celebrating three years.

austin and i started a tradition {is it really a tradition when you first start it?} of having cake and champagne at midnight on our anniversary. it began with my inability to be patient excitement on our first anniversary when i wanted to have some yummy wedding cake and champagne from our wedding. unfortunately, our at midnight on our second anniversary we had a little hiccup of juliet deciding to break out in hives, so we didn't get to have cake and champagne at midnight, but we did have some eventually!

this year there were no hiccups! austin popped open the bottle and poured us each a glass right before it officially was midnight. it's like new year's eve!

{geeze why is our kitchen so yellow?? someone come paint it for me.}

and austin had picked up some cupcakes for us and he even thought to get them in our wedding colors- pink and green! {plus chocolate iced ones just because they're delicious}.

austin, of course, had to work the day of our anniversary, but once he was home and changed out of his scrubs we were ready to celebrate!

and what, you ask, did we do to celebrate our anniversary?

we went to watch monsters university, of course! i'm kind of obsessed with mike and sully. so i was really excited to see the prequel to monsters, inc. sully was kind of a jerk though. and that made me sad... {also, don't forget to check out austin's monster growl face above}

austin always gets me flowers for our anniversary. and this year was no exception.

he even made sure to get some of my favorite flowers included in the bouquet- lilies and hydrangeas, which were also in my wedding bouquet. he's a thinker, that one.

after cooking some dinner together, we settled in on the couch to watch the summer premiere of one of our favorite shows, big brother! {yes, we have an unhealthy obsession with that show.}

we had a great day celebrating three years of marriage! i sure do love this guy. :)

1095.

1,095. that's how many days it's been since this happened:

1,095 seems like so many days. but yet it doesn't seem like it's been that long since i was freaking out about everything that still had to be done anxiously awaiting walking down the aisle to my husband-to-be.

dear mr. heard,
three years has flown by. and i have enjoyed every minute of it {ok, fine, almost every minute}. so much has happened in those 1,095 days, but i know there is so much more to come for us in our life together. i love you and happy anniversary.

{p.s. if you'd like to know more about our wedding, check out our wedding page here. or get more details from last year's wedding week posts. and you can see how we celebrated our first and second anniversaries here and here.}

check back soon for a post on how we celebrate the occasion this year! and yes, it started with champagne and cake at midnight. tradition!

2012 wrap up.

whoa man. can you believe today is the last day of 2012? and to think, we were all told we'd never make it past the 21st. just like past years, here's a recap of the year in my life/blog.

apparently the month of january was less than eventful. but the year did start off with champagne, so... no compaints.

in february we bought a house. kind of a big deal.

read all about our house projects here and check out our checklist here.

we also celebrated austin's birthday in february.

march was somewhat uneventful too. work on the house, go to school, work on the house.

we got lots of work done on the outside of our house in april when momma and my timmy came to see us!

and miss juliet turned seven!

school's out for summer in may. which, of course, meant more work on the house.

june is always a good month. this year kasey came to visit.

i blogged everyday through wedding week 2012 leading up to our second wedding anniversary.

austin and i took a little trip back home in july to visit the family.

dad and robin came out to tennessee to see our new house in august.

and lindsy and katie surprised me by coming in town for the adpi beta beta house opening. bri came, too!

september was a fun month, too. austin and i took a trip to gatlinburg!

you guys know my favorite month of the year is october. always. austin took me camping and i wore lots of camo.

and he made me a cake!

we did the usual thanksgiving thing in november.

and obviously december was full of christmas, family, and friends.

so that's that. 2012 in summary. i'd say it was a pretty good year. but i have to say i've got a lot to look forward to in 2013. big things. like graduation. and a job.

p.s. here you can see my year-end posts from 2010 and 2011.

two whole years.

it's been two years since austin and i said our vows to each other. and although our anniversary this year landed on a tuesday, which meant austin had to work, we were still able to celebrate.

austin had flowers delivered to me at the house. aren't they pretty? he was even thoughtful enough to get stargazer lilies added to the bouquet since i had those flowers in my wedding bouquet. he's a keeper, for real, y'all.

after austin got home from work, we headed out to dinner at 212 market downtown. it was delicious and i even tried some new things! for starters i had the herbed goat cheese crostini and austin had the fried georgia quail breast. for our meal i ordered the housemade spinach and walnut ravioli and austin had the wild caught shrimp and falls mill stoneground grits. and i accidentally ate a bunch of green onions. i thought they were green beans. true story.

for dessert and in order to incorporate cotton {the traditional second anniversary gift} i had made some cotton candy cupcakes at home. i even made them pink and green as a nod to our wedding colors. aren't they pretty?

i think they look like they belong at some sort of dr. suess inspired party.

also in order to keep our tradition of cake and champagne on our anniversary austin picked us out a bottle to pop open. the plan i had was to have the cupcakes and champagne at midnight when it was officially our anniversary, just like we did last year, but juliet decided that was not going to happen when she broke out into a rash/hives all over her little tummy and then threw up all night... so we waited to have the cake and champagne after our dinner date instead.

fortunately, the champagne was tasty.

the cupcakes, however, were a complete and total fail.

they were hard as rocks. so hard that i could barely get the fork through it to cut it. and they were completely inedible. and being the sweets-lover that i am, i will suffer through some mediocre desserts if i have to, but two bites of this and i was done so you know it was bad. they're all going straight to the trash. i was really disappointed, but it was a weird recipe {you failed me, pinterest} and i could tell when i mixed it up that things weren't looking great.

fortunately, i was smart enough to know that the cupcakes were going to suck, so austin and i ordered some desserts to go from 212, just in case. and although i haven't eaten my cheesecake yet, i know it's going to be de.lish.

so that was that. our second wedding anniversary celebration complete with flowers, dinner, drinks, and desserts. and dog vomit. all the essentials, right?

wedding week: first anniversary.

one year ago today, austin and i celebrated our one year anniversary. it wasn't a huge celebration, but that's kind of how we do things: simple, meaningful, and fun.

we started our anniversary weekend with a fun hike up on signal mountain.

we enjoyed year old wedding cake and champagne at midnight when it was officially our anniversary {a tradition i'm determined to make happen every year, but with fresh cake, please}.

the traditional first anniversary wedding gift is paper. and although that sounds pretty lame, it actually just means you have a lot of options! we didn't really do a gift exchange. instead we kind of gifted each other with a gift certificate to terra nostra where we had tapas and sangria.

you can read the original post about our first anniversary here. it really was a great weekend. and perfect for us.

so now that it's time to celebrate our second anniversary, i'm wondering what we'll do to mark this milestone. and i'm also wondering what kind of gifts we'll do since the traditional second anniversary gift is cotton... either way, i'll be back at some point with all the details. whether you like it or not, really.

i hope you all have enjoyed wedding week 2012. i know i've really enjoyed getting to look back at all the pictures from our wedding, including all the prep work and celebrations. it reminds me how blessed i am to have such awesome family and friends. and how lucky i am to have an amazing husband. here's to many, many more anniversaries between us.