The floods

Have you heard of the floods over here in Missouri yet? They are closer than I thought, but I did want to let everyone know that Mike and I are okay and won't be affected by the floods.

I heard that 370 was closed for a night this week due to flooding and that the one exit is closed off. 370 connects 70 to 270 to bypass some of the bad traffic on I-70 during rush hour. We never take it because it is out of the way, but I went ahead and took it home today to see the sights. I was surprised because I didn't think it was close to the river, but I guess it is. The Mississippi is just north of 370 by the Truman/Cave Springs exit and there are creeks that run off of it. Now the whole area is a lake. Here are some pictures i took with my camera phone. Sorry abotu the poor quality. I'd say I wasn't driving at the time, but that would be a lie. I promise I was careful and mostly aware of my surroundings. :)



Here is a map to show out of towners where everything is. If you came in town for the wedding, it was still a little ways from the reception.

We are so thankful we don't have to deal with these flooding waters and luckily we did make it an important point that our home was not located in a flood plain. With so much water running through the area, there are a lot of flood plains and even though they only flood every several years, that's enough to keep us away. We wish the best to everyone who is battling the rivers and hope that they are able to keep it at bay.

I don't want to brag, but...

okay, I want to brag about my craftiness from our wedding! :) I had so much fun doing my projects. It all started with wanting a theme...since I wanted to get married at a winery (a Missouri Winery was enough, but still too far away), I decided to do a wine theme. It wasn't over the top, but I think it was obvious.

For the invites (right), I didn't include anything wine-y, but did use the colors merlot, olive green, gray and blue. It worked.

For the guestbook (below) I wanted something different. I found photobooks that you could make on shutterfly. So I think I saw someone make a guestbook out of one of those somewhere online. I thought it was a great idea, so I made one of photos from our first date to our engagemnt photos. And the very end were pages for guests to sign.




I made the programs for the ceremony too. :) The outside was our initials, M and B, just like on the invite. Behind it was an F. It signifies that we are going into the church as just Mike and Beth, but are leaving as the Frahlman's. :) The fold was kinda neat too. A woman I used to work with gave me this idea because she used it at her wedding as well. It was nice and small so it would fit in a purse.




Place cards were wine corks I bought on Ebay (yes you can buy anything on Ebay and you wouldn't believe the demand for wine corks!). I cut a slit down one side and place a bead of hot glue on the other so it wouldn't roll over. Although some still did, I didn't have enough budget for a quality control person to come in and look at them.

For party favors, I had a really hard time. I wanted to keep with the wine theme, but couldn't afford 100 personalized wine and wine bottles from a local store. So I figured the next best thing was candy! I bought some little boxes from Michael's and put some hugs and kisses in it, glued a ribbon around it and an F monogram on it and ta da...little boxes of candy!


Table decorations were made out of empty wine bottles. One bottle had a label on it that said the table number and the other two were for decoration. Afraid people would think they were full bottles of wine and wreck the centerpiece (people can be such animals! ;) ) I put some greenery around it to keep it off limits.

Thanks for looking!

New Photo Site

Of course, if there is a new photo website I have to try it out! My friend Jenna told me about shutterfly's sites that let you share photos and let people upload their own pics to your site. Here is the address if you want to check it out! Right now I only have a few wedding and honeymoon photos, but plan to put more up!

http://frahlmanphotos.site.shutterfly.com/

Over and back...

Wow, the wedding craziness is finally over! We had so much fun, but I hated neglecting my blog. So much has happened since January and I plan to write all about it! And the future posts will be more about our family...the Frahlmans! :) But first...here are some pictures from our honeymoon. I will write more when time allows!


Our condo on the beach in Sanibel












A picture from our sunset cruise... thought the flag was a nice touch









Fishing in the ocean...I almost caught a shark by the way!








There were tons of ospreys at the beaches...they are so pretty!

My friend Flickr

I love take photos...I'm sure you all know that by now. I decided to put some pictures out on Flickr that I really like. Here is the link...

http://flickr.com/photos/54115788@N00/

Just for fun, I've put links from some of my pictures into photofriday.com. Its just a photo site that people enter links to their photos to and people can see them and comment on them if they want. I think its pretty fun.

Enjoy!

Christmas in January?

I know, I know...its been a while!

My classes have started up again and adding that to wedding planning...I don't know if I will ever be able to blog again! But I will anyway! Even though they are belated...here are some pictures from Christmas!

We went to Mike's parent's house in Decatur for the actual holiday. I guess I took more photos of Jack than I realized...pretty much no one else in the family got in the pictures...oops...sorry. :(

Jack in his jumping toy thing...

Jack eating...and laughing...he does both rather well.

Jack and Momma Lori...

