Perspective

"Freedom is sometimes just simply another perspective away. " ~Kutless

Life's felt overwhelming lately...it's usually that way for me when my to-do list is longer than I can keep mental track of.

But I had a change in perspective...and suddenly my life is good and simple again.

It started last night...Clay and I sat down to think through every possible thing we can imagine we need to do between now and August 2nd. Clay was typing up the list as I was thinking out loud...but much to my chagrin, instead of typing what I asked, he was inserting his own amusing, creative embellishments. I apparently was not in the mood for amusing, creative embellishments, because dang it, wedding planning is WORK!

He told me to chill out, and he told me to relax, and he reminded me that wedding planning is supposed to be fun. I wasn't in the mood for correction...but for whatever reason, I heard the truth in what he was saying. So when he added an exclamation point to, "Buy a cake topper!" I emitted a giggle and relaxed.

And this evening, I read an update from my YD friends Mikey and Bonnie, who today, being only six months into their marriage went to Mikey's first day of chemotherapy. And as they share their story, they are certainly nervous, but they have so much hope and joy too.

I suddenly feel like I have no reason to be overwhelmed...in seven weeks I will be surrounded by friends and family, celebrating being united in marriage with Clay...the to-do list is a trite thing...and it really should not be running my life.

Award-Winning Commercial

A shout out to Isaac, who is now an award-winning commercial-writer, thanks to this video. And way to go Preston!

I Am the Victor

In the battle of Me v. Invitations, I am the victor. 193 of them went in the mail today, having been compiled, addressed, stamped and sealed over the last few days. An additional 183 made their way to Texas, where they are being addressed, stamped and sealed by Clay's mom.

Now that it's all done...I'm very proud of them and don't even mind the many long nights of my life that they soaked up. We did save a few dollars, and the finished product is very Clay and Heather...clean, simple and a bit eccentric.

I would post a picture, but I wouldn't want that to spoil the fun of opening your envelope yourself. So, you will just have to wait.

This week, Clay is moving into our new apartment, where he will work very hard to keep it clean while he lives there alone for the next two months...and I go back to Ohio to visit the family, enjoy my first wedding shower, visit some bridesmaids and friends, and enjoy exciting appointments with the caterer, hairdresser, florist, tux shop and rental shop...woo-wee!

Did I mention that I can't wait for the honeymoon in Belize? Seriously...I need a Belize paper chain titled, "Countdown to Nothing-to-do."

Me v. Invitations

For the past month, the lack of blogging has mostly been due to the fact that I've spent about every available moment of free time creating 400 wedding invitations. Oh my!

I have several regrets about this already:

1. That I decided we'd save a great deal of money by making invitations, which is not necessarily true.
2. That I was so sure I would enjoy making invitations, which was true for about a week and untrue for about four weeks.
3. That I decided to mat the white invitation on black paper, which took a great deal of time to trim.

Several things I do not regret, however, are the amazing Hatch Show Print-inspired design I created, the choice to put them in white sparkly #10 envelopes, choosing to use a postcard as a reply card to save $.15 on each reply stamp, choosing an amazing engagement photographer who gave us permission to make prints of our engagement photos, and making the choice to send them as many people as we possibly could.

It is very true that making 400 invitations is extremely stressful...especially if you don't know what you're doing...and I do know what I'm doing, because I order and create printed things all the time for work, and it's still extremely stressful for me.

But yesterday, I packed up 200 ready-to-go invitations and mailed them to Clay's mom, who will address them...and I'm finishing the other 200 this weekend and sticking them in the mail on Tuesday. The end is in sight, and I will be so thankful for invitation month to be over, so I can just rejoice in having them move out of my living room and into your mailboxes.

Engagement Photos are Online!

Our engagement photos are now available for viewing online:

http://gabrielboone.com/showit/Heather

Free Time? Huh?

Apparently I've been pretty busy lately. I didn't realize it until this morning when our engagement photographer asked, "What do you do in your free time?" and I responded, "Huh?"

Lately, free time has consisted of premarital counseling, driving around Arlington checking out rental units, a bit of wedding planning, and applying to Grad School. Apparently what I do in my free time is nothing that could or should be considered leisurely. You should know that I don't prefer to live my life this way. I love free time...vast spaces of nothingness that can be filled with whatever desire happens to be floating by at that moment.

