I dont know why, but whenever there's a holiday or something that involves being outside and BBQing, it rains. It's getting really old. Really.Anyway, on Sunday, one of my friends from high school came to visit for and early Memorial Day! She's stationed at Norfolk in the Navy, and I love getting together with her. She brought her incredibly cute baby, Maddie, her hubby, Jacob, and their puppy, Daisy. It was great to have some much needed girl time, and Peter got some man time also. It was really crappy weather-wise, but we were still able to have a lot of fun!Yesterday was Memorial Day, which is one of my favorite holidays. Since my dad was a Marine, patriotic holidays were always a lot of fun on base. There were always BBQ's honoring those who have served, and the base always did something special. Plus, I love watching all the war movies on TV. It's great to think about those who have given their lives so that we could enjoy the freedom that we have today. I am so grateful to them.Today, I had the last class of the first course of my Wilton cake decorating. I love these classes! I love making roses out of frosting, and have learned some neat techniques. Hopefully I can take the next course in June. I haven't taken any pictures of any of my 'projects' because I generally don't finish them. That, and I'm a perfectionist when it comes to decorating...so I haven't really liked any of my run-throughs. It's hard to color coordinate everything that we have to do. But, I did take a picture of my final project.
Here are the roses we had to work on...
Our new chocolate brown faux suede sectional that we designed ourselves arrived yesterday! We designed it a couple of weeks ago on homereserve.com. It's a really cool website, because you can literally design each piece of your couch! They have a bunch of different options for arm rests and the back pillows etc, and hundreds of fabrics to choose from! Were planning on ordering a couple pillows from there in a few weeks - once again, TONS of options. You can design sectionals, couches, chairs, 1.5 chairs, armiors, wall art to match, automans, etc. They have example ideas that are really cool too. And, you can always send any of it back if its not what you expected.But anyway, we designed a sectional with an automan attached to one end. All the setions have storage under the cushions, which will come in handy at one point or another. I love the chocolate brown, though its not quite as dark as i had thought it would be. The only catch is that it comes completely unassembled. They literally send you the pieces of wood, the pillows, cusions, and fabric in stacks in the boxes. It only took us 3.5 hours to put together though, which was impressive.We LOVE it!Before...
...after.
One year ago today, Peter and I were married in the San Diego Temple. I cant believe how fast time has gone by! So much has happened in the past year. I love spending time with my awesome hubby, and I'm so glad we had today together
Peter took the day off from work so we could spend the day together without any distractions, which is very uncommon. Peter made an awesome breakfast of bacon, eggs, hash browns, and English muffins! YUM! After breakfast, we folded a mountain of laundry together. Not too exciting, but we got to talk some more, and I always like it when he helps. Shortly after, UPS dropped off our new couch! Ill have to write more about that later when we have more pictures. This couch came - literally - in 5 boxes and we had to completely assemble it on our own. But we had fun doing it. Great anniversary gift! Though it wasn't really intended to be lol.
We went to an AMAZING restaurant in Charlottesville called Cassies. It has a fine dining atmosphere, and because the weather was great, we sat on the patio. The dishes come in smaller portions so you can pick 2 or 3, and the prices range from $10-15 each portion. I loved this because I can never pick just one dish! I chose the pesto salmon with a wonderful citrus orange sauce, and mussels with English peas in a garlic butter sauce. Peter chose a garden salad with roasted pistaschios, goat cheese and balsamic dressing, and a duck breast in an amazing sauce (he doesnt remember what it was called). For dessert, I had an apple tart with homemade ice cream and carmel sauce, and Peter had cream brulee. All in all the food was absolutely wonderfull. You could tell everything was made from scratch, the service was great, and they paid attention to us, bringing our food when we were ready for it. We cant wait to go back again! After dinner, we walked around the downtown mall for awhile. During the summer, there is a lot of nightlife - unlike the winter completely - so its a lot of fun to walk around and 'people watch.' Everyone brings their dogs too, which is always fun to watch. I love going out at night; it was a lot of fun!
Im so glad that I married Peter, and it has been a great - yet trying - year! We have learned so much from each other. I cant wait to see what the future has in store for us!
It just doesn't feel like summer until you can smell the aroma of fresh cut grass in the air! Living here is great for that, because the gardeners come here pretty often. Combine that with sunshine, and it's a perfect day! I've started taking a Wilton Cake Decorating course, which I absolutely LOVE! The instructor is wonderful! So far we have learned how to make frosting into different consistencies, and what techniques use each consistency. I will never use store bought frosting ever again! We have also learned different techniques to frost a cake - most of which I already knew from Cold Stone. My project that was due yesterday was a standard tort cake - which means it has a filling - and we had to use a star technique, choosing from 2 options in the book. I did the rainbow option - lame, I know - and it turned out pretty well! It was Samantha's first birthday on Sunday. We took her to Petsmart to buy treats and puppy food. When we were checking out, there was a cardboard picture of a puppy against the window and Sam was afraid of it. She barked at it and it was pretty amusing. She's pretty much nuts.Hopefully we'll have a few more updates later this week!
