Life keeps moving on and is at a standstill all at once.

I have been back in Austria for 4 months now and nothing is progressing. We sent in our visa March 6 and so far there is nothing, no news on it.
I know that this visa usually takes about 5 months and I am fine with that. The only thing that bothers me about it, is that the visa applications that are being transferred from the Texas Service Center to the California Service Center are being processed within 7-11 days while I have to wait 5 months. This is outrageous!
People who applied a MONTH later than I did have already gotten their NOA2 and are now going through the next steps, while I still have to wait patiently. As time goes on I get worried about everything we sent in, though I shouldn't, but we do have this one red flag that I worry about sometimes - he is 8 years older than me. To us it is nothing and we never even talk about it and when you look at the pictures of us, you hardly even notice any age difference (in my opinion), but sometimes I worry that this might look bad for us.
This is something that is on my mind all the time, especially when I have my weak days where I miss my fiance the most, but since it is something I have no influence on, I want to try and leave it written down here so I can stop worrying about it.

When it comes to the wedding planning, I have not really progressed much.
I gave the guestbook I purchased to my big brother's girlfriend who is incredibly talented at drawing and typography to add "Guestbook" and "Stephen and Martyna" to the first two pages, so we have a nice introduction to it.
Since my family won't be there for my wedding I wanted everyone to write a message for us before I leave, so I can read it with Stephen after the wedding ceremony. My mom had the idea to take pictures all dressed up with every family member to glue into the guestbook so they are "with me" on my big day and I think that is a wonderful idea. After we purchase the dress we will pick a day where we go out to the forest in our backyard and have everyone take a picture with me. I love this idea and I am looking forward to getting all dolled up and take these pictures!
Other than that I have been working on our wedding invitation a bit and I like what I have in mind right now. I will make a sample and show it to Stephen and see what he says.

I have plans for our first year of being married aswell! I started working on a coupon book with 24 coupons, so he can use two a month if he wants to!


I'm going to add a colored sheet of paper to every page and write the text on it! Each page can be ripped out, because there is a perforated line (I LOVE MY PAPER CUTTER!!!)

I will also make a book / folder for our first year, to pictures and collected little things to every month, so when we look back upon the year on our first wedding anniversary we see how much we have been through. I am so excited to start this project!!

The little update I was takling about [and this is what happens when you hit post instead of preview accidently, you have to edit it in] is that I have recently started to be more craftsy and baked a little. I am by no means a good baker or good at doing DIY things, but I will never get better if I don't atleast try, right?
So here is a couple little things I did over the past weeks:

A recipe folder (to which I added the sugar cookie, sponge cake and leniwe/lazy pierogi recipe just yesterday):







Some cookies I baked for my fiancé's work-in-progress novel:


And cakes that I baked for mother's day and just to try out a checkered cake: