Fridays with Mr. Milk - Miami = Good Times!

For those following Chocolate Lover's blog closely, my apologies for not keeping to my Friday schedule. A mix of travel and ridiculous work schedules, plus preparations for our major relocation have kept my head in the hole... So what have I been up to lately? Biggest news is that I got a teaser of what my bachelor party could be like.

Nine of us met in Miami, arriving from England, Canada, Belgium and Germany to celebrate one of our close friend's bachelor party. We had an amazing time in Miami, which left me with an impression of a Vegas-LA hybrid city, perhaps with a bit more glare and 10 times as pretentious. We did everything from cruising on a private yacht to clubbing at Nikki Beach with Hed Kandi, and watching Roger Federrer and Marcos Baghdatis (our Cyprus tennis star) play at the Sony Ericsson Open. Super fun times! Here's some pics from my trip. I can't wait until my bachelor (which is now in the planning phase with my best man)!

Overall though, I must say it was great to be with my good friends and it made me excited to be moving back to Europe where I can be closer to them.

The view from our Miami Beach condos

The famous Nikki Beach

Sailing on a private yacht

Gotta love Florida's unpredictable weather! We got rained on big time the day of the tennis tournament, but thankfully managed to still watch a couple of games in the afternoon.

Roger

Marcos

What are your guys doing/did do for their bachelor parties?

Until next Friday, this is Mr. Milk signing off. 

Happy Wedding Day Mr. and Mrs. Beever!

Just want to wish Stacey and John a very happy wedding day! She is actually posting live from the site as we speak so go check it out! What a dedicated blogger! I feel like I've been stalking her, refreshing her blog every 20mins or so! :)

All Consumed Bride

I first met Stacey over at Blogger Brides when I was new to all this blogging stuff and she has been a supportive, encouraging friend every step of the way.

Stacey (and John) I wish you all the happiness in the world as the two of you embark on this new, wonderful journey together! Enjoy every second of your day and soak it all in! Mostly because I want awesome recaps :)

Pottery Making Class

Mr. Milk and I were given a gift certificate for a pottery making class at Christmas. We'd been postponing it as neither of us was overly excited about it. Ok, maybe I was less excited than he was, but its not like he was doing somersaults!

So since our time in Vancouver is dwindling down, we thought we might as well go get this over and done with try this. We were the only ones there with the instructor, and I think we both had more fun than we thought we would! Here's some proof.

Mr. Milk making a bowl

Getting there

Look at that!

Me attempting to make a bowl

Shaping up nicely. Its so much harder than it looks. 

The end result!

Now the bowls need to dry, be put in the oven, and we get to go back in a week or so to paint and glaze them! Thats the part I am looking forward to. We made some other trinkets but they are kind of crap not worth showing!

Have you guys been up to anything you don't usually do? Or been surprised by an activity you thought wouldn't be that interesting?

The Ties That Bind Us

I was recently contacted by the wonderful people at Bows-n-Ties and given the opportunity to review some of the products on their site. I highly recommend checking them out! For us wedding-consumed brides, the ties are organized by color making it easy to coordinate the ties with our wedding colors!

Since I had already purchased our groomsmen's ties, I got a tie for my dad for the wedding, and some ties for Mr. Milk, which he will need with the start of his new job!

I got this tie for my dad for the wedding. It combines several of our wedding colors in one!

And these are the beautiful ties I got for Mr. Milk. He has been crazy busy these last few weeks so he asked me to pick some out for him and surprise him. He loved them! And they are all silk!

Hendrik, the owner/founder of the company, was super responsive to my emails and requests.  The company offers free shipping for orders over $100, even for international orders! And they have a 60 day return policy with no restocking fee! Shipping to Canada can sometimes take forever (I blame customs) but these babies arrived within a 5 days of being shipped! 

Prices range from $9.90 to $24.90 so there is plenty to pick from that will be within each persons budget, and I found that the colors of the ties on the site were very accurate to real-life. 

And the best part? Bows-n-Ties is offering you wonderful readers 20% off your total purchase!! Isn't that awesome! All you have to do is enter the coupon code SilkTies to get your discount! This is a great opportunity for those of you who are looking for ties for your bridal party or just gifts for the men in your lives. 

So hurry over to Bows-n-Ties ladies and get yourselves some fabulous ties at some great prices!

Waste No More Time Arguing

Mr. Milk and I had our first big argument since moving in together the other day. It took us nine months, so that ain't too shabby. We both said things we didn't mean and wish we could take back, and were left feeling totally drained the next day. 

It all started over discussions on buying a house. We have been thinking and talking about this on and off since January. An opportunity came to our attention through a developer we know, who is building small, townhome-like houses that Mr. Milk thought we could afford. I am typically the hesitant/resistant one in the relationship when it comes to big decisions like this. I prefer to have most of the facts before I start a discussion about something. Mr. Milk on the other hand is the type who likes to brain storm out loud. He likes to talk about his ideas and figure things out as they come up. Now keep in mind that I am without a job, so clearly I have nothing to contribute to the purchase of a home (or any other major purchase for that matter). So in our discussions, I assumed that Mr. Milk knew about most things that pertained to such a purchase. After all, he was doing some research, talking to people who were recent home-owners, inquiring about mortgages, and so on. I finally become more comfortable with the idea that we can make such a large investment with one salary and started to get more involved in the process. We talked about how if we get in early enough, we could make some changes to the internal layout of the house, like have a larger kitchen and a smaller laundry room rather than a small spare room downstairs. 

Well it all blew up in our face the other day. After discussions with the developer Mr. Milk came to the conclusion that this was no longer affordable. I was stunned and disappointed and confused. I guess at the end of the day I felt a little cheated. Here I was trying to take small, calculated steps towards this idea and just as I was starting to feel comfortable with it and get excited about it, I had the rug pulled out from under me. Apparently there were some expenses that he hadn't taken into account, which can happen to anyone, but I did not react well to it all. 

source

This is so how I felt about this argument! Anyway, it all came down to miscommunication and certain expectations that were set that were unrealistic at the end of the day. We talked about our different ways of handling things and are trying to come up with a better way to not fall into such traps in the future. I'm sure just like anything else, it will be a work in progress. Once the intensity of the argument subsided, we were better able to see where we had each gone wrong and apologize. Hopefully we don't have too many more arguments of this intensity, but if they happen only once every nine months, then I really can't complain.

Have you and your Mr. had such arguments? How do you deal with them?

Just Stopping By...

...To say a quick hello to you ladies! 

Sorry to have been MIA on you again, but as most of you know this is a super busy time for us. Our best man is in town until Saturday and we were on a trip to Portland over the long Easter weekend. I have been reading along and staying up to date on your blogs but just not commenting very much. 

I did want to quickly share with you that I checked one more thing of our to-do list! My wedding band! And it looks something like this...

source: Google Images

I am so excited to wear it! I love all the bling! 

Hope everything is going well for you ladies and I will be back to normal posting by this coming week.

So Excited About Our Photographer

What do you do when you are faced with this:

William and Cynthia came from the United States and were married on the 9th of September in Santorini. Only William and Cynthia. No guests. Their wedding planner had arranged that their ceremony would be covered by a photographer and videographer. Nevertheless, they asked me to photograph their day, from the morning when they would start their preparations until the evening. What kind of pictures can a wedding photographer take without any guests, with no reception, another photographer covering the ceremony and absolutely no posed, location shooting...

This is what our wonderful photog was faced with this past September. But he did an amazing job! There are too many pictures to post one by one, but if you click this link you'll see for yourselves how awesomely he overcame this challenge!