New York City

Last weekend, James and I traveled to The Big Apple.  We were heading up North to attend the wedding of one of James' grad school friends.  I have so much to say about both New York and Tyler and Julie's wedding, so I plan on separating out the two blog posts.

We took Friday off work, and to take full advantage of our time in New York, we booked a flight leaving Atlanta at 6:30am.  We set our alarms for 3am so that we could shower and get out the door by 4:30.  Needless to say, I was falling asleep a little exhausted by the time 9 o'clock rolled around Friday evening. Our flight landed in NYC around 9:30 Friday morning, and the adventure began.  We were staying at our friend Brent's apartment in the West Village but as soon as we got off the flight it dawned on us, we had no plan and didn't know how we would actually get to Brent's place.  Keep in mind I had never been to New York and James went once... in 7th grade.... on a safety patrol trip... with chaperones.  Yeah.

So we ended up getting an airport shuttle to Grand Central Station and then navigated the subway to Brent's apartment to drop off our bags.  By the time we got to Brent's we were starving (hello, we ate breakfast at 6:00am) and sweating. New York was unseasonably hot and muggy, as it had been sprinkling on and off.  This girl only packed jeans, boots and sweaters.  Needless to say, after we ate lunch we had to go shopping.  Those of you who know me well may think that I planned that little coincidence, but I promise I didn't!  James was very patient while I stopped off in a store and bought a dress really quick.

After we ate lunch, we headed down to the World Trade Center.  We didn't buy tickets beforehand, so we couldn't go on the official tour of ground zero, but we were able to see the construction of the new Twin Towers.  It was a bit eerie to be down there, and think that  just a little over ten years ago that whole area was covered in dust, chaos and fear.

After ground zero, we headed towards Wall Street.  We were hoping that we would see the Occupy Wall Street protesters so that we could take pictures and heckle them, but they were at a private park somewhere else in the city.

Of course, I had to get a picture outside Tiffany & Co. It's a girl thing...

After Wall Street, we headed down to Battery Park to see the Statue of Liberty.  Unfortunately, they weren't offering crown tours that afternoon, so we couldn't go up into the statue, but we did hang in Battery Park for a bit to take it all in.  We happened to sit down at a bench that had this carved into it:

I swear we didn't carve that ourselves.  Such a coincidence though...

We left Battery Park around 4pm when some of James' friends were starting to arrive in town.  We ended up going to get pizza with friends and hanging out Friday night.  Saturday morning we were up early to head over to New Jersey for Tyler and Julie's wedding.  More to come on that next...

The closet!

You may remember this post where I first talked about the master closet remodel, and shared a few pictures of the construction.  I am embarrassed to say that a) it has been over a year since that post, b) the closet has been done since January of this year, and c) I have still yet to update the blogging world on the finished product!  The original master bedroom closet in our house was pretty small, as most closets in older houses are. So last year, James and my Dad set out to build a walk in that would be big enough for all of our things.  I mean, I dont know why they were concerned...it's not like I have a lot of clothes or anything.

After the walls were constructed and painted and the carpet was installed, we started purchasing the closet organization system.  We ended up going with the Elfa system from the Container Store.  James said that the system was really easy to install, and we are pleased with the way it turned out.  They have a lot of "extras" that you wouldn't normally think about.  Things like tie racks and shoe racks that pull out to make access easier and valet rods where you can hang your clothes for the next day, or your dry cleaning when you get home. Here are some pictures of the finished product:

Jewelry organizer

Drawers for t-shirts, socks, etc

Shoe racks!

...that pull out!

Valet rod

Belt organizer

Necklace hooks

Tie rack

Sixteen

On Monday night, I hosted sixteen of my sorority sisters for a supper club at our house. I think sixteen definitely takes the cake for the highest number of people we have ever hosted at our house, which might I add, isn't very big! It went really well, and we had a lot of fun. The weather cooperated, so we were able to open out all of the french doors onto our back deck and spill out to the deck. The theme for the night was Italian, and everyone signed up to bring a different dish or bottle of wine. We had quite the feast! Between everyone we had baked ziti, lasagna, salad, bread, bruschetta, caprese salad bites, pasta salad, cinnamon biscotti, tiramisu, Italian wedding cake and many bottles of wine.

I am able to see some of the girls that came over every week, but it had been a year or more since I had a chance to catch up with the others. It was so much fun hearing where everyone is in life now and reminiscing on good ol' college days at 317 South Milledge Ave.

Dawgs Win!

This past Saturday, James and I headed up to Athens for our first home game of the season. Obviously, we are the dawgs good luck charms, because we finally got a win! Orrrr maybe we just won 59-0 because we were playing Coastal Carolina. Either way, we had a great time. Athens is such a special place to us. It's where we both spent four of the best years of our lives and also where we met. Lots of great memories in the classic city!

James and I tailgating at Sig Ep

After the game we headed to Sweet Peppers Deli downtown. Two of James' fraternity brothers, Alan and Ryan Pope opened Sweet Peppers in downtown Athens last year. It's really yummy and walking distance of everything. If you go, I would highly recommend the Mediterranean chicken panini. I actually didn't get the Mediterranean panini, but James did, and I wish I had after he gave me a bite!

Here's to hoping the dawgs can pull out a W against the rebels this weekend!

