Our First Anniversary Celebration

On Saturday May 4 Zac and I celebrated our one year anniversary. It's incredible how quickly this year has gone by. We weren't sure if we were going to end up at the hospital on our anniversary since Zane could be arriving at anytime, so we opted not to make plans that were too crazy. We weren't going to be heading out of town and obviously being nine months pregnant wine or beer tasting was out of the question. (Ha ha.) And we didn't want to have some incredibly expensive dinner at a restaurant. (I don't have any cute dresses that fit as dresses anymore, anyway.) We talked about what to do for our anniversary as it grew closer and after realizing that this could potentially be the last full day that we both had together just the two of us (Zac works 5-6 days a week) we thought that it would be wonderful to have a romantic day at home.

We knew that no matter what we ended up doing throughout the day, at the end of the night we wanted to cut into the top tier of our wedding cake. The small red velvet cake wth buttercream frosting had been wrapped up tight in our freezer for the last 365 days.

We were happy to find that when we finally unwrapped it from the box and set it out to thaw that it had held up very well. It had only lost a few of its pearl details and still looked gorgeous and tasty.

Zac thought that it would be fantastic to recreate the dinner from our wedding. We had an amazing dinner that evening so I was all for it! We looked up the menu we had chosen from our venue and made a shopping list. The day before our anniversary while I laid in bed resting with my feet up, Zac went grocery shopping and spent the afternoon prepping food for our anniversary dinner before he headed off to work for the night. (I seriously have the most amazing husband ever!)

Zac and I spent the afternoon of our anniversary hanging out together. It was nice to have an entire day to spend with my love. For lunch we enjoyed a recreation of appetizers served at our cocktail hour. The bbq meatballs were fantastic! We pulled out our guestbook that was made up of photos from our photobooth. Guests were able to take pictures in the booth and leave messages for us. Our photographer, Tess, of Van's Studio caught the fun and excitement over at the photobooth. It was a big hit and we were so happy that we had it at the reception.  

Zac and I were cracking up as we looked through the guestbook. The faces that were being made, the costumes, and the comments are all priceless. It's such a fantastic keepsake from our wedding.

That evening, Zac started dinner and I pulled out our anniversary china we received as a wedding gift (Mikasa Love Story dinnerware found here) and our wedding toasting flutes (Waterford Wishes Happy Celebrations found here) for the occasion.

Before dinner Zac and I sat down to watch our wedding video. At 5:00pm (the same time that our wedding was scheduled to begin) we pressed play and took in the whole day. (Check out our wedding video at the end of the blog post here or our highlights video in this post here.) I can't explain how happy we are that we have this record of our wedding. It was so great to be able to watch us say our vows to one another and remember how excited we were on that day.

Dinner was AMAZING! Zac did a fantastic job recreating the meal. The salmon, the steak...everything was delicious! Zac will have to pass his cooking skills on to Zane because that is not a skill he will be able to pick up from me. When we had finished dinner we used the cake knife from our wedding to cut into our cake. The Michael Buble station on Pandora had been playing throughout our dinner. Right as we cut the cake "Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch" by The Temptations started. We laughed because this was the song that played when we cut the cake at our wedding. Nicely done Pandora...nicely done.

When dinner and dessert were complete it was time to exchange gifts. The first anniversary is traditionally the paper anniversary. I'm not going to lie. This had me quite stumped for a while. I like to think that I'm a pretty good gift giver but when restricted to a material I felt a little lost. Giftcards were lame and most were plastic anyways. There were no concerts or events coming up that I could get tickets for. With baby on the way buying train tickets for a trip out of town was not a smart idea. In the end I turned to Pinterest for some ideas (big shocker!). I found a fantastic idea (and I'm ashamed to say that I didn't bookmark the link!)....a gift that kept on giving. For Zac, I created a "Sunday Jar". In the jar I placed 52 pieces of scrapbook paper. On each paper there are date ideas, gifts, treats, activities, etc.. Each Sunday, Zac will be able to pick out a paper from the jar to redeem that day or to use throughout the week. The papers have things like: get a bag of coffee, go for a family walk, Daddy needs a new shirt, beer tasting date with the wifey, lazy day in bed. I was happy that Zac's smile got bigger and bigger as he read through each piece of paper in the jar. He pulled his first one, "get a new book" the following day.

Next was my turn. Zac had me stay downstairs in the dining room while he ran upstairs to get my gift. A few minutes had passed and I was beginning to wonder what was taking him so long. A few minutes after that he came down with a smile on his face and extended a hand for me to take. He asked me to close my eyes and he carefully led me up the stairs. Once we reached the top of the stairs and made a right I knew that we were headed into Zane's room. I stood in what I could only assume was the middle of the room for a few moments with my eyes closed as I waited for permission to open them and take a peek at what Zac had in store. I could hear Zac moving around and after smelling matches I knew that he was lighting candles. Soon I could hear "A Kiss to Build A Dream On" (the song we had our first dance to) and Zac told me that I could open my eyes. There in front of me was Zac on one knee, holding out a ring box, a "Marry Me!" banner hung behind him. I couldn't help but cry. Here was my husband, proposing all over again in the same way that he had proposed the first time, using the exact same banner. (I had no idea that he still had it.) (Read all about how Zac proposed here and see how he surprised me a year later here.) I was so blown away by the romantic gesture that I hadn't even taken a good look at my ring.

