Since starting this blog, I have noticed that my life is a series of weekends. The actual weeks don’t seem to matter. Well, not that they don’t matter, it’s just the same thing on repeat. Go to work, try to go to the gym for lunch, leave work, cook dinner, eat dinner, think about cleaning, ignore cleaning, watch tv, go to bed. And plan what we’re going to do on the weekend.

So back to the past weekend. Saturday we cleaned the garage. Like, cleaned it. Swept away the cobwebs and spider balls, loaded up the car with junk to take to the dump, organized our garage sale stuff. It’s so refreshing out there now. That night Keith wanted to see A Country Christmas at Opryland Hotel and since that place is amazing, we made the trek. Too bad I trusted Keith to have paid attention to when they were actually starting their Christmas decorations. Because it wasn’t last Saturday.

Sunday I attended my first professional football game. I love going to games, which is something I never thought would happen. Keith is a huge Bills fan and I like the Titans, so it was a natural game for us to go to. As a super-bonus, a salesman I worked with gave me his AWESOME tickets as a thank you for a sale I helped him with. The reward highly outweighed the work I did, but I wasn’t going to argue. So Sunday we got up early, had a couple of beers and headed to the stadium.

that's the Pedestrian Bridge we thought we were walking on

The game was great (especially since my team won) (oh and the head coach of the Bills was fired 2 days later) (oh and Bud Adams was fined $250,000 for being a crazy old bird-flippin coot). We found ourselves strangely obsessed with the cheerleaders. We picked out favorites and laughed at the ones that couldn’t dance. Professional cheerleaders are a bizarre.

note: awesome seats

note: beer crotch

Stay tuned for next weekend where I will detail Keith’s birthday party. It’s looking good…

The Weekend

The weather this past weekend was perfect. Perfect for me, anyway. Sunny and 60 degrees. If I could afford to live in a place that had that weather year round, I would. Guess I’ll just keep waiting for my Sultan father to pass away and leave his inheritance to me…

Saturday we did some light chores and then made our way to our first MTSU game. I went to school there for 7 years (some more than others) and never made it to a single game. Stacey and I had plans to go to one, but the cable guy was 6 hours late and ruined it. So the MTSU experience is slightly different from the UT one. The most noticeable difference (aside from the 100,000 people) is that they don’t check your bags and they will give you straws. Straws might not seem important, but if you’ve smuggled liquor into a UT game and poured it into your drink, then you know you have no way to stir it. Which means for the next 15 minutes you are doing shots of vodka. And because there are only 200 people at an MTSU game, you can have an entire section to yourselves. We had a blast and we’ve committed to attending at least one of these per year.

Sunday was the Day of the Desk. I bought a new desk to replace the one I bought 10 years ago at Target that had pieces sticking out of it. One day I will be able to afford furniture that is already put together, but until then, I’m stuck with days like this. It took me 8 hours to assemble this thing. I did take a break to go to the grocery store, but I was a zombie by the end of the day. I have scratches and bruises on my hands from scraping them on the sides of the wood while screwing in screws. My eyes were blurry from trying to decipher which part was AA1 and which part was ZZ9. But when I finished, I felt awesome. I mean, look at this thing.

yes, that computer is an antique

The top drawer is a little wonky because I couldn’t figure out which drawer tracks went where and had to screw and unscrew them 6 times. And there is a small chip in the underside of the keyboard holder where I threw my screwdriver and it took out a chunk of wood. But that just adds personality, right?

Halloween

I’m discovering that I’m not very good at updating blogs. But I’m trying. Promise.

So I’ve never been a huge fan of Halloween, but this year I let Stacey infect me. And infect me she did. (Actually, I’m realizing that Stacey is responsible for my Halloween plans every year…) This time I had not one, but two costumes—work and play. Work was relatively simple; we went with The Wizard of Oz theme and my hair made me a natural Dorothy candidate. I think we all looked amazing, but the flying monkey really stole the show.

(note the super awesome wings)

Then for Stacey’s Halloween party, I chose to be the Angel of Death. But not just any angel of death—mine and Keith’s current obsession with One Tree Hill meant I would be going as Peyton going as the Angel of Death. I just hope no one got obsessed with me and tattooed my image on their back.

I made this face in every picture. I guess I thought it was death-y.

