eeeeek!! and yayyyy!!!

We're sort of gearing up for the ceremony (eeeeeeeek! and yaaaayyyyy!!!)
so we've done some visiting about music and readings a bit lately. our dear jon is going to sing or cantor (he sounds like an ANGEL and is a pretty big deal in the atl burbs church choir scene, fyi) and he spent some time last weekend letting us peek into all of his hymnals and then he'd hum the tunes of ones we liked. SO FUN. i mean, boone and i are in divinity school, but liturgy is just not something i've got much knowledge about... and before now have never really had much interest in. but things are different now....

turns out the message we're going for in our wedding ceremony is um... well, love. and a hope for peace (not world peace, but Christ peace or relationship peace or something) and the service involved in, or the servanthood that is marriage. :) i feel good about it.

anyway, here's the scripture reading from the day we got engaged.. I think it's pretty darn appropriate for a wedding.


Phillipians 2: 1- 7
If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

AND i ran across this non-Bible reading today on a pretty sweet little blog and we may just use it. :) thoughts? or other reading ideas?

From "The Strength to Love," by Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The meaning of love is not to be confused with some sentimental outpouring. Love is something much more than emotional bosh. An overflowing love which seeks nothing in return, is the love of God operating in the human heart. Love is the most durable power in the world . . . the most potent instrument available in mankind’s quest for peace and security. The great military leaders of the past have gone, and their empires have crumbled and burned to ashes. But the empire of Jesus, built solidly and majestically on the foundation of love, is still growing."

image found here

have you SEEN this??

via Mrs.O

whoo hoo!

friends, i'm 26 today! hmph...i'm officially over a quarter of a century old.
i'd like to take this moment to share that i'm so thankful for this past year... even amid societal turmoil it was personally the best i've ever had. :) it just feels so good to have a goal for my future, someone who cares for, understands, and forgives me, friends who I love with all of my heart, and a faith community that really strives to live out it's commitments. (not to mention a historic presidential event). i'm a really blessed/lucky/thankful gal.



for my birthday last year (2007 = not such a great year personally, btw) we went square dancing in a church basement to celebrate (which i HIGHLY recommend!), but this year Boone and I are waiting a week and going on an adventure in the shenandoah valley! either way i'm a happy girl (and either way involves bluegrass music! hooray!)

photo from ourlaboroflove

nothing to wear...

so we're taking our engagement photos this weekend (now that my hives are gone and BEFORE Boone shaves his beard and has a mustache for Febru-hairy. more on this fun project later...)

but i have nothing to wear and basically zero dollars to spend on something new. I wish i had thought of this sooner and had made something (although i'm not exactly an accomplished seamstress) but i guess something will materialize from my closet...

sigh....i wish i had this outfit to wear for the pictures.

it's so pretty. too bad all i've got is an old pair of jeans and a plaid shirt.

i wish boone would wear his outfit that looks like this...

he loves that vest of his... so i might just get my wish. :)

fyi:the first photo was found via modish.

what boone got for christmas....

say cheese!

introducing.... the fabulous, the wonderful, the talented, Joe Martinez!
hooray! he's agreed to be our photographer for our wedding even though he's not technically a "wedding photographer" check out more of his work here, here or here.

tooting my own horn (just a little)

guys, guess what?!?
i walked into anthropologie the other day and saw these...



remember way back when i made a post about them and how cool, fab, and eco-friendly they were?
i thought so.
well, apparently they really were cool, otherwise anthropologie wouldn't have had anything to do with them. let's just say i felt good about myself and leave it at that. ;)

Red (face) Alert! Mangoes= allergy

confession...i hate mangoes.

i mean, i love the way they taste, but apparently i have a horrific allergy associated with them. i thought i had one last year and avoided them like the plague, but then Sunday while I was making my fave black bean, sweet potato and mango stew i thought ,"hey, i'm probably not THAT allergic. i bet i can have a little taste."
nope.
now, three days later with an itching, stinging, completely red and bumpy face and swollen cracked lips, and i wish i'd never even been introduced to this most delicious, beautiful, tropical fruit.
WHY o WHY am i the most awkward person in the entire world? not only am i supremely clumsy, but i have a stupid food allergy to tropical fruit that gives me hideous face-hives!!! the good news is that i'm not the only one...do quick search for "Mango allergy" and all sorts of strange things pop up. apparently the skin of the fruit it's a lot like poison ivy or poison oak..so when you eat mangoes, BEWARE.

