Chattanooga Engagement Party

Last Saturday, we headed up to Chattanooga for Aidan & Jinna Anne's engagement party. As soon as we arrived, we headed straight to Blue Water Grill downtown for a food tasting.  My parents will be hosting the rehearsal dinner at the Tennessee Aquarium and the food will be catered by Blue Water Grill.  After the delicious tasting, we headed to the chapel to see where my brother will be getting married.  The wedding will take place at the Patten Chapel on the UT Chattanooga campus.  The chapel was absolutely beautiful-- stained glass and detailed wood work throughout.  I can't believe that James and I will be standing up at the altar with Aidan and Jinna Anne, witnessing their vows in 3 short months! After taking a quick tour of the chapel, we headed to the Tennessee Aquarium to see the location where the rehearsal dinner will take place.  After looking at the space, we walked around the aquarium to check out the fishies:

As soon as Aidan and James saw the tank where you can pet the sting rays, their sleeves were rolled up and their hands were in the water...Such big kids.

Aidan and Jinna Anne in one of the exhibits...clearly JAT was excited

I found an alligator! Those of you who know my obsession with the show Swamp People will understand and appreciate this...

Later that evening James and I, my parents, Aidan & Jinna Anne, and Jinna Anne's parents went out to dinner before the engagement party.  

The engagement party was hosted by a good family friend of Jinna Anne's. There were all kinds of delicious deserts, good wine and toasts by Aidan and Jinna Anne's friends & family.  My toasts to the happy couple always seem to start out with "I was never a huge fan of any of the girls Aidan dated until he met you..." (which is so true by the way). It was really fun hearing all of the other toasts and the overwhelming support everyone has for the engaged couple.  

Aidan & Jinna Anne listening to the toasts

Some of the girls at the engagement party

Aidan, Jinne Anne, James and I

Such a fun weekend! We are looking forward to spending more family time this weekend with both my side of the family and James'.  James' sister, Julia, will be delivering her baby either sometime in the middle of the night tonight or tomorrow morning (please keep her in your prayers).  We are so excited to have a new niece or nephew for Christmas! 

Front Door Facelift

We recently finished two small projects that didn't take long at all, but make a big impact.  One is a more permanent change, and the other was a fun Christmas project.  

We have been wanting to replace the light fixtures on either side of our front door for awhile now, but wanted to wait until after we painted the exterior.   As y'all know, the painting is now done, so it was time for these to go...

We wanted a darker fixture to tie in with the newly painted black shutters, and something with a clear glass.  After a quick trip to Lowe's, we came back with these:

I am slightly obsessed with them. I enlisted James to do the wiring, and in no time, we had new front porch lights.

I love the herringbone pattern on the fixtures.

Our next project was a triple wreath for the front door.  I saw the idea on Pinterest a few months ago, and knew immediately that I wanted to incorporate a triple wreath into the Christmas decorating at our house.  So, this is the inspiration picture:

Here is the how to from the Martha Stewart website.  After a brief trip to Michael's, I came back with all of the supplies to get started.  Once again, I enlisted James to help me with securing the wreaths to the door. We ended up using all fishing wire to hang the wreaths, because we didn't want to put any nail holes in our newly painted front door.  

Deck The Halls

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, James and I set out to get our first Christmas tree as a married couple.  As most first time newlywed experiences are, it was a fun time, and also a learning experience for both of us.  I learned about James' Christmas decorating traditions and James learned how OCD specific I am about making the tree look perfect.  Since childhood, James and his family would decorate the Christmas tree while eating cookie dough.  James' cookie of choice is his mom's oatmeal chocolate chip.  So we cranked up the Christmas carols, pulled out the mixer and got to work!

Mom O's Choc-Oat Chip Cookie Recipe

1 cup (2 sticks) margarine or butter softened

1 1/4 cups firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

2 Tbs. milk

2 tsp. vanilla

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

2 1/2 cups Quick or Old Fashioned Oats, uncooked

1 (12 oz) pkg. semi- sweet chocolate morsels

1)  Heat oven to 375. 2)  In large bowl beat margarine and sugars until creamy. Add eggs, milk, and vanilla; beat well. Add flour and baking soda; mix well. Stir in oats, chocolate morsels; mix well. 3) Drop by rounded measuring tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet.  4) Bake 9 to 10 minutes for a chewy cookie or 12 to 13 minutes for a crisp cookie.  5) Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet; remove cookies to wire rack.  Cool completely.

