Our monthiversary has come and gone, I’ve scratched several items off my “30 before 30 list” (including vacationing in Italy), and yet, I’ve still remained a slacker in the realm of blogging.
I know I blogged a lot about wedding planning leading up to September 1st, but I never thought it would turn out so lovely. Despite Pete waking up with strep throat and me getting over a sinus infection, it couldn’t have been a more perfect day for us and our relationship. Our family pulled together to help us transform our backyard, captured beautifully by our photographers — Morrissey Photo.
I look forward to sharing more photos and reviewing our vendors in the upcoming weeks, but for now, I’ll just share some of my favorite moments.
Tags: wedding
Posted in weddings
Last time I blogged, I rambled about the mundane tasks that go along with homeownership, but our list of to-do’s didn’t stop there. We had been ignoring our weed-filled brick path for months, so we finally set aside a Saturday to deal with it.
This meant lifting all of the bricks, putting down weed killer, chiseling bricks that didn’t fit the edges, and filling the gaps with sand.
When Pete took charge chiseling, I weeded, trimmed the bushes, and spray painted the lattice he built for the front of our house.
Then after that, around 6 p.m., we realized we had one last fence to remove in preparation for our new fence install. This bad boy:
About 5 hours later, this happened (doesn’t he look thrilled?):
Except it was still dark out, so we had to take an “after” shot of the concrete post in the morning. Our neighbors, who were having a birthday party in their backyard at the time, cheered us on as we finally pulled the fence post out in a state of exhausted hysteria. We thought that was the worst of it, since the other two posts we dug up weren’t so bad, but there was another post just like this one. So that’s what we ended up doing with our weeknights.
I think it was all worth it, since now we can take Betty White outside with the utmost laziness. Plus it just looks prettier.
Here are a ton of “after” shots of the yard with the fence. Harold, our lawn gnome, quickly got used to his new digs.
I felt the need to document Betty White’s first fenced-in bathroom break, but left out the photos of her going #2 (you’re welcome).
We’re pretty smitten with how good our backyard smells right now with all of the fresh cedar. It’s kind of crazy that we’ll be getting hitched back there in a little over a month.
Tags: Betty White, brick path, lattice, red cedar, shadowbox fence
Posted in before and after, home, home projects
Part of being a homeowner means when your friends ask what you did last weekend, you begin to cringe at how ordinary your life sounds when you say it out loud. “I spent the entire weekend sweating outside while trying to improve our home instead of going to the shore.” Despite how that might be interpreted by peers, I am surprised at how much fun I have working with Pete on our home in less than ideal conditions (100+ degree weather).
One of the tasks on our to-do list was getting an affordable rain barrel (thank you, Craigslist) and putting our wasted water to work. This project isn’t quite over since the barrel still needs another coat of spray paint, but at least it’s functional. I need to take a break from spray painting for a while though, or at least until forest green nose hairs come into fashion.
Every time I take Betty White outside, I am reminded that our bilco doors are a rusty, hot mess. It has been driving. me. crazy. since we moved in a year ago. It was a simple fix, but one I just never seemed to get around to — spraying the doors with metal primer and then painting the doors with exterior Rust-Oleum.
Our shed. Dear god, our shed. This might be the ugliest eyesore on the planet, but we are stuck with it until we can afford a new one. Between the peeling door and cracked paint on the window frames, the opportunities for lead poisoning were boundless. Not to mention the green gunk that is still begging to be pressure washed.
There’s really no way to fix this thing without renting a bulldozer, but we made an attempt. Pete secured the door with a new latch and we sanded and painted the door and window frames. If you’re curious, our grass is recovering from weed killer, thus the sad brown spots.
We’re getting a fence installed in a few weeks, but we wanted to keep these trees for added privacy:
The contractor asked that we trim the trees back for up to six feet so they wouldn’t be putting any weight on the fence. Most of those branches were low-hanging and half-dead, so it was an excuse to get some more yardwork out of the way. Probably not the best activity to perform in sweltering weather, but we entertained ourselves by putting lawn bags over our heads and chasing each other with branch lassos. Pretty sure our neighbors think we’re cray cray now, if they didn’t already.
Are any of you working on DIY projects or home repairs that are consuming your free time and making you feel like a total grown-up?
Tags: bilco doors, fence, rain barrel, shed, spray paint, yardwork
Posted in before and after, home projects
Our third homebrew (thus the “003″), a Kobayashi Wheat with Sorachi Ace, has been labeled and sealed as one of our wedding favors.
Pete designed the labels, which we printed on Kraft sheets from Paper Source (cue angels singing — that place is amazing).
We decided to incorporate one of our wedding colors by dripping yellow wax down the bottles, Maker’s Mark-style.
With a makeshift double-boiler (an aluminum can inside of a pot), we melted batches of wax beads.
Emma Stone stared at us from the newspaper as we took turns dipping the bottles in the wax (c’mon girl, no one believes you wear Colorburst).
We cracked open our first one last night and it tasted like beer to me (in that I didn’t like it), so I deem it a success. We’ll probably keep a few extras for upcoming anniversaries…hopefully by then we’ll have a few more homebrews under our belts.
Tags: beer, homebrew, Keystone Brewing, wax beads, wedding, wheat
Posted in DIY, weddings
It’s been over a month since I’ve posted on here, so let me just say that I’m impressed you’re still reading. I apologize for the silence on my end, but things have been a bit busy as of late. When I’m not working at my full-time job at Generocity, I’m tackling absurd amounts of yard work with Pete, shooting weddings on the weekends, processing photos, or planning our own backyard wedding.
I haven’t had a chance to share our engagement shoot with you guys, so here are some of our favorites by Morrissey Photo. Even though I’d rather be behind the lens any day, it was really easy to be ourselves in front of them since they’re two of the nicest people on. the. planet. Thanks again to Matt and Lauren for following us around the Love Letter murals in Philadelphia, you guys are the bestest.
Images by Morrissey Photo
In other wedding planning news, we sent our invites out to our parents and siblings. I had a lot of fun working on these with Pete — I made the illustration for the back and Pete designed the front (I contributed the talk bubbles with our initials). It’s been really nice having this whole wedding planning thing be a collaborative effort while crossing tasks off our to-do list.
Not that it’s as thrilling as envelope liners and photos of the Ginger, but I’ve been posting more actively on my photography blog, if you want to give it a look-see every week or so.
Tags: engagement photos, illustration, invites, Love Letter murals, Morrissey Photo, Philadelphia
Posted in DIY, weddings
