The WEEKEND!

We had a beautiful start to spring here in Nashville. The weather was just perfect. I was going to attempt to do a photo-an-hour post chronicling our Saturday, but some of the pictures didn't save to my phone, so I'm just going to give you what I've got.

Saturday morning we hit the gym first thing...  For some reason I was just feeling very fatigued and out of breath... I couldn't do even half of what I normally do. While waiting for Josh to finish up, I took my blood pressure and it was 105/55. That's pretty low for me these days, but I think that explains why I was feeling so weak. I know low BP and low blood sugar are not the same thing, but we stopped at Chik-Fil-A after the gym (at my insistence... I only ate the chicken part of my chicken minis and had a yogurt) and a few swigs of orange juice made me feel almost normal again.

Went home, got cleaned up and then I stopped at Target to get some new all-purpose flats, and then went to Whole Foods to get food for our (wine, cheese and chocolate) picnic!


(my basket before checkout)

I mixed honey and red pepper flakes to put on some of the cheese... doesn't it look lovely? Tasted good, too!


We hopped in the car and headed to Arrington Vineyards, about 40 minutes or so away.


My hubbin is so handsome.


We found the perfect place to spread our quilt, and he went to get the wine while I got the food all sorted out.

(one of the jars is the honey, the other is homemade fig jam - also good on cheese!)


Mmmm, cheese!


Mmmm, dessert (the Creole bar was my favorite!)


Best combination ever.


A toast.














(Josh now has 4 pairs of TOMS shoes. He's an addict. These burlap ones are my fave, though)



Sunday was the usual.... Cleaned the house (and finally threw these shoes away. I think they've been through enough, don't you? Happily, I found another pair just like them on ebay, they should be arriving soon!)...



Also made our meal plan for the week and went grocery shopping. After that, I made a stop at Rita's because they were giving away free Italian ices for the first day of spring. I got the raspberry lemonade one, it's my favorite and they hardly ever have it!



I buy bananas every week. Lately, instead of throwing the leftover ones from the previous week away, I've started freezing them to make banana soft serve (just puree it in the blender). Here's what I had last night after my daily butt-kick from Jillian:



I pureed one banana, topped it with 1 Tbsp melted peanut butter and about 5-6 cocoa-roasted almonds. DELICIOUS!  I think protein and potassium are supposed to be good things to have after working out. It tastes just like ice cream (better than, actually) and it was so refreshing and good for me, too. I think I've found my go-to summer treat. Yum!

Here's the boys being weird when we put them to bed last night.


And a gratuitous picture of Jorge, just because:


Hope your weekend was just as fabulous. Happy Spring!

What a weekend! Part 2 - Sunday

As I type this, it's cloudy and rainy in Nashville. Not raining hard by any means, but I think that we Nashvillians may have a knee-jerk "rain is bad!" reaction to rain for a long time, now that we know what it can do to our beautiful city.

Yesterday - Mother's Day- was sunny and beautiful, but a bit windy and only in the 60's (I wore long sleeves! Brrr!). I would gladly trade today's weather for a little wind, though!

Josh's mom likes to organize what she calls "FFF" time - it stands for "Forced Family Fun". Since I loooove planning things and I looooove picnics, Josh and I tossed around the idea of doing an FFF picnic for a while. Mother's Day seemed like a great time to do it, and we decided to do it at Arrington Vineyards. At first, I had all these ideas in my head of making all homemade picnic food, etc. And I would still love to do that, someday. But with the Yard Sale being the day before, and Josh's exams being the day before that (he ended the semester with a 4.0, by the way), cooking was the last thing on our minds. Next time!

We assigned the drinks and wine to Josh's siblings, and he and I bought all the food. I went out to get everything while he showered and got ready. I can throw myself together in about 10 minutes, which is why he never fails to be better looking than me! I just want to be the pretty one for one day, dangit! ;) I went to whole foods first and bought an assortment of cheeses, crackers, fig preserves (put a dollop on top of your cheese and cracker - you have not LIVED until you tried it), their in-store made pimento cheese spread (delicious!), pasta and veggie salad, creole mustard, pesto, mini-cupcakes and a birthday cake for Josh's brother, who had a birthday a couple days beforehand. I'm trying to remember the cheeses I got, because they were excellent - a habanero cheddar, a goat's milk cheddar, a goat's milk gouda, a smoked cheddar, and a type of blue cheese that was phenomenal. I can't remember the name, but it was orange, like a cheddar (and tasted similar to a cheddar), except with the blue veins in it. The Bip informed me that no one would eat that one except me, but let me tell you, it allllllll was eaten, with only a little help from me.

Then I stopped at Kroger and got an assortment of breads and some sliced cheeses (cheddar, swiss, gouda) and thick cut deli meats (honey roasted turkey, bourbon honey ham and bourbon chicken), and some canned pears (more on that in a minute).