However, even if life right now is a bit more busy than I'd like, I'm still stubbornly convinced my life should not be classified as busy, so here is a list of interesting things I have done recently that are not about weddings, grad schools or leases:

1. Watching Seasons 1-7 of Friends (on my second series watch-through). Mostly, I watch it while I'm doing my taxes or updating Quicken. Joey is a very funny man, even moreso when you've been doing a budget analysis for the past 45 minutes.
   
2. Reading my Better than Oprah book club book for the month: The Hero and the Crown. This book is actually a fantastical biography of the life of my maid of honor, Renee, who makes a very good fictional character.
   
3. Cooking fabulous dishes. Recently, I made a fantastic asian noodle soup (with bok choy!), a healthy bean dip (with homemade whole wheat tortilla chips) and a ginger pear cheesecake. I cannot wait for my Pampered Chef Bridal Shower in Ohio next month!
   
4. Listening to my latest set of purchases at Best Buy and iTunes:
   Derek and Sandra's Ampersand EP
   Natasha Bedingfield's Pocketful of Sunshine
   Anna Nalick's Shine EP
   Sara Bareilles' Little Voice
   Jon Foreman's Fall EP, Spring EP, and Winter EP
   Caedmon Call's Overdressed
   Also, I'm still enjoying some Christmas gift/purchases:
   Allison Krauss and Robert Plant's Raising Sand
   Levon Helm's Dirt Farmer
   Shawn Colvin's These Four Walls
   Gillian Welch's Soul Journey
   (n.b. Recently, I discovered that in Clay and I's shared music tastes, female pop singer/songwriters don't really make his cut...thus many of these purchases have been either reactionary, or to fill in a void in my life. It neglects to inform you how much Counting Crows and Ryan Adams I've soaked in over the last few months.)
5. Purchasing tickets to see Radiohead in Seattle the week after we return from our Honeymoon! I'm so pumped! Thom Yorke, the lead singer for Radiohead, looks very much like Clay's very good friend DeJon. If you want, I can get DeJon's autograph for you.
   

Okay, honestly, I feel a lot better about myself now. I was seriously beginning to worry that my life was no longer in my own hands, but apparently, through music and cooking, and the occasional book and episode of Friends, there is my sweet respite.

Thank you sweet respite. You are being good to me these days.

I Love to Tell the Story

I don't know if I'll ever get tired of telling people the story of the way Clay and I met.

Last week, we were looking at a condo to rent, and the real estate agent asked off-hand where we'd met, and we breezily replied, "Oh--we were at a convention in Austin, and Clay posted an ad on the convention bulletin board looking for people to go to a concert with him, and I just happened to see his ad and call." We turned sheepishly to see her eyes wide, and her jaw a bit dropped, and we laughed a bit, because although it's a bit surreal at times still, it's what happened. We love telling our story.

Yesterday morning, we went and spent a few hours standing (freezing) in the middle of a bright red tulip field telling our story. We hired my coworker Aaron, who runs Hands On Films, to create a video documentary of us telling our story. It's a piece we're putting together to share at our wedding--so that for those who don't know Clay so well or for those who haven't seen Heather and Clay together at all--they can feel more a part of our story.

It might seem a little taxing to stand in a field talking to a video camera for 2 hours, but it really wasn't. Just being able to look out at a hazy Northwest gray sky, across acres of bright red, pink, and purple tulips, and green, green grass...and tell someone how we got together, how we got engaged, why we're getting married, and why we love each other, it was such a blessing. We loved telling our story.

And telling our story was energizing. At the end of it all, we were able to just look at each other and say, "I love you so much" because we'd been so reminded of where we'd come from these past 18 months.

Growing up, we'd sing the old hymn, I Love to Tell the Story:

I love to tell the story of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love.
I love to tell the story, because I know ’tis true;
It satisfies my longings as nothing else can do.

I love to tell the story, ’twill be my theme in glory,
To tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love.

It's been awhile since I told the story of how Christ has worked in my life...how we met, how I fell in love with Him. I don't even remember the last time I told my story of meeting Christ. But when I see how energized I was to tell Aaron and the video camera how much I love Clay, and how satisfying it was to share that love...well... I think it's a story I should share more than I do.

I think this is how we are supposed to be sharing Christ with others anyways:

When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power. (1 Corinthians 2:1-5.)

Sci-Fiiiiiiiiiii

I've decided to become a sci-fi nerd.

Now, to just be a sci-fi nerd is one thing, but to consciously become one certainly attains an even higher level of nerdiness.

