Got Some Gocco In My Life

Today I am super duper excited because I finally got the toy that I have been coveting for months. I've been checking craigslist, ebay, and etsy religiously for a reasonably priced one, but was having no luck. Then last week I saw an ad on a website for it. The price sounded right and it included a lot of accessories that I would need. So I emailed the person selling it right away. Turned out the seller lived in Irvine and I could go pick it up, which means no having to pay for shipping...sold!!

Here it is, my new GOCCO:



If you're like me from 4 months ago, you have no idea what this weird looking device is or what the heck the big deal is with it. I didn't understand what the hype was about the Gocco either, but I performed some research on this little guy's capabilities and was wowed by the projects that people made with it. It's basically a screen printing machine. You design whatever image you would like to print, use the machine to make a master copy of your image, and then you add ink and use the machine again to print multiple copies of your master image onto your desired surface. If you're like me and like to make everything yourself (i.e. stationary, wedding invitations!) then this is the answer to all of your do-it-yourself printing needs. Plus, I recently downloaded the Adobe creative suite and am slowly learning all about the design software. I can't wait to get my creative juices flowing and put the design skills to work with my Gocco! Hopefully I don't suck at it, but at least I still have some time to sharpen my skillz. I'll be sure to keep my blog up to date with any printing projects I take on in the future. Unfortch, I won't have time to play with the Gocco until January. The rest of December will be busy with finals and a trip to Mexico (WOOT!)

Speaking of busy months, can I just say that November was insane? It was insane, but in a good way because I finally moved on out of Chino! I now officially reside in a loft in downtown LA and I loves it! Felipe and I knew that when we got married, we wanted to buy a home instead of rent. We figured that we should take advantage that we had the opportunity to live at home with our families so we used it to save up for a few years. Well when we got engaged we had our savings to either 1)spend it on a wedding, or 2)buy a home. The smarter choice (for us) is obvious and while it shatters the idea of having the "wedding of your dreams" it just made sense for us to look for a home instead. After a couple months of searching, lots of frustration, and uncertainty it all worked out and I am happy in my new casita. I'm living alone for now (Felipe doesn't move in until the wedding...that's an entirely different story and one that I may or may not agree with but whatevs) and it's def a change and something that I'm slowly adjusting to. I think it is good for me, though. A girl should know how to live on her own, no? For now, I'm enjoying my 30 minute commute to work (previously 1.5 hours), living closer to my friends, and having my own kitchen! Yay for changes. :)

The Most Important Part

When I moved to LA six years ago for college, I really fell in love with the city. Although I visited all the time, it was a much different experience to live in downtown and experience city life. I discovered an entirely new world away from Chino, CA and found a lot of my favorite places that I always talk about - and I continue to find new ones! One of those favorite places was only a couple blocks away from the house where I lived during my senior year. It is one of the most beautiful catholic churches that I have seen (in the U.S.) and I knew that if the time ever came for me to get married, and in LA, I wanted it to happen at this church not only because it was so pretty but also because of of its location and all that it represented.

These pics are pretty crappy and I've been meaning to take some new ones, but here it is in all its beauty on a sunny October day in downtown Los Angeles - Saint Vincent De Paul Catholic Church:





Felipe and I visited the church for the first time together back in August for their marriage informational meeting. That's when we learned about all of the requirements to get married at St Vincent. They told us that before we can even meet with the priest we had to gather all of our sacrament documents, take a one-day marriage preparation course, and register for a weekend marriage preparation retreat that is usually booked months in advance (which it was - we signed up for one in March). Well gathering our religious sacrament documents was not much of a problem since both our parents had them mainly stashed away in files. The hardest part for that was getting a copy of Felipe's original baptism certificate mailed from Mexico. Then, we signed up and went to our one-day marriage preparation course in September at a parish in Long Beach. This was actually a lot of fun and a good experience for us. It was pretty much what you would expect from a pre-marriage counseling event, but good in the sense that you really get to focus on the true meaning of marriage (i.e., not just the wedding) and getting married in the catholic church. Even though there were a lot of other couples at the same session, it was really a day that was just for us to communicate about this new stage in our lives. Because of that, I'm looking forward to our retreat in March.

After we had everything we needed to meet with the priest, we called him to make an appointment and got a voicemail message that he was out of town for all of September. This forced us to wait until October to call again, and after about a week of phone tag we were finally able to set an appointment - whew! A couple weeks ago, we met with Father Restrepo, told him the date that we would like, gave him all our documents, and finalized the deal! YAY! It was so exciting to meet the person who would be marrying us in the perfect church and on the perfect date and time. After that, I knew that the most important part was taken care of. We are getting married the way I have always imaged it - no matter the weather or flowers or decorations or any other of those minor details in comparison to the actual marriage. It's really happening and I can't wait!