Jack giving me the moose sign...don't know what that means but I remember learning a drinking game in college where I had to do that. Hmm, what are they teaching him?

Jack opening gifts...kids just seem to know what to do when given a gift...rip it open!

Jack checking things out!



Thanks for looking!

Christmas Time!

Christmas time is time for decorating Christmas Trees, singing Christmas Carols and making fun of the puppy that falls into the snow! :) Just kidding. Here are some pictures of Rou after the first real snow fall of the winter.

He's winking!

Check out how deep the snow is! Rouge didn't seem to mind though. I thought his paws were going to freeze off, but he stayed out there for a while.

Of course, I have to have some artsy type pictures to include...this first one is of our evergreen tree out back. It was so pretty with all the snow on it, but I didn't have the right shows on so I had to shoot it from the patio. I decided to add a few effects to the pic and this is what came out. I think its pretty.

I was trying to take some pictures of our Christmas tree without the flash on and it never seems to work. Its always blurry...so I decided...lets just make it really blurry and twisted the camera as I was taking the picture. Pretty cool, eh?

Sweet Home Chicago!

This past weekend, Mike and I took the puppy to the kennel and went on up to Chicago to see the Illini battle the Arizona Wildcats. We hoped the game would be like the last time they met in 2004 when the Illini went to the final four in St. Louis, but unfortunately, this time they lost.

We met up with Tim and Laura in Collinsville on Friday evening and headed up to the windy city. We ended up getting there a little after midnight and couldn't even muster up any energy to get one drink at our fun looking hotel on Michigan Ave. Oh well. So we got up early, went to breakfast and then Laura and I went on our shopping adventure, while the boys did their manly watching the basketball game thing that they do.

The city is awesome. It is so big and there is so much to do. We saw three Walgreens within the first few blocks we walked and passed three Ann Taylor Lofts! We went into several stores (mainly to get the feeling back in our toes), but didn't buy much since the lines were around 2 miles long. Oh well, saved some money, right? After our shopping, we heard from Mike and Tim that the game was over and met them at a bar near the United Center. It was great to see all their college friends and hang out. Everyone was in pretty good spirits despite the Illini loss. From there we decided to go to Wrigleyville, which is obviously where Wrigley Field is.

We went on our impromptu pub crawl and took lots of crazy pictures. I usually don't like taking pictures of people, because I feel like I'm being annoying, but I got more courageous as the night went on. Here's a free lesson in bar photography...just hold the camera up above your head and fire a few off. And poof, candid, silly pictures. Boy, I'm good...I should write a book!

By midnight we were back to the hotel ready to sleep, because that was a long long day! We had to leave early the next day because of course, a string of ice storms was lining I-55 and we knew we'd have to drive slower than normal. Luckily the roads weren't too bad and we were able to get back on time to get the puppy from the kennel.

What a great trip, but way too short...I'm going back again and definitely when its warm! Chicago in December...What were we thinking?!?!

Shoppin the Photos

I am trying to improve my photo shopping skills and I'm not sure if its working or not, but I'm having fun anyways.

I took several pictures in Mammoth when we went there a few weeks ago and really liked a lot of shots I got. It is easy when the scenery is so beautiful! Here is a picture I took at Mono Lake. The rock formations are called Tufas and wikipedia tells me Tufas are "rough, thick, rock-like calcium carbonate deposit that forms by precipitation from bodies of water with a high dissolved calcium content." I just thought they were cool looking.


I decided to turn it into black and white because there is so much contrast in the picture with the rock formations, and so this is what I got when the computer took away the color.


Then I realized there was an option to chose the filter type I wanted to use to convert it to black and white. Default was blue, but I could also try yellow, green and red too. My photo class from high school was starting to come back to me and as I tried the different filters I got this picture by using the red filter.

I think I need to do some more research on this to see what else I can do to improve my pictures. I'll make sure to get to that right after I finish Christmas decorating and shopping, plan a wedding and get all my school work done. Hmmmm, this could take a while.

Mammoth Pictures

A few weeks ago, Mike and I went to Mammoth Mountain in California with our friends Kim and Ty. Kim is my friend who I met when I first started working at Boeing and we both moved to California for work. She moved to Ridgecrest, CA (2.5 hours North of LA in the desert) and I moved to Lancaster, CA (about an hour north of LA also in the desert).

It was the first weekend of ski season, but since none of skied we just enjoyed the scenery. If we did ski we would've been disappointed because there was only one run open on the mountain. Anyway, I just wanted to share some pictures from our vacation, so here they are!

Below is a picture of June Lake. (8 miles north of the ski resort)


Kim and I at Mono Lake (15 miles north of the ski resort).


Next is a picture of the hot springs we saw.

