Yesterday was our first wedding anniversary.  We always have to be different, so instead of doing the 10/10/10 thing we went for 10/10/09.  Actually, I was aiming for 10/3/09 but we couldn’t get the date.  So the 10th it is!

In honor of our anniversary, I decided to post a few (okay, 25) wedding pictures that cover more of the design/style side of the wedding and less of the hey! look at us! side.  How does this relate to the house? Well as I’ve mentioned before, we did all of our flowers and most of the wedding design on the same day as we chose our interior options for the house.  And coincidentally, the foundation of our house was poured on 10/9/09… the day before the wedding.  Here’s a picture of the house on 10/4/09, the last chance we had to take a picture before the wedding….

So without further ado, our wedding, in mostly pictures so I don’t bore you 🙂

(Pictures courtesy of our phenomenal photographer, Zlatko Batistich)

We got married at a very small, little known bed and breakfast with an organic farm not far from where we live.  It’s nestled so far back in the woods that we had driven past numerous times and never knew it was there.  We attempted to time the date so that the leaves had began to change, but of course those things never work out and it was mostly green around the farm.

The wreath our florist made for the door

Our DIY menu cards…Mike used the font from our invites (which we had to purchase and also appears in the title for this site) we printed them on textured cardstock, glued them to green scrapbook paper, hole punched the corners and tied some twine in there.  We made quite the team.

Hey look, it’s me! Coming down the stairs of the old house, which dates back to 1750.

My bridesmaids and I, walking to meet Mike in one of the gardens with old water tower in the background.

There is an old cottage on the grounds and it was one of the reasons why we chose this place.  We had our cocktail hour in this area and since it got chilly at night, the owners lit the fireplace inside.  Definitely one of the highlights of the wedding.  We didn’t even think anyone would go in there, but it was jam packed.

Walking through one of the gardens.  My dress and shoes were filthy before the wedding even started. I’ve never claimed to be very glamorous.

My favorite series of pictures.  I wanted a location with a dirt driveway for this reason.

My bouquet. (Side note- this picture is completely candid, I had no clue it was taken.  How’s that for an awesome photographer?)

Bridal party… girls’ dresses were from David’s Bridal (unbelievable right?), guys got suits from Macy’s and wore striped ties to compliment Mike’s solid tie.  The florist didn’t listen to anything we said about the bridesmaids flowers.  I hate leaves in arrangments.  But when the day comes around, what can you do? I’m no bridezilla.

Always connected…

Mmm cake. The florist “forgot” our topper, so we had a naked cake.  But I kinda like it like that.  Maybe a new trend?

One of the table arrangements

Our DIY menus, with our DIY favors/placecards

The first tag on the favor box gives a name/table number.  The second tag said this…

And was filled with these…probably my favorite part of everything we did.

Farm signage

Every wedding needs a cute kid, I believe we hit the jackpot.  Complete with ring bearer pillow via Etsy.

Ceremony view

Every good party has guacamole!

It rained in the morning, which was very nerve racking, but it cleared up by the afternoon and left us with this beautiful sunset.

The reception was in a tent, which I know a lot of people consider to be a turn off, but it was something we were looking for.  A blank canvas 🙂

And I was dying to hang paper laterns, which don’t exactly go with a ballroom

We specifically asked our caterer for mini ice cream cones, being that we’re pretty well known for being ice cream lovers

Another thing that was huge to us was the music.  We did nothing traditional for the ceremony and didn’t want any group dances, slow dances, etc during the reception, which made for one hell of a party.

The old house at night

All and all, I’d say our wedding was pretty cool, though I suppose I’m a little biased 🙂

Happy Anniversary, Husband.

Back when we had our condo, we kept both our garbage and recycling cans in those under cabinet pull out drawer things.  It was practical then, because we didn’t have any wall space to stick one garbage can, nevermind two, but I hated that they took up precious storage space.  So when we got this new place, I began eyeing this Simple Human semi-round stainless garbage can…

Mike originally didn’t want to leave a garbage out in the open, but I stressed the ease of people coming over and not having to give directions to the can.  And also being able to move it to places where we were chopping or making other messes.  It would also add some prettiness to the side of our island, which was a plain old side of a cabinet. I obviously won the battle, despite the expense of the can, but if you’re sticking it in the middle of your kitchen, it better be a nice one, right?

We figured since we no longer use water bottles, we wouldn’t have enough recyclables to justify a can.  We planned to just bring them out to the garage when we had to.

But since we use a can of cat food a day and get mass amounts of junk mail, it seemed that we couldn’t keep up with the trips to the garage.  We always had a pile of cardboard/paper and one for cans on our countertop.  I hate cluttered countertops.  Like, I couldn’t relax at night unless everything was cleared off.  So one day we were in Target and I spotted this small basket…

I wasn’t looking for a solution, but I just loved the dark color of the basket and the idea immediately popped in my head to use it as a place to store our recyclable paper before we bring it out to the garage.  I knew it was more realistic to accept the fact (especially with winter approaching) that we wouldn’t be making 3 trips out to the garage per day.  So we began using it and it worked like a charm, living on top of our fridge and getting emptied about every two weeks with the recycling pick up.

I also liked that it brought a little more of the dark brown warmness into the room, since there’s some dark brown in our backsplash tiles.

But we still had the can issue, which was fine until a few weeks ago when we went on a seltzer kick.  Suddenly we couldn’t keep up with those trips to the garage either.  Then once again, while randomly walking past the basket aisle in Target looking for picture frames, I noticed they had a round version of our small rectangular one.

I put it on the floor, in the corner between our cabinets and our sliding glass door.  It’s mostly out of sight, but I once again like the dark homeliness it brings in.

Garbage can, meet basket…

And basket, meet garbage can…

(Yes my curtains are wrinkled.  I will get on that.)

So far the process has worked wonderfully…it has been practical and efficient, yet pretty.  We have to decorate practically around here, since we have a 4 legged terror running around…

“Oooh nice basket!! MINE?!”

I posted this picture a few weeks ago of some tomatoes we got from the farm we belong to. Well the farm just outdid itself by giving us a purple pepper!!!

Yes I know, one of those things is a pumpkin. But we also got that from the farm and I was going for the contrast 🙂

I took seriously well over a hundred pictures of these things. I don’t think I will ever eat them. But for now, they are sleeping tight in my favorite countertop bowl from Ikea…

Mother nature has outdone herself again. I am so in love with these pretty colored veggies that I may have to find a place in my house to hang one of my hundred pictures. Dining room?

Monday night we managed to put our two new desks together, despite the fact that we purchased the wrong legs and had to go BACK TO IKEA AGAIN. Last night we (or rather Mike) put our 4 shelves up. Our soon to be organized space has almost all of it’s basics, besides a bookcase or two. Now for the challenging, makes-me-scratch-my-head part of making it look like ours!

We’re approaching that time! The time where we will all try to carve the greatest pumpkins ever.  Well, I’ll just fail at it really bad — I can’t carve or sculp for the life of me.  But the wife, Rebecca, can sure carve a pumpkin.

Last year, Rebecca carved Macky’s mug into a pumpkin.  Macky has excellent features, strong contrasting colors and solid lines — perfect for carving.  After Rebecca’s co-worker helped her create the Macky stencil (maybe using these tips?), she was able to carve the perfect Macky.

But the moral of the story is to get creative with your pumpkins this year.  While the whole “pumpkin-throwing-up” thing is insanely funny, it’s been done before;  so this year is the perfect opportunity to start thinking outside the box with those pumpkins.