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Sunday, September 15, 2013

Henna Night and Wedding

A week ago, I went to my first bachelorette party here! It is called a "henna night". 


The bride gave us favors of these purple flower headbands, and mustaches and lip props.


While I don't have other pictures of the bride, she changed outfits 3 times during the night. This is the traditional "henna night" outfit. She wears this and a specific song is played which is supposed to make the bride cry (I think it is about moving far away and leaving her family). They dance and wave a tray with candles above her head (the feathery thing in the picture), and they put a blob of henna on her palm with a gold coin in it from her mother-in-law. Then everyone takes some henna from the tray and puts in on their palm. It leaves a not-so-beautiful blob shaped stain on your hand.




Later that week, we went to the wedding! It was a very nice wedding, and it was actually pretty similar to receptions I have been to in the states. The biggest difference is that they don't really have a ceremony. Their version of the ceremony is a 2 minute signing of the license and stating of vows. Then they have dancing, eating (at least at this wedding they had food), and a ceremonial cake cutting - except the cake is a 10-tiered plastic cake that they pretend to cut with a large sword while fireworks go off in the background. 





Monday, September 9, 2013

Catching Up

Every week, I get to shop at the farmer's market (pazar) on our street. A few weeks ago, I was especially inspired by my weekly haul, the colors, variety, quantity, etc. so I laid it all out for a little photoshoot. It still makes me drool thinking about all of the flavors and freshness!


Ronnie went on a week-long trip last week, so I got all emotional and made him let me take some pictures of him. I love that guy, and am glad he is back home safely!



My mom was able to send me a little care package, among the contents were our House M.D. seasons, Adobe Lightroom (my birthday present), and some shirts I had her dig through our storage bins for. We set up a skype date to dig through my clothes bins for shirts I wanted, and these are the ones I picked out. I must have been in a striped mood or something!


The other day, I followed some "pintsperation" (that can be a word right?) to make some squash/eggplant chips that turned out to be fairly decent. The squash ones were better than the eggplant ones. The first time I cut them too thin, so the second time was more successful. While I was on the kick, I also tried to make some apple chips, which really turned out well! The only thing is that I don't think it was the best type/most delicious apple to begin with, so once the apples start to get better this fall I can't wait to try this a little more.



I had the opportunity to attend a local bachelorette party (henna night), and these were our party favors! We had fun taking pictures with them at the party - I will try to do a post on that soon!



Hobbies

The other day I had some extra time, and there was a little project that I had been thinking about tackling for a while - so I seized the day! Our china cabinet is backed by some cheap, somewhat stained plywood, so I wanted to paint it. I went shopping, bought a new shirt and nail polish, and then headed to a paint supply store. I couldn't really remember any of the vocabulary that I knew for paint supplies, but between hand motions and looking around I was able to find everything that I needed!



Before and after. If you look closely, you can tell that it (white) doesn't match the wall (taupe or something), but if you look even more closely you can tell that the crown molding is white, so it really matches that (not shown in picture). Yay for finished projects!

Birthday Breakfast

I have to admit that a good breakfast is one of my (Jessica) favorite things in the world, so that is exactly what we decided to do this year! We knew of this one place that had eggs benedict on the menu (a rarity here), so we grabbed some American friends and ate our hearts out! Thank you all for making my birthday week a special one =).