girls girls girls

Some more favorite wedding shots... with some of my favorite girls. xoxo

cranberry sauce is done...

and everything else is chopped, prepped, brining, minced or cleaned. Yum! Can't wait for tomorrow. Missing the family and friends though :(

I am feeling more grateful and thankful this year than ever before in my life. I realize how much I have, physically and emotionally, and just feel blessed in every way. This has been an amazing year and I just want to shout out to all my friends who stay in touch on le blog! So much fun to be connected with you all. Hope everyone has a fabulous day tomorrow, whatever you're up to.

xoxo - T

such a blah day

Today is freezing, gray, raining and lonely. So here's a photo from a much nicer day about 7 weeks ago :)

Thanksgiving dinner

I have wonderful kids table memories

Brett tells me that growing up he had Stove-Top stuffing and canned cranberries. So I am going to step up to the wifely, domesticated, newlywed plate and cook for our first Thanksgiving together and let him perform his husbandly duty of sitting on the couch with one hand on the remote and the other wedged in his waistband. We're having:

turkey (brined overnight and stuffed with citrus, herbs and onion)

fancier green bean cassrerole (fresh green beans, shallots, fresh mushrooms, cream, white wine)

caramelized sweet potato wedges (with orange zest)

wild rice dressing (with sage and dried apricots)

mashed potatoes (the old fashioned way)

cranberry compote

I wish my brother-in-law Kyle could be here to make his famous peach pie for dessert. I'll miss my family all tucked away together in NNY, but I think a quiet Thanksgiving alone is just what B and I need right now. Oh, and we'll spend the rest of the weekend getting the condo all ready to list. Please tell me you know someone who needs a lovely 1980's 850 square foot condo in downtown Atlanta? 

sniff...

So someone on facebook wants to slap me. That's not nice. People are mean.

post 148

I'm so glad we poopooed the warnings, balked at authority, threw caution to the wind...  and shot in this bookstore. THANK YOU, Almasy Photo, for so many beautiful wedding photos. More to come. Finally Friday!

feeling pretty smart!

My blog images have been looking terrible lately, the program seems to be downsampling them quite a bit and they look so pixelated. Fed up, I googled it and after reading a few articles, found out how to go in an edit the code to fix 'em up. Want to do it too? Go into the Edit Html tag and change the numbers right before your image name from  /s400/sampleimage.jpg to /s800/sampleimage.jpg. 

Easy!

the latest

For Mya, and parents-to-be Kelly and Jeff. 

to font or not to font?

There is a beautiful font I have wanted to buy for a while. It is the font created specifically for Martha Stewart Living and is now available for the masses to purchase. Great, right? Well sort of. I was pretty close to adding it to my cart this morning while working on a design for our Christmas card for '09. This close. But then THIS pop up ad appeared on my screen:

The type looks suspiciously similar to Archer... Kinda ruins it.

love this!

www.myparentswereawesome.com

"Before the fanny packs and Andrea Bocelli concerts, your parents (and grandparents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super awesome."

I just love this site. I have always spent time thinking about my parents when they were my age and obsessing over old photos: photos of my grandparents as teenagers, my mom's yearbook, my dad's scrapbook. Some genius put all that nostalgia online. Just one more thing to take up time, but at least there is a little less snark involved than a lot of internet nonsense.

Goodness, it's late.

how to...

fail a test with dignity. Courtney just sent me this in an email along with the note, "Just like HS math." Which yes, for me would be accurate.

Enjoy! Hilarious.

part 2

the Barbie shoe!

all our pics are self portraits, the beach was pretty deserted.

freckles! a.k.a. sun damage :)

crabs!

I have been bad about documenting our travels this year, here are a couple pics from a weekend in Baltimore at Kyle's Crab Fest '09. All the family bonding, baby holding and Old Bay seasoning I can take in one weekend!

We had fun running around helping K and K get ready for the party and of course, admiring their gorgeous house. The new bathroom was unveiled that weekend and my jealous heart about burst! Katie, mom and I had a fun trip to K Mart for some necessities and found crab flavored crackers and hula hoops. Brett had fun with the neighborhood rugrats, especially the ones with bikes and skateboards. Rad. I got my fix of babies, there were 16 kids under 8, including two sets of 14 month old twins! I met a sweet baby named Deacon and stole him from his mom for a few hours. Heaven :)

Here is a picture of the handsome birthday boy, and a shot of the souvenir koozies. A great weekend. I think I ate about 8 crabs, I just had to do my part...

um, pass the Yuengling, please.

honeymoon with my honey

fun in the sun

I got to marry him?

moi

Just a quick post about the honeymoon! More for my own memory preservation than anything, but enjoy! These are just a smattering of my photos, I haven't gotten any off B's camera just yet. But there are some good ones, so I'll have to do a to part 2.

We drove to Rosemary Beach, FL, sort of a fake, postmodern beach community for yuppie Southerners, which normally would gross me out. But the architecture and design of the place overruled the yuppie factor and we settled right into a week there very easily.

