Honeymoon Booked!

I know, I posted twice tonight but I have been meaning to put this up for a few weeks. I have just been so busy with school, my past 3 weeks or so have been jam packed with school, projects (big projects... 26 page paper, 12 pages, and a biology research paper that is very time consuming, and of course finals are about to be here) In addition to school Nate and I have been looking more for houses... no luck though :( In case some of you don't know, we have put an offer on about 4 houses and almost on 3 more but they sold before we got a chance. I will not get discouraged though, it just means there is a specific AND wonderful house that is supposed to be ours!!!

Anyways, as some of you know because of the timing of the wedding, we are not able to go on the honeymoon we had planned on. Carroll's football stuff moved up to the week after our wedding and so we have to make it a 3 day weekend instead of going to Eldorado Royale in Mexico. But it is ok because we are going to have a blast anyways and we will get to go on a trip 6 month or a year down the road.

We are going to stay in Dallas at the W-Victory Hotel http://www.starwoodhotels.com/whotels/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=1521

We are staying in The "Cool Corner Room" -weird names for all the rooms. But it is windows from floor to ceiling and we are on a corner, hence the name. Our view will be downtown Dallas!
I am excited, it is a neat hotel and we plan on laying out at their pool (on the 16th floor!) and relaxing for a few days.

Take a look at the pictures on the website, it is a really nice hotel!

Advertising to Children

I recently had to write a paper for my media law and ethics class. We had to choose a topic that in our opinion was an ethical issue in the media. I chose advertising and targeting children in the media. I am posting this because the information I found was astounding and although I know the media affects children, I never realized that there are specific companies targeting children because they know how vulnerable they are. I initially chose the topic because I had heard about Mattel creating a Shopping Barbie. This particular barbie came with a register and a MasterCard to swipe all her purchases, I think this is horrible because it teaches children while they are developing their perception and opinions of the world that it is right to take your MasterCard (the specific brand and logo on the card) to spend money. They associate barbie, a toy that they love with MasterCard. It is very clever of MasterCard...

I know everyone would agree that media and advertising in some ways influences us as adults, I mean I would be lying if I said that seeing a beautiful woman who is thin on TV does not make me a little jealous, or make me a little more critical on my own body and appearance. This is not the only area that the media and advertisers are targeting children now, they have developed advertising plans completely targeting children from 2 years old to middle school age. Advertisers target children indirectly with food advertisements, soda ads, movie ads and even cigarette ads which really shocked me. In my research I found that cigarette advertisers place ads in magazines where they know children and teens will see even though the actual magazine is not intended for children and teens. The advertisers are very intelligent, they have methods of tracking circulation and readership so they are able to identify their audiences and age groups, interests ect, by doing this they can find out how many children read a specific magazine that is intended for their older siblings (for example) and place cigarette ads in them.. Another shocking piece of information I found was that advertisers are teaming up with child psychologists now to find out what areas children are the most vulnerable in, what they are interested in and what celebrities they are the most interested in so that they can use those celebrities to promote certain products that children will be drawn to even though they are not old enough for the product or won't be able to purchase the product until they are older. The goal is to draw them in while they are young and make a product appealing so that when the child is older, they will immediately be drawn to the initial brand they were introduced to, this is called brand loyalty. Marketers trying to create brand loyalty is all over the place, I could go on and on about this but I am going to leave you with a few things I found and you can decide for yourself how you feel.

-James McNEal, Author of a book on Marketing to Kids said “Brand Marketing must begin with children. Even if a child does not buy the product and will not for many years…the marketing must begin in childhood.”

-USA Today printed this article, a "how to"-6 marketing strategies for marketing to children
http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2006-11-21-toy-strategies-usat_x.htm

-According to the American Psychological Association, children lack the cognitive skills and abilities of adults and do not critically comprehend advertisements the same way adults do, children tend to believe advertisements are truthful and accurate.

-In 2007, according to the APA $2 billion was spent on advertising to children

There was so much more info, so I suggest looking into it more- and being careful what kids around you are exposed to, I didn't even touch on the studys focusing on the results of the media on children!

Kids say the funniest things!

