I know it has been a few weeks. It has been a busy, crazy couple of weeks (I seem to be saying that a lot lately). More on that later. For now, here's my progress. There's not a huge amount of it, but there's some!

Before:

[Image] After:

[Image]
It's only 62% done, but I feel like I'm in the home stretch. I'll probably be saying that for a few years. But that's okay.

So what has been going on. First, Handsome Helpful Fiancé and I have decided to pick up and move back to California. There's a variety of reasons for this, but ultimately it's for the best and we're happy with our decision. This, of course, means that I now have to organize a cross country move. There's was a flurry of getting estimates from movers, figuring out a timeline, final dress fitting (in Dallas) etc. etc. My mom will be flying out, going to my final dress fitting with me, coming back and helping us pack, and then helping us drive out to California. So that will be happening at the end of August.

Then, wedding planning. The invitations are going out next week so I HAD to finish the registries. Since one of our registries is a honeymoon registry I had to finish booking cars, hotels, etc. I find the perfect hotel that has everything we wanted for the right price and decide to book it. It was also the last room available. So I book it and a few minutes later get a call from my credit card company. They decide that the transaction is too suspicious and they cancel it. Now, I'm all for credit card security, etc., but I feel that if I book plane tickets to a foreign country and then use the same card to book a hotel room in said country, that shouldn't be suspicious. But they decided it was and canceled the whole transaction, telling me to rebook the hotel. However, it's the last room and is now showing up as booked so I can't. The guy on the phone doesn't seem to understand that and seems to be stuck in a loop just telling me I "simply have to rebook" over and over. Not very helpful.

Now, I never pull out the "I'm a bride" card because that's just not me. I believe a wedding is a time to be happy and share in friends and family. But when you cancel my honeymoon hotel and then don't listen to me, I'm going to be unhappy. Soon, I had the poor guy making phone calls to the hotel, trying to sort it out, but he kept claiming that he couldn't get through. I voiced my unhappiness with the credit card and hung up. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not an unreasonable person. But I have had many problems with this credit card. It keeps cancelling my transactions, flagging them as suspicious. Especially the kinds of transactions they flagged as suspicious including my bridal alterations and my honeymoon hotel. The good news is that I was able to Skype-call the hotel, they ran the card again with me on the phone, and we got the room. Yay!

This made me want to check the status of my other hotels, just because I got a bad feeling. There was one hotel I had to book over the phone instead of online, without receiving a confirmation. They had charged my credit card so I wasn't too worried but I figured that while I'm at it, I might as well confirm. So I call the hotel. Apparently, the hotel had been sold. The new owners cancelled all previous reservations but didn't inform anyone because they decided it "wasn't their problem." No refunds were issued because it "wasn't their problem." No contact information for the previous owners was given when I asked for it because it "wasn't their problem." I had booked this one with a different credit card, with FANTASTIC customer service, so I called them quickly to dispute the charge. Why should I have to pay for a hotel that cancelled my reservation without notifying me?

But that's not the end of my story. The next day, Handsome Helpful Fiancé and I are sitting down to watch a show. I was in the kitchen getting some snacks together and when I sat down I had a voice mail waiting for me. It was a guy from a U-Haul company in Arizona stating that they believe my card had been used fraudulently to purchase some items from them online and they wanted to let me know. This is the same credit card that had cancelled my honeymoon hotel. So I quickly call the card and suspend it. Whoever stole the number managed to rack up $500 in charges in a few hours. I won't be responsible for those charges. I called the man in Arizona back to thank him. There are still good people in this world.

So I was having a bit of a rotten week. As I'm getting ready for work Friday, I get an email from Jo (of Serendipitous Stitching) with the subject line, "Blogger of the month." Intrigued, I opened it immediately. Turns out that WOCS magazine has named me Blogger of the Month in issue 218! I have no idea how this happened but I'm honored and flattered. So to the fine folks at WOCS, thanks so much! I hope everyone enjoys reading my ramblings as much as I enjoy writing them. Handsome Helpful Fiancé insists that it is his presence in my blog that has helped me become "an award winning blogger" (as he puts it).

When I told my friends about it in a group text, their reactions were hilarious. They have decided that since WOCS is from the UK, I am now English and will receive free meals and entry into restricted areas with obligatory luncheons with British celebrities in Buckingham Palace, and the Orangery in Kensington Palace Gardens and they will ride my coattails. My friends are, by the way, crazy anglophiles (as am I). There was also something about birthday parties, ponies, and champagne fountains.

So now that I've written a novel and likely bored you all to tears, here are the stats for the week:
Days until wedding: 111 (holy crap!)
Anticipated completion date for "secret stitching": 4/12/2016
Anticipated completion date for College:  10/28/2016

Happy stitching, everyone!