Lulu Bliss

Less Then One Month Till the BIG DAY!!

L1050549.JPG, originally uploaded by itsolivia.

That lovely picture was taken at the end of my bachelorette party, when my sweetie was picking up his drunk and sweaty (from lots of dancing) soon-to-be bride. By the way, my girlfriends made my bachelorette party the most fantastic day and night! A few of us started off by getting some spa treatments at Bliss. Afterwards we relaxed at Andy's house and got ready for the evening. They took me to a wonderful dinner at Orson (so delicious, I highly recommend this place) and THEN dancing at Elbo Room for Saturday Night Soul Party!

Since I have been really bad at posting to my blog lately and it won't get any better in the next month, I wanted to let you know to check back with me at the beginning of August. I promise to post pictures of the finished wedding dress and the wedding festivities, but right now I just need to concentrate on our house and all the wedding details. Please come back and see me in August.

Costumes and other random things...

I have had a side project that I have been working on since February and yesterday I handed off the almost completed costumes...  I haven't posted about these, because I wanted to wait until I could post a picture of the girls in their costumes.  My friend Natatie put me into contact with one of her friends George, who wanted two costumes made for his daughters (who are both too cute).  He sent me these images:

Link from Legend of Zelda-

Nausciaa-

And here are the girls in their costumes:

I am still not finished with the Nausicaa helmet, I will be working on that today.  Here we are doing the last helmet fitting yesterday.

I also just stumbled upon a Flickr group that is so much fun to look at and get inspiration from, the Moleskinerie.  Here is one of my favorites from that group, I love the colors she uses.  Check this group out there are some amazing artists doing incredible things with their Moleskin notebooks.  

A trip to Lacis and some volunteer work...

A few weeks ago I went to Lacis in Berkeley to find some supplies to make the cocktail hat for my wedding.  If you haven't been there, Lacis is an amazing resource for all types of textile arts both new and old.  They even have a small museum there that shows all sorts of amazing lace and textile exhibits (I saw a beautiful Irish crochet exhibit there, a couple of years back).  The book selection alone could keep me occupied for weeks!  The only drawback is that it is expensive and I could spend thousands of dollars there, but it is so worth the trip to visit, just for some amazing needlework eye candy. 

Here is what I picked up while I was there:

All sorts of goodies (from left to right)... a turquoise vintage beaded design, turquoise silk ribbon, red veil netting, black elastic, red flowers, red silk ribbon and vintage turquoise sequins.  YUMMY!

Last week I decided that I need to get out of the house more and make some friends here is San Jose, so I did two things... 

#1. I went to my local yarn store Commuknitty and participated in there social knitting (every Sunday from 2-4pm).

#2.

I am now going to volunteer at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.  I am very excited to be a part of this place and the women that I met the day I went in to apply were all so friendly and welcoming.  My  first official activity will be this coming Friday evening.  Some of the downtown galleries and museums stay open late and are free the first Friday of every month, so if you are free come on down.

Working away... 70 plus hours on my dress so far!

DSCN0021, originally uploaded by lulubliss.

I swear I am not lying that is basically just the amount of time I worked on my dress during the week of my couture sewing class. I ended up working so hard that week, that I was sick for a few days after the class.  I still have about 40 more hours of work to put into the dress before it is done.  No wonder couture garments cost so freaking much! 

I can't begin to tell you how wonderful the class was! Susan Khajle was our instructor and she is such a wealth of knowledge in couture sewing. I wish the class continued. Another great thing about the class was that you learned different techniques from the other students projects too. There were a total of 13 students and everyone was doing a different type of garment. I was on a high all week and it has been hard going back to life as usual. Check out my updated "Making of my wedding dress" Flickr set for more images.

Wedding dress officially started!!

Check it out...

www.flickr.com

I will be updating my flickr set as I make progress with my dress! I am very excited for my Couture sewing class next week. It will be a long week, but totally worth it. I love learning very detailed techniques of a dying art.

Sneak Peak at the Wedding Reception Invite

Wedding invite prototype, originally uploaded by lulubliss.

