Back in Nam

time is funny. i left Hanoi, Vietnam a year ago after living there for 20months. and now even a year later it feels like my time in Hanoi was over in the blink of an eye. other moments i feel like a whole lifetime was lived, only now visible in my albums, souvenirs (one being a future husband) and trip-down-memory-lane conversations that usually end up in 'you don't know man, you weren't there, you don't know!', which inevitably ends the polite small talk the cashier was making...
in honour of my one year departure i've decided to share some of the first few photo's i took in around the alley i first lived.  

a sight i got very used to. motorbikes, small alleys and handy man telephone numbers painted everywhere

three brides in the park.

this remains one of my favourite photos taken in the Nam.

the birdcage boys

art

20 months and i never took a cyclo trip. back then it was because i was an expat snob, now i just think i regret that more than not bringing home that conical hat

happening

 slowly but surely keeping up with the wedding diy projects, enjoying my jack russel, loving the engagement photo i found of my grandparents 

 

vanilla cupcakes

i tried a new recipe that's supposed to be the best vanilla cupcake recipe ever.  turned out pretty good. i love making treats that are pretty to look at. these cupcakes make me want to wear a polka dot dress and wooden wedges with over sized glasses.
i added raspberry jam, frosting made from scratch and a slice strawberry. 

in the room today

rock my wedding... with rocks

early on i decided on a home made, intimate, unique MOST AWESOME WEDDING you've ever seen IN YOUR LIFE LIKE EVER. not only that, i've also made a very deliberate decision to stress as little as possible, have as much fun as possible, and stay as busy as possible.  reasons i've mentioned before are: long distance engagement, traumatic gun point incident, and generally stressing enough about immigrating to the USA.
 so you see how becoming a bridezilla and stressing about the smallest of wedding details just doesn't seem to fit into my life. which brings me to these rocks as seen above.
 rather than search high and low for awesome name placement card ideas i decided to make use of something i do have. or more what my friend had.  my friend was going make away with heaps of random rocks left for her by a previous owner.
 instead the vision of black rocks with white painted names placed on wooden tables among field flowers in used collected glass jar came to me and ta da.  rocking name placement rocks that say 'you rock' with our wedding date on the back.  and just like that another TICK is made on the list of a trillion things to do.

save the date diy

because i'm on a budget, i went for a 'creative, free and uhm.. informative' look for our save the date notes, we e-mailed to our guest and they loved it.
money spent= 0.1 cent on paper and ink
money saved= going straight to that kind of an open bar we have in mind.

#241 to learn before i leave South Africa

i need to learn how to bake melktert to perfection if i want to be any kind of good afrikaans wife in a foreign land far from 'tuisnywerhede', 'oumas' and the Walskipper.