We loaded up the truck with a picnic basket and bags full of food and a few quilts. I had never been to Arrington Vineyards before, but it was beautiful. It is owned by Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn fame, if I am not mistaken.

The fig preserves on the cheese was an absolute HIT.  Almost the whole jar was eaten. Josh made sandwiches for him and his brother that consisted of the chicken, gouda, mustard, pesto and pears, and it was a hit as well. The pimento cheese was also well-received. And the raspberry wine... oh my lawwwd! It was nothing short of phenomenal. It was so nice for everyone to be together for a few hours, enjoying wine and food and weather and each other's company. I think everyone had a good time! And I feel especially proud that although everything was store-bought, we did have some special ingredients that upped the 'gourmet' factor a bit - that was important to me. And it all looked so homey surrounded by the quilts we brought. It was a lovely time!

I am apprehensive about posting pics of the Bip's family ON THE INTERNETS without their permission, so I won't post them all here, but there are a couple that I just have to share.

This is Josh, his brother, his mom and his sister.

What a good-looking family! And you have to admit that the quilt adds a lot, too! Great picnic quilt!

And here is Josh's bro and myself - obviously we were feeling the wine pretty good by this point:

We were tuckered out when we got home (and I had a rocking sunburn on my face), so we decided to just rest our eyes for a while. We were on top of the bedcovers with just light blankets over us, just going to rest a minute. I really didn't even think I'd fall asleep. It was about 5:15 p.m. Then I woke up at 12:30.... a.m.! The dogs were on the bed with us (because we had thought we were just going to rest, you see?) and they had not stirred and probably didn't want to because they knew they'd end up sleeping in the laundry room otherwise. I was cold, so I got up to pull the covers back and the Bip woke up and asked what I was doing. I said I was getting under the covers. He sleepily asked why I hadn't been under the covers. I said "Well, I hadn't planned on sleeping this long, I thought we were just going to rest." Startled, he came fully awake and asked in amazement, "Are we still napping?!" It was so funny. He got up to read for a while, but I went straight back to sleep and continued to sleep until 6:30 am. Thirteen hours of sleep! I had no idea I was even that tired, but it did my body good. I feel so good today, and I am in the greatest mood you ever did see.

To end this post, here are my sweeties curled up on the picnic blankets this morning.

I think my sweet Julio knew it was Mother's Day yesterday, because he gave me all the snuggles and cuddles that he usually gives to his Poppa. :)

All in all, it was a wonderful weekend... hope yours was beautiful, too.

Perfect Weekend, Part 1 (SATURDAY)

This beautiful spring weather makes life sweeter in every way. Nashville is a beautiful city, any way you look at it, but Nashville in spring, especially, is just breathtaking. All the flowering trees, the way the leaves pop up on the trees overnight, so many different shades of green everywhere. Just lovely!

We live in a Historic neighborhood I love... my favorite neighborhood, actually. However, we're kind of on the non-pretty side of things... but we sat on our porch yesterday and marveled at just how beautiful our street looked. That's the magic of spring in Nashvegas... it even makes the not-so-pretty beautiful.

But, back to our super fun Saturday. Josh and I have been talking about going on a picnic pretty much since we met. I have a really great picnic basket and blanket (and matching wine carrier), but it's a little on the fancy side, and I had visions of something a little more casual for our first picnic. I found a great, colorful basket at Target for $15 that was perfect. So, on Saturday we put a quilt in it and headed to Green Hills. After a quick stop to browse Anthropologie, we went to The Food Company. It's not the cheapest place for picnic food by ANY means, but their Turkey sandwiches just can't be beat, and I had such a craving for them! We bought sandwiches and chips and dessert and drinks and headed to Centennial Park. I will let the pictures do the rest of the picnic-talking for me!

(Our next picnic, we'll be going to Arrington Vineyards, using the fancy basket, and I'll make some really yummy stuff from scratch. But casual picnics like this one are wonderful, too!)

Once we were done eating and enjoying, we headed over to Hillsboro Village to go to the park over there. I don't know the real name of it, I call it "Dragon Park" because of the gigantic mosaic dragon that is there. It makes a great backdrop for photos, as do all the flowering trees. It was beautiful and Josh had never been there (though he was born and raised in Nashville), so I was excited to show him the Dragon!

(I love the above picture)

The Dragon in it's entirety:

Below is probably my favorite picture I took this weekend:

I messed with it in Picnik a little, and I like the way it looks like this, too...

Bip took this awesome photo below... love it. iphones take such great photos, especially the "Shake It" app. How did we ever live without it?

On our way back home, we stopped by our local Home Depot to see if they had the new Martha Stewart paint colors out yet (they didn't). We weren't ready to stop our marvelous day yet, so we decided to top it all off with some vanilla frozen custard with hot fudge (Bip) and a mango ice (me) from Rita's.

We capped off our Saturday with some reading material and a long nap. Truly a perfect day.... Sunday was just as good, maybe even better. More on that next post!