This is convict lake. It is my favorite lake because I love the way the mountains dip down around it. I have some pictures of this from the last time Mike and I went to Mammoth when we lived in California and it looks so different because it was barely cloudy out last time.

Thanks for checking out my pictures!

Engagement Photos

Yeah, so we got engaged a while ago, but its never to late to get engagement photos done! I had hired our photographer and included in the package was an engagement photo session so we met her at Tower Grove Park and she just started snapping pictures. I felt so America's Next Top Model!This last picture we took kind of as a tribute to Mike. He is always wearing his sunglasses, yes even indoors with no lights on sometimes. Probably not the picture we'd use for the newspaper announcement, but its fun to have. He was tickling me by the way, that's why I have the double chin face going on! :)

Wa Waaaaa!

It was Oct 20th, the day of the Illini-Michigan football game. We were raring to go see an Illini win. We packed up the car and went to tailgate all...day...long. Mike and I had to stay in Decatur (there were no hotels closer to Champaign, too many Michigan fans got those). Jobu and Dimple and Mike Lemons also stayed in D-town and rode up with us. Below is a picture of Jobu, Dimple and their frind Missy.

We made it safely to the tailgate area, only losing our tarpaulins on the road. We didn't have enough room in the car for the table, so Mike tied the table to roof of the SUV and put some towels underneath it. The towels flew out from under the table right as we approached Champaign and some guy following us in a car rolled down his window to warn us we had lost our "tarpaulins". We had no clue what he was talking about until someone informed us that tarpaulin is what tarp is short for...ohhh, what you learn as you go tailgating.

Once everything was set up the party was started. We met up with Matt Kraft and his friend Beth. They had the grill and the food, we had the beer and the extras. Matt and Beth below.Mike brought along his bags game, so that was a big hit. I tried to play, but sucked, so I gave up. Yes, I quit my bags career before it even started. Mike and Matt, however were experts in the game and were in charge of telling everyone how to throw the bags and where exactly to position the ramp thingy, as shown below.


While we were there we had a lot of fun hanging out with the people who came to our tailgate as well as the outsiders who were just out to have fun and get free beer. These two guys were in the Marching Illini back in '80 or '90-who knows when. They played for beer, so we gave them a Bud Select and got to hear some good ol' fashion Illini fight song. Of course, Matt's friend Beth was the only one who actually knew the words, but the rest of us were nice and stood and clapped.Jenna and Dave made their appearance and of course brought the lovely Adelle! Isn't she cute?! She can be so serious! She was busy calling people so I didn't bother her too much with mundane things like taking her picture. :)


Of course after the food and beer were consumed and we had enough fun playing bags and laughing at the guys tailgating next to us doing keg stands, we headed in for the game! It was supposed to be such a great game...the Illini were finally getting it together and Michigan hasn't been great this year. This was going to be a game for the record books...wa waaaaa...it was not unfortunately. It was a game full of many mistakes and it almost seemed like both teams were trying to lose at times. I was pulling for the Illini, but they just couldn't do it. I think the Iowa loss got to them. Oh well, they are still doing good and now are bowl game bound (after the Ball State win this week.) Who knows, they could end up in a bowl game against a big 12 team...Kansas State anyone? Uh oh, I smell t-r-o-u-b-l-e.

Go Illini!

Frahber

Random tidbit of thought because I don't have any pictures to post because I'm out of town for work...

I was thinking about it and if Mike and I were to have a Hollywood merged-type name like they did with Bennifer and TomKat, we'd have a horrible name like Meth or Bike. So I decided to put our last names together and then you have Frahber. I like it!

I'm back!

No, I haven't fallen off the edge of the earth or anything like that. I have been very busy lately and haven't had time to update my blog. :( Yeah yeah yeah. Isn't everyone really busy. That's a bad excuse and I apologize for even thinking of using it. I will just chalk my hiatus up to being lazy.

Not much has been happening in my life lately...same old stuff. Planning a wedding, hanging out with friends and family, a little craftiness, and a whole lotta web site design learning. I have taken two classes about web design from Webster Universities online classes. They have been very fun because I'm a geek and like school and homework and such. I love being able to learn XHTML coding while still having to be aware of how pretty my site looks. I have pasted some screen shots of some websites from my Web Design class below. (my first class was just learning XHTML so those sites were too boring).

This is my website for my final project which was a website for an online candle store. I had to go and find pictures from the internet, but I liked my overall design.

I also liked this design I did. The purpose of this site was to create a logo with my name. Its a painter's pallet and paint brush. I don't actually paint, but I like art, so in that respect it was appropriate.

Well, that's it for today. But I'm back, Baby! And I plan to keep on blogging. I've made some wedding planning progress I want to write about soon too! Bye for now!