Free China!!!

Yes you heard (or read) right! The Relentless Bride is giving away (how nice!) TWO LENOX PLACE SETTINGS from the Opal Innocence collection. And you get to choose which pattern you like best!

There are a number of ways to enter this draw so go check out her blog and enter to win!

Here's one I liked. Competition ends Sept 30th. Good luck!

Wonders of the Neti Pot

This is not going to be your typical post, but I cannot not write about this! Some may be grossed out by this so feel free to skip over it. For those of you who have suffered from sinus issues, the Neti Pot may already be known to you. If not, go out and get one right now!

This mini teapot-like item can do wonders for your breathing if you have chronic sinus issues or are even suffering from a cold. It is used for irrigating the nasal passages. The Neti Pot originally comes from the Ayurvedic and yoga traditions. You use a lukewarm saline solution (inexpensive, easy to make and find from a drug store) to pour into one nostril while your head is tilted over the sink at about a 45 degree angel. The liquid falls out the other nostril. You then repeat the process through the second nostril and when you are done, clean the Neti Pot ready for next use. Each one comes with its own instructions and packets of saline solution.

While I have known about this for awhile, I for some reason did not go out and buy one until a few day ago. And then I used it! I can't even begin to tell you how much it improved my breathing almost instantly. I've used a saline nasal spray in the past, and although that has been helpful it did not clean out my nasal passage the way the Neti Pot did. 

Here is a video showing how to use the Neti Pot. Although I think the exercises at the end are a little much, some might find them useful. Have others used the Neti Pot? What did you think?

Ever been stuck on the freeway?

The other day my chocoholic friend and I were heading into San Francisco from the peninsula. Thinking that we were going to have some time to check out a store in Marin and grab a bite before she dropped me off at another friends house, our bubble was quickly burst by this...

Not fun let me tell you - and even less so for the person who was involved in the accident that caused this backup for sure! What was interesting was that people decided to get out of their cars and just walk along the freeway! After sitting in the car for a while we thought it would be an experience to get out and join in. Not to mention that standing in the shade of a lone eucalyptus was cooler than sitting in the car. Thankfully we were only about 20 cars away from the closure of the freeway and had to wait about 50 minutes before highway patrol cleared open a few lanes for us to get through. Could have been much worse. Hope the person in the accident is ok.

Save the Dates

I have been meaning to write about Save the Date cards for a while now, so here it goes. Save the Date cards are not common at all in Cyprus. It's such a small place and people are likely to see each other at some point or another well before the wedding date that there is no real need for them. In fact I have never seen a Save the Date card in Cyprus to be honest. So needless to say this was a new and interesting concept when I first delved into the world of wedding planning and invitations. A concept that actually become more and more appealing as I thought about.

Having lived abroad for many years, both Mr. Milk and I have close friends who we would like to have at our wedding but who are spread all over the world: the USA, Canada, UK, Italy, Saudi Arabia. In this day in age, tickets and travel have become very expensive. People are more selective about where they spend their money and rightly so. Since Cyprus is far away for a lot of our friends, we figured many of them might use our wedding as an excuse to plan a vacation to the Mediterranean. Giving them enough notice to do so became very important, taking into account that they will need tickets and hotels. This was our push to send Save the Dates.

I spent some time online looking at what was available, reading other people's blogs to see what they had done, and generally researching the cards. We decided that in order to save some money, and to be a little green, we would send out e-cards instead of printed ones. One day while looking through things on Wedding Wire (a great free website for those of you just starting this process) I saw that they had an update regarding Save the Dates. I followed their link and came across this great site. Pingg is a relatively new site that allows you to design and create unique invites for a variety of occassions. You can use pre-set designs/images or you can upload your own. They give you a bunch of options on how you can send your invite: via email, text, webpage, through social networking sites like facebook and twitter, or they will even print the invitations out for you and mail them (you pay for postage). Apart from the print and send option, the rest are free to use. They charge you for using some designs, but they have a large selection which are free to use. Their website is user friendly and has a nice, clean feel. I looked around for a bit and then decided that it would be unique to us if I used one of our engagement photos for the backdrop of the e-card. I chose this picture and kept the text simple.

I pre-empted the e-card with a short message letting people know that we would love it if they could make it to our wedding, and that we were sending these e-cards in an attempt to give them as much time as possible to plan their trip. I was able to pick colors for the background and font, and was actually very pleased with the result. Pingg has a variety of features available to you as the organizer and I think I will definitely use them again in the future for other invites. Unfortunately there is no way of posting an image of the final product (at least not one I could find), but that just means that you'll need to check the site out for yourselves!

Champagne Flutes

We just spent a wonderful labor day weekend in the Bay Area, catching up with good friends. Mr. Milk returned back to Vancouver early this morning - work calls - but I am here for another week. While we were wandering around in downtown San Francisco, we came across these beautiful champagne flutes by Nambe.

They were so beautiful that we just couldn't resist buying them for the wedding. Particularly since we got them at 30% off! Don't you just love getting things you like at a discounted price?!

The World of Photography

Looking for wedding photographers has been an interesting process. Since taking our engagement photos I have come to appreciate photography more than I did before, and have also been able to narrow down what type of pictures I would like for my wedding day.

On my search I found an amazing photographer in the Bay Area by the name of Jennifer Kloss Photography. Here is a sample of some of her most recent photos from a San Francisco wedding. I love the colours! Especially on the pictures of the details.

More of her work can also be found on her blog.

Having our wedding in Cyprus posted many photog questions. Could we find what we were looking for in Cyprus? Would we hire someone from North America that we liked? How much would that cost? What does that even involve? So I spent many an hour online looking into photography. I realized that the photos that most appealed to me were the ones with a photojournalistc outlook.

One of the few Cypriot photographers that I came across that met our requirements were a couple who took pictures of weddings in Cyprus and the UK called Amorphia Photography. We contacted them and they were great, but not available for the dates we wanted. Here is some of their work.

They too have a blog you can check out. They do some neat digital work on some of their photos, particularly those of "day after" or "trash the dress" shoots.

The ring is ours!

So I am in San Francisco and it feels really great to be here. Feels like home actually. I've been spending time with some great friends and hense have not had much time to blog - something which I think will continue to happen while I'm here. But something important did happen today which I thought was worth sharing

Yes we got Mr. Milk's ring!! Soooo happy! Even though the wedding is more than a year away, it's nice to know that on that day he will have the ring he wanted. Especially after after all the trouble we went through to get it! :)