Well here it is the almost final prototype of the wedding reception invite that my best friend Olivia designed for us (the address isn't real, but everything else is). I LOVE IT! It is totally what I wanted... I didn't give Olivia a whole lot to go on, when she ask me the look I was going for I said "classy fiesta" and dahlia's. She gave me this look like WTF?! I tried to clarify "I want a vintage classy fiesta feel with dahlias". I think she captured exactly what I wanted.

The actual wedding ceremony invite will look very similar, but have different wording. We are having a very small private ceremony with only about 25 people, on Friday July 25th (our 2 1/2 year anniversary). This is where we are getting married, at the Santa Anna One Room Schoolhouse. We will then have a bigger reception the next day at our house for about 100 people. It should be a fun and exciting couple of days!

FINALLY SOME PROGRESS!

kitchen, originally uploaded by lulubliss.

As you can see we got the new kitchen floor in and it looks beautiful! I LOVE IT! It was a hell of a lot work getting that old floor out, but it was worth it, seeing how good this looks. There are many more pictures of what we have been up two in the last few weeks at my home renovation flickr set, check them out.

So sorry for lack of posts. My dad extended his stay one week, so we could get more done and we have been wiped out everyday. This weekend was the first time I had an actual day off in a few weeks.

Next week I will be working on my toile for the couture class I will be taking starting on May 5th. I will post about that process.

What I have been up to...

new lawn 1
Originally uploaded by lulubliss

It has been awhile since I posted! Where does the time go? A lot has happened, I guess I have been busy and my mind elsewhere.

First, a week ago today was my last day at my corporate job! It was a scary but necessary decision to make. I needed time to focus on the next chapter of my life and being away from my house 12-13 hours a day wasn't allowing that. I am not worrying about starting my own business until after the house renovations and our wedding. So my big focus is our house and our wedding (both feel overwhelming to me right now).

Second, the house renovations. In the last week we have torn up our back yard and had it re-seeded (see more pictures here), so we will have a pretty lawn for our reception. I have also been slaving away at tearing out the damn kitchen linoleum. What a slow job and I have found that I can do only a few hours of it a day. If I do more, the next day I am just to sore and achy to work on it. My dad will be here this weekend so I have to get it done!

Third, a fun little tidbit. Last week while riding my bike home from the train station a fellow bike commuter asked to take a picture of my bike. He said he would post the picture on Flickr that night and to look for it. Anyhow, that fellow bike commuter Richard, e-mailed me and wrote a profile of me and my bike commute here.

I have never been so SORE!!!

Oh my goodness, I never thought tearing up 70 year old linoleum would be such back breaking work!  I am wiped out and sore all over.  We have been working on the kitchen floor for the past 3 days about 4-5 hours each day and we aren't even close to done. 

Here is me just getting started:

The iron on the tin foil is supposed to heat up and loosen the adhesive, then you scape it up.  Sounds so easy, but NOOOO, this stuff is evil and doesn't want to come up. 

This is after one day of work on the floor (I didn't show what Matthew has done, he started working on the other side of the kitchen):

Not such a huge dent in the 300 square feet of tile we have to rip up!  BTW, I bought the cheapy $5 knee pads, seen in the above image, thinking that they would be fine.  Don't do it, if you want to save your knee's!  Today, I broke down and bought the $20 one's and I feel like my knee's are on pillows:

I heart these fancy pants gel lined knee pads!  If you know me, you would have never thought I would get excited about great knee pads.  I guess this is a sign that my life is really changing. I am entering my new domestic DIY part of my life and I do enjoy it, even if it is hard work and a huge learning curve.  Here are my other two lifesavers:

A new sharper scraper and the pink canvas/leather gloves (a girl has got to save her hands from blisters). 

The progress is slow and I won't bore you with the pictures of daily progress, but it will be a while before we will have it all ripped up.  We just picked up our brand new linoleum tiles yesterday!  They are going to look great but right now they are just waiting, ready for us to lay them down, but it will be a couple of weeks.

I will keep you posted. 

How to Make Your Own Embroidery Pattern Video...

is up on Craft! Thursday after work Natalie filmed me showing how to create your own embroidery pattern from a photo. This is the first time I have ever been filmed for anything, so please excuse the goofy, nervous rambling.

Yes, this is the same embroidery of Mikey that I started almost one year ago. What can I say, I have crafting ADD.

Let me know what you think. Also, please feel free to share any tips you may have for creating your own embroidery patterns.