I was very detailed in my depiction, even though the only person that could tell was Keith. Speaking of Keith, he went as Super Mario, which I've heard was a popular choice this year. The best thing that came from this costume is he discovered is love for overalls. I can not wait to see him cleaning gutters in these this weekend.

We're already thinking about next year's costumes.

Sunday

Sunday is always my cleaning day, but this Sunday was especially bad since we had been out of town the two previous weekends. (I’m not even going to pretend like I could clean during the week.) So yesterday I made a day out of it and cleaned like guests were coming over. I mopped (moving furniture and getting the baseboards), dusted the corners and behind the furniture, washed the dog bowls, disinfected trashcans…it was awesome. I opened the windows and enjoyed the fresh air. I also enjoyed beers while cleaning. This made it a most satisfying day.

Asheville

We took a min-vacation and met Grant and Jennifer in Asheville NC last weekend. We rented the most amazing house—the decorations alone made the stay worthwhile.

Shell Cat

Porcelain Pets

Most of the weekend was spent eating. Friday night was Jennifer’s spaghetti. It was wonderful—I’m adjusting my own recipe now. She also brought salad from her favorite pizza place in Charleston and it may have looked ordinary, but it certainly did not taste ordinary.

Saturday morning was our turn and we made crème brulée french toast with bacon. Usually Keith and I go with turkey bacon, but we decided to splurge and ended up getting a slab of thick-cut real bacon. I don’t want to talk about the amount of grease it produced, but it was directly proportional to it’s flavor. The french toast was not-too-shabby either, but we were just getting started.

Saturday afternoon was mexican and then it was on to the pièce de résistance—Zambra’s. We had dinner there and after an initially frustrating get-in-the-door experience, everything was incredible. Pomegranate pork spring rolls, gnocci with bittersweet chocolate, lamb taco, veal cheeks (Keith was adventurous and I am GLAD), sesamae seared scallops, sheepshead and chips…it was endless. Topped off by a chocolate torte with sea salt, we waddled out of there. (What I gained in weight, I lost in my wallet.)

Stuffed and Happy

Bruch was mexican-inspired and I don’t know exactly what I had, but there were eggs and it was spicy and I was happy. Jennifer’s parents met us and we had a wonderful time.

We managed to do a couple of things that didn’t involve food. The weather wasn’t very cooperative and I’m afraid Jennifer and Grant felt like they were in the tundra after leaving Charleston. We drove through the Blue Ridge Parkway—I love the changing of the leaves. I don’t know how anyone can’t be happy looking at that.

This looks sweet, but we're really just freezing

We also wandered around downtown and found that Asheville is a nice town…natural…but nice. I’ll go back at some point. Especially since I still need to go to the Biltmore Dairy Barn.

Phases of Blog Insanity

Let me start by saying, I have never been that into weddings. I didn’t plan mine when I was a little girl. I did not ask about the details of my friends’ weddings when they were getting married. And I certainly did not know that there is a wedding subculture that lurks just below the surface of normal society whose sole purpose is to talk about every last detail involved in getting married. And look. Now I’ve joined it.

Phase 1: Besieged
It started out simply enough—googling ‘wedding ideas’, finding a couple of sites, clicking on the recommended sites of those sites, clicking on the recommended sites of those sites…then one day I realized I had 40 Favorites in my Wedding folder.

Phase 2: Systematize
I realized that I could not continue down this path, so I created sub-folders (Blogs, Ideas, Resources) that would help me manage my newly-found addiction. When I found an invitation suite that I loved the look of, it went into Ideas. When I found a vendor that looked useful, it went into Resources. And when I found a Blog that updated frequently and featured weddings that I liked, it went into Blogs.

Phase 3: Obsess
The amount of information that you can find on wedding blogs is astounding. The Real Weddings features quickly became my favorite and I felt like I was getting so much inspiration from them. They update them so frequently. And they are all so pretty. I was checking the sites several times a day. I was a crazy person.

Phase 4: Forgo
Then I took a week vacation to the beach. With no computers. And no blogs. And guess what? I survived. I didn’t miss them. Everything was still okay.

Phase 5: Awareness
When I came back to civilization and had my blogs again, I realized: These are completely unrealistic portrayals of planning a wedding. On my budget. With what I like. And that’s when I didn’t need the blogs anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I still read them. But I know that I don’t have $100,000 (like, 1/10 of that) and I don’t have crafty skills, and I don’t have services to trade with vendors. And that is 100% okay with me.