Zac explained that the banner was the paper part of my gift. The other part of my gift was the addition of a band to my ring that represented our first year of marriage and our first baby. He said he hoped I didn't mind that he killed two birds with one stone giving me something that was both an anniversary gift and a push present all in one. I told him he killed three birds....no Mother's Day gift needed! The ring is absolutely stunning. My poor hands are still crazy swollen and unfortunately the ring only fits on my pinky right now. I can't wait until my hands go back to normal and I can wear this gorgeous, sparkly number on my hand again. I've missed it these last ten weeks. Zac thought that I for sure knew what my gift was. As we were watching our wedding video I had made a comment about how pretty my ring was and how much I missed wearing it. He figured that I had found my empty ring box and put it together that he was adding a band to it. He was wrong. I had no idea... I just really love my ring!

We ended our evening relaxing in bed together watching a movie. I've been exhausted lately and at around 8:30 my eyes started to feel heavy. We got a good giggle thinking that we were laying in bed when at that time one year before we were getting the party started on the dance floor at our reception. Next year we'll probably be having our bedtime routine with our almost one year old.

I couldn't have asked for a better year or a more perfect anniversary with my Zac. I know that we only have more great things in store for us. I'm so lucky to have him!

1 Year Anniversary

January 14th was the one year anniversary of the day that Zac proposed. I can't believe that a year has gone by so quickly. Zac and I definitely wanted to celebrate the occasion, so we headed out for a champagne breakfast that morning before I had to go to work.

While I was at work, Zac and I texted one another and discussed what we thought we should do to celebrate. We decided that it would only be fitting to get P.F. Changs takeout and have a candle lit dinner like we had done that same day just one year earlier.

After I got off work, I came home and had a chance to relax. Zac told me to hang out in our room because he was preparing a surprise downstairs and he didn't want me to see it just yet. After a while we headed out to pick up dinner and dessert.

When we got home, Zac had me wait in the car for a few minutes so he could finish setting up the surprise. When I was finally allowed to come into the house, I was greeted by candles and a beautifully set dining room table.

As beautiful as the table was, I had no idea that it wasn't the real surprise. In reality it turned out to be a decoy dinner table. Zac started to get the food plated and as we were about to sit down to dinner we headed into the garage instead. There in the same place that Zac got down on one knee was a table set for two. The floor of the garage was covered in white balloons and there were candles everywhere.

Zac had soft music playing in the background and the room was decorated with our wedding colors. It was the sweetest thing!

It was the most perfect way to spend our proposal anniversary together.

Our House

Two years ago today, Zac and I got the keys to our first house. For three years we had been living in an apartment two blocks away from what would soon be our home. When we first started the search for a house we had no idea that it we would be lucky enough to find the perfect one so close by.

Since Zac and I moved in, we've made some changes; things that have made us love our home even more.

One of the first changes we made was to the coat closet in the foyer. When we moved in, it had an accordian style door, two shelves, and a hanging rod. That particular wall was painted green.

I saw a picture online of a mudroom style closet that I loved, so Zac and I started to revamp the coat closet. Zac removed the door, the shelves, and the hanging rod. We painted the inside of the closet a light shade of green while the walls got a few coats of a warm tan color. Zac built a padded bench to take the place of the lower shelf. We purchased three pillows and Zac made three more to be placed on the bench. After adding six hooks along a strip of trim, we finished the closet by adding a wall decal that reads "Breathe, you're home."

Another closet change took place in our office. We decided to transform our third bedroom into an office and since the room had more than one closet we decided to turn one of them into a large built in book case. This is what it looked like when we first moved in:

And this is how it looked after we removed the two sliding doors and added four shelves:

When we first moved in and people saw pictures of our formal sitting room, they thought that we were crazy. It was true, the room needed a lot of help. For starters each wall was a different color. The longest wall was tan, the smalled wall was red, and the third wall was a medium shade of green. What really threw the look of the room off was the dark black color of the fireplace.

Zac and I saw the potential and got to work picking out paint colors to fix the problem. We ended up with a rich, warm tan color. With all the walls sharing a color the room already felt bigger and more inviting. The room really lightened up with the final coats of white paint on the fireplace. After the wedding we plan to finish furnishing our larger living room space and this smaller room will become a sitting room.

The biggest change came in our kitchen. When we moved in the kitchen felt a little cave-ish. The stain on the cabinets was dark and the walls were painted a dark red. The only touches of light color were the white appliances.

You'll see from the photo below that we painted all of our cabinets white to lighten up the space. We also removed the cabinet hanging above the counter. Though we eliminated four cabinet spaces to place dishes it was well worth it to open up the room and create a nice flow from kitchen to informal dining and living spaces. (We repurposed the kitchen cabinets by hanging them in the garage and giving Zac more space to organize his tools.)

From a different point of view you can really see how that red color (and the green color on the larger living room wall in the background). The contrast of the red against the brown tile and dark cabinets really made the space feel small.

