the day I became a Mrs

27 of our closest friends and family gathered in Italian Lakes park, shaded by a canopy on the bridge. It was 97 degrees and sweltering. Luckily, because we had so few people, moving the wedding an hour later to escape the heat was an easy task of about 4 phone calls. Thank God for baby powder, as it kept my knees from sticking together under my 18 lb dress. My girls wore Vera Wang dresses that were on sale for $12 at Kohls. [I think I should get an award for cheapest bridesmaid dress ever] My flowers were lucious peonies, arranged by my sister in law Amy. The whole day was extremely relaxing and enjoyable. I even did my own makeup. It was a beautiful and simple ceremony, led by my Pastor Charles. During the ceremony I took a moment to look around and connect with every person there to witness the best day of my life. I'll never forget it. After the ceremony we all took a stroll around the lake, as my dad serenaded us with his violin. Then a few pictures....and off to a little spanish restaurant Manga Qui. It was incredibly intimate as we had the whole place to ourselves. We ate delicious food, listened to heartful toats, took communion, ate dessert family style, and danced a little. It was the best celebration I've ever been to.

4th folder, 4th picture

i'm tagged for a photo meme by Madeline, my fav college roomie! Since I have two harddrives where I keep photos, I will post one from each 4th folder. This is from a party at my friend niki's, and I think I was dancing and looking at chris. Haha.

This is a random picture from my 'art ideas' folder that I thought was beautiful.

have a happy evening lovely readers!

mwah!

y.

recipe sharezies!

My friend Claire gave me a delicious recipe for Shredded Port Burritos and I want to share with you! Pork has never been a frequent food in my diet because of it's creepy bacteria and such...BUT I can't deny it's deliciousness when prepared like this.


Shredded Pork Burritos

Ingredients:

Pork Roast
Salt
Pepper
Fresh Cilantro
Onion
A few small potatos
Curry
Ginger (fresh or powder)
Olive oil
GARLIC


Place pork roast, chopped onions and cubed potatoes in crockpot with about a cup of water.
Add the remaning ingredients. Cook on high for 2 hours, then turn to low for about 4 more hours.
When it's ready the pork will shred and the potatos will be mushy. Dish pork into tortillas with a little fresh cilantro, avocado, tomato or salsa. Add cheese if you like. Eat. Enjoy!

[I am a big fan of adding dashes of this and that, and making things up as I go. The last time I tried this I added white wine and corriander, yumm]

poly face

Heyyy, blog land readers and writers. I am still alive and have no intentions of abandoning my blog! I spent this week cleaning up after the inlaws left, and spending time with my parents who are home for the first time since December. Also, we finished staining our floors in our house- dark magohany with added red tints- gorgeous. I was planning to post photos, but we left the camera in the bathroom, which I can't reach because the floors are still wet!! we're dorks. I will post photos soon!

Tonight: we get our polyurethane groove on. Oh snap!

Also tonight: MORE houseguests arrive. I feel like we are a revolving door of house guests. Once they leave saturday, our roommate comes back home from CA. You see, Chris and I live my parents 'office/guest house' [free of charge as long as we play host and hostess] as we remodel our house... that we bought in July. So we have lived with other people nearly the entire time we've been married. Can you see why I'm freaking out at the thought of moving in?? Major, major excitement.

keep your fingers crossed, as next weekend may be our move-in and groove-in!

wow, real people clothes!

Yesterday I felt good enough to get out of my sweatpants and wear 'real people clothes' - and it's about time after all the echinacea, orange juice, countless cups of tea, garlic tablets, raw garlic (ew i know) cough drops and a few baths I've had these past 4 days. I HAD to muster up the energy to get up and out of the house so I could go look at my newly painted kitchen!! Actually, it was really nerve racking to have someone else paint my kitchen, like I was on a house show seeing my new room for the first time. I did consider fake crying and freaking out and screaming like they do on TLC... but I was too tired.

But I like it! it needs some time to grow on me...

You want to see some pics? Promise you wont think it's fugly without the proper lighting, tons of ikea boxes, and no cabinetry? It's the bigger picture that we're going for here! ;)
We went with a steel grey blueish color. I think with our white cabinets, walnut (looking) countertops, and glass doors the blue is going to look really nice...

This is our countertops, and some styrafoam. Um, oh and the color in the middle is our fancy.

