CEREMONY: I chose not to have a videographer and to spend money on a really amazing photographer. I am still fine with this decision, but I REALLY wish I would have had someone videotape the ceremony. It just happened a few months ago and I am already forgetting some of the nuances of the ceremony. You can really have anyone do it, doesn’t have to be fancy if you don’t want. Maybe even get a cousin to do it.

#3: 6 HOURS IS THE PERFECT LENGTH: My wedding was too short for me. We started the ceremony at 6:00 and it went until about 6:45, then we did pictures and an appetizer hour for the guests for an hour. So we started diner around 8:00, it went until about 9:00 and we had an hour for dancing afterward. My husband and I are not the party type so I thought this would be plenty of time, but it seemed a little rushed. 6 hours would have been just enough time for wiggle room.

#4: IF YOU HAVE A SINGLE OUNCE OF YOU THAT IS WORRIED ABOUT A VENDOR, DO NOT WORK WITH THEM: I am not a dessert person at all. I don’t know why, just never have been. I decided what the cake was supposed to look like and Scott decided the flavor. We wanted to find a bakery that was near the venue so we wouldn’t have to pay for transportation, so we went with the bakery the venue had at their tasting. It was a small company called A Piece of Cake in Poulsbo, WA. At first I would call the woman in charge and never heard back from her. We finally met up with Dawn for the tasting and I showed her a picture of the cake and she said she would do the baking and she had a younger assistant who would do the decorating because she had steadier hands. I was very nervous about the fact that she took so long to get back to us, but my mom said to just go with it because she was nice old lady and she would come through in the end. Before I knew it, the big day was here and there was Dawn with the cake…. a completely non-decorated cake. Dawn ended up doing the decorative flowers and designs the day of  at the venue. The fondant had somehow cracked and condensed around the cake and it just looked terrible up close. Thank goodness it looked OK from far away, but we could tell. TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS!

#5: USE HOWEVER MANY BRIDESMAIDS OR GROOMSMEN YOU WANT: I chose to have three bridesmaids and a maid of honor, so a total of four. Scott had two groomsmen and a best man, so a total of three. At first I was kind of worried about this, but it turned out fine. I decided to have my maid of honor walk out alone and all the rest of the women had a male partner to walk out at the end of the ceremony with. I did it this way to make Mallory, my MOH, stand out a little. Another thing you can do is if you have four and your husband has two, for example, you can have them walk single woman, pair, single woman, pair. Really you can  do whatever you want!

#6: PRACTICE YOUR GUESTS TRAVEL ROUTE: We got married at the Kiana Lodge in Poulsbo, WA. It is about 45 minutes north of where we live. We had a lot of guests coming from Seattle and the best way to get there from Seattle is via ferry. Our venue coordinator asked if we wanted to have a bus pick people up at the ferry terminal so they could park on the other side and take a bus to the location. I figured people would rather just drive their cars onto the ferry, and didn’t think there would be a problem with that. Oh boy was there a problem! We ended up having two FULL tables of people who didn’t make it just because of the ferries. Apparently on Friday at 5:00 ferries are so packed that you might have to wait a few hours for a free one. I was upset that my venue coordinator never told me this might be a problem. I’m  assuming it has happened before. What I suggest you do is, sometime close to your wedding practice the route that most of your guests will use at the time they will be doing it. This way you can change  plans, make calls or post advice on your wedding website.

#7: FRIDAYS AND SUNDAYS SAVE YOU MONEY: We got married on a Friday during the BIGGEST wedding weekend for weddings in the state of Washington. We wanted to get married on July 24, 2009 because we met on July 24, 2003 and wanted to keep the same anniversary. This day happened to be a Friday, so we lucked into some savings. You can always negotiate a better deal for ANY price, but Friday/Sunday weddings make it even easier.