I have to tell you all about the girls I kind of nanny/help tutor them ( they call me their nanny which is funny because I used to have a lady I called nanny and she was a mom who made quilts, baked, decorated wedding cakes and throws cookie decorating parties. She is a much better nanny than I am!) But anyways, there are four girls, Rivers the youngest, then Mandy, Ryleigh and Shalah. They are such a joy to be around, not just the girls but also their wonderful mom Jenny. I could go on and on about them and what a wonderful family they are and how much I love them so I have to just get to the point! The two youngest girls amaze me with the imagination they have, but especially Rivers the youngest. Rivers ( 6 yrs old) has a huge imagination and sometimes will tell me things that are so off the wall, and she is so serious! I love it! One day she asked why I was not getting a house with a pool, because she said they are very cheap and if the house does not already have one, you just need a couple shovels...she offered to help dig the pool! :)

Anyways, the most current story I have was when I was in the kitchen with her. She began by telling me it makes her sad that she can't read the big books and she only gets to read the short ones..so I told her that that's why we read the short ones and after practicing those enough you get to move up to the longer books. Apparently I was not understanding so she continued to say I want to read the big books, with the big words. She said, " I just really wish I could read the curse words like adults can." You can imagine my shock! So I ask her twice about it, then I told her I did not like that she wanted to read curse words (by this time Jenny was in there just as confused as I was). Next she tells us that she will show us the only curse word she knows and I am still just so shocked that she even knows how to spell them! Finally she walks in, and writes an A for us... after a few moments Jenny said, "Rivers do you mean CURSIVE?! " And of course that's what she wanted to read!

That was a pretty long story, I could make a whole blog about these girls and the fun times I have with them! I will post about the other girls also it would be way too long of a post to write about all four, there is so much to say about them!

Here is a picture of Rivers that definitly fits her personality!

wedding update...

When I started this blog my intention was to update everyone on my wedding but so far it has been posts on anything from the wedding to random things that happen to me throughout the week. So I decided I would update you all on wedding stuff! This past week was spring break for Nate and I so we got our engagement pictures done in downtown Fort Worth, I love downtown pictures with the street signs and building in the background, they are my favorite. We went on Thursday afternoon and it was a lot of fun. We are definitely not models but we sure did have fun pretending, we were walking down the streets having a photographer tell us how to pose, kiss ect.. it was pretty hilarious.

The three most comical pictures were:

1. Nate kissing my neck-the photographer kept telling him to kiss my neck and for me to be serious,this was never going to work. Not only because it was kind of weird, but when I get uncomfortable I laugh alot!
2. Serious Pictures- we are not good at these! I can smile and that's about it, finally he would say, "ok..serious but NOT angry!"
3. Nate dipping me in the streets- its cute in pictures and sweet but it was not cute for us at all! First of all it made me nervous and I thought Nate was going to drop me so I was really tense and wouldn't lean back enough, then I would start laughing and that made it worse! So those pictures look like Nate is attacking me or trying to kiss me against my will.


To view our engagement pictures go to www.knightphoto.com click on the link storefront (top-right 3rd link to the right) next scroll down to the more on the bottom left and then you should see my name with our picture next to it.


BTW, I got my dress in! It fits perfectly and I love it even more than I did when we bought it.

Garage Sale Shopping!

Well I have not updated in a while, I kept meaning to but I have been so busy! So, first about the garage sale shopping... Nate and I went last Saturday at about 7am. We had so much fun with each other, he is a fantastic garage sale shopper. He found the good finds and got the good deals! The first place we went was an estate sale in Colleyville, the house was abandoned and we had to search through gobs and gobs of things.. I got a few vases, but then Nate saw something he knew I wanted but would not pay for and I could not have been more excited! Nate saw a kitchen aid mixer in the corner of the room and it had all the tools and bowl. So we asked the lady how much and she said $20 for everything, including the vases!! She told us she was not sure if it worked so we took it to his school and took it into the locker room to try it out and it worked perfectly! After a bit of cleaning, a few washes in the dishwasher it was beautiful and later that week I made him a cheesecake with it! So, now I have a kitchen aid mixer and I never thought I would get one, it is a creme/yellow color because it is older but it is better than new to me because it is such an awesome find! We found some very pretty platters, and then at our last garage sale of the day Nate found reindeer to put in our yard at Christmas.. at first I said no, but it broke my heart to see him leave without the reindeer so we turned around and got them. All of the reindeer and the sleigh for $25, you can't really beat that. We also got a brand new light fixture for an entry way or maybe above a breakfast table, its very pretty.

