before and after

Yes!  I loaded my pictures "backwards" fully expecting blogger to do something crazy like load them in the correct order this time, but it's still loading backwards so now they're right!  Hooray!  

So, this was our cabinet "before"

that bottom shelf of our "everyday" dishes was pretty bare

And then!  Poof!  

After:  

Some of Adrian's friends bought SIX place settings for us!  

What a blessing!  Amazing!  Thank you so much!  

wish me luck!

I'm entering a dessert cook-off at our church tonight.  Wish me luck!  Kelly

first married meal!

"What?!" you say, "You haven't eaten in over a month?"

Well, no one said blogging had to be extremely timely did they?

Of course we ate on our honeymoon. I guess our first true married meal was lunch at the airport version of Blue Mesa after the super nice hotel man took all of our luggage all the way to the baggage check in at the airport straight from our hotel room on those fancy little carts they have. (Fancy!) After all that deluxe service we had plenty of time to chow down on some airport food to satisfy our growling stomachs.

In San Francisco where we honeymooned we had some wonderfully appealing sourdough, gnocchi, polenta with Bolognese sauce in San Fran's "Little Italy" at Pinnochio's. If you're ever in San Fran, I would *highly* recommend it! We had a decadent Ghiradelli hot fudge sundae and breakfast at Sear's Fine Foods and sat just inside that little window you can see in the pic on the website looking out onto the street. We saw another pair of newlyweds getting into their shoe polished car. :) The service and food at Sears were top-rate! Chocolate croissants complimentary at our hotel were a treat as were the Lindt truffles piled in a bowl at our B&B in Santa Cruz! (um . . . Kelly, chocolate is not a meal . . . getting back on track). We splurged on a fancy dinner at Shadowbrook in Capitola-by-the-Sea and happened upon a goat dairy in Pescadero where we indulged in flavored goat cheeses that we ate at an idyllic picnic spot behind the grocery there with fresh bread and salami.

So, all that to say that we ate well, but back to the point, this post is about our first married meal at home that we cooked and where we broke out those new wedding gifts we were just itching to use!

Unfortunately blogger loaded all of my photos in reverse order so just bear with me. :)

Here is the finished meal served on our new dishes!

dishes: Staccato from Crate and Barrell

broccolini cooking in one of our new all-clad pots!

an adorable little whisks with hearts tied onto one of our packages in one of our new pyrex bowls! (Thanks, Aunt Gail and Uncle Terry, Stacie, Mike, Jenny, Jon and Bethany!)

hey, Rice-a-roni may not be the classiest way to inaugurate the new all-clad but we went to SAN FRANCISCO for our honeymoon! You know, "Rice-a-roni, the San Francisco treat!" (You'll be singing that all day now, sorry!)

The ingredients!

Yum!

We are so enjoying being married and making a home together. Thank you to all of you who blessed us with so many nice gifts to feather our nest with and try out our culinary skills with! Kelly

oops!

Sandy over at Reluctant Entertainers posted a confession about dropping an egg on the floor. I don't know if that was in my subconscious or what when I became butter fingers yesterday while putting away the groceries Adrian bought. I almost dropped the carton of eggs, recovered and then really did drop them! Oh dear!

Well, when life gives you spilled eggs . . . blog about it, right?

So once again blogger is importing my pics in reverse order (grr) so I'll just blog backwards I guess. :)

exhibit A: a nice, beautiful egg, ummm . . . just waiting to go into some yummy dish



exhibit B: my enamelware bowl full of eggs. I'm pretending we live on a farm. Who wouldn't love to live on a farm for a week or so?

(sidenote: every Easter of my childhood we would go to my grandparents' house and have a big egg hunt with all of the cousins. At the end we would play with the eggs. The playhouse became a barn/henhouse where we would set all of the colored hardboiled eggs on the various ledges and then take our baskets and go and gather the eggs. Can you say city girl who's read a farm book or two? Then my grandma would have us put all the eggs in a pile in the middle and we would go around the circle and each pick an egg to keep, then go around again and so forth until all the eggs were divied up fair and square.)

exhibit C: goopy egg mess sliming out of the carton (only two cracked thankfully!)

exhibit D: oops! the egg carton fell right out of my hands and onto the kitchen floor

so, I'll end with a question, how long will that second egg whose shell was cracked but which did not leak so I poured it into a handy little prep bowl with lid (a gift from my mom!) last in the fridge? I don't have any plans for cooking/baking with an egg tonight but I'm sure I could think of soon.