Happy day

This post is a little bit late. I meant to write it a week ago, but I haven't gotten around to it until now. Anyway, the happy day that I speak of was last Tuesday. The reason it was happy was because Felipe and I actually booked our wedding reception venue! That means we finally have a date!! We ended up going with the LA River Center & Gardens which means that the wedding is going to be a little later than we had hoped. It won't happen until November 2009, but there is so much going on right now for both of us that at least it feels like we have a little extra time to plan and keep saving. These past couple months have been going by so quickly that I know this next year will fly by. That kind of makes me nervous too because now that we set a date, it's like having a deadline and there are sooo many things to do before that deadline gets here! Oh well. We can do it. One step at a time. For the meantime, I'm still trying to get used to my new schedule with work/school. I'm working only 30 hours a week now, but I still feel like I'm on a full time schedule with 10 hours of class a week. Plus, there are the hours of driving time. I'm taking 2 classes at Cal State Long Beach for this semester. USC is making me take a couple of prerequisite courses since my undergrad major wasn't Chemical Engineering. The good thing is that they are letting me take those classes at another univ. So in an effort to save some money, I deferred USC classes until next semester (or maybe year) until I finish these prereqs. The downside is the driving to Long Beach twice a week, though. grr..

So life has been a bit crazy, but I prefer it this way. It keeps me focused. It just takes some adjusting just like anything else.

The search for a venue

One of the first tasks that Felipe and I were faced with was choosing a date for the wedding. While the engagement officially marked the beginning of the planning process, we really had no clue about the 'when or where'. Since we are both still working full time, going to school part time, and saving money we really don't feel the need to rush anything. Yeah, it's exciting and I really can't wait to become Mrs. Murillo but we need to make the wiser decision for us; which means to continue doing what we're doing and do the planning little by little so that it won't be too stressful for anyone. Initially ,we've decided to aim for late summer/early fall 2009. But, we still want to have a set date to look forward to. We didn't want to choose a date and search for venues with only one date in mind because then if the place that we liked didn't have the date available, we'd be disappointed. Instead, we decided to tour venues and churches, choose our favorites, and choose a date based on their availability. The whole venue/church search and touring process has been quite time consuming, though! It's taken up a lot of our weekend time and hours of internet research & email. It has been enjoying, though, and it's cool to learn about all these cool places in or near Los Angeles that I never knew existed. Anyway, here's a quick run through of sites that we have visited.

The LA River Center & Gardens

This was one of the places that caught our attention from the beginning. It fits the look and feel for the wedding that we are aiming for. And, since it's not privately owned the rental fees are pretty cheap and (best of all) they allow you to bring your own catering, do your own equipment rental, and everything else that pretty much will save us from inflated prices at private venues!


I love the garden, open-air feel, arches, and fountains at this place. It's really perfect. The only downfall about this place is that every Saturday is booked straight into November 2009. :( We didn't expect to wait THAT long, especially since the cold weather will start creeping up about that time of year.

Next...Rancho Las Lomas

Absolutely, hands-down, my favorite, favorite, favorite one. It was perfect. The look, the feel, the natural beauty of this preserved Mexican land grant property.


They even had their own private zoo (white tigers and all)!

I should have known it was too good to be true. At a minimum $150 per person plus a hefty rental fee, this spot was a weeeee out of our budget. Come on people, we are young enginerds in debt trying to start our life on the right foot. Why is the wedding industry so cruel?

Felipe and I took a trip to downtown LA one weekend to visit some hotels in the area. We visited the Bonaventure hotel to check out the banquet hall. We've been to the hotel before and it is really nice and has the typical downtown-LA/trendy/classy feel to it. I didn't take pictures while in the hotel, but it's probably what you would imagine - a big, fancy reception hall. We found that the prices here were relatively reasonable..not the lowest, but possibly workable.

Another spot just down the street was the Millenium Biltmore. I had never been to this hotel before and I was amazed at how beautiful it was when I stepped inside. I can't believe I never knew this place existed in downtown.

Picture of one of the halls. Not the best quality. It reminded me of the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, esp with the frescoes on the ceiling.


The super fancy and pretty banquet room...

Needless to say, this place was out of our budget. Moving on.....