This is a sample of our cabinets and flooring:

le sick face

Well, it seems an overweight family of phlegm has taken residence in my lungs and threw a dance party, followed by poker night with lots of fighting and smoking [visuals courtesy of Mucinex commercials]

I feel like le crap. Yesterday was worse though. The majority of my day was spent in my sweat pants, weakly leafing through Domino. I don't know what is more sad, the fact that I am this sick, or that I can't cope with the fact that Domino is gone. Maybe if i just pretend it never happened...it never will. Well, I'm going to interrupt my delusions of grandeur with some excellent and dance worthy news:

The entire first floor of my house is primed, AND "Autumn Fog" is going up on my kitchen walls tonight, thanks to my lovely in-laws!!!! They have plans to paint my whole house if I can just hunker down and make my final color decisions. Wow, and all I am offering in return is free food for the week. Halle-stinkin-lujah! So tomorrow, I might venture out of my sweats to go and behold my painted kitchen.

Happy, happy, joy, joy! heart go boom-boom :)

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I've been a tad lax on the blogging lately- My inlaws came into town yesterday, and leading up to that we had lots and lots of stuff to do, to get ready for them. My husband got sick. Then I went on the 3 hour grocery shopping adventure of my life so we'd have enough food for the week (i hate bi-weekly shopping trips). I got my husbands cold. Valentines happened. More drywalling. But mostly, standing awkwardly in Lowes and Home Depot, hovering over the colors, feeling anxious about picking the 'wrong' colors for my house, bashing my frustrated head against my steering wheel, and deciding that only Arby's curly fries will help me make my color decisions. It didn't, but they were delish. So now i'm fatter, and have thankfully whittled my way down from about 300 options down to a handful. "Abracabara" for kitchen, "Smoked Amber or London Coach" for guest bedroom, 'Tea Stain' for bedroom, "Summer Harvest" for Living room and "Morning Fog" for bathroom.

Dont you just love how stupid and non-revealing those names are?? This week I wil attempt to make the final decisions on my paint colors, and the in-laws are here to help us prime and paint...So we are happy campers about that. I will try, in all my messiness, to post pics. Wish me luck!

Heaven vs. Hello gorgeous!

most nights, while my husband falls asleep in under 3 minutes, I lay in bed for about an hour or so, and I think. I pick colors for my bedroom. I think about blogging. I plan my grocery list. I dream about beautiful chandeliers. I imagine what organs are going for on the black market, and wonder if I have extras I dont need? But mostly I just think about beautiful things like this:

Have I died and gone to heaven?? I *drool* about all things Ochre. Btw peeps, the last chandelier is chainmail. Chain efin mail. While they don't list prices on their site, the average price is 5-9k for the couches, so I'm thinking, selling my soul to the devil still wouldn't be enough.

Do you love them too?

i am my mother!

I'm turning a quarter of a century this july, and besides the typical getting wiser stuff, the thing I've come to realize more and more is I.am.my.mother. Has anyone else come to that realization?? {gasp!} As a kid, I idolized her! She was beautiful, talented, dressed so cool, and was the best smelling mom ever and all my friends loved her. I wanted to be her. Then I turned teen horror, I didn't like her as much because she nagged me. There were so many things about her I swore I would never resemble, but now I appreciate her for who she is, and realize that I have evolved into a woman so similar to her...and I'm proud of that. I laugh like her. I'm dramatic, like her. We both dance the same, and most of the time it's terrible and should spare others the embarressment. I argue with my husband like she argues with my dad. Sometimes we nag too.

At 54, my mother is a stunning woman. In look and deed she's graceful. She hosts the best dinner parties and can make a boring room light up with her laughter. She is always blessing others around her with gifts or compliments. But what I love most about her is her heart; she loves the poor. Right now she is in India, with 4 of her friends, on a garbage dump tour- searching out the poorest areas of a city and brings food, joy, love, prayer and God to every person she meets. How radical is that? I hope that when I grow up I will be just like her and will have a heart full of love for others less fortunate than we.

[she texted me today from India- "watching gramm y luv radiohead with marching band love mom'' - {She just learned how to text this year}

Photos- My dad and mom last year:

My mom in Paris:

My mom and Sting:
Mmmhmm. While shopping in the Grand Bazarre in Istanbul, she met Sting. He's so dreamy.

I'm on the fence.

did anyone else only midly enjoy the 'i'm the awesome-est performer ever' awards? er, I mean the Grammy's?

overall, I'm not super impressed nor disappointed, but here's what I think:

-Marching Band+Radiohead: wow.
How much would I love to be 17 and in their marching band right now!?

-Stevie Wonder is still cool, even though he still has corn rows.

-Gweneth Paltrow looked good.

-Neil Diamond, Vegas Dies Hard Sparkling jacket. Nuff said.

-Still loving Mia's performance and cute belly!