So, if you can answer this question, I would love to know (Deborah, I'm pegging you as one of the most likely to know) and if you have a suggestion of what sort of yummy nummy dish I should make with that egg that so nearly lost it's life, I would love to hear that as well! Thanks! Have a marvelous weekend! Kelly

where I blog

I've seen before on other's blogs a pic of where they blog from.  I don't know why but I always find it so interesting to see the pictures of the places people are when they're putting themselves out there for us all to read.  This is my spot.  The ice cream is a pretty standard feature at the computer.  :)  

Where do you blog?  I'd love to see a pic.  Put one on your blog and link over here and leave a comment saying you put up a post with where you blog and we'll all see each others!  Kelly

my dress

I will be able to share professional pictures with you pretty soon I think.  Hopefully by Thanksgiving for sure!  I thought I'd give you a preview of my dress.

This top pic was taken during the ceremony while our brothers prayed over us and the joining of our two families and our families lovingly surrounded us.  

This photo was taken way back in July at the bridal shop.  It's not the greatest picture but I like how it shows off the cathedral length veil.  It is the veil that my mom wore down the aisle on her wedding day 36 years ago!  

happy fall!

for those of you who know anything about plants, this photo was actually taken last May in Chicago but I liked the fallish hues in the photo.  Hope you're having a good day!  Kelly

please vote

Please vote today if you haven't already. It's important.

Please vote in an educated manner. Seriously, it only took me only 20 minutes to google "my county voter's guide" and learn about the different candidates on my ballot. State Board of Education, Judges, Congressmen, etc., etc. to make educated decisions.

If you're dreading waiting in line today, check out emily's post about overhearing interesting conversations around her in line. Take a book. Enjoy the "mind break".

Thanks. It's important. May God bless our country on this important day. Kelly

p.s. If you need added incentive, my friend Julie left the following comment on my last post. :)

"note also that most STARBUCKS locations will give out a free tall coffee to anyone on Tuesday who tells them that they voted. :o]"

Also, I just saw this about free scoops from Ben and Jerry's tonight between 5 & 8! Yippee! Love me some Ben and Jerry's. What's your favorite flavor? My current favorite is Creme Brulee but it changes quite often. :)

free coffee!

My friend Jen posted about free coffee from Barnes and Noble and Dunkin' Donuts! I'm going to Barnes and Noble on Friday! Didn't want any of you to miss out! Head on over and see Jen. Her blog is great! Kelly

I'm a winner!

Thanks, Tara! So exciting!

If you took pictures at our wedding, let me know so I can include them in the book I won! Kelly

a wonderful thing for a husband to say . . .

"your passport's current, right?"

a rock

"The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer

my God is my rock in whom I take refuge.

He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold."  

Psalm 18:2

Inspiration of pairing a photo with scripture from Modgirl

photo:  a beach on highway one taken on our honeymoon

chairs!

Remember this big ol' fat chair dilemma?  

Look how great they turned out!  

Didn't Adrian do a wonderful job on hanging the lanterns?  I love the way they look!  

Thanks so much for the photos, Jenni!  

Our Save the Date - after the fact

Now that the wedding is over and I am not wary of sharing the wedding date and place, I thought I'd show you guys our save the date.  

I liked the idea of save the dates but at the same time realized I didn't want to spend a lot of time and money on them once I got into the wedding planning.  So, we decided to send electronic save the dates.  We sent what you see below via e-mail.  

I had collected some craft supplies and just began laying things out and taking photos.  Then I made the whole thing in iphoto on my mac.  The top collage was from a template for a greeting card you can make to have printed.  The other images are just photos I took of things laid out on my parents' kitchen table.  The other bonus is that I didn't have to glue anything down and therefore just dismantled all my "set-ups" when I was done and I still have all of those craft supplies to use for other things.  

For those of you out there planning your weddings, this was a great, cost-effective way for us to send save the dates and we also included our website information in the e-mail.  The only thing I would caution is that we sent it from my e-mail address so some of Adrian's friends deleted it right off thinking it was spam because they didn't know me.  

Our wedding is fast approaching!  We'd like for you to be there!  

Your destination is McKinney, Texas.  

You can come by car, train or air.  

Please join us in celebrating our marriage on . . . 

Thank you so much for your friendship, love and support!  We are really looking forward to celebrating with each one of you.  Kelly and Adrian 

If you were at our wedding, I would love to hear about what you thought of McKinney, what you did that weekend, etc. when we weren't together.  For instance, on my way to my hair appointment on the wedding day, I saw two of our guests shopping on the square downtown.  They looked like they were having a great time.  So much fun!  I hope you all had just as great a weekend overall as we did!  Kelly

Sunday

Since I posted pics of last Saturday yesterday, I thought I'd post pics of last Sunday today.  