Being the nerds that we are, we drowned our sorrows by making a stop to the Los Angeles Public Library which was right across the street from the Biltmore. It's one of my favorite places in LA.

You can actually rent part of the courtyard area adjacent to the cafe at the library for private events. But I don't think very many people would enjoy homeless people crashing the wedding.

Another place that we visited was a bit of a ways from LA. It was the Mission Inn in Riverside.

The place was gorgeous and Felipe and I both loved it. The prices were pretty reasonable for the type of venue that it was. The main downfall is that it is a little over 40 miles east of LA, which would be a long drive if we plan to have our church ceremony in LA.

The latest venue that I check out was a little privately owned property in Culver City. It used to be a smog/car shop and the owners fixed it up to be a hip and modern event venue.


I liked this place a lot. It's pretty unique, and they allow you to do your own catering and rentals. The main downfall is that the rental fee is just as much as any of the other nice places with a set rental fee. It just doesn't seem worth it for a place that is not quite as spacious.

And so that is where we are now. After all of that, we still don't have anything set in stone yet. I really can't wait to just pick a place and move on with the planning! For now, we are just trying to weight the pros & cons of our favorite venues while searching for others on the side. It is just so time consuming! (But still fun!) One day we will have a wedding day set. Hopefully soon...

So I was thinking

Hello blog. I was thinking that I've entered a new stage in my life, and then I realized that I'm not doing very well of a job of documenting it all. And by new stage, I mean wedding planning. So then I remembered that I have this cool blog hanging around that I never really use. I've recently been inspired by sites like weddingbee and theknot with all their cool articles and people who are genuinely excited (like me!) about this whole process called wedding planning. So I'm going to do my own little documentation experiment and see how well I can keep this up to date with wedding/life. Actually, it might lean more towards the "life" part because I hardly have time for wedding planning. And I've already failed miserably at updating about "life." ummm...but lets see how it goes this time around.

Where to start? Wow, it's been just over 3 months and I feel like so much has happened. Let's see:
May = vacation in Guanajuato
June = recover from vacation withdrawals, finally submit in my USC application (just in time for the deadline)
July = visit venues and plan for engagement party
August = engagement party, church informational meeting and learn about all the bajillion documents and requirements they want from us before the priest will even meet with us (which is where we are at now, but are checking that list off little by little)

Okay, not much has really happened. But I swear it feels like a lot. And Guanajuato feels like a dream that happened years ago. sigh... Not to worry, though. Mexico, I will be back in December. But enough about that. I have some cool pics of venues that we have visited. I think that will be my next subject of discussion, though. Right now is mimis time. 5am wakeup for work keeps me from staying up too late nowadays. :(

YAY!

I got accepted to USC again! I'm going to get my MS in Chemical Engineering - finally! Oh man, this is going to be a crazy year. Or rather, crazy next several years.

::excited::

Being Creative

I love arts & crafts and do-it-yourself projects! I only wish I had more time to do more of it and finish my projects quicker. I'm feeling pretty accomplished with one wedding-related project right now and I'm glad to have most of it off my back before the busy week begins. I'm super happy that this was a long weekend. I needed it.

So I was thinking about the whole keeping my blog private, and I decided to say "F it" to that idea. Sometimes I like to read random people's blogs that I happen to come across while web surfing, and people should be able to read mine too. That's the whole concept behind blogging anyway - putting your thoughts out there and sharing. Plus, anyone who knows me knows I have nothing to hide and always talk about the random shit in my life. So, enjoy world.

Changes

Wow, it's been pretty well near a year since I have even touched this thing. I've pretty much neglected my poor blog due to my laziness. I think I've always considered and treated blogging as a journal where I need to dedicate a lot and time and effort to updating my readers on my daily activities. It turned into something that was really time consuming, but time doesn't seem to be on my side anymore. I think it's time to change my perspective on blogging. How about I treat this as something that I need not spend time nor effort on? I'm just going to write my random thoughts down whenever they cross my mind. I recently took up Twitter but I get annoyed by the limited amount of characters you're allowed for each blog post. I wish the "microblog" were a little less micro. haha does that even make sense? Oh well. Here's to my new attempt at blogging.

umm, wait. Does anyone even read this anymore? Probably not since this is private now. I was getting creeped out by the prospect of total strangers reading my life stories and viewing my photos. Well if you're my friend and have a google account (which you should so you can chat with me on gmail while I'm at work..hehe) then you are more than welcome to read and enjoy (hopefully) whatever is on my mind when I update this thing.