-Justin Timberlake is cute and scruffy like always, but WHY did his co-artist need to use a track for his rap? Doesn't that just go against the whole point of rapping??

n-e-wayz.

time for snoozing. love!

"they look like fairies!'

Grammy's Midway Synopsis:

-WTF is up with Kanye West's hair?? Lyonell Ritchie and Michael Jackson's lovechild?

-Mia- so cute and pregnant!! And droppin it like it's hot. She is due for birth today. Wow, she's my new hero.

-Not that impressed with Coldplays performance- Chris's comment "they look like fairie's"
I live my husband, he's always good for a laugh.

-Rat Pack? Reeeaaaallly?

-Carrie Underwood's assistant should be taken out back and shot. But I'd give a lot of things to have her sculpted shimmery mile high legs.

-Al green and J.T. <3 sigh

-Stevie Wonder + Voice box. yes!?

- Adele is so cute and has amaaazing red hair. I love that Brits say "Fank You Vary Mach!"

primer does a soul good

finally.

fiiinallyyyyyyyy.

we have PRIMED our kitchen!

{standing ovations are welcome and appreciated, but not required!}

It has taken us 6 months of slaving away our nights and weekends to get to this point. We've gutted, demolished, gutted some more, bled, sweat and cried. Here are some 'before' and 'current' photos for your delight. We removed wonky and greasy cabinets, wood paneling, dropped ceilings, {and an infestion of mice poop above the dropped ceiling}, rewired electrical, removed the horrible sticky tile floor, hung drywall, taped, added gentle arches and finally, painted. Sigh of relief.

we are still weeks away from completion, and we are waiting with abaited breath to for it to be that time!! [you mean I will actually get to unpack and use the wedding presents we were given 8 month ago??] whoopie!

Sorry I've been so lax on posting photos of this whole process. We just work so hard and are so exhausted every day, that posting a few measly pictures seems like such a monumental task!

Lame I know...but I will try to be better! :)

xoxox

tuuuulips!

Inspired by this photo in Domino, I planted approximately 103 black and white tulips in my backyaahhd [i live on the edge of new england, I'm allowed to say yaaahd] with a little help from my overly-friendly neighbor Rick and Cyntha Kling's 'the Adventuress' video instrutctions on Domino. I'm so thrilled to meet my little tuuulips! Grow babies, grow!

love at first light

The Feb-March issue of Ready Made features a design by Jean Pelle and I am in love with this chandelier. Love at first light? I think so. Ready made has directions on how to make this little beauty yourself {for the less handy, have your boyfriend or husband make it for you}

[EDIT: My engingeering smarty pants husband just informed me that the electrical tape, as called for in the do-it-yourself instructions, is NOT a good idea. He also informed me that he has figured out a way to wire it in a more efficient and safe manner. Aw, yay for smarty pants husbands who go to school and support their college-drop-out wives. Once we have this pretty baby made, we'll tell you how to do it. I'm refering to the chandelier, not the birds and the bees. Ask your mother that. Better yet, google it. Less awkward.]

Am I cheap, or thrifty?

I asked myself the other day, 'In this economy, how are we to furnish our homes?' Thrifting of course! Thrifting is not everyone's cuppa tea, but if you have an eye, the knack, and a wee bit of patience you can find some gems. While money is hard to come by, if I had excess I wouldn't jump at the chance to buy Johnathan Adler's needle point pillows. I love granny things, but needlepoint is somewhere I'm not willing to go. Am I crazy to not like them?

No, if I had excess money I would be a minimalist. Have you noticed how minimalist decorate? Minimal amounts of expensive and high quality furniture, looks so good. I love this room here: [and like normal I don't remember where I found it]

But until that day comes, I will continue thrifting [and collecting myriads of stuff so my house feels decorated, and I have used all the excess closet and basement space and my husband blows a gasket and forces me to have a yard sale of the century, and get rid of my precious second hand items.] Ahh, they cycle of decor life.

and lookie what I found last week! dessert plates 4.99, a peacock tea tray for 2.99, copper bowl, 1.99, carved candle sticks .99 each, and last but not least, candleabras [that spelling looks off] 3 for .99!
I love it when they underprice!

'My, she was yar'

Last night I watched 'Philadelphia' and fell in love [again] with Katherine Hepburn. Then I watched her auto-biographry and was smitten [for the bajillionth time that night]



One of my favorite lines was this: {refering to her former husband Spencer Tracy} 'He was like a baked potato, solid, dependable. I was more like an ice cream sundae, with whipped cream!'

She was dramatic and playful at the same time...great woman attributes.

happy relaxing sunday everyone!