Our Anniversary Traditions

Ever heard the saying that everyone is born knowing all the lyrics to the Beatles instinctively? Like, as humans those lyrics are just automatically passed down through the fetus along with all the amniotic stuff.

This is one of two facts I know for sure.

The second fact I know for sure is that one of the best things about being a flight attendant (presumably) is that you can fart whenever you want and the purring of the engine will drown out the purring of your ass. However, this is way off point.

Not that I really had a point.

Anyway...

The last few days have been spent in my new back yard listening to Paul McCartney with my little girl (and she somehow knows all the words) as she plays with her My Little Ponies while I pull weeds, sip on tea, and plan out this Summer's garden. We've grilled out every night, thrown the bocce balls around, our doggie has been lounging in the sun and we've started to bust out the sun block.
It has been one of the most relaxing weeks ever.

Jason and I had our 3rd wedding anniversary and it has finally been enough years to be able to appreciate our little yearly customs.
On our 1st anniversary, everything was still so new and although it was exciting to plan out what we wanted to do every year as our official traditions, we really had no idea how fun it would be in the future as we celebrated each additional year of not killing each other.

It's an equation really:
one more year down + zero murders = champagne toast

Choosing our anniversary traditions was a really big deal to us. We wanted to pick things to do every year that would be fun and revitalizing for our marriage and I think we've got a great list. The best, to be exact.

We have our fancy million dollar champagne flutes which we splurged on for the wedding and we get them down once a year from their velvet box and fill them up with cheap champagne.

They have our names and wedding date etched in the glass cups which beautifully sit on alabaster stone and Australian crystal studded stems. They're absolutely gorgeous and I'm really happy we made the choice to include them in our annual celebration. We don't make a big speech or anything, mainly we sit on the porch and shoot the shit and get buzzed off of Andre's Brut $4.99 special. 

We also run by our local bakery and pick up some sort of  pie (or cheesecake or whatever) and we use our matching cutlery to cut the cake. We bought them as a set with the flutes, and trust me that once you're in one or two glasses of bubbly, a piece of cake sounds pretty damn good.  

Our particular flute and utensil set are the Park Avenue line from Things Remebered. Totally worth the money if you're careful with them. I actually shattered one of the glasses last week when I was washing them and forking out the money for an emergency expedited replacement wasn't so fun. 

So, you know, try to not do that. 

Once I'm all liquored up, I spend some time going through my wedding boxes while we watch the DVD of our wedding and our Honeymoon.

Now, lets talk about the clothing. 

Ladies: the dress and veil and shoes and hair and everything else that went along with that magic day was probably one of the most beautiful occasions of your adult life. 

You've heard my wedding dress story, but my veil was something I picked out and fell madly in love with. It's a cream lace embedded with crushed Swarovky crystals and it was pretty much love at first site. I found her at a little boutique in Laguna Beach and knew from the moment we met that she was meant to be mine. 

There was absolutely no way in hell that I was going to wear this veil once and be done with it. 

When Jason and I got engaged in upstate New York, we were visiting his parents and that was the same trip I learned that his mother gets her veil down every year and wears it around on their anniversary.  This was seriously one of the most brilliant things I had ever heard in my entire life. 

So no matter what we're doing that day, for instance if I happen to be chilling out on a tree swing high up in the Rocky Mountains, I wear my veil. If I'm going to the grocery store, I wear my veil. If we're going out to dinner, I wear my veil. You get the idea. 

My bridesmaids and I all had matching black hoodies for the reception. Theirs said "Bridesmaids" and mine obviously said "Bride" and I rock that around town also. 

This year's anniversary, we bummed around our new house. I folded laundry in my jeans and house slippers, and I wore my veil the whole day.  I saved my white "Bride" tank top which I wore when I was getting my makeup and hair done the morning of my wedding. If it's warm enough, I'll throw it on. This is the first year I've been able to wear the tank strictly because April in Southern California is drastically different from April in Northern Colorado.

(You can feel my excitement, yeah?)

Our final tradition and one I'm the most fond of is our annual anniversary photo:

Every year, we take a photo holding the photo from the year prior. 

Eventually the original will be too tiny to see...

This year, our 4-year-old daughter took the picture with my cell phone so it's super blurry and crooked which is possibly why I love it the best!

So whatever you choose to make your traditions, make them outstanding ones. You'll be doing them for a loooong time! Don't be boring, have fun, and cheers to a long and happy marriage!

50 Shades Of Pewter Mug

Well, it's 4AM and with the majority of things starting to settle down in my life, apparently my brain isn't one of them because I'm wide awake writing to all of you.

A new house and a new job are starting to feel more like home and less like I'm painfully out of my element.

Finally.

I'm getting to know and genuinely like my co-workers which is a welcomed change from having so much time off to sit around and worry about whether or not I was going to ever get to that level of comfort again.

The house is coming along.
We're still painting.
In the beginning, I was so excited to roll out that very first stroke on the wall but by the time the first room was finished I can assure you I was over it. Going from a grey to a light tan takes multiple coats even with primer included in the paint and the novelty of it wears off by the end of the first trim taping.

This Pewter Mug color was on every wall in the house.
Like, every wall.
While I can appreciate grey as much as the next guy, this much of it can certainly sour a mood.

It was like looking at Eeyore's ass everywhere I turned.

I've had enough.

My entire life I've gone with blacks, whites and greys. My couches were black leather, my picture frames were noirs and silvers, my side tables were slates. I'm ready to branch out a bit and add some color to my repertoire. Had I gotten a hold of this house 10 years ago, I would have loved the cloudy day fog / morgue look. However today, especially because we're buying this house in the dawn of spring time, I need a little light in my life!

You can see how the dark paint sucked out all of our natural light and made the ceilings feel low. This living room is such a great open space but it just felt so much like a cave. I spent time looking around on multiple websites and I found many homes where they could make this color work, but for us it just wasn't going to. 

We didn't buy a monstrosity of a home. We bought a quaint, 3 bedroom house with the perfect amount of space for our little family, and it seemed like the houses that could pull this color off had giant vaulted ceilings and picture windows as tall as magic beanstalks. Either that or they used it in a more appropriate room such as a bathroom or bedroom, which we ended up doing in the long run as well. 

You remember a couple weeks back when I posted this picture prior to our furniture arriving and our coffee cups being unpacked. We were still in patio furniture and camping cooler mode.

The carpal tunnel loving process has been seemingly endless and has caused the casualties of multiple cases of beer. So many outlets to unscrew, so much trim to tape off, so many trays to trip over, spills to wipe up, ladders to constantly relocate... 

However in the end, I'm beyond satisfied with the outcome. Once the walls were dry, the furniture was delivered, and the Venitian blinds were put back up, it started to look much more like what I had in my head. 

Obviously, the place could use a bit of personality, maybe an area rug, some art, photos, that sort of thing. But you get the idea. For now all we have is an early morning 4-year-old who refuses to look at the camera. 

There is a very distinct line where we stopped at the kitchen wall. That's a project to be tackled later in the Spring or maybe even early Summer when we decide on colors and counter tops.

Project after project is slowly approaching and we're tackling them as financially steady as we can. One down, one million more to go!