MarDo Staycation

After two weddings this year, my parents (MARshall and DOrothy) decided to have vacation at home this year. Hence, MarDo Staycation. So we all drove up/over to Oak Ridge and enjoyed a wonderful and relaxing weekend with family.

We celebrated my mom's bday and I tried to make this cake and while it's a hideous mess, it tasted pretty good. Sometimes I don't have patience for baking, especially when there's ice cream and travelling involved. Oh well.

The next day they surprised us by renting a van and driving up to Chateau Morrisette Winery in Virginia. It was beautiful!

We enjoyed being together!

And drinking wine, of course.

In the gift shop there was a picture of this dog. It was especially funny to us because we named our cat Zuzu and dog Petals!

Beautiful sunflowers!

First attempt to get a family picture on the camera's timer.

I LOVE them!!

Me & that Ginna girl.

This morning we went to hear Uncle Hunter preach at Redeemer. Then we went to a pub for lunch in Winston Salem.

Ginefferson.

Family!

It was a great weekend! We had yummy food, enjoyed the beautiful country, watched home videos which made us laugh so hard we cried, snuggled with the sisters, enjoyed our MarDo Staycation goodie bags (complete with a whistle dad put in the girl's bags... you know, to put on our keychain in case of an emergency. Dad's always think about these things.) , read books and sat on rocking chairs on the porch. Ahh, tis the life!

Thanks, Mom & Dad for a great vacation!

Another one bites the dust!

As every newlywed husbands knows, or at least quickly finds out (especially if he has a peculiar, shall we say, taste in decor), there are certain material things that he brings into the marriage that don't fit into the interior decorating plan devised by the two newlyweds. What said unsuspecting gentleman will also soon discover is that such items have a tendency to break, disappear, or otherwise fall into unfortunate circumstances that bring about their demise.

There was one such item of mine, a little, cheap, ceramic figure I'd brought back from Japan about 10 years ago of a number of cheery Japanese racoons on a boat. Imagine a 100 yen ceramic version of the below:


Now, imagine my surprise, when I come home one day to my tearful wife explaining how the boat had inauspiciously plummeted from its home on the back ledge of the stove to the tile floor, where needless to say, it found itself in a completely unpresentable state, so I ceremoniously consigned it to the garbage bin. This occurred some weeks, or maybe months ago.

Well, today, another unfortunate event has occurred. If any of you were at our wedding, you will perhaps recall this lovely arrangement.



The large centerpiece was one that I had purchased on a lark when we were looking for vases for the reception. Let's just say that post wedding, it hasn't seen much of the light of day, and I've complained not a whit since honestly I'm not sure what we'd do with the thing. It was quite probably the largest champagne flute ever devised, and useful for drinking one whole bottle of the bubbly, at minimum. Alas, gravity has struck again and my giant drinking vessel is no more.

Now, for certain, I would ascribe no ill motives to my wife, since gravity does indeed often strike with importunate regularity. That said, there does appear a curious correlation between things original to me that she does not find fit for public display in the apartment and ones that end up in an unpresentable state, while I'm not around to prevent their departure from this mortal plane

So...to my intrepid reader, what's next? My probably not original pressing of Thriller, by Michael Jackson? My Jolly Roger, which gleefully watches over our laundry room? I confess I know not why it falls to these specific articles to meet an early demise, but there is certainly a haunting of some sort about this place, and it has no taste for the silly eclecticisms of a bachelor.

Weekend Update

Our weekend started out a little early on Thursday when we had my old roomie MK and her boyfriend (!), and our friend Kurt over for dinner. Michelle also joined us because she was flying out of Charlotte the next morning and I have to say, we had a blast! Oh it was so fun and Mich & MK had me cracking up!

The next day I met Lizziepie at the Clt airport and greeted her with Chick-Fil-A! I feel lucky enough to have gotten to see her on her way home from 2.5 years in Romania! Ooh, so wonderful to catch up!

That night Andrew surprised me with a date night (I made him knock on the door to pick me up) and he surprised me with flowers, too. Aw.

We went to Vintner's Wine Market with a Living Social coupon... go coupons. Dinner was so delicious and it was a great way to start the weekend.

Oh and the next day he also surprised me by having bought seasons 1-8 of FRIENDS on EBay. I had to go around the house to find them all. Wahoo!

Saturday night my sister-in-law and her three kiddos came to stay with us. We had tacos and then I needed lots of help making chocolate chip cookies so Adia & Jacques helped me. :)

Souley was content just giving Uncle Andrew high fives.

So cute!

Yesterday we went to see my parents to return their truck which we borrowed to get a double bed for the guest room (come stay with us!) and a hutch we bought in Charlotte. It was a leisurely afternoon watching the Women's World Cup and looking for snakes in the yard as we took this picture with our wedding sunflowers. Yeah my mom killed a snake on Friday. She's amazing. And so brave. {I am not brave.}

Eeek!!! Petals (or as I say, Petolshshshsh!!). So cute and so sweet and so lovey!!