I got to use the kitchen aid mixer and one of the platters this past weekend for Cory and Nates combine birthday dinners, Nate wanted Cheesecake and chocolate covered strawberries. It was fun because I got to use my new things but also, my niece Shannon helped me a little but so we got to spend some time together doing that. They were a hit! Everyone loved them!

Total Garage Sale purchases:

Kitchen Aid Mixer $19
4 vases $2
Crystal Platter $1
Flower Platter $1
New light fixture $10
Reindeer $25

Total Purchases: $48

tomorrow I am going shopping...

Today was a pretty good day, visited Katie and my grandma in the hospital, both are doing really well. I went to class this morning, had a break, then went back to class (biology lab) which lasted from 130-430, it doesn't matter what we are doing it never fails that she keeps us until exactly 430, I would think she wanted to go home also but apparently not! It was pretty interesting though today, we are growing E.Coli (the disease that cows were getting..mad cow disease I think) and we will see how much we can grow by next week. It is actually to test antibiotic resistance, so we gave some samples full course of antibiotics and some half, we will see what happens! This evening, Nate and I went to our Love and Respect Marriage class which was really great, we missed the last two weeks and our teachers invited us over to their house to watch the lessons we missed (lol, maybe they think we REALLY need it).

SO tomorrow I think I am going to go shopping, I probably won't get anything because I need to be saving money. I am normally not one to go shopping if I have no money but I really want to go walk around and look (it is very hard for me!), I would like to find a cute sundress, a swim suit, a good pair of jeans and a few other things so maybe if I find some good deals I can convince Nate to fund my much needed shopping trip :) I actually went to Ann Taylor the other day and tried on a few things, I love it there! They had some great jeans, shorts and a couple shirts I really liked. I would love to go start buying stuff for the honeymoon, but I want to wait and make sure all the cute spring/summer stuff is out before I go buy stuff.

Oh, I found out today that 12 of y relatives from Ohio are flying in for the wedding! I am so excited, I thought there would be a couple but I never dreamed that many would fly in! They are going to stay here for a week and just make a whole vacation out of it so that was really good news. We also put an offer on another house, we really like it but I won't go into detail unless we get it so for now I won't tell details. It could be a couple months before we find out and it could be tomorrow, it is a foreclosure so there is no rush for the bank to decide anything.

I will keep you posted!

hospital visits, baby shower and fashion show

My weekend was pretty jam packed! It all started Friday morning, my grandma went into the hospital for pneumonia... everything turned out fine she is feeling much better now. But I spent most of Friday at the hospital visiting her, then going over to see Katie a couple times (they are both in Harris Methodist FW). It is odd I have never known two people in the same hospital at the same time, I wish neither of them had to be there! So that was my Friday night, Saturday morning I woke up and went to a baby shower for a girl I have known a long time, she is just so cute! When that was over I went looking at houses all afternoon, Nate and I found a couple houses we really liked, so we will see what happens. I will definitely update on that after tomorrow, we are seeing one more house then maybe placing on offer. Saturday night again was spent at the hospital.

The Fashion show mentioned in my title was today at the Fort Worth club, it was put on by a TCU sorority, for the Women's Center of FW. It was alot of fun, Ashlea had an extra ticket so we went and walked around and looked at the auction items and then watched the fashion show. Everyone there was dressed so beautifully and we were on the 12th floor overlooking all of FW....Fancy!!There were some very cute outfits in the show, I posted some pics of the fashion show outfits above, plus a couple of dresses that were not in the show that I really liked.

Anyways, that about sums up my weekend! Nate and I are going to look at one more house tomorrow, this house looks really great on the website, its in a very nice neighborhood and it has this pretty iron fence in the back with a pond behind the house! It looks like it would be really nice for entertaining people when the weather it nice, so I will update tomorrow on the house and our decision!

**BTW,the Walgreen's on glenview is having some sales right now (I know this is random) but I got 2 sets(3 in each set) of scroll black metal candle holders for $1.75 each, they are 75% off. Nate and I were there printing pictures and getting my picture for my passport tonight. While we were waiting we walked around the store and found these really pretty candle holders. They were so cheap! SO if you want some cute new candle holders go check out Walgreen's (weird, i know but I saved alot of money!)