Last Sunday we flew back from California where we spent our lovely honeymoon week and came home!  Home!  What a wonderful word when we live here together.  It was so neat to know that this is now OUR home.  

My mom outdid herself for us after the wedding and had our apartment clean and all ready for a nice arrival for us.  She put up this banner that we had used at the wedding on our mantel and stacked all our wedding presents around as well as some neat things from the wedding, the San Francisco children's book that she had given us at a shower, etc.  

our wedding cards just waiting to be taken out of their birdcage home and opened

She also got out all of our new towels that she'd washed and set up our new master bath!  

Thanks for the apothecary jars, Barbie and thanks to everyone for the towels!  

my first linen closet filled with the blessing of new, matching, fluffy towels!  

honeymoon pics

Happy Saturday everyone!

I know, I know, everyone wants to see wedding pics and I'll get some on here but we're still in the process of making heads or tails out of things around here, loading photos on our computers, needing to charge our overworked cameras so they'll let us load photos, etc.  Have patience, have patience.  

But for your viewing pleasure this lovely Saturday I thought I'd show you some fun shots from last Saturday, our last full day in California

Dolphin???

nope, killer whales!

it was amazing!  Adrian took me on a whale watch out of Monterey, CA.  He knows I love whales!  We saw sooo many!  God really blessed our trip and we marveled at these creatures he has made.  So exciting.  We spent 4-5 beautiful hours aboard a ship out at sea on a beautiful, beautiful day!  

I just liked this sign for pelican pizza.  I wish the shadow of the lights wasn't in the picture but what are you gonna do? There was Italian food all over the place in northern California.  We ate in North Beach (San Fran's Little Italy) a couple of times and boy was it yummy!  

There's an old fashioned boardwalk in Santa Cruz, CA where we stayed for a couple of nights.   We went last Saturday afternoon and I LOVED it!  It was so neat, just like something out of a book.  This is the GIANT DIPPER that we road.  Our first roller coaster together!  

Finally, pumpkins!  

I have mostly been to CA in the summer and I'm not sure why but I didn't expect to see pumpkin stands all over the place.  To me "fall" and California aren't things that I equate.  I guess I just think of it as endless summer there.  Anyway, of course there is so much agriculture so they have lots of pumpkins. This is from the pumpkin/flower stand where we stopped on our way to the hotel the last night before we flew out on Sunday morning.  They had a big sign that said dozen roses - $5.  Adrian pulled right off the road and bought some for me!  We were on our honeymoon after all!  

We're Back!

from a lovely week on the West Coast!  

Adrian and Kelly are getting married!

That's right!  We are.  Right now!  

God is good and may He bless this beginning of our life together and continue to bless us, grow us and guide us always!  

Kelly

the social

The venue where we got married had a lot of different events all the time so you didn't get to book it for an entire weekend or anything. Basically we got it for the day of our wedding and that's it. I think there was a high school homecoming dance there the night before our wedding.

We didn't have attendants and since our family members who took part in our wedding doing music, readings, etc. are all polished speakers, performers, etc. and our preacher is very accomplished at doing weddings and we certainly weren't his first, we decided that a formal "rehearsal" in the space was not important to us.

We decided that we what was really important to us was actually getting to spend time with all of the wonderful friends and family who were coming to our wedding, particularly the many, many people who came from out of town and who we don't get to see just every day.

My old youth minister, Greg, once said that there are two times in your life when everyone you know and love is going to gather in one place. One of those is your wedding and the other is your funeral. Obviously, you only get to enjoy those people at one of those events. His point was to soak up that time with the people you love and who love you at your wedding rather than getting overly focused on details and things.

So . . .

we went a different route than the norm and had a big social at a park and invited everyone who was invited to the wedding to come the night before and hang out.

We made it simple by getting sandwiches, chips, soft drinks, etc., nothing fancy, and everything was just serve yourself.

That meant we got to enjoy

family

old and new friends

big hugs from people we hadn't seen in a while

beginning to be hospitable together as a couple

sweet conversations

watching our friends and family from both sides join together and pitch in to set out food, etc.

This was actually one of my favorite parts just watching all of the people that we love individually meeting each other, smiling, laughing, talking, working, eating and playing alongside each other. It was neat.

We talked and caught up on each other's lives.

People came from Alaska, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, other parts of Texas and even overseas. I may even be missing a place or two.

It was so very special to us!

We had simple decorations.

Many handmade by friends.

There was laughter,

football

hugs

and smiles!

I think it was absolutely perfect for us and I'm so glad we did it.

What a wonderful night!

Kelly