#8: DO ANY MUSIC YOU LIKE, THINK  OUTSIDE THE BOX: I chose to have a string trio do the music for my ceremony. It was one of my favorite decisions, they did an AMAZING job! (We used the South Sound Strings http://www.southsoundstrings.com/) I asked them to play Edwin McCain’s “I’ll Be” when the moms and grandmas walked in and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” when my bridesmaids walked in. Don’t be afraid to ask if your musicians can play something special, because they probably can. I’m so happy I did this, definitely one of my favorite parts of the ceremony.

#9: MAKE A WEDDING WEBSITE: Nowadays making a wedding website is unbelievably easy and free. I made one on www.tkeknot.com and it was really cute. We went to a wedding a few weeks ago and they did not have a wedding website and of course we lost the invitation and didn’t know where the reception was. Luckily we knew the name of the church and time so we made it there, but we just had to follow everyone else to the reception that was not that far away, but did have really confusing turns so we almost got lost. If they had a wedding website I would have been able to print directions to the reception.

#10: KNOW THE PRICE YOU WANT TO PAY BEFORE NEGOTIATING WITH A VENDOR: This really pertains to any vendor, but I did it mostly with DJ’s. After looking at several DJ’s in the area and getting quotes of around $950 I decided I didn’t want to pay anything over $700. So I looked up some DJ’s on a wedding website  I respected (www.junebugweddings.com) and sent them all emails saying I wanted to pay $700 for a Friday night wedding and just went with the first one I heard back from. We chose Dicso Royale (http://www.discoroyale.biz/) and Kevin did a great job. I came up with a list of must plays and because the dancing time was so short he just played music off of that list the whole time and it was perfect! After doing your research, you can easily reach out to smaller name vendors and just tell them what you want to pay and let them get back to you.

So that’s it. Obviously there’s a ton more that I would suggest, but these are the main ones that stick out to me because either I didn’t do it and wish I did, or because I am soooooo glad I did. Good luck in all your wedding planning and remember to make your wedding day all about you, because the best wedding is a wedding where people leave saying, “That was so (insert your name here)!”

I am interviewing at Waggener Edstrom tomorrow and whilst I was getting ready for the interview I was looking over their website and found an article about their Twitter mining Web application, Twendz. It’s so cool because they can use the Twitter Search to run a “sentiment analysis” on what people are saying on Twitter about a certain organization, product or person.

On Mother’s Day FTD messed up a bunch of flower orders so Waggener Edstrom ran their application and found that 63% of Tweets about FTD were negative. That’s amazing! Basically Waggener Edstrom has instant customer/public feedback! Obviously there are publics who can’t be tested using this application because lots of people don’t have Twitter, but if you are wanting to know what the 18-30 year old, tech-savvy population are thinking about you or your product, it’s perfect!

Anyway, my interview is tomorrow at 3:00 so let’s hope it goes well. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Here’s some pictures of the necklaces you could win if you apply on magchunk:

My favorite are the top two. The second one might be a possible wedding necklace… Maybe? I guess I should have my dress done before I pick out any jewelry for it. Oh well. Check out magchunk for other giveaways also. Maggie usually has something up her sleeve!

If you’ve never been to etsy, you are missing out! It’s a website where super crafty people make whatever they make and sell it. I guess it’s kind of like ebay, but just for crafts. But you can find almost anything and it’s pretty cheap. I got a stamp for my Save the Date cards and I’m in the process of ordering a stamp with my address on it for the RSVP cards in the wedding invitations.

Here’s a card I thought was funny.

This is what my stamp for the address on the RSVP cards will look like.

This is just a random ring I thought was cute.

This is one of my favorites! It’s the end of a spoon bent over and engraved. Cute huh?

I’m happy to say that this sequel was much better than the others. I’m not usually a fan of movies with lots of car chase scenes or races because I can never seem to grasp whose in the front. I don’t know why but with all the camera angle changes and going back and forth and what not, I just never know what’s really going on. I still never knew who was in front in this movie, but I still felt involved in all the chases.

Of course there were the ridiculous girls making out scenes, and the monotonous car shots but overall the movies was interesting, kept my attention and was the perfect length. I would give it a 7 out of 10 and reccomend it to anyone who is in the mood for a mindless movie.