First, before anything else, I wanted to share our wedding photos with you all. You have been with me, more or less, throughout the duration of my relationship with CB. You’ve heard it all and I just want to be able to share some pieces of our two special days with you. So, if you’re interested, the polished up pictures can be found here.

Second, the big news…

Here is my new blog!!!

It’s called A Patchwork of Daydreams and I’ll be prettifying it up over the next few weeks, but it is, for all intents and purposes, ready to go.

All I ask is that you respect my request to restore anonymity to my blogging. I’ll have an alias and C.B. will be getting a real name alias. I fell in love with my Cabana Boy, but really, he has become so much more to me than that pet name I dubbed him with so early on in things. Rex and Luna will be keeping their real names, you know, so things don’t get too confused.

And as to why I picked something that I didn’t even give you all as an option, well, I’ll tell you.

It was down to Terminal Verbosity and Porcelain in a Paper Cup World. C.B. and I were sitting out in the giant wading pool he bought for the back yard (that’s what happens when he can’t find good supports for a hammock…he goes and buys a giant blow up pool) and I asked him which of the two he liked better. He felt (and I agreed) that while I often do run off at the mouth (fingertips?), there are also times when I’m short and blunt. And I also felt like if I used Terminal Verbosity I’d end up with a jet engine motif on the new blog. Porcelain was the one that actually appealed to me more, but it also focused a bit on a negative aspect of my existence, which is that I never quite feel like I fit into my environment. While it is true, it’s not necessarily something I want to define my personal thoughts day to day.

I also started to mention the chasing butterflies idea and how it had come from a post I’d written that really spoke a lot about who I was, and that’s when I remembered another part of that post. The part where I said: I chose the unknown over stability…because I’m a daydreamer. My life is a patchwork of my dream driven decisions, and I suppose I’ve led a life less usual than some due to this fact.

And there it was, the title for my new blog.

So there you have it. Lilac Colored Glasses documents the last three years of my life and it will always be here in some form or another, although I may password protect it once I’m pretty sure you’ve all found your way over to the new place. Once I do so, you are more than welcome to email me and ask for the password. Chances are I’ll give it to you, I just want to assure my anonymity.

Thank you all again for making this whole blogging thing so worthwhile for me. enjoy the photos and I hope to see you over on A Patchwork of Daydreams.

Now, help me pick one out.

I’ve come up with several potential names for my new blog and I’d really like it if you all could give me your input/opinions.

Violet Sky
Snagged from this song by MIKA, an artist whose music I’m really growing to love. I really relate to the concept of a perpetually shifting identity in the song, plus I’d be keeping the purple imagery, for consistency-sake, although I guess that contradicts the concept I’d be trying to embrace.

Porcelain in a Paper Cup World
Snagged from this song by Kerli from the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack. Not only does it reference one of my all time favorite books, but it also sort of reflects how I often feel out of place in the world, be it stateside or here in Europe. Plus tea parties can be whimsical and fun or alternatingly formal and severe. I guess I’d be juxtaposing my own nature onto the concept of a tea party.

Painting Flowers
Taken from yet another song, this one by All Time Low. If you get the wrong colored rose bush, why not paint it to look how you want it? Another reference from Alice in Wonderland, I see this as a much more entertaining and beautiful metaphor for the making lemonade from lemons thing. Not that I don’t like lemonade, but the idea of painting flowers, in my opinion is much more aesthetic. And personally, while life has given me many flowers, most of which I have, in some manner, been thankful for, they are rarely, if ever, the color I’ve wanted them to be. I’ve had to make due and try to paint them as I see fit. Some have turned out much prettier than others.

Butterflies and Bubbles (alternately Chasing Butterflies/Bubbles)
This one is referencing an original post of mine, here. That post is probably one of my most accurate and insightful observations regarding myself, my own nature, and my reactions to my own culpability. I sum myself up very well here because really, no matter how old I get I will always be chasing those butterflies and bubbles, sometimes to the point where I run myself right off the edge of a cliff without knowing it.