Confession

Sometimes on the long commute home from work…if there isn’t anything on the radio…I’ll listen to the song we’re using for our first dance. Then I just let my mind wander around how that moment is going to feel.

I did NOT expect that having a wedding would make me a crazy person. But it kind of is.

The Cake

This has certainly been the most enjoyable decision to make so far. We loved the first place we tried, but maybe we should pretend we didn’t just so we can eat more cake.

We are really happy with our vendor choice: 2 Chicks & Some Flour. I was a little nervous, only because they were priced so reasonably that I thought it couldn’t be real. Or that the cake would taste terrible. Or they would be awful people. Turns out they really are just 2 chicks making some cakes. We tasted 6 kinds of cake and 6 kinds of filling/icing and it was awesome. It’s possible that I horrified them since I didn’t notice there was a fork until it was over. I actually took pieces of cake and scooped the filling out of the bowls with my hands. So much for classy.

The most surprising event was with the groom’s cake. Mr. Met decided he wanted a cupcake tower instead of a giant baseball or an orange T. Fine by me. We picked out two flavors for the cupcakes and 3 flavors for the cake. Simple enough—until mom decided the flavors weren’t special enough. This was one of those times that it was just easier to say “you’re right” than have a fight, so after adding layer, we are finished with our cake. I don’t want to ruin the surprise for anyone who’s going to be there (mostly because I imagine anyone who is reading this will probably be there), but with 6 different kinds of cake to choose from, surely everyone will be happy. I know I will. Especially when mom sees the topper…

The Dress

My dress came in today! I bought it in May so I had kind of forgotten about it. I'll be honest, I'm a little nervous that when I see it again I won't love it as much as the first time. The only person that has seen me in it is my mom and I don't want to say her taste is questionable...it's just very different from mine. Plus she kept talking about a blanket I had when I was 5 and how it had a satin edge, so of course I would pick a dress made out of soft material because touch has always been my strongest sense. Basically she’s crazy. But we did have a really good weekend shopping. I think she was just so happy this was finally happening she didn’t have time to be crazy-crazy.

So hopefully next weekend I will take some trusted friends to make sure I look amazing and then I guess its alteration time. Which means I need to make a decision on shoes. I’m pretty sure I’m going with a pair of yellow flats; I just have to prepare myself for mom’s reaction. I have a feeling she’s expecting something more traditional. “What about your pictures?! You need pretty shoes for your pictures!!” Blegh. I need to be comfortable and feel pretty. And yellow flats will be comfortable and make me feel pretty.

The Food

The food was much more fun to make a decision about. Our first caterer had us doing passed hors d'oeuvres and a risotto station. I was really excited about that risotto...until we got the quote. I don't know if I'm naive or if I just haven’t thrown enough catered parties, but the cost was really surprising to me.

So we decided to shop around and I’m glad we did. We chose Vanishing Gourmet and I just love Jeanne. She asked us questions, listened to what we liked and came up with the perfect menu for us. Which I guess is exactly what she is supposed to do, but we love her anyway. She also said she would cut our cake for us—and I’m glad she did, because I don’t think it would have ever crossed my mind to get someone for that.

Our Menu

Antipasto Skewers
Mini Sliders w/ Pulled Pork, Beef and Chicken
Assorted Sauces
7 Cheese Baked Macaroni
Field Green Salad
Marinated Roasted Veggie Skewers
(eggplant, squash, mushroom, red onion)
Fried Peaches

We went with the buffet style because that makes the most sense (and costs the least) and I think it’s going to be awesome. I know that some brides say they didn’t eat any of their food, but let me tell you—I can not imagine having that problem. There is no way I’m going to pass up macaroni and cheese. Especially when I know how much I paid for it.

The Venue

aerial

The venue was the hardest decision I've made so far. I just felt like it set the tone for the rest of the wedding and that was a scary decision to make. We could use a church, but we don't belong to one and I really wanted to have the ceremony and reception at the same location. There are plenty of plantations in Nashville, but I've never been a plantation kind of girl. I found an amazing barn venue that had just opened, but it was WAY out of budget. And I wasn’t going to be able to find 300 people to fill it up anyway. So when I found aerial, I felt like it was the most fitting for what we needed and wanted. And it worked with our budget. When we visited it, we just sort of knew it would work. We wanted something unique and something people would remember. And I think a rooftop in downtown Nashville is memorable. So aerial it is.