Why would I want to do such a thing? First of all, because sci-fi is freaking cool. What's not to love about Star Wars, Star Trek, Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Jurassic Park, Transformers. Face it, you love sci-fi too.

Second of all, because there's more amazing sci-fi out there to be read and seen, and honestly, Star Wars and Star Trek are just the tip of a very extensive genre. Last week when Chris and Janelle were visiting for Spring Break, we all went to the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. It was pretty awesome to see the original Death Star, the Rocketeer's jet pack, and loads of other stuff from Paul Allen's personal collection.

But I was actually embarrassed to be in the Science Fiction Museum having never seen Blade Runner or I, Robot or having never read Ender's Game or Slaughterhouse Five. I was like, "What in the world!? I'm missing out!"

In response, Chris, Janelle, Clay and I promptly returned to my house to watch Contact and I Am Legend, in order to make up for lost sci-fi time.

And now I have printed out the list of the top sci-fi books, where I have sadly discovered I've only read eleven of the top 100! So--slightly more interesting than my last top 100 goal (to watch the AFI Top 100 Films), I will now attempt to read the top 100 sci-fi books. This will at least be good, in that it will require me to read Ender's Game, which will allow me to be better friends with both fiance Clay and maid-of-honor Renee.

At this point, pre-top-100, my favorite sci-fi book is probably either The Time Machine or Brave New World...and my favorite sci-fi movie is probably Return of the Jedi (who doesn't love the Ewoks, eh?), although I still have a soft spot for Batteries Not Included (which may seem dumber now than it did 20 years ago...) And I loved Firefly...

How about you? How do you stack up against the top 100? And what's your favorite sci-fi book/movie?

TU on Dateline

I missed the Dateline episode last week, but here's the coverage...

A Dateline special on the Taylor Accident of April 2006 and the case of mistaken identity. It's incredibly moving...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23849928/

Let Them Eat Cheesecake

On one of Clay and I’s early dates, we discovered a mutual love/obsession for fantastic cheesecake. He promised to introduce me to the best cheesecake I’d ever had--and he took me to Claim Jumper. I’ll tell you what--after sampling the divinity of the White Chocolate Raspberry dream-on-a-plate at Claim Jumper, I’m telling you that if you can’t eat this piece of cake, should just fast for the rest of your life rather than subject yourself to another slice of Sara Lee or Cheesecake Factory.

A few months later, during our first visit to San Antonio, I discovered that Clay’s mother shares our love for cheesecake. This was discovered during a great evening around the dinner table discussing “Great Cheesecakes We Have Known.” It was all too fitting that the next afternoon, at our stop in Fredericksburg, Texas, I picked up a fantastic recipe book called, The 50 Best Cheesecakes in the World. It was like--there was so much cheesecake love in our midst--that the book just couldn’t help but reveal itself to us.

I am now endeavoring to make them all.

I started with a Marzipan Raspberry Cheesecake. And for the record--anytime there’s an option for a light alternative, I make a substitution...if there are the 50 best cheesecakes to be made, we have to save enough room for all of them. So using low-fat cream cheese, low-fat sour cream, and low-fat cottage cheese, I made a slice of heaven. The raspberry sauce was a little intimidating, requiring me to strain freshly blended raspberry puree through cheesecloth in order to remove all the seeds. (messy!) But when I sprung the cheesecake onto some unsuspecting friends at a dinner party, it resulted in 6 of us consuming an entire cheesecake in one evening, my friend Jimmy eating three pieces and saying, “I don’t even normally like cheesecake, but come on--this is lowfat.”

Today, Clay and I were introduced to cheesecake #2--a ginger pear delight with freshly grated ginger and freshly grated pear. When my roommate saw it sitting on the counter, she actually thought it was store-bought. The result--absolutely delicious.

So why do I share all of this? Because a wedding is a perfect excuse to share what you love with 250 of your best friends...and what do Clay and I love? Cheesecake. So be prepared, because on August 2nd, you will not be served just any plain old white or chocolate corn syrup and white flour mumbo-jumbo...you will partake in a fine array of dazzling cheesecakes.

Okay, I’m not going to handmake 50 cheesecakes for you to try the 50 best...that would be obsessive...but I bet there are at least 50 of you reading this, so...if you all schedule a visit to the Utley home in the fall and request a cheesecake as your parting gift, I bet we can check every one off the list in a hurry.