Since my year of blogging absence, I’ve been blogging in my head a lot. But it has been hard to find the motivation to sit down and transcribe them off my head in light of the whirlwind of things going on. There are still numerous wedding-related blog entries that I would love to get out, but alas, I fear that the time has passed for that topic.

As is obvious from this new pile of books I’ve been reading, I am pregnant. Thirty-one weeks and two days pregnant, to be a wee bit more precise. We are expecting a little boy this coming June 20th.

Pregnancy is amazingly exciting, strange, a pain in the ass (as well as every other part of the body), and every other adjective out there will probably apply as well. But mostly, it is just really awesome.

I am planning on making time to blog more before the baby arrives, life turns upside down forever, and the concept of free time and sleep become myths. My journey into motherhood will most likely dominate my thoughts and thus this blog for quite some time. Stay tuned.

I love these fruit-shaped notebook or notepad that I saw on Decor8. They are supposedly from a Japanese company D-Bros, but I could not find the product on their website.

I like it so much that I’m thinking of attempting to make something like it. It would not make a very useful notepad, but it just looks so deliciously neat.

I just came across this awesome multimedia artist via Flickr’s Explore feature. iri5 paints with cassette tapes. And he makes awesome montage portraits using the artists’ works. See for yourself.

Below are portraits of Jimi Hendrix made from his cassette tapes and Dali made from Dali’s paintings.

Saturday’s beautiful and sizzling hot weather gave this year’s annual Southeast Asian Water Festival an excellent turnout. Among the many booths and events, there were boat races, lots of asian foods and drinks, fresh coconut juices, tropical fruits, Cambodian books, CD’s, and DVD’s (bootleg and legitimate), crafts, toys, paintings from Cambodian artists, tropical plants like Kaffir Tree and Rice Paddy herbs, etc. Some were sold for personal profits, but most raised funds on behalf of their temples, churches or other non-profit organizations.

I was still a tad bit sick and could not last too long in the hot weather, but I did show up at the peak hours of the festival to enjoy the day and to help the Vanderbilt Republic Foundation spread the word about their “Masters” project with Cambodian Living Arts.

Below are the of the postcard that we handed out.

The Vanderbilt Republic just launched their fundraising site. Their goal is to raise $50,000 so that they can send a team of photographers to Cambodia to document the Cambodian masters and the efforts of Cambodian Living Arts.

“We only have $50,000 left to raise, if we accomplish this we will be going to Cambodia in October!

How it works, anyone can pledge any amount they want. Their pledge is tied to a unique reward, in our case we are giving people who contribute $60 or more a signed one of a kind “fujiroid” from the shoot, which is precious. Kickstarter is goal oriented meaning people are only charged if and when we reach our goal. If we do not meet our goal, no one pays a penny.”
~ Matthew Bogosian, Co-Founder of The Vanderbilt Republic Foundation

Please see their video at Kickstarter.com, donate, and help them to spread the word.

I am working on putting together another site that documents all the information, DIY projects, ideas, and lessons learned from planning my own wedding. However, because I personally know three couples that are just recently engaged, I thought it best to post some information asap so that they may benefit.

These were the books that I bought, read, dog-eared (especially the second book), and recommend very highly for anyone planning a wedding. Erica and Jen, you’re more than welcome to borrow them any time.

Intimate Weddings by Christina Friedrichsen
This is a great what-type-of-wedding-do-I-want book that discusses the gazzillion different possibilities for a fantastic wedding that suits any budget. It is full of many great and inspiring real-life examples as well. I didn’t know what kind of wedding I wanted, initially… but this book inspired me to put together a wedding that best reflected Paul and me. I recommend reading this before you select either a venue or a date.

Bridal Bargains by Denise and Alan Fields
This book ought to be titled “The Essential Step-By-Step Wedding Planning Handbook.” It goes way beyond just finding good bargains. It offers very detailed coverage of all the ins and outs of the different parts of a wedding as well as potential scams and price gouging that you should watch out for. I found the suggested questions that you should ask the different vendors especially helpful.

