Shouldless Days: July

This past weekend I worked my butt off on Saturday (grocery shopped, team cleaned the house with Phil, did laundry) so that I could have a shouldless day yesterday.  As usual, it was glorious.  I completely recognize that it's probably not possible to have a shouldless day if you are a parent, but if your life circumstances permit taking a day to yourself, DO IT! Here's how I filled my day!

I laid in bed until 8 am (which is so late for me!!) and then wandered downstairs to have a breakfast of yogurt with blueberries and pb toast with banana.

Once Phil got up, I made smoothies with peach, blueberries, banana, and frozen pineapple. I loved this combination! We watched Face the Nation on CBS which is our Sunday morning tradition. Then Phil headed to his mom's for the day and I headed to my garden.

As I said last week, it's growing like crazy these days.

I picked more beans, a few cherry tomatoes, harvested the rest of our beets, and gathered up all the zucchini, which is growing like crazy. I see zucchini boats, zucchini "meatballs", and zucchini coffee cake in our future.

After my trip to the garden, I enjoyed a sandwich, roasted beets from my garden that I roasted last weekend, and cottage cheese while watching an episode of Suits.

After that, I had to figure out what to do with all the beets I picked! I love beets but they aren't Phil's thing and there is no way I could eat them all on my own. So I turned 2 pounds of beets into refrigerator pickled beets (I subbed apple cider vinegar for white vinegar as I think that will give them more flavor!). I loooove pickles so can't wait to snack on these throughout the week and share some with my parents next weekend when we go to the lake.

The rest of my afternoon was incredibly lazy. I laid on the couch and read my latest book, A Little Life. This book is so good but so heart breaking (hence the reason it's been referred to as emotionally devastating. This book is not for the faint of heart!). Before long, Oscar had joined me (she loves it when I lay on the couch!) and we took a little nap together. I was definitely nervous about how well I would sleep after sleeping in AND taking a nap, but oh well! Last week was busy and I guess my body needed the extra rest - plus kitty's sleepiness tends to rub off on me when we are cuddling!

Phil got home around 8 and we caught up on our days. Before I knew it, it was time for bed!

How did you spend your weekend? While Sunday was pretty lazy, Friday and Saturday weren't as we hosted friends for dinner on Friday night and went to a get together with 2 other couples on Saturday night (after a full day of adulting!).

Eating the Fruits of My Labor

I love summer for many reasons, but towards the top is that I get to do one of my newfound hobbies/talents - gardening!

I put my garden in a couple of weeks before the wedding and this month I've been able to pick some things!

My cherry tomatoes are growing well but taking awhile to turn red. I picked one (which I promptly ate) and 4 more last night. Hopefully more will start to turn soon! Fresh-off-the-vine tomatoes are sooo good! Phil doesn't like raw tomatoes so I get them all to myself!

I'm also growing larger tomatoes but didn't take a picture of them as they are just starting to pop and are very green. I'll probably be able to start to pick them in late July or early August. Hopefully my crop is as good this year as it was last year so I can do lots of canning!

One new thing I am growing this year is tomatillos. It's been interesting to watch these grow. If you've bought tomatillos before, you know that they are sold in their husk. I thought that the fruit and the husk would grow at the same time, but the husk grows first and then the fruit grows to fill it. I'm guessing I won't be able to pick these until August as the fruit inside is cherry tomato size right now. But once I can start to harvest these, there will be lots of green salsa and green enchilada sauce in my future!

This picture is upside down, but you get the idea of what else I was able to pick last night. The zucchini on the far right is HUGE (it weighs about 2.5 pounds!). We've got some zucchini boats in our future!  I'm going to a bbq hosted by a college friend this weekend so will likely bring something zucchini-based. I know beets are popular with everyone, so I'll roast those for salads and sides.

I also picked a bunch of green beans. This is a gallon bag so there are quite a few! We'll be enjoying these tonight along with grilled brats and potatoes.

I love going to Farmer's Markets, and frequent the local one on weekends when we are home, but there's nothing quite like the satisfaction of eating food that you grew! I'm so glad that our neighborhood of Minneapolis has a community garden!

Are you doing any gardening this year? Have you been visiting any local Farmers Markets? My weekends have been so busy since getting back from our honeymoon so I have only gone to the Farmer's Market once! Hopefully I can get there more often going forward!

Our Wedding: Going to the Reception

Tired of reading wedding posts yet? I'm trying not to write an obnoxious number of posts but I know I'll love coming back and re-experiencing the day in years to come.

When the ceremony ended, we decided not to have a receiving line as we planned to go around to each table at the reception. By the time my dress was bustled, all of the guests had made their way over to the reception, so we headed that way and took some pictures along the way. This area of Minneapolis is my absolute favorite area of Minneapolis so it made for a beautiful backdrop for photos. Once again, I have a lot of images to share!

Here we are with our 'just married!' expressions!

This area of Minneapolis has cobble-stoned streets and side walks and just oozes charm.

We walked along the path that we've ran along together countless times!

Our matrons of honor and best men joined us for a couple more wedding party shots before heading to the reception!

I used to live in a building that is a block to the left of the tall building in this photo.

These are the photos I dreamed of taking when we decided to have our wedding in this area. I'm so glad that the weather cooperated! And I just love how green and lush everything is in these photos!

This photo is among my favorites of the day.

I love our expressions in this photo - the photos that capture our personalities are my favorite!

We crossed back over to the other side of the street and made our way to the reception, taking more photos along the way.

Phil was clearly still adjusting to wearing a ring at this point!

And then it was time to head into the social hour to kick off the celebration!

July Happiness Project: Get Outside and to the Lake

Oh hey, remember how I said I was going to have a monthly "happiness project"? And then didn't focus on anything since focusing on keeping my schedule more tame for March and April? Whoops. Let's just say my focus for May and June was getting married/adjusting back to normal life!