Terminal Verbosity
This is a last minute addition because damn. If you can read and understand all the stuff I just wrote and you’re not drooling on your keyboard by now, you should be able to get why this name popped into my head.

So yeah, please weigh in and give me some feedback. My next day off is Sunday and I’d like to make some steps towards moving then.

According to CB, my blog is safe for now.

For now.

All of my posts have been backed up and saved, so all of the writing I’ve done on this blog so far is safe from being forever lost in the mucky mire of the internet.

However, I’m still not so keen on this yearly violation of my space. Plus, like I said before, this blog, as it is, no longer really reflects who I am or what my life is about anymore.

So what I’ve decided to do is go back to a hosted blog site (wavering on which one to use) and pretty much create a new blog that will link back to this current one in case anyone would want to read the old stuff.

I’m still trying to decide on a name for the new blog so I’d like to invite anyone reading this to give some suggestions. A few have crossed my mind and I’ll share those with you in a week or so, after I have a look at any suggestions you all might have for me.

In the meantime, I’ll most likely post here a bit while I’m working on the new blog’s setup/design/etc. because well, I guess I just can’t give blogging up for now. I’ve had at least ten ideas for posts in the last week and I’d be lying to myself if I said a stupid hacker had erased the joy I get from rambling on about myself.

I’m such an egotist.

For anyone who hasn’t realized it yet, my blog was hacked right after I made my last post. CB fixed it but it was corrupted less than a day later. This is now the second time (last year I was hacked in June as well) that I’ve felt invaded in what I consider my personal space. For as cool as having my own domain name is, I confess, the fear of being hacked and losing the last 3 years of almost daily writing permanently has lead me to the decision to abandon this blog.

I’m still deciding on whether or not I’ll pursue a new one or not, but if I do, I’ll post here to let any remaining readers know where you all can find me.

So.

Wow.

There really is no amount of words to describe the past month of my life. I could seriously fill an immense chunk of virtual notebook pages if I tried to touch on everything that has gone on, but I think most of you out there got the gist of it.

On May 23 CB and I flew to my home in Pittsburgh, on May 30th I turned 29 and we were legally married in a beautiful ceremony in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh. Most of my friends and family were there to celebrate with us as well as 13 of CB’s family members as well. A couple days later we flew back to Belgium, barely finished unpacking and then welcomed my parents and my brother and his girlfriend to Gent for our Belgian wedding reception on June 12. No ceremony the second time around, just a spectacular and pyrotechnic (hopefully there will be pictures soon so I can explain what I mean) dinner and party where CB’s family, friends and colleagues (along with some of my blogging and barista friends) could come to celebrate our marriage. Not many brides have the opportunity to wear their dress twice, but like many other things in my life, I guess I got to do something unique.

On top of the wedding festivities, two other major things have happened.

My brother Scooter proposed to his girlfriend while they were on the Eiffel Tower in Paris and she said yes.
And CB’s doctoral thesis was finally 100% accepted by the jury selected to review it by Ghent University.

So aside from becoming a happily wedded wife, I’m also gaining a second sister-in-law (eventually) and a doctor (Ph.D) for a husband.

And after all of that, when I finally got a day or two to sleep in and pay some attention to the inner workings of my head, I really began reflecting on where I am in life compared to the same time last year.

I won’t drag you through any linky flashbacks, but I will say that this time last year I was jobless and hopeless and frustrated. I was feeling like a failure in my language abilities and I had run out of anything to write about because I found myself doing nothing but complaining.

And now, here I am, working full time, looking into starting up an intro course to French (not that my Dutch is even close to perfect, but it’s pretty fluent according to what most people have told me), married and realizing that, for now, at least, my life has reached the next plateau.

My biggest choice currently is whether we should go to Paris or London for a weekend getaway in August.

And I’m looking at my blog and realizing that, well, the me that started it is no longer entirely the me that is writing it. I’m not the timid suburban daycare worker trying to find her way in a new relationship and a new city anymore.

Methinks it’s high time for an overhaul!

(and no worries, there will be lots and lots of wedding photos, we just need to compile them and take out anything we deem too fugly for public viewing)