Joining Hands and Heart by Susanna Stefanachi Macomb
This book helped me to put together an actual ceremony that incorporated all of our different multicultural heritages. If you are looking to incorporate traditions, quotations, etc. from other cultures into your ceremony, I would highly recommend this book.

Now, about those bridal magazines… that’s a whole other topic for another blog altogether.

[Disclosure: The links above are make-me-rich-one-penny-at-a-time Amazon Affiliate links.]

I want to pass on links to two videos that are worth seeing. The topic struck a very personal cord. It brought back a flood of memories from my childhood and from stories that my family have told me about their struggles during the Pol Pot era.

Cambodian Living Arts is primarily about the vision of one Pol Pot survivor, Arn Chorn-Pond who is trying to save one of the most beautiful aspect of the Cambodian culture, it’s traditional dance and music.

“The old masters of Cambodia are like the king and the queen of their skills, because we don’t write music. We don’t write music notes. The masters teach young people one to one, so if these master die, the whole culture, the whole music would go with these masters. They are a national treasure of Cambodia, they are an international treasure of the world…”

The few masters that have survived Pol Pot are scattered all over the world. Most are old, feeble, and impoverished. Arn Chorn-Pond founded Cambodian Living Arts to find these masters and give them the means to pass the skills on to another generation.

Recently, The Vanderbilt Republic Foundation have partnered with Cambodian Living Arts to document their efforts. You should definitely watch the video at the The Vanderbilt Republic Foundation website. (via John Gruber’s Daring Fireball)

Below is another touching video about the story of an impoverished Cambodian orphan girl whose life is changed because of Cambodian Living Arts. Read more about it here.

First and foremost, I wanted to mention that my husband’s feedback after he’d read the prior post was that it sounded as if I am currently in the process of making my wedding dress. I’d threw the post together hastily and published a poorly written entry for fear that I would never get around to it later if I didn’t post it then.

To clarify, I am happily married for two months now. We had both the traditional American wedding ceremony and a portion of a traditional Cambodian ceremony.

The images above are courtesy of our wonderful wedding photographer, Eric Limon.

But back to the ever so brief pictorial sneak peak behind the scenes of the construction of my wedding dress…

Photo #16: This was how I kept the dress sort of hidden from the groom. :-)

It took me about one week to make the entire dress (not counting the construction of the dummy). I wish I had more time to add more elaborate details such as a few gazillion satin covered buttons along the back, some beading on the lace, etc. But I had no time. I had so many other things to do that my sister had to help me with half of the hemming.

Overall, I am very very happy with how it came out. And here are the pictures of me wearing the dress on my wedding day.

This is the plaster gauze dressform that I had blogged about. I didn’t have time to finish it with an official fabric covering and a stand. So I simply put one of my turtleneck shirts over it and I plopped it over a radiator and it worked out rather decently.

I am making a prototype of my wedding dress using muslin (very cheap cotton fabric). I had even gone to the extent of sewing boning to ensure a good fit.

I stayed fairly true to the original pattern, except that I had switched the gaudet (the extra gathered fabric on the side) from the left to the right side, and rather than three very large pleats, I am creating a rouged bodice.

The color differences between the different pieces of the dress are unintentional at this point. I purchased the cheapest muslin I could find which happened to be the yellow color. Then it turned out that it I needed a much wider fabric in order to make the skirt, and that was only available in white.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions from readers about how the dressform came out. It came out very nicely, but I did not have a chance to finish it much more beyond where I had left off in the last blog entry.

I had a family member who was very unexpectedly diagnosed with a terminal illness, so I had halted my wedding preparations to help my sister care for him. I only resumed the wedding preparations again at the end of April, which barely gave me a month of frenzied mad rush to the wedding day which was on May 24.

There simply had not been time for many updates here at Kimoat.com. And I am very sorry that I also did not have a chance to answer many of the questions I’d received via the contact form about specific details of the dressform.

Now that all is said and done, I will try to get those answers out to you. And I am going to post some of the things that I had done for the wedding, such as the knot that I had posted in the prior entry. The next planned entry will be about the construction of my wedding gown (where the half-finished dressform came very handy).