Though we don't love the brown tile countertops (which can also be found in all of our bathrooms) it hasn't been high on our priority list of changes to make. Eventually we'll change it out but for now we're working to highlight what we've got. Our new paint color really works with it rather than against it. The tan color of our walls compliments the tile well which makes the tile stick out less.

In the picture above you can see that the trim around the lighting is white. When we first moved in the trim was the same dark stain as the cabinets. (You can kind of see it in the photo below.) We gave the ceiling a fresh coat of white paint and then decided to paint the trim white, too. It did a lot to make the lighting less of a focal point and it no longer felt like the ceiling was going to close in on us.

Compared to the photo above our new kitchen (pictured below) is a much lighter, brighter space. That's not just because the photo is taken in the day with the blinds open. (I realize it's not the fairest of comparisons.)

The white paint on our fireplace, trim, kitchen ceiling, and cabinets have all done wonders to lighten up our space. We're really happy with the changes that we've made to the house, especially to the kitchen.

These pictures were all taken last summer. Since then we've made several more changes to the house including changing out the light fixtures downstairs, hanging up family pictures, and other decor changes. One of these days I'll have to post a video tour to show all of the fun things we've done.



Wearing His Heart On His Sleeve

Zac and I celebrated our 6 year anniversary just a few days ago. As we opted for a low-key celebration since we're saving money for the big day we also decided not to get too crazy with the gifts. So when it came time to pick out a gift for Zac I decided that although the gift was going to be inexpensive it didn't mean that it couldn't also be pretty meaningful. My sweet Zac is quite the romantic and has always worn his heart on his sleeve. I thought that our wedding day should be no different.

For Zac's anniversary gift I diy'ed a little heart out of a fun yellow and white print fabric. Inside the heart I hand stiched a 'T *heart* Z'.

This little piece of fabric is going to be sewn on the inside of Zac's sleeve on the suit jacket he plans to wear when we get married so that Zac can carry around his own hidden 'T + Z' on the big day. Zac loved the heart.

On our wedding day, not only will Zac be wearing his own heart on his sleeve, but he'll be wearing my heart as well.

Love is in the Air

We all know that weddings can get to be pretty expensive. Zac and I have been watching our spending and resisting the urge to splurge on big items or go out to eat often. Our families are also giving us some help (which we are unbelievably grateful for!!!) in having a beautiful wedding. Though we couldn't afford to splurge and take a mini vacation or road trip, Zac and I weren't going to let our budget get in our way of having a good time on our anniversary. We decided to have a laid back celebration together at home. It's nice to think that this time next year we will perhaps be on our honeymoon. Plus years from now when we're married with children we'll look back on the celebration of our sixth year together and remember it as the year that we were saving for our wedding. It's a sweet thought.

Before we settled in for a nice evening in we had a whole afternoon of fun planned. First we went shopping for supplies to work on what we're calling 'Project Wonderland' (don't worry...we'll be revealing details later about this fun project in the near future) and secondly, we were meeting up with some friends and co-workers of mine to have some drinks and celebrate the union of Josh and Matt who are newly married. After a little rearranging of plans we all met up at Chevy's to celebrate over margaritas. Here are some shots from the afternoon.

Gabe and Danielle being goofy.

I love my Mattie!

Josh and Mattie as cute as ever! Congratulations guys!

Claire-bear enjoying a margarita.

Just the girlies....Danielle, me, and Claire.

Bailey and Jeremy just started dating. Aren't they so cute.

Love was definitely in the air.

Miss Kelly giving us a cheesy smile.

Hey, hey, Natalie!

This was a fun moment. Anyone want to guess what was going on in Mattie's mind at this moment?

A little goofy after one margarita.

Danielle always does a self portrait at ocassions like this.

The margaritas really were yummy.

Anniversary kisses...even if he was eating chips and wasn't ready for it. \

Of course we couldn't end the afternoon without a silly moment from Mr. Mattie.

I just love him.

We had such a good time catching up with everyone, joking, laughing, and celebrating.

When the afternoon of margaritas at Chevy's was over, Zac and I began our prepping for our anniversary date night in. We decided that rather than making a big dinner at home we would put together a bunch of little treats to snack on during our movie. Having never been into Whole Foods (I'm sure a hear some gasping out there...no we've never been to Whole Foods) we decided to venture into the grocery store to get everything we needed for a yummy spread.

Fresh ciabatta bread, a variety of cheeses (swiss, smoked gouda, mounster, sharp cheddar, pepper jack, and a goat gouda), and an assortment of crackers.

White chocolate, milk chocolate, dark choclate.

Strawberries, apple, and wine to go with the chocolate.

Zac also made some yummy bruschetta using the ciabatta bread, tomatoes, basil, and olive oil.

In the end we had quite a spread that included 2 mini pizzas (one that had some delicious egglplant on it), ciabatta bread, bruschetta, organic white bread, chocolate, apple, strawberries, hummus, cheese, wine, and champagne.

Zac and I had a wonderful night together just hanging out in our house, watching movies and snacking. It couldn't have been a better way to spend our 6 year anniversary...just being home.