We decided to do the honeymoon on the cheap - consequently our second meal as husband and wife was consumed at Chik-Fil-A and followed with snacks from the gas station. Klassy. We went to Publix as soon as we got to the beach to buy groceries and I am happy to report we cooked dinner 4 out of 6 nights and made breakfast at home everyday, too. We even went as far as to make our own margaritas to bring to the beach! It was fun to be frugal. Even our souvenirs were fairly cheap, I found a Barbie shoe washed up on the sand and decided that was all I needed to remember the beach. It now sits in a place of honor on the toy shelf in the kitchen, right next to the red plastic fish I found on the beach in Mexico. Doesn't take much to make me happy :)

We spent a lot of time sitting in the sun, reading and sleeping, it was heaven. The sun came up every day at around 6, so we were early risers and early to bed, we felt so old and married, but we loved it. We did TRY to go out one night to a hot spot all my friends raved about, but it was packed and we wanted out early bird specials without a 40 minute wait. The one night we splurged on dinner was at an 8 table, very romantic restaurant called Cafe Tango. We realized there that it payed to drop a casual, "we're on our honeymoon" and got free dessert. A fun night and a chance to dress up. Of course we forgot to take a picture.

Brett sensed me getting a little restless about 4 days in and took me antiquing on Saturday. Lots of neat places, we bought an antique map of the world and I may or may not have found 2 dresses I could not live without. Did I say all I needed was a Barbie shoe? Um, yeahhhh.

Other highlights included a 30 mile bike ride (in place of a training run since it was 90 degrees), one of the best cupcakes of my young life, purchased from an Airstream camper which made it taste better, sunset walks on the beach, people watching and the smell in our little house. I haven't washed a few things that we brought because they still have the distinct peppery, slightly musty smell of the carriage house. A lovely vacation!

a biking break

This was meant to show the dirt on my legs, didn't really show. They were dirty.

mmm, Airstreams... er, I mean, cupcakes...

We felt a little boring for not having run off to Greece or Capri or even Aruba for the 'moon, but honestly, planning a wedding in 4 months was tough enough! And it was fun to do a road trip together. Hopefully next year will bring international travel. Until then, I've got good memories.

weekend notes

This has been a great weekend, I have been home alone! I realized that this is how I used to spend a lot of my weekends and while I thought I was happy then, I had not yet experienced true happiness. I might have had all the time in the world to shop for shoes, fold and iron the contents of my linen closet (?) and go on a hot date or two (ok, sometimes three :) but I miss Brett so much this weekend that I almost can't wait for it to be over 'cause then he'll be back. OK, so that might be a slight exaggeration, slight.

I got rid of a bunch more stuff this weekend, I just put it out by my dumpster and people help themselves. Saves a trip to Goodwill! I don't know too many of my neighbors but I bet I'd be served out of one of my old champagne flutes if I dropped in for some bubbly :)

I do know one neighbor really well, Tiffani! We've been tight for about a year now, she is a fellow designer and we like to spend our together-time antiquing, shopping for cupcakes, watching Gossip Girl, cooking soup and going to arty, indie events that my other friends aren't into. She likes to try to flatter me into buying dresses I will never have an occasion to wear and I like to smother her baby niece with my motherly instincts. Last night we did the Halloween thing. She came up and we drank the remains of a bottle of Gray Goose Vanille, mixed with coke and outfitted with cinnamon stick stirrers. Then we used the holiday as an excuse to wear crazy outfits and eyelashes and strutted down to the Silver Scream Spook Show for a screening of the 1932 classic White Zombie. This is one of my favorite Atlanta activities and last night was one of the best ever shows. Home and in bed my midnight :)

T and T's Halloween self portrait

Today was more cleaning out, I organized my collections of the good home decor magazines that are no more (sniff), roasted a chicken following closely the instructions in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (another favorite wedding gift) and then decided to step into fall with a small, conservative shopping trip.

Brett and I figured out our family budget last week and it was a true wake up call. I am embarrassed to admit, I have never done a budget and have always followed the close enough school of thought when going about my finances. I usually just go shopping and buy what I want, trying not to be too extravagant and to buy only stuff that I L-O-V-E. But I have spent more than I should. Now I am on a clothes budget. Sort of stings to think about, but I am considering it a challenge. Today I bought some awesome skinny jeans at Ann Taylor Loft, which is sometimes at risk of selling mom-jeans, but I love these. Not too skinny, perfect length, teeny bit of stretch and the best part, $60. And a great sweater coat thing with a big chunky collar for about $25, originally $80. I wanted a $50 cardigan but decided to leave it behind and check back for a sale. Then onto DSW. I have been craving black patent pumps for about 2 years, but just keep putting it off. I got a great pair today for $35! Steal. I resisted a cute pair of open toe ankle boots :) My one splurge was a full price metallic skinny belt at the Gap, but I had a gift card :)

I think one of the keys of not buying too much is wearing unflattering clothes and not doing hair or makeup before going out. Admittedly, the fake blue mole I penciled on last night was still hanging on and was probably a tad inappropriate, oh well. My point is, if the clothes you are trying on still look good with a sports bra and clogs, then they are worth it.

But in addition to my self-centered ramblings, I wanted to congratulate J & K and A & T on their new babies! Can't wait to see more pictures of all that cuteness :) Happy Birthdays, M and J!

And now it is getting dark and 6pm. And I don't really mind. Have a good week!