Pieces of Anna

Just married D and I got married on June 9, 2012 in a beautiful outdoor ceremony in Piers Park, East Boston. During the days leading up to our wedding, the rain did not let up. Everyone was worried that our outdoor ceremony would be rained out. Everyone, except for me. I was convinced that the sun would come out on our wedding day - and it did! Our ceremony in Piers Park A long time ago, during our venue search , we came up with the idea of having an "urban beach" wedding. I would say that our wedding came pretty close - the ceremony was in front of a gazebo on a pier jutting out into the waterfront, with a marvelous view of downtown Boston. Also, I just realized that the roof of that gazebo kind of goes with my dress - surprise bonus points! And speaking of the dress , I ended up wearing a Betsey Johnson number that required exactly zero alterations. You know you got the right dress when it fits you like a glove. We wrote the entire ceremony ourselves and i...

Yes, yes, I know I still have to write about the wedding (it was awesome) and the honeymoon (we loved it), but we are still waiting on the professional photos from the wedding, and quite frankly I want to talk about something else for a change. Like home ownership. In the Boston area. Ha ha ha. So, you've all heard about the housing bubble that burst back in 2008, right? Well, apparently, no one remembered to tell Boston about it. Not only did the housing prices in the greater Boston area neglect to drop, they actually continued to steadily climb in the most desirable neighborhoods. Which means that for the amount of money that can buy you a (deeply depreciated in price) 4,000 square foot McMansion in Florida, Arizona, or California, you can maybe purchase a run-down closet in Boston. Maybe. But I didn't discover any of this until D and I recently started looking into the housing market in the area. We've talked about buying a house in the past, but it was more like ...

Image caption: In English: "Just Married" In Russian: "Caution, newlyweds!" As of June 9, 2012, D and I are officially married. I drove us to the wedding in my car. Our sisters and cousins took the opportunity to decorate it while we danced the night away.

So, remember how back in January I made an ambitious plan for our DIY wedding centerpieces? Yeah, now that May is almost over, they are finally finished. I confess, the plan was so intimidating that it took me a while to get started. And because making the centerpieces was a multi-step process, it took me a long time to finish them. But the centerpieces are finally complete! Here is how it all went down. If you remember, my plan was to take the cheap mason jars I bought from Kmart, wrap them in jute, and put pom-pom yarn ball arrangements into the jars instead of flowers. My reasoning was that yarn balls are way cheaper than real flowers, and I could make the centerpieces ahead of time (yeah, that didn't happen) and not stress about them the day before the wedding. I found my inspiration on Offbeat Bride : My inspiration for yarn pom pom balls, found here . First thing first, I bought my supplies: Supplies for centerpieces. Supplies included: Mason jars (I used ...

After literally years of craigslist hunting, I am finally a proud owner of the most awesome 1960's round wicker chair. And, no, I'm not insane. I just love bargain hunting. And chairs. And this particular chair has been eluding me ever since I spotted it on Young House Love: The elusive round wicker chair in YoungHouseLove nursery . After Sherry confirmed that this chair has remained comfy after a year of nursing, my desire to make this chair mine increased exponentially. Not for nursing, mind you, but because it is vintage, comfortable, AND looks so unusually cool. Several times, I found this chair on craigslist. But they were all near-misses, as craigslist frustratingly tends to be - someone got to my chair first. But last weekend, my persistence finally paid off. We drove an hour to get this lovely chair for a mere 35 bucks. 1960's round wicker chair. I love it. Side and back view. The chair is in great condition. Other than a small tear in the wicke...

We are going to be DIYing the flower bouquets for me and the girls the day before the wedding, so I figured it would be a good idea to do a dry run in order to figure out how hard it is to make a bouquet and how long it would take an amateur like me to do it. Turns out, it was super easy and only took about twenty minutes. Of course, it helped that I kept it real simple. Back in October, I collected inspiring photos of floral bouquets and centerpieces that were beautiful, bright, and happy. But I'm not a pro, and flowers are expensive, and many flowers I was falling in love with would not be in season anyway. So I went back to my engineering roots and decided to follow the KISS principle (as in, Keep It Simple, Stupid). Sherry's bouquet from their YoungHouseLove wedding pointed me in the right direction. Sherry's hydrangea wedding bouquet. From here . Hydrangeas are perfect for keeping it simple. They are in season in June, each stem is very voluminous and has hi...

I had read somewhere (probably on Pinterest) that if you chop up the green parts of spring onions, but leave the white parts intact, you can regrow the green parts simply by placing the remainder of the onions into some water and leaving them alone for some time. Someone even claimed that you can do this repeatedly! Needless to say, I was a bit skeptical about this miracle re-growth, but I decided to do a little science experiment anyway, just to test it out. After making a salad one day, I was left with the white parts of five spring onions. The onions came with their roots mostly chopped off, but some roots remained attached, which gave me hope. Here is the "before": Spring onions, before. I put the glass with the onions on the window sill that got the most sunshine during the day and left them alone for eight days. I didn't even bother changing the water. At first, there was no noticeable growth. But after a few days, some new green tips began to appear. It wa...