House Tour, Part 1

Enough of you have asked and I've finally found the time to do a tour of our house!

Here it is:

 I can't tell you how much we love this house!

Front porch

Front door

Living room

Fireplace/Living room

Dining Room (view from the fireplace)

Dining Room (view from the kitchen door) 

Kitchen (view from the kitchen office)

Kitchen (view from the dining room)

Kitchen office (where I'm typing now!)

Back deck (one of our favorite parts of the house!)

One of our favorite places to sit after work

Backyard. Garden is in the raised bed to the left. We have: three kinds of tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, three types of bell pepper, red onions, green onions, sweet mint, chocolate mint, basil, and rosemary in that plot!

Master bedroom

Other side of master bedroom

View from the hall outside the master into the living/dining room

Bathroom

Love the tile in the bathroom. Looks brand new, but it's original.

Guest bedroom, which is a whole lot of nothing right now. We're going to paint and put a double bed, which is in storage, in there eventually.

What you don't see is the third bedroom, which doubles as Paul's office. He was working in there (magazine goes to press in a few days) and it's seen cleaner days. We'll show it to you in another post. Hope you guys enjoy!

Mother's Day

I hate I haven't been as active, but I'll try to do better!

Because my job requires me to coordinate photography for commencement, we've now had to push our Mother's Day camping trip back a week. BUT, that meant that the whole family could come over to our house for lunch instead!

It was a beautiful morning that started off with me drinking my coffee on the back deck (which I love and will be showing off in a house tour post soon).

 We're lucky enough to be able to get tables and chairs nearby and we cleared off the deck to start preparing.

 Snipping some rosemary and arranging some roses, we had a nice little set up.

Menu

Grilled chicken

Sweet and sour green beans

Hashbrown casserole

Fruit salad

Dessert: Chocolate Lasagna

Sunny and 70 - it was the perfect day to eat lunch outside. Hope everyone had a great day!

March Madness

March has been a crazy month, but we've tried to take time to sit back and enjoy it, like our time on the roof. Blood orange sangria, chip and sun - perfect. We're trying to soak it all in because we're moving into our new place in two weeks!

 Most of the month was consumed by preparations for Zippity Doo Dah weekend and especially the Color Me Rad race. Hands down, one of my favorite events I've photographed.

It was so much fun to see everyone getting excited and running through the color stations.

At the finish line, Paul and I got to be in the scissor lift photographing/videoing and throwing color and shirts out to the crowd. So much fun.

Here's to packing!

Come on Spring!

Our Mississippi weather is so odd. Last week, we had highs in the 70s and Saturday we had snow flurries!

The end of the cold weather means citrus is all around and I've been really into blood oranges.

 Because of all the blood oranges I had around, I decided to try blood orange-cello with it. I'll let you know in a few weeks how it turned out.

This early spring weather motivated me branch out and find some cute new pieces. I found this fun dog skirt I love wearing. 

 We also found this beautiful mid-century modern dresser the other night walking home from Babalu. With a little love and furniture polish, it's just like new!

Here's to another crazy week!

DIY: Bulletin Board

 Ever since I got my new job and an office that finally had walls, I've been wanting to do a bulletin board. My walls are a bland beige, so I wanted to kick it up a notch. After pinning things on Pinterest and gathering ideas, I finally pulled the trigger this weekend.

I found a great fabric and got started.

One cork bulletin board (which I got 50% with a coupon at Michael's), batting, fabric, and a husband with a staple gun later, voila!

Less than 20 minutes and $20 later, I had a big piece to jazz up my office.

It definitely made for a happy Monday morning hanging it up!

Valentine's

I hope all of you had a wonderful Valentine's Day!

I had a great and busy one, starting with a day that flew by at work. When I got home, these beautiful flowers and a sweet letterpress card were waiting for me.

 Paul wouldn't tell me where we were going for dinner, but I had a hunch. I ended up being right - Walker's! It's maybe 500 feet from our building and one heck of a restaurant.

For Valentine's Day, they had a four course dinner menu, which was out of this world. Paul and I decided to go pescatarian for Lent (essentially, eat no meat from an animal that has legs) and Walker's was the best place for that.

 We started with appetizers - Paul with Lobster Mac and I with a Bread-less Crab Cake. We moved on to Lobster Bisque, Redfish Anna (topped with crab), and dessert. I ordered the Chocolate Bread Pudding (our favorite) and P ordered Chocolate Cake with Coffee Icing. Ooof.

We had such a great time and really enjoyed ourselves.

If this wasn't a night to enjoy our neighborhood, I don't know what was. After dinner, we kept on walking down the street to Duling Hall for a concert by one of our favorite bands, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors.

The magazine helps sponsor these concerts, so it's always exciting to see more and more people at them. This is the third time this band has been to Duling and every time the crowd doubles. It was PACKED! We had fun dancing and singing along to the music.

I hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day too!

Perfect Day

After some really busy days and weekends, we decided this was the perfect weekend to get away. That, and the fact that Paul had been signed up to run a half marathon this weekend, but weather and work got in the way of training and he didn't feel prepared to run it. So we decided to take this opportunity to take a day trip to our old stomping ground: Hattiesburg.

We started with coffee at The Bean next to our place, of course.

 I've always said it and it's still true - for some reason, Hattiesburg has some of the best shopping. We scored some great deals at Hudson's, including a deeply discounted expensive suit jacket and pants for Paul and a sweater for me. We went by United Apparel Liquidators and I scored two pairs of cropped black work pants I had been looking for all for a total of $14. Pretty happy about that.

One thing I turned my husband on to in Hattiesburg is Glory Bound Gyro Co.

They have some of the most incredible hummus flavors, including a jalapeno cilantro that I'm crazy about. But what it really comes down to are those pita chips. There's nothing like it.

 After exploring downtown (which is really exploding these days with two breweries and lots of new shops), Paul suggested we go to the Hattiesburg Zoo. I have to admit, even living right next to the Zoo, I never went. We had so much fun.

The capybara says hello.

We even rode the train. It felt like being a kid!

 I also was interested in visiting my alma mater to see the building they have been renovating to move the journalism school. It looks beautiful!

Of course, campus hasn't changed that much. Especially working at a college again, I really miss mine sometimes.

 Coming back home, we decided on sushi. I was in heaven.

Perfect end to the day. Hope you guys had a good one!