Documenting the every day

This has been one of my favorite things to do since we got married! I first got the idea from this blog and started it by getting my 5x7 index cards (which I cut in half), a stamper (I found one at Office Depot for $3...) already had an ink pad, and asked for an extra berry container at my farmer's market. I started it on May 7th, the day we got married. I usually take up three lines and just write what we did that day or if the day is special (which it is... YAY Al & B for TWO YEARS today!!) or anything else that I find would be fun to remember the next year(s). It's a really easy way to document life and I'm sure it will be cool to look back after 4 years or so.

Sunflowers and cake

One of our wedding favors was a sunflower seed packet (that we ordered here) and I had hoped everyone would go and scatter their sunflower seeds. Yesterday I visited the family I used to nanny for and they had done just that!

They even put this stick in the garden. :)

Last night we had some friends over for Andrew's birthday celebration. I saw this amazing looking cake on Design*Sponge and just had to make it.

Anyone want to come over for cake? We have so much left over!

The celebration continues

Tonight we went to Providence Cafe for Andrew's birthday dinner. It's turning into our special occasion dinner restaurant since we first went there the night we got engaged and then for my birthday. Afterwards we went to the top of the Target parking deck for a rooftop view of the city. Ahh, it was beautiful and the weather perfect. Now Andrew is drinking a coffee stout and watching Doctor Who. Anyone else watch Doctor Who?

Oh and Andrew got a new birthday bowtie that we ordered from our friends! Check out their website for awesome bowties!

That concludes July 7th! Also a huge birthday shout out to Andrew's birthday buddy, Miss Anna who is ONE today! Hooray!

Happy Birthday Andrew!!

Yay! This post is mostly about Andrew (and food) because today is his BIRTHDAY!! Wahoo! It's been fun celebrating him. I often think that your Birthday Eve is much better than your birthday night (kinda like Christmas Eve vs. Christmas night). Anyway, here's what we've been up to:

I know guys really aren't into flowers. But I am. Life is more festive with flowers.

Ok, Andrew is the healthiest eater I know. During his bachelor days this is what he would eat every night for dinner: a spinach salad with carrots, a sweet potato from the microwave (eaten plain), peas and boiled noodles. Well I cannot take such monotony in my cuisine, so the only thing that continues on is the spinach salad. At first I thought it was weird but now it's a staple. See below.

The easiest decoration EVER. I found them on here and they make me so happy hanging from our chandelier. It feels quite festive in our little apartment. (Oh, note the curtains I recently made!)

Balloons hanging from the light fixtures are not uncommon when it's your birthday.

Since Andrew lived in Japan (and is fluent in Japanese and totally throws me off when his friends call him and I have no idea what they're saying) he often requests an Asian fare for dinner. I thought his Birthday Eve would be the perfect night to whip something up. I was recently reading through a cookbook (am I the only newlywed that does this?!) when I found a recipe for Japanese Stuffed Peppers in this cookbook. Well I went all over the Queen City yesterday looking for dark sesame oil, straw mushrooms and dry sherry among a long list of ingredients.

This feels like a really intense picture of me but maybe I was super excited because 1. I don't usually like mushrooms, but I really liked this dish; 2. I finally made a Japanese something for Andrew; and 3. IT'S ANDREW's BIRTHDAY EVE!!

Beer. Of course.

Since we're having a dinner party with two couples on Friday and I'm going to make a surprise cake for Andrew then, I thought he still needed to blow out candles. So I made a chocolate chip cookie cake from this recipe. I loved how petite it is. I put just a little in a 9 inch cake pan (froze the rest) and iced it. Voila. I sent him to work with the rest of it. It will be a perfect snack for all after he gets the Panda Bear Singing Telegram I had sent to his office. ;) That would be so funny!

Wow, what a guy to put up with my cheese. After I made him a breakfast of blueberry ebelskiver pancakes I then had to take a picture of him leaving for work on his birthday, complete with a birthday balloon. I originally had the balloon on our front door for when he came home from work yesterday. However he reminded me that we wouldn't want to give our neighbors the wrong impression. Good thinking.

Happy Birthday my love!!

Guess what...

Weekend Update

On Saturday I went to my friend Margot's baby shower in Greensboro! She was a nanny in Connecticut when I was a nanny on Long Island. We would often meet in the City and go to Redeemer, shop and eat NYC pizza. :)

Her baby shower was so cute. Charlie will be born in about three weeks!

Me & Mar

We stopped to see Erin & Dave and HENRY in Raleigh!

It was fun to visit!

Then we went to hang out with the Neels! We had a fun time doing a dance game (what's it called again, Gin?) and made a yummy dinner from all the veggies Ginna got at the farmer's market that morning.

Hope you have a happy 4th! We're enjoying a lazy extended weekend hanging the curtains I made (!!), finishing decorating the apartment (thank you Goodwill and spray paint), eating homemade waffles and anticipating fireworks!

I'll leave you with the following conversation from breakfast:

Andrew: *something something something* "...it came out like a damp squib."

Carrie (not having had a complete cup of coffee yet): "Like a WHAT? A damn squid??"

Ahh, just another day in the life...