Cake Stands

I wasn't expecting to purchase a cake stand for our wedding cake but I just love these ceramic cake stands by Clara French.  What a great way to personalize your wedding cake display with these customized cake stands.  I love the fresh and original designs and soft colors.  

Abetone

Chuck and I revisited Abetone, this time with Jim. Jim is Chuck's fellow co-worker at Ferrari and recently came back from Toronto to work there. Abetone is an hour drive southwest of Maranello in the mountains. It's a popular ski resort in the winter and is also popular in the summer for mountain biking and hiking. We're totally excited for winter as there's a lot of ski resorts not only in Italy, but in Austria and Switzerland as well; all within a four hour drive from Maranello. For our pre-honeymoon (Chuck won't have time off work until around October for our honeymoon), we want to go to Zurmatt, Switzerland for a long weekend of skiing. Anyways, before hiking, we ate lunch in town at a small pizzeria. We became chatty with the owners as they were excited that Jim and Chuck worked at Ferrari and on the Formula One race cars (the time trials for the F1 race in Germany was on the television). So, it was nice to practice our spotty Italian but they were really good about it, talking slower and correcting our mistakes. I understood about 40% of the entire conversation. They gave us complimentary drinks of blueberry wine, which was really tasty...who knew! After a two-hour lunch, we headed to the ski lift (gondola) and went up the mountain. It's crazy to see a ski mountain without all the snow. Pretty much dirt, rocks, bushes and grass. Once we went up to the top, we hiked for an hour taking in the beautiful views and cooler temperatures. Italy is such a beautiful country. I love the varied topography from the mountains, rolling hills to the coastline. It's nice to have the same variety of landscape as I enjoy in Washington. After our hike, Chuck wanted to find White Dog Brewery in Guiglia, east of Abetone and about fourty-five minutes away. Guiglia is a really small town, really just on a street. We walked around and couldn't find a brewery, but found a castle (really, in Europe?!!). We stopped for a bite to eat and asked around about the brewery. The server was really nice and actually called the brewery to find out their location (people here are very friendly...thank goodness!) Luckily, the owners are British and spoke English. It turns out that this brewery was in the brewer's home which was also a bed and breakfast in the outskirts of Guiglia and on a dirt road. So after buying twelve bottles of beer (stout and wheat beer), we headed back home to Maranello. It was a nice day trip as it was nice to get away from the overly crowded and touristy towns and to enjoy nature. 

Venice

Last weekend, Chuck and I took a one-day trip to Venice.  It's only a two and a half hour train ride from Modena and we only transferred once at Bologna.  Usually the wait time between trains has been less than fifteen minutes.  There is a road leading to the entrance of the city with a parking lot for cars, but transportation is entirely on water or on foot.  Being in the peak of tourist season, it was unbelievably crowded with people especially the lines for the ferries.  Not only was it overly crowded with tourists, but it was unbearably hot.  Unfortunately, I was feeling the early effects of heat exhaustion with nausea, dizziness, and a rapid pulse rate.  Staying hydrated and walking in the shade helped immensely.  Though I really wanted to ride in a gondola, we didn't since I felt sitting in the blaring and beating sun would not conducive to my well-being.  We were going to go to a museum (which we haven't been to any yet), but noticed you can get an exceptional deal of 18 euros for four museums versus 13 euros for one museum.  So we decided to visit again, stay for a weekend, and see more of the sights. 

Hairstyles

Images from The Knot.

Now that I've grown my hair out, I'll have more options on styles.  However, my hair is driving me crazy because it's too long!  But I made my appointment with Divina for August 5th and am anxiously awaiting...a trim.  After the wedding, I'll chop it all off and donate my hair to Locks of Love as I'll have at least ten inches.  I guess I won't decide upon a hair style until I get my dress, but here are a few styles that I'm liking so far.  

mmmm...Manolos.

top left:  Manolo Blahnik, top right:  Prada,

bottom left:  Jimmy Choo, bottom right:  Manolo Blahnik

If I end up buying a tea-length wedding dress, I'm definitely splurging on a really cute pair of shoes.   I'm excited to start shoe shopping!

Wedding Ideas

You can get this Kolo Hudson Newport personalized at www.jennibick.com.  Add adhesive photo mount corners and it'll be a Polaroid wedding guest book.  Charlie has a Polaroid camera and yes, they are still selling Polaroid film, at least until next year, at Target.  Film is pricey, but I love the idea of having corresponding photos with guests' messages.

Another cute guest book idea.  You can be creative and use different colored paper, colored pens and stickers.

This is a sample of Japanese Chiyogami (Yuzen) paper.  I love Japanese paper and excited that I'm having it incorporated in my wedding invitations.  I love the scroll design as it reminds me of the chandeliers at Lake Union Cafe.  Michelle at mmm...paper, my stationer, is ordering it at the moment and so there's a hiatus on my invitation designing.  I'm so excited to see samples of her design.  

After perusing through many wedding blogs, I fell in love with petit macaroons.  I would love to have these as an addition to our wedding cake for dessert.  To keep with the wedding colors, I'd have a mix of pistachio, vanilla, and cafe.  My favorite french bakery at Pike Place, Le Panier, bakes them.  I e-mailed them and you can special order them. 

 

San Marino Photos