Kiawah Island, SC

Over Labor Day weekend, I went on a girls trip to Kiawah Island with 6 of my girlfriends, my friend Sara's mom and my mom. Sara's family has a house on the beautiful Kiawah Island, about 30 minutes outside of Charleston. A fun, relaxing weekend could not have come at a better time, after a stressful few weeks at work. On Thursday morning, me, Sara and Mary Frances made our way to Kiawah. Our moms had been there since Monday....and we were super jealous and ready to join them! On Thursday evening our friend Kelly flew into the Charleston airport. After we picked her up, we headed out to dinner in downtown Charleston at Coast. Can't get better than girl talk and fresh seafood at the beach.

On Friday, we headed out to the beach for the whole day. During the afternoon on Friday Kristi & Shannon arrived and then Amy got there Friday evening. Here we all are before heading out to dinner on Friday night.

Oh, and I know I mentioned Sara's mom and my mom were there the whole time. Well, they pretty much had their own agenda the whole week and spent all their time chatting on the back porch, and going out to dinner together. Apparently they were too cool to hang with us. Honestly though, I am so thankful for the friendship they have formed. It's so fun to be such close friends with Sara, and then our mom's be friends also. All weekend we called them "The Twins" or "Moms".

The Twins, my mom, Edie on the left and Ms Margie on the right

We sat on the beach all day Saturday afternoon, and then went to dinner at our favorite restaurant in Kiawah, Rosebank Farms, on Saturday night. As soon as dinner was over, we headed over to a sports bar to watch the Georgia/Boise State game. Even though the Dawgs lost we had a really fun night!

All the girls after dinner at Rosebank Farms

My mom and I and Sara and her mom

Unfortunately, Sunday was a little overcast and rainy. But it was probably for the best because we were all dragging a bit from the night before. Ms Margie took us all to lunch at The Beach Club on the island and we all kind of lounged around all day. On Sunday night Ms Margie did a low country boil and we stayed around the house playing games and drinking wine.

Feast

Edie and Marge- they have learned the picture pose from their girls...

Sara and I

Sweet friends: Me, Kristi, Amy, Mary Frances, Sara, Shannon and Kelly

It was such a fun weekend, and I can't wait for our next girls trip. I definitely missed my hubby though, and I think he missed me too. I came home to a spotless house and these on the kitchen table:

James' TV Debut

...okay actually the title of this blog post is a lie. Few people actually know this, but my hubby has actually been on TV before. A few years ago James and his family went on a family vaca to California, and went to a live taping of The Price is Right. While James wasn't a contestant, he was seated on the front row and the camera panned by him multiple times. He also may or may not have pretended he was friends with the guy who won, jumping on the stage, cheering and celebrating enthusiastically at the end of the show. We have it on tape if you don't believe me. Its pretty humorous.

But this post is about James' most recent 15 minutes 15 seconds of fame. Like many Dekalb County property owners, we received our property tax bill in the mail the other day. Because the property taxes are paid out of our mortgage escrow account, we didnt pay much attention to it. Then emails started circulating on our neighborhood listserve about the land and structure values being switched from last year. Example:

2010 Land Value $60,000
2010 Home Value $150,000

2011 Land Value $150,000
2011 Home Value $60,000

It seemed a bit strange, so James being the nerd he is, contacted the 11 Alive Investigative Reporter. Bill Liss from chanel 6 actually called back and said he wanted to interview him! Anyway, here is the link to the news story, in case anyone is interested in watching:

http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=201954

It was pretty exciting to see my handsome hubby on TV, event though they didn't really solve the issue at hand. Just for the record, Dekalb County gave conflicting information. They issued an official statement (in writing) saying that it was a computer glitch, but then the Tax Assessor that they interview on the video gives a different reason for the switch. Overall, we aren't super worried about it because our bottom line tax bill isnt drastically effected. We just thought it was a bit strange. Bill Liss called James the other day saying there may be a follow up story next week, because he wasn't pleased with the answer either. Also... James and Bill are BFF now.

Nashville

This past weekend, James and I met our friends Lindsey and David in Nashville for the weekend. Lindsey & David are good friends of ours from college. They moved up to Indianapolis after they got married, when David's job took them there. We are still dying to go to Indy one weekend, but Nashville is actually the halfway point between Atlanta and Indianapolis, so we decided to meet there for the weekend. Rachel and her husband Brad were supposed to join in on the weekend fun, but unfortunately they could make it! We missed The Davidsons, but we definitely enjoyed our stay in Nashville. We ended up staying right downtown within walking distance of everything, which was really nice!

Both couples arrived in Nashville on Friday night, around 7:30 and we were famished, so we headed to a Mexican place that our concierge recommended. Queso and Margs? Yes please! After dinner we headed straight out to they honkey-tonks... yes, thats right... honkey-tonks. Since I had never been to Nashville before, I literally laughed out loud when someone suggested we go to the honkey-tonks. But I definitely enjoy country music, so I was down for a little boot scootin' boogie.

James and I enjoying some live music at Tootsies

On Saturday, we had a lazy morning and then headed to lunch at Puckett's, which was just a few blocks away from our hotel. A friend green tomato BLT and diet coke definitely hit the spot. After lunch, we did a little sightseeing.

The Ryman Auditorium

James and I outside of the country music hall of fame

The rest of the day and night on Saturday we found ourselves back in the honkey-tonks, taking in all of the live music.

We had a blast in Nashville, and are getting ready to pack our bags again to head out of town again this weekend. We are headed up to Big Canoe for an Ostenson Family weekend trip!