photo from flickr

the first lady is FAB, y'all.

don't they look gooooooood?






photos from my new fav site, Mrs-O

writing simply and with care...

so boone got me a fab calligraphy set for Christmas (actually, he turned me loose in an art supply store and said... "pick out whatever you want") and on top of that, i know for a fact that "being a bride" is synonymous with "writing a zillion thank you notes." anyway, for that reason i REALLY want this book... and bet all you other folks might want it too

HOORAY!

need i say more?

image by yeehawindustries

why's paper so fun?

i just meandered into the paper source in my 'hood yesterday (just for a minute!!! i promise!!!) but I was there for waaaay too long. here are a few reasons why:

and then there was the lovely decorative paper section... (i'll spare you the gorey details..or save them for another post) i could have been there rubbing and looking and wishing all day!
and then, i saw these! a-dash mazing.


how many times have i needed one of these and never even KNOWN it?!? i especially wish they made them for conversations. if i wasn't the most frugal, least-likely-to-make-an-impulse-purchase person in the entire world, i would have gotten one of each, just in case...

see rock city...

when i used to drive back and forth from college i'd go through eastern tennessee and loved looking for these barns. turns out other people do too, which is why flickr has a whole group dedicated to the search!

i just think it's the folksiest, simplest, coolest ad campaign* that ever existed...and it may or may not be a secret dream of mine to live on a piece of property that has one of these barns. until then, i'll have to settle for one of the birdhouses. i'd actually forgotten how much i loved them and how i bothered boone about NEEEEDING one (or a mailbox that looked like one) until i saw one at brunch at treehouse this morning. i'm hooked again!

i even put it on my wishpot registry (is that silly?) honestly, i hope people get us things cook with before we get a birdhouse... but just in case, you know? ;)
*learn more about the history of said campaign here.

what to do this weekend?

well, i'm probably going to go out tonight (maybe?) and then have brunch with some fun gals tomorrow, watch some bball and read for class. but...after seeing these lovely photos, i might just stay in and watch my so called life. how about y'all?




or maybe boone and i will make thai food and watch house. mmmmmm.

our save the dates!

I told y'all we'd put in some serious hours last week to make progress.... in fact, on Friday, my mom and I made and mailed all of these! we sort of went for the cluttered desk of a busy person (and also used the pen, yellow paper and post-it as homage to boone and my fav TV show, the office!)
please excuse the poor quality...this is a copy of a copy. anyway, this part was big fun...but some of the other decisions are less so. anyway, i'm back from the land of dial up internet and hope i'll get to post more regularly! hooray!

making plans..finally!

happy New Year to you!

and hooray! wedding plans abound!

i'll give more complete details when i leave the land of the dial-up internet (aka my parent's house) but for now i'll say that we've made a great deal of headway on the wedding... we've got a caterer, a florist, and a wedding/reception site, and we've registered.

now, i should warn you, the site that we've chosen isn't the uber-cool tin rooved, pea gravelled and blues memorabilia decked location that i intially mentioned...BUT this is totally ok and good news! here's why:

that place was the "Carport Chapel" of the Shack Up Inn and the Hopson Commissary in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

now, don't get me wrong, it was going to be a coooooooool place to hold a fun, rustic, blusey reception. BUT to make the ceremony site look reverent, simple, and lovely rather than junky and tired it was going to take a LOT of work. this freaked the mom out just a little... obvi.

even though the parties i've been to at hopson have been so crazy fun, they weren't wedding-reverent. and the photos I've seen from other weddings there (which I'll try to get permission to post soon) look fab...really fab, but from what i understand it took a TON of work on the part of the wedding planners, family members, and bride and groom to make it look that way.

since boone and i want something easy, fun, and rustic, but mostly easy, it just wasn't the place. i mean, we want to spend the weeks prior to our wedding getting excited and hanging with our folks, not spend two weeks in a foreign locale cleaning up and jazzing up and renovating the ceremony site, you know?

soooooo, we're going with our backup plan in my hometown.

we're going to get married in the backyard of this lovely place and have the reception here too!

i think it's just lovely... and while it won't be super rustic, per se, it can still be fun and laid back with the right plan.

anyway, now instead of feeling bluesy and cool it'll feel like an intimate backyard wedding... but it's just not in my backyard... it's in someone elses! :) everyone wins.