I do want to get back to having a monthly focus, though. My July focus is going to be getting outside and to the lake. Summer is a short season here in the Midwest so I need to be intentional about making the most of it!  Here's how I'm planning to live out this focus in July!

1. Week day walks outside. I am terrible at working through my lunch and not taking a break. But in July I want to try to get outside for a 20 minute walk 2-3 times a week, which should be more than doable! A little mid-day fresh air is so good for me. Plus I love watching the steps accumulate on my FitBit (Do you have a FitBit? If so, we should be friends!)

2. Get to the lake more often. In July I'm focusing on getting to the lake more often. I'll be there 3 weekends which is probably the number of weekends I was at the last lake summer in total! Phil and I are taking his mom there for a weekend in 2 weeks. Then I'll head back the following week to spend Wed-Sat there so I can soak up some time with my Chicago brother and his family while they are up there for a week.

3. Weekend coffee + read outside. I'm not going to be around a whole lot this month, but on the weekends I will be around, I want to be intentional about going outside for my morning coffee and to read. I did that on the 4th of July and it was glorious to spend a couple hours out there sipping coffee and reading!

Do you have any monthly focuses or intentions?

Our Wedding: The Ceremony

This post is going to have LOTS of photos because I had the hardest time narrowing down all the awesome pictures our photographers took during our ceremony! This is going to be a lengthy post!

I am a practicing Catholic so the ceremony part of the wedding day was very important to me. I currently split my time between 2 different churches (one that was walking distance from where I used to live and one that is walking distance from our current home in south Minneapolis). We decided to get married at Our Lady of Lourdes, the church close to downtown Minneapolis, as it's a gorgeous, historic church in a beautiful area of the city. Oh and it's a French-themed church with lots of fleur de lis so it was the perfect church for a Francophile like me to get married in! Plus since we had a lot of out-of-town guests, we wanted to pick a location that was easy to get to and didn't require renting a car. The church and ceremony were about 3 blocks apart and about a mile from our hotel blocks.

The ceremony gave us a chance to incorporate more family into the wedding. 2 of my nephews handed out the programs.

Kolin (10) and Matthew (9)

My friend that designed our invitations also designed our programs. I love the scripted font that we used on all of our paper-products for the wedding. It's swoon-worthy!

Our photographers did a good job of getting pictures of some of our guests - especially my nieces and nephews!

Evie waiting for the wedding to start!

Evie (3), Charlie (almost 6), and Anna (5)

Andrew (11) and James (12)

 My oldest brother Chad seated my mom.

We didn't have any songs during our wedding as the church is particular about wedding music, so instead my good friend Heather sang "How Beautiful" after the seating of the mothers. I hid in the entryway at the back of the church so I could listen to this beautiful song. Besides having my good friend sing, my 2 aunts played piano (one played the processional/recessional, the other accompanied my friend during How Beautiful and the psalm that was sung between readings). I'm lucky to have so many musical family members and friends.

After "How Beautiful," it was time for the bridal party procession!

My handsome groom

My older sister Emily and Phil's college friend Luke

My younger sister Abby and Phil's high school friend Dave

Waiting for his bride!

Then it was my turn to walk down the aisle. Surprisingly, I was dry-eyed.  I just remember grinning from ear to ear and feeling so much excitement that we were about to be married in front of our closest family and friends!

I love the look on my mom's face in this photo! My parents were VERY excited that I was marrying Phil, and my mom especially knows how long I've waited to find my life partner. So there were lots of happy tears on her part during the wedding weekend.

The one time I came *close* to crying was when I hugged my dad at the end of the aisle. I am so surprised that I didn't cry on my wedding day as I have certainly cried at others - but I felt such joy and excitement that day!

You can see the fleur de lis on the altar and carpet in this picture!

My God-son/nephew James did the first and second readings and he did such an amazing job!!

Then it was time for the sermon, which I really liked (well, maybe except the part where he mentioned that we were an older couple but that he hoped we'd still be able to have a family - LOL! My east coast friends were confused as to why he considered us old - but we really are OLD for a first marriage by Midwest standards (most of my friends my ages are done having kids!) so I don't hold it against the priest for making that comment!)

Then it was time for the vows! We had 2 priests at our wedding (long story) but they split the duties nicely. The priest for this parish preached and did the nuptial blessing at the end and the other priest (from the parish by our house) did the vows.

I loved my long train!

You may now kiss the bride!!!

The ceremony went by so quickly (for me at least). It was about 40 minutes, which is about average for a church wedding (we did not have communion/full mass - it would have been closer to 90 minutes had we had mass).

After the wedding ceremony we headed back to sign the marriage license and make it official for the state of Minnesota! I had never signed my name with my new last name!  My younger sister said she couldn't believe I hadn't practiced!  It's going to take awhile to get used to signing with my new last name!

I'd been wearing a ring for 5 months at this point, but it's a new experience for Phil, hence the goofy expression in this photo! I'll share photos of the rings in my details post. Phil chose to have his dad's wedding ring re-sized. I love that there is meaning and significance behind his ring.

The newly married couple with our 2 priests! Phil joked during his speech that if we had a 3rd priest, maybe the weather would have been nicer that day.  LOL.

After that we headed down to the basement so my sister and good friend Courtney (wife of Luke, one of best men) got to work on the bustle. From the look on Phil's face below, you get a sense for how long it took/how complicated it was!

Courtney came with me to my last dress fitting appointment to learn how to do the bustle. She took pictures and a video to make sure she would figure it out! It was not an easy task!!

Success!!

After that we were ready to walk to our reception, but took some time to take pictures on the way, which are some of my favorite from the day - I'll share them in the next post!