The dough-- James' favorite part

Finished product

I've made this recipe 2 or 3 times and for some reason they never taste as good as they taste when James' mom makes them.  I guess she has the "mom's touch"--James insists they taste the same, but I think he is just being nice.  While baking we started working on the tree.  James and I are both firm believers in a real tree.  We just love that fresh evergreen smell and the whole act of picking out the perfect tree. 

It was love at first sight

I'm not sure how much fun James had decorating the tree, while I watched over him...moving the ornaments he had just placed.  I really need to loosen up before we have kids.  Here is the finished product, along with some of the other decorations around the house. Including an early Christmas gift from my parents-- a nativity set.

Prints

Those of you who know me (or have seen my Pinterest page) know that I love the look of a cluster of simple prints.  On Wednesday, I was out and about and decided to stop in at Home Goods to check out their Christmas decorations, when I saw three botanical prints for $30 each.  Although my husband didn't seem to think so, $90 for three pieces of art is a steal! Needless to say, they ended up in my cart and now they have found a home in our guest room.

I may, or may not be slightly obsessed with them...

Numbers

Before we re-painted, the hardware on our front door was brass.  We have replaced all of the brass hardware with stainless hardware.  The other night, we were trying to figure out the best way to get the numbers level when James had a brilliant idea-- keep the numbers in their individual packages and drill holes into the door where the screws need to go.  What can I say, he's good with numbers...We centered the numbers on the door and taped them up, then checked to make sure they were level.

Then James drilled holes where the screws needed to go

Next, we took the numbers out of their packages and screwed them into their pre-drilled holes

The finished product!

Painting Project

Ever since we bought our house, we have been wanting to update it with a fresh coat of paint.  After much deliberation, we settled on painting the exterior gray, with black shutters and a red door.  Specifically, the paint colors we selected were Winter Gates by Benjamin Moore for the house color, Front Door Red for the door and Black Tie for the shutters, both by Allen & Roth.  We were a little nervous about tackling this project on our own, but we knew that by DIYing the paint job, we would save hundreds.  Thanks to our sweet family members, we were able to get the majority of the painting done last weekend.  On Saturday, my parents and James' brother, Jon, and his wife Jenny came to help.  We were able to finish the entire gray exterior and got a few coats of paint on the door.  Sunday afternoon, James' parents came over for a few hours to help us work on trim.  Here are a few before and after pictures, we are thrilled with the way it turned out:

  Before-- kind of, we had already taken the shutters off and primed the door, which used to be black

Front- After

Front- After

Back- After, or.. during, if you look closely you can see James on the roof 

and my mom working on the siding

It's fun coming home to a "new" house every day.  It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do! We still have some touch-ups to do and we need to finish the trim on the back of the house.  We are also still debating on whether to paint the red exposed brick the same gray color as the rest of the house, or to leave it be.  At this point, we have left the brick exposed, since it is easier to paint it than un-paint it.  We figure we will live with it for a bit and see how we like it.  Here's a close up of the exposed brick area:

What do y'all think? Paint the red brick or leave it exposed?

Big Brother Is Getting Married!

Last weekend we headed down to St. George Island for a very special weekend.  About a month ago, my brother let our family know that he was planning on proposing to his girlfriend, Jinna Anne.  Awhile back, we had planned a family trip to St. George Island for this fall.  Once Aidan made the decision to ask Jinna Anne for her hand in marriage, he figured the beach would be the perfect setting.  After talking to her parents and getting their blessing, he asked them to make the trip down to Florida to surprise Jinna Anne after he popped the question.

Saturday afternoon Aidan and James went to play golf, and Jinna Anne, my mom and I did girly things all afternoon- brunch, shopping, laying out by the pool.  I'm pretty sure Jinna Anne was clueless that she was about to be an engaged woman.  It was so funny, when we were at the grocery store, someone asked us if we were sisters, and I responded saying "Hopefully one day!"-- little did she know that day would be sooner than later!

Aidan originally planned to pop the question at sunset, but as soon as he and James returned from golf, he couldn't wait.  As soon as they set off down the beach, we called Jinna Anne's parents and they came over.

She said yes! Once we saw them heading back towards the house, we all went out on the back porch to cheer.

After the love birds got showered and cleaned up, we celebrated with a champaign toast. 

After the champaign toast, we did a low country boil for dinner and enjoyed hearing the soon-to-be newly weds wedding ideas and plans.  After dinner we had a bon fire on the beach complete with smores.  Sunday morning, we had a chance to take a few pictures on the beach of our new family of six!

Aidan and Jinna Anne will be married on April 7th in Chattanooga, TN.  Congrats you two! James and I  can't wait to be a part of your big day.  We know you two are the perfect match for each other, and we can't wait to watch your marriage flourish.  Oh, and we can't wait for nieces and nephews one day!